Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) by P.M. Carlson

Victoria had the help of her prime minister. And not just one prime minister. Two!”
    Nick leaped through the wall of the kick line and landed together with Larry, their upstage hands raised with the hats, twin smiles directed at the nonexistent audience.
    “Fine,” said Daphne, and showed them the routines for their duet, an almost vaudevillian soft shoe involving lots of high-spirited prancing and spinning together, bent elbows linked. “Okay, give it a try. Let’s just honk through it.”
    Nick and Larry waved their hats, gave a preliminary prance to the piano’s rollicking phrases, and began.
    “Oh, Gladstone and Disraeli, Victoria’s glorious pair! There’s fame enough for Dizzy and the Grand Old Man to share!”
    The Chairman waved a hand from his podium at the side and announced, “Mr. Gladstone, the Grand Old Man!”
    Nick stepped forward. Even in his bedraggled rehearsal sweats he radiated the energy and righteous zeal of the famous orator. “I’m William Ewart Gladstone,” he sang. “My talent’s heaven-sent. I try to work God’s purpose in the halls of Parliament! I work for fallen women, for the Irish, for the crowds! My heart is with the people!”
    “His head is in the clouds!” sneered Larry, elbowing Nick aside to claim center stage. He exuded a languid cleverness, the perfect foil for Nick’s pompous enthusiasm, as he sang, “I’m Benjamin Disraeli, a Tory with a twist. I’m known as wit, as Jew, as Brit, as great imperialist! I work to find what’s useful in Gladstone’s woolly dreams. I work for Queen and Empire!”
    “For selfish Dizzy schemes!” Nick, scornful too, shouldered him aside in turn and began the argumentative refrain: “Extend the vote!”
    “The Empire!”
    “God’s will!”
    “And glory bright!”
    “There’s fights enough for Dizzy and the Grand Old Man to fight!” they chorused together, spontaneously flashing their canes in mock swordplay as they skipped around. The other actors were chuckling.
    “Both happily married!” announced the Chairman, and Edith and the actress playing Mrs. Disraeli joined them from the chorus.
    Nick and Edith held hands in an affectionate but thoroughly proper manner. “A ragamuffin husband and a rantipoling wife, we’ll fiddle it and scrape it through the ups and downs of life!” They two-stepped neatly around the stage; but Disraeli and his wife high-kicked. The contentious prime ministers quarreled on through three more stanzas. Then as Jaymie stepped regally down from the rickety chair that was standing in for a throne, Nick launched the final chorus. “There’s land reform!”
    “There’s India!”
    “Peace!”
    “War!”
    “And jubilee!” Jaymie broke in. The prime ministers looked at her, astonished. Increasingly assured, she went on, “And majestee! And dynastee! There’s work enough for Dizzy and the Grand Old Man—and me!”
    The three linked elbows and skipped around the stage to the closing chords.
    “Super!” Derek enthused. “Funnier than I thought! I’m rather taken with that sword fight with the canes, aren’t you, Daphne?”
    “Love it. We’ll keep that. Larry, I like that scarecrow quality you’re giving Disraeli. But tone it down just a little in your choruses with Nick, so it looks like the same dance.”
    “Okay. Nick isn’t exactly a scarecrow.”
    “Yeah, everybody tells me. Woolly mammoth. Prince of Whales,” grumbled Nick.
    “It’s going to be cute. Nice job, Jaymie,” Daphne said, and Jaymie glowed. Then Daphne added almost casually, “Okay, Derek, what’s next?”
    A little pulse of tension ran around the room. Everyone knew what was supposed to be next. But Derek, as casually as Daphne, said, “‘Top of the Greasy Pole.’ Disraeli’s solo.”
    “Oh, can that,” said Larry vehemently. “What’s the point in rehearsing it?”
    “We’ll save it,” said Derek. “It’s important to the show.”
    “Ramona wants the show to be perfect,” Nick said. “She’ll