The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin Page A

two more scenes like that and you’ll have the whole company at loggerheads.’
    â€˜I’ve no intention of having my affairs criticized in public by a child like that,’ said Yseut, ‘and certainly it’s no business of yours, in any case. Come on, Donald. Let’s get out of this damned place. Apparently it’s one of the latest rules of repertory that the producer’s mistress can talk to the company anyhow she pleases.’
    â€˜What that child needs,’ Rachel said to Nigel when she had gone, ‘is a darned good spanking.’
    The company reassembled on the stage, but a mood of depression had descended on the rehearsal. The news of Yseut’s little scene with Jean had passed with lightning rapidity from mouth to mouth, and the always mercurial spirits of the company sank to the bottom. Nigel watched for some time longer, but he slipped away shortly before one o’clock and returned very thoughtfully to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ for his lunch.
    It was nearly a week later that he realized he had heard something that morning which would enable him to identify a murderer.

4. Wild Goose Overtaken
    Pray for me, O my friends, a visitant
    Is knocking his dire summons at my door,
    The like of which, to scare me and to daunt,
    Has never, never come to me before …
    Newman
    Nigel passed the rest of the day in various and not very interesting ways. His holiday was proving rather flat, largely owing to the fact that there were now so few people in Oxford whom he knew, while those he had met since his arrival were not only occupied with their job for most of the day, but got on so badly with one another that their company was generally anything but agreeable. If it hadn’t been for Helen, he would probably have packed up and gone back to London straight away. He anticipated seeing Nicholas at lunch, but he had unexpectedly left Oxford and did not return until the next day. A walk round his old haunts, taken in the hope of its producing a few pleasant
frissons
of reminiscence, proved barren of amusement. And when the sky became overcast, and a thin, persistent drizzle set in, he gave it up in disgust and went to the pictures. After a late dinner, he sat gloomily reading in the lounge of the hotel until it was time to go and meet Helen.
    Their supper-party succeeded in cheering him up a good deal. The rumour of her affair with Richard, to which Nigel led up with elephantine tact, Helen dismissed as quite baseless, and accused Nigel of being an innocent if he imagined that that sort of remark, coming from Yseut, had any relation to the facts. As they strolled back together to Helen’s rooms, Nigel waxed sentimental, in terms which it is not necessary to speak of here; and went home so happy that we must suppose they were not ill received.
    The next day, the day of Peter Graham’s eventful party, brought with it a belated intimation of summer warmth which lasted until the end of the week. Peter Graham, who had spent Tuesday in dancing incessant and thoroughly inconvenient attendance on Rachel, devoted almost the whole of it to agitatedpreparations. In the morning, Nigel found him in the bar, laden with flowers and trying to cadge a couple of extra bottles of gin out of the barman. ‘Cherries!’ he was saying excitedly, ‘I must have some cherries! And olives!’ He greeted Nigel with delight, and rushed him away to the shops to buy a great quantity of unnecessary and expensive things for the party.
    Within its limits, as Nigel afterwards admitted, it was a good party. There were unpleasantnesses, but he observed them through an agreeable alcoholic mist, and in any case he had become so used to unpleasantness during the past few days that he would have felt uneasy if none had occurred. The final incident, however – if something could be called an incident which passed completely unnoticed – did in fact disturb him.
    He spent the earlier part of