Swan Song by Edmund Crispin Read Free Book Online

paid for drinks out of an accumulation of change.
    â€˜Damn!’ he said, irresolute. ‘I believe I left it in my dressing-room at the theatre. I really think I’d better go and fetch it.’
    â€˜Won’t tomorrow do?’ said Elizabeth. Adam thought that she looked particularly beautiful tonight, with her hair glowing like satin in the light of the bedside lamp.
    He shook his head. ‘I really shan’t feel happy unless I go and get it. There’s rather a lot of money in it.’
    â€˜But won’t the theatre be locked up?’
    â€˜Well, it may be. But the old stage-doorkeeper sleeps there, and he may not have gone to bed yet. I’ll try, anyway.’ He was dressing again as he spoke.
    â€˜All right, darling.’ Elizabeth’s voice was sleepy. ‘Don’t be long.’
    Adam went over and kissed her. ‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘It’s only three minutes’ walk.’
    When he got outside, he found that the moon was gibbous, very pale, and with a halo encircling it. Its light illuminated the whole of the south side of George Street, and at the end, at the junction with Cornmarket, he could see the steady green of the traffic signals. A belated cyclist pedalled past, his tyres crackling on the ice which flecked the surface of the road. Adam’s breath steamed in the cold air; but at least the wind had dropped.
    He crossed Gloucester Green. There were still a few cars parked there, the pale moonlight on their metal roofs striped with the yellower rays of the street-lamps. It was very quiet, save for the persistent coughing of a belatedwayfarer stationed ouside the little tobacconist’s shop on his left. Adam paused for a moment to read the concert announcements posted on a nearby wall, and then walked on into Beaumont Street.
    He had no difficulty in entering the opera-house – indeed, the stage-door stood wide open, though the little foyer inside, with its green baize notice-board and its single frosted bulb, was deserted. By about twenty-five past eleven he had retrieved his pocket-book and was preparing to depart.
    His dressing-room was on the first floor, and his decision to go down in the lift must therefore be ascribed solely to enjoyment of the motion. He pressed the button, and the apparatus descended. He climbed in, and traversed the short distance to the ground floor. Then, feeling this short journey to be inadequate, he ascended again, this time to the second floor. Through the iron gates he could see the long, gloomy corridor of dressing-rooms, the gleam of the telephone fixed to the wall at the far end, and the rectangle of yellow light which came from the open door of the stage-doorkeeper’s bedroom. After a moment, the stage-doorkeeper himself shuffled out of it. He was an old man named Furbelow, with wispy hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. Adam, sensing perhaps that his presence required some explanation, opened the lift gates and greeted him.
    â€˜Ah, sir,’ said the old man with some relief. ‘It’s you.’
    Adam accounted dutifully for his late visit. ‘But I’m surprised,’ he added, ‘to find you still up.’
    â€˜I’m always up till midnight, Mr Langley, and I keep the stage-door open till then. But it’s cold down below, so I comes and sits up ’ere during the last part o’ the evening.’
    â€˜I should have thought it was equally cold up here, if you keep the door of your room open.’
    â€˜I as to do that, sir, when the electric fire’s on. Them things exude gases,’ said Furbelow a shade didactically. ‘You ‘ave to ‘ave ventilation when they’re alight.’
    Adam, though doubting if there was much basis for this assertion, was not sufficiently interested in the stage-doorkeeper’s domestic affairs to argue about it. He said goodnight and left the theatre. As he was walking away, a car drew up, and its occupant, a