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darling, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting and I’m afraid that I can’t take you out, something else has happened.’
    ‘Yes, I saw it. How is the poor boy?’
    ‘Not good. Come upstairs, at least I can offer you some tea. Until the police come. Oh, Lord, the newspapers are going to have a jolly time with this!’
    Aware of the doorkeeper’s ears flapping, Phryne laid one finger on Sir Bernard’s lips and allowed him to escort her back to his office, which now contained no Coplands but a girl laid out on the couch in a state of hysteria, being scolded by a middle-aged woman.
    ‘Sit up, girl, drink your tea, and pull yourself together,’ she snapped. ‘This is no time for hysterics, Leila. Sit up or I will slap you.’
    There was no doubt that she meant exactly what she said, and the young woman obeyed. Phryne recognised Dame Hannah and Rose Maybud.
    35
    ‘Ah. Miss Phryne Fisher, this is Miss Leila Esperance and Miss Agnes Gault. Is that tea?
    Good. Miss Fisher is considering helping us. She is a private detective.’
    Miss Gault stared hard at Phryne and then smiled a broad relieved smile. ‘Yes, please do, Miss Fisher.
    This company’s on the edge of a nervous break-down, so many odd things have been happening.
    I’ve been in the business since I was three and I’ve never known things to be so . . . so strange.’
    ‘We’re cursed,’ announced Miss Esperance,
    ‘haunted!’
    ‘Haunted? Sorry, I don’t deal in ghosts. You want the Society for Psychical Research,’ suggested Phryne.
    ‘Ghosts, forsooth,’ Sir Bernard poured out stewed tea and loaded his with sugar. ‘We don’t have a ghost, we have a trickster of some sort –
    not dangerous.’
    ‘Not dangerous, with poor Robert Craven and Walter laid out?’ Miss Esperance’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘We’re doomed!’
    Miss Gault delivered a slap to Miss Esperance, then offered a shoulder onto which the star collapsed.
    ‘Perhaps I’ll just take her back to her dressing room,’ she murmured. She encouraged Miss Esperance to her feet and led her out.
    ‘That was a reprise of her role of ‘‘Black Nell’’
    in The Shadow of Huntley Hall ,’ said Sir Bernard dryly. ‘The trouble with actresses is . . . well, that they are actresses.’
    36
    ‘You can’t fault them for being what you want them to be,’ said Phryne briskly. ‘Now, what has happened? I’m intrigued.’
    ‘Lots of things. Both Copland and Craven are very ill. The doctor’s with them now. Before that
    . . . well, if I believed in ghosts, which I don’t, I’d begin to think that we were haunted, Phryne darling.’ He put down the cup. ‘Do you want this disgusting tea?’
    ‘No,’ said Phryne, who had not tasted it.
    ‘Then let’s have some whisky.’ He found two glasses and poured out a liberal dose. Then he stared, pointing a quivering forefinger.
    ‘Look!’
    ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to be that colour, you know,’ Phryne observed.
    The manager’s good and expensive Scotch whisky was a brilliant and repulsive green.
    ‘Oh, Lord, that’s it, that is the final straw, I have had enough!’ Bernard bellowed, swelling and taking on the sun-kissed hue of a ripe tomato.
    ‘This must stop! When I find out who’s doing this I shall personally suspend them by the . . . I shall suspend them from the tower of this theatre for daws to peck at!’
    ‘Very good, Bernard, now tell me what has been going on, or those daws are going to go hungry.
    What are daws, anyway?’
    ‘I presume that they are jackdaws,’ said Bernard coldly. ‘Very well. There have been several incidents. The first was the disapearance of Rose Maybud’s glove, which vanished while she was on 37
    stage and turned up in Mr Alexander’s room.’
    ‘That is susceptible of a romantic explanation.’
    ‘Yes, but he swears he didn’t do it.’ Phryne smothered a smile. ‘Then, there was a bag stolen from the chorus’s dressing room – which turned up in Mr Alexander’s room