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In retrospect, Julia thought it had been a mistake to continue with the play. They should have called it quits when Graham died. They should have thanked the am-dram festival organisers for their offer of inclusion, and declined. But all that ‘show must go on’ nonsense of Hector’s had gone to their heads. And now they’d been summoned by Roger to another emergency meeting.

She had muttered as much to Tabitha, who seemed more accepting of the state of affairs, but there was no time to discuss it, because it was 3p.m. on the dot and Roger was taking the floor. He stood and raised his hand.

‘Fellow thespians!’ he said, thespianly, by way of greeting. ‘I come to you with good news, difficult news, and a conundrum.’

Julia was torn between wishing she hadn’t come, intrigue as to the nature of the news, news and conundrum, and the hope that something might tip her off as to who might have had a murderous grudge against Graham Powell.

‘Jane has given us her blessing to stage the production at the festival. If we wish to go ahead, she has no objection.’

There was some appreciative muttering .

‘In the more difficult news, Oscar phoned me yesterday afternoon to tell me that after much thought and discussion, he has decided not to return to our group for this production.’

Understanding nodding and murmuring greeted this announcement. Julia wondered who Oscar had discussed it with. Jane?

‘Which brings us to our conundrum. We need to rearrange our cast once more. I will need someone to fill Oscar’s shoes. It’s a speaking role, so…’

‘Let me do it!’ Hector said, jumping to his feet. For unexplained reasons, Hector had, as usual, brought his son Troilus with him to this meeting. Troilus had seemed to be nodding off and looked most startled by Hector’s sudden burst of energy.

‘Well, that’s a very generous offer…’ Roger looked awkward, even shifty.

‘I know all the lines, every single one.’ Hector spoke passionately, using theatrical arm movements to reinforce his point. ‘Don’t I, Troilus?’

Troilus nodded vigorously, ‘That you do, Papa, that you do.’ Julia could only imagine the hours that the poor young man had spent listening to his father orate.

‘And as you know – I have extensive experience in front of the camera. I may not have mentioned, but I had a major role on Hot Press .’

Roger looked like a man caught in a conundrum worse than the conundrum he’d been previously caught in.

‘Allow me to demonstrate to you…’ Hector said. He cleared his throat, and looked at Roger expectantly.

‘Ah, well, that’s a nice offer, but not necessary. I do believe you when you say you know…’

‘I insist! It’s only right that I have the chance to audition.’ Hector stood, feet apart, head held high. He was an actor at the ready.

Julia got the distinct impression that Roger didn’t want to hear Hector’s demonstration. But he must have realised he had no choice, because he sighed in what seemed like resignation, and said, ‘Go ahead then, Hector.’

Hector nodded. ‘I’ll take it from where Charming Good-for-Nothing first makes his intentions known.’

Ah, so Hector was going for broke. Despite the fact that the lead was not up for grabs, Hector seemed to be auditioning for it! Audacious, thought Julia. Audacious audition action from the ambitious prompt! Well, good luck to him.

Hector cleared his throat once more, and spoke in a clear, forceful voice.

‘My dear young lady, please, allow me to be of assistance. As a man with some experience in the ways of the human heart, I have no motive than to assist you in navigating the affairs of your heart. I, myself, have some experience in this field, and am much acquainted with the minds of men – men like your betrothed – and can plainly see…’

Julia cringed. Hector’s acting was terrible, just terrible ! That’s why Roger hadn’t given him a bigger role from the beginning. He must have heard him bludgeoning his way through his lines before. And now here was Hector, re-auditioning. It was utterly excruciating. Julia could hardly watch. In fact, she had taken to examining her hands, which were clasped in her lap, writhing in horror, while Hector plodded his way through the lines. He wasn’t inaccurate in his claim that he knew every single word, or so it seemed from his performance so far. But the way he put them together…Lord above, it was as if each word existed in a completely separate universe from its neighbour, and they were individually plodding along one after the next after the next until one decided – randomly, and without warning or logic – to burst forth with emphasis , calling undue attention to itself for no reason whatsoever. The one thing she must not do was to look at Tabitha, or, in fact, she must not think about Tabitha at all. Since childhood, she had been horribly susceptible to being set off by other people’s illicit, barely controlled laughter. From the moment she and Tabitha had become friends, at university, their shared ability to get the giggles together had landed them in trouble. And once they started…

Which is why when Julia glanced up, momentarily, she did so explicitly not in the direction of Tabitha. The faces before her were frozen in awkward expressions that indicated either embarrassment, or a desperate wish to be elsewhere. Gina was staring at the ceiling. Dylan was staring at the floor. Only Troilus was looking at his father in rapt attention. Nicky, unfortunately, happened to be looking in Julia’s direction, and Julia accidentally caught Nicky’s eye. Caught Nicky’s whole face, actually, which was in the process of performing a remarkable dance, flitting from amusement to horror to confusion to: Oh my God, please don’t let me laugh .

Julia felt her own laughter rising, and quickly looked down at her hands again. She was a woman over sixty, which meant that the sight of the backs of her hands was guaranteed to wipe the smile off her face. Good heavens, if the skin wasn’t exactly like that of the Galápagos tortoise she’d seen on the Nature Channel, the oldest living animal in the world, encased in deep, dusty-grey wrinkles. It was the gardening that did it. That and the washing-up. No matter how regularly she rubbed in the hand cream, they still looked ancient. The laugh was now thankfully under control.

But then she heard Nicky cough, a cough that Julia felt sure was covering an emerging bubble of laughter. This wasn’t good. Julia could feel her own bubble struggling to emerge. The important thing was not to look up. Julia pulled herself together, staring fixedly at her hands, thinking resolutely of ageing tortoises, and breathing evenly.

Hector was still at it: ‘We are alike, you and I. In your heart beats a fire yet un fulfilled…’

‘Thank you, Hector,’ Roger said, cutting him off, to the relief of all. ‘I think I’ve seen enough.’

Troilus clapped energetically. ‘Bravo, Papa. Encore.’

Definitely not an encore, hoped Julia.

‘I mean to say, I have what I need to make some decisions about the casting, and get back to you all, if you don’t mind.’ Roger looked drained by the morning’s activities, not to mention the previous days’ events, and the prospect of rejigging the cast list again, and – presumably – disappointing Hector. There was absolutely no way he could give the man more than three or four consecutive words to say.

‘Thank you, everyone. I’m sorry to take up more of your time, but hopefully we’ll be ready to rehearse with the new cast shortly.’ The group was already on the move, picking up handbags, scraping chairs across the floor. Roger spoke above the noise: ‘Could the props people stay behind, please? I just want to make sure everything is good to go once we’ve sorted out the roles.’

Roger Grave looked a bit more relaxed once the cast had left, and it was just him, Tabitha and Julia in the village hall. He exhaled audibly, and said, ‘Goodness, who would have thought amateur dramatics would be so…fraught?’

‘Not me, that’s for sure,’ said Tabitha. ‘But don’t worry about the props. It should all be there except for what, um, Graham was wearing. The police have those. We’ll sort out wardrobe for Graham’s replacement. It shouldn’t be too much trouble.’

‘And we’ll need a substitution for Oscar’s jacket, too,’ said Julia. ‘I think the police still have that. If we’re lucky, whoever plays that role will have something suitable.’

‘Let’s go and check what’s what.’ Roger led the way backstage, to the props cupboard. It was strange being back there. So much had changed since Julia and Tabitha had done the pre-dress performance check. Julia could still see it in her mind’s eye, the gun, lying in the props box. She’d held it, and not enjoyed the feeling – the heft of it, the hard metallic chill, had felt dangerous, even ominous. She’d told herself she was being silly, it wasn’t loaded, it was just a harmless lump of metal. But look what had happened.

‘Shall we get started?’ Tabitha said, breaking Julia’s reverie.

‘Of course.’ Julia pulled out the box of props. The clothes were hung on hangers on a rail next to the cupboard. There were two or three empty hangers, where Graham’s costume and Oscar’s jacket had hung.

Roger had the wardrobe list and the props list, and they went through them. It was all there, except for Oscar’s jacket, everything Graham had been wearing, and, of course, the gun.

Julia started packing things back in the box. The sunglasses, the yellow pillbox hat, the hairy caterpillar of a fake moustache.

‘Graham’s moustache!’ Tabitha said, holding the thing rather distastefully. ‘Odd that that’s here. Graham was wearing it on the night, remember?’

‘How could I forget?’ said Roger, with a shudder. ‘It had come unstuck and was making its way down his face.’

Tabitha looked at the moustache with a thoughtful frown. ‘I would have thought the police would have it.’

‘I expect that they do. But remember, Graham was wearing the cheap replacement that we found. That’s the one the police will have,’ said Julia. ‘Turned out Graham left the original at home after the dress rehearsal. Jane found it. She brought it over that afternoon and put it in the props cupboard. She told me it was there, but it slipped my mind. In fact, we laughed about it – her finding the horrible thing on his bedside table.’

‘You’re right. That’s what happened,’ said Tabitha. ‘Jane put this one back in the props cupboard on Saturday afternoon, and Graham must have picked up the cheap stick-on one we’d found as back-up. That’s why the moustache slipped on the night. ’

‘Oh God,’ said Roger. ‘Remember how ridiculous it looked. To think that I thought that that was going to be the worst thing that went wrong that night.’ He looked quite distressed, but before Julia could say anything to comfort him, his phone rang. He glanced at it. ‘Hayley Gibson,’ he said. ‘I better take it, she promised to let me know when the forensics came back.’

He answered the call, and took some steps away from Julia and Tabitha, as if this would prevent them hearing his rather loud, carrying voice. After greeting Hayley, he made some grunting noises of agreement, and then said, ‘Strange. Oscar’s and mine and Tabitha’s you say. But not Julia’s. Interesting.’

He took another step away from the two women, and carried on speaking, “Uh huh… yes, quite… indeed… thank you.’

He ended the call and turned to find Tabitha and Julia staring at him.

‘That was about the gun,’ Julia said, after a pause.‘It had your fingerprints, Tabitha. And Oscar’s.’

‘You weren’t really supposed to hear that,’ said Roger, blushing.

‘You’ve got a voice like a foghorn, Roger,’ said Tabitha.

‘That’s not true,’ said Roger. Loudly.

But Julia carried on thinking aloud, undistracted. ‘But I also handled the gun that day. I put it in the cupboard. My prints should have been on it, too.’

The three of them looked at each other, each coming to the same conclusion. But it was Julia who voiced it.

‘Whoever put the bullet in the gun did so after I put it in the cupboard, and they wiped it clean. Whoever murdered Graham put the bullet in the gun after I put it in the props cupboard, but before you took it out. Isn’t that right, Roger?’

The three of them all looked at each other. This put an entirely new spin on things.