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“Well, people are saying it might have been Dr. Undershaft.”

“But he was killed!”

“He might have hanged himself. He’d been very depressed lately. And he’d always been a bit strange. Nervy. It’s going to be a bit difficult without him, though. Here, I’ve brought you a stack of old programs. Some of the notes may help, since you haven’t been in the opera long.”

Agnes stared at them, unseeing.

People were disappearing and the first thought that everyone had was that it was going to be inconvenient without them.

The show must go on. Everyone said that. People said it all the time. Often they smiled when they said it, but they were serious all the same, under the smile. No one ever said why. But yesterday, when the chorus had been arguing about the money, everyone knew that they weren’t actually going to refuse to sing. It was all a game.

The show went on. She’d heard all the stories. She’d heard about shows continuing while fire raged around the city, while a dragon was roosting on the roof, while there was rioting in the streets outside. Scenery collapsed? The show went on. Leading tenor died? Then appeal to the audience for any student of music who knew the part, and give him his big chance while his predecessor’s body cooled gently in the wings. Why? It was only a performance, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like something important. But…the show goes on. Everyone took this so much for granted that they didn’t even think about it anymore, as though there were fog in their heads.

On the other hand…someone was teaching her to sing at night. A mysterious person sang songs on the stage when everyone had gone home. She tried to think of that voice belonging to someone who killed people. It didn’t work. Maybe she’d caught some of the fog and didn’t want it to work. What sort of person could have that feel for music and kill people?

She’d been idly turning the pages of an old program and a name caught her eye.

She quickly shuffled through the others beneath. There it was again. Not in every performance, and never in a major role, but it was there. Generally it played an innkeeper or a servant.

“Walter Plinge?” she said. “Walter? But…he doesn’t sing, does he?”

She held up a program and pointed.

“What? Oh, no!” André laughed. “Good heavens…it’s a…a kind of convenient name, I suppose. Sometimes someone has to sing a very minor part…perhaps a singer is in a role that they’d rather not be remembered in…well, here, they just go down on the program as Walter Plinge. Lots of theaters have a useful name like that. Like A. N. Other. It’s convenient for everyone.”

“But…Walter Plinge?”

“Well, I suppose it started as a joke. I mean, can you imagine Walter Plinge onstage?” André grinned. “In that little beret he wears?”

“What does he think about it?”

“I don’t think he minds. It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?”

There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crashendo—the long-drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don’t have three hands, and ends with the roinroinroin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning around and around on the floor.

They heard an irate female voice.

“Walter Plinge!”

“Sorry Mrs. Clamp!”

“Damn thing keeps holding onto the edge of the pan! Let go, you wretched insect—”

There was the sound of crockery being swept up, and then a rubbery noise that could approximately be described as a spoing.

“Now where’s it gone?”

“Don’t know Mrs. Clamp!”

“And what’s that cat doing in here?”

André turned back to Agnes and flashed her a sad smile. “It is a little cruel, I suppose,” he said. “The poor chap is a bit daft.”

“I’m not at all sure,” said Agnes, “that I’ve met anyone here who isn’t.”

He grinned again. “I know,” he said.

“I mean, everyone acts as if it’s only the music that matters! The plots don’t make sense! Half the stories rely on people not recognizing their servants