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murderer straight in the eyes as he lifted his white handkerchief.
    “Fire!”
    The count pulled the trigger. There was a loud retort, followed by the acrid smell of gunpowder and scorched flesh. Topolain stumbled and the audience gasped as they watched the handkerchief he was holding turn bright red.
    Topolain straightened himself up. In his sweating palm he held up the bullet and showed it to the audience. He staggered forward to take a final bow.
    The curtains were drawn and the audience clapped politely. By now they had lost interest.
    “Most peculiar,” said the marquis. “Come, I think we are all in need of champagne. Let us go upstairs, where the card tables demand our attention.”
    The great library doors were opened and music filtered into the room. The marquis led the way out, quite forgetting his daughter, who stood staring transfixed at the curtains as the other guests filed past her. All seemed unaware of the drama unfolding behind the velvet drapes. None of them turned around as there was a thud from backstage. None of them saw Topolain slumped down on the chair.
    Death had made his entrance upon the small stage. He was all too visible to the magician. As a trickle of blood ran down his chin, he had the strangest sensation of becoming detached from his body, connected only by spider threads of silver memory. Now he was floating up over the guests, past the crowded bookshelves toward the bright painted ceiling with its angels and cherubs.
    The silver threads snapped and he was free. Caught in a gust of wind, he was blown out of the library and into the hall with its marble busts and winged statues, where the doors had been opened to let in a latecomer. The snow flurried in as Jacques Topolain, the magician, glided out into the dark night. He saw no more, he heard no more, he was no more.
    Yann had rushed with Têtu to help. He had taken one look at Topolain and seen Death’s black gown trail across the stage. Sido too had witnessed Topolain’s end, but the count had turned her around and led her from the room, locking the doors behind him. The candles flickered in the draft.
    Têtu put his head to Topolain’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. He shook his head. There was nothing to be done.
    “It has never gone wrong before. Why now?” cried Yann.
    Têtu was examining the weapon. “It didn’t go wrong this time either,” he said. “The pistol has been tampered with. Topolain didn’t stand a chance. He was murdered.”

chapter five
    If ann had never before stared death in the face as he did now. It looked to him so absolute, a final curtain fallen. The essence of Topolain had gone, snuffed out like a candle. Only the body that housed him was left lying on the stage in a pool of congealing blood, with Têtu kneeling beside him, tears rolling down his cheeks, rocking back and forth on his heels and sobbing.
    “I should have listened to you. We shouldn’t have come. Then this would never have happened,” he said defeatedly.
    Yann put a gentle hand on the dwarf’s shoulder and bent down to whisper to him. “We have to leave.”
    Têtu was silent. In the dim light of the room Yann could see him shaking. He was in a bad way. He was already exhausted from doing two performances in one night, and now the shock of losing such a dear friend had taken all his strength away and robbed him of his senses.
    All Yann could think was that they must somehow get out of here.
    Out in the hall, the guests were making their way up the grand staircase to where the Marquis de Villeduval stood, champagne glass in hand. Sido felt perplexed by their indifference. Surely they realized that the magician wasn’t acting, surely they realized he had been seriously hurt. Why did no one summon a surgeon to help?
    She turned in desperation to the duchess. “I think the magician has been wounded.”
    “Nonsense, child! It was just playacting.”
    Could these people not see what had taken place? Sido wondered. Did they not