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the gasps and the ‘how did he do that’s’. When he finally pulled the cloth away revealing the empty table and Brenda’s cousin’s daughter was discovered smiling back in her seat, the audience applauded with a kind of groan as if they resented being impressed. Back in his dressing room, Max took off his greasepaint and drank cold coffee (whisky would have to wait until after the second house). It was only then that he remembered the letter, propped up against the mirror.
    He opened it carelessly, getting a smudge of five and nine on the envelope. The photograph fell to the floor and he had to scramble for it in the dust (the dressing rooms at the Alexandra were filthy). Eventually he held the picture under the bright mirror lights. What he felt was a kind of lurch, as if he’d missed a step or had opened the cabinet to find the girl still there, staring at him. He put a hand to his head and realised that he was shaking. The room spun like the Wall of Death at a fairground, but the girl stayed at the still centre of it, eyes closed, pale as death.
    ‘My God,’ said Max aloud.
    The years were spinning too. Max was back in Hastings before the war and his assistant was twirling in the footlights, knowing exactly when to divert the audience’s attentions to her charms.
    Ethel.

Chapter 5
    Brighton had always been one of Max’s favourite towns. In some vague way, he thought they were alike. Like him, the town was classless, raffish, slightly secretive. The hotels on the seafront (he was staying at the Old Ship) presented a smooth, well-bred façade, but at the back, where the kitchens spilled out into the alleys, all was chaos and decay; rats scuttled past overflowing bins and tramps fought the seagulls over the remains of flounder fillets
à la moutarde
. Edgar said there was a lot of crime in the town.
    But, as Max walked through the Pavilion Gardens towards the Theatre Royal, he wasn’t thinking about Brighton or about the week’s show. He was thinking about Ethel. How had she ended up here, the victim of some random sadist? He had been sure that Ethel was living in married bliss on the Isle of Wight. But now he saw that the Christmas cards, ‘with best wishes from Ethel and Michael’, concealed a darker truth. Because, if one thing was for certain, it was that happily married women didn’tend up chopped into three and their body parts scattered around seaside towns. Something must have happened to Ethel and, given their past connection, he couldn’t help wondering if he was somehow to blame.
    He was meeting Ed after band call. Would Edgar the supersleuth be able to solve the mystery? He had his doubts. He knew Ed was clever (apparently he had scored off the scale on the intelligence tests for MI5), but Max had always felt that Edgar was somehow too innocent for police work. If ever a chap had been suited to going back to Oxford after the war and finishing his degree, it was Ed. Max had fought hard to convince him of this, but Edgar seemed fixated on some stupid public service ideal, probably connected with his brother’s death and what had happened to Charis. They had argued in a bar in Victoria station, Ed protesting almost tearfully that Britain had to change and everyone had to ‘do their bit’. ‘Suit yourself,’ Max had said. ‘I’m going back to my old life and I’m never going to think about anyone else ever again.’ Except that his old life – champagne, dancing girls, delirious audiences – didn’t exist anymore and now here he was, not only thinking about his old partner but coming damn close to vowing to track down her murderer. Steady on, Max, he told himself sternly, you’re not Dick Barton, you’re a stage magician. Ethel’s killer was probably some down-and-out who got his thrills from mutilating beautiful women. Except, said the voice in his head, she was your assistant and her torso was sent directly to your friend.
    The pillars and archways of the Theatre Royal were sparkling