Curtain Call at the Lantern

"Class is a costume," said Crane, pouring. "Anyone can learn to wear it. It's fashion, dressed as destiny. Give a child the right accent, the right posture, the right first name for a school report, and in ten years nobody would tell them from the real thing. Not even them."

"Edwin," you said.

"Edwin was a very good student." She smiled. "You should look at Rex Halloran's little friends outside the theatre. Boys like that. Nothing to lose. And Hugo has motive; Hugo always has motive."

She said it like a woman laying out a table. Every place was set. All you had to do was sit where you were told.

"Identity gives people structure," she went on. "A framework of rules. A goal. A direction. Without it they're at sea. That's what people don't understand about the modern world: everyone's choosing their selves from a shelf, and they wonder why they end up feeling like no one. Edwin thought he could throw the shelf away." Her voice didn't change. "I'm afraid it doesn't work like that."

By the door hung a green wool coat, and beside it an umbrella with a silver handle, planted upright in a stand like a walking stick. You did not look at them. You'd learnt, over the years, that the most valuable thing you could do with a piece of evidence was to pretend not to have seen it.

If you hold clue I or clue J, you know what this coat means. There is no new letter to note; simply keep it in your mind.