Curtain Call at the Lantern

"Rex Halloran," you said.

Halloran laughed, delighted, and drew a notebook from his jacket as if you'd offered him a scoop. "Me? Ada, you've got a lovely theory. The man who prints the fear also does the murder to sell the fear?" He was already writing. "It's a marvellous headline."

He was right. It was. The Sentinel ran it in full the next morning, with three rebuttals. Halloran's circulation went up nineteen per cent. Halloran had a charming alibi: forty people who had watched him complain about the wine. Rook took you aside at the stage door.

"You've just handed a man with a printing press a sympathy story," he said. "And you've let the real one walk."

In the weeks that followed, Saltmarsh talked about Halloran, and about the Sentinel, and about media ethics. Nobody talked about who killed Sir Edwin. The agenda had been set, as it always is, by the person with the biggest voice.