Curtain Call at the Lantern

Blackwood's smile stayed exactly where it was. That was what made you certain the question landed.

The Fairweather Foundation, it turned out, was forty per cent in hock to Blackwood Holdings. The gala, the theatre, the patronage: an elaborate machine for turning money into taste and taste into rank. "The brand is everything," said Blackwood. "Donors give to a name. Break the name and they scatter like starlings."

"And Edwin was going to break it," you said.

"Edwin was having an episode of sincerity." Blackwood turned to the window. "I've known for years, Miss Voss. The boy from the docks. I held it like a mortgage; you don't call in a loan you'd rather keep collecting on. Now some fool of a man decides on a whim to throw the whole thing away."

"Where were you at nine-fifteen?"

"At the bar. Ask the dome above it. Ask the twelve people who wanted my attention." He almost sounded bored. He was, you thought, the sort of man about whom nobody's ever had to wonder whether he was on camera.

Which was, you noted, its own kind of alibi.