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Death Before the Final Act

Case 003 · 16 July 2026 · Easy

The interval ran twenty minutes long and the audience began to whistle. Backstage, Julian Mace, the producer who had threatened to close the theatre at the end of the week, was lying among the crates. The house doctor needed one look to say it was not a heart attack. Three people had been behind that curtain the whole interval, and each of them was somewhere different. Who killed him, what did they use, and where were they when the bell rang for the final act?

Suspects

• Arthur Penn

  Stage manager

  Runs the show from a stool and a clipboard and has never missed a cue in nine years. He signed for the props that night, including one he swears he never touched.

  173 cm

• Margaret Lowe

  Leading actress

  Small, famous and finished if the theatre closes. She changed her costume twice during the interval, which nobody could explain, least of all her dresser.

  161 cm

• Daniel Frost

  Lighting technician

  Spends the whole show thirty feet above the stage and hears everything that is said below. Mace had cut his crew from four men to one that morning.

  186 cm

Possible weapons

• The brass-topped cane

  A prop from the second act, solid oak, and signed out of the store at the start of the interval.

  1.1 kg

• The silk curtain cord

  Thin, strong, and cut from the spare roll at some point that evening — the cut end is fresh.

  210 g

• The marble bust

  The centrepiece of the drawing-room set, white, cold and heavy enough to need both arms.

  6.8 kg

Places

• The prop store

  A narrow room of crates and dust sheets behind the stage, with one door and no window.

  Indoors

• The prompt corner

  Stage left, behind the heavy curtain: a stool, a script, a bell and a view of nothing.

  Indoors

• The lighting bridge

  A steel walkway high over the stage, reached by one ladder that rattles when anybody climbs it.

  Indoors

Evidence & statements

1. If Daniel Frost was up on the lighting bridge, then whoever was carrying the marble bust is the shortest of the three.
2. The silk curtain cord was in Daniel Frost's hands.
3. Arthur Penn spent the interval at the prompt corner.
4. Whoever was on the lighting bridge is taller than whoever was in the prop store.
5. A chip of white marble was found under the body, and the bust has a fresh corner missing: the killer is the one who was carrying the marble bust.

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