What?! I'm sorry, I've only just this second woken up.
SStephen
We're likely to get into all sorts of tangles if we play questions and answers. So with your permission. [He walks in] I'll just begin at the beginning.
Well before you do, if this some tale about a missing hymn book, it's a bit early...
SStephen
It's murder, Miss Magellan. Cold, clinical and calculated. And it took place last night at my home in Oxfordshire. The midday papers will be full of it. What they won't explain, what no-one can explain is how the killer evaporated into thin air, right in front of everyone's eyes. Some miracles you don't want to believe in.
No. The bit where you enjoy making me feel like I'm treating you like a moron. When you're perfectly capable of reasoning it out for yourself if only you'd stop taking things at face value.
She made all of the moves and now I'm boxed in. We've got nothing whatsoever in common and if I try and break it off she'll think it's because of you know what [her baldness]. Which she's obviously very sensitive about.
MMadeline
I'm not surprised! Didn't you get suspicious when you were running your fingers through her hair and she wasn't even in the room?!
Did it ever occur to you that someone could have cut it without actually being in the room? Using a high-powered laser through the glass in the ceiling.
Of course I am, the idea's ridiculous. In fact the way this was worked was so sublimely simple, when I tell you, you'll wonder why you didn't get it in five seconds flat.
You mean Pot Pourri? One of the biggest cons of the Twentieth Century. People pick it up in a shop, what's the first thing they do? [Mimes sniffing a bowl of Pot Pourri] "mmm, smell this one! That's sensational! I'll have some of that!" Of course it is if you shove your face in it. Put some in a bowl in the middle of the room, you can't smell a bloody thing. There should be a label on the packet "only effective when inserted up nostril"
[On the phone to Jonathan] If you could choose the manner of your own death, would it be (A) Peacefully in your sleep? (B) Breathlessly with Nicole Kidman? or (C) Being dismembered by a homicidal illusionist? If 'c', simply hang up now.
Ever since the man who owned and ran this place died, it was 1969 - a man named William Amberghast, the old Mother Redcap pub in Edmonton has been property market poison. Whether it's superstition or what, I don't know. Would you buy a hundred year-old building where seven men have been quite literally terrified to death?
[Pause]
IInvestigator
The way it's told: the first one, Mr Clifford Jennings, managing director of a big clothing firm, was staying overnight with a lady friend in a special guest room that was kept for visitors. Round about midnight he was preparing for bed. The death certificate said it was his heart. The truth was, no-one knew what had killed him. The girl was convinced he'd seen something... outside. "Something so utterly horrible it set off a fatal seizure". Between 1947 and '51 there were five other cases, deaths that which have never been explained from that day to this. All in the same room. All after they'd looked out of the window in the middle of the night.Not a mark or scratch on any of the bodies. No evidence they'd been poisoned or suffocated. Four of them were found on the floor the next morning. Three were actually seen at the moment of death, collapsing in what appeared to be a fit of mortal terror.
