The rest of the house

"What are you expecting to find here?" asked Miss Flava.  She turned her head sideways to look at her boss, but he was concentrating on the corridor ahead.  It was mundane, carpeted in a light green, hard-wearing carpet, and the walls were painted cream where there weren't scrapes and scuffs from things having been carried along it.  At the end they'd come through was the door that Playfair claimed had just popped open of its own accord, and at the other end was a glass-paned door with a white frame.
"Nothing much," said Playfair.  "Judging from the forensics report Stormy was killed too many times to have died here and been taken elsewhere.  It's just about possible, I suppose, that he wasn't killed where he was found, but you'd have to ask yourself why someone would try and kill him again somewhere else."
"Yes," said Miss Flava, wondering not for the first time just how oddly her boss's mind worked.  "That would be a strange thing to think.  Which kind of explains why it's you thinking it, I suspect."
Playfair huffed a little.  "What I'm looking for here is something to tell us what kind of a man Stormy was.  Something so that when we start talking to people we've got things to talk to them about."
He turned the handle on the glass-panelled door, and Miss Flava found herself hoping for a moment that it was locked, but it turned and opened, admitting them to a living room.  It was spacious; there was a wide-screen television on the wall next to where they'd come in, and a leather suite set in a horseshoe shape around it.  Behind that was a table with a stack of papers, some pens, and a steel ruler on it, and behind that was a low bookcase.  As Miss Flava looked around, she found more and more things to look at, as though the room were actually two rooms, each used at different times and unaware of the other's existence.
"Hmm," said Playfair, sitting down on the couch.  "This is a bit close to that screen for comfort."
"For you, maybe," said Miss Flava.  "For all we know, Stormy is short-sighted."
"Was short-sighted," corrected Playfair.  "Well he enjoyed watching television anyway, look at this."  He leaned forward and indicated the slim boxes below the television that provided cable, satellite, and free-to-view television, along with PVR facilities.  "There's games consoles here, too," he said, pointing at another three boxes set a little way off.  "There must be a sea of cables hidden behind all this."
"You think he put them all in himself?"
"No," said Playfair almost immediately.  "It's all too tidy really; I think it was done by a professional so that it's hard to get them all out and mess them up again."
Miss Flava left Playfair to inspect the DVD cupboard and wandered over to the table and bookcase.  On the wall above the bookcase were glass-fronted pictures of men, and the occasional woman, in evening-wear.  Most of the women had the look of 'glamorous assistant' about them, but one or two looked as though they might be the star performer in their own right.  She was about to turn away when one of them caught her eye.
"Playfair!" she called, leaning in a little closer to look at the picture in more detail.  "Come and look at this."
"I hope it's better than these DVDs," said Playfair sounding grumpy.  "I don't think there's anything here that isn't a recording of some show that he's done.  The SOCO boys are going to be really disappointed."
"Look at this," said Miss Flava, tapping the picture with her finger.  "Does she look familiar to you?"
Playfair peered at her, his eyes narrowing slightly as he considered the picture.
"It's the woman with Ronald," he said.  "Bit more meat on her bones in that picture, but it suits her."
"Right," said Miss Flava.  "And look at what's written below it: Angelique Demaître, summer '84.  Looks like there might have been a reason for her thinking that there might be something between herself and Stormy."
"I hope not," said Playfair instantly.  "Otherwise everyone else on this wall becomes a suspect, and some of them look pretty dead."
"You can't tell if someone's died just by looking at a picture of them, Playfair."
"Some of them look dead in their pictures."
"Anyway, if you were her and you knew that you were up on the wall like this, wouldn't you think there was a chance?"
"No," said Playfair. "Not when it's with all these others.  Could just be professional courtesy."
Miss Flava considered pointing out that they both thought that the woman was already slightly delusional but decided not to when she remembered that Playfair seemed almost as disinterested in her as her brother-in-law had been.
"Anything in the papers?" asked Playfair, looking at the books on the bookcase with a look of disgust.  "The books all seem to be magic books."
"Makes sense," said Miss Flava.  "These all seem to be blueprints for something."
"Right," said Playfair.  "I think we can leave this room then.  Where next?"

Backstory

"Well," said Playfair, "you should be picking your unconscious sister-in-law up and taking her away so that we can get on with our investigation, shouldn't you?"
Ronald looked down at Melissa and rubbed the tears from his eyes.  "I suppose so, yes," he mumbled, his accent coming back a little.  Miss Flava flicked back through a couple of pages in her notebook, then forward again.  As Ronald bent down to grab one of Melissa's feet, she looked up.
"I still don't understand why you dislike your sister-in-law so much," she said.  "Bad cooking and fancying someone who sleeps around a lot aren't a bad thing–"
"Indicative of poor taste, though," interrupted Playfair.  Miss Flava scowled at him.
"Aren't a bad thing," she repeated.  "But they're not really enough to hate someone the way you seem to hate her."
"I don't hate her," said Ronald, giving her foot a tug.  Her shoe, a cream, strappy thing that made Playfair think of frozen cod fillets, came off in his hand.  "Hate would be a bit much."
"How is she your sister-in-law?" asked Miss Flava, her pen poised over her notebook again.
"She married my sister," said Ronald.  Miss Flava carefully wrote that down before looking up at him, and her face was as neutral as she could manage.
"In this country?" she asked.
"Oh no, they met in Europe and got married somewhere out there," said Ronald.  "It was a little bit of a surprise when they came back together, and Mother had a couple of strokes in quick succession but that was really kind of her own fault... then Father had his little accident and left my sister quite a lot of money in his will, and Melissa kept spending it.  And spending it.  And my sister never seemed to see any benefits from it, which didn't seem quite right really.  Then Mother died, and Anna the nurse died two weeks later, and then my sister drowned herself in the fish-pond.  It really wasn't a good year, to be honest."
"Did your mother have a stroke because your sister was a lesbian?" Miss Flava was looking over Ronald's statement, tapping her pen against her teeth.
"No!  No, like I said, it was really her own fault.  She'd decided to unpack for Felicity – my sister – and found... well, things in there that apparently you can... use... somehow... if you're... if one of doesn't have..."
"And the shock gave her a stroke?" said Miss Flava, seeing him struggle with his embarassment.
"No.  No, it was trying them out for herself that seems to have got her a bit... er... overexcited, you see...."
Playfair burst into laughter, and Ronald stared at him.  His eyes seemed to bulge a little from his face, and his hands, large and pale, twitched spasmodically, trying to clench into fists.  Playfair ignored him, and just laughed more.
"That sounds very tragic," said Miss Flava, making herself heard over Playfair's laughter.  "I'm sure it was a very trying time for you."
"What was your father's accident?" asked Playfair, grinning broadly but no longer laughing.
"Does it really matter?" asked Ronald, stiffly now.  He was holding himself tightly under control, and if looks could kill then Playfair would certainly have been maimed.
"No," said Miss Flava quickly.  "Thank-you, Mr. Verges, you've been very helpful.  We... have your address, and I'm sure we'll be able to find you if we need you further.  Does your sister-in-law live with you?"
Ronald sighed, and nodded, and dropped her shoe on the floor.  He pulled on her foot again, and she slipped a little towards him.
"Come on, Playfair," said Miss Flava, closing her notebook up.  "Let's go and look round the house."

Rehearsal

"Look, Inspector," said Ronald, his accent thickening to the point where single vowels seemed to take entire second to pronounce, and wobbled around the inside of his mouth like they'd been partially stunned before being spat out.  "Look, it was a simplistic slip of the tongue, a lapsus lingue, if you like."
"I don't like," said Playfair.  "And what has a slip of the tongue got to do with lingerie?  Are you suggesting that I'm just some thick clod plod?"
"Oh no!"  Ronald waved his hands frantically, reminding Miss Flava of the last traffic warden she'd seen from a car when Playfair was driving.  "Oh not at all, Sergeant Inspector!  I just wanted–"
"Detective Inspector," said Playfair.  "I'm sure you just wanted, Mr. Ronald.  And I'm equally sure you just took, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're saying!"  Ronald wailed, his eyes now bright with tears and his hands trembling.  He still held them out before him, silently imploring Playfair to take pity on him, and much of his previous arrogance now seemed well held in check.
"I really want to know why you're here," said Playfair.  "Metaphorically, metaphysically, and cinéma verité.  The man who owns this house is dead several times over and has been for days, so what the bloody hell are you doing here?  Why are you in here?  Why are you insulting my Detective Sergeant?  Why are getting in the way of my police dog?  And why don't you care, in the slightest, about your sister-in-law?"
"It's a rehearsal," said Ronald, his voice high-pitched and wobbly.  His accent had receded a little and he was much easier to understand now.  "Melissa and I are Tricksters, we work with Iain to get his shows right and make sure the illusions work.  Melissa is the set-dresser and I'm an Illusionist.  I work out how to make the tricks work in ways that the audience won't be able to spot.  We have a rehearsal today, and Iain wasn't here when we arrived.  That's nothing new, so we let ourselves in and started setting up anyway.  We were expecting him back around lunchtime."
"What do you mean, that's not unusual?" said Miss Flava, not looking up from her notebook.  She was writing quickly, using shorthand.
"Iain often spends the night elsewhere," said Ronald a little hesitantly.  "He has a lot of fans."
"Hah," said Playfair, a smile playing around his eyes.  "And he always gets back at lunchtime, does he?"
"Well no," said Ronald.  "He gets back when he gets back, and usually he'll be back quite early for a rehearsal.  There's always a lot to go through, and Iain's quite demanding on the technical side of his tricks."
"So why lunchtime this time?" asked Miss Flava.
"There was no breakfast laid on," said Ronald.  "Iain normally has someone in preparing breakfast, or sometimes gets an outside caterer for the day, but when we arrived this morning the house was quiet and there was only a little food in the fridge.  We thought that he knew he'd be late."
"Hah!" said Playfair again, but this time with a little bit of an edge to it.  "Indeed he was."
Miss Flava frowned, and pointed at the drying and curling sandwiches.  "So where did they come from then?"
"Melissa usually makes a couple of trays of sandwiches to bring with her," said Ronald.  "She's just sad really, she fancies Iain and is trying to get him to notice her.  She brings these trays of horrible sandwiches hoping that he'll have forgotten to get food, and then she'll be able to impress him.  She was delighted when we couldn't find any sign of breakfast this morning."
"Did you eat any of the sandwiches?" asked Playfair.
"No," said Ronald, looking pained.  He rubbed his stomach absently with one thin, bony hand.  "I don't much care for cucumber and chutney, egg and mackerel mayonnaise or pureed broccoli and riced chicken sandwiches.  Melissa ate a couple.  The cucumber ones I think.  Is this important?"
Miss Flava, who hadn't written anything down about the sandwiches, shook her head, but Playfair nodded at the same time.
"You never know what details are important," he said, "Until you need them.  After all, it might turn out that the thought of these miserable sandwiches deepened the Great CumuloNimbus's depression to the point where he decided to kill himself rather than face any more of them."
"Really?  Iain was depressed?  He never said anything!"  Ronald's mouth dropped open, and his hands started shaking even more.
Miss Flava sighed and noted the sandwich fillings down with bad grace.  "We don't know if Stormy the magician was depressed or not, yet," she said.  "Do you have any reason to believe he might have been?"
"No! Of course not!  He was very successful!" said Ronald, almost hiccoughing with each exclamation.  "Look around you, you can see how successful he was!"
"Thank-you, I will," said Playfair immediately, and Miss Flava had to hide her smile quickly.  It wasn't quite permission to search the house, but Playfair would rework it until it certainly sounded like permission had been granted.
"Where do you live?" she asked.  There was a crunch from somewhere nearby, and they all turned to look, a little guiltily, at where Melissa was still lying on the floor.  Thankfully Calamity was nowhere to be seen, so they all looked around the room, trying to locate the crunch.  The crunch sounded again, and they found Calamity sitting under one of the trestle tables in front of the apron, eating sandwiches from one of the trays.  The sandwich crunched in Calamity's jaws.  Playfair looked at Ronald.
"Probably the pureed broccoli and riced chicken," he said gloomily.  "I've needed dental work when I've not been able to avoid the sandwiches."
"Where do you live?" repeated Miss Flava, already dreading the next drive with Calamity.  "We'll need to come and talk to you some more about all of this, but for now you and Melissa will need to leave while we determine if this house should be treated as part of the crime scene."
"Oh.  Oh right," said Ronald, and gave her his address, also located in Little Haversham.
"Hmm," said Playfair, examining the sandwiches, but not, Miss Flava noted, doing anything to stop Calamity from eating them.  "This looks like ham in this one."
"Egg and mackerel mayonnaise," said Ronald.  "Trust me on this, Inspector."

Dim Tart

"Dead?"  Melissa gasped dramatically, and one wrist was flung upwards to land against her forehead like some nineteen-forties movie starlet's idea of shock.  Sadly Melissa misjudged it badly and her bony wrist rapped against her forehead like a hob-nailed boot striking the boot-scraper, and her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed on the floor in a heap for real.  Miss Flava looked at her pityingly, Playfair barely spared her a glance, and Ronald Verges acted as though she wasn't there.  Only Calamity paid her any attention, sneaking out from behind Playfair's legs with her head lowered as though hoping that if she couldn't see Miss Flava then Miss Flava couldn't see her, until she reached Melissa.  Then her long pink tongue lolled out of her mouth, and she started licking the woman's eyes.
"Why do dogs like the taste of eyeballs?" asked Miss Flava, watching Ronald Verges.  He still didn't look down at the fallen woman.
"I don't know," said Playfair, with a hint of exasperation.  He sighed heavily.  "Easier to chew, maybe?"
"Surely they'd just pop?"  Still no reaction from Ronald Verges.
"Hah, yes.  Maybe that's what they like about them.  Grapes for dogs!"
"The Great CumuloNimbus is dead, Sergeant?" asked Ronald, his foot tapping slightly as her spoke.  He held his arms tightly across his body, and his face was drawn, his mouth pinched.
"Detective Inspector, actually," said Playfair.  "I have a card here somewhere...."  He produced nearly a dozen cards of various shapes and sizes from an inside pocket and dropped them on the floor.  They clattered, causing Miss Flava to raise an eyebrow.
"No, don't help me," said Playfair turning round and bending down and somehow managing to stand on Ronald's tapping foot in the process.  "I've got them all!"
There was a noise like a steam-kettle starting to boil in the next room, and Miss Flava noted that it was coming from Ronald as he tried not to let Playfair know that he was standing on his foot.  His pale face was going a putrid pink, and his teeth were gritted to the point where they were nearly grinding together.
"There, got them all," said Playfair standing up and finally shifting his weight off Ronald's foot.  He put them away in his pocket again.  "Now Mr. Ronald, you were saying that the great CumuloNimbus is dead."
"No!  No, you were saying that, Inspector.  I was only repeating it."
"How do you know that the Great CumuloNimbus is dead then?"
"I just said, Inspector, you told me."
"Hearsay, then.  You're spreading malicious rumours about the demise of a local celebrity without checking if they're true or not first?  Is there a reason for this.  I mean, a particular reason, other than the obvious?"
"Wha–"  Ronald stared at Playfair with his mouth open.  Then he realised what he was doing and it snapped closed again like a striking venus fly-trap.  Miss Flava pulled Calamity away from Melissa, noticing with a little bit of concern that Melissa's nose now appeared a little nibbled.
"No, I'm not spreading rumours," said Ronald, getting his thoughts together.  His accent, already rather Home Counties, became plummier still.  "One doesn't do that kind of thing.  You told me, mere moments ago, my dear chap, that the Great CumuloNimbus was dead, and I'm now trying to find out why you are telling me that.  One that."
"Because he is," said Playfair.  "And you are in his house, which is suspicious, with a woman, who looks suspicious, doing suspicious things in a suspicious manner.  And this, you see, makes me suspicious."
"That's a lot of suspicion," said Miss Flava, sounding helpful.
"Oh do shut up, you dim tart," said Ronald.  It sounded reflexive, as though this was a standard come back for the women in his life.  The silence in the room was thick enough to cut with a bread-knife, and when he realised why, his still-ruddy face finally started to pale.  "I was talking to my sister-in-law," he said.  He pointed at the unconscious woman on the floor, lying in a pool of dog-drool.  "She's a daft tart and a dim bint."
"I really hope you know more Arabic than that one word," said Playfair, producing a notebook from a pocket Miss Flava was sure he'd shown to be empty at least twice today.  "Or that's language likely to cause disorder.  And possibly a hate crime."
"A hate crime?" said Ronald, over-enunciating his aitche.
"Well, I hate you," said Playfair.  "And causing me to do that is definitely a crime."