"Ah," Rupert said, "I know what you mean. Funerals, and all that."

"Yes," I said. "Funerals and all that."

But I was thinking more of Cynthia.

"Which way to the mains?" Rupert asked suddenly.

For a moment I was dumbfounded. I must have looked particularly unintelligent.

"The mains," he repeated. "The current. The electrical controls. But then I don't suppose you'd know where they are, would you?"

As it happened, I did. Only weeks before I had been press-ganged into standing backstage with Mrs. Witty, helping to throw the massive levers of the antique lighting control panel, as her first-year ballet students tripped across the boards in their recital of The Golden Apples ofthe Sun, in which Pomona (Deirdre Skidmore, in insect netting) wooed the reluctant Hyas (a red-faced Gerald Plunkett in improvised tights cut from a pair of winter-weight long johns), by presenting him with an ever-growing assortment of papier-mache fruit.

"Stage right," I said. "Behind the black tormentor curtains."

Rupert blinked once or twice, shot me a barbed look, and clattered back up the narrow steps to the stage. For a few moments we could hear him muttering away to himself up there, punctuated by the metallic sounds of panels being opened and slammed, and switches clicked on and off.

"Don't mind him," Nialla whispered. "He's always nervous as a cat from the minute a show's booked until the final curtain falls. After that, he's generally as right as rain."

As Rupert tinkered with the electricity, Nialla began unfastening several bundles of smooth wooden posts, which were bound tightly together with leather straps.

"The stage," she told me. "It all fits together with bolts and butterfly nuts. Rupert designed and built it all himself. Mind your fingers."

I had stepped forward to help her with some of the longer pieces.

"I can do it myself, thanks," she said. "I've done it hundreds of times--got it down to a science. Only thing that needs two to lift is the floor."