Chapter 39

A week prior to that, there had almost been a fire in the costume shop. It would have been a full-out one, and disastrous, if one of the seamstresses hadn’t smelled smoke and grabbed a fire extinguisher to put it out. The cause was put down to material too close to an overhead light fixture above the fabric racks. The head of the costume shop questioned everyone, but of course no one admitted to piling the fabrics so high the heat from the light could have caused the fabric to smolder and begin to burn.

Then there was the cracked step on a ladder in the scene shop, which broke when Pat was using it. That was a couple of days before the costume shop incident. He ended up with a sprained wrist as a result. Taken individually, they would have been, and were, put down to the usual things which could happen when people weren’t careful. Together, in the space of only a few weeks, it seemed suspicious.