DEATH BEFORE WICKET - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Death Before Wicket 1
The jazz band had recovered from its amazement and picked up
approximately where they had left off, more or less. It was getting
late and the band were, along with the dancers, both tired and
emotional. Not their fault, as they later pointed out to a policeman
whose profession had hardened him against sad stories of human
frailty. People kept buying them drinks. Bringing them drinks.
And, naturally, they had drunk the drinks so charitably provided.
People might have got offended if they hadn’t, officer.
The drummer was playing in a time that was being estimated
by his critics at two-and-a-quarter per bar, variable, the
trombone player was yawning, the cornet was asleep and competent
medical advice might have declared the banjo player to
be clinically dead, except that he was still strumming. The fact
that he was strumming ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird’ while the rest of
the band was playing ‘Tiger Rag’ was going unnoticed in the
general clamour.
Phryne accepted an invitation to turkey-trot from George
and slid away into the mass of dancers. George might have been
a good dancer—there was simply no way of telling. Phryne
wreathed her arms around his neck and tried to keep her feet
out of the way of boots as beggars, rabbits, someone who was
probably impersonating a pixie and presumably meant well and
the poet Villon in someone’s tights milled and swayed.
This crowd was drunk, thought Phryne, slipping a sandal out
from under a descending thigh-high boot which belonged to a
rather tasty Robin Hood. So far they were drunk and cheerful,
drunk and amorous, drunk and morose perhaps but not drunk
and belligerent or drunk and disorderly. Various policemen
who stood around the walls were also blinking gently and had
probably absorbed a good deal of the old familiar juice. One,
in fact, was so glazed that he had allowed a large lady dressed
as a kangaroo and carrying a whole bottle of gin in her pouch
past him without saying a word. As Phryne watched over
George’s shoulder, he slid bonelessly to the ground and lay there
unregarded, a small smile on his face and his helmet resting at
the foot of a marble plinth.