“I think it was dropped,” Donny answered. “Yes, there was some hokum about the man having the doctor killed, but wouldn't he have knocked off the girl instead?”

“Wonder what happened to her?”

“She went back to work. Used to be one of the dancers at the Tiger, in fact.”

“The Blue Tiger, where we were Friday? Is she still there?”

“She wouldn't be, no—she'd be too old even for the chorus now.”

“Billy's no spring chicken,” Flo commented, in what sounded like an objection.

Billy? I thought, then: Ah. Belinda Birdsong, the saucy chanteuse.

Donny gave a snort, and said, “Billy was old when he was in short pants.”

Hmm. Another Billy, then. Unless this was another of the slang turns my American contemporaries used, where a girl was “old man” and a man “young thing.”

Flo giggled. “Don't be absurd, Donny. Billy never wore short pants; he was born in a skirt.”

“Wait a minute,” I broke in. “Are you saying that Belinda Birdsong is a man?”

My two companions flew into gales of laughter, making me realise that I'd sounded like someone too ancient, or too naïve, to have imagined such a thing as a man acting as a woman. “No, honestly,” I protested, “I've seen men impersonating women before, but a person can usually tell. Are you sure?”

This set them off again, into the sort of choking noises that can only come from a risqué joke. “Oh, yes,” Donny got out at last. “No mistake.”

“Do you care to tell me why?”

The cool edge to my question reminded him of his manners. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn't mean to . . . That is to say, yes, I'm sure Belinda's a man, 'cause I saw his, er, fittings one evening. I was walking by his dressing-room when someone threw open the door at a . . . revealing moment.”

“I see.”

“As did I. Gave me quite a trauma, I tell you, seeing the, er, lengths the boy would go to to conceal—” A slapping noise came out of the darkness as Flo chastised him, and I made haste to move the subject on a step.

“I'm impressed. Their throat usually gives them away, the Adam's apple, you know, and a degree of exaggeration in their manners. He's very natural.”

“They all are.”

“What, you mean the others on the stage were all men, as well?”

“Not the chorus line, but the three other singers, yes.”

I'd never even suspected it. Alcohol, of course, was partly to blame for my lack of perception, and the room's thick, smokey air, but on reflection, I decided that the reason I had failed to notice was that, in England, such acts as I had seen were generally in small and seedy cabarets, not in a glittering palace the size of a warehouse with a big, slick jazz band to accompany its internationally known singer.