I got it to work. I have closed down iClone and rebooted many times today. Not sure if I rebooted this time but I reopened iClone and loaded the project that I mentioned in the last post. No General Sound track and I deleted the character with sound.
I inserted a new version of the mp3 that I exported from Audacity, this time being careful that I chose to "force" mono on it, (even though the file was mono anyway,)
First, the sound track worked all the way through. Secondly, I brought the character back in by "undoing" its deletion. The general Sound still works all the way through! (!:40 video)
So there's that. We'll see how long it lasts...