Ngaio Marsh - Light Thickens

“ ‘Bad dress. Good show.’ ” quoted the stage director cheerfully. “Are we getting them down tomorrow?”

He put this to the company.

“If we get it rotten-perfect now, you can sleep in tomorrow morning. It’s just a matter of working straight on from cue to cue with nothing between. All right? Any objections? Banquo?”

“I?” said Banquo, who had been ready to make one. “Objections? Oh no. No.”

They finished at five of two in the morning. The management had provided beer, whiskey, and sherry. Some of them left without taking anything. William was dispatched in a taxi with Angus and Menteith, who lived more or less in the same direction. Maggie slipped away as soon as her sleepwalking scene was over and she had seen Peregrine. Fleance went after the murder, Banquo, after the cauldron scene, and Duncan, on his arrival at the castle. There were not many holdups. A slight rearrangement of the company fights at the end. Macbeth and Macduff went like clockwork.

Peregrine waited till they were all gone and the night watchman was on his rounds. The theatre was dark except for the dim working light. Dark, coldly stuffy. Waiting.

He stood for a moment in front of the curtain and saw the caretaker’s torch moving about the circle. He felt empty and dead-tired. Nothing untoward had happened.

“Good-night,” he called.

“Good-night, guv’nor.”

He went through the curtain into backstage and past the menacing shapes of scenery, ill-defined by the faraway working light. Where was his torch? Never mind, he’d got all his papers under his arm fastened to a clipboard and he would go home. Past the masking pieces, cautiously along the Prompt side.

Something caught hold of his foot.

He fell forward and a jolt wrenched at his former injury and made him cry out.

“Are you all right?” asked a scarcely audible voice.

He was all right. He still had hold of his clipboard. He’d caught his foot in one of the light cables. Up he got, cautiously. “All serene,” he shouted.

“Are you quite sure?” asked an anxious voice close at hand.

“God! Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me, guv.”

“Props! What the blazes are you doing? Where are you?”

“I’m ’ere. Thought I’d ’ang abaht and make sure no one was up to no tricks. I must of dozed off. Wait a tick.”

A scrabbling noise and he came fuzzily into view around the corner of a dark object. A strong smell of whiskey accompanied him. “It’s the murdered lady’s chair,” he said. “I must of dropped off in it. Fancy.”

“Fancy.”

Props moved forward and a glassy object rolled from under his feet.

“Bottle,” he said coyly. “Empty.”

“So I supposed.”

Peregrine’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom. “How drunk are you?” he asked.

“Not so bad. Only a few steps down the primrose parf. There wasn’t more’n three drinks left in the bottle. Honest. And nobody got up to no tricks. They’ve all vanished. Into thin air.”

“You’d better follow them. Come on.”

He took Props by the arm, steered him to the stage door, opened it, and shoved him through.

“Ta,” said Props. “Goo’night,” and made off at a tidy shamble. Peregrine adjusted the self-locking apparatus on the door and banged it. He was in time to see Props being sick at the corner of Wharfingers Lane.

When he had finished he straightened up, saw Peregrine, and waved to him.

“That’s done the trick,” he shouted, and walked briskly away.

Peregrine went to the car park, unlocked his car, and got in.

“Oh, Lord!” he said, and drove himself home.

Emily in her woolly dressing gown let him in.

“Hullo, love,” he said, “You shouldn’t have waited up.”

“Hullo.”

He said: “Just soup,” and sank into an armchair.

She gave him strong soup laced with brandy.

“Golly, that’s nice,” he said. And then: “Pretty bloody awful but nothing in the way of practical jokes.”

“Bad dress. Good show.”

“Hope so.”

And in that hope he finished his soup and went to bed and to sleep.

Now they were all in their dressing-rooms, doors shut, telegrams, cards, presents, flowers, the pungent smell of greasepaint and wet white and hand-lotion, the close, electrically charged atmosphere of a working theatre.

Maggie made up her face. Carefully, looking at it from all angles, she drew her eyebrows together, emphasized the determined creases at the corners of her mouth. She pulled back her reddish hair, twisted it into a regal chignon, and secured it with pins and a band.

Nanny, her dresser and housekeeper, stood silently, holding her robe. When she turned there it was, opened, waiting for her. She covered her head with a chiffon scarf; Nanny skillfully dropped the robe over it, not touching it.

The tannoy came to life. “Quarter hour. Quarter hour, please,” it said.

“Thank you, Nanny,” said Maggie. “That’s fine.” She kissed a bedraggled bit of fur with a cat’s head. “Bless you, Thomasina,” she said and propped it against her glass.

A tap on the door. “May I come in?”

“Dougal! Yes.”

He came in and put a velvet case on her table. “It was my grandma’s,” he said. “She was a Highlander. Blessings.” He kissed her hand and made the sign of the cross over her.

“My dear, thank you. Thank you.”

But he was gone.

She opened the case. It was a brooch: a design of interlaced golden leaves with semiprecious stones making a thistle. “It’s benign, I’m sure,” she said. “I shall wear it in my cloak. In the fur, Nanny. Fix it, will you?”

Presently she was dressed and ready.

The three witches stood together in front of the looking-glass, Rangi in the middle. He had the face of a skull but his eyelids glittered in his dark face. Around his neck on a flax cord hung a greenstone tiki , an embryo child. Blondie’s face was made ugly, grossly overpainted: blobs of red on the cheeks and a huge scarlet mouth. Wendy was bearded. They had transformed their hands into claws.

“If I look any longer I’ll frighten myself,” said Rangi.

“Quarter hour. Quarter hour please.”

Gaston Sears dressed alone. He would have been a most uncomfortable companion, singing, muttering, uttering snatches of ancient rhymes, and paying constant visits to the lavatory. He occupied a tiny room that nobody else wanted but that seemed to please him.

When Peregrine called he found him in merry mood. “I congratulate you, dear boy,” he cried. “You have undoubtedly hit upon a valid interpretation of the cryptic Seyton.”

Peregrine shook hands with him. “I mustn’t wish you luck,” he said.

“But why not, perceptive boy? We wish each other luck. À la bonne heure .”

Peregrine hurried on to Nina Gaythorne’s room.

Her dressing-table was crowded with objects of baffling inconsistency and each of them must be fondled and kissed. A plaster Genesius, patron saint of actors, was in pride of place. There were also a number of anti-witchcraft objects and runes. The actress who played the Gentlewoman shared the dressing-room and had very much the worst of the bargain. Not only did Nina take three quarters of the working bench for her various protective objects, she spent a great deal of time muttering prophylactic rhymes and prayers.

These exercises were furtively carried out with one scared eye on the door. When Peregrine knocked she leaped up and cast her makeup towel over her sacred collection. She then stood with her back to the bench, her hands resting negligently upon it, and broke out into peals of unconvincing laughter. There was a strong smell of garlic.

Macduff and Banquo were in the next-door room to Sir Dougal’s and were quiet and businesslike. Simon Morten was withdrawn into himself, tense and silent. When he first came he did a quarter of an hour’s limbering-up and then took a shower and settled to his makeup. Bruce Barrabell tried a joke or two but getting no response, fell silent. Their dresser attended to them.