Ngaio Marsh: Night at the Vulcan

Ben would have none of this. He threatened to publish Brod’s letter if a certain change was made in the casting. The day before yesterday, under duress, I submitted and no longer pressed for this change. However, owing to Miss G.’s highstrikes, it was, after all, effected. Five minutes before the curtain went up on the first act, Ben informed me, with, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, that at the final curtain he intended to advance to the footlights and tell the audience I’d pinched the play. Knowing Ben meant business, I acted: in a manner which, it appears, you have rumbled and which will be fully revealed by your analysis of the greasepaint on his unlovely mug.

He powdered his face with pethidine-hydrochloride, an effective analgesic drug now in fashion, of which the maximum therapeutic dose is 100 milligrams. Ben got about 2 grams on his sweaty upper lip. I loaded his prepared powder-pad with pethidine (forgive the nauseating alliteration) while he was on in the last act and burnt the pad when I returned, immediately before the curtain-call. He was then comatose and I doubt if the gassing was necessary. However, I wished to suggest suicide. I overturned his powder-box in opening out his overcoat. My own vestment being habitually besprinkled with snuff was none the worse, but the powder must have settled on his coat after I had covered his head. Unfortunate. I fancy that with unexpected penetration you have in all respects hit on the modus operandi . Pity we couldn’t share the curtain-call.

It may interest you to know that I have formed the habit of pepping up my snuff with this admirable drug and had provided myself with a princely quantity in the powder form used for dispensing purposes. One never knew which way the cat would jump with Ben. I have been equipped for action since he threatened to use his precious letter. By the way, it would amuse me to know if you first dropped to it when I trampled on my pethidine box in the Greenroom. Dogberry, I perceived, collected the pieces.

My other spare part is secreted in the groove of the sofa. I shall now return to the sofa, listen to your oration and if, as I suspect, it comes close to the facts, will take the necessary and final step. I shall instruct the moronic and repellent Badger to place this letter in the rack if I am still asleep when the party breaks up. Pray do not attempt artificial respiration. I assure you I shall be as dead as a doornail. While I could triumphantly justify my use of Brod’s play, I decline the mortification of the inevitable publicity, more particularly as it would reflect upon persons other than myself. If you wish to hang a motive on my closed file you may make it vanity.

Let me conclude with a final quotation from my fellow-plagiarist.

And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,

When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,

Presuming on their changeful potency.

I hear the summons to return. Moriturus —to coin, as Miss G. would say, a phrase— te saluto, Caesar .

Yours, etc., on the edge of the viewless winds.

JOHN JAMES RUTHERFORD

Alleyn folded the letter and gave it to Fox. He walked back to the sofa and stood looking down at its burden for some time.

“Well, Fox,” he said at last, “he diddled us in the end, didn’t he?”

“Did he, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Fox woodenly.

Bailey and Thompson moved tactfully off-stage. Young Lamprey came on with a sheet from one of the dressing-rooms. Fox took it and dismissed him with a jerk of his head. When the sheet was decently bestowed, Alleyn and Fox looked at each other.

“Oh, let us yet be merciful!” Alleyn said, and it is uncertain whether this quotation from the Doctor’s favourite source was intended as an epitaph or an observation upon police procedure.

Poole switched off his engine outside Jacko’s house. Martyn stirred and he said: “Do you want to go in at once? We haven’t said a word to each other. Are you deadly tired?”

“No more than everybody else but — yes. Aren’t you? You must,” she said drowsily, “be so dreadfully puzzled and worried.”

“I suppose so. No. Not really. Not now. But you must sleep, Martyn. Martyn. There, now I’ve used your Christian name again. Do you know that I called you Kate because I felt it wasn’t time yet, for the other? That astonished me. In the theatre we be-darling and be-Christian-name each other at the drop of a hat. But it wouldn’t do with you.”

He looked down at her. She thought: “I really must rouse myself,” but bodily inertia, linked with a sort of purification of the spirit, flooded through her and she was still.

“It isn’t fair,” Poole said, “when your eyelids are so heavy, to ask you if I’ve made a mistake. Perhaps tomorrow you will think you dreamed this, but Martyn, before many more days are out, I shall ask you to marry me. I do love you so very much.”

To Martyn his voice seemed to come from an immensely long way away but it brought her a feeling of great content and refreshment. It was as if her spirit burgeoned and flowered into complete happiness. She tried to express something of this but her voice stumbled over a few disjointed words and she gave it up. She heard him laugh and felt him move away. In a moment he was standing with the door open. He took her keys from her hand.

“Shall I carry you in? I must go back to the theatre.”

The cold night air joined with this reminder of their ordeal to awaken her completely. She got out and waited anxiously beside him while he opened the house door.

“Is it awful to feel so happy?” she asked. “With such a terror waiting? Why must you go to the theatre?” And after a moment “Do you know ?”

“It’s not awful. The terrors are over. Alleyn said I might return. And I think I do know. There. Good night. Quickly, quickly, my darling heart, good night and good morning.”

He waited until the door shut behind her and then drove back to the theatre.

The pass-door into the foyer was open and the young policeman stood beside it.

“Mr. Alleyn is in here, sir,” he said.

Poole went in and found Alleyn with his hands in his pockets in front of the great frame of photographs on their easel.

“I’m afraid I’ve got news,” he said, “that may be a shock to you.”

“I don’t think so,” Poole said. “Jacko spoke to me before I left. He knew about the play: I didn’t. And we both thought John’s sleep was much too sound.”

They stood side by side and looked at the legend over the photographs.

Opening at this theatre

on

THURSDAY, MAY 11TH

THUS TO REVISIT

— A New Play —

by

JOHN JAMES RUTHERFORD

The End