Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 6: Opening Night, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Scales of Justice. Ngaio Marsh
stage-lights just touched the bulging curve of his old-fashioned shirt-front. He was monumentally still. One of the critics, an elderly man, said in an aside to a colleague, that Rutherford reminded him of Watt’s picture of the Minotaur.
For the greater part of the first act he was alone, having, as he had explained in the office, no masochistic itch to invite a guest to a Roman holiday where he himself was the major sacrifice. Towards the end of the act, however, Bob Grantley came into the box and stood behind him. Grantley’s attention was divided. Sometimes he looked down through beams of spot-lights at the stalls, cobbled with heads, sometimes at the stage and sometimes, sideways and with caution, at the doctor himself. Really, Grantley thought, he was quite uncomfortably motionless. One couldn’t tell what he was thinking and one hesitated, the Lord knew, to ask him.
Down on the stage Clark Bennington and Parry Percival and J.G. Darcey had opened the long crescendo leading to Helena’s entrance. Grantley thought suddenly how vividly an actor’s nature could be exposed on the stage: there was for instance a kind of bed-rock niceness about old J.G., a youthfulness of spirit that declaimed itself through the superimposed make-up, the characterization and J.G.’s indisputable middle-age. And Bennington? And Percival? Grantley had begun to consider them in these terms when Percival, speaking one of his colourless lines, turned down-stage. Bennington moved centre, looked at Darcey and neatly sketched a parody of Percival’s somewhat finicking movement. The theatre was filled with laughter. Percival turned quickly, Bennington smiled innocently at him, prolonging the laugh.
Grantley looked apprehensively at the doctor.
‘Is that new?’ he ventured in a whisper. ‘That business?’
The doctor didn’t answer and Grantley wondered if he only imagined that the great hands on the balustrade had closed more tightly over each other.
Helena Hamilton came on to a storm of applause and with her entrance the action was roused to a new excitement and was intensified with every word she uttered. The theatre grew warm with her presence and with a sense of heightened surprise.
‘Now they’re all on,’ Grantley thought, ‘except Adam and the girl.’
He drew a chair forward stealthily and sat behind Rutherford.
‘It’s going enormously,’ he murmured to the massive shoulder. ‘Terrific, old boy.’ And because he was nervous he added: ‘This brings the girl on, doesn’t it?’
For the first time, the doctor spoke. His lips scarcely moved. A submerged voice uttered within him. ‘Hence,’ it said, ‘heap of wrath, foul indigested lump.’
‘Sorry, old boy,’ whispered Grantley and began to wonder what hope in hell there was of persuading the distinguished author to have a drink in the office during the interval with a hand-picked number of important persons.
He was still preoccupied with this problem when a side door in the set opened and a dark girl with short hair walked out on the stage.
Grantley joined in the kindly applause. The doctor remained immovable.
The players swept up to their major climax, Adam came on and five minutes later the curtain fell on the first act. The hands of the audience filled the house with a storm of rain. The storm swelled prodigiously and persisted even after the lights had come up.
‘Ah, good girl,’ Bob Grantley stammered, filled with the sudden and excessive emotion of the theatre. ‘Good old Adam. Jolly good show!’
Greatly daring, he clapped the doctor on the shoulders.
The doctor remained immovable.
Grantley edged away to the back of the box. ‘I must get back,’ he said. ‘Look, John, there are one or two people coming to the office for a drink who would be –’
The doctor turned massively in his seat and faced him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
‘Well, but look, dear boy, it’s just one of those things. You know how it is, John, you know how –’
‘Shut up,’ said the doctor, without any particular malice. ‘I’m going back-stage,’ he added. He rose and turned away from the audience. ‘I have no desire to swill tepid spirits with minor celebrities among the backsides of sandblasted gods. Thank you, however. See you later.’
He opened the pass-door at the back of the box.
‘You’re pleased, aren’t you?’ Grantley said. ‘You must be pleased.’
‘Must I? Must I indeed?’
‘With the girl, at least? So far?’
‘The wench is a good wench. So far. I go to tell her so. By your leave, Robert.’
He lumbered through the pass-door and Grantley heard him plunge dangerously down the narrow stairway to the stage.
III
Dr Rutherford emerged in a kaleidoscopic world: a world where walls fell softly apart, landscapes ascended into darkness and stairways turned and moved aside. A blue haze rose from the stage which was itself in motion. Jacko’s first set revolved bodily, giving way to a new and more distorted version of itself which came to rest, facing the curtain. Masking pieces were run forward to frame it in. The doctor started off for the dressing-room passage and was at once involved with moving flats. ‘If you please, sir.’ ‘Stand aside, there, please.’ ‘Clear stage, by your leave.’ His bulky shape was screened and exposed again and again plunged forward confusedly. Warning bells rang, the call-boy began to chant: ‘Second Act beginners, please. Second Act.’
‘Lights,’ Clem Smith said.
The shifting world stood still. Circuit by circuit the lights came on and bore down on the acting area. The last toggle-line slapped home and was made fast and the sweating stage-hands walked disinterestedly off the set. Clem Smith, with his back to the curtain, made a final check. ‘Clear stage,’ he said and looked at his watch. The curtain-hand climbed an iron ladder.
‘Six minutes,’ said the ASM. He wrote it on his chart. Clem moved into the prompt corner. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Actors, please.’
J. G. Darcey and Parry Percival walked on to the set and took up their positions. Helena Hamilton came out of her dressing-room. She stood with her hands clasped lightly at her waist at a little distance from the door by which she must enter. A figure emerged from the shadows near the passage and went up to her.
‘Miss Hamilton,’ Martyn said nervously, ‘I’m not on for your quick change. I can do it.’
Helena turned. She looked at Martyn for a moment with an odd fixedness. Then a smile of extraordinary charm broke across her face and she took Martyn’s head lightly between her hands.
‘My dear child,’ she murmured, ‘my ridiculous child.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said briskly: ‘I’ve got a new dresser.’
‘A new dresser?’
‘Jacko. He’s most efficient.’
Poole came down the passage. She turned to him and linked her arm through his. ‘She’s going to be splendid in her scene,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she?’
Poole said: ‘Keep it up, Kate. All’s well.’ And in the look he gave Helena Hamilton there was something of comradeship, something of compassion and something, perhaps, of gratitude.
Dr Rutherford emerged from the passage and addressed himself to Martyn: ‘Here!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you, my pretty. You might be a lot worse, considering, but you haven’t done anything yet. When you play this next scene, my poppet, these few precepts in thy –’
‘No, John,’ Poole and Helena Hamilton said together. ‘Not now.’
He glowered at them. Poole nodded to Martyn who began to move away but had not got far before she heard Rutherford say: ‘Have you tackled that fellow? Did you