The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays Page 6

  MAGNUS: I put it to you!—are you the real Inspector Hound?!

  MOON: You know damn well I’m not! What’s it all about?

  MAGNUS: I thought as much.

  MOON: I only dreamed... sometimes I dreamed——

  CYNTHIA: So it was you!

  MRS. DRUDGE: The madman!

  FELICITY: The killer!

  CYNTHIA: Oh, it’s horrible, horrible.

  MRS. DRUDGE: The stranger in our midst!

  MAGNUS: Yes, we had a shrewd suspicion he would turn up here—and he walked into the trap!

  MOON: What trap?

  MAGNUS: I am not the real Magnus Muldoon!—It was a mere subterfuge!—and (standing up and removing his moustaches)

  I now reveal myself as——

  CYNTHIA: You mean——?

  MAGNUS: Yes!—I am the real Inspector Hound!

  MOON (pause): Puckeridge!

  MAGNUS (with pistol): Stand where you are, or I shoot!

  MOON (backing): Puckeridge! You killed Higgs—and Birdboot tried to tell me——

  MAGNUS: Stop in the name of the law!

  (MOON turns to run. MAGNUS fires, MOON drops to his knees.) I have waited a long time for this moment.

  CYNTHIA: So you are the real Inspector Hound.

  MAGNUS: Not only that!—I have been leading a double life—at least!

  CYNTHIA: You mean——?

  MAGNUS: Yes!—It’s been ten long years, but don’t you know me?

  CYNTHIA: You mean——?

  MAGNUS: Yes!—it is me, Albert!—who lost his memory and joined the force, rising by merit to the rank of Inspector, his past blotted out—until fate cast him back into the home he left behind, back to the beautiful woman he had brought here as his girlish bride—in short, my darling, my memory has returned and your long wait is over!

  CYNTHIA: Oh, Albert!

  (They embrace.)

  MOON (with a trace of admiration): Puckeridge... you cunning bastard.

  (MOON dies.)

  THE END

  AFTER MAGRITTE

  CHARACTERS

  HARRIS

  aged about 40

  THELMA

  his wife, a bit younger, attractive

  MOTHER

  a little old, tough, querulous lady

  FOOT

  Detective Inspector

  HOLMES

  Police Constable

  The first performance of After Magritte was given at the Ambiance Lunch-hour Theatre Club on 9 April 1970. The cast was as follows:

  FOOT

  Clive Barker

  HOLMES

  Malcolm Ingram

  HARRIS

  Stephen Moore

  THELMA

  Prunella Scales

  MOTHER

  Josephine Tewson

  Directed by Geoffrey Reeves

  SCENE

  A room. Early evening.

  The only light is that which comes through the large window which is facing the audience. The street door is in the same upstage wall. There is another door on each side of the stage, leading to the rest of the flat.

  The central ceiling light hangs from a long flex which disappears up into the flies. The lampshade itself is a heavy metal hemisphere, opaque, poised about eight feet from the floor.

  A yard or more to one side (Stage L), and similarly hanging from the flies, is a fruit basket attractively overflowing with apples, oranges, bananas, pineapple, and grapes. The cord or flex is tied round the handle of the basket.

  It will become apparent that the light fixture is on a counterweight system; it can be raised or lowered, or kept in any vertical position, by means of the counterbalance, which in this case is a basket of fruit.

  Most of the furniture is stacked up against the street door in a sort of barricade. An essential item is a long low bench-type table, about eight feet long, but the pile also includes a settee, two comfortable chairs, a TV set, a cupboard and a wind-up gramophone with an old-fashioned horn. The cupboard is probably the item on which stand the telephone and a deep-shaded table lamp, unlit but connected to a wall plug.

  Directly under the central light is a wooden chair. Hanging over the back of the chair is a black tail-coat, a white dress shirt and a white bow-tie. Towards Stage R, in profile, is an ironing board with its iron upended on the asbestos mat at the centre-stage end of the board.

  There is no other furniture.

  There are three people in the room.

  MOTHER is lying on her back on the ironing board, her head to Stage R, her downstage foot up against the flat of the iron. A white bath towel covers her from ankle to chin. Her head and part of her face are concealed in a tight-fitting black rubber bathing cap. A black bowler hat reposes on her stomach. She could be dead; but is not.

  THELMA HARRIS is dressed in a full-length ballgown and her hair is expensively ‘up’. She looks as though she is ready to go out to a dance, which she is. Her silver shoes, however, are not on her feet: they have been discarded somewhere on the floor. THELMA is discovered on her hands and knees, in profile to the audience, staring at the floor ahead and giving vent to an occasional sniff.

  REGINALD HARRIS is standing on the wooden chair. His torso is bare, but underneath his thigh-length green rubber fishing waders he wears his black evening dress trousers. His hands are at his sides. His head is tilted back directly below the lampshade, which hangs a foot or two above him, and he is blowing slowly and deliberately up into the recess of the shade.

  Gazing at this scene through the window is a uniformed Police Constable (HOLMES). Only his shoulders, his face and his helmet are visible above the silt. He stands absolutely motionless, and might be a cut-out figure; but is not.

  For several seconds there is no movement, and no sound save the occasional sniffing from THELMA. THELMA pads forward a couple of paces, still scanning the floor ahead and around. HARRIS blows into the lampshade.

  Without looking up at HARRIS, THELMA speaks.

  THELMA: It’s electric, dear.

  HARRIS: (mildly) I didn’t think it was a flaming torch.

  THELMA: There’s no need to use language. That’s what I always say.

  (She pads on a bit, scanning the floor. HARRIS tries to remove the light bulb but it is apparently still too hot: he blows on his sharply withdrawn fingers, and then continues to blow on the light bulb. After a couple of blows he tests the bulb again and is able to remove it.

  This upsets the delicate balance of the counterweight. The shade, relieved of the weight of the bulb, slowly begins to ascend, while the basket of fruit descends accordingly. HARRIS, however, has anticipated this and the movement is one of only a few inches before he has turned on his chair and removed an apple from the basket. This reverses the effect: the basket ascends, the shade descends. But HARRIS has anticipated this also: he takes a bite out of the apple and replaces it. The equilibrium is thus restored.)

  You could have used your handkerchief.

  HARRIS: (intrigued) You mean, semaphore?

  (But THELMA is not listening: she has given up her search, stood up, approached her shoes—and stepped on something; it is in fact a lead slug from a .22 calibre pistol. She picks it up with satisfaction and tosses it into a metal wastebin wherein it makes the appropriate sound.)

  THELMA: A hundred and forty-nine.

  (She hands the iron’s plug up to HARRIS and accepts from him the warm bulb.)

  HARRIS: I never took semaphore as a sophomore, morse the pity.

  (THELMA looks at him icily but he has his own cool.)

  I used the time in a vain attempt to get the Rockefeller girl to marry me for my sense of humour. Would you pass my hat?

  (THELMA passes him the bowler hat, which he puts on his head. He then inserts the iron plug into the light socket, deftly removing his hat and hanging it on a banana, thus cancelling out the imbalance threatened by the weight of the plug and its flex.

  THELMA’s attention does not stay to be impressed.)

  THELMA: For some re
ason, my mind keeps returning to that one-legged footballer we passed in the car … What position do you suppose he plays?

  (HARRIS has got down off the chair and looked critically around.)

  HARRIS: Bit dark in here.

  (The natural light from the window is indeed somewhat inadequate, THELMA pursues her own thoughts and a path to the light switch, positioned by the door at Stage L, which controls the ceiling light, or, at the moment, the iron.)

  THELMA: I keep thinking about him. What guts he must have!

  HARRIS: Put the light on.

  (THELMA independently depresses the light switch, and the red warm-up light on the iron comes on. HARRIS regards it sceptically.)

  Most unsatisfactory.

  THELMA: I mean, what fantastic pluck! What real never-say-die spirit, you know what I mean? (Pause.) Bloody unfair on the rest of the team, mind you—you’d think the decent thing would have been to hang up his boot. What are you doing now?!

  (For HARRIS has gone upstage to the table lamp resting amid the barricade and tried, without result, to turn it on, whereupon he has started to blow violently against the shade. He replies immediately.)

  HARRIS: Filthy. Hasn’t been dusted for weeks. I could write my name on it. (He proceeds to do so, in full, remarking the while:)

  It wasn’t a football, it was a turtle.

  THELMA: A turtle?

  HARRIS: Or a large tortoise.

  THELMA: What?

  HARRIS: He was carrying a tortoise.

  THELMA: You must be blind.

  HARRIS: (equably) It was he who was blind. What happened to the bulb?

  (He means the bulb from the table lamp.

  THELMA however, holds out the warm bulb.)

  THELMA: Here.

  HARRIS: What did you take the bulb out for?

  THELMA: No, that was the one you put in the bathroom. This is the one which——

  (As he takes the bulb from her by the metal end and flips it angrily into the air, catching it by the glass.)

  —you just took out——

  HARRIS: (shouts) Not by the metal end! (Irritably he goes to insert the bulb into the table lamp.)

  THELMA: And how do you explain the West Bromwich Albion football shirt?

  HARRIS: Pyjamas—he was wearing pyjamas. (He successfully switches on the lamp, raising the gloom considerably as he gazes moodily around. He continues to speak, characteristically, without punctuation.) This place is run like a madhouse. What’s that policeman staring at?

  (THELMA turns to the window, marches up to it and viciously draws the curtains together.)

  THELMA: Bloody nerve!

  (There is a piercing scream, from MOTHER as she jerks her foot away from the heated-up iron. This causes some confusion and cries of pain from MOTHER and cries of ‘Mother!’ from THELMA, who snatches up the iron and places it on the wooden chair, the fruit adjusting itself accordingly, MOTHER is now sitting up on the irioning board, facing the audience, her burned foot clutched in her lap, the other hanging down. Her first audible word seems to be a vulgarity; but is not.)

  MOTHER: Butter!

  THELMA: (primly) Now there’s no need to use language——

  MOTHER: Get some butter!

  THELMA: Butter!—Get butter, Reginald!

  (HARRIS rushes out. THELMA grabs the phone.)

  (Dialling) Don’t move—whatever you do don’t move—

  Hello!—I want an ambulance! (There is a loud knocking on the door, THELMA drops the phone—it falls into the cradle—and rushes to the window, shouting.) Who is it?

  (She draws back the curtains, and the Policeman reappears.)

  HOLMES: It’s the police!

  THELMA: (furiously) I asked for an ambulance!

  (She viciously draws the curtains together and dashes back to pick up the phone.

  HARRIS rushes in with half a pound of soft butter on a butter dish.)

  HARRIS: Where do you want it, mother?

  MOTHER: On my foot, you nincompoop.

  (HARRIS slams the butter up against the sole of MOTHER’S undamaged foot.

  The confusion ceases at once, THELMA replaces the phone and stands quietly. HARRIS stands up looking slightly crestfallen.

  MOTHER regards him glacially. There is a silence.) You married a fool, Thelma.

  (MOTHER gets down on the floor, on her good, though buttered, foot.) Has the bathroom light been repaired?

  HARRIS: I put in a new bulb, mother.

  MOTHER: I hope you cleaned your boots, (MOTHER hops one-legged across the stage to the door and leaves, not before delivering the following threat.) I shall be back for my practice. (Certain things are integrated with the following dialogue. The iron goes back on the ironing board. The fruit adjusts. THELMA irons the white dress shirt while HARRIS, sitting on the wooden chair, takes off his waders, which have been concealing not only his trousers but his black patent leather shoes. HARRIS crams the waders into the cupboard in the barricade of furniture.

  When the shirt has been ironed, HARRIS puts it on, and puts on the bow-tie, and finally the coat. After ironing, HARRIS climbs back on the wooden chair to remove the iron plug and, of course, the bowler hat, which, for want of anywhere else, he puts on his head, MOTHER leaves the room.)

  HARRIS: Don’t start blaming me. She could have lain on the floor.

  THELMA: Oh yes—very nice—with my back in the state it’s in—you’d rather I bent double.

  HARRIS: You could have squatted over her. It’s not my fault that the furniture could not be put to its proper use in its proper place.

  THELMA: If you’re referring to the Cricklewood Lyceum——

  HARRIS: I am referring to the Cricklewood Lyceum—it was a fiasco——

  THELMA: You know perfectly well that my foot got caught in my hem——

  HARRIS: With your legs?—your feet don’t reach your hem.

  THELMA: My legs are insured for £5,000!

  HARRIS: Only against theft. The fact of the matter is, it was a botch from first to last, and that is why we find ourselves having to go through it again at the eleventh hour, half of which has now gone. We are never going to get away on time!

  THELMA: (ironing the shirt) I am being as quick as I can. All I can say is I’ll be glad when it’s all over and things are back to normal. It’s making you short-tempered and argumentative.

  You contradict everything I say——

  HARRIS: (heatedly) That I deny——

  THELMA: I’ve only got to mention that the footballer had a football under his arm and you start insisting it was a tortoise. Why a footballer should play with a tortoise is a question which you don’t seem prepared to face.

  HARRIS: (calmingly, reasonably) Look—he was not a footballer. He was just a chap in striped pyjamas. It was a perfectly natural, not to say uninteresting, mistake and it led you to the further and even more boring misapprehension that what he was carrying was a football—whereas I——

  THELMA: Whereas you, accepting as a matter of course a pyjamaclad figure in the street, leap to the natural conclusion that he must be carrying a tortoise.

  HARRIS: The man obviously had his reasons.

  THELMA: You’ve got to admit that a football is more likely.

  HARRIS: More likely?

  THELMA: In the sense that there would be more footballs than tortoises in a built-up area.

  HARRIS: Leaving aside the fact that your premise is far from self-evident, it is more likely, by that criterion, that what the fellow had under his arm was a Christmas pudding or a copy of Whitaker’s Almanac, but I happened to see him with my own eyes——

  THELMA: We all saw him——

  HARRIS:—and he was an old man with one leg and a white beard, dressed in pyjamas, hopping along in the rain with a tortoise under his arm and brandishing a white stick to clear a path

  through those gifted with sight——

  THELMA: There was no one else on the pavement.

  HARRIS: Since he was blind he could hardly be exp
ected to know that.

  THELMA: Who said he was blind? You say so——

  HARRIS: (heatedly) He had a white stick, woman!

  THELMA: (equably) In my opinion it was an ivory cane.

  HARRIS: (shouting) An ivory cane IS a white stick!! (This seems to exhaust them both, THELMA irons placidly, though still rebellious. After a while …)

  THELMA: (scornfully) Pyjamas … I suppose he was hopping in his sleep. Yes, I can see it now—a bad dream—he leaps to his foot, grabs his tortoise and feels his way into the street——