Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh

encountered Barrabell before but it didn’t take him long to suspect a troublemaker and this morning he had confirmation of it. Barrabell and Nina Gaythorne arrived together. He had dropped his beautifully controlled voice to its lowest level, he had taken her arm, and in her faded, good-natured face there appeared an expression that reminded Peregrine of a schoolchild receiving naughty but absorbing information upon a forbidden ground.
    “Most unexpected…” the Voice confided. “We were sitting…” It sank below the point of audibility. “… concentrated…
most
extraordinary…”
    “Really?”
    “… Blondie… rigor…”
    “No!”
    “I promise.”
    At this point they came through the scenic archway and saw Peregrine.
    There was a very awkward silence.
    “Good morning,” said Peregrine happily.
    “Good morning. Perry. Er — good morning. Er.”
    “You were talking about last night’s storm.”
    “Ah. Yes. Yes, we were. I was saying it was a heavy storm.”
    “I didn’t see it,” said Nina. “Not really.”
    “Did you notice that old scrap shed on the waterfront has collapsed?” Peregrine asked.
    “Ah!” said Barrabell on a full note. “
That’s
what it is! The difference!”
    “It was struck by lightning.”
    “Fancy!”
    “The center of the storm.”
    “Not the theatre.”
    “No,” they both fervently agreed. “Not our theatre.”
    “Did you hear about Blondie?”
    Nina made noises.
    “Blondie has this thing about lightning,” said Peregrine. “Electricity in the air. My mother has it. She’s seventy and very perky.”
    “Oh yes?” said Nina. “How lovely.”
    “Very fit and well but gets electrically disturbed during thunderstorms.”
    “I see,” said Barrabell.
    “It’s quite a common occurrence. Like cat’s fur crackling. Nina darling,” said Peregrine, putting his arm around her, “I’ve got three little boys coming this morning to audition for the Macduff kid. Would you be an angel and go through the scene with them? Here are their photographs. Look.”
    He opened a copy of
Spotlight
at the child-actor’s section. Three infant phenomena were displayed. Two were embarrassingly overdressed and bore an innocent look that only just failed to conceal an awful complacency. The third had sensible clothes and a cheeky face.
    “
He’s
got something,” said Nina. “I would feel I could bear to cuddle him. When was the photo taken, I wonder?”
    “Who can tell? He’s called William Smith, which attracts one. The others, as you’ll see, are called Wayne and Cedric.”
    “Little horrors.”
    “Probably. But one never knows.”
    “We’ll have to see, won’t we?” said Nina, who had recovered her poise and was determined not to get involved with Barrabell-Banquo again.
    A girl from the manager’s office came through to say the juveniles had arrived, each with its parent.
    “I’ll see them one by one in the rehearsal room. Nina, would you come, dear?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    They went together.
    For a little while Barrabell was alone. He had offered his services as the obligatory Equity representative for this production. It is not a job that most actors like very much. It is not pleasant to tell a fellow player that his subscription is overdue or to appeal against an infringement, imagined or genuine, by the management, though the Dolphin, in its integrity and strong “family” reputation, was not likely to run into trouble of that sort.
    Barrabell belonged to a small, extreme leftist group called the Red Fellowship. Nobody seemed to know what it wanted except that it didn’t want anything that was established or that made money in the theatre. Dougal Macdougal was equally far on the right and wanted, or so it was believed, to bring a Jacobite pretender to the throne and restore capital punishment.
    Barrabell kept his ideas to himself. Peregrine was vaguely aware of his extremism but being himself hopelessly uncommitted to anything other than the theatre