Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh

appearance, became larger than life. A gap was left in the middle of the group, and into this when all was ready floated Helena Hamilton, ruffling her plumage, and becoming at once the focal point of the picture.
    “Darling,” she said, “it’s not going to be a flash, is it, with all of you looking like village idiots, and me like the Third Witch on the morning after the cauldron scene?”
    “If you can hold it for three seconds,” Adam Poole said, “it needn’t be a flash.”
    “I can hold anything, if you come in and help me.”
    He moved in beside her. “All right,” he said, “let’s try it. The end of the first act”; and at once she turned upon him a look of tragic and burning intensity. The elderly man wandered across and tweaked at her skirts. Without changing pose or expression, she said: “Isn’t it shameful the way Jacko can’t keep his hands off me.” He grinned and ambled away. Adam Poole said “Right”; the group froze in postures of urgency that led the eye towards the two central figures and the cameras clicked.
    Martyn tried, as the morning wore on, to get some idea of the content of the play, but was unable to do so. Occasionally the players would speak snatches of dialogue leading up to the moment when a photograph was to be taken, and from these she gathered that the major conflict of the theme was between the characters played by Adam Poole and Clark Bennington and that this conflict was one of ideas. About a particular shot there was a great deal of difficulty. In this Poole and Gay Gainsford confronted each other, and it was necessary that her posture, the arrested gesture of her hand, and even her expression should be an exact reflection of his.
    To Martyn, Poole had seemed to be a short-tempered man, but with Gay Gainsford he showed exemplary patience. “It’s the old story, Gay,” he said. “You’re over-anxious. It’s not enough for you to look like me. Let’s face it—” he hesitated for a moment and said quickly: “We’ve had all this, haven’t we — but it’s worth repeating — you can’t look strikingly like me, although Jacko’s done wonders. What you’ve got to do is to
be
me. At this moment, don’t you see, you’re my heredity, confronting me like a threat. As far as the photograph is concerned, we can cheat — the shot can be taken over your shoulder, but in the performance there can be no cheating, and that is why I’m making such a thing of it. Now let’s take it with the line. Your head’s on your arms, you raise it slowly to face me. Ready now. Right, up you come.”
    Miss Gainsford raised her face to his as he leaned across the writing desk and whispered: “Don’t you like what you see?” At the same moment there was a cascade of laughter from Miss Hamilton. Poole’s voice cracked like a whip-lash: “Helena, please,” and she turned from Parry Percival to say: “Darling, I’m so sorry,” and in the same breath spoke her line of dialogue: “But it’s you, don’t you see? You can’t escape from it. It’s you.” Gay Gainsford made a hopeless little gesture and Poole said: “Too late, of course. Try again.”
    They tried several times, in an atmosphere of increasing tension. The amiable Jacko was called in to make an infinitesimal change in Gay’s make-up, and Martyn saw him blot away a tear. At this juncture a disembodied voice roared from the back of the circle:
     
    “Madam, have comfort: all of us have cause
    To wail the dimming of our shining star!”
     
    Poole glanced into the auditorium. “Do shut up like a good chap, John,” he said.
     
    “Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow’s nurse,
    And I will pamper it with la-men-ta-ti-ons.”
     
    The man called Jacko burst out laughing and was instantly dismissed to the dressing-rooms by Poole.
    There followed a quarter of an hour of mounting hysteria on the part of Gay Gainsford and of implacable persistence from Adam Poole. He said suddenly: “All right, we’ll cheat.