Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh Page A

with the job. We take our understudies seriously at the Vulcan and like to feel they’re an integral part of the company. You’ll rehearse again tomorrow morning and—” He stopped unaccountably, and after a moment said hurriedly: “You’re all right, aren’t you? I mean you feel quite happy about this arrangement?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Very happy.”
    “Good.” He hesitated again for a second and then said: “I must go,” and was off down the aisle to the front of the house. He called out: “I’ll be in the office for some time, Jacko, if anyone wants me.”
    A door banged. There was a long silence.
    Jacko advanced to the footlights. “Where are you?” he asked.
    “Here,” said Martyn.
    “I see you. Or a piece of you. Where is the rest? Reassemble yourself. There is work to be done.”
    The work turned out to be the sewing together of a fantastic garment created and tacked up by Jacko himself. It had a flamboyant design, stencilled in black and yellow, of double-headed eagles, and was made in part of scenic canvas. There was an electric sewing machine in the wardrobe-room, which was next to Mr. J. G. Darcey’s at the end of the passage. Here Jacko sat Martyn down, and here for the next hour she laboured under his exacting direction while he himself crawled about the floor cutting out further garments for the Combined Arts Ball. At half past six he went out, saying he would return with food.
    Martyn laboured on. Sometimes she repeated the lines of the part, her voice drowned by the clatter of the machine. Sometimes, when engaged in hand-work, it would seem in the silent room that she had entered into a new existence, as if she had at that moment been born and was a stranger to her former self. And since this was rather a frightening sensation, though not new to Martyn, she must rouse herself and make a conscious effort to dispel it. On one of these occasions, when she had just switched off the machine, she felt something of the impulse that had guided her first attempt at the scene with Poole. Wishing to retain and strengthen this experience, she set aside her work and rested her head on her arms as the scene required. She waited in this posture, summoning her resources, and when she was ready raised her head to confront her opposite.
    Gay Gainsford stood on the other side of the table, watching her.
    Martyn’s flesh leapt on her bones. She cried out and made a sweeping gesture with her arms. A pair of scissors clattered to the floor.
    “I’m sorry I startled you,” said Miss Gainsford. “I came in quietly. I thought you were asleep but I realize now — you were doing that scene. Weren’t you?”
    “I’ve been given the understudy,” Martyn said.
    “You’ve had an audition and a rehearsal, haven’t you?”
    “Yes. I was so frightful at rehearsal, I thought I’d have another shot by myself.”
    “You needn’t,” Miss Gainsford said, “try to make it easy for me.”
    Martyn, still shaken and bewildered, looked at her visitor. She saw a pretty face that under its make-up was sodden with tears. Even as she looked, the large photogenic eyes flooded and the small mouth quivered.
    “I suppose,” Miss Gainsford said, “you know what you’re doing to me.”
    “Good Lord!” Martyn ejaculated. “What
is
all this? What have I done? I’ve got your understudy. I’m damn thankful to have it and so far I’ve made a pretty poor showing.”
    “It’s no good taking that line with me. I know what’s happening.”
    “Nothing’s happening. Oh,
please
,” Martyn implored, torn between pity and a rising fear, “
please
don’t cry. I’m nothing. I’m just an old understudy.”
    “That’s pretty hot, I must say,” Miss Gainsford said. Her voice wavered grotesquely between two registers like an adolescent boy’s. “To talk about ‘any old understudy’ when you’ve got that appearance. What’s everyone saying about you when they think I’m not about? ‘She’s got the