Husbandry in Heaven by Richard Dacres
Author: Richard Dacres
Publisher : Not known
Source book: False Scent by Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn #21)
Richard Dacres has written three comedies, two of them West End successes and the third about to start rehearsals, all of them starring Mary Bellamy who has brought him up as her ward. Then he has written a serious play: Husbandry in Heaven*. When Richard gives Mary his new manuscript he doesn’t explain it’s not for her.
Mary is anxious about her 50th birthday. She doesn't like talking about her age: even the most successful actress can’t get away with playing the naughty darling forever. Her birthday party is a to be a great occasion with press photographers and even a film crew.
Accustomed to success and adulation, Mary throws the most appalling temper tantrum when her best friend Pinky confides that she has been cast as leading lady in Bongo Dillon's new play at the Unicorn Theatre and will not be part of the cast of Richard’s new comedy. Worse, Mary’s designer Bertie Saracen (the erstwhile Albert Jones) admits he has offered to dress Pinky. There’s another “temperament” later on when Mary realises the main role in Husbandry in Heaven has been written for Richard’s girlfriend Anelida who is just starting out as an actress.
During the course of the day Mary is dreadfully rude to all her closest friends and family. She has the power to threaten their livelihoods, and she does. She lets out a thirty year old secret, and she badly upsets three of the people closest to her. Perhaps it’s no surprise someone decides to murder her.
We see the beginning of Husbandry in Heaven through Mary’s eyes as she starts to read it:
“Mimi comes on. She might be nineteen or twenty-nine. Her beauty is bone-deep. Seductive without luxury. Virginal and dangerous. Hodge comes out of the Prompt corner. Wolf whistles. Gestures unmistakably.
“Mimi: ‘Can this be April, then, or have I, so early in the day, misinterpreted my directive?’”
I have to say I think I would definitely prefer the lightweight comedies and you would have to drag me kicking and screaming to see this play. But I often find myself wondering at Ngaio Marsh's choices when she writes about the theatre.
Also mentioned is a book in Charles’s library: Handbook of Poisons by a Medical Practitioner which doesn’t seem to be a real book.
* A quote from Macbeth.
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