The Rat and the Beaver
Author: Not known
Publisher: Not known
Source book: Enter a Murderer by Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn #2)
The Rat and the Beaver, a play in the West End of London, is the setting for a brutal murder. The murder is carried out on stage, in front of the audience (very selfish on the part of the murderer), with Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn sitting in the stalls (very silly on the part of the murderer). A murder is part of the plot; usually the victim is shot with a dummy bullet, with the sound of the shot coming from a different gun off-stage... but this particular evening the murderer swops the dummies for real bullets.
This is one of Ngaio Marsh’s earliest books, published in 1935. Inspector Alleyn hasn’t yet developed his true character: for example, he’s all over the glamorous leading lady like a rash. Since she is a suspect in a murder case this doesn’t seem very professional.
And then there’s the dreadful sounding play you would probably have to pay me to attend. In fact Ngaio Marsh creates a number of plays in her books, and almost all of them sound quite ghastly to me. I probably wouldn’t go and see any of them. Do I sound a bit critical?
The Rat and the Beaver is a play about drug dealers. And it turns out that some of the characters in Enter a Murderer who are actors in the play within the book, are drug dealers too. And drug addicts, and blackmailers. And murderers.
Interestingly Janet Emerald, a character in Enter a Murderer, is said to have been in Madame X which is a real play. The plot of Madame X sounds perfectly dire to me (look it up on Wikipedia) but times have changed. It must have have been enormously popular because it has been filmed 8 times, initially in 1916, and mostly before WWII.
I do wonder if this were one of Ngaio Marsh’s later books would she have had Janet in a fictional play of her own creation, or did she choose Madame X in 1935 as it would have been well known to her readers?
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| Thanks to The Guardian |
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