The Case of the Gilded Fly Read Online Free Page A

enormously to seeing your play next week,’ said Nigel to Robert. ‘Though I must admit I’m a bit surprised that you’re putting it on here.’
    Robert gestured vaguely. ‘It’s a case of needs must,’ he said. ‘My last thing was such a miserable flop in the West End that I had to go to the provinces. The only consolation is that I shall be able to produce it myself, a thing I haven’t been allowed to do for years.’
    â€˜Only a week’s rehearsal on a new play?’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s going to be a sweat.’
    â€˜It’s a try-out really. Various agents and managers are coming down from London to confirm their belief that I am, in fact, a dandelion seed in the wind, and that I’ve lost all my mind. I hope to disappoint them. Though God knows what sort of a production it will be; this place has become a repository for callow children from the dramatic schools, with a substratumof old crocks and one or two of the most notorious hams in Europe. Whether I shall be able to beat them into a proper use of timing, gesture and intonation in a week I really can’t imagine. But Rachel’s going to be in it, and she’ll help.’
    â€˜Frankly, I doubt it,’ said Rachel. ‘An outsider starring in repertory for box-office purposes creates more bad feeling than anything else. You know, muttering in corners.’
    â€˜What’s the theatre like?’ Nigel asked. ‘I hardly went near the place while I was up here.’
    â€˜You worked!’ put in Nicholas incredulously, who always pretended that he had not.
    â€˜It’s not bad,’ said Robert. ‘An old place, put up somewhere in the eighteen-sixties, but modernized just before the war. I was working there about ten years ago, and my God, it was awful then: squeaky dimmers, erratic tabs, and flats that fell over at a touch. All that’s been done away with now though. Some good soul with money and ambitions crammed the place with every technical device he could lay hands on, including a revolve –’
    â€˜A revolve?’ said Nigel vaguely.
    â€˜Revolving stage. Like a circular turntable, divided across the middle. You set the next scene on the side hidden from the audience and then, when the time comes, just twiddle it round. It means you can’t have flats projecting on to it from the wings, and that rather limits you in the composition of your sets. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they use it much here – it’s a sort of white elephant; certainly I shan’t. But it’s a nuisance, because you lose an enormous depth of stage you could very well do with.’
    â€˜And what,’ said Nicholas, settling back more comfortably in his chair, ‘is the play about? Or is that giving away trade secrets?’
    â€˜The play?’ Robert seemed surprised at the question. ‘It’s a re-write of a thing of the same name by a very minor French dramatist called Piron. You probably know the story. About 1730, I think it was, Voltaire began to receive verses from a Mlle Malcrais de la Vigne, to which he gallantly responded, and a huge correspondence sprang up between them, all very amorous and literary. Later on, however, Mlle de la Vignecame to Paris, and turned out to Voltaire’s fury and everyone else’s delight to be a great fat youth called Desforgues-Maillard. Piron used this situation as the basis of his play, and I’ve taken it over and modified it, reversing the sexes though and making the chief character a woman novelist and her correspondent a mischievous woman journalist. I know it doesn’t sound up to much,’ he concluded apologetically, ‘but that’s really only the bare bones of the thing.’
    â€˜Who’s playing the woman novelist?’
    â€˜Oh, Rachel of course,’ said Robert cheerfully. ‘Lovely part for her.’
    â€˜And the journalist?’
    â€˜Frankly,