Free Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh Page A

a flower sweet on my black coffin let there be strown
.”
    “Wrong play, dear boy,” said Ross. “That’s from
Twelfth Night
.”
    “Bloody funny choice for a comedy.”
    “Strange, isn’t it?”
    Lennox said: “Do any of you find this play… I don’t know… oppressive? Almost too much. I mean, we can’t escape it. Do you?”
    “I do,” Ross confessed. “I’ve been in it before. Same part. It does rather stick with one, doesn’t it?”
    “Well,” Menteith said reasonably, “what’s it
about
? Four murders. Three witches. A fiendish lady. A homicidal husband. A ghost. And the death of the name-part with his severed head on the end of a claymore. Rather a bellyful to shake off, isn’t it?”
    “It’s melodrama pure and simple,” said Angus. “It just happens to be written by a man with a knack for words.”
    Lennox said: “What a knack! No. That doesn’t really account for the thing I mean. We don’t get it in the other tragedies, do we? Not in
Hamlet
or
Lear
. Or even in
Othello
, grim as it is.”
    “Perhaps it’s the reason for all the superstitions.”
    “I wonder,” Ross said. “It may be. They all say the same thing, don’t they? Don’t speak his name. Don’t quote from it. Don’t call it by its title. Keep off.”
    They turned into a narrow side street.
    “I tell you what,” Caithness said. “I don’t mind betting anyone who’s prepared to take me up that Perry’s the only one of the whole company who
really
doesn’t believe a word of it. I mean that —
really
. He doesn’t
do
anything, but that’s so that our apple-carts won’t be upset.”
    “You sound bloody sure of yourself, little man, but how do you know?” asked Menteith.
    “You can tell,” said Caithness loftily.
    “No, you can’t. You just kid yourself you can.”
    “Oh, do shut up.”
    “Okay, okay. Look, there’s Rangi. What’s
he
think of it all?”
    “Ask him.”
    “Hullo! Rangi!”
    He turned, waved at the Swan, and pointed to himself
    “So are we,” Angus shouted. “Join us.”
    They caught up with him and all entered the barroom together.
    “Look, there’s a table for six. Come on.”
    They slipped into the seats. “I’ll get the beer,” Ross offered. Everybody want one?”
    “Not for me,” said Rangi.
    “Oh! Why not?”
    “Because I do better without. Tomato juice. A double and nothing stronger with it.”
    Menteith said: “I’ll have that too.”
    “Two double tomatoes. Four beers,” Ross stated and went to the bar.
    “Rangi,” Lennox said, “we’ve been arguing.”
    “Oh? What about?”
    Lennox looked at his mates. “I don’t know exactly. About the play.”
    “Yes?”
    Menteith said: “We were trying to get to the bottom of its power. On the face of it, it’s simply what a magical hand can do with a dose of blood-and-thunder. But that doesn’t explain the atmosphere it churns up. Or does it?”
    “Suppose…” Caithness began. “You won’t mind, Rangi, will you?”
    “I’ve not the faintest idea what you’re going to ask but I don’t suppose I will.”
    “Well, suppose we were to offer a performance of the play on your — what do you call it —”
    “The
marai
?”
    “Yes. How would you react?”
    “To the invitation or to the performance?”
    “Well — to the performance, I suppose. Both, really.”
    “It would depend upon the elders. If they were sticklers, really orthodox people, you would be given formal greetings, the challenge and the presentation of the weapon. It is possible —” He stopped.
    “Yes?”
    “It would have been possible, I believe, that the
tahunga
— that’s what you’d call a wise man — would have been asked, because of the nature of the play, to lay a
tapu
on the performance. He would do this. And then you would go away and dress and the performance would take place.”
    “You don’t mind about using — well, you know — eyes, tongue, and everything in the play?”
    “I am not entirely orthodox. And we take the