Free The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays by Tom Stoppard Page A

appear to be that shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the talented though handicapped doyen of the Victoria Palace Happy Minstrel Troupe emerged from his dressing-room in blackface, and entered the sanctum of the box-office staff; whereupon, having broken his crutch over the heads of those good ladies, the intrepid uniped made off with the advance takings stuffed into the crocodile boot which, it goes without saying, he had surplus to his conventional requirements.
HARRIS : It must have been a unique moment in the annals of crime.
FOOT : Admittedly, the scene as I have described it is as yet my own reconstruction based on an eye-witness account of the man’s flight down nearby Ponsonby Place, where, it is my firm conjecture, Harris, he was driven off by accomplices in a fast car. They might have got away with it had it not been for an elderly lady residing at number seven, who, having nothing to do but sit by her window and watch the world go by, saw flash by in front of her eyes a bizarre and desperate figure. Being herself an old devotee of minstrel shows she recognized him at once for what he was. She was even able to glimpse his broken crutch, the sort of detail that speaks volumes to an experienced detective. By the time she had made her way to her front door, the street was deserted, save for one or two tell-tale coins on the pavement. Nevertheless, it was her report which enabled me to reconstruct thesequence of events—though I am now inclined to modify the details inasmuch as the culprit may have been a genuine coloured man impersonating a minstrel in order to insinuate himself into the side door to the box office. These are just the broad strokes. My best man, Sergeant Potter, is at this moment checking the Victoria Palace end of the case and I am confidently expecting verification by telephone of my hypothesis. In any event I think you now understand why I am here.
HARRIS : No, I’m afraid I’m completely at a loss.
FOOT : Then perhaps you can explain what your car was doing in Ponsonby Place at twenty-five minutes past two this afternoon.
HARRIS : So that’s it.
FOOT : Exactly. It was bad luck getting that parking ticket,
Harris—one of those twists of fate that have cracked many an alibi. We traced your car and sent Constable Holmes to take a look at you.
HARRIS : But we know nothing of this outrage.
FOOT : What were you doing there, right across London?
HARRIS : We went to see an exhibition of surrealistic art at the Tate Gallery.
FOOT : I must say that in a lifetime of off-the-cuff alibis I have seldom been moved closer to open derision.
THELMA : Perhaps it would help to explain that my mother-in-law is a devotee of Maigret.
MOTHER :
Magritte
.
FOOT : I’m afraid I don’t follow your drift.
HARRIS : You will when I tell you that she is an accomplished performer on, and passionate admirer in all its aspects of, the tuba.
FOOT : Tuba? (
Angrily
.) You are stretching my patience and my credulity to breaking poi—(
He sees
MOTHER
with the tuba now on her lap
.)
MOTHER : Can I have a go now?
HARRIS : Hearing that among the canvases on view were several depicting the instrument of her chief and indeed obsessional interest, my wife’s mother, in law, or rather my mother,prevailed upon us to take her to the exhibition, which we did, notwithstanding the fact that we could ill afford the time from rehearsing for a professional engagement at the North Circular Dancerama tonight, and to which, I may say, we will shortly have to absent ourselves. (
To
THELMA
without pause
.) Have you taken up your hem?
( THELMA
gasps with dismay and self-reproach and immediately whips off her dress. This leaves her in bra and panties. Her action, since it is not especially remarkable, is not especially remarked upon
, THELMA ’
s preoccupation now is to find needle and thread, in which she succeeds quite quickly without leaving the room. However, her chief problem during the ensuing minutes is her lack of a tailor’s