Bodies from the Library 2. Группа авторов

high-profile Agatha Christie film adaptations, Death on the Nile (1978), before returning to his own work with another twisted mystery, Absolution (1978), directed by Anthony Page. He also worked with the director Nicholas Meyer on Sommersby (1993), which relocated a sixteenth-century mystery of imposture to the American Civil War.

      Towards the end of his life, Anthony Shaffer lived in Australia with his third wife, the actress Diane Cilento, and it was here that his final two plays were performed, Widow’s Weeds (1977) and The Thing in the Wheelchair (1996), a ‘melodrama’ adapted from ‘The Case of the Talking Eyes’, a short story by Cornell Woolrich.

      After his stint as a Bevin boy, Peter Shaffer also went up to Cambridge, on a scholarship, to read history. He graduated in 1950 and moved to America where he worked in the New York Public Library and then in a bookshop. It was while living in New York that he wrote his first script, The Salt Land (1955), a television play about the formation of the state of Israel. On returning to London, he worked for the classical music publisher Boosey and Hawkes on catalogues and publicity, specialising in the symphonic section, and he also reviewed books for the magazine Truth. As well as writing the libretto for a comic opera, he wrote a television play Balance of Terror (1957), a spy thriller about the theft of plans for an intercontinental missile by an unspecified foreign power, and a radio ‘parable’ called The Prodigal Father. His first major theatrical success was Five Finger Exercise (1958), a play about a warring family. Though it seemed to some critics rather old-fashioned, others praised the play for the way it explored sensitive issues without the strident tone of other playwrights of the new wave. Either way, the play won him recognition as the Most Promising British Playwright of the Year in the Evening Standard’s prestigious theatre awards.

      Peter Shaffer believed that theatre ‘should lead people into mystery and magic. It should give them a sense of wonderment and, while entertaining, reveal a vision of life.’ His many plays include The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964), which explored Spain’s genocide of the Incas, the ‘farce in the dark’ Black Comedy (1965), Lettice and Lovage (1987) and Amadeus (1979), which probed the death of Mozart and the possible involvement of the composer Salieri. For many, Amadeus is Peter Shaffer’s finest play and it was filmed by Milos Forman in 1984, winning eight Oscars including one for Shaffer’s screenplay. But there is also Equus (1973), an ingenious whydunnit in which a psychiatrist explores the motives and meaning behind a case of horse-mutilation. The play was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, although, as the playwright observed, ‘In London, Equus caused a sensation because it displayed cruelty to horses; in New York because it allegedly displayed cruelty to psychiatrists.’

      Anthony Shaffer died in London in 2001, the year in which his brother was knighted; Peter Shaffer died in 2016 while on a family visit to Ireland.

      ‘Before and After’, the only short story to feature Mr Verity, was published in London Mystery Magazine (Issue 16) in 1953, and ‘Part II: Mr Verity’s Investigation’ appeared in the following issue, credited to ‘J. M. Caffyn’, the name of a surgeon in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

       HOTEL EVIDENCE

       Helen Simpson

      Henry Brodribb was engaged in an argument with his wife; or, rather, he was pacing the room, wordless, trying to take in the sense of her final proposal. His wife, calmly stitching an undergarment, watching him, was aware of his throes, and allowed time to elapse before she continued:

      ‘It’s no good our going on living together when there’s no reason for it and we don’t suit each other.’

      ‘Don’t we?’ interjected Mr Brodribb ironically.

      ‘No,’ said his wife, disregarding the irony, ‘we don’t. Now, Arthur and I do. We like the same sort of plays, and there’s bridge, and he’s ever so good-looking. But, as I said to him, I won’t have anything underhand.’

      ‘Nothing underhand,’ Mr Brodribb repeated, ‘only a pack of lies for me to tell in court. Only perjury and collusion. What about the King’s Proctor?’

      ‘People can’t be expected to tell the truth,’ said his wife comfortably, ‘with the silly way the law is. I’m sure if there was any other reason they’d let you have, I’d have no objection to your divorcing me. But there’s only infidelity for a woman. As I said, there’s never been anything of that between me and Arthur. Besides, it wouldn’t be good for him in his business.’

      ‘And what about my business?’ Mr Brodribb inquired, sarcastically.

      ‘You’ll be all right,’ his wife replied, disregarding the sarcasm. ‘Nobody’d ever dream of your doing anything wrong. It ’ud be a change for both of us.’

      To this Mr Brodribb’s imagination gave involuntary assent. He pictured home without Cissie, a life free from comment, in charge of a good cook-housekeeper. It was alluring. Also, he could move from the country into the town. But he sounded a protest, as was right.

      ‘I never heard of such a thing. I won’t listen to another word about it.’

      And he sat down in the chair opposite hers and shook out his evening paper. Mrs Brodribb, biting off a length of yellow silk. resumed:

      ‘Nobody thinks anything of it, nowadays. Look at these countesses, and Lady This and Lady That; always in and out of the divorce courts.’

      Mr Brodribb beat the paper into more convenient folds and replied severely:

      ‘We’re not countesses.’

      It was a shot fired in flight, at random, which could not give pause for an instant to the victorious advance of his wife. She had made up her mind.

      Mr Brodribb realised this, and was appalled. Only once before had he known her to make up her mind. She had not argued with him then, but she had used other methods without scruple, and he had turned up at the church on the day she named. Having secured him by this display of resolution she had laid decision aside until now, when all the slow force of her will was once more arrayed to be rid of him. Cowering behind his paper, Mr Brodribb sank deeper into his chair and prepared to offer such resistance as pride demanded.

      ‘I was afraid,’ said Mrs Brodribb calmly, ‘that it might be expensive. But it’s not so very, Arthur says, if the case isn’t defended. Arthur’s been finding out about it. Of course, he’d share expenses. Arthur—’

      ‘How dare you mention that fellow’s name to me?’ Mr Brodribb inquired. ‘It’s bare-faced. You don’t seem to have any sense of what’s right and proper.’

      ‘I’ve told you,’ Mrs Brodribb answered with dignity, ‘there’s nothing wrong at all between me and Arthur. And won’t be.’

      Mr Brodribb dashed down his paper, rose, and retired to the only refuge that owned him for master, the tool shed. Mrs Brodribb showed no emotion at his exit, did not lift her eyes from her sewing; but some minutes later she smiled.

      This was the first of a series of encounters whereby, at the end of a fortnight, Mr Brodribb was finally brought to reason. Towards the result his wife’s arguments contributed in some degree; but in the main she owed her victory to that unknown ally, Mr Brodribb’s imagination, which displayed him to himself a free man. Only that wicked preliminary, the necessary infidelity, alarmed him. He made guarded inquiries, confirmed Arthur’s estimate of the expense, and admitted one evening that he might think it over. His wife kissed him, and telephoned to Arthur to come round at once.

      The meeting passed off without awkwardness, owing to Arthur’s tactful praise of Mr Brodribb’s generosity. Indeed, the evening ended with a kind of impromptu supper, during which healths were drunk in whisky and water. After all, as Mrs Brodribb pointed out, it was not as if they had any of them anything to be ashamed of. It was she who steered the men towards action, with: