SLEUTH

A PLAY

ANTHONY SHAFFER

This book is
compiled & gifted to book-lovers by
Vibhatsu
Published in Great Britain in 1977 by MARION BOYARS PUBLISHERS 24 Lacy
Road London SW15 1NL
First published in 1971 by Calder & Boyars Ltd
Reprinted by Marion Boyars 1981, 1985, 1988, 1992, 1998, 2004
ePUB released in 2022 by “Vibhatsu”
www.marionboyars.co.uk
Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Peribo Pty Ltd, 58 Beaumont Road,
Kuring-gai, NSW 2080
Reprinted in 2004 10 987654321 © Anthony Shaffer 1971
All performing rights in this play are strictly reserved, and application for performances
should be made to Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street,
London WC2B 5HA.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise except brief extracts for the purposes of review, without prior
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The right of Anthony Shaffer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A CIP
catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 0-7145-0763-6 Paperback
Printed and bound in England by Biddles, King’s Lynn
 to
Father Brown, Mr. Philip Trent, Mr. Max Carrados, Dr. Reginald
Fortune, Mr. Roger Sheringham, Mr. Albert Campion, Mr. Nigel
Strangeways, Lord Peter Wimsey, Dr. Gideon Fell, Monsieur Hercule
Poirot,
and
all their omniscient, eccentric, amateur gentlemen colleagues,
this play is dedicated with
sincere regard and affection.
Illustrations from the Palomar Pictures Production of
SLEUTH
Presented by 20th Century-Fox
starring
Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine
screenplay
Anthony Shaffer based upon his play
Produced by
Morton Gottlieb
Directed by
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Released in the United Kingdom by
Fox-Rank Distributors Ltd.
SLEUTH
 Content
Cover
Jacket
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Description
Half Title
About the Play
ACT ONE
Picture Library-1
ACT TWO
Picture Library-2
Back Cover
SLEUTH was rst presented at the St. Martin’s
Theatre, London, on February 12th, 1970, after a
pre-London tour of Oxford, Leeds, Brighton and
Eastbourne, with the following cast:

ANDREW WYKE Anthony Quayle

MILO TINDLE Keith Baxter
INSPECTOR DOPPLER Stanley Rushton
DET. SGT. TARRANT Robin Mayfield
P.C. HIGGS Liam McNulty

The play was directed by Cli ord Williams.

ACT ONE
 The curtain rises on the living room of ANDREW WYKE’s Norman Manor
House in Wiltshire. It is stone flagged, and a tall window runs the height of the
back wall. It is divided laterally by a minstrels gallery which, in turn, is
approached by a winding staircase. A wardrobe, stage le , and a grandfather
clock, and bureau stage right stand on the gallery. Upstage right is the hallway
leading to the unseen front door. Upstage le a corridor leads into another part
of the house. Standing in this corridor is a basket. Games of all kinds adorn the
room ranging in complexity from chess, draughts and chequers, to early dice
and card games and even earlier blocking games like Senat and Nine Men
Morris. Upstage centre, by the window, under the gallery is a full-sized
“Laughing Sailor”.
As the play opens ANDREW WYKE, is sitting at his desk, typing. He is a
strongly built, tall, fleshy man of 57, gone slightly to seed. His fair hair carries
on it the suspicion that chemical aid has been invoked to keep the grey at bay.
His face, sourly amused and shadowed with evaded self-knowledge is beginning
to reflect the absence of constant, arduous employment. He wears a smoking
jacket and black tie.
The clock strikes eight o’clock. ANDREW turns to look at clock, finishes typing,
takes the page from the typewriter and begins to read)

ANDREW : “Since you appear to know so much, Lord Merridew,

Sir, ” said the Inspector humbly, “I wonder if you
could explain just how the murderer managed to
leave the body of his victim in the middle of the
Tennis Court, and e ect his escape without leaving
any tracks behind him in the red dust. Frankly, sir, we
in the Police Force are just plain ba ed. There seems
no way he could have done it, short of black magic. ’’
St. John Lord Merridew, the great detective, rose
majestically, his huge Father Christmas face, glowing
with mischievous delight. Slowly he brushed the
crumbs of seedy cake from the folds of his pendulous
waistcoat. “The police may be ba ed, Inspector, ” he
boomed, ’’but Merridew is not. It’s all a question of a
little research and a little ratiocination. Thirty years
ago, the murderer, Doctor Grayson, was a
 distinguished member of the Ballet Russe dancing
under the name of Oleg Gray-sinski. The years may
have altered his appearance, but his old skill had not
deserted him. He carried the body out to the centre of
the tennis court, walking on his points along the
white tape which divides the services boxes. From
there he threw it ve feet into the court, towards the
base line, where it was found, and then, with a neatly
executed fouette, faced about and returned the way
he had come, thus leaving no traces. There, Inspector,
that is Merridew’s solution. ”
Splendid! Absolutely splendid! Merridew loses none
of his cunning I’m glad to say. He’s as neat and as
gaudy as ever he was.
The doorbell rings. ANDREW finishes his drink slowly,
then exits to hallway)

ANDREW : Oh hallo. Good evening, Milo Tindle, is it?

MILO : Yes. Mr. Wyke?
ANDREW : Yes. Do come in won’t you?
MILO : Thank you.
(The front door is heard to close. ANDREW walks back into
the room. He is followed by MILO TINDLE.

He is about 35, slim, dark-haired and of medium height. He

has a sharp, sallow face alive with a faintly Mediterranean
wariness. Everything about him is neat from his exactly
parted hair to the squared off white handkerchief in the
breast pocket of his blue mohair suit)

ANDREW : Let me take your coat.

(ANDREW hangs coat on coat rack U. L.)
 Did you nd the entrance to the lane alright?
MILO : Yes.
(MILO walks about surveying room)

ANDREW : Well done. Most people go straight past it. It’s very
nice of you to come.
MILO : Not at all. I found your note when I got down from
London this afternoon.
ANDREW : Oh good. I pushed it through your letter box.
MILO : Er … What’s this? (Indicating life-size figure of a sailor
sitting in front of window)
ANDREW : Oh that’s Jolly Jack Tar the Jovial Sailor. He and I have
a very good relationship. I make the jokes and he
laughs at them. (He moves the sailor’s head manually) You see
ha ha’. Now let me get you a drink. (Moves to drinks trolley)
What will you have? Scotch, Gin, Vodka?
MILO : Scotch.
ANDREW : How do you like it? Soda, water, ice?
MILO : Just ice. And what’s this?
(MILO has crossed to table D. L. C. on which there is a
large game)

ANDREW : Oh that’s a game.

MILO : It looks like a child’s game. (He picks up one of the pieces)
ANDREW : It’s anything but childish I can assure you. I’ve been
studying it for months, and I’m still only a novice. It’s
called Senat, played by the Ancient Egyptians. It’s an
early blocking game, not unlike our own Nine Men
 Morris. Would you mind putting that back where you
found it. It’s taken me a long time to get it there. How
are you settling in at Laundry Cottage?
MILO : Very well.
ANDREW : Using it for weekends, that sort of thing?
MILO : Yes, that’s the sort of thing.
ANDREW : It’s a charming little place. Well, cheers.
MILO : Cheers.
ANDREW : Now do come and sit down. Forgive me if I just tidy
up a bit. I’ve just reached the denouement of my new
book. “The Body On the Tennis Court”. Tell me would
you agree that the detective story is the normal
recreation of noble minds?
MILO : Who said that?
ANDREW : Oh I’m quoting Philip Guedalla. A biographer of the
thirties. The golden age when every cabinet minister
had a thriller by his bedside, and all the detectives
were titled. Before your time I expect.
MILO : Perhaps it would have been truer to say that noble
minds were the normal recreation of detective story
writers.
ANDREW : Yes. Good point. You know even in these days I still
set my own work among the gentry. And a great
number of people enjoy it, in spite of the Welfare
State.
MILO : I’m surprised they haven’t done any of your stu on
television.
ANDREW : Oh God forbid.
MILO : Well they’re always doing crime stories.
ANDREW : What - you mean those ghastly things where the
police race around in cars and call all the suspects
chummy?
MILO : Yes. That’s the kind of thing.
ANDREW : Oh no that’s not my line of country at all. That is
detective fact not detective ction.
MILO : And of course as such is of much less interest to noble
minds.
ANDREW : Yes, yes you’ve put it in a nut shell, my dear Milo, if I
may so address you.
MILO : Of course.
ANDREW : Thank you, we need to be friendly. Now do sit down
and let me get you another drink. I’m one up on you
already.
(MILO starts to sit in chair below staircase. ANDREW
moves to drinks table)

I understand you want to marry my wife.

(A pause. MILO is disconcerted by the directness of the
question)

You’ll forgive me raising the matter, but as

Marguerite is away for a few days, she’s up in the
North you know visiting some relatives…
MILO : Is she?
ANDREW : Yes, so I thought it an appropriate time for a little
chat.
MILO : Yes.
ANDREW : Well is it true?
MILO : Well … Well, yes, with your permission of course.
ANDREW : Oh yes of course. (He crosses to MILO) Zere, put zat
behind your necktie.
MILO : Cheers.
ANDREW : Prosit. (He stands in front of the fireplace) Yes I’m glad
to see you’re not like so many young men these days
seem to think they can do anything they like without
asking anyone’s permission.
MILO : Certainly not.
ANDREW : Good. I’m pleased to hear it. I know you won’t object
then if I ask you a few questions about your parents
and so on.
MILO : My mother was born in Hereford, a farmer’s
daughter. My father is an Italian who came to this
country in the thirties.
ANDREW : Jewish?
MILO : Half, on his mother’s side, that for the Fascists was
the important side. The male they felt didn’t transmit
the disease so virulently.
ANDREW : (tut-tutting) Dreadful business, dreadful.
MILO : Of course I’m not at all religious myself, I’m an
agnostic.
ANDREW : (crosses to centre stage) My dear boy, you don’t have to
explain to me. We’re all liberals here. I have no
 prejudice against Jews, or even half-Jews.
Why some of my best friends are half-Jews … Mind
you I hope you have no objections to any children
that you and my wife may have being brought up
Church of England?
MILO : None whatsoever if that’s what Marguerite wants.
ANDREW : You haven’t discussed it yet?
MILO : Not yet, it doesn’t seem to have cropped up.
ANDREW : Well I suppose in some ways that’s rather a relief. But
if you take my advice you’ll opt for C of E. It’s so much
simpler. A couple of hours on Christmas Eve and
Good Friday and you’ve seen the whole thing o
nicely. And if you throw in Remembrance Sunday
they give you the good Christian medal with oak leaf
cluster.
MILO : It’s the same with a lot of Jews. My father used to say
‘most people only talk to their really old friends two
or three times a year. Why should God be angry if He
gets the same treatment?’
ANDREW : (insincerely) Very amusing. Your father? Was his
name Tindle? It doesn’t sound very Italian.
MILO : He name was Tindolini. But if you had a name like
that in England in those days you had to make a-da-
nice cream. He was a watch-maker and so he changed
it.
ANDREW : Was he a successful man?
MILO : No. His business failed. He went back to Italy. I send
money from time to time and go and visit him and
 get a little sun or ski-ing, depending, of course, on the
season.
ANDREW : Ah!
MILO : It’s not that I’m disloyal to Britain, you understand.
It’s just that the Cairngorms and Minehead don’t o er
quite the same attractions.
ANDREW : And you? What do you do?
MILO : I’m in the Travel business. I have my own agency in
Dulwich.
ANDREW : Tindle’s Travels, eh? I see, and where do you live?
MILO : I live above the o ce.
ANDREW : In Dulwich?
MILO : Yes, I rent the whole house. It’s really most
convenient, and … and it’s most attractive, too. It’s
Georgian.
ANDREW : H’m. I’m sure it’s perfectly delightful but I doubt
whether an 18th century architectural gem in
Dulwich whispers quite the same magic to
Marguerite as it does to you.
MILO : She adores old houses. She can’t wait to live there.
ANDREW : I understood she was already living there - at least for
a couple of nights a week. I’m not mistaken, am I?
(MILO shrugs in embarrassment)

And surely your motive in renting the cottage down

here was to increase the incidence of this
hebdomadal coupling?
MILO : I came to be near the woman I love. It is a great pain
for us to be apart. You wouldn’t understand.
ANDREW : Possibly. But I understand Marguerite well enough to
know that she does not adore old houses. She’s lived
here quite a time, and between them the rising damp
and the Death Watch Beetle have put the boot into
her good and proper. She’s only got to see a mullioned
window and it brings her out in lumps.
MILO : (hotly) Perhaps it wasn’t the house so much as the
person she had to share it with.
ANDREW : Now, now. I thought you were well brought up. Surely
you know it’s very rude to make personal remarks.
MILO : I’m sorry. You were disparaging my lover.
ANDREW : On the contrary, I was reminiscing about my wife.
MILO : It comes to the same thing.
ANDREW : Things mostly do, you know. I’ll wager that within a
year, it’s you who will be doing the disparaging, and I
who will be doing the rhapsodising, having quite
forgotten how intolerably tiresome, vain,
spendthrift, self-indulgent and generally bloody
crafty she really is.
MILO : If you don’t love Marguerite, you don’t have to abuse
her.
ANDREW : Never speak ill of the deadly eh?
MILO : Now look here …
ANDREW : If I choose to say that my wife converses like a child of
six, cooks like a Brightlingsea landlady, and makes
 love like a coelacanth I shall.
MILO : That’s just about enough …
ANDREW : And I certainly don’t need her lover’s permission to
do so either. In fact, the only thing I need to know
from you is, can you a ord to take her o my hands?
MILO : A ord to …
ANDREW : A ord to support her in the style to which she wasn’t
accustomed before she met me, but now is.
(MILO gestures around the room)

MILO : She won’t need all this when we’re married. It’ll be a
di erent life - a life of love and simplicity.
Now go ahead - sneer at that. It’s almost a national
sport in this country - sneering at love.
ANDREW : I don’t have to sneer at it. I simply don’t believe you.
For Marguerite, love is the fawning of a willing lap
dog, and simplicity a square cut 10-carat diamond
from Van Cleef and Arpels.
(MILO rises to his feet, and moves to drinks table to put
down glass)

MILO : I don’t know what I’m doing here. With a little e ort
I’m sure you could nd a much more appreciative
audience.
ANDREW : Oh now, Milo. You disappoint me. Rising to your feet
like that and bridling.
MILO : (abashed) I wasn’t bridling. I was protesting.
ANDREW : It looked like a good old fashioned Hedy Lamarr
bridle to me.
MILO : (turning to ANDREW) Who ?
ANDREW : Oh very good! Very good! Why don’t you just sit down
and we’ll talk about something that matters
desperately to both of us.
ANDREW : Marguerite?
ANDREW : Money! Have you got any?
MILO : Well I’m not a millionaire, but I’ve got the lease on
the house and some capital equipment, and the
turnover in the business this year has been growing
every month. By this time next year I …
ANDREW : This year, next year, sometime never. What you’re
saying in fact is that at present you’re skint.
MILO : I’ll survive.
ANDREW : I’m sure you will but survival is not the point.
Presumably when you’re married to Marguerite you’ll
want a fast car, a little place in the sun, and a couple
of mistresses.
MILO : Why presumably? Just because you need those
things.
ANDREW : Certainly I do. And so does every right thinking
insecure, deceitful man. The point is how to get
them. (He moves to drinks table)
MILO : I’m sure you do alright. (He crosses to fire place)
ANDREW : Me? Oh no. Just this fading mansion, the slowest
Lagonda in Wiltshire, and only one mistress, I’m
afraid.
MILO : Tea? The Finnish lady who runs the Sauna Bath at
Swindon.
ANDREW : Oh, so you know about her, do you?
MILO : Marguerite and I have no secrets from each other.
ANDREW : Not even mine, it seems. (Mock mystical) Tea is a
Karelian Goddess. Her mother was llma, supreme
divinity of the air; her father was Jumala, the great
Creator. Her golden hair smells of pine, and her cobalt
eyes are the secret forest pools of Finlandia.
MILO : I hear she’s a scrubbed blonde with all the sex appeal
of chilled Dettol.
ANDREW : (with dignity) There are those who believe that
cleanliness is next to sexiness. And if I were you I
wouldn’t pay much attention to what Marguerite
says. You can take it from me that Tea’s an engaging
little trollop, and she suits me mightily. Mind you, she
takes a bit of keeping up with, it’s a good thing I’m
pretty much of an Olympic sexual athlete.
MILO : I suppose these days you’re concentrating on the
sprints rather than on the long distance stu .
ANDREW : Not so, dear boy. (He sits) I’m in the pink of condition.
I could copulate for England at any distance.
MILO : Well, they do say in Olympic circles, that the point is
to take part, rather than to win, so I suppose there’s
hope for us all. Are you going to marry her?
ANDREW : Marry a Goddess? I wouldn’t presume. I might get
turned into a birch tree for my audacity. Oh no I
simply want to live with her.
MILO : So what’s stopping you?
ANDREW : Basically the rm of Prurient and Pry Ltd., whom you
and Marguerite have seen t to employ. Don’t look so
innocent. Those Woodbine stained private detectives
who’ve been camping outside TSa’s at for the last
week.
MILO : (crossing to centre stage) So you spotted them?
ANDREW : A Bantu with glaucoma couldn’t have missed them.
No-one can read the Evening News for four hours in a
Messerschmidt bubble car, and expect to remain
undetected.
MILO : Sorry about that. It was Marguerite’s idea.
ANDREW : Who else’s? Who paid?
MILO : I did.
ANDREW : I wonder you could a ord it.
MILO : It was an insurance policy against you changing your
mind about divorcing Marguerite.
ANDREW : My dear boy, let us have no misunderstanding. I’ve
nothing against you marrying Marguerite. There’s
nothing I want more than to see you two tucked up
together. But it’s got to be a xture. I want to be rid of
her for life, not just a two week Tindle Tour, economy
class. No, you listen to me. You don’t know her like I
do. You think you do, but you don’t. The real truth of
the matter is that if you fail her, by which I mean
cancelling the account at Harrods, or short-changing
her on winter in Jamaica, she’ll be back to me in a ji y
 mewing for support - and guilty wife or no, she may
be entitled to get it.
MILO : Don’t be so bloody pathetic. Winter in Jamaica? I’m
not going to take her for winter in Jamaica. You’re
worrying unnecessarily. Once Marguerite is married
to me she ’ll never think of returning to you. Never.
And don’t worry about my being able to look after her
either.
ANDREW : I see. You mean as soon as you and she are married,
Marguerite will joyously exchange Cartiers for the Co-
op?
MILO : So she’s used to luxury. Whose fault is that?
ANDREW : It’s not a fault if you can a ord it. But can you?
Knowing you to be hard up has she shown any sign of
mending her ways in these last idyllic three months?
When did she last turn down Bollinger for the
blandishments of Baby cham? Or reject Crepes
Suzettes in favour of Roly Poly? No, no I’m not joking,
how much has this brief liaison cost you so far?
£500? £800, £1, 000? And that father of yours in
Italy, when did you last send him any money ? You
see why I’m concerned. I tell you. She’ll ruin you. To
coin a phrase, in two years you’ll be a used gourd. And
what’s more, a used gourd with a sizeable overdraft.
MILO : We’ve often talked about money. I’ve told her we
spend too much.
ANDREW : And she takes no notice?
MILO : (low) None.
ANDREW : A silvery laugh? A coquettish turn of the head?.
MILO : Something like that.
ANDREW : Exactly. Well, it’s to solve this little problem that I
have invited you here tonight. This, as they say, is
where the plot thickens.
MILO : Ah!
ANDREW : I’ll get you another drink.
(He crosses to drinks table. In “Listen with Mother” style)

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Once

upon a time there was an Englishman called Andrew
Wyke who, in common with most of his countrymen
was virtually castrated by taxation. To avoid total
emasculation, his accountants advised him, just
before the last devaluation, to put a considerable part
of his money, some £135,000, into jewellery. His
wife, of course, was delighted.
MILO : You made her a present of it ?
ANDREW : Absolutely not. It’s still mine, as well she knows. But
we felt she might as well wear it, as bank it. After all,
it’s fully insured.
MILO : I see what you mean by the plot thickening. It usually
does when insurance is mentioned.
ANDREW : I’m glad you follow me so readily. I want you to steal
that jewellery.
MILO : (astounded) What?
ANDREW : Tonight, for choice. Marguerite is out of the house.
It’s an admirable opportunity.
MILO : You must be joking.
ANDREW : You would know it if I were.
MILO : (playing for time) But … But what about the servants?
ANDREW : I’ve sent Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins to Weston-super-Mare
for a 48 hour paddle. They won’t be back till Sunday
night. So, the house is empty.
MILO : I see.
ANDREW : What do you say?
MILO : It sounds criminal.
ANDREW : Of course it’s criminal. All good money-making
schemes in England have got to be these days. The
jewellery, when it’s not in the bank, lives in the safe
under the stairs. It’s there now. All you have to do is
steal them, and sell them abroad and live happily ever
after with Marguerite. All I have to do is to claim the
insurance money and live happily ever after with Tea.
(Pause) Well, in my case perhaps, not ever after, but at
least until I get fed up with a cuisine based on the elk.
MILO : Is that what you asked me over to hear? A scummy
little plot to defraud the insurance company?
ANDREW : I’m sorry you nd the plot scummy. I thought it was
nicely clear and simple.
MILO : Nicely obvious and clearly unworkable. Supposing I
do as you say and take the jewels. If I sell them to a
fence, always supposing I could nd one, I’d get a
fraction of their value.
ANDREW : Not with the fences I know.
MILO : (derisory) What fences would you know?
ANDREW : I know some of the nest fences in Europe. Prudent
yet prodigal. I met them some years ago while
researching “The Deadly A air of the Druce
Diamond”.
MILO : Never read it.
ANDREW : You never read it! I suppose you’re going to tell me
you never read “Diet of Worms”, or “The Mystery of
the Plantaganet Parakeet”?
MILO : Sorry.
ANDREW : Haven’t you read any of my books?
MILO : I’m afraid not. What were you telling me about
fences?
ANDREW : That I know a great many. In fact on your behalf I
have already contacted a certain gentleman in
Amsterdam. He will treat you very well; you won’t
get full value of the jewels but you will get two-
thirds, say £90, 000, and you’ll get it in cash.
MILO : Why should this man be so generous?
ANDREW : Because he will have what fences never have -title to
the jewels. I will see to it that in addition to the
jewels, you also steal the receipts I got for them. All
you have to do is hand them over together. Now what
does my Insurance Company discover when it swings
into action, antennae pulsing with suspicion? It
discovers that someone impersonating Andrew Wyke
sold the jewels for £90, 000 cash. They’ve still got to
pay me. Hard cheese. Think it over. Take your time.
There’s no hurry.
 (A pause. MILO considers the proposition. ANDREW walks
away from MILO, humming lightly to himself. He stops by
a roll-a-penny wall game and plays to a successful
conclusion. MILO paces up and down, indecisive. He
suddenly turns and faces ANDREW)

MILO : Look, I know this sounds stupid, but… but well, have
you had any experience - I mean, have you ever
actually committed a crime before?
ANDREW : Only in the mind’s eye, so to speak. For the purpose of
my books. St. John Lord Merridew would have a
pretty lean time of it if I didn’t give him any crime to
solve.
MILO : Who?
ANDREW : My detective, St. John Lord Merridew. Known to
millions all over the civilized world. ‘An ambulatory
tun of port with the face of Father Christmas’. That’s
how I describe him. ‘A classical scholar with a taste
for good pipes and bad puns, but with a nose for
smelling out evil, superior to anything, in the force’.
MILO : Oh yes, the police are always stupid in your kind of
story, aren’t they? They never solve anything. Only
an amateur sleuth ever knows what’s happening. But
that is detective ction. This is fact.
ANDREW : I am aware of the di erence, Milo. I also know that
insurance investigators are sharp as razors, and that’s
why, as they say in the Athenaeum, everything’s got
to be done Kosher and according to cocker.
MILO : I’m just saying there’s a di erence between writing
and real life, that’s all. And there’s another thing.
How do I know this thing isn’t one big frame up?
ANDREW : Frame up?
MILO : Yes. That you really hate my association with your
wife and would give ve years of Olympian sexual
athleticism to see me in jail. Once I’m clear of the
house, an anonymous ‘phone call to the police…
ANDREW : And be stuck with Marguerite for another bickering
eternity? Bodystockings on the breakfast tray, false
eyelashes in the wash basin, the bottles, the lotions,
the unguents, the oils, the tribal record player and
that ceaseless vapid yak. Oh yes, I could shop you to
the police, nothing easier, but whatever for. Still, it’s
for you to evaluate, old boy.
MILO : Well… I er…
ANDREW : If you don’t trust me…
MILO : Oh, I trust you but…
ANDREW : It’s a very simple proposition. You have an expensive
woman and no money. It seems to me if you want to
keep Marguerite there is only one thing you can do -
you must steal those jewels.
MILO : Why don’t you steal them and simply hand them
over to me?
ANDREW : I should have thought that was obvious. The burglary
has to look real. The house has actually to be broken
into.
MILO : Well, why don’t you break into it?
ANDREW : (Brooklyn accent) Hey, Milo baby, will you do me a
favour. Leave this to me, huh? You know what I
mean? Crime is my specialty. I’ve got such a great
 plan and I’ve got it all worked out to the last detail.
You’re the star, I’m just the producer.
MILO : £90,000?
ANDREW : (deliberately) £90, 000 tax free. Incash. It would take a
lot of Tindle Tours to make that kind of money, (they
laugh together. MILO is convinced)
MILO : Alright, I’ll do it. Where shall I break in? (MILO rushes
for the stairs)
ANDREW : Hold your horses. Now the rst thing you’ve got to do
is disguise yourself.
MILO : What on earth for?
ANDREW : Supposing someone saw you climbing in.
MILO : Who? You’re not overlooked.
ANDREW : Who knows? A dallying couple. A passing sheep
rapist. And, dear boy, remember the clues we’re to
leave for the police and the Insurance Company. We
don’t want your footsteps in the owerbeds, or your
coat button snagged on the window-sill. Oh no, you
must be disguised.
MILO : Alright, what do you suggest?
ANDREW : (ANDREW crosses to U.L. and brings a large hamper
to D.L.) As Marguerite has assuredly told you, in
younger days we were always dressing up in this
house. What with amateur dramatics, and
masquerades and costume balls, there was virtually
no end to the concealment of identity.
MILO : She’s never mentioned it.
ANDREW : No… ? (a touch wistful) Well, it was all some years ago.
(briskly) Anyway, let’s see what we’ve got. (he opens
the basket. He holds up the pieces of the burglar suit one
by one and puts them on MILO). Item. A face mask, a
at cap, a striped jersey and bag marked Swag.
MILO : I thought the idea was that I was not to be taken as a
burglar.
ANDREW : Fashions have changed you know.
MILO : Not quickly enough. It’s asking for trouble.
(ANDREW puts the costume back and brings out a Ku Klux
Klan outfit)

ANDREW : Ku Klux Klan invade country home. Fiery cross,

ames on Salisbury plain. Police ba ed.
MILO : Isn’t it a tri e conspicuous for Wiltshire?
ANDREW : Yes, you may be right’. (ANDREW holds up a monk’s
costume) Here is one of my favourites. How about
Brother Light ngers?
MILO : Oh, for God’s sake…
(MILO shakes his head decisively)

ANDREW : Oh, come on. Let’s make this a Gothic folly. (Jesuit
priest voice) Perhaps we shall never know the identity
of the cowled gure seen haunting the grounds of the
Manor House on the night of the terrible murder.
Even today, some locals claim to hear the agonised
screams of the victim echoing around the chimney
pots.
MILO : Murder? Anguished screams of the victim? What are
you talking about? It’s a simple robbery we’re staging
 here, that’s all.
(An uneasy pause)

ANDREW : (normal voice) Quite right, Milo. I was carried away

for a moment. I’m not sure I wasn’t going to add a
cruci ed countess entombed in her bedroom,
guarded by a man eating sparrow-hawk.
MILO : Look here, Andrew, you probably think this is one
huge joke. But it’s my freedom you’re playing with.
ANDREW : I’m merely trying to bring a little romance into
modern crime, and incidentally into your life.
MILO : Marguerite will bring all the romance into my life I
need, thank you all the same.
ANDREW : Marguerite romantic? Marguerite couldn’t have got
Johann Strauss to waltz.
MILO : Look, Andrew, these are great costumes, but haven’t
you just got an old pair of wellies, a raincoat and a
sock that I can pull over my head?
ANDREW : Old pair of wellies and a sock? How dreary! That’s the
whole trouble with crime today. No imagination. I
mean you tell me, does your heart beat any faster
when you hear that a lorry load of cigarettes has been
knocked o in the Walworth Road?
MILO : Not particularly.
ANDREW : Well of course not. Or that a 93 year old night
watchman has had his silly interfering old skull split
open with a lead pipe?
MILO : Of course not.
ANDREW : Well then, what’s the matter with you? Where’s your
spunk? Let’s give our crime the true sparkle of the
thirties, a little amateur aristocratic quirkiness.
Think of all that wonderful material. There’s the ice
dagger, the poison that leaves no trace, the Regie
cigarette stubbed in the ash tray, charred violet note
paper in the grate, Dusenberg tyre marks in the drive
way, the gramophone record simulating
conversation, the clutching hand from behind the
arras, sinister orientals, twin brothers from Australia,
’’hi there cobber, hi there blue’’, where were you on
the night of the 13th? I swear I didn’t do it, Inspector,
I’m innocent I tell you, innocent …
MILO : God you’ve gone o like a re-cracker!
ANDREW : And why not? We’re on the brink of a great crime.
Don’t you feel the need to give your old archenemy
Inspector Plodder of the Yard a run for his money?
And you’re the Star, you’re the who-what-dun -it!
MILO : Well what about this? (He holds up Courtier’s costume)
ANDREW : Ah! Monsieur Beaucaire. He’s very good. Lots of
beauty spots and wig powder to let fall all over the
place. Or what about this? Little Bo Peep?
(ANDREW sings Little Bo Peep and dances about holding
up the costume)

MILO : No.
ANDREW : Why not?
MILO : I haven’t got the gure for it.
ANDREW : Are you quite sure? An indi erent gure shouldn’t
materially a ect the execution of this crime.
MILO : Quite sure.
ANDREW : Well you are choosey, aren’t you? There’s not a great
deal left.
(He pulls out a Clown’s costume. Large pantaloons, waiter’s
dicky, tail coat)

We’ll have to settle for Joey.

MILO : Wow!
ANDREW : Can’t you see it all, the tinsel, the glitter, the lights,
the liberty horses, the roar of the crowd, I and Milo all
the kiddies love you.
MILO : (happily) Alright! It seems the costume most
appropriate to this scheme.
ANDREW : Well give me your coat I’ll hang it up for you. We
don’t want the police to nd any bres of this
beautiful suit.
(MILO takes off his jacket and gives it to ANDREW)

Oh and the shirt and trousers too.

MILO : What?
ANDREW : Oh yes, you know how clever they are in those
laboratories of theirs. That’s it. Don’t be shy. Into your
smalls. Oh I know a well brought up boy when I see
one. Folds his pants at night.
MILO gives him his carefully folded trousers. ANDREW
runs up the stairs and with a sudden violent gesture,
roughly throws the suit in the wardrobe, while MILO takes
off his shirt and tie and shoes)
MILO : Shirt and shoes.
(MILO holds up his shirt, shoes and tie)

ANDREW : Very good, sir. The Quick Clean Valet Service always
at your disposal, sir.
(He pushes them into the wardrobe, then watches MILO
changing with great satisfaction)

(so ly) Give a clown your finger and he’ll take your hand.

MILO : What was that?

ANDREW : Just an old English Proverb I was thinking of.
(MILO sings to himself “On With the Motley” and ends it
with “£90,000 tax free, in cash” as he dresses)

MILO : Ecco, Milo!

ANDREW : Bravissimo! Now all you need are the boots.
(MILO pulls a huge pair of boots from the basket)

MILO : Hey I could go skiing on these when I go to Italy.

ANDREW : The clown is such a happy chap,
His nose is painted red,
His trousers baggy as can be,
A topper on his head.
He jumps around the circus ring,
And juggles for his bread,
Then comes the day he tries a trick,
And drops down …
Come on do us a trick.
MILO : What sort of trick?
ANDREW : Oh I don’t know. Trip up — fall on your arse.
MILO : Certainly not, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.
ANDREW : Well what about a bit of juggling then.
(ANDREW takes two oranges from the drinks table and
throws them to MILO. He then produces an umbrella from
the basket and throws it to MILO who opens it and runs
about the room and finally trips up on his boots)

MILO : Christ!
ANDREW : Sorry, dear boy. But you know the rule of the circus. If
at rst you don’t succeed…
MILO : Give up. Can we get on with this charade, please!
ANDREW : Of course. Yours to command, (he opens swag bag)
Here are the tools of your trade. One glass cutter to
break in with; a piece of putty for holding on to the
cut piece of glass so it doesn’t clatter onto the oor
and awake the ravenous Doberman Pincher you
suspect lurks inside; and a stethoscope.
MILO : A stethoscope?
ANDREW : Safe breakers for the use of. The theory is you tried to
pick the lock by listening to the tumblers, failed, and
then employed gelignite.
MILO : (alarmed) Gelignite? I don’t know anything about
gelignite.
ANDREW : I do. Leave that to me. Now what we want is some
supreme bizarre touch to crown the whole edi ce -
say a signed photograph of Grock left impaled on a
splinter of glass.
MILO : A signed photograph of Grock. (angry) Why don’t you
take a full page ad in The Times and tell them what
 we’re doing.
ANDREW : I was only trying to lighten Inspector Plodder’s day
for him… If you don’t like the idea…
MILO : (earnestly) There’s no such animal as Inspector
Plodder outside of books. It’ll be Inspector Early Bird,
or Superintendent No Stone Unturned. You can bet
your bottom dollar on that. And I can’t walk in this
costume. These boots are ridiculous, (he stumbles and
starts to take them off)
ANDREW : Keep them on. Can’t you see it all. Wiltshire
paralysed. The West Country in a ferment. Where
will Big Boot strike next?
MILO : But…
ANDREW : (reasonably) All these boots will tell the police is that a
true professional realised the ower beds would carry
footprints, and decided to disguise his own perhaps a
tri e eccentrically. Now are you ready? Got
everything? Glass cutter? Putty?
ANDREW & MILO :The mask!

(ANDREW takes top hat and mask from basket)

ANDREW : Good. Now go through that door, round the house

and across the lawn. To your right you will discover a
shed. In it is a ladder. Bring the ladder back and stand
it against the house so you can break in at the gallery.
MILO : Will you come out and hold it steady?
ANDREW : Certainly not. I don’t want my footprints in the
ower beds.
MILO : I’m not very good at heights.
ANDREW : Improvise, ducky. Place one foot above the other. It’s
called climbing.
MILO : OK.
ANDREW : Goodluck.
(MILO bows and goes through the hall door. ANDREW
takes a length of flex and black box with gelignite, black
tape and detonator from desk drawer. A er a few minutes
MILO appears at window U. L.)

ANDREW : (pause) For Christ’s sake can’t you keep those bloody
boots o my Busy Lizzies.
(MILO disappears and presently reappears with the ladder
which he places against the window and starts to climb.
ANDREW sits with his back to the window and reacts to
the noises he hears. As he attaches the detonator to the flex
he speaks in an old woman’s voice)

Puss, Puss, Puss, do you hear a noise Puss! Was that a

step on the stairs. No, it was just the wind.
You know Puss I sometimes think there’s a curse on
this house. But you shouldn’t pay any attention to
me. I’m just a silly old woman who is afraid of her
own shadow, (noise of glass cutter scoring window)
What was that Puss? Someone’s prowling in the
grounds. We’re all going to be murdered in our beds.
No, no, the front door’s locked, and the window’s too
high, no one can get into our snug little home.
(MILO drops pane of glass)

(exasperated) What are you doing now?

MILO : I dropped the glass.
 (ANDREW groans theatrically. A er a further struggle
MILO succeeds in climbing through the window, onto the
gallery)

Whew! What do I do with the putty?

(He indicates the putty)

ANDREW : (irritated) Stick it on the wall.

MILO : I can lose this at any rate, (puts mask on bureau) Now
for the safe!
ANDREW : No. Not straight away. You’re not meant to know
where they are. Search around. Go into the bedroom.
Disturb a few things. Throw some clothes on the oor
- Marguerite’s for choice.. .That’s it.
(MILO goes into the bedroom and returns with a pile of
women’s clothes which he puts neatly on the floor)

Don’t pack ’em. Ravage ‘em. Don’t you know how

burglars leave a place?
(ANDREW takes a flying kick at the pile of his wife’s clothes
- sending them flying all over the room)

Now try the, wardrobe. Rumple the contents a little.

Actually that’s enough. Those shirts were made for
me by Baget & Grub, chemise makers to monarchs.
(MILO throws the shirts out with relish)

MILO : Got to be thorough. It would be suspicious if the

burglar played favourites.
(ANDREW’S socks and underwear follow, cascading out all
over the gallery)

ANDREW : Oh, it’s a martyrdom, (shouting) Will you stop that,

Milo, and ri e that bureau immediately.
 (Reluctantly MILO crosses to the bureau and tries a
drawer)

MILO : It’s locked.

ANDREW : Of course it’s bloody locked! Use your jemmy on it.
MILO : I haven’t got a jemmy. You didn’t give me one.
ANDREW : (exasperated) Well, we’d better go and nd one, hadn’t
we?
(They tramp downstairs)

Honestly, Milo, you are the soppiest night interloper

I’ve ever met. I can’t think what Marguerite sees in
you.
MILO : The sympathy and kindness of a kindred spirit,
actually.
ANDREW : It’s like a Bengali tiger lying down with a Bush Baby.
MILO : I know we’re a damn sight happier than you are with
your ice maiden.
ANDREW : You probably take it more seriously, that’s all.
MILO : You have to be serious if you want to be in love.
ANDREW : You have to be serious about crime if you want to
a ord to be in love. Now get cracking on that bureau.
(MILO climbs the stairs. He starts work on the bureau with
the jemmy. A er a pause the drawer yields and he opens it)

MILO : There is a set of false teeth here. They look like a

man’s.
ANDREW : (furious) Put them back at once.
MILO : Sorry. Your spares?
ANDREW : (pause) Come down at once.
(MILO comes down the stairs and crosses to ANDREW
who has plugged the flex into a light switch U. stage le )

Keep your feet o the ex. Right, stand by for count

down 5-4-3-2-1. Contact!
(Noise of explosion and puff of smoke from safe)

MILO : There she blows. Ah! It’s hot.

ANDREW : You’ve got gloves on! - Get in there!
(MILO rummages in the safe and finds a large jewel box.
He examines it carefully, occasionally shaking it gently)

What the hell are you shaking it for? It’s a jewel box,
not a maracca.
MILO : I thought it might have some secret catch on it. It’s
locked, you see.
ANDREW : Well, smash it open. Jesus! You’ve all the killer
instinct of a twenty year old Sealyham.
(MILO attacks the box with his jemmy)

MILO : It’s such a pretty box - it seems such a waste.

(The box opens to reveal its precious contents. MILO stands
entranced letting the jewels flash and sparkle through his
fingers)

Dear God!
ANDREW : Ah! Moses looks upon the promised land.
(MILO sits at base of stairs)

MILO : They’re very beautiful. Look at this ruby necklace?

ANDREW : That we got on our honeymoon.
MILO : It’s fantastic.
ANDREW : I never cared for it myself. I always thought it made
Marguerite look like a blood sacri ce.
MILO : I’d like my father to be here now. Poor blighter, he had
no idea what it was all about… sitting there every
night hunched up over those watches like a little old
gnome, squinting his eyesight ^jvay, and for what -to
give me an education at a second-rate public school. I
suppose he thought he had to do it - that he owed it to
me and the brave new Anglo-Saxon world he’d
adopted. Poor old bugger.
ANDREW : Here, put them in your pocket for a start. I’ll get you
the receipts in a moment. Now’. This is the fun bit.
It’s the moment when the householder, his attention
attracted by the sound of the explosion, surprises his
burglar. In the ensuing struggle, the house is sacked.
MILO : Why is it necessary for you to surprise me at all?
ANDREW : Because if I’ve seen you at close quarters, I can always
describe you to the police…
(MELO reacts as if hit)

MILO : Now look here…

ANDREW : …wrongly. (INSPECTOR’S voice) Did you manage to
get a good look at the intruder’s face, sir? (normal
voice) Yes, Inspector, I did. It may just have been a
trick of the light, but his face didn’t look wholly
human. If you can imagine a kind of prognathic
stoat, fringed about with lilac coloured hair, and
seemingly covered in a sort of boot polish…
MILO : (patiently) I understand. How much sacking do you
want done?
ANDREW : A decent bit, I think, a few chairs on their backs, some
china ornaments put to the sword. You know -
convincing but not Carthaginian.
(MILO carefully turns a chair over and leans a small table
against the sofa. He takes a china ornament and stands it
upright on the floor. ANDREW watches impatiently)

Surely you don’t call that convincing?

(ANDREW throws over another table, spills the contents of
a drawer, and turns books out of his bookcase)

That’s better. Let the encyclopaedias y like autumn

leaves. Let the contents of the drawers be scattered to
the four winds!
(MILO throws papers into the air in a great cloud)

Ah! A super snowstorm. That’s very good. We’ll let

my accountants sort that lot out later. You know I
never liked Saltglaze. I can’t think why Marguerite is
devoted to it. (he picks a china ornament off the
mantelpiece and hurls it across the room) Oh it’s
coming along nicely, but it still doesn’t look right.
Come on, let’s see what accident does to arti ce.
(ANDREW seizes MILO and wrestles him round the
room, overturning things as they go. MILO, apart from
being the shorter, is much hampered by his big boots
and floppy clown’s clothing, so that ANDREW is able
to pummel him severely)
MILO : You’re bigger than I am. It’s not fair.
ANDREW : Nonsense. You’re the underdog, aren’t you? You’ve
got the support of the crowd.
MILO : A good big ‘un will always lick a good little ‘un.
ANDREW : The bigger they are the harder they fall.
(MILO receives a particularly hard blow)

MILO : Here, steady on, old man!

ANDREW : They never come back, (he pushes MELO over the
fender into the fireplace)
MILO : Christ! That hurt!
(ANDREW helps him up)

ANDREW : Come on, back into the ring. Don’t despair. This ght
is xed. It’s about now that I take a dive.
This is where you lay me out cold.
MILO : What? For real?
ANDREW : Naturally. When the police come I must be able to
show them a real bump.
(MILO smiles weakly)

I thought you’d like this bit.

(MILO tentatively moves towards a lamp)

MILO : What shall I use?

ANDREW : Not my opaline if you don’t mind.
(MILO picks up the brass poker)

MILO : This is it. The poker, the original blunt instrument,

(he beats logs viciously)
 (ANDREW eyes the poker apprehensively)

ANDREW : Steady on, Milo. Don’t get carried away.

MILO : Well, I’m doing my best.
ANDREW : We are not talking about a murder weapon. We are
discussing an object from which I receive, in the
classic formula, a glancing blow which renders me
temporarily unconscious.
MILO : Such as?
ANDREW : Well I don’t know exactly… Frankly I’m rather o this
blow business now I’ve seen you in action. Perhaps
we could think of a device which will raise a lump
without actually cracking the cranium. Yes, that’s it.
Now what would those fathers of the scienti c
detective story, R. Austin Freeman, or Arthur B. Reeve
have come up with?
MILO : Huh?
ANDREW : You know. The Red Thumb Mark 1907. The Silent
Bullet 1912.
MILO : (trapped into joining in) How about a bee sting
projected into the scalp with a blow pipe.
ANDREW : Oh, Milo, that’s absolutely brilliant. Do you have such
sting, pipe, or bee?
MILO : Well… no.
ANDREW : No. Still seven out of ten for trying. I know, you can
always tie me up and gag me and leave me to be
found by the cleaning woman. (CHARLADY’S voice)
 Lawks, Mr. Wyke, what are you doing all trussed up
like a turkey cock?
(ANDREW mimes being tied up and gagged and trying to
get the Charlady to untie him)

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Mmmmmmmmmmm…
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm… (CHARLADY’S voice)
Trying out something for one of them creepy books
of yours, are you, sir? Well, don’t mind me.J won’t
disturb you. I’ll just get on with my dusting.
MILO : (patiently) If I don’t knock you out, how do I manage
to tie you up?
ANDREW : (normal voice) That’s a very good question. I know.
You could hold a gun on me.
MILO : We professional burglars don’t like rearms much.
ANDREW : But, as you’re a rank amateur you can conquer your
scruples.
(ANDREW produces a gun from the desk drawer)

Here. How about this? Don’t you think its wicked

looking blue barrel is just the thing.
MILO : MELO. Is it loaded?
ANDREW : Naturally. What use would it be otherwise? And I
think it should go o a couple of times in the
struggle.
MILO : Why?
ANDREW : It would add credence to my story of your holding a
gun on me. Hearing a noise and fearing burglars, I
 took my revolver and went to investigate. You
attacked me. In the struggle it went o . Being an old
fraidy cat householder, I allowed brutish you to take
possession of it. You then held it on me while you tied
me up. Right?
MILO : I suppose so.
ANDREW : Uninventive but believable. Nowthen, what to
sacri ce? What do you say to the demolition of that
gaudy Swansea puzzle jug? The gloriously witty idea
is that when you tip it up the liquid pours out of a
hole in the back, and not through the spout.
MILO : A bit obvious, really.
ANDREW : Exactly! Obvious and ugly. Let us expose its
shortcomings.
(ANDREW draws a bead on it, then lowers the gun)

On the other hand, the creme brule colouring lends it

an attractive solidity I should miss. Now how about
that giant Sta ordshire mug with the inscription bn
it? What does it say?
(MILO moves a little towards it and reads it out)

MILO : (reading) In the real cabinet of friendship everyone

helped his neighbour and said to his brother be of
good cheer.
ANDREW : Proletarian pomposity!
(ANDREW suddenly raises his gun and fires, shattering the
jug. MILO turns in surprise, as he realises the bullet must
have passed reasonably close to his head)

You might have said good shot.

MILO : Good shot.
ANDREW : (insouciant) It’s nothing.
(ANDREW looks around him. His eye falls on a china
figurine poised on the banister rail above him. He takes
aim)

Down with all deviationist, reactionary Dresden

Shepherdesses.
(He shoots and the Dresden Shepherdess flies into pieces)

MILO : Bravo’.
ANDREW : What fun this is! Did you ever know Charlie Begby?
MILO : I don’t think so.
ANDREW : Terribly funny fellow. I once saw him bag three brace
of duck with one shot.
MILO : No!
ANDREW : Yes. Three brace with one shot! The only trouble was,
they were china ducks on his aunty’s drawing room
wall. I said “oh Charlie you can’t do that, it’s the close
season”, (he presses a button on the desk and the sailor
laughs) I told you, he always laughs at my jokes.
(MILO laughs. ANDREW’S mood changes abruptly)

It’s not really all that funny. There’s an open season

on some creatures all the year round.
(ANDREW turns the gun on MILO)

Seducers and wife stealers for example.

MILO : (nervous) Only in Italian opera surely.
ANDREW : (hard) You should know. It’s your country of origin, is
it not?
MILO : No. I was actually born here in England.
ANDREW : Were you now. Dear old cradle-of-the-parliamentary-
system-who-screws-my-wife-merits-a-large-pink-
gin-England?
MILO : Sense-of-humour-fair-trail-England, I mean.
ANDREW : That’s the way a foreigner talks. In private he thinks,
lthy wet country, ugly red cold men who don’t know
how to treat women.
MILO : What’s brought all this on? What are you doing with
that gun?
ANDREW : Pretty obviously pointing it at you.
MILO : For God’s sake, why?
ANDREW : (slowly, Italian accent) Because I’m going to kill you.
MILO : You’re going to… (laughs nervously) Oh Jesus! I
suppose this is some sort of game.
ANDREW : Yes. We’ve been playing it all evening. It’s called
’You’re going to die and no-one will suspect murder’.
(A pause. MILO considers his position)

MILO : You mean all this steal my wife’s jewels stu was just
a…
ANDREW : Of course! I invited you here to set up the
circumstances of your own death. The break in, the
disguise, the jewels in your pocket, the householder
aroused, the gun going o in the struggle and then
 the nal fatal shot. I might even get a commendation
from the police, for “having a go”.
MILO : For God’s sake, Andrew, knock it o !
ANDREW : Can you nd a aw in it?
MILO : (beginning to feel desperate) Marguerite! They’ll trace
the connection between me and Marguerite. They’ll
know that’s why you did it.
ANDREW : I am quite entitled to tackle a man wearing a mask
plundering my house in the middle of the night. How
was I expected to know who you were? Oh no, the law
will have every sympathy with me. Property has
always been more highly regarded than people in
England. Even Marguerite will assume you were just
an adventurer who only loved her for her jewels - a
petty sneak thief who found larceny less burdensome
than marriage. You really are a dead duck, aren’t you?
Not a moral or romantic attitude left.
MILO : I believe you are serious.
ANDREW : I’m not afraid of killing you, if that’s what you mean.
MILO : You’ve got to be. Mortally afraid for your soul.
ANDREW : I didn’t think the Jews believed in hell.
MILO : We believe in not playing games with life.
ANDREW : Ha! Wit in the face of adversity. You’ve learnt
something from the English. Well here’s something
else to learn. A sporting chance. Why don’t you run
for it?
MILO : And give you the chance to shoot me down in cold
blood?
ANDREW : In hot blood you mean. I’m going to shoot you down
in cold blood anyway.
(MILO tries to run but falls over his boots)

MILO : Look, stop pointing that gun at me…I hate guns…

please…this is sick.
ANDREW : You should be attered by the honour I’m doing you
— to take your life light-heartedly — to make your
death the centre piece of an arranged bit of fun. To
put it another way, your demise will recreate a noble
mind.
MILO : This is where I came in.
ANDREW : And where you go out, I’m afraid. The only question
to be decided is where the police shall nd you.
Sprawled over the desk like countless colonels in
countless studies? Or propped up in the log basket
like a rag doll? Which do you think? Early Agatha
Christie or middle Nicholas Blake?
MILO : For Christ’s sake, Andrew, this is not a detective story,
this is real life. You are talking of doing a real murder.
Of killing a real man - don’t you understand?
ANDREW : Perhaps I shouldn’t do it with a gun at all. Perhaps I
should shove the ham knife into you, and leave you
face down in the middle of the room -(melodramatic
voice) - your blood staining the agstones a deep
carmine.
(MILO shudders)
MILO : Oh God!
ANDREW : Or best of all, how about a real 1930’s murder weapon
— the mashie niblick. I’ve got one in my golf bag.
(ANDREW fetches the golf club from the hall. MILO dives
for the telephone but is too late)

You would be discovered in the replace, I think in a

fair old mess, (dramatic voice) The body lay on its
back, its limbs grotesquely splayed like a broken
puppet. The whole head had been pulped as if by
some superhuman force. (INSPECTOR’S voice) “My
God” breathed the Inspector, blenching. “Thompson,
you’d better get a tarpaulin… Excuse me sir, but was
all this violence strictly necessary?” (own voice) I’m
sorry Inspector. It was when I saw him handling my
wife’s nightdresses. I must have completely lost
control of myself. (INSPECTOR’S voice) “That’s quite
alright sir. Don’t get excited. I quite understand.”
(ANDREW throws down golf club) No. I don’t like it. I
think the scene the police nd is simply this. After
the ght you ee up the stairs to regain your ladder. I
catch you on the landing and in the renewed struggle
I shoot you. Nothing succeeds like simplicity, don’t
you agree, Milo? Now then, some of my own nger
prints on my own revolver. (ANDREW takes his glove
off and holds the gun in his naked hand) On your feet,
up!
(ANDREW forces MILO to mount the stairs by shoving the
gun in his back. MILO gives a sudden spasmodic shudder)

Did you know that Charles I put on two shirts the

morning of his execution? “If I tremble with cold,” he
said, “my enemies will say it was from fear; I will not
 expose myself to such reproaches”. You must also
attempt dignity as you mount the steps to the
sca old.
(MILO demurs and sinks to his knees near the top step)

MILO : (terrified and pleading) But why, Andrew? Why?

ANDREW : Don’t snivel. You can’t think it’ll gain you mercy.
MILO : I must know why!
ANDREW : I’m amazed you have to ask. But since you do, it’s
perfectly simple. I hate you. I hate your smarmy, good
looking Latin face and your easy manner. I’ll bet
you’re easy in a ski lodge, and easy on a yacht, and
easy on a beach. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny, that
you wear a gold charm round your neck, and that
your chest is hairy and in summer matted with sun
oil. I hate you because you are a mock humble,
jewelled, shot cu -link sponger, a world is my oyster
er, a seducer of silly women, and a king among
marshmallow snakes. I hate you because you are a
culling spick. A wop - a not one of me. Come, little
man, did you really believe I would give up my wife
and jewels to you? That I would make myself that
ridiculous?
MILO : Why not? You’re not in love with her.
ANDREW : She’s mine whether I love her or not. I found her, I’ve
kept you. I am familiar with her. And once, she was in
love with me.
MILO : And now she’s in love with me, and the dog in the
manger won’t let go. (tries to attack him) The mad dog
 in the manger who should be put down for everyone’s
sake.
ANDREW : (deadly) And you are a young man, dressed as a clown
about to be murdered. Put the mask on, Milo, (a
pause)
MILO : No please.
(ANDREW reaches up and li s the clown mask off the
newel post)

ANDREW : Put it on!

(MILO takes the mask and fumbles it onto his face)

Excellent. Farewell Punchinello!

(ANDREW li s the pistol to MILO’s head. MILO is shaking
with fear)

MILO : (high falsetto) Please…

(ANDREW slowly pulls the trigger. MILO falls backwards
down the stairs and lies still. ANDREW walks past him,
pausing to peer closely to see whether there is any sign of
life. He li s the lolling head and lets it thump back,
carelessly, onto the stairs.

Satisfied that he has done his work well, he straightens up,

and smiles to himself)

ANDREW : Game and set, I believe.

Slow Curtain
ACT TWO
 (The curtain rises to the sound of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh
Symphony which is playing on a record player. ANDREW enters from kitchen
with a tray containing a large pot of caviare, toast, wedge of lemon, a bottle of
champagne and glass. He puts tray on desk and stands conducting the music.
The Movement comes to an end. ANDREW crosses to record player and turns
over the record. He returns to desk and starts to eat.
The telephone rings)

ANDREW : Hullo… Yes, Hawkins, where are you? What? Well,

you should have checked the times of the trains.. I’ve
had to get my own supper for the third time running
… Yes, yes, I daresay, but you know how helpless I am
without you and Mrs. H. Man cannot live on Baked
Beans alone, you know.. .Alright.. .Alright, tomorrow
morning. But rst thing, mind you.
(ANDREW continues eating for some moments. The front
doorbell rings. A er a slight pause ANDREW goes to
answer it)

DOPPLER : (off stage in hall) Good evening, sir.

ANDREW : Evening.
DOPPLER : Mr. Wyke.
ANDREW : Yes?
DOPPLER : My name is Inspector Doppler, sir. Detective
Inspector Doppler. Of the Wiltshire County
Constabulary. I’m sorry to be calling so late. May I
have a few words with you on a very important
matter?
(ANDREW enters, followed by INSPECTOR DOPPLER, a
heavily built, tallish man of about 50. His hair is balding,
and he wears cheap round spectacles on his fleshy nose,
above a greying moustache. His clothes, dark rumpled suit,
 under a half-open light coloured mackintosh occasion no
surprise, nor does his pork pie hat)

ANDREW : The Wiltshire County Constabulary you say? (turning

off music) Come in. Always pleased to see the police.
DOPPLER : Can’t say the same about everyone, sir. Most people
seem to have what you might call an allergy to us.
ANDREW : Would you join me in a brandy, Inspector? Or are you
going to tell me you don’t drink on duty?
DOPPLER : Oh no, sir. I always drink on duty. I can’t a ord to in
my own time.
(DOPPLER sits Centre)

ANDREW : (handing the INSPECTOR a brandy) Well, what can I

do for you, Inspector?
DOPPLER : I’m investigating a disappearance, sir.
ANDREW : Disappearance?
DOPPLER : Yes, sir. Of a Mr. Milo Tindle. Do you know him, sir?
ANDREW : Yes, that’s the chap who’s taken Laundry Cottage.
DOPPLER : He walked out of his cottage on Friday night and
hasn’t been seen since.
ANDREW : Great Scott.
DOPPLER : Do you know this gentleman well, sir?
ANDREW : Vaguely. He came to the house once or twice. How
can I help you?
DOPPLER : When did you last see Mr. Tindie, sir?
ANDREW : Oh, months ago. I can’t exactly remember. As I told
you, he wasn’t a close friend; rather more an
acquaintance.
DOPPLER : Really, sir. That doesn’t quite accord with our
information. In fact, he told Jack Benn, the Licensee
of the White Lion he was coming to see you, two
nights ago.
ANDREW : Publicans are notorious opponents of exactitude,
Inspector. Vinous gossip is their stock in trade. In
particular, I’ve always found that Jack Benn’s
observations need constant correction.
DOPPLER : Really, sir. I was wondering if you could correct
something else for me.
ANDREW : What’s that?
DOPPLER : The impression gained by a man who happened to be
passing your house two nights ago, that a erce
struggle was taking place in here.
ANDREW : Does it look like it?
DOPPLER : And that shots were red?
ANDREW : (uncertainly) Shots?
DOPPLER : Three, our man thinks.
ANDREW : A car back ring?
DOPPLER : No, sir. These were shots. From a gun. Our man is
positive.
ANDREW : May I ask why you took two days to call round and
ask me about all this?
DOPPLER : Well, sir, things take longer to check out than you
think. We like to be certain of our facts before
troubling a gentleman like yourself.
ANDREW : Facts? What facts?
DOPPLER : After our informant reported the incident, we did a
spot of checking in the village, and as I say Mr. Benn
was very helpful.
ANDREW : There’s an upright citizen, then. **
DOPPLER : Quite so, sir.
ANDREW : If there were more like him…
DOPPLER : He told us that Mr. Tindle popped into the pub Friday
evening for a quick one, and said he was just on his
way up to you. Well, what with him being a
newcomer to these parts and all, we thought we’d
better have a word with him, and see if he could
throw any light on the subject. But as I previously
indicated he seems to have disappeared, sir.
ANDREW : But what’s that got to do with me?
DOPPLER : He wasn’t at his cottage all of Saturday, nor all today.
We must have called half a dozen times.
ANDREW : By Jove, Merridew would have been proud of you.
Now Inspector, if that’s all you have to say…
DOPPLER : When we stepped inside Mr. Tindle’s cottage to make
sure he’d come to no harm, we found this note, sir.
(reading) ” Urgent we talk. Come Friday night eight
o’clock. Wyke. ” May I ask whether this is your hand-
writing, sir?
 (DOPPLER shows him the note. ANDREW tries to retain
it, but DOPPLER takes it back)

ANDREW : (trapped) Yes. It’s mine alright.

DOPPLER : So Mr. Tindle was here?
ANDREW : Yes. The Potman spoke sooth.
DOPPLER : Perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering my original
question now, sir.
ANDREW : Which one?
DOPPLER : Was there a struggle here two nights ago?
ANDREW : In a manner of speaking, yes. It was a game we were
playing.
DOPPLER : A game? What kind of game?
ANDREW : It’s rather di cult to explain. It’s called Burglary.
DOPPLER : Please don’t joke, sir.
ANDREW : Isn’t it about time you told me I don’t know the
seriousness of my own position?
DOPPLER : A man comes here, there is a ght. Shots are heard.
He disappears. What would you make of that if you
were me?
ANDREW : An open and shut case. But things are not always
what they seem Inspector. In the case of ’’The
Drowned Dummy” my man, Merridew, once proved
by a phonetic mis-spelling the forgery of a document
allegedly written by a deaf mute.
DOPPLER : I’m waiting for an explanation.
ANDREW : Tindle arrived at eight and left about an hour and a
half later. I haven’t seen him since.
DOPPLER : And nor has anyone else,, sir.
ANDREW : This is absurd. Are you suggesting that I killed
Tindle?
DOPPLER : Killed Tindle, sir. I never mentioned kill.
ANDREW : Oh really! You can’t pull that old one on me.
(Joke INSPECTOR’S voice)

Garotted, sir? Might I ask how you knew that her

ladyship was garotted?
(Normal voice)

Surely you told me so Inspector.

(Inspector’s voice)

No, sir. I never mentioned it.

DOPPLER : I’m sorry you nd us so comic, sir. On the whole what
we do is necessary.
ANDREW : “You’re just doing your job, ’’,that’s the overworked
phrase, isn’t it?
DOPPLER : Possibly, sir. Your wife and Mr. Tindle have been
associating closely for some time.
ANDREW : Oh, so you know about that, do you. I suppose you
can’t keep anything quiet in a small village.
DOPPLER : Perfectly true, sir.
ANDREW : You aren’t suggesting a crime passionel, I hope,
Inspector - not over Marguerite. It would be like
 kni ng somebody for a table-spoonful of Co-
operative White blancmange.
DOPPLER : I’m very partial to blancmange, sir. I nd it a great
standby.
ANDREW : (oratorically) All of you had either means, motive or
opportunity, said Inspector Doppler as he
thoughtfully digested another spoonful of his
favourite pud. But only one of you had all three.
DOPPLER : Exactly so, sir! That person is you.
ANDREW : Forgive me, Inspector, I suppose I’d better tell you
what happened.
DOPPLER : Yes.
ANDREW : Want a bribe to believe it?
DOPPLER : I’ll have another drink.
ANDREW : As you seem to know, Tindle was having an a air
with my wife. Now, I’m one of that rare breed of men
who genuinely don’t mind losing gracefully to a gent
who’s playing by the same rules. But to be worsted by
a ash crypto Italian lover, who mistakes my
boredom for impotence and my provocative energy
for narcissism is too much. It’s like starting every
game love-30 down, and the Umpire against you.
DOPPLER : You mean you couldn’t bring yourself to accept the
situation, sir. Is that what you’re saying?
ANDREW : I think what infuriated me most was the things he
said about me - things that Marguerite repeated to
me. I mean no man likes to listen to the other man’s
 witticisms when he’s trying to choke down his late
night Ovaltine.
DOPPLER : What sort of things, sir?
ANDREW : Oh you know, smarmy, deceitful things which any
lover can make about any husband. It’s just too easy
for them with a captive audience groggy on
rediscovered youth and penis envy, (pause) It’s not
really playing the game.
DOPPLER : You seem to regard marriage as a game, sir.
ANDREW : Not marriage, Inspector. Sex. Sex is the game with
marriage the penalty. Round the board we jog
towards each futile anniversary. Pass go. Collect 200
rows, 200 silence, 200 scars in the deep places, it’s
just as well that I don’t lack for amorous adventure.
Finlandia provides.
DOPPLER : Are you trying to tell me that because of your
indi erence to your wife, you had no motive for
killing Mr. Tindle?
ANDREW : I’m simply saying that in common with most men I
want to have my cookie and ignore it.
DOPPLER : Well, sir. I must say you’re very frank.
ANDREW : Disarmingly so, I hope.
DOPPLER : Please go on.
ANDREW : As I say. I thought I’d teach Mr. Tindle a lesson for his
presumption. In a curious way, some of his remarks
which Marguerite repeated to me, led me to believe
that he was worth taking a little trouble with - even
perhaps worth getting to know. Now, the shortest
 way to a man’s heart is humiliation. You soon nd out
what he’s made of.
DOPPLER : So you invited him here and humiliated him?
ANDREW : I did indeed. I took a leaf out of the book of certain
18th century secret societies. They knew to a nicety
how to determine whether someone was worthy to
be included amongst their number and also how to
humiliate him in the process. I refer of course to the
initiation ceremony.
DOPPLER : Would it be something like bullying a new boy at
school?
ANDREW : Not unlike, but the victim had the choice of refusal.
When Count Cagliastro, the noted magician, sought
admission to one such society, he was asked whether
he was prepared to die for it, if need be. He said he
was. He was then sentenced to death, blind-folded
and a pistol containing powder but no shot placed
against his temple and discharged.
DOPPLER : And you did this to Mr. Tindle?
ANDREW : More or less. I invited Milo here and suggested to him
that as my wife had expensive tastes and he was
virtually a pauper, the only course open for him was
to steal some valuable jewels which I had in the safe.
DOPPLER : And he agreed to this?
ANDREW : With alacrity. I persuaded him to get out of his
clothes and to dress as Greek, in which ludicrous
disguise he broke into the house and blew open the
safe. He then pocketed the jewels, struggled,
convincingly, round this room and was about to
make o , when I turned nasty and revealed the
purpose of the evening. This, of course, was that I had
manoeuvred him into a position where by pretending
to mistake him for a burglar, I could, as the outraged
householder, legitimately shoot him as he raced away
up the stairs. By the time the police arrived I would be
standing in my night attire innocent, bewildered and
aggrieved. And as you well know, Inspector, there’s
no liar in Britain, however unconvincing, more likely
to be believed than an owner occupier standing with
his hair ru ed in front of his own replace, wearing
striped Viyella pyjamas under a camel Jaeger dressing
gown.
DOPPLER : What was Mr. Tindle’s reaction to all this?
ANDREW : It was electrifying! He swallowed my story hook, line
and sinker. He fell on his knees, pleaded for his life,
but I was implacable. I put the gun against his head
and shot him with a blank cartridge. He fainted dead
away. It was most gratifying.
DOPPLER : Gratifying or not, sir. Mr. Tindle must have been put
in fear for his life. Such action invites a grave charge
of assault.
ANDREW : Well, I suppose that’s marginally better than the
murder charge you were contemplating a few
minutes ago.
DOPPLER : I still am contemplating it, sir.
ANDREW : Oh come now, Inspector. I’ve told you what
happened. After a few minutes, Mr. Tindle recovered
his senses, realised shrewdly that he wasn’t dead
after all and went o home.
DOPPLER : (shaking his head in disbelief) Just like that?
ANDREW : Well, he needed a glass or two of cognac to get the
parts working. I mean, wouldn’t you?
DOPPLER : I doubt whether I would have survived comp lot ah
undamaged, sir. The whole thing sounds like the
most irresponsible trick.
ANDREW : Irresponsible? It was quite the contrary. I was
upholding the sanctity of marriage. That’s more than
most people are prepared to do these days. By this
action I was clearly stating “Marriage isn’t dead. It’s
alive and well and living in Wiltshire”.
DOPPLER : Tell me, did Mr. Tindle say anything when hr left?
ANDREW : No. He seemed speechless, (laughs) He just lurched
o .
DOPPLER : I’m sorry you appear to nd all this so funny, Mr.
Wyke. We may not take quite the same attitude.
ANDREW : Look, why don’t you see this from my point of view.
In a sense, Milo was a burglar. He was stealing my
wife.
DOPPLER : So you tortured him?
ANDREW : (exploding) Don’t you see. It was a game!
DOPPLER : A game?
ANDREW : A bloody game, yes!
DOPPLER : It sounds rather sad, sir - like a child not growing up.
ANDREW : What’s so sad about a child playing, eh!
DOPPLER : Nothing, sir - if you’re a child.
ANDREW : Let me tell you, Inspector. I have played games of
such complexity that Jung and Einstein would have
been honoured to have been asked to participate in
them. Games of construction and games of
destruction. Games of hazard, and games of callidity.
Games of deductive logic, inductive logic, semantics,
colour association, mathematics, hypnosis and
prestidigitation. I have achieved leaps of the mind
and leaps of the psyche unknown in ordinary human
relationships. And I’ve had a great deal of not wholly
innocent fun.
DOPPLER : And now, sir, you have achieved murder.
ANDREW : No!
DOPPLER : I believe so, sir.
ANDREW : No.”.
DOPPLER : Would you mind if I looked around?
ANDREW : Go ahead. Crawl about the oor on hands and knees.
Get your envelope out and imprison hairs. Gather ye
blunt instruments while ye may.
(DOPPLER rises and starts to examine the room)

(slowly) I ask myself, if I wanted to conceal

(DOPPLER shakes the sailor on his passage round the

room)

MILO : where would I put him? In the cellar? Too traditional!

In the water tank?… Too poisonous! In the linen
chest?… Too aromatic! In the furnace? … Too
residual! In the herbaceous border?… Too ossiferous!
In the…
DOPPLER : Excuse me, sir, but these holes in the wall here and
here. They look like bullet holes.
ANDREW : (slowly) Quite right, Inspector. So they are.
DOPPLER : I understand you to say, sir, that you used a blank.
ANDREW : Two live bullets to set up the trick. One blank to
complete it. I had to persuade Tindle I was in earnest.
After all, there’s really no point in playing a game
unless you play it to the hilt.
DOPPLER : I see, sir. One blank. I’d like you to show me where Mr.
Tindle was when you killed him.
ANDREW : Pretended to kill him you mean.
DOPPLER : Quite so, sir. Show me, please, exactly where he was
when the bullet hit him.
ANDREW : You do realise of course, there wasn’t a real bullet.
DOPPLER : (sceptically) Very well, sir. Show me where he was
when the blank cartridge was red.
(ANDREW mounts the stairs followed by the Inspector)

ANDREW : He was standing, kneeling, crouching about here. He

fainted and fell down the stairs. Bang!
(DOPPLER passes ANDREW)

DOPPLER : I see. About here you say, sir?

ANDREW : Towards me. Come on. Come on. Stop.
DOPPLER : Were you close to Mr. Tindle when you red the gun?
ANDREW : Very. I was standing over him in fact, with the gun
pressed against his head. The actual feel of the gun
coupled with the noise of the explosion was what did
the trick. (DOPPLER scrutinizes the staircase)
Inspector, I’d like to facilitate your work in every way.
Could I interest you in a magnifying glass? No?
(DOPPLER bends down to examine the staircase, then
the banisters, suddenly he rubs a finger on them, and
straightens up, wiping them on his handkerchief)
DOPPLER : Joke blood, sir?
ANDREW : (nervous) I’m not quite sure I follow, Inspector.
DOPPLER : This here on the banisters. It’s dried blood.
ANDREW : Blood? Where?
DOPPLER : Here in the angle of the banister - (DOPPLER scrapes
some dried blood into an envelope)
(Warily ANDREW crosses to the stairs. He examines the
banisters and slowly straightens up. His expression is
confused and fearful)
 Don’t touch it, sir! Oh, look sir, here’s some more.
Someone’s been rubbing at the carpet. Do you see, sir?
There, deep in the pile that’s blood, sir. Oh! It’s still
damp. Could you explain how it got there, sir?
ANDREW : I have no idea, Milo… er… he was a little burnt… You
must believe me!
DOPPLER : Why should I, sir?
ANDREW : But it’s impossible, it was only a game.
DOPPLER : A game, sir? With real bullets and real blood?
ANDREW : (gabbling) There’s the hole cut in the pane of glass
with the diamond cutter… and there are the marks of
the ladder on the sill outside… and if you look down
you’ll see the imprint of the other end of the ladder
and of size twenty eight shoes or whatever they were,
still there in the owerbed and this is the bureau that
he broke open… (DOPPLER descends the stairs)
DOPPLER : (hard) Thank you, sir, but I don’t require a conducted
tour. Over the years my eyes have been adequately
trained to see things for themselves.
ANDREW : I’m sure they have, Inspector. I only meant to point
out facts which would help substantiate my story.
And that’s the safe we blew open…
DOPPLER : Where are the jewels now, sir?
ANDREW : I put them in the bank yesterday.
DOPPLER : On a Saturday?
ANDREW : Yes, Inspector, on a Saturday. I went to Salisbury and I
put them in the night safe. I felt they’d be better o
 there. I mean, anyone could break in and steal them.
DOPPLER : How provident, sir.
ANDREW : And look down the corridor, you’ll see the dressing up
basket…
(DOPPLER turns away and looks out of the window, over
the garden)

DOPPLER : You didn’t point out that mound of earth in the

garden, did you, sir?
(ANDREW joins DOPPLER at the window)

ANDREW : Mound of earth? What mound of earth?

DOPPLER : Over there - by the far wall. In the shadow of that yew
tree. Would you say it had been freshly dug, sir?
ANDREW : (shouting) How the hell should I know. It’s probably
something the gardener’s doing. A new owerbed I
think he said.
DOPPLER : A owerbed under a yew tree, sir?
ANDREW : (shouting) I’ve already told you I don’t know. Why
don’t you ask him yourself? He’s probably out there
somewhere maundering around on his mole-skinned
knees aching for an opportunity to slander his
employer.
DOPPLER : Funny, sir. I’ve always found gardeners make
excellent witnesses. Slow, methodical, positive.
ANDREW : Inspector, I’ve had just about enough of this farce. Go
and dig the damned thing up, if you want to.
DOPPLER : Oh, we shall, sir. Don’t worry.
ANDREW : (persuasive) Look, do you really think that I’d bury
Tindle in the garden, and leave all that newly turned
earth for everyone to nd?
DOPPLER : If you weren’t expecting us, sir, yes. In a couple of
weeks, with some bulbs or a little grass seed, it would
be di cult to tell it had ever been disturbed. We in
the police know just how fond murderers are of their
back gardens, sir.
ANDREW : (attempts a laugh) You’re nearer a killer’s heart in a
garden than anywhere else on earth, eh?
DOPPLER : Except a bedroom, sir. I think you’ll nd that’s still
favourite.
(DOPPLER starts rummaging in the wardrobe)

Tch! Tch! Tch! What a way to keep your clothes! All

screwed up at the back of your wardrobe. Why should
you do that, I wonder.
(He holds up Milo’s shirt)

That’s an interesting monogram. I. W. No, I’ve got it

the wrong way up - M. T.
ANDREW : Let me see that.
DOPPLER : (reading) Made by Owen & Smith of Percy Street.
16.8.69 for Mr. Milo Tindle. Tell me something, sir.
(ANDREW seizes the shirt and stares at it in horror, unable
to speak. DOPPLER holds up the jacket and carefully reads
the name in the inside pocket)

When Mr. Tindle lurched o as you put it, did he

lurch naked?
ANDREW : (in great distress) Believe me, Inspector. I have no idea
how those clothes got there.
DOPPLER : Didn’t you tell me that Mr. Tindle stripped o here
the other night to disguise himself as a clown?
ANDREW : Yes, that’s right.
DOPPLER : Another part of the humiliation process, I suppose?
ANDREW : But he changed back before he left. I mean, you can’t
really see him walking through the village dressrd as
a clown, can you?
DOPPLER : No, sir, I can’t. Which makes the appearance of his
clothes here all the more signi cant.
ANDREW : It’s all so di cult…
DOPPLER : On the contrary, sir, I think it’s all very simple. I think
you started this as a game, exactly an you say you did,
in order to play a diabolical trick on Mr. Tindle but
that it went wrong. Your third shot was not a blank
as you had supposed, but was in fact a live bullet
which killed Mr. Tindle stone dead, spattering his
blood on the banisters in the process. When you
realised what you’d done, you panicked and simply
buried him in the garden. It was silly of you not to
wash the blood properly o the banisters and bum
his clothes though.
ANDREW : I swear Tindle left here alive.
DOPPLER : I don’t believe it.
ANDREW : I didn’t murder him.
DOPPLER : I accept that. As I said, I think it happened by
accident. We’ll be quite content with a charge of
manslaughter.
ANDREW : (shouting) I did not kill him! He left here alive.
DOPPLER : If you will pardon a ippancy, sir, you had better tell
that to the judge.
ANDREW : Look. There’s one way of settling this. If you think
Tindle is in the garden, go and dig him up.
DOPPLER : We don’t need to nd him, sir. Recent decisions have
relieved the prosecution of producing the corpus
delicti. If Mr. Tindle is not under the newly turned
earth in your garden, it will merely go to indicate that
in your panic you rst thought of putting him there,
then changed your mind and buried him somewhere
else.
ANDREW : Where?
DOPPLER : Does it matter? Spook Spinney! Flasher’s Heath! It’s
all the same to us. He’ll turn up sooner or later -
discovered by some adulterous salesman, or rutting
boy scout. And if he doesn’t it scarcely matters,
there’s so much circumstantial evidence against you.
Come along, it’s time to go.
ANDREW : (a cry) No!
DOPPLER : I’m afraid I must insist, sir! There’s a police car
outside.
ANDREW : (louder) You may have a eet of police cars out there.
I’m not going.
DOPPLER : Now let’s have no trouble, sir. Please don’t make it
di cult.
ANDREW : (wildly) I must see a lawyer. It’s my right.
(ANDREW backs away. DOPPLER makes to seize him,
there is a scuffle)

DOPPLER : You can make a call from the station, sir. Wo wouldn’t
want to do anything unconstitutional. Come on, sir.
Don’t despair. At the most you’ll only get seven years!
ANDREW : (horrified) Seven years!
DOPPLER : Seven years to regret playing silly games that go
wrong.
ANDREW : (bitterly) It didn’t go wrong. It went absolutely right.
You’ve trapped me somehow.
DOPPLER : Yes, sir. You see, we real life detectives aren’t as stupid
as we are sometimes portrayed by writers like
yourself. We may not have our pipes, or orchid
houses, our shovel hats or deer-stalkers, but we tend
to be reasonably e ective for all that.
ANDREW : Who the hell are you?
DOPPLER : Detective Inspector Doppler, sir, spelt as in C. Doppler
1803-1853 whose principle it was that when the
source of any wave movement is approached, the
frequency appears greater than it would to an
observer moving away. It is also not unconnected
with Doppler meaning double in German - hence
Doppleganger or double image. And of course, for
those whose minds run to these things, it is virtually
an anagram of the word Plodder. Inspector Plodder
 becomes Inspector Doppler, if you see what I mean,
sir!
ANDREW : (a shriek) Milo!
MILO : (normal voice) The same.
(MILO peels off his disguise which apart from elaborate
face and hair make-up - wig, false nose, glasses, cheek
padding and moustache, also includes a great deal of body
padding, and elevator shoes, which have had the effect of
making him taller than ANDREW, where in reality he is a
fraction shorter)

ANDREW : You shit!

MILO : Just so.
ANDREW : You platinum plated, copper bottomed, died in the
wool, all time knock down dragout, champion
bastard Milo!
MILO : Thanks.
ANDREW : You weasel! You cozening coypu!
MILO : Obliged.
ANDREW : You mendacious bollock of Satan. Milo! You triple
dealing turd!
MILO : In your debt.
ANDREW : Mind you, I’m not saying it wasn’t well done.
It was - brilliant.
MILO : Thank you.
ANDREW : Have a drink, my dear fellow?
MILO : Let me wash rst. I’m covered in make-up and spirit
gum.
(ANDREW shakily pours himself a whisky)

ANDREW : Just down the corridor. Cheers!

MILO : Good health. (MELO exits to bathroom U.L. as
ANDREW gulps it down)
ANDREW : Yes, I must say, Milo, I congratulate you. It was rst
class. You really had me going there for a moment.
MILO : (offstage, quizzically) For a moment?
ANDREW : For a long moment I concede. Of course, I had my
suspicions towards the end. Flasher’s Heath indeed!
That was going a bit far.
MILO : (offstage) I was giving you one of your English
sporting chances.
ANDREW : What did you think of my performance? The anguish
of an innocent man trapped by circumstantial
evidence.
MILO : (offstage) Undigni ed - if it was a performance.
(MILO returns on stage, picks up his clothes)

ANDREW : Of course it was, and it had to be undigni ed to be

convincing. As I say, I had my suspicions.
MILO : Indeed? How cleverly you kept them to yourself.
(MILO goes upstairs to the wardrobe where he dresses
in his own clothes)
ANDREW : And how well you executed it. I loved your Inspector
Doppler. His relentless courtesy, his chilly rusticity,
 his yeoman beadiness.
MILO : (DOPPLER voice) I’m glad you view the tri ing
masquerade in that light, sir.
ANDREW : He was quite a masterpiece: Inspector Ringrose
crossed with a hint of declasse Roger Sheringham I’d
have said.
MILO : Really?
ANDREW : Oh yes. Surely you remember the Poisoned
Chocolates Case 1929. It was a really astounding tour
de force with no less than six separate solutions.
MILO : I’ve never heard of it.
ANDREW : You should read it. It’s a veritable textbook of the
literature. Not that you need any tips on plotting.
I suppose you slipped in here when I was over in
Salisbury?
MILO : Yes, I waited to see you leave.
ANDREW : And dumped the clothes in the wardrobe, and
sprinkled a little sacri cial blood on the banisters.
MILO : Exactly. But it wasn’t my blood you will be relieved to
hear. It was obtained from a pig’s liver.
ANDREW : Ugh! Perhaps you will do me the favour of wiping it
o in a minute. I don’t wish to fertilise the
woodworm.
MILO : Question. Where would you nd homosexual
woodworms?
ANDREW : What?
MILO : In a tallboy.
(ANDREW grimaces. MILO comes downstairs)

(sharply) I’d like that drink now.

ANDREW : Yes, of course. (ANDREW goes to drinks table and

pours a brandy for MILO) You deserve it.
MILO : (sits on chair under staircase) You know I haven’t
congratulated you on your game yet. You brought it
o with great elan.
ANDREW : Did you think so? Oh good! Good! I must say I was
rather delighted with it myself. Tell me.. .did you
really think that your last moment on earth had
come?
MILO : Yes.
ANDREW : You’re not angry, are you?
MILO : Anger is a meaningless word in this context.
ANDREW : I’ve already tried to explain it to you. I wanted to get
to know you - to see if you were, as I suspected, my
sort of person.
MILO : A games-playing sort of person?
ANDREW : Exactly.
MILO : And am I?
ANDREW : Most certainly. There’s no doubt about it.
MILO : And what exactly is a games-playing person?
ANDREW : He’s the complete man - a man of reason and
imagination; of potent passions and bright fancies.
He’s joyous and unrepenting. His weapons are the
 openness of a child and the cunning of a pike and
with them he faces out the black terrors of life. For
me personally he is a man who dares to live his life
without the crutch of domestic tension. You see, at
bottom, I’m rather a solitary man. An arrangement of
clouds, the secret mystery of landscape, a game of
intrigue and revelation, mean more to me than
people - even the ones I’m supposed to be in love
with. I’ve never met a woman to whom the claims of
intellect were as absolute as they are to me. For a long
time I was reticent about all this, knowing that most
people would mistake my adroit heart for one of
polished stone. But it doesn’t worry me any longer.
I’m out in the open. I’ve turned my whole life into one
great work of happy invention.
MILO : And you think I’m like this?
ANDREW : Yes, I do.
MILO : You’re wrong.
ANDREW : I’m not. Look at the way you chose to get back at me -
by playing Inspector Doppler.
MILO : That was just the need for revenge. Every Italian
knows about that.
ANDREW : Rubbish. You could have revenged yourself in one of
many crude Ma osi ways - cutting o the gardener’s
hands, for example, or staking the cleaning woman
out on the gravel, or even I suppose, as a last resort,
scratched loutish words on the bonnet of my
Lagonda. But no, you had to resort to a game.
MILO : I like to pay back in kind.
ANDREW : And is honour satis ed? Is it one set all?
MILO : (hard) By no means. Your game was superior to mine.
I merely teased you for a few minutes with the
thought of prison, (low) You virtually terri ed me to
death.
ANDREW : My dear fellow…
MILO : (slowly, thinking it out) And that changes you
profoundly. Once you’ve given yourself to death,
actually faced the fact that the coat sleeve button, the
banister, the nail on your fourth nger, are the last
things you’re going to see ever - and then heard the
sound of your own death - things cannot be the same
again. I feel I’ve been tempered by madness. I stand
outside and see myself for the rst time without
responsibility.
ANDREW : (nervous) That’s shock, my dear chap. It’ll pass. Here,
have another drink. (ANDREW reaches for the glass.
MILO jerks away. He is in great distress) How cold
you are. Milo, my dear fellow, I didn’t realise how
absolutely cold…
MILO : So that my only duty is to even our score. That’s
imperative. As you would put it ‘I’m three games up
in the second set, having lost the rst six love’ That’s
right, isn’t it? That’s about how you see it? I should
hate to cheat.
ANDREW : You’re being too modest, Milo. In my scoring it’s one
set all.
MILO : Oh no, I can’t accept that. You see to the ends of
playing the game and drawing honourably level, I
 have killed someone.
ANDREW : Killed someone?
MILO : Murdered someone. Committed murder.
ANDREW : You’re not serious.
MILO : Yes.
ANDREW : What is this. Some new murder game?
MILO : Yes. But it has a di erence. Both the game and thr
murder are real. There’s absolutely no point in
another pretence murder game, is there?
ANDREW : (soothing) No, none. But I don’t like to take advantage
of you in this emotional state.
MILO : (shouting) It can’t wait.
ANDREW : (soothing) Alright. Alright. Let’s play your game. Who
did you kill?
MILO : Your girlfriend, Tea…
ANDREW : You killed Tea?
MILO : (a little giggle) She whose cobalt eyes were the secret
forest pools of Finlandia. I closed them.
ANDREW : You…
MILO : I strangled her - right here on this rug I strangled her
and… I had her rst.
ANDREW : You raped and str…
MILO : No. Not rape. She wanted it.
ANDREW : You’re lying. You can’t take me in with a crude game
like this, (with braggadaccio) Honestly, Milo. You’re in
the big league now. I gave you credit for better sport
than this.
MILO : You’ll have all the sport you can stomach in a
moment, Andrew. That I promise you.
ANDREW : Really, Milo, I think it would be better if…
MILO : When I was here yesterday, planning the blood and
clothes for my Inspector Doppler scene, Tea called. I
strangled her. She was under that freshly dug mound
of earth in the garden that so took Doppler’s fancy.
ANDREW : Was? You mean she’s not there now?
MILO : No. I moved her.
ANDREW : (derisory) You moved her? Whereto? Flasher’s Heath I
suppose.
MILO : Something like that. It was too easy leaving her
here… Too easy for the game you are going to play
against the clock before the police arrive.
ANDREW : The police?
MILO : Yes. You see, about an hour ago I ‘phoned them up
and asked them to meet me here at ten o’clock
tonight. They should be here in about ten minutes.
ANDREW : (sarcastic) Yes, yes. I’m sure they will be. Led, no
doubt, by intrepid downy Inspector Doppler.
MILO : Oh no. It’ll be a real policeman, have no fear of that.
Detective Sergeant Tarrant his name is. I told him a
lot about you, Andrew, I said that I knew you to be a
 man obsessed with games-playing and murder
considered as a ne art. Your life’s great ambition, I
said, of which you’d often spoken, was to commit an
actual real life murder, hide the body somewhere
when’ it couldn’t be traced to you and then leave
clues linking you with the crime, strewn about your
house in the certain knowledge that the pedestrian
and simple-minded police wouldn’t recognise them
for what they were.
ANDREW : Obsessed with games-playing and murder considered
as a ne art! That’s rather ingenious of you, Milo. But
it won’t work. Please sir, Andrew Wyke can’t rest
until he’s committed a real murder which is going to
make fools out of all you coppers. Honestly! Tell that
to the average desk Sergeant and you’ll nd yourself
strapped straight into the giggle jacket.
MILO : Not so in fact, I told them that if they didn’t believe
me, one look at your bookcase and the furnishings of
your house would con rm what I said about your
obsessions.
ANDREW : (slow) Go on.
MILO : I also told them that two days ago your girlfriend had
come to my house in great distress saying you
suspected she was having a airs with other men and
had threatened to kill her.
ANDREW : The police believed all that?
MILO : After some demur, yes.
ANDREW : The fuzz are watching too much T. V.
MILO : You mustn’t resent imagination in public o ce,
Andrew. Of course, I went on I had no proof that any
harm had’ actually been done to her, but I thought I
had better report the matter, particularly as I had just
received an excited phone call from you, Andrew,
saying you were all set to achieve your life’s great
ambition.
ANDREW : My dear boy, I quite appreciate you have been
captivated by the spirit of games-playing and the
need as you see it, to get even, but frankly you are
trying too hard to be a big boy, too soon.
(ANDREW goes to the telephone and dials)

Hello, Joyce, this is Andrew. May I speak to Tëa… she

what?… when was this? Where… ? Oh my God!
(ANDREW replaces the receiver and takes a drink straight
from the bottle. MILO is very excited)

MILO : I told you. I killed her yesterday. Now sweat for your
life. You have a little over ten minutes before the law
arrives. It’s your giant brain against their plodding
ones. Concealed in this room are two incriminating
clues. And as a nal expression of your contempt for
the police you hid the murder weapon itself. Do you
follow me so far?
ANDREW : (admiringly) You bastard!
MILO : No judgements please. Three objects. Those you don’t
nd, be sure the police will. I should add that they ’re
all in plain view though I have somewhat
camou aged them to make the whole thing more
fun. The rst object is a crystal bracelet.
ANDREW : Not…
MILO : Yes, I tore it o her wrist.. .o you go. It’s inscribed
“From Andrew to Tëa, a propitiary o ering to a
Karelian Goddess”.
ANDREW : Alright! Alright! I know how it’s inscribed.
(ANDREW takes off his jacket and starts his search)

MILO : Would you like some help ?

ANDREW : Yes, damn you!
MILO : Tch! Tch! … For any man with half an eye What
stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.
ANDREW : (furious) You said everything was in plain view.
MILO : Well, it’s paradoxical old me, isn’t it?
ANDREW : I’ll get my own back for this… don’t worry. That I
promise you. I’ll roast you for this… I’ll make you so
sorry you ever…
MILO : Eight minutes.
ANDREW : (slowly to himself) I must think… I must think… It’s in
plain view, yet not to be seen. H’m… there’s a visual
trick involved.
(ANDREW searches the stage)

MILO : A propitiary o ering, eh! What was it you had to

propitiate for I ask myself?
ANDREW : None of your bloody business.
MILO : Just for being yourself I suppose. Just for being cold,
torturing, Andrew Wyke. Poor TSa, I wonder if all her
jewellery was inscribed with apologies for your bully
boy behaviour.
ANDREW : That’s a cheap jibe.
MILO : Mind you, at least you gave her some. Marguerite just
had the use of them.
ANDREW : I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to distract me…
But you won’t succeed… I” 11 solve your puzzle … Let
me think… Optics sharp it needs to see what is not to
be seen… with the naked eye? It’s microscopic! You
only see a fraction of it. That’s it!
(ANDREW picks up the microscope and uses it)

MILO : You won’t need the Sherlock Holmes kit, Andrew. The
bracelet is full sized and in full view. Though the
detective angle is not a bad one. I wonder how your
man, Merry dick, would have gone about the search.
ANDREW : (furious) Merrydew! St. Lord John Merrydew!
MILO : Perhaps he’d have clambered up on to that desk to
look at the plinth, hauling his great tun of port belly
after him.
(ANDREW climbs up on his desk to inspect the plinth)

Or perhaps he’d have gone straight to the chimney

and shoved his fat Father Christmas face right up it.
(ANDREW runs to the chimney and climbs inside it)

My God! cried the noble Lord, puking on his pipe and

indulging his famed taste for bad puns. This is hardly
a sootable place for a gentleman!
 (ANDREW emerges from the chimney)

ANDREW : I won’t listen to you. I must think… What are the

properties of crystal? It’s hard… It’s brilliant … It’s
transparent.
MILO : You’re getting warm, Andrew.
ANDREW : You look through it and you don’t see it. Now the only
place to conceal a transparent thing, so as to make it
invisible yet keep it in plain view, is in another
transparent thing like…
(ANDREW inspects various glass objects including Milo’s
drink which he is holding conspicuously.

Finally he crosses to the ornamental tank, down stage right

and li s out the bracelet)

Suddenly it’s all as clear as crystal. I don’t need to

destroy this, do I? She could have this here any time.
MILO : True, it was only planted so that the police could read
the inscription. At least they’d know that your
relationship with Tëa hadn’t always been a happy
one.
ANDREW : Very subtle. What next?
MILO : The next object is much more damning. The clue is a
riddle, which goes as follows:
Two brothers we are, Great burdens we bear, On
which we are bitterly pressed. The truth is to say, We
are full all the day, And empty when we go to rest.
ANDREW : Oh, I know that… don’t tell me… full all the day,
empty when we go to rest… it’s a… it’s a pair of shoes!
MILO : Very good. In this case, one right, high-heeled shoe.
Size 6. The other, I need hardly add, is on Tëa’s body.
ANDREW : Oh, my God. Poor Tëa.
(ANDREW searches the room)

MILO : Poor Tëa, eh? Well, that’s a bit better. It’s the rst sign
of sorrow you’ve shown since you heard of her death.
ANDREW : It’s not true! You think I don’t care about Tëa, don’t
you? But I must save myself.
MILO : You’re loving it. You’re in a high state of brilliance
and excitement. The thought that you are playing a
game for your life is practically giving you an orgasm.
It’s pitiable.
ANDREW : Hold your lthy tongue. What you see before you is
someone using a mighty control to keep terror in
check, while he tries to solve a particularly sadistic
and morbid puzzle. It’s a triumph of the mind over
atavism!
(ANDREW searches under the stairs and in the bookshelves,
and pipe racks then the sailor’s foot and finally finds the
shoe in a brightly decorated cornucopia attached to the
stage le column)

Ah! What have we here ?

MILO : Very good! Sorry it’s so messy. It’s only earth from
Tëa’s rst grave in your garden.
(ANDREW burns the shoe in the stove)

ANDREW : Now there’s one thing left, isn’t there. The murder
weapon, that’s what you said. Now you strangled her
 here. What with? Let’s see… a rope … a belt… a
scarf…
MILO : It bit into her neck very deeply, Andrew. I had to prise
it loose.
ANDREW : You sadistic bloody wop!
MILO : I hope I didn’t hear that correctly… It would be
foolish to antagonise me at this stage. Because as
you’re certain to need a lot more help, I would hate to
have to give you an oblique, Florentine sort of clue,
sewn with treachery and double dealing.
ANDREW : (controlling himself) Alright! Alright!
MILO : As Don Quixote in common with a great number of
chaps remarked, “No es Oro todo que reluce”.
ANDREW : But the other chaps of course, didn’t say it in Spanish,
did they?
MILO : Well at least you know it was Spanish, even if you
can’t speak it. I suppose that’s what is meant by a
general education in England.
ANDREW : God, you’re pretty damned insu erable, Milo.
MILO : I’ve learnt it. Let’s try you on a little Latin. Every
gentleman knows Latin. I’m sure you’re acquainted
with the Winchester College Hall Book of 1401 ?
ANDREW : (sarcastic) Naturally. As a matter of fact I’ve got the
paperback by my bedside.
MILO : (bland) Then you will remember an entry by Alanus
De Insulis - ’’Non teneas nurum totum quod splendet
ut aurum”.
ANDREW : (sarcastic) I’m afraid I can’t have got that far yet.
MILO : Pity… I suppose I could put it another way. ”Que tout
n’est pas or qu’on voit luire”. The French, of course, is
thirteenth century.
ANDREW : Say it again, slowly.
MILO : AU-that-glitters…
ANDREW : All that glitters isn’t gold… Why didn’t you say that
in the rst place…
(MILO whistles a scale)

Golden notes? Golden whistle?… Golden cord?…

Golden cord! You strangled her with a golden cord
and put it round the bell pull.
(ANDREW runs to the bell pull, examines it, but finds
nothing)

No you didn’t.
(MILO whistles “Anything Goes”)

Anything goes. In olden d… In olden days a… glimpse

of stocking. It’s in the spin dryer.
(ANDREW goes off down corridor to kitchen)

MILO : Cold, cold. It’s in this room remember.

ANDREW : Where do you put stockings? On legs, golden legs…
(ANDREW examines the golden legs of the fender, then a
chair)

MILO : (sings) “In olden days a glimpse of stocking was

looked on as something shocking… *’ I thought I
heard something.
 (MILO exits to hallway. MILO comes back on stage)

Yes, Andrew, it’s the police. They’re coming up the

drive.
ANDREW : (desperate) Keep them out! Give me one more minute!
MILO : A glimpse of stocking, remember.
(MILO exits to hallway)

(off stage) Good evening. Detective Sergeant Tarrant.

DET. SGT. TARRANT :Yes, sir. This is Constable Higgs.

MILO : Good evening, Constable.

CON. HIGGS : Good evening, sir.

(The grandfather clock strikes 10. 00)

ANDREW : Olden days… A glimpse… Now you see it now you

don’t! Of course, the clock.
(He rushes to clock and finds stocking)

MILO : Nice of you to be so prompt. I apologise for keeping

you waiting out there for a moment. The front door’s
a bit sti .
TARRANT : That’s alright, sir. We’re used to waiting.
MILO : Won’t you hang your coats up? It’s a bit warm inside.
TARRANT : Thank you, sir. I expect we’ll be here a little time.
(ANDREW puts stocking into fire)

MILO : Here, Constable. Let me take your helmet.

HIGGS : Thank you, sir. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll
keep it with me, but I ‘ll take my coat o . (Door slams
 off-stage. ANDREW rims to his desk and sits
unconcernedly reading)
MILO : Come in, gentlemen. May I introduce Mr. Andrew
Wyke. Andrew, may I introduce Detective Sergeant
Tarrant and Constable Higgs.
ANDREW : Come in, gentlemen, come in.
(A pause. No one enters)

MILO : Or perhaps I should say Inspector Plodder and

Constable Freshface. Thank you, Sergeant. We won’t
be needing you after all.
TARRANT’S VOICE :That’salright, sir. Better to be safe than sorry,
that’s what I say. Good night, sir.
MILO : (own voice) Good night, Sergeant. Good night,
Constable. Good night, sir.
(ANDREW sinks on the settee, shattered)

Aren’t you going to ask about Tëa? She did call here
yesterday looking for you when I was here setting the
Doppler scene. I told her about the trick you had
played on me with the gun. She wasn’t a bit
surprised.
She knows only too well the kind of games you play -
the kind of humiliation you enjoy in icting on
people.
I said I wanted to play a game to get even with you
and I asked her to help me. I asked her to lend me a
stocking, a shoe and a bracelet. She collaborated with
enthusiasm. So did her at-mate, Joyce. Would you
like to telephone her, she’ll talk to you now? Of course
 you don’t really have much to say to her, do you? She’s
not really your mistress She told me you and she
hadn’t slept together for over a year. She told me you
were practically impotent - not at all, in fact, the
selector’s choice for the next Olympics.
(ANDREW hides his head as MILO starts up the stairs)

ANDREW : Where are you going?

MILO : To collect Marguerite’s fur coat.
ANDREW : She’s not coming back?
MILO : No. Among other things she said she was fed up with
living in Hamleys.
ANDREW : Hamleys?
MILO : It’s a toy shop in Regent Street.
ANDREW : Milo.
MILO : Yes?
ANDREW : Don’t go. Don’t waste it all on Marguerite. She doesn’t
appreciate you like I do. You and I are evenly
matched. We know what it is to play a game and
that’s so rare. Two people coming together who have
the courage to spend the little time of light between
the eternal darkness - joking.
MILO : Do you mean live here?
ANDREW : Yes.
MILO : (scornfully) Is it legal in private between two
consenting games-players?
ANDREW : Please… I just want someone to play with.
MILO : No.
ANDREW : Please.
MILO : No. Most people want someone to live with. But you
have no life to give anyone - only tricks and the
shadows of long ago. Take a look at yourself, Andrew,
and ask yourself a few simple questions about your
attachment to the English detective story. Perhaps
you might come to realise that the only place you can
inhabit is a dead world - a country house world where
peers and colonels die in their studies; where butlers
steal the port, and pert parlourmaids cringe, weeping
malopro-pisms behind green baize doors. It’s a world
of coldness and class hatred, and two dimensional
characters who are not expected to communicate; it’s
a world where only the amateurs win, and where
foreigners are automatically gures of fun. To be
puzzled is all. Forgive me for taking Marguerite to a
life where people try to understand. To put it shortly,
the detective story is the normal recreation of
snobbish, out-dated, life hating, ignoble minds. I’ll
get that fur coat now. I presume it is Marguerite’s,
unless, that is, you’ve taken to transvestisism as a
substitute for non-performance.
(MILO disappears into the bedroom. ANDREW sits on
below, crushed and humiliated. A er a minute, he rises and
starts wearily across the stage. Suddenly he stops as a
thought enters his mind)

ANDREW : (to himself) The coat!___The fur coat… of-course…

I’ve got him!
(He brightens visibly - a man who realises suddenly that he
can rescue a victory out of the jaws of defeat - and crosses
firmly to his desk and takes out his gun)
 You see, Inspector, I was working in the morning
room when I heard a noise. I seized my gun and came
in here. I saw the gure of a man, apparently carrying
my wife’s fur coat. I shouted for him to put his hands
up, but instead he ran towards the front door, trying
to escape. Though I aimed low, I’m afraid I shot him
dead.
(INSPECTOR’S voice) Mustn’t blame yourself, sir, could
have happened to anybody!

(MILO returns carrying fur coat. He comes down the stairs,

but does not see the gun hidden behind ANDREW’S back)

I’m not going to let you go, you know.

MILO : No? What are you going to do, Andrew. Shoot me
down? Play that old burglar game again?
ANDREW : Yes, that’s precisely what I could do.
MILO : It wouldn’t work, you know, even if you had the guts
to go through with it.
ANDREW : Why not?
(MILO fetches a suitcase from the hall and packs the fur
coat)

MILO : Because of what happened when I left here on Friday

night. I lurched home in the moonlight, numb and
dazed, and soiled. I sat up all night in a chair -
damaged -contaminated by you and this house. I
remembered something my father said to me; “In this
country, Milo” he said, “there’s justice, but sometimes
for a foreigner it is di cult”. In the morning I went to
the police station and told them what had happened.
One of them - Sergeant Tarrant - yes he’s real - took
 me into a room and we had quite a long chat. But I
don’t think he really believed me, even though I
showed him the powder burn on my head. He seemed
more interested in my relationship with Marguerite,
which by the way they all appeared to know about. I
felt this terrible anger coming over me. I thought
“they’re not going to believe me because I’m a
stranger from London who’s screwing the wife of the
local nob and has got what he deserved”. So I thought
of my father, and what I might have done in Italy, and
I took my own revenge. But remember, Andrew, the
police might still come.
ANDREW : (slowly) Then why haven’t they, then?
MILO : I don’t know, perhaps they won’t. But even if they
don’t, you can’t play your burglar game now, they’d
never swallow it. So you see you’ve lost.
ANDREW : I don’t believe one word you’re saying.
MILO : (deliberately) It’s the truth.
ANDREW : You’re lying.
MILO : Why don’t you ‘phone Sergeant Tarrant if you don’t
believe me.
ANDREW : And say what? Please Sergeant has Milo Tindle been
in saying that I framed him as a burglar and then
shot him. I’m not that half-witted.
MILO : Suit yourself.
ANDREW : I shall shoot you, Milo. You come here and ask my
permission to steal away my wife, you pry into my
manhood, you lecture me on dead worlds and ignoble
 minds, and you mock Merridew. Well, they’re all real
bullets this time.
MILO : I’m going home now.
(MILO starts to leave, ANDREW fires at the last moment.
MILO staggers downstage right and drops in pain, fatally.
ANDREW kneels and holds his head up)

ANDREW : You’re a bad liar, Milo, and in the nal analysis, an

uninventive games-player. Can you hear me? Then
listen to this, NEVER play the same game three times
running!
(There is the sound of a car approaching and pulling to a
halt. A flashy blue police car light shines through the
window. The door bell rings. Loud knocking on door.
Painfully MILO li s his head from the floor, he laughs)

MILO : Game, set and match!

(His laugh becomes a cough. Blood trickles from his mouth. He grimaces in
surprise at the pain and dies. The knocking on the door is repeated more loudly.
ANDREW staggers to his desk and accidentally presses the button on it. This
sets off the sailor who laughs ironically. The knocking becomes more insistent.
ANDREW leans weakly against pillar as the curtain falls)
Sleuth has all the ingredients of a top-class thriller, which it
undoubtedly is - a plot that twists and turns with fiendish cunning,
an atmosphere of extreme suspense and a staggering denouement.
Yet it is far more than that: it is also a brilliant parody of the
Agatha Christie country-house thriller which mercilessly satirizes
the genre whilst employing its technical devices to the full: it is a
dramatic study of the sexual conflict and jealousy between an
older and a younger man: and, finally, it is a subtle psychological
study of an inadequate and sexually obsessed middle-aged man.
This edition is fully illustrated with stills from the film by Joseph
Mankiewicz, for which Anthony Shaffer wrote the screenplay,
with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in the lead roles.
Anthony Shaffer wrote several television and stage plays
including the West End success Murderer (also available from
Marion Boyars Publishers). He also wrote the screenplays for the
Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun, cult
classic The Wicker Man and Hitchcock’s Frenzy. Sleuth enjoyed a
West End revival at The Apollo in 2003.

‘This metaphysical mystery play still keeps you guessing

three decades a er its premiere’ The London Evening
Standard
‘Not only a whodunit but a whodunwhat. A great deal of
fun… marvellous’ New York Times
‘This tit-for-tat rapier fight rarely loses pace and never
gives itself away’ Independent
‘A clever and enjoyable piece…full of energy, sophistication and
brilliant humour’ The London Theatre Guide
£8.95/$11.95
Marion Boyars Publishers
24 Lacy Road, London SW15 1NL
Distributed in the USA by
Consortium Book Sales
1045 Westgate Drive, Saint Paul, MN 55114-1065
www.marionboyars.co.uk
Cover design by Eleanor Rose

This book is
compiled & gifted to book-lovers by
Vibhatsu