FORGOTTEN BOOK: NIGHT AT THE VULCAN

Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh  (first published in England in 1951 as Opening Night; serialized in Woman's Day (US) and in Woman's Journal (UK, March to May, 1951); included in the omnibus Three-Act Special, 1960; included in 3 x 3 (Three Times Three) Mystery Omnibus, Volume 3, edited by Howard Haycraft & John Beecroft, 1964; adapted for television [and co-written by Marsh] as Night at the Vulcan for The Philco Television Playhouse, August 26, 1951,  adapted as Opening Night for Television New Zealand in 1977 featuring George Baker as Roderick Alleyn [later broadcast on PBS as the first American screening of a New Zealand television series]; adapted for BBC radio in the 1990s as Opening Night. featuring Jeremy Clyde as Roderick Alleyn )

It has been some thirty years since I last read a Ngaio Marsh mystery so it's high time I got back to her books and yo her detective, Metropolitan Police  Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

Night at the Vulcan lies smackdab in the middle of Marsh's books about Alleyn; it was the sixteenth of thirty-two books featuring Alleyn published in her lifetime (one additional book, the unfinished Money in the Morgue was completed by Stella Duffy and published in 2018, thirty-six years after Marsh had died).  It was one of six novels set in the theater -- Marsh's great passion; three other novels concerned actors off-stage; Marsh also wrote on theatrical short story featuring Allyn -- "I Can find My Way Out," (first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 1946), which is referenced in Night at the Vulcan.

Martyn Tarne is a nineteen-year-old actress who had just arrived in London.  She has had some success in touring companies in her native New Zealand and hopes to further her career in England.  Unfortunately, all her money, as well as her press clippings, were stolen when she arrived.  Now she is dead-broke with no place to live and has had no luck with theatrical agencies.  After making the rounds of almost all the theaters in London, she turns to the Vulcan, a newly reopened and renamed theater which had been closed for years following a notorious murder.  The theater is readying for the premiere of a new play and Martyn sneaks in, hoping merely to find a hidden corner where she can sleep.  The manager of the theater is famed actor Adam Poole, who happens to be a distant relation to Martyn, a second cousin once removed, or something like that; Poole has no idea of the relation and had no idea that he had relations in New Zealand.  Yet there is a strange physical resemblance between Poole and Martyn -- something that turns out to be significant.  Poole is also cast as the star of the new play.  Through a set of coincidences, Martyn is hired to be the dresser for the play's leading lady, the noted Helena Hamilton; Helena and Poole have has a relationship that is beginning to wear out, although they both have great respect for each other.

Also in the cast is Helena's estranged husband, Clark Bennington, a once talented actor who has begun a slide to oblivion through his alcoholism.  Bennington has brought his niece, Gay Gainsford, to the cast as the ingenue.  Gay does not have the talent needed for the role but Bennington insists that she take it; the role depends on Gay's resemblance to Poole, something she has difficulty portraying  through physical cues.  (You see where Martyn's resemblance to Poole comes in here, don't you?)  Rounding out the cast are character actor J. G. Darcey and "juvenile" lead Parry Percival; Percival resents being cast in such a minor role.  The playwright is Dr. John James Rutherford, an overly dramatic, highly critical, self-proclaimed genius who spends much of his time belittling Gay's insubstantial talents.

Gay is becoming more and more unsteady in her role.  Poole, noticing the resemblance between himself and Martyn, makes her Gay's understudy -- which causes rumors that Martyn might be Poole's love child from a tour he did of New Zealand twenty years before.  There are only a few rehearsals left before opening night.  then, on opening night Gay has a complete breakdown and refuses to go on stage.  With only half an hour before curtain, Martyn is forced to take over the role.  She succeeds wonderfully and the play appears to be a success.  Only a few minutes before the final curtain, Bennington makes his final appearance, then exits.  He does not appear during curtain call and his body is found in his dressing room, an apparent suicide, his death echoing that of the tragedy five years before in the theater.

The first half of the novel goes into great detail with the characters and the work needed to stage the play.  The author's enthusiasm for the theater really shines here.  The reader also gets to see how much Bennington is hated by everyone involved in the play.  Everybody has a motive, no matter how specious.

Enter Roderick Alleyn and his associated from the C.I.D.  Alleyn has good reason to believe this supposed suicide was actually murder.   His brief investigation takes place at the theater on the evening of the murder.  The murderer is revealed and the motive -- merely hinted at before -- is made clear.

The novel is a well-written, character-driven mystery and a paean to the theater that Dame Ngaio Marsh so loved.  Part of me, unlike with Marsh's other novels, did not give a hoot about whodunnit; I just wanted to keep reading about the theater and the marvelous people that the author had created.

Recommended.

It should be noted that one of Alleyn's assistants in this case was P.C. Lord Michael Lamprey, who had been a child witness in the 1941 novel A Surfeit of Lampreys (US title Death of a Peer) and a young man eager to join the police force in "I Can find My Way Out."