Read Online An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson - Free Book Online Page B

company director Stanley Thackery from South London said he was protesting at the amount of alimony Mr Justice Hereward had ordered he should pay to his estranged wife. The judge, who was not seriously injured, told him…” Maltravers turned the set off.
    “ Slow news day indeed,” he remarked. “Anyway, we didn’t miss anything we don’t already know. Let’s see if your Mystery Plays can take our minds off our own mystery.”
    Performed in the Great Hall of Vercaster’s Edward VI Grammar School, a stubborn survivor in an age of more egalitarian education, the plays did entertain and occupy them. The evening was taken up with the first three plays of the cycle, the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and the story of Adam and Eve, and Noah’s Flood. The Vercaster Players destroyed all Maltravers’ dark misgivings about the horrors of amateur theatre, showing themselves well rehearsed, imaginatively directed, capable of ingenious effects and entertainingly inventive. They treated the works of the monk Stephen of Vercaster with intelligent adaptation, abandoning antique and incomprehensible references for modern interpretations in modifications by the school’s senior English master. They also tellingly extended the role of the Devil, introducing him throughout every play as a counterpoint to God, now evil, now mischievous, terrifying or amusing. He fell from grace with maniacal and sinister laughter, watched the creation of Adam and Eve with mouthwatering anticipation of the possibilities of corruptible innocence and caused total and hilarious havoc during the building of the ark and the loading of the animals. As the wives of Shem, Ham and Japheth tried to shepherd the children dressed as all the beasts of the world into some sort of order, the Devil constantly moved among them — he explained in an aside to the audience that he was invisible — shouting contradictory instructions until there was complete chaos. As offstage thunder rolled and Noah and his family bewailed the violence of the storm, he calmly stood to one side of the stage sheltering under a red umbrella and when the little girl dressed as the dove made her exit after delivering the olive leaf he maliciously tripped her up.
    After God had bestowed his blessing upon Noah and promised mankind no further elemental wrath, the Devil watched them depart rejoicing. Then, alone on the stage, he turned to the audience to deliver his sinister valediction:
    The end is come of storm and rain
    But Lucifer will here remain.
    About this world I here will stay
    Until the dreadful judgement day.
    His eyes glittered malevolently with fiendish relish of what was to come. Then a burst of crimson smoke enveloped him and the stage plunged into darkness.
    Melissa took Maltravers and Tess backstage to meet the cast and Maltravers sought out the Devil, now emerging from costume and make-up as Jeremy Knowles, a hatchet faced local solicitor whose natural expression was inescapably evil.
    “ You should have gone into the profession,” Maltravers told him.
    “ You’re very kind,” he replied. “But I think the Vercaster Players and the local magistrates’ court are as far as I want to go.”
    “ I assume we’ll be seeing more of you in the rest of the cycle?”
    “ Oh, yes. In Trevor’s adaptation I’m hardly ever off the stage. We’ve taken a lot of liberties, but I think they’ll work. Incidentally,” he added, “I saw Miss Porter on Saturday night. Is there any news of her?”
    However much he tried to put it to the back of his mind, Maltravers thought, Diana’s disappearance sounded like a constant keynote. He explained briefly then returned to Tess who had been identified as an actress and was signing autographs for some of the children in the play.
    “ Are you an actor?” demanded a freckled redheaded boy.
    “ No. I’m a writer.”
    “ Oh,” said the child and managed to combine disinterest, dismissiveness and contempt in the single syllable as he