Click here for more Rock Tuff stories!
“It’s not what I pictured.” The young man looked around my office, a room in a closed factory whose caretaker-watchman, Hank, a retired custodian from Blandsville High School, let me use. “Except for the bookcases.” There, the Elizabethans, Romantics, and Victorians stood cover to cover with classic and modern detective fiction.
“What are you doing now?” I asked. I remembered Graham Wilson as the star of several high school plays.
“I’m directing and acting in Little Theatre productions. By the way, ‘Little’ does not mean small or amateurish; it’s named for Orville Little, our sponsor. He’s a millionaire.” I had seen ads in the newspapers for their shows, but I had not attended any. “Currently we’re rehearsing Macbeth. That’s why I came to see you.” Was he going to a lot of trouble to sell me a ticket? “When I heard that you had become a P.I., I decided to offer you a job …and a role.”
I was flattered, but “I can’t act,” I said.
“You acted in skits at school. You even wrote some of them.”
“I didn’t act, I performed. I’m very nervous in front of audiences and I can’t remember lines, even ones I wrote.”
“It would be a small part.” I tried to picture myself as Fleance or one of Lady Macduff’s children. No, I’m much too old. King Duncan or Banquo? Much too big roles, even though both are killed off long before the end of the play.
“You see, we’re having lots of problems: broken or disappearing props, damaged sets. Someone is trying to sabotage our play. I thought you could find the villain, but to be inconspicuous, you’d need to be part of the cast.”
“Maybe it’s just bad luck. Isn’t the play traditionally plagued with problems? You aren’t even supposed to mention the title; it’s referred to as ‘The Scottish Play’.”
I was tempted, and I hated to turn Graham down, but I prayed for the telephone to ring with another case: a bag of garbage thrown onto a lawn, a missing cat, a stolen rake.
“What role did you have in mind for me?”
“The drunken Porter. He’s in only one scene.”
The phone didn’t ring, so that night I found myself in the Little Theatre theatre, being introduced to the cast. “This is Mr. Petty, my high school English teacher. He’ll be playing the Porter.” We had decided not to use my pseudonym or mention my new vocation, so as not to alert the culprit — if there was one. “You’ll learn the cast’s names as we rehearse, Mr. Petty.” And immediately forget them, I thought. I looked apprehensively at the rows of seats which my imagination filled with people, a terrifying number of them. I could already hear their boos and hisses.
