Chairs, a Table, a Cauldron

by Eric

Shakespeare's Macbeth isn't out of place in this newsletter. While not a mystery it can certainly be classified as a crime story. There's a large enough body count. One Internet source tallies eight murders. But I don't want to write about the play itself. My subject is the performance I saw in 1974 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The theater has about three hundred seats, the rows curving around a thrust stage more or less creating half of a theater in the round. The whole audience is practically on top of the action. For this production the stage was covered by various levels of metal gratings. Most of the actors carried swords and wore heavy boots and dark bulky outfits with numerous metal fittings. They clanked and rattled across the gratings looking huge in the dim lighting. The set was stark. Chairs, a table, a cauldron for the witches.

All impressive and spooky but when Macbeth strode onto the stage a remarkable thing happened.

What is stage presence? Good acting? Appearance? An attitude? A psychic projection? However it might arise, after seeing this performance of Macbeth I have no doubt it exists. The actor filled the theater with the enormous force of Macbeth's personality. You couldn't look away.

On my way out, feeling almost stunned, I asked one of the ushers "Who was that?"

"Christopher Walken," she replied, rather incredulously, apparently shocked that I didn't know him or maybe just surprised I had neglected to read my Playbill.

Walken was already well known to New York theatergoers but had appeared in only a few movies. Stardom and the Academy Award for The Deer Hunter came later. Over the years he seems to have been relegated mainly to playing villains which strikes me as a terrible waste of talent. Maybe the magnetism I felt during his Macbeth can't be captured by film. I was thrilled to see the Avengers' Patrick McNee in Sleuth at a tiny, regional theater, but though I loved his television performance as Steed and his portrayal of mystery writer Andrew Wyke on stage was excellent, I can't honestly say he had great stage presence, at least for me.

I haven't seen many famous actors on stage. I thought Frank Langella as Dracula had less presence than Edward Gorey's stage settings. Strangely enough, Carol Channing in a frothy show designed for her had whatever it is and then some. And I never even liked her. Chatting with talk show hosts she struck me as too gushing and phony. Yet seeing her in person I absolutely believed in her sincerity. It felt like she created some sort of psychic bond with every person in the audience. Jason Robards -- I don't know. Can stage presence reach the nosebleed seats where you need binoculars to recognize the actors?

For what it's worth I saw Blondie close up on the CBGB bar/rock club's poor excuse for a stage. Debbie Harry basically jumped up and down in a little pink dress and much as I love Blondie's music she didn't rivet my attention. To be fair I was sitting practically next to the sound man (CBGBs in cramped to put it mildly) who fiddled in apparent desperation with switches and dials and buttons muttering things like "Twenty-five thousand dollars worth of sound equipment and a twenty-five cent voice." Which I think totally inaccurate after listening to Debbie Harry's recordings many times over the years.

However, I can say for certain that lesser known singer and actress Quinn Lemley has presence in abundance. When Mary and I saw her one-woman show about Rita Haworth in a tiny dinner theater, she walked over to the edge of the stage in her slinky dress, a couple feet from where we sat, and sang The Heat Is On directly to me. So....

While trying to get my facts straight (if only I could google my memory) I managed to find a listing for the Macbeth performance I saw. As my gaze passed over the cast list I suddenly stopped. Banquo was played by Christopher Lloyd -- Reverend Jim in Taxi and Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Well, how do you like that, I thought.

But wait. Peter Weller portrayed Lennox. The name sounded familiar. Let's see...he was Robocop! And there was another name I recognized -- Carol Kane who was also in Taxi and plenty of movies. Heck, she was only one of the witches! Who would have guessed she'd go on to marry Latka?

I looked up the rest of the cast. Practically every one had long careers and a Wikipedia entry. Without knowing it I'd seen Stephen Collins (Macduff) in Star Trek: The Motion picture, John Heard (Donalbain) and Jason Tolkan (Rosse) in the Home Alone films. Some of the actors I might have glimpsed in shows I watched, like Hill Street Blues. Others were in shows I've heard about: The Sopranos, Dark Shadows, the Doctors, and more.

Realistically it's pretty likely you'll see a lot of actors who are successful or headed for success in a New York City production so my experience was not, I am sure, very unusual. Still, it amazed me that I had seen unknowingly so many actors I'd watch in the future all on the same stage that long ago afternoon. Remarkable isn't it how the Internet can alter and even enhance our own memories? Or perhaps that's scary.

Meteor Right, Murder Wrong

by Eric

So, let me talk about a new cozy mystery series.

Meteor Right, Murder Wrong is the first of the Ye Olde Meteor Shoppe Mysteries

Newly divorced Lavinia Smith-Dusenberg moves to Dog Elbow Corners and finally realizes her lifelong dream. A meteor shop.

Lavi, as her friends call her, puts it this way. "Jiminy Cricket once sang when you wish upon a star your dreams come true. I wished upon a meteroid in space, a meteor during its descent through the atmosphere and a meteorite after it hit the earth. Which, I know, is a more complicated wish, but remember Jiminy was only an insect. And I can't sing.

"My beastly and controlling husband laughed and told me no one could make a living selling meteorites in a rural village but he was wrong. It's easy if you move to a village where people are constantly being murdered."

In the first book Flossie, owner of the local Paperclip Paradise, is apparently killed by a falling meteor, or meteorite, depending on whether a meteor can be considered to have reached the earth when it hits someone's head. Only Lavinia would think to ask such a question which -- spoiler alert -- turns out to be pivotal. She needs to employ all her investigative powers when the police classify Flossie's death as murder and target Lavinia as the chief suspect. "As I sat miserably in my cell all I could think was why me? How could they possibly suspect me? Yes, Paperclip Paradise was luring away my customers, but I never wanted Flossie dead. Much better she suffer."

Ye Olde Meteor Shoppe does no mail order business because "People like the personal touch, they like to buy their meteors from other people. Well, they'd probably prefer to buy them from an alien, but, you know..."

The Shoppe, designed to resemble a Mercury capsule much to the consternation of the local planning board, also sells other artifacts from space.

Browsing the control panel one sees: Genuine astronaut's boot lost during a spacewalk. Certified by noted space expert Professor Edward O. Wilbur, author of I Was Abducted by Two-Headed Venusian Hermaphrodites.

And near the observation window a quaintly hand-lettered sign entices the space enthusiast to: Buy a piece of the International Space Station or maybe a rusted bottle cap. For $6.99 it's worth the chance.

Of course, Lavinia's doughty cat companion Space Junk is always on hand to lend feline cunning and a helping paw.

The author has also written a romance novel, Flaming Descent, and is hard at work on a new cozy series, The Mealy Worm Mecca mysteries.

No Ringie-Dingies For Us

by Mary

We spent the first week of August pacing up and down the battlements of Maywrite Towers, staring hopefully down the road and, it must be admitted, occasionally muttering what certain Golden Age of Mystery writers referred to as continental objurgations.

Severe storms lashed the area late last month, toppling a tree next door. It ended up spread-eagled over most of the neighbor's lawn, blocking our right-of-way, in the process smashing down on his car, damaging the corner of our house, tearing off our phone and power lines, and sandwiching them between his car roof and its leafy burden. Thankfully its upper limbs missed our buggy by a couple of feet, a close shave Sweeney Todd would most likely have awarded a B+.

We've related our brushes with assassin trees before * but seeing as we've never had a disrespectful word to say about Ents or left rubbish in bosky dells -- and indeed have planted trees in two countries -- it's more than a bit shabby one of them came a-calling, or should we say a-falling. This time Fortuna smiled benignly as our power stayed on, even with the line lying on wet ground.

Kind neighbours helped us organise necessary calls and the following morning saw assorted utility personnel arriving in convoy after the fashion of the traditional elephant parade down Main Street announcing the circus had come to town.

The power crew's gaffer took one look at the shambles and observed "That's bad!" in an ominous tone. It seemed at first glance for technical reasons a repair to the house was necessary before they could restring the power line. The repair was outside their bailiwick so we'd have to engage a carpenter to handle it. Once we'd snared one, we were to notify them of the date and a crew would arrive to turn off power so the repair could be effected, following which the power line would be immediately restrung.

Then the phone wallah could be sent for to restore service since the power line would be raised above his working space. Meantime he gave us a temporary hookup.

However, after a lively discussion, the crew decided it would be possible to restore power by attaching the doings a short distance over from their original location on the siding. Thus we had a front row seat as they cut the power, tossed a stout white rope over next door's car, attached rope to line, and pulled it up and over the tree cuddling the vehicle.

Another crew arrived next morning to begin the two-day task of removing the tree, in the process breaking our temporary phone hookup. The phone company informed us reconnection could not be made for almost a fortnight. Persistence obtained a promise the job would be expedited/red flagged, but no date could be given because scheduling was organised by its contractors. Who said we might be reconnected sooner if a service call was cancelled. Unlikely, we thought, but hope, that waking dream, springs eternal.

Hope withered on the vine as time passed. We had no ringie-dingies for thirteen days before service was back. Yet Fortuna continued to be gracious, since during the process of reconnection it was discovered the line was damaged so the whole run from house to pole was replaced on the spot. On the glorious day they galloped up the hill, the phone cavalry had just begun work when my keyboard began to conk out, so though phone service was restored I was not out of the woods yet. Trees again, you notice.

According to the Good Book, the wind may bloweth where it listeth. We just hope next time it gets that angry it'll listeth to bloweth elsewhere-eth.

* http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/tos89.htm#trees

Plumbing the Depths

by Mary

We now return to our continuing series titled When Household Machinery Goes Rogue.

In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Lord Byron refers to the hell of waters when they howl and hiss. I am here to tell subscribers it's not much fun either when your water supply goes missing on a Sunday night.

Last week we found ourselves in that interesting situation. The first company we contacted could not send someone immediately but we managed to find a plumber able to come out. She (yes, a lady plumber) arrived at Casa Maywrite accompanied by two young fellows who looked to be in their late teens and whom we deduced were her sons. We came to this conclusion because they called her mom. Let me pause here to point out that was yet another demonstration of our advanced deductive powers. We believe they were apprentices -- theirs was a family business -- because she explained everything to them in detail and answered questions as she went along. Not to mention they knew exactly what to bring her when she asked them to get some plumbing fiddly widget or other from their van.

By the end of their visit the drainage tap, gauge, and pressure switch had been replaced on the well's pressure tank situated behind the fridge under the stairs, there being nowhere else for either to be placed. This is, as I occasionally remark, an eccentric house.

A few hours after they left there was no water in the loo tank.

Next day brought a second plumber who was here about three and a half hours, during which he fixed the loo's lack of water (diagnosed as sand from the well choking its water inlet tube). Since he was here anyhow we asked him to change all the taps in the bathroom as well as replace the shower head, thus ticking off a couple of tasks on our jobs to get done list.

A few hours later we discovered there was no water in the loo tank or any of the taps. A second visit got water flowing, Alas, it was black and gritty, not a good sign. Even after running all the taps the problem kept coming back. And there still no water in the tank. However, hot water stayed clean, because the gritty sand had settled to the base of the water heater and we were getting hot water from the top. Just to keep things exciting, the heater began kettling. Lord Byron spoke true.

It was obvious the problem involved the well itself, meaning it would have to be pulled for examination. A couple of possibilities mooted in our discussions were shortening the water line in the well so as to keep the pump above the clart at its base or in the worst case scenario replacing the pump. We decided to do the latter as it was over a decade old and approaching the average time when it would become likely to give up the ghost. While at it we ordered a new pressure tank as well, given it was at least twenty years old and if it conked out another visit would be necessary.

The final act of the saga was the glorious day when two plumbers were here six hours on the Friday of the week in question. It was quite a sight to observe plumbing the well's depths involved laying over 120 feet of water line and accompanying wiring straight across our lawn, over the one next door, and a little way down the road. As it turned out, the pump had fallen into the mire on the well floor and had in technical plumbing jargon "gone bad". Mud had also choked the water lines. The pump was a sorry sight, moving one plumber to observe he had never seen anything like it.

After they left, we may not have had a chicken in a pot but we had water in every place it should be, not to mention the water heater had been drained and refilled, thus correcting the kettling. We are again considering taking wagers as to which piece of household machinery will be next to go rogue.

I would observe last week was very draining on us but then boots would be thrown. But as events unfolded I thought more than once of The Gas Man Cometh. A favourite Flanders and Swann song*, it relates a series of repairs required to correct the previous day's repair. As the duo so rightly remark, those repairs all made work for the working man to do.

* Audio at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0&ab_channel=NancyDeHaven

Soldiering On

by Eric

Recently a friend emailed some jpgs of old toy advertisements he'd dug up on the Internet. I remembered seeing similar ads on the back covers of my Batman and Superman comics.

"100 toy soldiers made of durable plastic only $1.25!"

What a bargain! At that price a gradeschooler could afford to fight a full scale war and have change left over for licorice whips. The set included machine gunners, sharp shooters, infantry men, tanks, jeeps, battleships, bombers, jet planes, and more. There were even 8 WAVES and 8 WACS. Perhaps they were provided for members of the fairer sex who preferred armed combat to Betsy Wetsy dolls. To be honest, my friends and I would have had no problem employing bazooka men and rifle men but we wouldn't have had a clue what to do with WAVES and WACS.

More intriguing to me, having written about the Eastern Roman Empire, was the set of 132 Roman Soldiers for a mere $1.98. And you didn't need to worry about resettling them in the provinces and paying ruinous pensions when they retired either. "Two Complete Roman armies," bragged the ad. It was probably easier than manufacturing Persians, Goths, and the like. "Fight again the battles of the old Roman civil wars."

Well, that puzzled me. Did any kids, back in the day, actually play at Roman civil wars?

We played Cowboys and Indians, or Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We argued about who should be Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday. Were there really kids who wanted to play Julius Caesar or Pompey, or who met by the corner of the woods Saturday morning and said, "I've got a great idea. Today, let's pretend we're in Judea revolting against Roman taxation"? How would you pick which old Roman civil war anyway? There were so many of them.

If we had possessed the war sets I've mentioned we would have made sure our Roman infantry were accompanied by tanks. I suspect children are more creative than the adults who design toys for them.

I did not, in fact, own any of the sets in the ads my friend sent to me, but I know what con jobs those ads were because I once bought a bag of two hundred soldiers at the local Five & Dime. The figures were utterly flat and so light and flimsy it was almost impossible to get them to stay upright on their plastic stands let alone array them for battle.

Since the bag the soldiers came in was transparent I did realize they were flat but I didn't know they wouldn't stand up until I got home and called them to duty. I can imagine how disappointed the children who ordered those magnificent armies pictured in the comic books must have been.

Toy advertisers have been deceiving youngsters forever. My kids were taken in by the Saturday morning cartoon commercials. Those castles and forts that were made to look like sets from Hollywood blockbusters turned out to be shoddy, plastic trash that fell over the moment they came out of the boxes.

Maybe that's why my ultimate go-to "toy" was modeling clay. Not the skimpy bits of colored stuff you could buy at the Five & Dime though. My dad bought huge chunks of clay at the art store. The sort sculptors use. Pounds of it. You could do something with that much. You could create buildings that didn't fall over.

Clay soldiers will stand up to fight. True, it wasn't feasible to make hundreds of them but at least if you did want to stage a Roman sword fight, unlike with plastic soldiers, heads could roll.

Be Careful Where You Step

by Mary

As with all readers, bookcases have been a constant presence in my living spaces.

The first graced a Victorian terraced house, the attic of which became the bedroom I shared with my sister. Its furnishings included a tall, white-painted bookcase which for unfathomable reasons had at some point been sawn in half vertically and was therefore held together by its shelves. Its idiosyncratic construction went well with the attic's working gas light and the previous tenants' tartan wallpaper clashing in eye-watering fashion with a contemporary sofa covered in fabric patterned with angular yellow and orange shapes that would have gladdened the hearts of cubist painters.

Since the bookcase had no back, we could see its lower part blocked a small door in the wall. Naturally we opened it and found it disclosed a clear view of a concealed narrow space running down the street between our neighbours' attic walls and their eaves overhangs. What purpose it could have served remains a mystery to this day. Assuming neighbouring attics had similar little doors, the arrangement would certainly have been useful for leaving the premises unnoticed and in haste when an urgent need for departure presented itself, such as when the rent man came to call or a polite policeman appeared at the front door.

Such secret places and especially hidden rooms have long fascinated me, so I particularly enjoyed reading Allan Fea's Secret Chambers and Hiding Places last month. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13918 Published in the early 1900s, it describes a number of concealed hiding places utilised by, for example, priests during religious persecutions and fleeing royal personages and their supporters at times of civil unrest. Most of these concealed chambers, often situated behind fireplaces or wainscoting, were in great country houses and displayed impressive ingenuity in their construction. Lots of ideas here for authors who need a secret room for plot purposes!

As Mr Fea's book relates, the entrances to these secret rooms were to be found in a variety of locations, including under window-seats, behind cupboards (one mentioned swung backwards, shelves included, to reveal the hidden space), or concealed behind paintings or sliding panels. My favourite in the latter category formed the back of a -- you have guessed it! -- bookcase seemingly fixed to the wall. Disguised trap doors are also touched upon. Fine workmanship was displayed by a particularly ingenious mechanism, whereby a hidden space could only be opened by pulling up the head of what appeared to be a nail in the floor, thereby releasing a spring opening the trapdoor. I was particularly struck by a correspondent quoted in the book who revealed touching an unspecified part of the family shield displayed in the state-room of his castle caused said decoration to revolve and reveal a hidden staircase. Its oddly numbered steps were solid but, he reveals, treading on any of the others started concealed machinery that collapsed the staircase, precipitating unwary pursuers into a vault seventy feet or so below. A devilish device worthy of the lairs in which Fu Manchu lurked!

Constructing such concealed spaces was necessarily done in great secrecy but time marches on and nowadays there are Youtube tutorials on how to build them. However, the nearest I've been to a hidden space, or knowingly at least, was when I lived in a flat in Florida. It was a couple of weeks before I realised the shelved wall in a cupboard next to the front door could be moved. The space thus revealed held part of the air conditioning equipment and was just big enough to admit someone to work on it without ending up with bruised elbows. On the other hand, a couple I know once lived in an old house converted into flats. On my first visit, they pointed out the sash window of a room they noticed had no visible door inside the house. Even more peculiar, the top half of the window was slightly down. It may be they were pulling my leg, but recollecting that white bookcase makes me wonder...

Hiding places for people or objects swarm in fiction. Stolen gems, wills, and compromising correspondence are commonly hidden in them. Sometimes concealment is temporary but on occasion the person involved remains entombed by accident or design until death releases them from durance vile. Apart from the fictional examples mentioned, my meanderings through literary gardens have led me to drawers hidden *within* hidden drawers and objects concealed in locations as diverse as a sundial, wells, a watch or pudding, between paving stones, in the handle of a tennis racquet, and down a rabbit hole.

A reader may well find concealed rooms in works other than mysteries. The Sanctuary by E. F. Benson I consider among the more disturbing of hidden room tales. Though I knew the plot, it still gave me a touch of creeping heebie-jeebies when I reread it recently. Edward Bulwer-Litton offered his readers a trapdoor leading to a hidden room in a house with an evil reputation in The Haunted and the Haunters. Were a vote taken it's possible the most widely read locked room story would be Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, where the hidden room is used to punish.

While writing An Empire For Ravens, we donned hard hats and big boots to construct an underground cistern, one column of which we fitted with a secret door turning on a pivot. This arrangement permitted our protagonist John and other characters access to a catacomb in Rome. Sounds somewhat unlikely, but oh, brabjous day! In passing Mr Fea mentions sections of massive stone columns in some ecclesiastical buildings and castles were capable of being rotated to reveal hidden spaces, thus showing our architectural invention was not as unlikely as it seems.

Interview with a Shadow Man

by Eric

It's mid-afternoon and the cafe in downtown Manhattan is brightly lit but the actor who goes by the name A. Mann is only a fleeting motion at the corner of my vision as he arrives for our interview and settles into a chair behind a pillar. He professes to feeling nervous about talking to me but I am the one who shivers as a sudden chill slithers down my spine.

If you've ever watched a horror movie or a thriller, you've seen A. "Shadow" Mann, though you won't find that name in any credits. He is the figure flashing past the open doorway, crossing the end of the hallway, lurking at the window. As often as not he is nothing more than a featureless shadow.

"As a child I used to startle people," says Mann, when I ask what led him to a movie career. "I'd walk up behind my mother and she'd jump. 'Oh, I didn't know you were there' she'd say. 'You move so quietly.' It was a talent I had. I liked making people jump. Movies gave me the chance to make a living at it."

His voice is not unusual. I remark upon that.

"Did you expect a Rod Serling voice, perhaps?" he says. "We do have something in common. When I appear in a movie, like Mr Serling, I tell movie goers without words that they are in a zone where things are out of the ordinary. In my case, a zone where people are likely to die horribly."

I lean back in my chair, attempting to see around the pillar, but Mann somehow contrives to remain just out of sight. "And you do this without words. Your parts never call for you to speak, do they?"

"No. Speaking would give away too much, too early. For quite a while I've been the world's highest paid silent actor."

"Do you take inspiration from the stars of the silent era?"

"Actually I study ballet dancers. What I do is all in the movement. You only see me for an instant. Gliding, creeping, lurching, scuttling, whatever is appropriate. I wish I could have seen the Russian dancer Nijinsky. There's hardly any film. I imagine he would have scuttled magnificently."

The disembodied voice is making me uneasy. What is he doing that I can't see? He might be contemplating the sort of wound a butter knife could inflict. For all I know he could be foaming at the mouth. Or a giant insect. I barely saw him arriving. I try to steady my voice. "You only appear for seconds at a time but your roles carry a huge responsibility."

"Yes. I'm the glimpse of evil and menace the audience sees first. It's up to me to capture the essence of the character in that instant when I race by. To instill a sense of dread. I lay the foundation that the actor or special effects crew builds on to portray the maniac or monster."

"Do you ever wish you had more screen time?"

"Not at all. That would ruin the effect. The horror the audience imagines after seeing my vague shape for a second is always far worse than what eventually appears fully fleshed out. Or partially fleshed out as the case may be."

Now I wonder if Mann's flesh is hanging in shreds or whether he is sporting scales instead. My voice starts shaking. "I've been told that you are the most in demand actor in Hollywood."

The statement is greeted with a soft laugh. Not in the least sinister. Not in the least. "Let's just say that I've played every kind of monster you can think of, human and otherwise, including most of the ones you've heard of. Actors like Robert Englund have been in plenty of films but I am, as they say, Legion."

Suddenly I must see him. I leap up and step around the pillar.

Mann is gone, as anyone who's ever seen a horror film knew he would be. I look around the room. No sign of him. Diners are eating and conversing unconcerned. Of course, they didn't notice the shadowy thing slinking in and out.

They have no idea of what they're up against.

Yet.