The Mousetrap

HENRIETTA. (Moving Centre; laughing) Well, less eccentric, anyway. There’s something very sane about Midge. (She rubs her hands on her overall.)

SIRHENRY. (Indignantly) I’m perfectly sane, thank you.

HENRIETTA. (Removing her overall and looking atSIRHENRY) Ye-es—perhaps you are. (She puts her overall over the back of the armchair Left Centre.)

SIRHENRY. (Smiling) As sane as anyone can be that has to live with Lucy, bless her heart. (He laughs.)

(HENRIETTA laughs, crosses to the mantelpiece and puts her cigarette ash in the ashtray.)

(He puts his newspaper on the coffee table. Worried.) You know, Henrietta, I’m getting worried about Lucy.

HENRIETTA. Worried? Why?

SIRHENRY. Lucy doesn’t realize there are certain things she can’t do.

HENRIETTA. (Looking in the mirror) I don’t think I quite know what you mean. (She pats her hair).

SIRHENRY. She’s always got away with things. I don’t suppose any other woman in the world could have flouted the traditions of Government House as she did. (He takes his pipe from his pocket.) Most Governors’ wives have to toe the line of convention. But not Lucy! Oh dear me, no! She played merry hell with precedence at dinner parties—and that, my dear Henrietta, is the blackest of crimes.

(HENRIETTA turns.)

(He pats his pockets, feeling for his tobacco pouch.) She put deadly enemies next to each other. She ran riot over the colour question. And instead of setting everyone at loggerheads, I’m damned if she didn’t get away with it.

(HENRIETTA picks up the tobacco jar from the mantelpiece, crosses and hands it to SIR HENRY.)

Oh, thank you. It’s that trick of hers—always smiling at people and looking so sweet and helpless. Servants are the same—she gives them any amount of trouble and they simply adore her.

HENRIETTA. I know what you mean. (She sits on the sofa at the Left end.) Things you wouldn’t stand from anyone else, you feel they are quite all right if Lucy does them. What is it? Charm? Hypnotism?

SIRHENRY. (Filling his pipe) I don’t know. She’s always been the same from a girl. But you know, Henrietta, it’s growing on her. She doesn’t seem to realize there are limits. I really believe Lucy would feel she could get away with murder.

HENRIETTA. (Rising and picking up the piece of clay from the carpet) Darling Henry, you and Lucy are angels letting me make my messes here—treading clay into your carpet. (She crosses and puts the piece of clay in the wastepaper basket down Right.) When I had that fire at my studio, I thought it was the end of everything—it was sweet of you to let me move in on you.

SIRHENRY. My dear, we’re proud of you. Why, I’ve just been reading a whole article about you and your show in The Times.

HENRIETTA. (Crossing to the coffee table and picking up “The Times”) Where?

SIRHENRY. Top of the page. There, I believe. Of course, I don’t profess to know much about it myself.

HENRIETTA. (Reading) “The most significant piece of the year.” Oh, what gup! I must go and wash.

(She drops the paper on the sofa, crosses, picks up her overall and exits hurriedly Left. SIR HENRY rises, puts the papers and tobacco on the coffee table, takes the clay from the table to the wastepaper basket, moves to the drinks table, and picks up the matches. MIDGE HARVEY enters up Centre from Left. She is small, neatly dressed but obviously badly off. She is a warmhearted, practical and very nice young woman, a little younger than HENRIETTA. She carries a suitcase.)

MIDGE. (As she enters) Hullo, Cousin Henry.