The Mousetrap

ELSA. I asked him to paint me. He said he didn’t do portraits. I said what about the portrait he’d done of Marna Vadaz, the dancer. He said special circumstances had led to that. I knew they’d had an affair together. I said, “I want you to paint me.” He said, “You know what’ll happen? I shall make love to you.” I said, “Why not?” And he said, “I’m a married man, and I’m very fond of my wife.” I said that now we’d got that settled, when should we start the sittings? He took me by the shoulders and turned me towards the light and looked me over in a considering sort of way. Then he said, “I’ve often thought of painting a flight of outrageously coloured Australian macaws alighting on St. Paul’s Cathedral. If I painted you in your flamboyant youth against a background of nice traditional English scenery, I believe I’d get the same effect.” (She pauses. Quickly) So it was settled.

CARLA. And you went down to Alderbury.

(ELSA rises, removes her coat, puts it on the downstage end of the settee and moves C)

ELSA. Yes. Caroline was charming. She could be, you know. Amyas was very circumspect. (She smiles) Never said a word to me his wife couldn’t have overheard. I was polite and formal. Underneath, though, we both knew . . . (She breaks off)

CARLA. Go on.

ELSA. (putting her hands on her hips) After ten days he told me I was to go back to London.

CARLA. Yes?

ELSA. I said, “The picture isn’t finished.” He said, “It’s barely begun. The truth is I can’t paint you, Elsa.” I asked him why, and he said that I knew very well “why” and that’s why I’d got to clear out.

CARLA. So—you went back to London?

ELSA. Yes, I went. (She moves upCand turns) I didn’t write to him. I didn’t answer his letters. He held out for a week. And then—he came. I told him that it was fate and it was no use struggling against it, and he said, “You haven’t struggled much, have you, Elsa?” I said I hadn’t struggled at all. It was wonderful and more frightening than mere happiness. (She frowns) If only we’d kept away—if only we hadn’t gone back.

CARLA. Why did you?

ELSA. The unfinished picture. It haunted Amyas. (She sits on the settee at the upstage end) But things were different this time—Caroline had caught on. I wanted to have the whole thing on an honest basis. All Amyas would say was, “To hell with honesty. I’m painting a picture.”

(CARLA laughs)

Why do you laugh?

CARLA. (rising and turning to the window) Because I know just how he felt.

ELSA. (angrily) How should you know?

CARLA. (simply) Because I’m his daughter, I suppose.

ELSA. (distantly) Amyas’s daughter. (She looks at Carla with a new appraisement)

CARLA. (turning and crossing above the armchair toC) I’ve just begun to know that. I hadn’t thought about it before. I came over because I wanted to find out just what happened sixteen years ago. I am finding out. I’m beginning to know the people—what they felt, what they are like. The whole thing’s coming alive, bit by bit.

ELSA. Coming alive? (Bitterly) I wish it would.

CARLA. My father—you—Philip Blake—Meredith Blake. (She crosses down L) And there are two more. Angela Warren . . .

ELSA. Angela? Oh, yes. She’s quite a celebrity in her way—one of those tough women who travel to inaccessible places and write books about it. She was only a tiresome teenager then.

CARLA. (turning) How did she feel about it all?

ELSA. (uninterested) I don’t know. They hustled her away, I think. Some idea of Caroline’s that contact with murder would damage her adolescent mind—though I don’t know why Caroline should have bothered about damage to her mind when she had already damaged her face for her. When I heard that story I ought to have realized what Caroline was capable of, and when I actually saw her take the poison . . .

CARLA. (quickly) You saw her?

ELSA. Yes. Meredith was waiting to lock up his laboratory. Caroline was the last to come out. I was just before her. I looked over my shoulder and saw her standing in front of a shelf with a small bottle in her hand. Of course, she might only have been looking at it. How was I to know?

CARLA. (crossing toC) But you suspected?

ELSA. I thought she meant it for herself.

CARLA. Suicide? And you didn’t care?

ELSA. (calmly) I thought it might be the best way out.

CARLA. (crossing above the armchair to the window) Oh, no . . .