by Dan Laurence
Malvern, 28 August 1935
ACT I
Mr Julius Sagamore, a smart young solicitor, is in his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It is a fine morning in May. The room, an old panelled one, is so arranged that Mr Sagamore, whom we see sitting under the window in profile with his back to it and his left side presented to us, is fenced off by his writing table from excessive intimacy with emotional clients or possible assault by violent or insane ones. The door is on his right towards the farther end of the room. The faces of the clients are thus illuminated by the window whilst his own countenance is in shadow. The fireplace, of Adam design, is in the wall facing him. It is surmounted by a dingy portrait of a judge. In the wall on his right, near the corner farthest from him, is the door, with a cleft pediment enshrining a bust of some other judge. The rest of this wall is occupied by shelves of calf-bound law books. The wall behind Mr Sagamore has the big window as aforesaid, and beside it a stand of black tin boxes inscribed with clients’ names.
So far, the place proclaims the eighteenth century; but as the year is 1935, and Mr Sagamore has no taste for dust and mould, and requires a room which suggests opulence, and in which lady clients will look their best, everything is well dusted and polished; the green carpet is new, rich, and thick; and the half dozen chairs, four of which are ranged under the bookshelves, are Chippendales of the very latest fake. Of the other two one is occupied by himself, and the other stands half way between his table and the fireplace for the accommodation of his clients.
The telephone, on the table at his elbow, rings.
SAGAMORE [listening] Yes? … [Impressed] Oh! Send her up at once.
A tragic looking woman, athletically built and expensively dressed, storms into the room. He rises obsequiously.
THE LADY. Are you Julius Sagamore, the worthless nephew of my late solicitor Pontifex Sagamore?
SAGAMORE. I do not advertize myself as worthless; but Pontifex Sagamore was my uncle; and I have returned from Australia to succeed to as much of his business as I can persuade his clients to trust me with.
THE LADY. I have heard him speak of you; and I naturally concluded that as you had been packed off to Australia you must be worthless. But it does not matter, as my business is very simple. I desire to make my will, leaving everything I possess to my husband. You can hardly go wrong about that, I suppose.
SAGAMORE. I shall do my best. Pray sit down.
THE LADY. No: I am restless. I shall sit down when I feel tired.
SAGAMORE. As you please. Before I draw up the will it will be necessary for me to know who your husband is.
THE LADY. My husband is a fool and a blackguard. You will state that fact in the will. You will add that it was his conduct that drove me to commit suicide.
SAGAMORE. But you have not committed suicide.
THE LADY. I shall have, when the will is signed.
SAGAMORE. Of course, quite so: stupid of me. And his name?
THE LADY. His name is Alastair Fitzfassenden.
SAGAMORE. What! The amateur tennis champion and heavy weight boxer?
THE LADY. Do you know him?
SAGAMORE. Every morning we swim together at the club.
THE LADY. The acquaintance does you little credit.
SAGAMORE. I had better tell you that he and I are great friends, Mrs Fitzfassen –
THE LADY. Do not call me by his detestable name. Put me in your books as Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga.
SAGAMORE [bowing] Oh! I am indeed honored. Pray be seated.
EPIFANIA. Sit down yourself; and dont fuss.
SAGAMORE. If you prefer it, certainly. [He sits] Your father was a very wonderful man, madam.
EPIFANIA. My father was the greatest man in the world. And he died a pauper. I shall never forgive the world for that.
SAGAMORE. A pauper! You amaze me. It was reported that he left you, his only child, thirty millions.
EPIFANIA. Well, what was thirty millions to him? He lost a hundred and fifty millions. He had promised to leave me two hundred millions. I was left with a beggarly thirty. It broke his heart.
SAGAMORE. Still, an income of a million and a half –
EPIFANIA. Man: you forget the death duties. I have barely seven hundred thousand a year. Do you know what that means to a woman brought up on an income of seven figures? The humiliation of it!
SAGAMORE. You take away my breath, madam.
EPIFANIA. As I am about to take my own breath away, I have no time to attend to yours.
SAGAMORE. Oh, the suicide! I had forgotten that.
EPIFANIA. Had you indeed? Well, will you please give your mind to it for a moment, and draw up a will for me to sign, leaving everything to Alastair.
SAGAMORE. To humiliate him?
EPIFANIA. No. To ruin him. To destroy him. To make him a beggar on horseback so that he may ride to the devil. Money goes to his head. I have seen it at work on him.
SAGAMORE. I also have seen that happen. But you cannot be sure. He might marry some sensible woman.
EPIFANIA. You are right. Make it a condition of the inheritance that within a month from my funeral he marries a low female named Polly Seedystockings.
SAGAMORE [making a note of it] A funny name.
EPIFANIA. Her real name is Patricia Smith. But her letters to Alastair are signed Polly Seedystockings, as a hint, I suppose, that she wants him to buy her another dozen.
SAGAMORE [taking another sheet of paper and writing] I should like to know Polly.
EPIFANIA. Pray why?
SAGAMORE [talking as he writes] Well, if Alastair prefers her to you she must be indeed worth knowing. I shall certainly make him introduce me.
EPIFANIA. You are hardly tactful, Julius Sagamore.
SAGAMORE. That will not matter when you have taken this [he hands her what he has written].
EPIFANIA. Whats this?
SAGAMORE. For the suicide. You will have to sign the chemist’s book for the cyanide. Say it is for a wasp’s nest. The tartaric acid is harmless: the chemist will think you want it to make lemonade. Put the two separately in just enough water to dissolve them. When you mix the two solutions the tartaric and potash will combine and make tartrate of potash. This, being insoluble, will be precipitated at the bottom of the glass; and the supernatant fluid will be pure hydrocyanic acid, one sip of which will kill you like a thunderbolt.
EPIFANIA [fingering the prescription rather disconcertedly] You seem to take my death very coolly, Mr Sagamore.
SAGAMORE. I am used to it.
EPIFANIA. Do you mean to tell me that you have so many clients driven to despair that you keep a prescription for them?
SAGAMORE. I do. It’s infallible.
EPIFANIA. You are sure that they have all died painlessly and instantaneously?
SAGAMORE. No. They are all alive.
EPIFANIA. Alive! The prescription is a harmless fraud!
SAGAMORE. No. It’s a deadly poison. But they dont take it.
EPIFANIA. Why?
SAGAMORE. I dont know. But they never do.
EPIFANIA. I will. And I hope you will be hanged for giving it to me.
SAGAMORE. I am only acting as your solicitor. You say you are going to commit suicide; and you come to me for advice. I do my best for you, so that you can die without wasting a lot of gas or jumping into the Serpentine. Six and eight-pence I shall charge your executors.
EPIFANIA. For advising me how to kill myself?
SAGAMORE. Not today. Tomorrow.
EPIFANIA. Why put it off until tomorrow?
SAGAMORE. Well, it will do as well tomorrow as today. And something amusing may happen this evening. Or even tomorrow evening. Theres no hurry.
EPIFANIA. You are a brute, a beast, and a pig. My life is nothing to you: you do not even ask what has driven me to this. You make money out of the death of your clients.
SAGAMORE. I do. There will be a lot of business connected with your death. Alastair is sure to come to me to settle your affairs.
E
PIFANIA. And you expect me to kill myself to make money for you?
SAGAMORE. Well, it is you who have raised my expectations, madam.
EPIFANIA. O God, listen to this man! Has it ever occurred to you that when a woman’s life is wrecked she needs a little sympathy and not a bottle of poison?
SAGAMORE. I really cant sympathize with suicide. It doesnt appeal to me, somehow. Still, if it has to be done, it had better be done promptly and scientifically.
EPIFANIA. You dont even ask what Alastair has done to me?
SAGAMORE. It wont matter what he has done to you when you are dead. Why bother about it?
EPIFANIA. You are an unmitigated hog, Julius Sagamore.
SAGAMORE. Why worry about me? The prescription will cure everything.
EPIFANIA. Damn your prescription. There! [She tears it up and throws the pieces in his face].
SAGAMORE [beaming] It’s infallible. And now that you have blown off steam, suppose you sit down and tell me all about it.
EPIFANIA. You call the outcry of an anguished heart blowing off steam, do you?
SAGAMORE. Well, what else would you call it?
EPIFANIA. You are not a man: you are a rhinoceros. You are also a fool.
SAGAMORE. I am only a solicitor.
EPIFANIA. You are a rotten solicitor. You are not a gentleman. You insult me in my distress. You back up my husband against me. You have no decency, no understanding. You are a fish with the soul of a blackbeetle. Do you hear?
SAGAMORE. Yes: I hear. And I congratulate myself on the number of actions for libel I shall have to defend if you do me the honor of making me your solicitor.
EPIFANIA. You are wrong. I never utter a libel. My father instructed me most carefully in the law of libel. If I questioned your solvency, that would be a libel. If I suggested that you are unfaithful to your wife, that would be a libel. But if I call you a rhinoceros – which you are: a most unmitigated rhinoceros – that is only vulgar abuse. I take good care to confine myself to vulgar abuse; and I have never had an action for libel taken against me. Is that the law, or is it not?
SAGAMORE. I really dont know. I will look it up in my law books.
EPIFANIA. You need not. I instruct you that it is the law. My father always had to instruct his lawyers in the law whenever he did anything except what everybody was doing every day. Solicitors know nothing of law: they are only good at practice, as they call it. My father was a great man: every day of his life he did things that nobody else ever dreamt of doing. I am not, perhaps, a great woman; but I am his daughter; and as such I am an unusual woman. You will take the law from me and do exactly what I tell you to do.
SAGAMORE. That will simplify our relations considerably, madam.
EPIFANIA. And remember this. I have no sense of humor. I will not be laughed at.
SAGAMORE. I should not dream of laughing at a client with an income of three quarters of a million.
EPIFANIA. Have you a sense of humor?
SAGAMORE. I try to keep it in check; but I am afraid I have a little. You appeal to it, somehow.
EPIFANIA. Then I tell you in cold blood, after the most careful consideration of my words, that you are a heartless blackguard. My distress, my disgrace, my humiliation, the horrible mess and failure I have made of my life seem to you merely funny. If it were not that my father warned me never to employ a solicitor who had no sense of humor I would walk out of this office and deprive you of a client whose business may prove a fortune to you.
SAGAMORE. But, my dear lady, I dont know anything about your distress, your disgrace, the mess you have made of your life and all the rest of it. How can I laugh at things I dont know? If I am laughing – and am I really laughing? – I assure you I am laughing, not at your misfortunes, but at you.
EPIFANIA. Indeed? Am I so comic a figure in my misery?
SAGAMORE. But what is your misery? Do, pray, sit down.
EPIFANIA. You seem to have one idea in your head, and that is to get your clients to sit down. Well, to oblige you. [She sits down with a flounce. The back of the chair snaps off short with a loud crack. She springs up]. Oh, I cannot even sit down in a chair without wrecking it. There is a curse on me.
SAGAMORE [collapses on the table, shaking with uncontrollable laughter]!!!!!
EPIFANIA. Ay: laugh, laugh, laugh. Fool! Clown!
SAGAMORE [rising resolutely and fetching another chair from the wall] My best faked Chippendale gone. It cost me four guineas. [Placing the chair for her] Now will you please sit down as gently as you can, and stop calling me names? Then, if you wish, you can tell me what on earth is the matter. [He picks up the broken-off back of the chair and puts it on the table].
EPIFANIA [sitting down with dignity] The breaking of that chair has calmed and relieved me, somehow. I feel as if I had broken your neck, as I wanted to. Now listen to me. [He comes to her and looks down gravely at her]. And dont stand over me like that. Sit down on what is left of your sham Chippendale.
SAGAMORE. Certainly [he sits]. Now go ahead.
EPIFANIA. My father was the greatest man in the world. I was his only child. His one dread was that I should make a foolish marriage, and lose the little money he was able to leave me.
SAGAMORE. The thirty millions. Precisely.
EPIFANIA. Dont interrupt me. He made me promise that whenever a man asked me to marry him I should impose a condition on my consent.
SAGAMORE [attentive] So? What condition?
EPIFANIA. I was to give him one hundred and fifty pounds, and tell him that if within six months he had turned that hundred and fifty pounds into fifty thousand, I was his. If not, I was never to see him again. I saw the wisdom of this. Nobody but my father could have thought of such a real, infallible, unsentimental test. I gave him my sacred promise that I would carry it out faithfully.
SAGAMORE. And you broke that promise. I see.
EPIFANIA. What do you mean – broke that promise?
SAGAMORE. Well, you married Alastair. Now Alastair is a dear good fellow – one of the best in his way – but you are not going to persuade me that he made fifty thousand pounds in six months with a capital of one hundred and fifty.
EPIFANIA. He did. Wise as my father was, he sometimes forgot the wise things he said five minutes after he said them. He warned me that ninety per cent of our selfmade millionaires are criminals who have taken a five hundred to one chance and got away with it by pure luck. Well, Alastair was that sort of criminal.
SAGAMORE. No no: not a criminal. That is not like Alastair. A fool, perhaps, in business. But not a criminal.
EPIFANIA. Like all solicitors you think you know more about my husband than I do. Well, I tell you that Alastair came back to me after six months probation with fifty thousand pounds in his pocket instead of the penal servitude he richly deserved. That man’s luck is extraordinary. He always wins. He wins at tennis. He wins at boxing. He won me, the richest heiress in England.
SAGAMORE. But you were a consenting party. If not, why did you put him to the test? Why did you give him the hundred and fifty to try his luck with?
EPIFANIA. Boxing.
SAGAMORE. Boxing?
EPIFANIA. His boxing fascinated me. My father held that women should be able to defend themselves. He made me study Judo.
SAGAMORE. Judo? Do you mean Hebrew?
EPIFANIA. Hebrew! Nonsense! Judo is what ignorant people call jujitsu. I could throw you through that window as easily as you handed me that rotten chair.
SAGAMORE. Oh! Japanese wrestling. Rather a rough sport for a lady, isnt it?
EPIFANIA. How dare you call Judo a sport? It is a religion.
SAGAMORE [collapsing] Forgive me. Go on with your story. And please break it to me as gently as you can. I have never had a client like you before.
