Six Short Plays

The First and the Last opens with a devastating confession: Keith Darrant, a rising barrister on the edge of judicial success, is confronted by his brother Larry, who believes he has killed a man in a desperate struggle over Wanda, the vulnerable Polish woman he loves. As Keith questions him with cold legal precision, the tension sharpens between law and loyalty, respectability and compassion, while the newspapers confirm the body's discovery and make concealment seem increasingly impossible. The drama deepens when Keith meets Wanda, Larry's secret wife, and discovers a lonely woman who has pinned her entire future on a love that may destroy them both. As police pressure mounts, Keith urges separation, escape, and sacrifice, but Larry cannot abandon the innocent man now caught in the murder's wake. Their emotional crisis ends in tragic uncertainty, with love, conscience, and survival pulling in opposite directions. Alongside this grim moral conflict, the collection's comic counterpoint follows an awkward little man who becomes protector of a helpless baby on a crowded train. Mocked by others and pursued by officials, he insists on compassion until a misunderstanding collapses authority and the baby's mother arrives in gratitude, turning public suspicion into an unexpected act of reverence. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.