Killer Dolphin

NINE Knight Rampant

Marcus Knight was not so much restive as portentous. He had the air of a man who is making enormous concessions. When Alleyn apologized for keeping him waiting so long, he waved his hand as if to say: “Think no more of it. Nevertheless—”

“One can’t tell,” Alleyn said, “in our job, how long any given interview will last.”

“It didn’t escape my notice,” Knight said, “that you were honoured with an earlier visit.”

“From Hartly Grove? Yes. He had,” Alleyn said, “thought of something.”

“He thinks of a number of things, most of them highly offensive.”

“Really? This was quite harmless. I wonder if you’ve noticed his overcoat.”

Mr. Knight had noticed Mr. Grove’s overcoat and said so briefly and with immeasurable distaste. “One is not surprised, however,” he said. “One recognizes the form. It is entirely consistent. My God, what a garment! How he dares!”

It became evident that he did not know that the coat had been given to Jobbins.

Alleyn briefly re-checked Knight’s movements. He had driven his Jaguar from the theatre to his house in Montpelier Square where he was given supper as usual by the Italian couple who looked after him. He thought it was probably about ten past eleven when he got in. He did not go out again but could not absolutely prove it

Extreme, wholly male beauty is not a commonplace phenomenon. Marcus Knight possessed it to a generous degree. His oval face, with its subtly turned planes, his delicate nose, slightly tilted eyes and glossy hair might have been dreamed up by an artist of the Renaissance or indeed by the unknown painter of that unknown man whom many observers call the Grafton Shakespeare. He had the bodily harmony that declares itself through its covering and he moved like a panther. How old was he? Middle thirties? Younger? Forty, perhaps? It didn’t matter.

Alleyn led him cautiously by way of his own exquisite performance to the work of his fellow players. He uncovered a completely egotistic but shrewd appreciation of the play and a raw patch of professional jealousy when the work of his associates, particularly of Harry Grove, came into question. Grove’s Mr. W.H., it seemed, was not a true reading. It was showy. It was vulgar. It was even rather camp, said Marcus Knight.

Alleyn spoke of the theft of the glove and documents. Knight rejoiced that they had been recovered. He gazed with passionate concern at Alleyn. Was it certain they were uninjured? Was it quite, quite certain? Alleyn said it was and began to talk of their unequalled worth. Knight nodded several times very slowly in that larger-than-life manner that Alleyn associated with persons of his profession. It was more like a series of bows.

“Unique,” he said, on two mellifluous notes. “U-nique!”

Alleyn wondered what he would say if he knew of Jeremy’s substitution.

“Well,” he said lightly. “At least Mr. Conducis and the American purchaser can breathe again. I can’t help wondering who she may be.”

“She?”

“Now, why did I say ‘she’?” Alleyn ejaculated. “I suppose I must have been thinking of Mrs. Constantia Guzmann?”

It was formidable to see how rapidly, with what virtuosity, Knight changed colour from deepest plum to parchment and back again. He drew his brows together. He retracted his upper lip. It crossed Alleyn’s mind that it was a pity the role of William Shakespeare didn’t offer an opportunity for a display of these physical demonstrations of fury.

“What,” he asked, rising and looming over Alleyn, “has that person—Grove—said to you? I demand an answer. What has he said?”

“About Mrs. Constantia Guzmann, do you mean? Nothing. Why?”

“You lie!”

“I don’t, you know,” Alleyn said composedly. “Grove didn’t mention her to me. Really. She’s an extremely well-known collector. What’s the matter?”

Knight glowered at him in silence for some time. Fox cleared his throat

“Do you swear,” Knight began in the lowest register of his voice, building up a crescendo as he went on. “Do you swear the name of Guzmann has not — ah — has not been — ah — mentioned to you in connection with My Own. Here in this room. Today. Do you swear to this? Hah?”

“No, I don’t do that, either. It has.”

“All!” he bellowed suddenly. “The lot. The whole pack of them! He’s lunched and bloody dined on it. Don’t attempt to contradict me. He’s betrayed a deeply, deeply regretted confidence. A moment of weakness. On my part. Before I knew him for what he is: a false, false man.” He pointed at Alleyn. “Has he—has he told—her? Miss Meade? Destiny? You need not answer. I see it in your face. He has.”

“I’ve not spoken with Miss Meade,” Alleyn said.

“They’ve laughed together,” he roared. “At Me!”

“Perfectly maddening for you if they have,” Alleyn said, “but, if you’ll forgive me, it isn’t, as far as I know, entirely relevant to the business under discussion.”

“Yes, it is,” Knight passionately contradicted. “By God it is and I’ll tell you why. I’ve put a restraint upon myself. I have not allowed myself to speak about this man. I have been scrupulous lest I should be thought biased. But now — now! I tell you this and I speak from absolute conviction: if, as you hold, that appalling boy is not guilty and recovers his wits, and if he was attacked by the man who killed Jobbins, and if he remembers who attacked him, it will be at W. Hartly Grove he points his finger. Now!”

Alleyn, who had seen this pronouncement blowing up for the past five minutes, allowed himself as many seconds in which to be dumbfounded and then asked Marcus if he had any reasons, other, he hastily added, than those already adduced, for making this statement about Harry Grove. Nothing very specific emerged. There were dark and vague allusions to reputation and an ambiguous past. As his temper abated, and it did seem to abate gradually, Knight appeared to lose the fine edge of his argument. He talked of Trevor Vere and said he couldn’t understand why Alleyn dismissed the possibility that the boy had been caught out by Jobbins, overturned the dolphin and then run so fast down the circle aisle that he couldn’t prevent himself diving over the balustrade. Alleyn once again advanced the logical arguments against this theory.

“And there’s no possibility of some member of the public’s having hidden during performance?”

“Jay assures me not. A thorough routine search is made and the staff on both sides of the curtain confirm this. This is virtually a ‘new’ theatre. There are no stacks of scenery or properties or neglected hiding places.”

“You are saying,” said Knight, beginning portentously to nod again, “that this thing must have been done by One of Us.”

“That’s how it looks.”

“I am faced,” Knight said, “with a frightful dilemma.” He immediately became a man faced with a frightful dilemma and looked quite haggard. “Alleyn: what can one do? Idle for me to pretend I don’t feel as I do about this man. I know him to be a worthless, despicable person. I know him—”

“One moment. This is still Harry Grove?”

“Yes.” (Several nods.) “Yes. I am aware that the personal injuries he has inflicted upon me must be thought to prejudice my opinion.”

“I assure you—”

“And I am assuring you—oh with such deadly certainty—that there is only one among us who is capable of the crime.”

He gazed fixedly into Alleyn’s face. “I studied physiognomy,” he surprisingly said. “When I was in New York”—for a moment he looked hideously put out but instantly recovered—“I met a most distinguished authority—Earl P. Van Smidt—and I became seriously interested in the science. I have studied and observed and I have proved, my conclusions. Over and again. I have completely satisfied myself—but com-pletely—that when you see a pair of unusually round eyes, rather wide apart, very light blue and without depth—look out. Look out!” he repeated and flung himself into the chair he had vacated.

“What for?” Alleyn inquired.

“Treachery. Shiftiness. Utter unscrupulousness. Complete lack of ethical values. I quote from Van Smidt.”

“Dear me.”

“As for Conducis! But no matter. No matter.”

“Do you discover the same traits in Mr. Conducis?”

“I — I — am not familiar with Mr. Conducis.”

“You have met him, surely?”

“Formal meeting. On the opening night.”

“But never before that?”

“I may have done so. Years ago. I prefer—” Knight said surprisingly—“to forget the occurrence.” He swept it away.

“May I ask why?”

There was an appreciable pause before he said: “I was once his guest, if you can call it that, and I was subjected to an insolent disregard which I would have interpreted more readily if I had at that time been acquainted with Smidt. In my opinion,” Knight said, “Smidt should be compulsory reading for all police forces. You don’t mind my saying this?” he added in a casual, lordly manner.

“Indeed no.”

“Good. Want me any more, dear boy?” he asked, suddenly gracious.

“I think not. Unless — and believe me I wouldn’t ask if the question was irrelevant to the case — unless you care to tell me if Mrs. Constantia Guzmann really confided to you that she is a buyer of hot objects d’art on the intercontinental black market.”

It was no good. Back in a flash came the empurpled visage and the flashing eye. Back, too, came an unmistakable background of sheepishness and discomfort

“No comment,” said Marcus Knight

“No? Not even a tiny hint?”

“You are mad to expect it,” he said, and with that they had to let him go.

“Well, Br’er Fox, we’ve caught a snarled up little job this time, haven’t we?”

“We have that,” Fox agreed warmly. “It’d be nice,” he added wistfully, “if we could put it down to simple theft, discovery and violence.”

“It’d be lovely but we can’t, you know. We can’t. For one thing the theft of a famous object is always bedevilled by the circumstance of its being indisposable through the usual channels. No normal high-class fence, unless he’s got very special contacts, is going to touch Shakespeare’s note or his son’s glove.”

“So, for a start you’ve got either a crank who steals and gloats or a crank of the type of young Jones who steals to keep the swag in England or a thorough wised-up, high grade professional in touch with the top international racket And at the receiving end somebody of the nature of this Mrs. Guzmann, who’s a millionaire crank in her own right and doesn’t care how she gets her stuff.”

“That’s right. Or a kidnapper who holds the stuff for ransom. And you might have a non-professional thief who knows all about Mrs. G. and believes she’ll play and he’ll make a pocket.”

“That seems to take in the entire boiling of this lot, seeing Mr. Grove’s broadcast the Guzmann-Knight anecdote for all it’s worth. I tell you what, Mr. Alleyn; it wouldn’t be the most astonishing event in my working life if Mr. Knight took to Mr. Grove. Mr. Grove’s teasing ways seem to put him out to a remarkable degree, don’t you think?”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “we’d better, both of us, remind ourselves about actors.”

“You do? What about them?”

“One must always remember that they’re trained to convey emotion. On or off the stage, they make the most of everything they feel. Now this doesn’t mean they express their feelings up to saturation point. When you and I and all the rest of the non-actors do our damnedest to understate and be ironical about our emotional reflexes, the actor, even when he underplays them, does so with such expertise that he convinces us laymen that he’s in extremis. He isn’t. He’s only being professionally articulate about something that happens offstage instead of in front of an official audience.”

“How does all this apply to Mr. Knight, then?”

“When he turns purple and roars anathemas against Grove it means A: that he’s hot-tempered, pathologically vain and going through a momentary hell and B: that he’s letting you know up to the nth degree just how angry and dangerous he’s feeling. It doesn’t necessarily mean that once his present emotion has subsided he will do anything further about it, and nor does it mean that he’s superficial or a hypocrite. It’s his job to take the micky out of an audience, and even in the throes of a completely genuine emotional crisis, he does just that thing if it’s only an audience of one.”

“Is this what they call being an extrovert?”

“Yes, Br’er Fox, I expect it is. But the interesting thing about Knight, I thought, was that when it came to Conducis he turned uncommunicative and cagey.”

“Fancied himself slighted over something, it seemed. Do you reckon Knight believes all that about Grove? Being a homicidal type? All that stuff about pale eyes etcetera. Because,” Fox said with great emphasis, “it’s all poppycock: there aren’t any facial characteristics for murder. What’s that you’re always quoting about there being no art to find the mind’s construction in the face? I reckon it’s fair enough where homicide’s concerned. Although,” Fox added, opening his own eyes very wide, “I always fancy there’s a kind of look about sex offenders of a certain type. That I will allow.”

“Be that as it may it doesn’t get us much further along our present road. No news from the hospital?”

“No. They’d ring through at once if there was.”

“I know. I know.”

“What do we do about Mr. Jeremy Jones?”

“Oh, blast! What indeed! I think we take delivery of the glove and documents, give him hell and go no further. I’ll talk to the A.C. about him and I rather think I’ll have to tell Conducis as soon as possible. Who’ve we got left here? Only little Meyer. Ask him into his own office, Br’er Fox. We needn’t keep him long, I think.”

Winter Meyer came in quoting Queen Mary. “This,” he said wearily, “is a pretty kettle of fish. This is a carry-on. I’m not complaining, mind, and I’m not blaming anybody but what, oh what, has set Marco off again? Sorry. Not your headache, old boy.”

Alleyn uttered consolatory phrases, sat him at his own desk, checked his alibi, which was no better and no worse than anyone else’s in that after he left the theatre with Knight he drove to his house at Golders Green where his wife and family were all in bed. When he wound up his watch he noticed it said ten to twelve. He had heard the Knight-Guzmann story. “I thought it bloody sad,” he said. “Poor woman. Terrible, you know, the problem of the plain, highly sexed woman. Marco ought to have held his tongue. He ought never to have told Harry. Of course Harry made it sound a bit of a yell, but I didn’t like Marco telling about it. I don’t think that sort of thing’s funny.”

“It does appear that on her own admission to Knight, she’s a buyer on a colossal scale under the museum-piece counter.”

Winter Meyer spread his hands. “We all have our weaknesses,” he said. “So she likes nice things and she can pay for them. Marcus Knight should complain!”

“Well!” Alleyn ejaculated. ’That’s one way of looking the Big Black Market in the eyes, I must say! Have you ever met Mrs. Guzmann, by the way?”

Winter Meyer had rather white eyelids. They now dropped a little. “No,” he said, “not in person. Her husband was a most brilliant man. The equal and more of Conducis.”

“Self-made?”

“Shall we say self-created? It was a superb achievement.”

Alleyn looked his enjoyment of this phrase and Meyer answered his look with a little sigh. “Ah yes!” he said. “These colossi! How marvellous!”

“In your opinion,” Alleyn said, “without prejudice and within these four walls and all that: how many people in this theatre know the combination of that lock?”

Meyer blushed. “Yes,” he said. “Well. This is where I don’t exactly shine with a clear white radiance, isn’t it? Well, as he’s told you, Charlie Random for one. Got it right, as you no doubt observed. He says he didn’t pass it on and personally I believe that. He’s a very quiet type, Charlie. Never opens up about his own or anybody else’s business. I’m sure he’s dead right about the boy not knowing the combination.”

“You are? Why?”

“Because as I said, the bloody kid was always pestering me about it.”

“And so you would have been pretty sure, would you, that only you yourself, Random, and Mr. Conducis knew the combination?”

“I don’t say that,” Meyer said unhappily. “You see, after that morning they did all know about the five-letter word being an obvious one and — and — well, Dessy did say one day, ‘Is it “glove,” Winty? We all think it might be? Do you swear it’s not “glove.” ’ Well, you know Dessy. She’d woo the Grand Master to let the goat out of the Lodge. I suppose I boggled a bit and she laughed and kissed me. I know. I know. I ought to have had it changed. I meant to. But — in the theatre we don’t go about wondering if someone in the company’s a big-time bandit.”

“No, of course you don’t, Mr. Meyer: thank you very much. I think we can now return your office to you. It was more than kind to suggest that we use it.”

“There hasn’t been all that much for me to do. The press is our big worry but we’re booked out solid for another four months. Unless people get it into their heads to cancel we should make out. You never know, though, which way a thing like this will take the public.”

They left him in a state of controlled preoccupation.

The circle foyer was deserted, now. Alleyn paused for a moment. He looked at the shuttered bar, at the three shallow steps leading on three sides from the top down to the half-landing and the two flights that curved down from there to the main entrance; at the closed safe in the wall above the landing, the solitary bronze dolphin and the two doors into the circle. Everything was quiet, a bit muffled and stuffily chilly.

He and Fox walked down the three canvas-covered steps to the landing. A very slight sound caught Alleyn’s ear. Instead of going on down he crossed to the front of the landing, rested his hands on its elegant iron balustrade and looked into the main entrance below.

His gaze lighted on the crown of a smart black hat and the violently foreshortened figure of a thin woman.

For a second or two the figure made no move. Then the hat tipped back and gave way to a face like a white disc, turned up to his own.

“Do you want to see me, Miss Bracey?”

The face tipped backwards and forwards in assent. The lips moved, but if she spoke her voice was inaudible.

Alleyn motioned to Fox to stay where he was and himself went down the curving right-hand stairway.

There she stood, motionless. The fat upsidedown cupids over the box-office and blandly helpful caryatids supporting the landing made an incongruous background for that spare figure and yet it crossed Alleyn’s mind, her general appearance was evocative, in a cock-eyed way, of the period: of some repressed female character from a Victorian play or novel. Rosa Dartle, he thought, that was the sort of thing: Rosa Dartle.

“What is it?” Alleyn asked. “Are you unwell?”

She looked really ill. He wondered if he had imagined that she had swayed very slightly, and then pulled herself together.

“You must sit down,” he said. “Let me help you.”

When he went up to her he smelt brandy and saw that her eyes were off-focus. She said nothing but let him propel her to Jeremy Jones’s plushy settee alongside the wall. She sat bolt upright. One corner of her mouth drooped a little as if pulled down by an invisible hook. She groped in her handbag, fetched up a packet of cigarettes and fumbled one out. Alleyn lit it for her. She made a great business of this. She’s had a lot more than’s good for her, he thought, and wondered where, on a Sunday afternoon, she’d get hold of it. Perhaps Fox’s Mrs. Jancy at The Wharfinger’s Friend had obliged.

“Now,” he said, “what’s the trouble?”

“Trouble? What trouble? I know trouble when I see it,” she said. “I’m saturated in it.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not a question of me telling you. It’s what he told you. That’s what matters.”

“Mr. Grove?”

“Mr. W. Hartly Grove. You know what? He’s a monster. You know? Not a man but a monster. Cruel. My God,” she said and the corner of her mouth jerked again, “how cruel that man can be!”

Looking at her, Alleyn thought there was not much evidence of loving-kindness in her own demeanour.

“What,” she asked with laborious articulation, “did he say about me? What did he say?”

“Miss Bracey, we didn’t speak of you at all.”

“What did you speak about? Why did he stay behind to speak to you. He did, didn’t he? Why?”

“He told me about his overcoat.”

She glowered at him and sucked at her cigarette as if it were a respirator. “Did he tell you about his scarf?” she asked.

“The yellow one with H. on it?”

She gave a sort of laugh. “Embroidered,” she said. “By his devoted Gerts. God, what a fool! And he goes on wearing it. Slung round his neck like a halter and I wish it’d throttle him.”

She leaned back, rested her head against the crimson plush and shut her eyes. Her left hand slid from her lap and the cigarette fell from her fingers. Alleyn picked it up and threw it into a nearby sandbox. “Thanks,” she said without opening her eyes.

“Why did you stay behind? What do you want to tell me?”

“Stay behind? When?”

“Now.”

“Then, you mean.”

The clock above the box-office ticked. The theatre made a settling noise up in its ceiling. Miss Bracey sighed.

“Did you go back into the theatre?”

“Loo. Downstairs cloaks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

She said very distinctly: “Because it didn’t matter.”

“Or because it mattered too much?”

“No.”

“Did you see or hear anyone while you were in the downstairs foyer?”

“No. Yes, I did. I heard Winty and Marco in the office upstairs. They came out. And I left, then. I went away. Before they saw me.”

“Was there someone else you saw? Jobbins?”

“No,” she said at once.

“There was someone, wasn’t there?”

“No.No. No.”

“Why does all this distress you so much?”

She opened her mouth and then covered it with her hand. She rose and swayed very slightly. As he put out a hand to steady her she broke from him and ran hazardously to the pass-door. It was unlocked. She pulled it open and left it so. Alleyn stood in the doorway and she backed away from him across the portico. When she realized he wasn’t going to follow she flapped her hand in a lunatic fashion and ran towards the car park. He was in time to see her scramble into her mini-car. Someone was sitting in the passenger seat who caught sight of Alleyn and turned away. It was Charles Random.

“Do you want her held?” Fox said at his elbow.

“No. What for? Let her go.”

“I think that’s the lot,” Peregrine said. He laid down his pen, eased his fingers and looked up at Emily.

The bottom of Phipps Passage having turned out to be windy and rich in dubious smells, they had crossed the bridge and retired upon the flat. Emily got their lunch ready while Peregrine laboured to set down everything he could remember of his encounters with Mr. Conducis. Of Jeremy there was nothing to be seen.

Emily said: “ ‘What I did in the Hols. Keep it bright, brief and descriptive.’ ”

“I seem to have done an unconscionable lot,” Peregrine rejoined. “It’s far from brief. Look.”

“No doubt Mr. Alleyn will mark it for you. ‘Quite G. but should take more pains with his writing.’ Are you sure you haven’t forgotten the one apparently trifling clue round which the whole mystery revolves?”

“You’re very jokey, aren’t you? I’m far from sure. The near-drowning incident’s all complete, I think, but I’m not so sure about the visit to Drury Place. Of course, I was drunk by the time that was over. How extraordinary it was,” Peregrine said. “Really, he was rum. Do you know, Emmy, darling, it seems to me now as if he acted throughout on some kind of compulsion. As if it had been he, not I, who was half-drowned and behaving (to mix my metaphor, you pedantic girl) like a duck that’s had its head chopped off. He was obsessed while I was merely plastered. Or so it seems, now.”

“But what did he do that was so odd?”

“Do? He—well, there was an old menu card from the yacht Kalliope. It was in the desk and he snatched it up and burnt it.”

“I suppose if your yacht’s wrecked under your feet you don’t much enjoy being reminded of it.”

“No, but I got the impression it was something on the card—” Peregrine went into a stare and after a long pause said in a rather glazed manner: “I think I’ve remembered.”

“What?”

“On the menu. Signatures: you know? And, Emmy, listen.”

Emily listened. “Well,” she said. “For what it’s worth, put it in.”

Peregrine put it in. “There’s one other thing,” he said. “It’s about last night. I think it was when I was in front and you had come through from backstage. There was the disturbance by the boy—catcalls and the door-slamming. Somewhere about then, it was, that I remember thinking of The Cherry Orchard. Not consciously but with one of those sort of momentary, back-of-the-mind things.”

“The Cherry Orchard?”

“Yes, and Miss Joan Littlewood.”

“Funny mixture. She’s never produced it, has she?”

“I don’t think so. Oh, damn, I wish I could get it. Yes,” Peregrine said excitedly. “And with it there was a floating remembrance, I’m sure — of what? A quotation: ‘Vanished with a — something perfume and a most melodious—’ what? I think it was used somewhere by Walter de la Mare. It was hanging about like the half-recollection of a dream when we walked up the puddled alleyway and into Wharfingers Lane. Why? What started it up?”

“It mightn’t have anything to do with Trevor or Jobbins.”

“I know. But I’ve got this silly feeling it has.”

“Don’t try to remember and then you may.”

“All right. Anyway the End of Hols essay’s ready for what it’s worth. I wonder if Alleyn’s still at the theatre.”

“Ring up.”

“O.K. What’s that parcel you’ve been carting about all day?”

“I’ll show you when you’ve rung up.”

A policeman answered from The Dolphin and said that Alleyn was at the Yard. Peregrine got through with startling promptitude.

“I’ve done this thing,” he said. “Would you like me to bring it over to you?”

“I would indeed. Thank you, Jay. Remembered anything new?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.” The telephone made a complicated jangling sound.

“What?” Alleyn asked. “Sorry about that twang. What did you say? Nothing new?”

“Yes!” Peregrine suddenly bawled into the receiver. “Yes. You’ve done it yourself. I’ll put it in. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“You sound like a pop singer. I’ll be here for the next hour or so. Ask at the Yard entrance and they’ll send you up. ’Bye.”

“You’ve remembered?” Emily cried. “What is it? You’ve remembered.”

And when Peregrine told her, she remembered, too.

He re-opened his report and wrote feverishly. Emily unwrapped her parcel. When Peregrine had finished his additions and swung round in his chair he found, staring portentously at him, a water-colour drawing of a florid gentleman. His hair was curled into a cockscomb. His whiskers sprang from his jowls like steel wool and his prominent eyes proudly glared from beneath immensely luxuriant brows. He wore a frock coat with satin reveres, a brilliant waistcoat, three alberts, a diamond tie-pin and any quantity of rings. His pantaloons were strapped under his varnished boots, and beneath his elegantly arched arm his lilac-gloved hand supported a topper with a curly brim. He stood with one leg straight and the other bent. He was superb.

And behind, lightly but unmistakably sketched in, was a familiar, an adorable façade.

“Emily? It isn’t—? It must be—?”

“Look.”

Peregrine came closer. Yes, scribbled in faded pencil at the bottom of the work: Mr. Adolphus Ruby of The Dolphin Theatre. “Histrionic Portraits” series, 23 April 1855.

“It’s a present,” Emily said. “It was meant, under less ghastly circs, to celebrate The Dolphin’s first six months. I thought I’d get it suitably framed but then I decided to give it to you now to cheer you up a little.”

Peregrine began kissing her very industriously.

“Hi!” she said. “Steady.”

“Where, you darling love, did you get it?”

“Charlie Random told me about it. He’d seen it in one of his prowls in a print shop off Long Acre. Isn’t he odd? He didn’t seem to want it himself. He goes in for nothing later than 1815, he said. So, I got it.”

“It’s not a print, by Heaven, it’s an original. It’s a Phiz original, Emmy. Oh we shall frame it so beautifully and hang it—” He stopped for a second. “Hang it,” he said, “in the best possible place. Gosh, won’t it send old Jer sky high!”

“Where is he?”

Peregrine said, “He had a thing to do. He ought to be back by now. Emily, I couldn’t have ever imagined myself telling anybody what I’m going to tell you so it’s a sort of compliment. Do you know what Jer did?”

And he told Emily about Jeremy and the glove.

“He must have been demented,” she said flatly.

“I know. And what Alleyn’s decided to do about him, who can tell? You don’t sound as flabbergasted as I expected.”

“Don’t I? No, well—I’m not altogether. When we were making the props Jeremy used to talk incessantly about the glove. He’s got a real fixation on the ownership business, hasn’t he? It really is almost a kink, don’t you feel? Harry was saying something the other day about after all the value of those kinds of jobs was purely artificial and fundamentally rather silly. If he was trying to get a rise out of Jeremy, he certainly succeeded. Jeremy was livid. I thought there’d be a punch-up before we were through. Perry, what’s the matter? Have I been beastly?”

“No, no. Of course not.”

“I have,” she said contritely. “He’s your great friend and I’ve been talking about him as if he’s a specimen. I am sorry.”

“You needn’t be. I know what he’s like. Only I do wish he hadn’t done this.”

Peregrine walked over to the window and stared across the river towards The Dolphin. Last night, he thought, only sixteen hours ago, in that darkened house, a grotesque overcoat had moved in and out of shadow. Last night— He looked down into the street below. There from the direction of the bridge came a ginger head, thrust forward above heavy shoulders and adorned, like a classic ewer, with a pair of outstanding ears.

“Here he comes,” Peregrine said. “They haven’t run him in as yet, it seems.”

“I’ll take myself off.”

“No, you don’t. I’ve got to drop this stuff at the Yard. Come with me. We’ll take the car and I’ll run you home.”

“Haven’t you got things you ought to do? Telephonings and fussings? What about Trevor?”

“I’ve done that. No change. Big trouble with Mum. Compensation. It’s Greenslade’s and Winty’s headache, thank God. We want to do what’s right and a tidy bit more but she’s out for the earth.”

“Oh dear.”

“Here’s Jer.”

He came in looking chilled and rather sickly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you had—oh hullo, Em.”

“Hullo, Jer.”

“I’ve told her,” Peregrine said.

“Thank you very much.”

“There’s no need to take it grandly, is there?”

“Jeremy, you needn’t mind my knowing. Truly.”

“I don’t in the least mind,” he said in a high voice. “No doubt you’ll both be surprised to learn I’ve been released with a blackguarding that would scour the hide off an alligator.”

“Surprised and delighted,” Peregrine said. “Where’s the loot?”

“At the Yard.”

Jeremy stood with his hands in his pockets as if waiting for something irritating to occur.

“Do you want the car, Jer? I’m going to the Yard now,” Peregrine said and explained why. Jeremy remarked that Peregrine was welcome to the car and added that he was evidently quite the white-haired Trusty of the Establishment. He stood in the middle of the room and watched them go.

“He is in a rage?” Emily said as they went to the car.

“I don’t know what he’s in but he’s bloody lucky it’s not the lock-up. Come on.”

Alleyn put down Peregrine’s report and gave it a definitive slap. “It’s useful, Fox,” he said. “You’d better read it.”

He dropped it on the desk before his colleague, filled his pipe and strolled over to the window. Like Peregrine Jay, an hour earlier, he looked down at the Thames and he thought how closely this case clung to the river, as if it had been washed up by the incoming tide and left high-and-dry for their inspection. Henry Jobbins of Phipps Passage was a waterside character if ever there was one. Peregrine Jay and Jeremy Jones were not far east along the Embankment. Opposite them The Dolphin pushed up its stage-house and flagstaff with a traditional flourish on Bankside. Behind Tabard Lane in the Borough lurked Mrs. Blewitt while her terrible Trevor, still on the South Bank, languished in St. Terence’s. And as if to top it off, he thought idly, here we are at the Yard, hard by the river.

“But with Conducis,” Alleyn muttered, “we move west and, I suspect, a good deal further away than Mayf air.”

He looked at Fox who, with eyebrows raised high above his spectacles in his stuffy reading-expression, concerned himself with Peregrine’s report.

The telephone rang and Fox reached for it “Super’s room,” he said. “Yes? I’ll just see.”

He laid his great palm across the mouthpiece. “It’s Miss Destiny Meade,” he said, “for you.”

“Is it, by gum! What’s she up to, I wonder. All right. I’d better.”

“Look,” cried Destiny when he had answered. “I know you’re a kind, kind man.”

“Do you?” Alleyn said. “How?”

“I have a sixth sense about people. Now, you won’t laugh at me, will you? Promise.”

“I’ve no inclination to do so, believe me.”

“And you won’t slap me back? You’ll come and have a delicious little dinky at six, or even earlier or whenever it suits, and tell me I’m being as stupid as an owl. Now, do, do, do, do, do. Please, please, please.”

“Miss Meade,” Alleyn said, “it’s extremely kind of you but I’m on duty and I’m afraid I can’t.”

“On duty! But you’ve been on duty all day. That’s worse than being an actor and you can’t possibly mean it.”

“Have you thought of something that may concern this case?”

“It concerns me,” she cried and he could imagine how widely her eyes opened at the telephone.

“Perhaps if you would just say what it is,” Alleyn suggested. He looked across at Fox who, with his spectacles halfway down his nose, blankly contemplated his superior and listened at the other telephone. Alleyn crossed his eyes and protruded his tongue.

“—I can’t really, not on the telephone. It’s too complicated. Look — I’m sure you’re up to your ears and not for the wide, wide world—” The lovely voice moved unexpectedly into its higher and less mellifluous register. “I’m nervous,” it said rapidly. “I’m afraid. I’m terrified. I’m being threatened.” Alleyn heard a distant bang and a male voice. Destiny Meade whispered in his ear, “Please come. Please come.” Her receiver clicked and the dialling tone set in.

“Now who in Melpomene’s dear name,” Alleyn said, “does that lovely lady think she’s leading down the garden path? Or is she? By gum, if she is,” he said, “she’s going to get such a tap on the temperament as hasn’t come her way since she hit the headlines. When are we due with Conducis? Five o’clock. It’s now half past two. Find us a car, Br’er Fox, we’re off to Cheyne Walk.”

Fifteen minutes later they were shown into Miss Destiny Meade’s drawing-room.

It was sumptuous to a degree and in maddeningly good taste: an affair of mushroom-coloured curtains, dashes of Schiaparelli pink, dull satin, Severes plaques and an unusual number of orchids. In the middle of it all was Destiny, wearing a heavy sleeveless sheath with a mink collar: and not at all pleased to see Inspector Fox.

“Kind, kind,” she said, holding out her hand at her white arm’s length for Alleyn to do what he thought best with. “Good afternoon,” she said to Mr. Fox.

“Now, Miss Meade,” Alleyn said briskly, “what’s the matter?” He reminded himself of a mature Hamlet.

“Please sit down. No, please. I’ve been so terribly distressed and I need your advice so desperately.”

Alleyn sat, as she had indicated it, in a pink velvet buttoned chair. Mr. Fox took the least luxurious of the other chairs and Miss Meade herself sank upon a couch, tucked up her feet, which were beautiful, and leaned superbly over the arm to gaze at Alleyn. Her hair, coloured raven black for the Dark Lady, hung like a curtain over her right jaw and half her cheek. She raised a hand to it and then drew the hand away as if it had hurt her. Her left ear was exposed and embellished with a massive diamond pendant.

“This is so difficult,” she said.

“Perhaps we could fire point-blank.”

“Fire? Oh, I see. Yes. Yes, I must try, mustn’t I?”

“If you please.”

Her eyes never left Alleyn’s face. “It’s about—” she began and her voice resentfully indicated the presence of Mr. Fox. “It’s about me?”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I must be terribly frank. Or no. Why do I say that? To you of all people who, of course, understand—” she executed a circular movement of her arm—“everything. I know you do. I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t known. And you see I have Nowhere to Turn.”

“Oh, surely!”

“No. I mean that,” she said with great intensity. “I mean it. Nowhere. No one. It’s all so utterly unexpected. Everything seemed to be going along quite naturally and taking the inevitable course. Because—I know you’ll agree with this—one shouldn’t—indeed one can’t resist the inevitable. One is fated and when this new thing came into our lives we both faced up to it, he and I, oh, over and over again. It’s like,” she rather surprisingly added, “Anthony and Cleopatra. I forget the exact line. I think, actually, that in the production it was cut but it puts the whole thing in a nutshell, and I told him so. Ah, Cleopatra,” she mused, and such was her beauty and professional expertise that, there and then, lying (advantageously of course) on her sofa she became for a fleeting moment the Serpent of the old Nile. “But now,” she added crossly as she indicated a box of cigarettes that was not quite within her reach, “now, with him turning peculiar and violent like this I feel I simply don’t know him. I can’t cope. As I told you on the telephone, I’m terrified.”

When Alleyn leaned forward to light her cigarette he fancied that he caught a glint of appraisal and of wariness, but she blinked, moved her face nearer to his and gave him a look that was a masterpiece.

“Can you,” Alleyn said, “perhaps come to the point and tell us precisely why and of whom you are frightened. Miss Meade?”

“Wouldn’t one be? It was so utterly beyond the bounds of anything one could possibly anticipate. To come in almost without warning and I must tell you that of course he has his own key and by a hideous chance my married couple are out this afternoon. And then, after all that has passed between us to—to—”

She turned her head aside, swept back the heavy wing of her hair and superbly presented herself to Alleyn’s gaze.

“Look,” she said.

Unmistakably someone had slapped Miss Meade very smartly indeed across the right-hand rearward aspect of her face. She had removed the diamond earring on this side but its pendant had cut her skin behind the point of the jaw, and the red beginnings of a bruise showed across the cheek.

“What do you think of that?” she said.

“Did Grove do this!” Alleyn ejaculated.

She stared at him. An indescribable look of—what: pity? contempt? mere astonishment?—broke across her face. Her mouth twisted and she began to laugh.

“Oh you poor darling,” said Destiny Meade. “Harry? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. No, no, no, my dear, this is Mr. Marcus Knight. His Mark.”

Alleyn digested this information and Miss Meade watched him apparently with some relish.

“Do you mind telling me,” he said at length, “why all this blew up? I mean, specifically why. If, as I understand, you have finally broken with Knight.”

“I had,” she said, “but you see he hadn’t. Which made things so very tricky. And then he wouldn’t give me back the key. He has, now. He threw it at me.” She looked vaguely round the drawing-room. “It’s somewhere about,” she said. “It might have gone anywhere or broken anything. He so egotistic.”

“What had precipitated this final explosion, do you think?”

“Well—” She dropped the raven wing over her cheek again. “This and that. Harry, of course, has driven him quite frantic. It’s very bad of Harry and I never cease telling him so. And then it really was too unfortunate last night about the orchids.”

“The orchids?” Alleyn’s gaze travelled to a magnificent stand of them in a Venetian goblet.

“Yes, those,” she said. “Vass had them sent round during the show. I tucked his card in my décolletage like a sort of Victorian courtesan, you know, and in the big love scene Marco spotted it and whipped it out before I could do a thing. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t had that flare-up in the yacht a thousand years ago. He hadn’t realized before that I knew Vass so well. Personally, I mean. Vassy has got this thing about no publicity and of course I respect it. I understand. We just see each other quietly from time to time. He has a wonderful brain.”

“ ‘Vassy’? ‘Vass’?”

“Vassily, really. I call him Vass. Mr. Conducis.”