Killer Dolphin

TEN Monday

As Fox and Alleyn left the flat in Cheyne Walk they encountered in the downstairs entrance a little old man in a fusty overcoat and decrepit bowler. He seemed to be consulting a large envelope.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, touching the brim of the bowler, “but can you tell me if a lady be-the-namer Meade resides in these apartments? It seems to be the number but I can’t discover a name board or indication of any sort.”

Fox told him and he was much obliged.

When they were in the street Alleyn said: “Did you recognize him?”

“I had a sort of notion,” Fox said, “that I ought to. Who is he? He looks like a bum.”

“Which is what he is. He’s a Mr. Grimball who, twenty years ago and more, was the man in possession at the Lampreys.”

“God bless my soul!” Fox said. “Your memory!”

“Peregrine Jay did tell us that the Meade’s a compulsive gambler, didn’t he?”

“Well, I’ll be blowed! Fancy that! On top of all the other lot—in Queer Street. Wonder if Mr. Conducis—”

Fox continued in a series of scandalized ejaculations.

“We’re not due with Conducis for another hour and a half,” Alleyn said. “Stop clucking and get into the car. We’ll drive to the nearest box and ring the Yard in case there’s anything.”

“About the boy?”

“Yes. Yes. About the boy. Come on.”

Fox returned from the telephone box in measured haste.

“Hospital’s just rung through,” he said. “They think he’s coming round.”

“Quick as we can,” Alleyn said to the driver, and in fifteen minutes, with the sister and house-surgeon in attendance, they walked round the screens that hid Trevor’s bed in the children’s casualty ward at St Terence’s.

P.C. Grantley had returned to duty. When he saw Alleyn he hurriedly vacated his chair and Alleyn slipped into it.

“Anything?”

Grantley showed his notebook.

“It’s a pretty glove,” Alleyn read, but it doesn’t warm my hand. Take it off.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, sir. Nothing else, sir. Just that.”

“It’s a quotation from his part.”

Trevor’s eyes were closed and he breathed evenly. The sister brushed back his curls.

“He’s asleep,” the doctor said. “We must let him waken in his own time. He’ll probably be normal when he does.”

“Except for the blackout period?”

“Quite.”

Ten minutes slipped by in near silence.

“Mum,” Trevor said. “Hey, Mum.”

He opened his eyes and stared at Alleyn. “What’s up?” he asked and then saw Grantley’s tunic. “That’s a rozzer,” he said. “I haven’t done a thing.”

“You’re all right,” said the doctor. “You had a nasty fall and we’re looking after you.”

“Oh,” Trevor said profoundly and shut his eyes.

“Gawd, he’s off again,” Grantley whispered, distractedly. “Innit marvellous.”

“Now then,” Fox said austerely.

“Pardon, Mr. Fox.”

Alleyn said, “May he be spoken to?”

“He shouldn’t be worried. If it’s important—”

“It could hardly be more so.”

“Nosey Super,” Trevor said, and Alleyn turned back to find himself being stared at.

“That’s right,” he said. “We’ve met before.”

“Yeah. Where though?”

“In The Dolphin. Upstairs in the circle.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said, wanly tough. A look of doubt came into his eyes. He frowned. “In the circle,” he repeated uneasily.

“Things happen up there in the circle, don’t they?”

Complacency and still that look of uncertainty.

“Yon can say that again,” said Trevor. “All over the house.”

“Slash?”

“Yeah. Slash,” he agreed and grinned.

“You had old Jobbins guessing?”

“And that’s no error.”

“What did you do?”

Trevor stretched his mouth and produced a wailing sound: “Wheeeee.”

“Make like spooks,” he said. “See?”

“Anything else?”

There was a longish pause. Grantley lifted his head. Somewhere beyond the screens a trolley jingled down the ward.

“Ping.”

“That must have rocked them.” Alleyn said.

“ ’Can say that again. What a turn-up! Oh, dear!”

“How did you do it? Just like that? With your mouth?”

The house-surgeon stirred restively. The sister gave a starched little cough.

“Do you mind,” Trevor said. “My mum plays the old steely,” he added, and then, with a puzzled look: “Hey! Was that when I got knocked out or something! Was it?”

“That was a bit later. You had a fall. Can you remember where you went after you banged the stage-door?”

“No,” he said impatiently. He sighed and shut his eyes. “Do me a favour and pack it up, will you?” he said and went to sleep again.

“I’m afraid that’s it,” said the house-surgeon.

Alleyn said : “May I have a word with you?”

“Oh, certainly. Yes, of course. Carry on, Sister, will you? He’s quite all right”

Alleyn said, “Stick it out, Grantley.”

The house-surgeon led him into an office at the entrance to the ward. He was a young man and, although he observed a markedly professional attitude, he was clearly intrigued by the situation.

“Look here,” Alleyn said, “I want you to give me your cold-blooded, considered opinion. You tell me the boy is unlikely to remember what happened just before he went overboard. I gather he may recall events up to within a few minutes of the fall?”

“He may, yes. The length of the ‘lost’ period can vary.”

“Did you think he was on the edge of remembering a little further just now?”

“One can’t say. One got the impression that he hadn’t the energy to try and remember.”

“Do you think that if he were faced with the person whom he saw attacking the caretaker, he would recognize him and remember what he saw?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a specialist in amnesia or the after-effects of cranial injury. You should ask someone who is.” The doctor hesitated and then said slowly: “You mean would the shock of seeing the assailant stimulate the boy’s memory?”

“Not of the assault upon himself but of the earlier assault upon Jobbins which may be on the fringe of his recollection—which may lie just this side of the blackout.”

“I can’t give you an answer to that one.”

“Will you move the boy into a separate room—say tomorrow—and allow him to see three—perhaps four—visitors: one after another? For five minutes each.”

“No. I’m sorry. Not yet.”

“Look,” Alleyn said, “can it really do any harm? Really?”

“I have not the authority.”

“Who has?”

The house-surgeon breathed an Olympian name.

“Is he in the hospital? Now?”

The house-surgeon looked at his watch.

“There’s been a board meeting. He may be in his room.”

“I’ll beard him there. Where is it?”

“Yes, but look here—”

“God bless my soul,” Alleyn ejaculated. “I’ll rant as well as he. Lead me to him.”

“Ten past four,” Alleyn said, checking with Big Ben. “Let’s do a bit of stocktaking.” They had returned to the car.

“You got it fixed up for this show with the boy, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Oh, yes. The great panjandrum turned out to be very mild and a former acquaintance. An instance, I’m afraid, of Harry Grove’s detested old-boymanship. I must say I see Harry’s point. We went to the ward and he inspected young Trevor who was awake, as bright as a button, extremely full of himself and demanding a nice dinner. The expert decided in our favour. We may arrange the visits for tomorrow at noon. Out of visiting hours. We’ll get Peregrine Jay to call the actors and arrange the timetable. I don’t want us to come into it at this juncture. We’ll just occur at the event. Jay is to tell them the truth: that the boy can’t remember what happened and that it’s hoped the encounters with the rest of the cast may set up some chain of association that could lead to a recovery of memory.”

“One of them won’t fancy that idea.”

“No. But it wouldn’t do to refuse.”

“The nerve might crack. There might be a bolt. With that sort of temperament,” Fox said, “you can’t tell what may happen. Still, we’re well provided.”

“If anybody’s nerve cracks it won’t be Miss Destiny Meade’s. What did you make of that scene in her flat, Fox?”

“Well: to begin with, the lady was very much put out by my being there. In my view, Mr. Alleyn, she didn’t fancy police protection within the meaning of the code to anything like the extent that she fancied it coming in a personal way from yourself. Talk about the go-ahead signal! It was hung out like the week’s wash,” said Mr. Fox.

“Control yourself, Fox.”

“Now, on what she said we only missed Mr. Knight by seconds. She makes out he rang up and abused her to such an extent that she decided to call you and that he walked in while she was still talking to you.”

“Yes. And they went bang off into a roaring row which culminated in him handing her a tuppenny one to the jaw after which he flung out and we, within a couple of minutes minced in.”

“No thought in her mind, it appears,” Fox suggested, “of ringing Mr. Grove up to come and protect her. Only you.”

“I daresay she’s doing that very thing at this moment. I must say, I hope he knows how to cope with her.”

“Only one thing to do with that type of lady,” Fox said, “and I don’t mean a tuppenny one on the jaw. He’ll cope.”

“We’ll be talking to Conducis in half an hour, Fox, and it’s going to be tricky.”

“I should damn well think so,” Fox warmly agreed. “What with orchids and her just seeing him quietly from time to time. Hi!” he ejaculated. “Would Mr. Grove know about Mr. Conducis and would Mr. Conducis know about Mr. Grove?”

“Who is, remember, his distant relation. Search me, Fox. The thing at the moment seems to be that Knight knows about them both and acts accordingly. Big stuff.”

“How a gang like this hangs together beats me. You’d think the resignations’d be falling in like autumn leaves. What they always tell you, I suppose,” Fox said. “The Show Must Go On.”

“And it happens to be a highly successful show with fat parts and much prestige. But I should think that even they won’t be able to sustain the racket indefinitely at this pitch.”

“Why are we going to see Mr. Conducis, I ask myself. How do we shape up to him? Does he matter, as far as the case is concerned?”

“In so far as he was in the theatre and knows the combination, yes.”

“I suppose so.”

“I thought him an exceedingly rum personage, Fox. A cold fish and yet a far from insensitive fish. No indication of any background other than wealth, or of any particular race. He carries a British passport. He inherited one fortune and made Lord knows how many more, each about a hundred per cent fatter than the last. He’s spent most of his time abroad and a lot of it in the Kalliope, until she was cut in half in a heavy fog under his feet. That was six years ago. What did you make of Jay’s account of the menu card?”

“Rather surprising if he’s right. Rather a coincidence, two of our names cropping up in that direction.”

“We can check the passenger list with the records; But if s not really a coincidence. People in Conducis’s world tend to move about expensively in a tight group. There was, of course, an inquiry after the disaster and Conducis was reported to be unable to appear. He was in a nursing home on the Cote d’Azur suffering from exhaustion, exposure and severe shock.”

“Bluff?”

“Perhaps. He certainly is a rum ’un and no mistake. Jay’s account of his behaviour that morning—by George,” Alleyn said suddenly. “Hell’s boots and gaiters!”

“What’s all this, now?” Fox asked placidly.

“So much hokum I daresay, but listen, all the same.”

Fox listened.

“Well,” he said. “You always say don’t conjecture but personally, Mr. Alleyn, when you get one of your hunches in this sort of way I reckon it’s safe to go nap on it. Not that this one really gets us any nearer an arrest.”

“I wonder if you’re right about that. I wonder.”

They talked for another five minutes, going over Peregrine’s notes, and then Alleyn looked at his watch and said they must be off. When they were halfway to Park Lane he said: “You went over all the properties in the theatre, didn’t you? No musical instruments?”

“None.”

“He might have had Will singing ‘Take, oh take those lips away’ to the Dark Lady. Accompanying himself on a lute. But he didn’t.”

“Perhaps Mr. Knight can’t sing.”

“You may be right at that”

They drove into Park Lane and turned into Drury Place.

“I’m going,” Alleyn said, “to cling to Peregrine Jay’s notes as Mr. Conducis was reported to have clung to his raft.”

“I still don’t know exactly what line we take,” Fox objected.

“We let him dictate it,” Alleyn rejoined. “At first. Come on.”

Mawson admitted them to that so arrogantly unobtrusive interior, and a pale young man advanced to meet them. Alleyn remembered him from his former visit. The secretary.

“Mr. Alleyn. And — er?”

“Inspector Fox.”

“Yes. How do you do? Mr. Conducis is in the library. He’s been very much distressed by this business. Awfully upset. Particularly about the boy. We’ve sent flowers and all that nonsense, of course, and we’re in touch with the theatre people. Mr. Conducis is most anxious that everything possible should be done. Well — shall we? You’ll find him, perhaps, rather nervous, Mr. Alleyn. He has been so very distressed.”

They walked soundlessly to the library door. A clock mellifluously struck five.

“Here is Superintendent Alleyn, sir, and Inspector Fox.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Mr. Conducis was standing at the far end of the library. He had been looking out of the window, it seemed. In the evening light the long room resembled an interior by some defunct academician: Orchardson, perhaps, or the Hon. John Collier. The details were of an undated excellence but the general effect was strangely Edwardian and so was Mr. Conducis. He might have been a deliberately understated monument to Affluence.

As he moved towards them Alleyn wondered if Mr. Conducis was ill or if his pallor was brought about by some refraction of light from the apple-green walls. He wore a gardenia in his coat and an edge of crimson silk showed above his breast pocket.

“Good evening,” he said. “I am pleased that you were able to come. Glad to see you again.”

He offered his hand. Large and white, it withdrew itself—it almost snatched itself away—from contact.

Mawson came in with a drinks tray, put it down, hovered, was glanced at and withdrew.

“You will have a drink,” Mr. Conducis stated.

“Thank you, but no,” Àlleyn said. “Not on duty, I’m afraid. This won’t stop you from having one, of course.”

“I am an abstainer,” said Mr. Conducis. “Shall we sit down?”

They did so. The crimson leather chairs received them like sultans.

Alleyn said, “You sent word you wanted to see us, sir, but we would in any case have asked for an interview. Perhaps the best way of tackling this unhappy business will be for us to hear any questions that it may have occurred to you to ask. We will then, if you please, continue the conversation on what I can only call routine investigation lines.”

Mr. Conducis raised his clasped hands to his mourn and glanced briefly over them at Alleyn. He then lowered his gaze to his fingers. Alleyn thought: “I suppose that’s how he looks when he’s manipulating his gargantuan undertakings.”

Mr. Conducis said, “I am concerned with this affair. The theatre is my property and the enterprise is under my control. I have financed it. The glove and documents are mine. I trust, therefore, that I am entitled to a detailed statement upon the case as it appears to your Department. Or rather, since you are in charge of the investigation, as it appears to you.”

This was said with an air of absolute authority. Alleyn was conscious, abruptly, of the extraordinary force that resided in Mr. Conducis.

He said very amiably: “We are not authorized, I’m afraid, to make detailed statements on demand—not even to entrepreneurs of businesses and owners of property, especially where a fatality has occurred on that property and a crime of violence may be suspected. On the other hand, I will, as I have suggested, be glad to consider any questions you like to put to me.”

And he thought: he’s like a lizard or a chameleon or whatever the animal is that blinks slowly. It’s what people mean when they talk about hooded eyes.”

Mr. Conducis did not argue or protest. For all the reaction he gave, he might not have heard what Alleyn said.

“In your opinion,” he said, “were the fatality and the injury to the boy caused by an act of violence?”

“Yes.”

“Both by the same hand?”

“Yes.”

“Have you formed an opinion on why it was done?”

“We have arrived at a working hypothesis.”

“What is it?”

“I can go so far as to say that I think both were defensive actions.”

“By a person caught in the act of robbery?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Do you think you know who this person is?”

“I am almost sure that I do. I am not positive.”

“Who?”

“That,” Alleyn said, “I am not at liberty to tell you. Yet.”

Mr. Conducis looked fully at him, if the fact that those extraordinarily blank eyes were focussed on his face could justify this assertion.

“You said you wished to see me. Why?”

“For several reasons. The first concerns your property: the glove and the documents. As you know they have been recovered, but I think you should also know by what means.”

He told the story of Jeremy Jones and the substitution and he could have sworn that as he did so the sweet comfort of a reprieve flooded through Conducis. The thick white hands relaxed. He gave an almost inaudible but long sigh.

“Have you arrested him?”

“No. We have, of course, uplifted the glove. It is in a safe at the Yard with the documents.”

“I cannot believe, Superintendent Alleyn, that you give any credence to his story.”

“I am inclined to believe it.”

Then in my opinion you are either incredibly stupid or needlessly evasive. In either case, incompetent.”

This attack surprised Alleyn. He had not expected his slow-blinking opponent to dart his tongue so soon. As if sensing his reaction Mr. Conducis recrossed his legs and said: “I am too severe. I beg your pardon. Let me explain myself. Can you not see that Jones’s story was an impromptu invention? He did not substitute the faked glove for the real glove six months ago. He substituted it last night and was discovered in the act. He killed Jobbins, was seen by the boy and tried to kill him. He left the copy behind—no doubt if he had not been interrupted he would have put it in the safe—and he took the real glove to the safe-deposit.”

“First packing it with most elaborate care in an insulated box with four wrappings, all sealed.”

“Done in the night. Before Jay got home.”

“We can check, you know, with the safe-deposit people. He says he had a witness when he deposited the glove six months ago.”

“A witness to a dummy package, no doubt”

“If you consider,” Alleyn said, “I’m sure you will come to the conclusion that this theory won’t answer. It really won’t, you know.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want me to spell it out, sir? If, as he states, he transposed the gloves six months ago and intended to maintain the deception, he had no need to do anything further. If the theft was a last-minute notion, he could perfectly well have effected the transposition today or tomorrow, when he performed his authorized job of removing the treasure from the safe. There was no need for him to sneak back into the theatre at dead of night and risk discovery. Why on earth, six months ago, should he go through an elaborate hocus-pocus of renting a safe-deposit and lodging a fake parcel in it?”

“He’s a fanatic. He has written to me expostulating about the sale of the items to an American purchaser. He even tried, I am told, to secure an interview. My secretary can show you his letter. It is most extravagant.”

“I shall be interested to see it.”

A brief silence followed this exchange. Alleyn thought: “He’s formidable but he’s not as tough as I expected. He’s shaken.”

“Have you any other questions?” Alleyn asked.

He wondered if the long, unheralded silence was one of Mr. Conducis’s strategic weapons: whether it was or not, he now employed it and Alleyn, with every appearance of tranquillity, sat it out. The light had changed in the long green room and the sky outside the far windows had darkened. Beneath them, at the exquisite table, Peregrine Jay had first examined the documents and the glove. And against the left-hand wall under a picture—surely a Kandinsky—stood the bureau, an Oeben or Riesener perhaps, from which Mr. Conducis had withdrawn his treasures. Fox, who in a distant chair had performed his little miracle of self-effacement, gave a slight cough.

Mr. Conducis said without moving, “I would ask for information as to the continued running of the play and the situation of the players.”

“I understand the season will go on: we’ve taken no action that might prevent it.”

“You will do so if you arrest a member of the company.”

“He or she would be replaced by an understudy.”

“She,” Mr. Conducis said in a voice utterly devoid of inflection. “That, of course, need not be considered.”

He waited, but Alleyn thought it was his turn to initiate a silence and made no comment.

“Miss Destiny Meade has spoken to me,” Mr. Conducis said. “She is very much distressed by the whole affair. She tells me you called upon her this afternoon and she finds herself, as a result, quite prostrated. Surely there is no need for her to be pestered like this.”

For a split second Alleyn wondered what on earth Mr. Conducis would think if he and Fox went into fits of laughter. He said: “Miss Meade was extremely helpful and perfectly frank. I am sorry she found the exercise fatiguing.”

“I have no more to say,” Mr. Conducis said and stood up. So did Alleyn.

“I’m afraid that I have,” he said. “I’m on duty, sir, and this is an investigation.”

“I have nothing to bring to it.”

“When we are convinced of that we will stop bothering you. I’m sure you’d prefer us to deal with the whole matter here rather than at the Yard. Wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Conducis went to the drinks tray and poured himself a glass of water. He took a minute gold case from a waistcoat pocket, shook a tablet on his palm, swallowed it and chased it down.

“Excuse me,” he said, “it was time.”

Ulcers? wondered Alleyn.

Mr. Conducis returned and faced him. “By all means,” he said. “I am perfectly ready to help you and only regret that I am unlikely to be able to do so to any effect. I have, from the time I decided to promote The Dolphin undertaking, acted solely through my executives. Apart from an initial meeting and one brief discussion with Mr. Jay I have virtually no personal contacts with members of the management and company.”

“With the exception, perhaps, of Miss Meade?”

“Quite so.”

“And Mr. Grove.”

“He was already known to me. I except him.”

“I understand you are related?”

“A distant connection.”

“So he said,” Alleyn lightly agreed. “I understand,” he added, “that you were formerly acquainted with Mr. Marcus Knight.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Peregrine Jay recognized his signature on the menu you destroyed in his presence.”

“Mr. Jay was not himself that morning.”

“Do you mean, sir, that he made a mistake and Knight was not a guest in the Kalliope?”

After a long pause Mr. Gonducis said: “He was a guest. He behaved badly. He took offense at an imagined slight. He left the yacht, at my suggestion, at Villefranche.”

“And so escaped the disaster?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Conducis had seated himself again: this time in an upright chair. He sat rigidly erect, but as if conscious of this, crossed his legs and put his hands in his trouser pockets. Alleyn stood a short distance from him.

“I am going to ask you,” he said, “to talk about something that may be painful to you. I want you to tell me about the night of the fancy-dress dinner party on board the Kalliope.”

Alleyn had seen people sit with the particular kind of stillness that now invested Mr. Conducis. They sat like that in the cells underneath the dock while they waited for the jury to come back. In the days of capital punishment, he had been told by a warder that they sat like that while they waited to hear if they were reprieved. He could see a very slight rhythmic movement of the crimson silk handkerchief and he could hear, ever so faintly, the breathing of Mr. Conducis.

“It was six years ago, wasn’t it?” Alleyn said. “And the dinner party took place on the night of the disaster?”

Mr. Conducis’s eyes closed in a momentary assent but he did not speak.

“Was Mrs. Constantin Guzmann one of your guests in the yacht?”

“Yes,” he said indifferently.

“You told Mr. Jay, I believe, that you bought the Shakespeare relics six years ago?”

“That is so.”

“Had you this treasure on board the yacht?”

“Why should you think so?”

“Because Jay found under the glove the menu for a dinner in the Kalliope—he thinks it was headed ‘Villefranche.’ Which you burnt in the fireplace over there.”

“The menu must have been dropped in the desk. It was an unpleasant reminder of a painful event”

“So the desk and its contents were in the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why, sir?”

Mr. Conduds’s lips moved, were compressed and moved again. “I bought them,” he said, “from—” he gave a grotesque little cough—“ from a person in the yacht.”

“Who was this person, if you please?”

“I have forgotten.”

“Forgotten?”

“The name.”

“Was it Knight?”

“No.”

“There are maritime records. We shall be able to trace it. Will you go on, please?”

“He was a member of the ship’s complement. He asked to see me and showed me the desk which he said he wanted to sell. I understand that it had been given him by the proprietress of a lodging-house. I thought the contents were almost certainly worthless but I gave him what he asked for them.”

“Which was—?”

“Thirty pounds.”

“What became of this man?”

“Drowned,” said a voice from somewhere inside Mr. Conducis.

“How did it come about that the desk and its contents were saved?”

“I cannot conjecture by what fantastic process of thought you imagine any of this relates to your inquiry.”

“I hope to show that it does. I believe it does.”

“I had the desk on deck. I had shown the contents, as a matter of curiosity, to some of my guests.”

“Did Mrs. Guzmann see it, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Was she interested?”

A look which Alleyn afterwards described as being profoundly professional drifted into Mr. Conducis’s face.

He said, “She is a collector.”

“Did she make an offer?”

“She did. I was not inclined to sell.”

Alleyn was visited by a strange notion.

“Tell me,” he said, “were you both in fancy dress?”

Mr. Conducis looked at him with an air of wondering contempt. “Mrs. Guzmann,” he said, “was in costume: Andalusian, I understand. I wore a domino over evening dress.”

“Gloved, either of you?”

“No!” he said loudly and added: “We had been playing bridge.”

“Were any of the others gloved?”

“A ridiculous question. Some may have been.”

“Were the ship’s company in fancy dress?”

“Certainly not!”

“The stewards?”

“As eighteenth-century flunkeys.”

“Gloved?”

“I do not remember.”

“Why do you dislike pale gloves, Mr. Conducis?”

“I have no idea,” he said breathlessly, “what you mean.”

“You told Peregrine Jay that you dislike them.”

“A personal prejudice. I cannot account for it.”

“Were there gloved hands that disturbed you on the night of the disaster? Mr. Conducis, are you ill?”

“I—no. No, I am well. You insist on questioning me about an episode which distressed me, which was painful, tragic, an outrage to one’s sensibilities.”

“I would avoid it if I could. I’m afraid I must go further. Will you tell me exactly what happened at the moment of disaster: to you, I mean, and to whoever was near you then or later?”

For a moment Alleyn thought he was going to refuse. He wondered if there would be a sudden outbreak or whether Mr. Conducis would merely walk out of the room and leave them to take what action they chose. He did none of these things. He embarked upon a toneless, rapid recital of facts. Of the fact of fog, the sudden looming of the tanker, the splitting apart of the Kalliope. Of the fact of fire breaking out

Of oil on the water and of how he found himself looking down on the wooden raft from the swimming pool and of how the deck turned into a precipice and he slid from it and landed on the raft

“Still with the little desk?”

Yes. Clutched under his left arm, it seemed, but with no consciousness of this. He had lain across the raft with the desk underneath him. It had bruised him very badly. He gripped a rope loop at the side with his right hand. Mrs. Guzmann had appeared beside the raft and was clinging to one of the loops. Alleyn had a mental picture of an enormous nose, an open mouth, a mantilla plastered over a big head and a floundering mass of wet black lace and white flesh.

The recital stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

“That is all. We were picked up by the tanker.”

“Were there other people on the raft?”

“I believe so. My memory is not clear. I lost consciousness.”

“Men? Mrs. Guzmann?”

“I believe so. I was told so.”

“Pretty hazardous, I should have thought. It wouldn’t accommodate more than—how many?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Mr. Conducis, when you saw Peregrine Jay’s gloved hands clinging to the edge of that hole in the stage at the Dolphin and heard him call out that he would drown if you didn’t save him—were you reminded—”

Mr. Conducis had risen and now began to move backwards, like an image in slow motion, towards the bureau. Fox rose, too, and shifted in front of it. Mr. Conducis drew his crimson silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it against his mouth, and above it his upper lip glistened. His brows were defined by beaded margins and the dark skin of his face was stretched too tight and had blanched over the bones.

“Be quiet,” he said. “No. Be quiet.”

Somebody had come into the house. A distant voice spoke loudly but indistinguishably.

The door opened and the visitor came in.

Mr. Conducis screamed: “You’ve told them. You’ve betrayed me. I wish to Christ I’d killed you.”

Fox took him from behind. Almost at once he stopped struggling.

Trevor could be, as Alleyn put it, bent at the waist. He had been so bent and was propped up in a sitting position in his private room. A bed-tray on legs was arranged across his stomach, ready for any offerings that might be forthcoming. His condition had markedly improved since Alleyn’s visit of the day before, and he was inclined, though still feebly, to throw his weight about

The private room was small but there was a hospital screen in one corner of it and behind the screen, secreted there before Trevor was wheeled in, sat Inspector Fox, his large, decent feet concealed by Trevor’s suitcase. Alleyn occupied the bedside chair.

On receiving assurances from Alleyn that the police were not on his tracks Trevor reported, with more fluency, his previous account of his antics in the deserted auditorium, but he would not or could not carry the recital beyond the point when he was in the circle and heard a distant telephone ring. “I don’t remember another thing,” he said importantly. “I’ve blacked out. I was concussed. The doc says I was very badly concussed. Here! Where did I fall, Super? What’s the story?”

“You fell into the stalls.”

“Would you mind!”

“True.”

“Into the stalls! Cripes! Why?”

“That’s what I want to find out.”

Trevor looked sideways. “Did old Henry Jobbins lay into me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Or Chas Random?”

A knowledgeable look: a disfiguring look of veiled gratification, perhaps, appeared like a blemish on Trevor’s pageboy face. He giggled.

“He was wild with me, Chas was. Listen: Chas had it in for me, Super, really he did. I got that camp’s goat, actually, good and proper.”

Alleyn listened and absently noted how underlying Cockney seeped up through superimposed drama academy. Behind carefully turned vowel and consonant jibed a Southward urchin. “Goo’ ’un prop-per,” Trevor was really saying, however classy the delivery.

“Some of the company are coming in to see you,”

Alleyn said. “They may only stay for a minute or two but they’d like to say hullo.”

“I’d be pleased,” Trevor graciously admitted. He was extremely complacent.

Alleyn watched him and talked to him for a little while longer and then, conscious of making a decision that might turn out most lamentably, he said: “Look here, young Trevor, I’m going to ask you to help me in a very tricky and important business. If you don’t like the suggestion you needn’t have anything to do with it. On the other hand—”

He paused. Trevor gave him a sharp look.

“Nothing comes to the dumb,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble? Come in and give.”

Ten minutes later his visitors began to arrive, ushered in by Peregrine Jay. “Just tell them,” Alleyn had said, “that he’d like to see them for a few minutes and arrange the timetable. You can pen them up in the waiting-room at the end of the corridor.”

They brought presents.

Winter Meyer came first with a box of crystallized fruit. He put it on the tray and then stood at the foot of the bed wearing his shepherd’s plaid suit and his dark red tie. His hair, beautifully cut, waved above and behind the ears. He leaned his head to one side and looked at Trevor.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “So the great star is receiving. How does it feel to be famous?”

Trevor was languid and gracious, but before the prescribed five minutes had elapsed he mentioned that his agent would be waiting upon Mr. Meyer with reference to the Management, as he put it, seeing him right

“We don’t,” Winter Meyer said, eyeing him warily, “need to worry just yet about that one. Do we?”

“I hope not, Mr. Meyer,” Trevor said. He leaned his head back against the pillows and closed his eyes. “Funny how faint I appear to get,” he murmured. “I hope it won’t be kind of permanent. My doctors seem to take a grave view. Funny thing.”

Mr. Meyer said, “You played that line just like the end of Act I, but I mustn’t tire you.”

He tiptoed elaborately away from the bed and, as he passed Alleyn, let droop a heavy white eylid.

Jeremy Jones had made a group of tiny effigies representing the characters in the play and had mounted them on a minuscule stage. “Ever so quaint,” Trevor said. “Ta, Mr. Jones. You have been busy. Put it on my tray, would you?”

Jeremy put his offering on the tray. Trevor gazed into his face as he did so. “You are clever with your fingers,” he said. “Aren’t you, Mr. Jones?”

Jeremy looked suspiciously at him, turned scarlet and said to Alleyn: “I mustn’t stay too long.”

“Don’t go,” said Trevor. “Yet.”

Jeremy lingered, with one eye on Alleyn and awkwardly at a loss for anything to say. Peregrine tapped on the door, looked in, said: “Oh, sorry,” when he saw his friend and retired.

“I want to see Mr. Jay,” Trevor said. “Here! Call him back.”

Jeremy fetched Peregrine and seized the opportunity, after a nod from Alleyn, to make his own escape. Peregrine, having already done his duty in that respect, brought no offering.

“Here!” Trevor said. “What price that kid? My understudy. Is he going on tonight?”

“Yes. He’s all right,” Peregrine said. “Word perfect and going to give quite a nice show. You needn’t worry.”

Trevor glowered at him. “What about the billing, Mr. Jay? What about the programmes?”

“They’ve been slipped. ‘During your indisposition the part will be played—’ You know?”

“Anything in the press? They haven’t brought me any papers,” the feeble voice grumbled. “What’s my agent doing? My mum says they don’t want me to see the papers. Look, Mr. Jay—”

Alleyn said: “You’ll see the papers.”

Peregrine waited until Charles Random arrived. “If you want me,” he then said to Alleyn, “I’ll be in the corridor.”

Random brought a number of dubious-looking comics. “Knowing your taste in literature,” he said to Trevor. “Not that I approve.”

Trevor indicated his tray. As Random approached him, he put on a sly look. “Really,” he said, “you shouldn’t have troubled, Mr. Random.”

They stared at each other, their faces quite close together—Random’s guarded, shuttered, wary and Trevor’s faintly impertinent.

“You’ve got a bruise on your cheekbone,” Random said.

“That’s nothing. You should see the rest.”

“Keep you quiet for a bit.”

“That’s right.” Random turned his head slowly and looked at Alleyn. “Police are taking a great interest, I see,” he said.

“Routine,” Alleyn rejoined. “Merely routine.”

“At a high level.” Random drew back quickly from Trevor, who giggled and opened his bundle of comics. “Oh, fabulous,” he said. “It’s ‘Slash.’ Z-z-z-z-yock!” He became absorbed.

“That being that,” Random said, “I shall bow myself off. Unless,” he added, “the Superintendent is going to arrest me.”

Trevor, absorbed in his comic, said: “You never know, do you? Cheerie-bye and ta.”

Random moved towards the door. “Get better quick,” he murmured. Trevor looked up and winked. “What do you think?” he said.

Random opened the door and disclosed Miss Bracey on the threshold.

They said, “Oh, hullo, dear,” simultaneously and Random added: “This gets more like a French farce every second. Everyone popping in and out. Wonderful timing.”

They both laughed with accomplishment and he went away.

Gertrude behaved as if she and Alleyn had never met. She said good morning in a poised voice and clearly expected him to leave. He responded politely, indicated the bedside chair, called Trevor’s attention to his visitor and himself withdrew to the window.

Miss Bracey said, “You have been in the wars, dear, haven’t you?” She advanced to the bedside and placed a small parcel on the table. Trevor lifted his face to hers, inviting an embrace. Their faces came together and parted and Miss Bracey sank into the chair.

“I mustn’t stay too long: you’re not to be tired,” she said. She was quite composed. Only that occasional drag at the corner of her mouth suggested to Alleyn that she had fortified herself. She made the conventional inquiries as to Trevor’s progress and he responded with an enthusiastic account of his condition. The worst case of concussion, he said importantly, that they’d ever seen in the ward.

“Like what you read about,” he said. “I was—”

He stopped short and for a moment looked puzzled. “I was having a bit of fun,” he began again. “You know, Miss Bracey. Just for giggles. I was having old Jobbins on.”

“Yes?” said Miss Bracey. “That was naughty of you, dear, wasn’t it?”

“But,” Trevor said, frowning. “You know. You were there, weren’t you?” he added doubtfully.

She looked anywhere but at Alleyn. “You’re still confused,” she said. “You mustn’t worry about it.”

“But weren’t you, Miss Bracey? Down there? In front? Weren’t you?”

“I don’t know when you mean, dear.”

“Neither do I. Not quite. But you were there.”

“I was in the downstairs foyer on Saturday night for a minute or two,” she said loudly. “As I told the Superintendent.”

“Yeah, I know you were,” Trevor said. “But where was I?”

“You didn’t see me. You weren’t there. Don’t worry about it.”

“I was. I was.”

“I’d better go,” she said and rose.

“No,” Trevor almost shouted. He brought his small fist down on the bed-tray and Jeremy’s microcosms fell on their faces. “No! You’ve got to stay till I remember.”

“I think you should stay, Miss Bracey,” Alleyn said. “Really.”

She backed away from the bed. Trevor gave a little cry. “There!” he said. “That’s it. That’s what you did. And you were looking up—at him. Looking up and backing away and kind of blubbing.”

“Trevor, be quiet. Be quiet. You don’t know. You’ve forgotten.”

“Like what you’re always doing. Miss Bracey. Chasing him. That’s right, isn’t it, Miss Bracey? Tagging old Harry. You’d come out of the downstairs lav and you looked up and saw him. And then the office door opened and it was Mr. Meyer and Mr. Knight and you done—you did a quick scarper, Miss Bracey. And so did I! Back into the circle, smartly. I got it, now,” Trevor said with infinite satisfaction. “I got it.”

“How,” Alleyn said, “did you know who he was? It must have been dark up there.”

“Him? Harry? By his flash coat. Cripey, what a dazzler!”

“It’s not true,” she gabbled and stumbled across the room. She pawed at Alleyn’s coat “It’s not true. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. It wasn’t Harry. Don’t listen. I swear it wasn’t Harry.”

“You’re quite right,” Alleyn said. “You thought it was Harry Grove but it was Jobbins you saw on the landing. Grove had given Jobbins his overcoat.”

Her hands continued for a second or two to scrabble at his coat and then fell away. She looked into his face and her own crumpled into a weeping mask.

Alleyn said: “You’ve been having a bad time. An awful time. But it will ease up. It won’t always be as bad as this.”

“Let me go. Please let me go.”

“Yes,” he said. “You may go now.”

And when she had gone, blowing her nose, squaring her shoulders and making, instinctively he supposed, quite an exit, he turned to Trevor and found him, with every sign of gratification, deep in his comics.

“Do I have to see the others?” he asked. “It’s getting a bit of a drag.”

“Are you tired?”

“No. I’m reading.” His eye lit on Gertrude Bracey’s parcel. “Might as well look it over,” he said and unwrapped a tie. “Where’d she dig that up?” he wondered and returned to his comic.

“You are a young toad, aren’t you?” Alleyn remarked. “How old are you, in Heaven’s name?”

“Eleven and three months,” Trevor said. He was helping himself to a crystallized plum.

A slight rumpus broke out in the passage. Peregrine put his head round the door. “Marco and Harry are both here,” he said and cast up his eyes.

When Alleyn joined him at the door he muttered: “Marco won’t wait. He didn’t want to come. And Harry says he got here first. He’s up to his usual game,” Peregrine said. “Knight-baiting.”

“Tell him to shut up and wait or I’ll run him in.”

“I wish to Heaven you would, at that.”

“Ask Knight to come along.”

“Yes. All right”

“No sign of Conducis as yet?”

“No.”

When Marcus Knight came in he did not exhibit his usual signs of emotional disturbance: the flashing eye, the empurpled cheek, the throbbing pulse and the ringing tone. On the contrary he was pale and as near to being subdued, Alleyn felt, as he could be. He laid his offering upon the now filled-to-capacity bed-tray. Fruit: in season and a gilded basket. He brusquely ran his fingers through Trevor’s curls and Trevor immediately responded with a look that successfully combined young Hamnet and Paul Dombey.

“Oh Mr. Knight,” he said, “You honestly shouldn’t. You are kind. Grapes! How fab!”

A rather stilted bedside conversation followed, during which Knight gave at least half his uneasy attention to Alleyn. Presently Trevor complained that he had slipped down in his bed and asked his illustrious guest to help him up. When Knight with an ill-grace bent over him, Trevor gazed admiringly into his face and wreathed his arms round his neck. “Just like the end of Act I come true,” he said, “isn’t it, Mr. Knight? I ought to be wearing the glove.”

Knight hurriedly extricated himself. A look of doubt crossed Trevor’s face. “The glove,” he repeated. “There’s something about the real one—Isn’t there? Something?”

Knight looked a question at Alleyn, who said: “Trevor doesn’t recall the latter part of his adventures in the theatre on Saturday night I think Jay has explained that we hope one of you may help to restore his memory.”

“I am remembering more,” Trevor said importantly. “I remember hearing Mr. Knight in the office with Mr. Meyer.”

Marcus Knight stiffened. “I believe you are aware, Alleyn, that I left with Meyer at about eleven.”

“He has told us so,” Alleyn said.

“Very well,” Knight stood over Trevor and imposed upon himself, evidently with difficulty, an air of sweet reasonableness. “If,” he said, “dear boy, you were spying about in front while I was with Mr. Meyer in his office, and if you heard our voices, you doubtless also saw us leave the theatre.”

Trevor nodded.

“Precisely,” Knight said and spread his hands at Alleyn.

“People come back,” said the treble voice. Alleyn turned to find Trevor, the picture of puzzled innocence, frowning, his fingers at his lips.

“What the hell do you mean by that!” Knight ejaculated.

“It’s part of what I can’t remember. Somebody came back.”

“I really cannot imagine, Alleyn—” Knight began.

“I-don’t-think-I-want-to-remember.”

“There you are, you see. This is infamous. The boy will be harmed. I absolutely refuse to take part in a dangerous and unwarranted experiment. Don’t worry yourself, boy. You are perfectly right. Don’t try to remember.”

“Why?”

“Because I tell you,” Knight roared and strode to the door. Here he paused. “I am an artist,” he said, suddenly adopting a muted voice that was rather more awful than a piercing scream. “In eight hours’ time I appear before the public in a most exhausting role. Moreover I shall be saddled throughout a poignant, delicate and exacting scene with the incompetence of some revolting child-actor of whose excesses I am as yet ignorant. My nerves have been exacerbated. For the past forty-eight hours I have suffered the torments of hell. Slighted. Betrayed. Derided. Threatened. And now—this ludicrous, useless and important summons by the police. Very well, Superintendent Alleyn. There shall be no more of it. I shall lodge a formal complaint. In the meantime—Goodbye.”

The door was opened with violence and shut—not slammed—with well-judged temperance.

“Lovely eggzit,” said Trevor, yawning and reading his comic.

From outside in the corridor came the sound of applause, an oath, and rapidly retreating footsteps.

Alleyn reopened the door to disclose Harry Grove, gently clapping his hands, and Marcus Knight striding down the corridor.

Harry said, “Isn’t he superb? Honestly, you have to hand it to him.” He drew a parcel from his pocket. “Baby roulette,” he said. “Trevor can work out systems. It is true that this is a sort of identification parade?”

“You could put it like that I suppose,” Alleyn agreed.

“Do you mean,” Hairy said, changing colour, “that this unfortunate but nauseating little boy may suddenly point his finger at one of us and enunciate in ringing tones: ‘It all comes back to me. He dunnit’ ”

“That, roughly, is the idea.”

“Then I freely confess it terrifies me.”

“Come inside and get it over.”

“Very well. But I’d have you know that he’s quite capable of putting on a false show of recovery smartly followed up by a still falser accusation. Particularly,” Harry said grimly, “in my case when he knows the act would draw loud cheers and much laughter from all hands and the cook.”

“We’ll have to risk it. In you go.”

Alleyn opened the door and followed Harry into the room.

Trevor had slithered down again in his bed and had dropped off into a convalescent cat-nap. Harry stopped short and stared at him.

“He looks,” he whispered, “as if he was quite a nice little boy, doesn’t he? You’d say butter wouldn’t melt. Is he really asleep or is it an act?”

“He dozes. If you just lean over him he’ll wake.”

“It seems a damn shame, I must say.”

“All the same I’ll ask you to do it, if you will. There’s a bruise on the cheekbone that mystifies us all. I wonder if you’ve any ideas. Have a look at it.”

A trolley jingled past the door and down the corridor. Outside on the river a barge hooted. Against the multiple, shapeless voice of London, Big Ben struck one o’clock.

Harry put his parcel on the tray.

“Look at the bruise on his face. His hair’s fallen across it. Move his hair back and look.”

Harry stooped over the boy and put out his left hand.

From behind the screen in the corner there rang out a single, plangent note. “Twang.”

Trevor opened his eyes, looked into Harry’s face and screamed.