Killer Dolphin

SIX Disaster

While he let them in at the stage-door the man—he was called Hawkins—said over and over again in a shrill whine that it wasn’t his fault if he was late getting down to the theatre. Nobody, he said, could blame him. He turned queer, as was well known, at the sight of blood. It was as much as Peregrine could do to get the victim’s name out of him. He had gone completely to pieces.

They went through the stage-door into the dark house, and up the aisle and so to the foyer. It was as if they had never left the theatre.

Peregrine said to Emily: “Wait here. By the box-office. Don’t come any further.”

“I’ll come if you want me.”

“Oh Gawd no. Oh Gawd no, Miss.”

“Stay here, Emily. Or wait in front. Yes. Just wait in front.” He opened the doors into the stalls and fastened them back. She went in. “Now, Hawkins,” Peregrine said.

“You go, Mr. Jay. Up there. I don’t ’ave to go. I can’t do nothing. I’d vomit. Honest I would.”

Peregrine ran up the graceful stairway towards the sunken landing: under the treasure where both flights emerged. It was dark up there but he had a torch and used it. The beam shot out and found an object.

There, on its back in a loud overcoat and slippers lay the shell of Jobbins. The woollen cap had not fallen from the skull but had been stove into it. Out of what had been a face, broken like a crust now, and glistening red, one eye stared at nothing.

Beside this outrage lay a bronze dolphin, grinning away for all it was worth through a wet, unspeakable mask.

Everything round Peregrine seemed to shift a little as if his vision had swivelled like a movie camera. He saw without comprehension a square of reflected light on the far wall and its source above the landing. He saw, down below him, the top of Hawkins’s head. He moved to the balustrade, held on to it and with difficulty controlled an upsurge of nausea. He fetched a voice out of himself.

“Have you rung the police?”

“I better had, didn’t I? I better report, didn’t I?” Hawkins gabbled without moving.

“Stay where you are. I’ll do it.”

There was a general purposes telephone in the downstairs foyer outside the box-office. He ran down to it and, controlling his hand, dialled the so celebrated number. How instant and how cool the response.

“No possibility of survival, sir?”

“God, no. I told you—”

“Please leave everything as it is. You will be relieved in a few minutes. Which entrance is available? Thank you.”

Peregrine hung up. “Hawkins,” he said. “Go back to the stage-door and let the police in. Go on.”

“Yes. O.K. Yes, Mr. Jay.”

“Well, go on, damn you.”

Was there an independent switch anywhere in the foyer for front-of-house lighting or was it all controlled from backstage? Surely not. He couldn’t remember. Ridiculous. Emily was out there in the darkened stalls. He went in and found her standing just inside the doors.

“Emily?”

“Yes. All right. Here I am.”

He felt her hands in his. “This is a bad thing,” he said hurriedly. “It’s a very bad thing, Emily.”

“I heard what you said on the telephone.”

“They’ll be here almost at once.”

“I see. Murder,” Emily said, trying the word.

“We can’t be sure.”

They spoke aimlessly. Peregrine heard a high-pitched whine inside his own head and felt sickeningly cold. He wondered if he was going to faint and groped for Emily. They put their arms about each other. “We must behave,” Peregrine said, “in whatever way one is expected to behave. You know? Calm? Collected? All the things people like us are meant not to be.”

“That’s right. Well, so we will.”

He stooped his head to hers. “Can this be you?” he said.

A sound crept into their silence: a breathy intermittent sound with infinitesimal interruptions that seemed to have some sort of vocal quality. They told each other to listen.

With a thick premonition of what was to come, Peregrine put Emily away from him.

He switched on his torch and followed its beam down the centre aisle. He was under the overhang of the dress-circle but moved on until its rim was above his head. It was here, in the centre aisle of the stalls and below the circle balustrade, that his torchlight came to rest on a small, breathing, faintly audible heap which, as he knelt beside it, revealed itself as an unconscious boy.

“Trevor,” Peregrine said. “Trevor.”

Emily behind him said, “Has he been killed? Is he dying?”

“I don’t know. What should we do? Ring for the ambulance? Ring the Yard again? Which?”

“Don’t move him. I’ll ring Ambulance.”

“Yes.”

“Listen. Sirens.”

“Police.”

Emily said: “I’ll ring, all the same,” and was gone.

There seemed to be no interval of time between this moment and the occupation of The Dolphin by uniformed policemen with heavy necks and shoulders and quiet voices. Peregrine met the Sergeant.

“Are you in charge? There’s something else since I telephoned. A boy. Hurt but alive. Will you look?”

The Sergeant looked. He said: “This might be serious. You haven’t touched him, sir?”

“No. Emily—Miss Dunne who is with us—Is ringing Ambulance.”

“Can we have some light?”

Peregrine, remembering at last where they were, put the houselights on. More police were coming in at the stage-door. He rejoined the Sergeant. A constable was told to stay by the boy and report any change.

“I’ll take a look at this body, if you please,” the Sergeant said.

Emily was at the telephone in the foyer saying, “It’s very urgent. It’s really urgent. Please.”

“If you don’t mind, Miss,” said the Sergeant and took the receiver. “Police here,” he said and was authoritative. “They’ll be round in five minutes,” he said to Emily.

“Thank God.”

“Now then, Mr. Jay.” He’d got Peregrine’s name as he came in.

“May I go back to the boy?” Emily asked. “In case he regains consciousness and is frightened? I know him.”

“Good idea,” said the Sergeant with a kind of routine heartiness. “You just stay there with the boy, Miss—?”

“Dunne.”

“Miss Dunne. Members of the company here, would it be?”

“Yes,” Peregrine said. “We were at the new restaurant in Wharfingers Lane and came back to shelter from the rain.”

“Is that so? I see. Well, Miss Dunne, you just stay with the boy and tell the Ambulance all you know. Now, Mr. Jay.”

A return to the sunken landing was a monstrous thing to contemplate. Peregrine said, “Yes, I’ll show you. If you don’t mind, I won’t—” and reminded himself of Hawkins. “It’s terrible,” he said. “I’m sorry to baulk. This way.”

“Up the stairs?” the Sergeant asked conversationally, as if he inquired his way to the Usual Offices. “Don’t trouble to come up again, Mr. Jay. The less traffic, you know, the better we like it.”

“Yes, of course. I forgot.”

“If you’ll just wait down here.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The Sergeant was not long on the landing. Peregrine could not help looking up at him and saw that, like himself, the Sergeant did not go beyond the top step. He returned and went to the telephone. As he passed Peregrine he said: “Very nasty, sir, isn’t it,” in a preoccupied voice.

Peregrine couldn’t hear much of what the Sergeant said into the telephone. “Some kind of caretaker—Jobbins—and a young lad—looks like it. Very good, sir. Yes. Yes. Very good.” And then after a pause and in a mumble of words, one that came through very clearly:

“—robbery—”

Never in the wide world would Peregrine have believed it of himself that a shock, however acute, or a slight, however appalling, could have so bludgeoned his wits. There, there on the wall opposite the one in which the treasure was housed, shone the telltale square of reflected light and there above his head as he stood on the stairs had been the exposed casket—exposed and brightly lit when it should have been shut off and—

He gave a kind of stifled cry and started up the stairs.

“Just a moment, sir. If you please.”

“The glove,” Peregrine said. “The letters and the glove. I must see. I must look.”

The Sergeant was beside him. A great hand closed without undue force round his upper arm.

“All right, sir. All right. But you can’t go up there yet, you know. You join your young lady and the sick kiddy. And if you’re referring to the contents of that glassed-in cabinet up there, I can tell you right away. It’s been opened from the back and they seem to have gone.”

Peregrine let out an incoherent cry and blundered into the stalls to tell Emily.

For him and for Emily the next half-hour was one of frustration, confusion and despair. They had to collect themselves and give statements to the Sergeant who entered them at an even pace in his notebook. Peregrine talked about hours and duties and who ought to be informed and Mr. Greenslade and Mr. Conducis, and he stared at the Sergeant’s enormous forefinger, flattened across the image of a crown on a blue cover. Peregrine didn’t know who Jobbin’s next-of-kin might be. He said, as if that would help: “He was a nice chap. He was a bit of a character. A nice chap.”

The theatre continually acquired more police: plainclothes, unhurried men, the most authoritative of whom was referred to by the Sergeant as the Div-Super and addressed as Mr. Gibson. Peregrine and Emily heard him taking a statement from Hawkins, who cried very much and said it wasn’t a fair go.

The ambulance came. Peregrine and Emily stood by while Trevor, the whites of his eyes showing under his heavy lashes and his breathing very heavy, was gently examined. A doctor appeared: the divisional-surgeon, Peregrine heard someone say. Mr. Gibson asked him if there was any chance of a return to consciousness and he said something about Trevor being deeply concussed.

“He’s got broken ribs and a broken right leg,” he said, “and an unbroken bruise on his jaw. It’s a wonder he’s alive. We won’t know about the extent of internal injuries until we’ve had a look-see,” said the divisional-surgeon. “Get him into St. Terence’s at once.” He turned to Peregrine. “Would you know the next-of-kin?”

Peregrine was about to say: “Only too well,” but checked himself. “Yes,” he said, “his mother.”

“Would you have the address?” asked Mr. Gibson. “And the telephone number.”

“In the office. Upstairs. No, wait a moment. I’ve a cast list in my pocketbook. Here it is: Mrs. Blewitt.”

“Perhaps you’d be so kind as to ring her, Mr. Jay.

She ought to be told at once. What’s the matter, Mr. Jay?”

“She meets him, usually. At the top of the lane. I— Oh God, poor Jobbins told me that. I wonder what she did when Trevor didn’t turn up. You’d have thought she’d have come to the theatre.”

“Can we get this boy away?” asked the divisional-surgeon crisply.

“O.K., Doc. You better go with them,” Mr. Gibson said to the constable who had stayed by Trevor. “Keep your ears open. Anything. Whisper. Anything. Don’t let some starched battleaxe push you about. We want to know what hit him. Don’t leave him, now.”

Mr. Gibson had a piece of chalk in his hand. He ran it round Trevor’s little heap of a body, grinding it into the carpet. “O.K.,” he said and Trevor was taken away.

The divisional-surgeon said he’d take a look-see at the body and went off with the Sergeant. Superintendent Gibson was about to accompany them when Peregrine and Emily, who had been in consultation, said: “Er—” and he turned back.

“Yes, Mr. Jay? Miss Dunne? Was there something?”

“It’s just,” Emily said, “—we wondered if you knew that Mr. Roderick Alleyn—I mean Superintendent Alleyn—supervised the installation of the things that were in the wall-safe. The things that have been stolen.”

“Rory Alleyn!” the Superintendent ejaculated. “Is that so? Now, why was that, I wonder?”

Peregrine explained. “I think,” he said finally, “that Mr. Vassily Conducis, who owns the things—”

“So I understand.”

“—asked Mr. Alleyn to do it as a special favour. Mr. Alleyn was very much interested in the things.”

“He would be. Well, thank you,” said Mr. Gibson rather heavily. “And now, if you’d phone this Mrs. Blewitt. Lives in my Division, I see. Close to our headquarters. If she can’t get transport to the hospital tell her, if you please, that we’ll lay something on. No, wait on. Second thoughts. I’ll send a policewoman round from the station if one’s available. Less of a shock.”

“Shouldn’t we ring her up—just to warn her someone’s coming?” Emily asked. “Should I offer to go?”

Mr. Gibson stared at her and said that he thought on the whole it would be better if Peregrine and Emily remained in the theatre a little longer, but, yes, they could telephone to Mrs. Blewitt after he himself had made one or two little calls. He padded off—not fast, not slow—towards the foyer. Peregrine and Emily talked disjointedly. After some minutes they heard sounds of new arrivals by the main entrance and of Superintendent Gibson greeting them.

“None of this is real,” Emily said presently.

“Are you exhausted?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I ought to tell Greenslade,” Peregrine ejaculated. “He ought to be told, good God!”

“And Mr. Conducis? After all, it’s his affair.”

“Greenslade can tackle that one. Emily, are you in a muddle like me? I can’t get on top of this. Jobbins. That appalling kid. Shakespeare’s note and the glove. All broken or destroyed or stolen. Isn’t it beastly, all of it? What are human beings? What’s the thing that makes monsters of us all?”

“It’s out of our country. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“No, but we act it. It’s our raw material. Murder. Violence. Theft. Sexual greed. They’re commonplace to us. We do our Stanislavsky over them. We search out motives and associated experiences. We try to think our way into Macbeth or Othello or a witch-hunt or an Inquisitor or a killer-doctor at Auschwitz and sometimes we think we’ve succeeded. But confront us with the thing itself! It’s as if a tractor had rolled over us. We’re nothing. Superintendent Gibson is there instead to put it all on a sensible, factual basis.”

“Good luck to him,” said Emily rather desperately.

“Good luck? You think? All right, if you say so.”

“Perhaps I can now ring up Mrs. Blewitt.”

“I’ll come with you.”

The foyer was brilliantly lit and there were voices and movement upstairs where Jobbins lay. Cameramen’s lamps flashed and grotesquely reminded Peregrine of the opening night of his play. Superintendent Gibson’s voice and that of the divisional-surgeon were clearly distinguishable. There was also a new rather comfortable voice. Downstairs, a constable stood in front of the main doors. Peregrine told him that Mr. Gibson had said they might use the telephone, and the constable replied pleasantly that it would be quite all right he was sure.

Peregrine watched Emily dial the number and wait with the receiver to her ear. How pale she was. Her hair was the kind that goes into a mist after it has been out in the rain and her wide mouth drooped at the corners like a child’s. He could hear the buzzer ringing, on and on. Emily had just shaken her head at him when the telephone quacked angrily. She spoke for some time, evidently to no avail and at last hung up.

“A man,” she said. “A landlord, I should think. He was livid. He says Mrs. Blewitt went to a party after her show and didn’t meet Trevor tonight. He says she’s ‘flat out to it’ and nothing would rouse her. So he hung up.”

“The policewoman will have to cope. I’d better rouse Greenslade, I suppose. He lives at some godawful place in the stockbrokers’ belt. Here goes.”

Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Greenslade had a bedside telephone. She could be heard, querulous and half asleep, in the background. Mr. Greenslade said: “Shut up, darling. Very well, Jay, I’ll come down. Does Alleyn know?”

“I—don’t suppose so. I told the Superintendent that Alleyn would be concerned.”

“He should have been told. Find out, will you? I’ll come at once.”

“Find out,” Peregrine angrily repeated to Emily. “I can’t go telling the police who they ought to call in, blast it. How can I find out if Alleyn’s been told?”

“Easily,” Emily rejoined with a flicker of a smile. “Because, look.”

The constable had opened the pass-door in the main entrance and now admitted Superintendent Alleyn in the nearest he ever got to a filthy temper.

Alleyn had worked late and unfruitfully at the Yard in company with Inspector Fox. As he let himself into his own house he heard the telephone ring, swore loudly and got to it just as his wife, Troy, took the receiver off in their bedroom.

It was the Chief Commander who was his immediate senior at the Yard. Alleyn listened with disgust to his story. “—and so Fred Gibson thought that as you know Conducis and had a hand in the installation, he’d better call us. He just missed you at the Yard. All things considered I think you’d better take over, Rory. It’s a big one. Murder. Double, if the boy dies. And robbery of these bloody, fabulous museum pieces.”

“Very good,” Alleyn said. “All right. Yes.”

“Got your car out or garaged?”

“Thank you. Out.”

It was nothing new to turn round in his tracks after one gruelling day and work through till the next. He took five minutes to have a word with Troy and a rapid shave and was back in the car and heading for the Borough within half an hour of leaving the Yard. The rain had lifted but the empty streets glistened under their lamps.

He could have kicked himself from Whitehall to Bankside. Why, why, why hadn’t he put his foot down about the safe and its silly window and bloody futile combination lock? Why hadn’t he said that he would on no account recommend it? He reminded himself that he had given sundry warnings but snapped back at himself that he should have gone further. He should have telephoned Conducis and advised him not to go on with the public display of the Shakespeare treasures. He should have insisted on that ass of a business manager scrapping his imbecile code word, penetrable in five minutes by a certified moron, and should have demanded a new combination. The fact that he had been given no authority to do so and had nevertheless urged precisely this action upon Mr. Winter Meyer made ao difference. He should have thrown his weight about.

And now some poor damned commissionaire had been murdered. Also, quite probably, that unspeakably ghastly little boy who had cheeked him in The Dolphin. And Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove and Hamnet’s father’s message had inspired these atrocities and were gone. Really, Alleyn thought, as he drew up by the portico of The Dolphin Theatre, he hadn’t been so disgruntled since he took a trip to Cape Town with a homicidal pervert.

Then he entered the theatre and came face-to-face with Peregrine and Emily and saw how white and desperate they looked and recognized the odd vagueness that so often overcomes people who have been suddenly confronted with a crime of violence. He swallowed his chagrin and summoned up the professionalism that he had once sourly defined as an infinite capacity to notice less and less with more and more accuracy.

He said: “This is no good at all, is it? What are you two doing here?”

“We got here,” Peregrine said, “just after.”

“You look as if you’d better go and sit down somewhere. ’Morning, Fred,” Alleyn said, meeting Superintendent Gibson at the foot of the stair. “What’s first?” He looked towards the half-landing and without waiting for an answer walked upstairs followed by Gibson.

Among the group of men and cameras was an elderly thick-set man with a grizzled moustache and bright eyes.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You again.”

“That’s right, Mr. Alleyn,” said Inspector Fox. “Just beat you to it. I was still at the Yard when they rang up so the C.C. said I might as well join in. Don’t quite know why and I daresay Fred doesn’t either.”

“More the merrier,” Mr. Gibson rejoined gloomily. “This looks like being an extra curly one.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “I’d better see.”

“We covered him,” Gibson said. “With a dust sheet. It’s about as bad as they come. Worst I’ve ever seen. Now!”

“Very nasty,” Fox said. He nodded to one of the men. “O.K., Bailey.”

Detective-Sergeant Bailey, a finger-print expert, uncovered the body of Jobbins.

It was lying on its back with the glittering mask and single eye appallingly exposed. The loudly checked coat was open and dragged back into what must be a knotted lump under the small of the back. Between the coat and the dirty white sweater there was a rather stylish yellow scarf. The letter H had been embroidered on it. It was blotted and smeared. The sweater itself was soaked in patches of red and had ridden up over the chest. There was something almost homely and normal in the look of a tartan shirt running in sharp folds under the belted trousers that were strained across the crotch by spread-eagled legs.

Alleyn looked, waited an appreciable time and then said: “Has he been photographed? Printed?”

“The lot,” somebody said.

“I want to take some measurements. Then he can be moved. I see you’ve got a mortuary van outside. Get the men up.” The Sergeant moved to the stairhead. “Just make sure those two young people are out of the way,” Alleyn said.

He held out his hand and Fox gave him a steel springtape. They measured the distance from that frightful head to the three shallow steps that led up to the circle foyer and marked the position of the body. When Jobbins was gone and the divisional-surgeon after him, Alleyn looked at the bronze dolphin, glistening on the carpet

“There’s your weapon,” Gibson said unnecessarily.

The pedestal had been knocked over and lay across the shallow steps at the left-hand corner. The dolphin, detached, lay below it on the landing, close to a dark blot on the crimson carpet where Jobbins’s head had been. Its companion piece still made an elegant arc on the top of its own pedestal near the wall. They had stood to left and right at the head of the stairs in the circle foyer. Four steps below the landing lay a thick cup in a wet patch and below it another one and a small tin tray.

“His post,” Alleyn said, “was on this sunken landing under—”

He looked up. There, still brillantly lit, was the exposed casket, empty.

“That’s correct,” Gibson said. “He was supposed to stay there until he was relieved by this chap Hawkins at midnight.”

“Where is this Hawkins?”

“Ah,” Gibson said disgustedly, “sobbing his little heart out in the gent’s cloaks. He’s gone to pieces.”

Fox said austerely, “He seems to have acted very foolishly from the start. Comes in late. Walks up here. Sees deceased and goes yelling out of the building.”

“That’s right,” Gibson agreed. “And if he hadn’t run into this Mr. Jay and his lady friend he might be running still and us none the wiser.”

“So it was Jay who rang police?” Alleyn interjected.

“That’s correct.”

“What about their burglar alarm?”

“Off. The switch is back of the box-office.”

“I know. They showed me. What then, Fred?”

“The Sergeant’s sent in and gets support. I get the office and I come in and we set up a search. Thought our man might be hiding on the premises but not. Either got out of it before Hawkins arrived or slipped away while he was making an exhibition of himself. The pass-door in the main entrance was shut but not locked. It had been locked, they say, so it looked as if that was his way out.”

“And the boy?”

“Yes. Well, now. The boy. Mr. Jay says the boy’s a bit of a young limb. Got into the habit of hanging round after the show and acting the goat. Jobbins complained of him making spook noises and that. He was at it before Mr. Jay and Miss Dunne left the theatre to go out to supper. Mr. Jay tried to find him but it was dark and he let out a catcall or two and then they heard the stage-door slam and reckoned he’d gone. Not, as it turns out.”

“Evidently. I’ll see Hawkins now, Fred.”

Hawkins was produced in the downstage foyer. He was a plain man made plainer by bloodshot eyes, a reddened nose and a loose mouth. He gazed lugubriously at Alleyn, spoke of shattered nerves and soon began to cry.

“Who’s going to pitch into me next?” he asked. “I ought to be getting hospital attention, the shock I’ve had, and not subjected to treatment that’d bring about an inquiry if I made complaints. I ought to be home in bed getting looked after.”

“So you shall be,” Alleyn said. “We’ll send you home in style when you’ve just told me quietly what happened.”

“I have! I have told. I’ve told them others.”

“All right. I know you’re feeling rotten and it’s a damn shame to keep you but you see you’re the chap we’re looking to for help.”

“Don’t you use that yarn to me. I know what the police mean when they talk about help. Next thing it’ll be the Usual Bloody Warning.”

“No, it won’t. Look here—I’ll say what I think happened and you jump on me if I’m wrong. All right?”

“How do I know if it’s all right!”

“Nobody suspects you, you silly chap,” Fox said. “How many more times!”

“Never mind,” Alleyn soothed. “Now, listen, Hawkins. You come down to the theatre. When? About ten past twelve?”

Hawkins began a great outcry against buses and thunderstorms but was finally induced to say he heard the hour strike as he walked down the lane.

“And you came in by the stage-door. Who let you in?”

Nobody, it appeared. He had a key. He banged it shut and gave a whistle and shouted. Pretty loudly, Alleyn gathered, because Jobbins was always at his post on the half-landing and he wanted to let him know he’d arrived. He came in, locked the door and shot the bolt. He supposed Jobbins was fed up with him for being late. This account was produced piecemeal and with many lamentable excursions. Hawkins now became extremely agitated and said what followed had probably made a wreck of him for the rest of his life. Alleyn displayed sympathy and interest, however, and was flattering in his encouragement. Hawkins gazed upon him with watering eyes and said that what followed was something chronic. He had seen no light in the Property Room so had switched his torch on and gone out to front-of-house. As soon as he got there he noticed a dim light in the circle. And there—it had given him a turn—in the front row, looking down at him was Henry Jobbins in his flash new overcoat.

“You never told us this!” Gibson exclaimed.

“You never arst me.”

Fox and Gibson swore quietly together.

“Go on,” Alleyn said.

“I said: ‘That you, Hen?’ and he says ‘Who d’yer think it is’ and I said I was sorry I was late and should I make the tea and he said yes. So I went into the Props Room and made it.”

“How long would that take?”

“It’s an old electric jug. Bit slow.”

“Yes? And then?”

“Oh Gawd. Oh Gawd.”

“I know. But go on.”

He had carried the two cups of tea through the house to the front foyer and up the stairs.

Here Hawkins broke down again in a big way but finally divulged that he had seen the body, dropped the tray, tried to claw his way out at the front, run by the side aisle through the stalls and pass-door, out of the stage-door and down the alley, where he ran into Peregrine and Emily. Alleyn got his address and sent him home.

“What a little beauty,” Fred Gibson said.

“You tell me,” Alleyn observed, “that you’ve searched the theatre. What kind of search, Fred?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Well—obviously, as you say, for the killer. But have they looked for the stuff?”

“Stuff?”

“For a glove, for instance and two scraps of writing?”

There was a very short silence and then Gibson said: “There hasn’t really been time. We would, of course.”

Fox said, “If he was surprised, you mean, and dropped them? Something of that nature?”

“It’s a forlorn hope, no doubt,” Alleyn said. He looked at Sergeant Bailey and the cameraman who was Sergeant Thompson-both of the Yard. “Have you tackled this dolphin?”

“Just going to when you arrived, sir,” Thompson said.

“Take it as it lies before you touch it. It’s in a ghastly state but there may be something. And the pedestal, of course. What’s the thing weigh?”

He went to the top of the stairs, took the other dolphin from its base, balanced and hefted it. “A tidy lump,” he said.

“Do you reckon it could have been used as a kind of club?” Fox asked.

“Only by a remarkably well-muscled-up specimen, Br’er Fox.” Alleyn replaced the dolphin and looked at it. “Nice,” he said. “He does that sort of thing beautifully.” He turned to Gibson. “What about routine, Fred?”

“We’re putting it round the divisions. Anybody seen in the precincts of The Dolphin or the Borough or further out. Might be bloody, might be nervous. That’s the story. I’d be just as glad to get back, Rory. We’ve got a busy night in my Div as it happens. Bottle fight at the Cat and Crow with a punch-up and knives. Probable fatality and three break-and-enters. And a suspected arson. You’re fully equipped, aren’t you?”

“Yes. All right, Fred, cut away. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Goodnight, then. Thanks.”

When Gibson had gone Alleyn said: “We’ll see where the boy was and then have a word with Peregrine Jay and Miss Dunne. How many chaps have you got here?” he asked the Sergeant

“Four at present, sir. One in the foyer, one at the stage-door, one with Hawkins and another just keeping an eye, like, on Mr. Jay and Miss Dunne.”

“Right. Leave the stage-door man and get the others going on a thorough search. Start in the circle. Where was this boy?”

“In the stalls, sir. Centre aisle and just under the edge of the circle.”

“Tell them not to touch the balustrade. Come on, Fox.”

When Alleyn and Fox went into the now fully lit stalls the first thing they noticed was a rather touching group made by Peregrine and Emily. They sat in the back row by the aisle. Peregrine’s head had inclined to Emily’s shoulder and her arm was about his neck. He was fast asleep. Emily stared at Alleyn, who nodded. He and Fox walked down the aisle to the chalk outline of Trevor’s body.

“And the doctor says a cut on the head, broken thigh and ribs, a bruise on the jaw and possible internal injuries?”

“That’s correct,” Fox agreed.

Alleyn looked at the back of the aisle seat above the trace of the boy’s head. “See here, Fox.”

“Yes. Stain all right. Still damp, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Yes.”

They both moved a step or two down the aisle and looked up at the circle. Three policemen and the Sergeant with Thompson and Bailey were engaged in a methodical search.

“Bailey,” Alleyn said, raising his voice very slightly.

“Sir?”

“Have a look at the balustrade above us here. Look at the pile in the velvet. Use your torch if necessary.”

There was a longish silence broken by Emily’s saying quietly: “It’s all right. Go to sleep again.”

Bailey moved to one side and looked down into the stalls. “We got something here, Mr. Alleyn,” he said. “Two sets of tracks with the pile dragged slantways in a long diagonal line outwards towards the edge. Some of it removed. Looks like fingernails. Trace of something that might be shoe-polish.”

“All right. Deal with it, you and Thompson.”

Fox said, “Well, well: a fall, eh?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it? A fall from the circle about twenty feet. I suppose nobody looked at the boy’s fingernails. Who found him?” Fox, with a jerk of his head, indicated Peregrine and Emily. “They’d been sent in here,” he said, “to get them out of the way.”

“We’ll talk to them now, Fox.”

Peregrine was awake. He and Emily sat hand-in-hand and looked more like displaced persons than anything else, an effect that was heightened by the blueness of Peregrine’s jaws and the shadows under their eyes.

Alleyn said: “I’m sorry you’ve been kept so long. It’s been a beastly business for both of you. Now, I’m going to ask Mr. Fox to read over what you have already said to Mr. Gibson and his Sergeant and you shall tell us if, on consideration, this is a fair statement.”

Fox did this and they nodded and said yes: that was it.

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Then there’s only one other question. Did either of you happen to notice Trevor Vere’s fingernails?”

They stared at him and both repeated in pallid voices: “His fingernails?”

“Yes. You found him and I think you, Miss Dunne, stayed with him until he was taken away.”

Emily rubbed her knuckles in her eyes. “Oh dear,” she said, “I must pull myself together. Yes. Yes, of course I did. I stayed with him.”

“Perhaps you held his hand as one does with a sick child?”

“It’s hard to think of Trevor as a child,” Peregrine said. “He was born elderly. Sorry.”

“But I did,” Emily exclaimed. “You’re right. I felt his pulse and then, you know, I just went on holding his hand.”

“Looking at it?”

“Not specially. Not glaring at it. Although—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I remember I did sort of look at it. I moved it between my own hands and I remember noticing how grubby it was, which made it childish and—then—there was something—” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I thought he’d got rouge or carmine make-up under his nails and then I saw it wasn’t grease. It was fluff.”

“I tell you what,” Alleyn said. “We’ll put you up for the Police Medal, you excellent girl. Fox: get on to St. Terence’s Hospital and tell them it’s as much as their life is worth to dig out that boy’s nails. Tell our chap there he can clean them himself and put the harvest in an envelope and get a witness to it. Throw your bulk about. Get the top battleaxe and give her fits. Fly.”

Fox went off at a stately double.

“Now,” Alleyn said. “You may go, both of you. Where do you live?”

They told him. Blackfriars and Hempstead, respectively.

“We could shake you down, Emily,” Peregrine said. “Jeremy and I.”

“I’d like to go home, please, Perry. Could you call a taxi?”

“I think we can send you,” Alleyn said. “I shan’t need a car yet awhile and there’s a gaggle of them out there.”

Peregrine said: “I ought to wait for Greenslade, Emily.”

“Yes, of course you ought.”

“Well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll bundle you off to Hampstead, Miss Dunne. Where’s the Sergeant?”

“Here, sir,” said the Sergeant unexpectedly. He had come in from the foyer.

“What’s the matter?” Alleyn asked. “What’ve you got there?”

The Sergeant’s enormous hands were clapped together in front of him and arched a little as if they enclosed something that fluttered and might escape.

“Seventh row of the stalls, sir,” he said, “centre aisle. On the floor about six foot from where the boy lay. There was a black velvet kind of easel affair and a sheet of polythene laying near them.”

He opened his palms like a book and disclosed a little wrinkled glove and two scraps of paper.

“Would they be what was wanted?” asked the Sergeant.

“To me,” said Mr. Greenslade with palapable self-restraint, “there can be only one explanation, my dear Alleyn. The boy, who is, as Jay informs us, an unpleasant and mischievous boy, banged the door to suggest he’d gone but actually stayed behind and, having by some means learned the number of the combination, robbed the safe of its contents. He was caught in the act by Jobbins, who must have seen him from his post on the half-landing. As Jobbins made for him the boy, possibly by accident, overturned the pedestal. Jobbins was felled by the dolphin and the boy, terrified, ran into the circle and down the centre aisle. In his panic he ran too fast, stumbled across the balustrade, clutched at the velvet top and fell into the stalls. As he fell he let go the easel with the glove and papers and they dropped, as he did, into the aisle.”

Mr. Greenslade, looking, in his unshaven state, strangely unlike himself, spread his hands and threw himself back in Winter Meyer’s office chair. Peregrine sat behind his own desk and Alleyn and Fox in two of the modish seats reserved for visitors. The time was twelve minutes past three and the air stale with the aftermath of managerial cigarettes and drinks.

“You say nothing,” Mr. Greenslade observed. “You disagree?”

Alleyn said: “As an open-and-shut theory it has its attractions. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It means that we all sit back and hope for the boy to recover consciousness and health so that we can send him up to the Juvenile Court for manslaughter.”

“What I can’t quite see—” Peregrine began and then said, “Sorry.”

“No. Go on,” Alleyn said.

“I can’t see why the boy, having got the documents and glove, should come out to the circle foyer where he’d be sure to be seen by Jobbins on the half-landing. Why didn’t he go down through the circle by the box, stairs, and pass-door to the stage and let himself out by the stage-door?”

“He might have wanted to show off. He might have —I am persuaded,” Mr. Greenslade said crossly, “that your objections can be met.”

“There’s another thing,” Peregrine said, “and I should have thought of it before. At midnight, Jobbins had to make a routine report to police and fire-station. He’d do it from the open telephone in the downstairs foyer.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Greenslade. “That would give the boy his opportunity. What do you say, Alleyn?”

“As an investigating officer I’m supposed to say nothing,” Alleyn said lightly. “But since the people at the bistro up the lane and the wretched Hawkins all put Jay out of the picture as a suspect and you yourself appear to have been some thirty miles away—”

“Well, I must say!”

“—there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask you to consider under what circumstances the boy, still clutching his booty, could have fallen from the circle with his face towards the balustrade and as he fell have clawed at the velvet top, palms down in such a posture that he’s left nail-tracks almost parallel with the balustrade but slanting towards the outside. There are also traces of boot polish that suggest one of his feet brushed back the pile at the same time. I cannot, myself, reconcile these traces with a nose-dive over the balustrade. I can relate them to a blow to the jaw, a fall across the balustrade, a lift, a sidelong drag and a drop. I also think Jay’s objections are very well urged. There may be answers to them but at the moment I can’t think of any. What’s more, if the boy’s the thief and killer, who unshot the bolts and unslipped the iron bar on the little pass-door in the main front entrance? Who left the key in the lock and banged the door shut from outside?”

“Did someone do this?”

“That’s how things were when the police arrived.”

“I—I didn’t notice. I didn’t notice that,” Peregrine said, putting his hand to his eyes. “It was the shock, I suppose.”

“I expect it was.”

“Jobbins would have bolted the little door and dropped the bar when everyone had gone and I think he always hung the key in the corner beyond the box-office. No,” Peregrine said slowly, “I can’t see the boy doing that thing with the door. It doesn’t add up.”

“Not really, does it?” Alleyn said mildly.

“What action,” Mr. Greenslade asked, “do you propose to take?”

“The usual routine, and a very tedious affair it’s likely to prove. There may be useful prints on the pedestal or the dolphin itself but I’m inclined to think that the best we can hope for there is negative evidence. There may be prints on the safe but so far Sergeant Bailey has found none. The injuries to the boy’s face are interesting.”

“If he recovers consciousness,” Peregrine said, “he’ll tell the whole story.”

“Not if he’s responsible,” Mr. Greenslade said obstinately.

“Concussion,” Alleyn said, “can be extremely tricky. In the meantime, of course, we’ll have to find out about all the members of the company and the front-of-house staff and so on.”

“Find out?”

“Their movements for one thing. You may be able to help us here,” Alleyn said to Peregrine. “It seems that apart from the boy, you and Miss Dunne were the last to leave the theatre. Unless, of course, somebody lay doggo until you’d gone. Which may well be the case. Can you tell us anything about how and when and by what door the other members of the cast went out?”

“I think I can,” Peregrine said. He was now invested with the kind of haggard vivacity that follows emotional exhaustion: a febrile alertness such as he had often felt after some hideously protracted dress-rehearsal. He described the precautions taken at the close of every performance to insure that nobody was left on the premises. A thorough search of the house was made by backstage and front-of-house staff. He was certain it would have been quite impossible for anybody in the audience to hide anywhere in the theatre.

He related rapidly and accurately how the stage-crew left the theater in a bunch and how Gertrude Bracey and Marcus Knight went out together through the auditorium to escape the wet. They had been followed by Charles Random, who was alone and used the stage-door, and then by Emily, who stayed offstage with Peregrine.

“And then,” Peregrine said, “Destiny Meade and Harry Grove came out with a clutch of friends. They were evidently going on to a party. They went down the stage-door alley and I heard Harry call out that he’d fetch something or another and Destiny tell him not to be too long. And it was then—I’d come back from having a look at the weather—It was then that I fancied—” He stopped.

“Yes?”

“I thought that the pass-door from stage to front-of-house moved. It was out of the tail of my eye, sort of. If I’m right, and I think I am, it must have been that wretched kid, I suppose.”

“But you never saw him?”

“Never. No. Only heard him.” And Peregrine described how he had gone out to the front and his subsequent interview with Jobbins. Alleyn took him over this again because, so he said, he wanted to make sure he’d got it right “You shaped up to chasing the boy, did you? After you heard him catcall and slam the stage-door?”

“Yes. But Jobbins pointed out he’d be well on his way. So we said goodnight and—”

“Yes?”

“I’ve just remembered. Do you know what we said to each other? I said: ‘This is your last watch,’ and he said: ‘That’s right. Positively the last appearance.’ Because the treasure was to be taken away today, you see. And after that Jobbins wouldn’t have had to be glued to the half-landing.”

Greenslade and Fox made slight appropriate noises. Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “And so you said goodnight and you and Miss Dunne left? By the stage-door?”

“Yes.”

“Was it locked? Before you left?”

“No. Wait a moment, though. I think the Yale lock was on but certainly not the bolts. Hawkins came in by the stage-door. He had a key. He’s a responsible man from a good firm, though you wouldn’t think it from his behaviour tonight. He let himself in and then shot the bolts.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “We got that much out of him. Nothing else you can tell us?”

Peregrine said: “Not as far as I can think. But all the same I’ve got a sort of notion that there’s some damn thing I’ve forgotten. Some detail.”

“To do with what? Any idea?”

“To do with — I don’t know. The boy, I think.”

The boy?”

“I fancy I was thinking about a production of The Cherry Orchard, but — no, it’s gone and I daresay it’s of no consequence.”

Mr. Greenslade said: “I know this is not your concern, Alleyn, but I hope you don’t mind my raising the point with Jay. I should like to know what happens to the play. Does the season continue? I am unfamiliar with theatrical practice.”

Peregrine said with some acidity: “Theatrical practice doesn’t habitually cover the death by violence of one of its employees.”

“Quite.”

“But all the same,” Peregrine said, “there is a certain attitude—”

“Quite. Yes. The — er — ‘the show,’ ” quoted Mr. Greenslade self-consciously, “ ‘must go on.’ ”

“I think we should go on. The boy’s understudy’s all right. Tomorrow—no, today’s Sunday, which gives us a chance to collect ourselves.” Peregrine fetched up short and turned to Alleyn. “Unless,” he said, “the police have any objection.”

“It’s a bit difficult to say at this juncture, you know, but we should be well out of The Dolphin by Monday night. Tomorrow night, in fact. You want an answer long before that, of course. I think I may suggest that you carry on as if for performance. If anything crops up to change the situation we shall let you know at once.”

With an air of shocked discovery Peregrine said:

“There’s a great deal to be done. There’s that—that—that—dreadful state of affairs on the half-landing.”

“I’m afraid we shall have to take up a section of the carpet. My chaps will do that. Can you get it replaced in time?”

“I suppose so,” Peregrine said, rubbing his hand across his face. “Yes; Yes, we can do something about it.”

“We’ve removed the bronze dolphin.”

Peregrine told himself that he mustn’t think about that. He must keep in the right gear and, oh God, he mustn’t be sick.

He muttered: “Have you? I suppose so. Yes.”

Mr. Greenslade said. “If there’s nothing more one can do—” and stood up. “One has to inform Mr. Conducis,” he sighed, and was evidently struck by a deadly thought. “The press!” he cried. “My God, the press!”

“The press,” Alleyn rejoined, “is in full lurk outside the theatre. We have issued a statement to the effect that a night watchman at The Dolphin has met with a fatal accident but that there is no further indication at the moment of how this came about.”

“That won’t last long,” Mr. Greenslade grunted as he struggled into his overcoat. He gave Alleyn his telephone numbers, gloomily told Peregrine he supposed they would be in touch and took his leave.

“I shan’t keep you any longer,” Alleyn said to Peregrine. “But I shall want to talk to all the members of the cast and staff during the day. I see there’s a list of addresses and telephone numbers here. If none of them objects I shall ask them to come here to The Dolphin, rather than call on them severally. It will save time.”

“Shall I tell them?”

“That’s jolly helpful of you but I think it had better be official.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Of course.”

“I expect you’ll want to tell them what’s happened and warn them they’ll be needed, but we’ll organize the actual interviews. Eleven o’clock this morning, perhaps.”

“I must be with them,” Peregrine said. “If you please.”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn said. “Goodnight.”

Peregrine thought absently that he had never seen a face so transformed by a far from excessive smile. Quite heartened by this phenomenon he held out his hand.

“Goodnight,” he said. “There’s one saving grace at least in all this horror.”

“Yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Peregrine said warmly and looked at a small glove and two scraps of writing that lay before Alleyn on Winter Meyer’s desk. “You know,” he said, “if they had been lost I really think I might have gone completely bonkers. You — you will take care of them?”

“Great care,” Alleyn said.

When Peregrine had gone Alleyn sat motionless and silent for so long that Fox was moved to clear his throat.

Alleyn bent over the treasure. He took a jeweller’s eyeglass out of his pocket. He inserted a long index finger in the glove and turned back the gauntlet. He examined the letters H.S. and then the seams of the glove and then the work on the back.

“What’s up, Mr. Alleyn?” Fox asked. “Anything wrong?”

“Oh, my dear Br’er Fox, I’m afraid so. I’m afraid there’s no saving grace in this catastrophe, after all, for Peregrine Jay.”