Killer Dolphin

EIGHT Sunday Afternoon

“What did you think of that little party, Br’er Fox?”

“Odd chap, isn’t he? Very different in his manner to when he was annoying his colleagues. One of these inferiority complexes, I suppose. You brought him out, of course.”

“Do you think he’s dropped to the obvious speculation?”

“About the coat? I don’t fancy he’d thought of that one, Mr. Alleyn, and if I’ve got you right I must say it strikes me as being very far-fetched. You might as well say—well,” Fox said in his scandalized manner, “you might as well suspect I don’t know who. Mr. Knight. The sharp-faced lady Miss Bracey, or even Mr. Conducis.”

“Well, Fox, they all come into the field of vision, don’t they? Overcoat or no overcoat.”

“That’s so,” Fox heavily agreed. “So they do. So they do.” He sighed and after a moment said majestically, “D’you reckon he was trying to pull our legs?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. All the same there is a point, you know, Fox. The landing was very dim even when the safe was open and lit.”

“How does that interior lighting work? I haven’t had a look, yet”

“There’s a switch inside the hole in the wall on the circle side. What the thief couldn’t have realized is the fact that this switch works the sliding steel front door and that in its turn puts on the light.”

“Like a fridge.”

“Yes. What might have happened is something like this. The doors from the circle into the upper foyer were shut and the auditorium was in darkness. The thief lay doggo in the circle. He heard Jay and Miss Dunne go out and bang the stage-door. He waited until midnight and then crept up to the door nearest the hole in the wall and listened for Jobbins to put through his midnight report to Fire and Police. You’ve checked that he made this call. We’re on firm ground there, at least.”

“And the chap at the Fire Station, which was the second of his two calls, reckons he broke off a bit abruptly.”

“Exactly. Now, if I’m right so far—and I know damn well I’m going to speculate—our man would choose this moment to open the wall panel—It doesn’t lock—and manipulate the combination. He’s already cut the burglar alarm off at the main. He must have had a torch, but I wouldn’t mind betting that by intention or accident he touched the inner switch button and, without knowing he’d done so, rolled back the front door, which in its turn put on the interior lighting. If it was accidental he wouldn’t realize what he’d done until he’d opened the back of the safe and removed the black velvet display stand with its contents and found himself looking through a peephole across the upper foyer and sunken landing.”

“With the square of light reflected on the opposite wall.”

“As bright as ninepence. Quite bright enough to attract Jobbing’s attention.”

“Now it gets a bit dicey.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“What happens? This chap reckons he’d better make a bolt for it. But why does he come out here to the foyer?” Fox placidly regarded his chief. “This,” he continued, “would be asking for it. This would be balmy. He knows Jobbins is somewhere out here.”

“I can only cook up one answer to that, Fox. He’s got the loot. He intends to shut the safe, fore and aft, and spin the lock. He means to remove the loot from the display stand but at this point he’s interrupted. He hears a voice, a catcall, a movement. Something. He turns round to find young Trevor Vere watching him. He thinks Jobbins is down below at the telephone. He bolts through the door from the circle to this end of the foyer meaning to duck into the loo before Jobbins gets up. Jobbins would then go into the circle and find young Trevor and assume he was the culprit. But he’s too late. Jobbins, having seen the open safe, comes thundering up from below. He makes for this chap, who gives a violent shove to the pedestal, and the dolphin lays Jobbins flat. Trevor comes out to the foyer and sees this. Our chap goes for him. The boy runs back through the door and down the central aisle with his pursuer hard on his heels. He’s caught at the foot of the steps. There’s a struggle during which the boy grabs at the display stand. The polythene cover is dislodged, the treasure falls overboard with it. The boy is hit on the face. He falls across the balustrade, face down, clinging to it. He’s picked up by the seat of his trousers, swung sideways and heaved over, his nails dragging semi-diagonally across the velvet pile as he goes. At this point Hawkins comes down the stage-door alley.”

“You are having yourself a ball,” said Mr. Fox, who liked occasionally to employ the contemporary idiom. “How long does all this take?”

“From the time he works the combination it needn’t take more than five minutes. If that. Might be less.”

“So the time’s now—say—five past midnight”

“Say between twelve and twelve-ten.”

“Yerse,” said Fox and a look of mild gratification settled upon his respectable face. “And at twelve-five, or -ten or thereabouts Hawkins comes in by the stage-door, goes into the stalls and has a little chat with the deceased, who is looking over the circle balustrade.”

“I see you are in merry pin,” Alleyn remarked. “Hawkins, Mr. Smartypants, has a little chat with somebody wearing Jobbins’s new coat which Hawkins is just able to recognize in the scarcely lit circle. This is not, of necessity, Jobbins. So, you see, Harry Grove had a point about the coat.”

“Now then, now then.”

“Going too far, you consider?”

“So do you, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Well, of course I do. All this is purest fantasy. If you can think of a better one, have a go yourself.”

“If only,” Fox grumbled, “that kid could recover his wits, we’d all know where we were.”

“We might.”

“About this howd’yedo with the overcoat. Is your story something to this effect? The killer loses his loot, heaves the kid overboard and hears Hawkins at the stage-door. All right! He bolts back to the circle foyer. Why doesn’t he do a bunk by the pass-door in the front entrance?”

“No time. He knows that in a matter of seconds Hawkins will come through the auditorium into the front foyer. Consider the door. A mortice lock with the key kept on a hook behind the office. Two dirty great bolts and an iron bar. No time.”

“So you’re making out he grabs the coat off the body, puts it on, all mucky as it is with blood and Gawd knows what—”

“Only on the outside. And I fancy he took the scarf from the overcoat pocket and used it to protect his own clothes.”

“Ah. So you say he dolls himself up and goes back to the circle and tells Hawkins to make the tea?”

“In a croaking bronchial voice, we must suppose.”

“Then what? Humour me, Mr. Alleyn. Don’t stop.”

“Hawkins goes off to the Property Room and makes the tea. This will take at least five minutes. Our customer returns to the body and re-dresses it in the coat and puts the scarf round the neck. You noticed how the coat was: bunched up and stuffed under the small of the back. It couldn’t have got like that by him falling in it.”

“Damn, I missed that one. It’s an easy one, too.”

“Having done this he goes downstairs, gets the key, unlocks the pass-door in the front entrance, pulls the bolts, unslips the iron bar, lets himself out and slams the door. There’s a good chance that Hawkins, busily boiling up on the far side of the iron curtain, won’t hear it or if he does won’t worry. He’s a coolish customer, is our customer, but the arrival of Trevor and then Hawkins and still more the knowledge of what he has done—he didn’t plan to murder—having rattled him. He can’t do one thing.”

“Pick up the swag?”

“Just that. It’s gone overboard with Trevor.”

“Maddening for him,” said Mr. Fox primly. He contemplated Alleyn for some seconds.

“Mind you,” he said, “I’ll give you this. If it was Jobbins and not a murderer rigged out in Jobbins’s coat we’re left with a crime that took place after Jobbins talked to Hawkins and before Hawkins came round with the tea and found the body.”

“And with a murderer who was close by during the conversation and managed to work the combination, open the safe, extract the loot, kill Jobbins, half kill Trevor, do his stuff with the door and sling his hook—all within the five minutes it took Hawkins to boil up.”

“Well,” Fox said after consideration, “it’s impossible, I’ll say that for it. It’s impossible. And what’s that look mean, I wonder,” he added.

“Get young Jeremy Jones in and find out,” said Alleyn.

When Harry Grove came out of the office he was all smiles. “I bet you lot wonder if I’ve been putting your pots on,” he said brightly. “I haven’t really. I mean not beyond mentioning that you all hate my guts, which they could hardly avoid detecting, one would think.”

They can’t detect something that’s nonexistent,” Peregrine said crisply. “I don’t hate your silly guts, Harry. I think you’re a bloody bore when you do your enfant terrible stuff. I think you can be quite idiotically mischievous and more than a little spiteful. But I don’t hate your guts: I rather like you.”

“Perry: how splendidly detached! And Jeremy?”

Jeremy, looking as if he found the conversation unpalatable, said impatiently: “Good God, what’s it matter! What a lot of balls.”

“And Winty?” Harry said.

Meyer looked very coolly at him. “I should waste my time hating your guts?” He spread his hands. “What nonsense,” he said. “I am much too busy.”

“So, in the absence of Charlie and the girls, we find ourselves left with the King Dolphin.”

As soon as Harry had reappeared Marcus Knight had moved to the far end of the circle foyer. He now turned and said with dignity: “I absolutely refuse to have any part of this,” and ruined everything by shouting: “And I will not suffer this senseless, this insolent, this insufferable name-coining.”

“Ping!” said Harry. “Great strength rings the bell. I wonder if the Elegant Rozzer in there heard you. I must be off. Best of British luck—” he caught himself up on this familiar quotation from Jobbins and looked miserable. “That,” he said, “was not intentional,” and took himself off.

Marcus Knight at once went into what Peregrine had come to think of as his First Degree of temperament. It took the outward form of sweet reason. He spoke in a deathly quiet voice, used only restrained gesture and, although that nerve jumped up and down under his empurpled cheek, maintained a dreadful show of equanimity.

“This may not be, indeed emphatically is not, an appropriate moment to speculate upon the continued employment of this person. One has been given to understand that the policy is adopted at the instigation of the Management. I will be obliged, Winter, if at the first opportunity, you convey to the Management my intention, unless Hartly Grove is relieved of his part, of bringing my contract to its earliest possible conclusion. My agents will deal with the formalities.”

At this point, under normal circumstances he would undoubtedly have effected a smashing exit. He looked restlessly at the doors and stairways and, as an alternative, flung himself into one of the Victorian settees that Jeremy had caused to be placed about the circle foyer. Here he adopted a civilized and faintly Corinthian posture but looked, nevertheless, as if he would sizzle when touched.

“My dear, dear Perry and my dear Winty,” he said. “Please do take this as definite. I am sorry, sorry, sorry that it should be so. But there it is.”

Perry and Meyer exchanged wary glances. Jeremy, who had looked utterly miserable from the time he came in, sighed deeply.

Peregrine said, “Marco, may we, of your charity, discuss this a little later? The horrible thing that happened last night is such a black problem for all of us. I concede everything you may say about Harry. He behaves atrociously and under normal circumstances would have been given his marching orders long ago. If there’s any more of this sort of thing I’ll speak about it to Greenslade and if he feels he can’t take a hand I shall—I’ll go to Conducis himself and tell him I can no longer stomach his protégé. But in the meantime—please be patient, Marco.”

Marcus waved his hand. The gesture was beautiful and ambiguous. It might have indicated dismissal, magniloquence or implacable fury. He gazed at the ceiling, folded his arms and crossed his legs.

Winter Meyer stared at Peregrine and then cast up his eyes and very, very slightly rolled his head.

Inspector Fox came out of the office and said that if Mr. Jeremy Jones was free Superintendent Alleyn would be grateful if he could spare him a moment.

Peregrine, watching Jeremy go, suffered pangs of an undefined anxiety.

When Jeremy came into the office he found Alleyn seated at Winter Meyer’s desk with his investigation kit open before him and, alongside that, a copy of The Times. Jeremy stood very still just inside the door. Alleyn asked him to sit down and offered him a cigarette.

“I’ve changed to a pipe. Thank you, though.”

“So have I. Go ahead, if you want to.”

Jeremy pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch. His hands were steady but looked self-conscious.

“I’ve asked yon to come in,” Alleyn said, “on a notion that may quite possibly turn out to be totally irrelevant. If so you’ll have to excuse me. You did the decor for this production, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“If I may say so it seemed to me to be extraordinarily right. It always fascinates me to see the tone and character of a play reflected by its background without the background itself becoming too insistent.”

“It often does.”

“Not in this instance, I thought. You and Jay share a flat, don’t you? I suppose you collaborated over the whole job?”

“Oh, yes,” Jeremy said and, as if aware of being unforthcoming, he added: “It worked all right.”

“They tell me you’ve got a piece of that nice shop in Walton Street and are an authority on historic costume.”

“That’s putting it much too high.”

“Well, anyway, you designed the clothes and props for this show?”

“Yes.”

“The gloves for instance,” Alleyn said and lifted his copy of The Times from the desk. The gloves used in the play lay neatly together on Winter Meyer’s blotting pad.

Jeremy said nothing.

“Wonderfully accurate copies. And, of course,” Alleyn went on, “I saw you arranging the real glove and the documents on the velvet easel and putting them in the safe. That morning in the theatre some six months ago. I was there, you may remember.”

Jeremy half rose and then checked himself. “That’s right,” he said.

Alleyn lifted a tissue paper packet out of his open case, put it near Jeremy on the desk and carefully folded back the wrapping. He exposed a small, wrinkled, stained, embroidered and tasselled glove.

“This would be it?” he asked.

“I—yes,” said Jeremy, as white as a sheet.

“The glove you arranged on its velvet background with the two documents and covered with a sheet of polythene fastened with velvet-covered drawing pins?”

“Yes.”

“And then from the panel opening in the circle wall, you put this whole arrangement into the cache that you yourself had lined so prettily with padded gold silk. You used the switch that operates the sliding steel door in the foyer wall. It opened and the interior lights went on behind the convex plate-glass front of the cache. Then you shut the back door and spun the combination lock. And Peregrine Jay, Winter Meyer, Marcus Knight, young Trevor Vere, Miss Destiny Meade and Miss Emily Dunne all stood about, at your suggestion, in the circle foyer or the sunken landing and they all greately admired the arrangement. That right?”

“You were there, after all.”

“As I reminded you. I stayed in the circle, you know, and joined you when you were re-arranging the exhibits on their background.” He gave Jeremy a moment or two and, as he said nothing, continued.

“Last night the exhibits and their velvet background with the transparent cover were found in the centre aisle of the stalls, not far from where the boy lay. They had become detached from the black velvet display easel. I brought the glove in here and examined it very closely.”

“I know,” Jeremy said, “what you are going to say.”

“I expect you do. To begin with I was a bit worried about the smell. I’ve got a keen nose for my job and I seemed to get something foreign to the odour of antiquity, if one may call it that. There was a faint whiff of fish glue and paint which suggested another sort of occupational smell, clinging perhaps to somebody’s hands.”

Jeremy’s fingers curled. The nails were coloured rather as Trevor’s had been but not with velvet pile.

“So this morning I got my lens out and I went over the glove. I turned it inside out. Sacrilege, you may think. Undoubtedly, I thought, it really is a very old glove indeed and seems to have been worked over and redecorated at some time. And then, on the inside of the back where all the embroidery is—look, I’ll show you.”

He manipulated the glove, delicately turning it back on itself.

“Can you see? It’s been caught down by a stitch and firmly anchored and it’s very fine indeed. A single hair, human and—quite distinctly—red.”

He let the glove fall on its tissue paper. “This is a much better copy than the property ones and they’re pretty good. It’s a wonderful job and would convince anyone, I’d have thought, from the distance at which it was seen.” He looked up at Jeremy. “Why did you do it?” asked Alleyn.

Jeremy sat with his forearms resting on his thighs and stared at his clasped hands. His carroty head was very conspicuous. Alleyn noticed that one or two hairs had fallen on the shoulders of his suede jerkin.

He said: “I swear it’s got nothing to do with Jobbins or the boy.”

“That, of course, is our chief concern at the moment.”

“May Perry come in, please?”

Alleyn thought that one over and then nodded to Fox, who went out.

“I’d rather be heard now than any other way,” Jeremy said.

Peregrine came in, looked at Jeremy and went to him.

“What’s up?” he said.

“I imagine I’m going to make a statement. I want you to hear it.”

“For God’s sake, Jer, don’t make a fool of yourself. A statement? What about? Why?”

He saw the crumpled glove lying on the desk and the two prop gloves where Alleyn had displayed them.

“What’s all this?” he demanded. “Who’s been manhandling Hamnet’s glove?”

“Nobody, “ Jeremy said. “It’s not Hamnet’s glove. It’s a bloody good fake. I did it and I ought to know.” A long silence followed.

“You fool, Jer,” Peregrine said slowly. “You unspeakable fool.”

“Do you want to tell us about it, Mr. Jones?”

“Yes. The whole thing. It’s better.”

“Inspector Fox will take notes and you will be asked to sign them. If in the course of your statement I think you are going to incriminate yourself to the point of an arrest I shall warn you of this.”

“Yes. All right.” Jeremy looked up at Peregrine. “It’s O.K.,” he said. “I won’t. And don’t, for God’s sake, gawk at me like that. Go and sit down somewhere. And listen.”

Peregrine sat on the edge of his own desk.

“It began,” Jeremy said, “when I was going to the Vic and Alb to make drawings of the glove for the two props. Emily Dunne sometimes helps in the shop and she turned out a whole mass of old tatt we’ve accumulated to see what there was in the way of material. We found that pair over there and a lot of old embroidery silks and gold wire and some fake jewellery that was near enough for the props. But in the course of the hunt I came across”—he pointed—“that one. It’s genuine as far as age goes and within fifty years of the original. A small woman’s hand. It had the gauntlet and tassel but the embroidery was entirely different. I —I suppose I got sort of besotted on the real glove. I made a very, very elaborate drawing of it. Almost a trompe l’oeil job, isn’t it, Perry? And all the time I was working on the props there was this talk of Conducis selling the glove to a private collection in the U.S.A.”

Jeremy now spoke rapidly and directly to Alleyn.

“I’ve got a maggot about historic treasures going out of their native setting. I’d give back the Elgin Marbles to Athens tomorrow if I could. I started on the copy; first of all just for the hell of it. I even thought I might pull Peregrine’s leg with it when it was done or try it out on the expert at the Vic and Alb. I was lucky in the hunt for silks and for gold and silver wire and all. The real stuff. I did it almost under your silly great beak, Perry. You nearly caught me at it lots of times. I’d no intention, then, absolutely none, of trying substitution.”

“What did you mean to do with it ultimately? Apart from leg-pulling,” said Alleyn.

Jeremy blushed to the roots of his betraying hair. “I rather thought,” he said, “of giving it to Destiny Meade.”

Peregrine made a slight moaning sound.

“And what made you change your mind?”

“As you’ve guessed, I imagine, it was on the morning the original was brought here and they asked me to see it housed. I’d brought my copy with me. I thought I might just try my joke experiment. So I grabbed my chance and did a little sleight-of-hand. It was terribly easy: nobody, not even you, noticed. I was going to display the whole thing and if nobody spotted the fake, take the original out of my pocket, do my funny man ha-ha ever-been-had stuff, reswitch the gloves and give Destiny the copy. I thought it’d be rather diverting to have you and the expert and everybody doting and ongoing and the cameramen milling round and Marcus striking wonderful attitudes: all at my fake. You know?”

Peregrine said, “Very quaint and inventive. You ought to go into business with Harry Grove.”

“Well, then I heard all the chat about whether the cache was really safe and what you, Mr. Alleyn, said to Winty about the lock and how you guessed the combination. I thought: But this is terrifying. It’s asking for trouble. There’ll be another Goya’s Duke but this time it’ll go for keeps. I felt sure Winty wouldn’t get around to changing the combination. And then—absolutely on the spur of the moment—it was some kind of compulsive behaviour, I suppose—I decided not to tell about my fake. I decided to leave it on show in the theatre and to take charge of the original myself. It’s in a safe-deposit and very carefully packed. I promise you. I was going to replace it as soon as the exhibits were to be removed. I knew I’d be put in charge again and I could easily reverse the former procedure and switch back the genuine article. And then—then—there was the abominable bombshell.”

“And I suppose,” Peregrine observed, “I now understand your extraordinary behaviour on Friday.”

“You may suppose so. On Friday,” Jeremy turned to Alleyn, “Peregrine informed me that Conducis had sold or as good as sold, to a private collector in the U.S.A.”

Jeremy got up and walked distractedly about the office. Alleyn rested his chin in his hand, Fox looked over the top of his spectacles and Peregrine ran his hands through his hair.

“You must have been out of your wits,” he said.

“Put it like that if you want to. You don’t need to tell me what I’ve done. Virtually, I’ve stolen the glove.”

“Virtually?” Alleyn repeated. “There’s no ‘virtually’ about it. That is precisely what you’ve done. If I understand you, you now decided to keep the real glove and let the collector spend a fortune on a fake.”

Jeremy threw up his hands: “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t decided anything.”

“You don’t know what you proposed to do with young Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove?”

“Exactly. If this thing hadn’t happened to Jobbins and the boy and I’d been responsible for handing over the treasure: I don’t know, now, what I’d have done. I’d have brought Hamnet’s glove with me, I think. But whether I’d have replaced it—I expect I would but—I just do not know.”

“Did you seriously consider any other line of action? Suppose you hadn’t replaced the real glove—what then? You’d have stuck to it? Hoarded it for the rest of your life?”

“NO!” Jeremy shouted. “NO! Not that, I wouldn’t have done that. I’d have waited to see what happened, I think, and then—and then.”

“You realize that if the purchaser had your copy, good as it is, examined by an expert it would be spotted in no time?”

Jeremy actually grinned. “And I wonder what the Great God Conducis would have done about that one,” he said. “Return the money or brazen it out that he sold in good faith on the highest authority?”

“What you would have done is more to the point.”

“I tell you I don’t know. Would I let it ride? See what happened? Do a kidnap sort of thing perhaps? Phoney voice on the telephone saying if he swore to give it to the Nation it would be returned? Then Conducis could do what he liked about it.”

“Swear, collect and sell,” Peregrine said. “You must be demented.”

“Where is this safe-deposit?” Alleyn asked. Jeremy told him. Not far from their flat in Blackfriars.

“Tell me,” Alleyn went on, “how am I to know you’ve been speaking the truth? After all you’ve only handed us this rigmarole after I’d discovered the fake. How am I to know you didn’t mean to flog the glove on the freak black market? Do you know there is such a market in historic treasures?”

Jeremy said loudly, “Yes, I do. Perfectly well.”

“For God’s sake, Jer, shut up. Shut up.”

“No, I won’t. Why should I? I’m not the only one in the company to hear of Mrs. Constantia Guzmann.”

“Mrs. Constantia Guzmann?” Alleyn repeated.

“She’s a slightly mad millionairess with a flair for antiquities.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Harry Grove knows all about her. So,” added Jeremy defiantly, “do Marco and Charlie Random.”

“What is the Guzmann story?”

“According to Harry,” Jeremy began in a high voice and with what sounded like insecure irony, “she entertained Marco very lavishly when he had that phenomenal season in New York three years ago. Harry was in the company. It appears that Mrs. Guzmann, who is fifty-five, as ugly as sin and terrifying, fell madly in love with Marco. Literally—madly in love. She’s got a famous collection of pictures and objects d’art. Well, she threw a fabulous party—fabulous even for her—and when it was all over she kept Marco back. As a sort of woo she took him into a private room and showed him a collection of treasures that she said nobody else had ever seen.” Jeremy stopped short. The corner of Alleyn’s mouth twitched and his right eyebrow rose. Fox cleared his throat. Peregrine said wearily, “Ah, my God.”

“I mean,” Jeremy said with dignity, “precisely and literally what I say. Behind locked doors Mrs. Guzmann showed Marcus Knight jewels, snuff-boxes, rare books, Fauberge trinkets: all as hot as hell. Every one a historic collector’s item. And the whole shooting-match, she confided, bought on a sort of underground international black market. Lots of them had at some time been stolen. She had agents all over Europe and the Far East. She kept all these things simply to gloat over in secret and she told Marco she had shown them to him because she wanted to feel she was in his power. And with that she set upon him in no mean style. She carried the weight and he made his escape, or so he says, by the narrowest of margins and in a cold sweat. He got on quite well with Harry in those days. One evening when he’d had one or two drinks, he told Harry all about this adventure.”

“And how did you hear of it?”

Peregrine ejaculated: “I remember! When I told the company about the glove!”

“That’s right. Harry said Mrs. Constantia Guzmann ought to know of it. He said it with one of his glances—perhaps they should be called ‘mocking’ — at Marcus, who turned purple. Harry and Charlie Random and I had drinks in the pub that evening and he told us the Guzmann yarn. I must say he was frightfully funny doing an imitation of Mrs. Guzmann saying: ‘But I vish to be at you bercy. I log to be in your power. Ach, if you vould only betray be. Ach, but you have so beautiful a botty.’ ”

Peregrine made an exasperated noise.

“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Well knowing your views on theatre gossip, I didn’t relay the story to you.”

“Have other people in the company heard it?” Alleyn asked.

Jeremy said, “Oh, yes. I imagine so.”

Peregrine said, “No doubt Harry has told Destiny,” and Jeremy looked miserable. “Yes,” he said. “He did. At a party.”

Alleyn said, “You will be required to go to your safe-deposit with two C.I.D. officers, uplift the glove and hand it over to them. You will also be asked to sign a full statement as to your activities. Whether a charge will be laid I can’t at the moment tell you. Your ongoings, in my opinion, fall little short of lunacy. Technically, on your own showing, you’re a thief.”

Jeremy, now so white that his freckles looked like brown confetti, turned on Peregrine and stammered:

“I’ve been so bloody miserable. It was a kind of diversion. I’ve been so filthily unhappy.”

He made for the door. Fox, a big man who moved quickly, was there before him. “Just a minute, sir, if you don’t mind,” he said mildly.

Alleyn said: “All right, Fox. Mr. Jones: will you go now to the safe-deposit? Two of our men will meet you there, take possession of the glove and ask you to return with them to the Yard. For the moment, that’s all that’ll happen. Good-day to you.”

Jeremy went out quickly. They heard him cross the foyer and run downstairs.

“Wait a moment, will you, Jay?” Alleyn said. “Fox, lay that on, please.”

Fox went to the telephone and established a sub-fusc conversation with the Yard.

“That young booby’s a close friend of yours, I gather,” Alleyn said.

“Yes, he is. Mr. Alleyn, I realize I’ve no hope of getting anywhere with this but if I may just say one thing—”

“Of course, why not?”

“Well,” Peregrine said, rather surprised, “thank you. Well, it’s two things, actually. First: from what Jeremy’s told you, there isn’t any motive whatever for him to burgle the safe last night. Is there?”

“If everything he has said is true — no. If he has only admitted what we were bound to find out and distorted the rest, it’s not difficult to imagine a motive. Motives, however, are a secondary consideration in police work. At the moment, we want a workable assemblage of cogent facts. What’s your second observation?”

“Not very compelling, I’m afraid, in the light of what you’ve just said. He is, as you’ve noticed, my closest friend and I must therefore be supposed to be prejudiced. But I do, all the same, want to put it on record that he’s one of the most non-violent men you could wish to meet. Impulsive. Hot-tempered in a sort of sudden red-headed way. Vulnerable. But essentially gentle. Essentially incapable of the kind of thing that was perpetrated in this theatre last night. I know this of Jeremy, as well as I know it of myself. I’m sorry,” Peregrine said rather grandly. “I realize that kind of reasoning won’t make a dent in a police investigation. But if you would like to question anyone else who’s acquainted with the fool, I’m sure you’ll get the same reaction.”

“Speaking as a brutal and hide-bound policeman,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “I’m much obliged to you. It isn’t always the disinterested witness who offers the soundest observations and I’m glad to have your account of Jeremy Jones.”

Peregrine stared at him. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

“What for? Before we press on, though, I wonder if you’d feel inclined to comment on the Knight-Meade-Bracey-Grove situation. What’s it all about? A character actress scorned and a leading gent slighted? A leading lady beguiled and a second juvenile in the ascendant? Or what?”

“I wonder you bother to ask me since you’ve got it off so pat,” said Peregrine tartly.

“And a brilliant young designer in thrall with no prospect of delight?”

“Yes. Very well.”

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Let him be for the moment. Have you any idea who the U.S. customer for the treasure might be?”

“No. It wasn’t for publication. Or so I understood from Greenslade.”

“Not Mrs. Constantia Guzmann by any chance?”

“Good God, I don’t know,” Peregrine said. “I’ve no notion. Mr. Conducis may not so much as know her. Not that that would signify.”

“I think he does, however. She was one of his guests in the Kalliope at the time of the disaster. One of the few to escape, if I remember rightly.”

“Wait a bit. There’s something. Wait a bit.”

“With pleasure.”

“No, but it’s just that I’ve remembered—It might not be of the smallest significance—but I have remembered one incident, during rehearsals when Conducis came in to tell me we could use the treasure for publicity. Harry walked in here while we were talking. He was as bright as a button, as usual, and not at all disconcerted. He greeted Mr. Conducis like a long lost uncle, asked him if he’d been yachting lately and said something like: remember him to Mrs. G. Of course there are a thousand and one Mrs. G’s but when you mentioned the yacht—”

“Yes, indeed. How did Conducis take this?”

“Like he takes everything. Dead pan.”

“Any idea what the obligation was that Grove seems to have laid upon him?”

“Not a notion.”

“Blackmail by any chance, would you think?”

“Ah, no! And Conducis is not a queer in my opinion if that’s what you’re working up to. Nor, good Lord, is Harry! And nor, I’m quite sure, is Harry a blackmailer. He’s a rum customer and he’s a bloody nuisance in a company. Like a wasp. But I don’t believe he’s a bad lot. Not really.”

“Why?”

Peregrine thought for a moment. “I suppose,” he said at last, with an air of surprise, “that it must be because, to me, he really is funny. When he plays up in the theatre I become furious and go for him like a pick-pocket and then he says something outrageous that catches me on the hop and makes me want to laugh.” He looked from Alleyn to Fox. “Has either of you,” Peregrine asked, “ever brought a clown like Harry to book for murder?”

Alleyn and Fox appeared severally to take glimpses into their professional pasts.

“I can’t recall,” Fox said cautiously, “ever finding much fun in a convicted homicide, can you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Not really,” Alleyn agreed, “but I hardly think the presence or absence of the Comic Muse can be regarded as an acid test.”

Peregrine, for the first time, looked amused.

“Did you,” Alleyn said, “know that Mr. Grove is distantly related to Mr. Conducis?”

“I did not,” Peregrine shouted. “Who told you this?”

“He did.”

“You amaze me. It must be a tarradiddle. Though, of course,” Peregrine said, after a long pause, “it would account for everything. Or would it?”

“Everything?”

“The mailed fist of Management. The recommendation for him to be cast.”

“Ah, yes. What’s Grove’s background, by the way?”

“He refers to himself as an Old Borstalian but I don’t for a moment suppose it’s true. He’s a bit of an inverted snob, is Harry.”

“Very much so, I’m sure.”

“I rather think he started in the R.A.F. and then drifted on and off the boards until he got a big break a couple of years ago in Cellar Stairs. He was out of a shop, he once told me, for so long that he got jobs as a lorry-driver, a steward and a waiter in a strip-tease joint. He said he took more in tips than he ever made speaking lines.”

“When was that?”

“Just before his break, he said. About six years ago. He signed off one job and before signing on for another took a trip round the agents and landed star-billing in Cellar Stairs. Such is theatre.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Is that all?” Peregrine asked after a silence.

“I’m going to ask you to do something else for me. I know you’ve got the change of casting and internal affairs on your hands, but as soon as you can manage it I wonder if you’d take an hour to think back over your encounters with Mr. Conducis and your adventures of last night, and note down everything you can remember. Everything. And any other item, by the way, that you may have overlooked in the excitement.”

“Do you really think Condueis has got anything to do with last night?”

“I’ve no idea. He occurs. He’ll have to be found irrelevant before we may ignore him. Will you do this?”

“I must say it’s distasteful.”

“So,” said Alleyn, “is Jobbins’s corpse.”

“Whatever happened,” Peregrine said, looking sick, “and whoever overturned the bronze dolphin, I don’t believe it was deliberate, cold-blooded murder. I think he saw Jobbins coming at him and overturned the pedestal in a sort of blind attempt to stop him. That’s what I think and, my God,” Peregrine said, “I must say I do not welcome an invitation to have any part in hunting him down: whoever it was, the boy or anyone else.”

“All right. And if it wasn’t the boy, what about the boy? How do you fit him in as a useful buffer between your distaste and the protection of the common man? How do you think the boy came to be dropped over the circle? And believe me he was dropped. He escaped, by a hundred-to-one chance, being spilt like an egg over the stalls. Yes,” Alleyn said, watching Peregrine, “that’s a remark in bad taste, isn’t it? Murder’s a crime in bad taste. You’ve seen it, now. You ought to know.” He waited for a moment and then said, “That was cheating and I apologize.”

Peregrine said, “You needn’t be so bloody upright. It’s nauseating.”

“All right. Go away and vomit. But if you have second thoughts, sit down and write out every damn thing you remember of Conducis and all the rest of it. And now, if you want to go—go. Get the hell out of it.”

“Out of my own office, I’d have you remember. To kick my heels on the landing.”

Alleyn broke into laughter. “You have me there,” he said. “Never mind. It’s better, believe me, than kicking them in a waiting-room at the Yard. But all right, we’ll have another go. What can you tell me, if your stomach is equal to it, of the background of the other members of your company.” Alleyn raised a hand. “I know you have a loyalty to them and I’m not asking you to abuse it. I do remind you, Jay, that suspicion about this crime will fall inside your guild, your mystery, if I may put it like that, and that there’s going to be a great deal of talk and speculation. With the exception of yourself and Miss Dunne and Miss Meade, whose alibis seem to us to be satisfactory, and possibly Harry Grove, there isn’t one of the company, and I’m including Winter Meyer and Jeremy Jones, who absolutely could not have killed Jobbins and attacked the boy.”

“I can’t see how you make it out. They were all, except Trevor, seen to leave. I saw them go. The doors were locked and bolted and barred.”

“The stage-door was locked but not bolted and barred. Hawkins unlocked it with his own key. The small pass-door in the front was unlocked when Miss Bracey left and was not bolted and barred until after Meyer and Knight left. They heard Jobbins drop the bar.”

“That cuts them out, then, surely.”

“Look,” Alleyn said. “Put this situation to yourself and see how you like it. Jobbins is still alive. Somebody knocks on the pass-door in the front entrance. He goes down. A recognized voice asks him to open up—an actor has left his money in his dressing-room or some such story. Jobbins lets him in. The visitor goes backstage saying he’ll let himself out at the stage-door. Jobbins takes up his post. At midnight he does his routine telephoning and the sequel follows.”

“How do you know all this?”

“God bless my soul, my dear chap, for a brilliant playwright you’ve a quaint approach to logic. I don’t know it. I merely advance it as a way in which your lock-up theory could be made to vanish. There is at least one other, even simpler solution, which is probably the true one. The only point I’m trying to make is this. If you clamp down on telling me anything at all about any member of your company, you may be very fastidious and loyal and you may be protecting the actual butcher, but you’re not exactly helping to clear the other six—even if you count Conducis.”

Peregrine thought it over. “I think,” he said at last, “that’s probably a lot of sophistical hooey but I get your point. But I ought to warn you, you’ve picked a dud for the job. I’ve got a notoriously bad memory. There are things,” Peregrine said slowly, “at the back of my mind that have been worrying me ever since this catastrophe fell upon us. Do you think I can fetch them up? Not I.”

“What do you connect them with?”

“With noises made by Trevor, I think. And then, with Conducis. With that morning when he showed me the treasure. But of course then I was drunk so I’m unreliable in any case. However, tell me what you want to know and I’ll see about answering.”

“Too kind,” said Alleyn dryly. “Start with—anyone you like. Marcus Knight. What’s his background apart from the press hand-outs? I know all about his old man’s stationer’s shop in West Ham and how he went to a county school and rose to fame. Is it true he’s temperamental?”

Peregrine looked relieved. “If it’s only that sort of thing! He’s hell and well-known for it but he’s such a superb actor we all do our best to lump the temperament. He’s a jolly nice man really, I daresay, and collects stamps, but he can’t take the lightest criticism without going up like a rocket. An unfavourable notice is death to him and he’s as vain as a peacock. But people say he’s a sweetie at bottom even if it’s a fair way to bottom.”

Alleyn had strolled over to a display of photographs on the far wall: all the members of the cast in character with their signatures appended. Marcus Knight had been treated to a montage with his own image startlingly echoed by the Grafton portrait and the Droushout engraving. Peregrine joined him.

“Extraordinary,” Alleyn said. “The likeness. What a piece of luck!” He turned to Peregrine and found him staring, not at the picture but at the signature.

“Bold!” Alleyn said dryly.

“Yes. But it’s not that. There’s something about it. Damn! I thought so before. Something I’ve forgotten.”

“You may yet remember. Leave it. Tell me: is the sort of ribbing Knight got from Grove just now their usual form? All the King Dolphin nonsense?”

“Pretty much. It goes on.”

“If he’s as touchy as you say, why on earth hasn’t Knight shaken the Dolphin dust off his boots? Why does he stand it for one second?”

“I think,” Peregrine said with great simplicity, “he likes his part. I think that might be it.”

“My dear Jay, I really do apologize: of course he does. It’s no doubt the best role, outside Shakespeare, that he’ll ever play.”

“You think so? Really?”

“Indeed I do.”

Peregrine suddenly looked deeply happy. “Now, of course,” he said, “I’m completely wooed.”

“What can it matter what I think! You must know how good your play is.”

“Yes, but I like to be told. From which,” Peregrine said, “you may gather that I have a temperamental link with Marco Knight.”

“Were he and Destiny Meade lovers?”

“Oh yes. Going steady, it seemed, until Harry chucked poor Gertie and came rollicking in. We thought the casting was going to work out very cosily with Dessy and Marco as happy as Larry on the one hand and Gertie and Harry nicely fixed on the other. Maddening, this dodging round in a company. It always makes trouble. And with Marco’s capacity to cut up plug-ugly at the drop of a hat—anything might happen. We can only keep our fingers crossed.”

“Miss Meade is — she’s — I imagine, not an intellectual type.”

“She’s so stupid,” Peregrine said thoughtfully. “But so, so stupid it’s a kind of miracle. Darling Dessy. And yet,” he added, “there’s an element of cunning, too. Certainly, there’s an element of cunning.”

“What a problem for her director, in such a subtle role!”

“Not really. You just say: ‘Darling, you’re sad. You’re heartbroken. You can’t bear it,’ and up come the welling tears. Or: ‘Darling, you’ve been clever, don’t you see, you’ve been one too many for them,’ and she turns as shrewd as a marmoset. Or, simplest of all: ‘Darling, you’re sending him in a big way,’ and as she never does anything else it works like a charm. She does the things : the audience thinks them.”

“Temperamental?”

“Only for form’s sake when she fancies it’s about time she showed up. She’s quite good-natured.”

“Did she slap Knight back smartly or gradually?”

“Gradually. You could see it coming at rehearsals. In their love scenes. She began looking at her fingernails over his shoulder and pulling bits of mascara off her eyelashes. And then she took to saying could they just walk it because she was rethinking her approach. She talks like that but of course she never has an approach. Only an instinct backed up by superb techniques and great dollops of star-quality.”

“She divorced her second husband, I believe, and lives alone?”

“Well — yes. Officially.”

“Anything else about her?”

“She’s a terrific gambler, is Dessy. On the share-market, with the bookies and anything on the side that offers. That’s really what broke up the second marriage. He couldn’t do with all the roulette-party and poker-dice carry-on.”

“Is she a successful gambler?”

“I daresay she herself scarcely knows, so vague are her ways.”

“And Miss Bracey?”

“That’s a very different story. I don’t know anything about Gertie’s background but she really does bear out the Woman Scorned crack. She’s — she’s not all that charitably disposed at any time, perhaps, and this thing’s stirred her up like a wasp’s nest. She and Marco exhibit the heads-and-tails of despised love. Marco is a sort of walking example of outraged vanity and incredulous mortification. He can’t believe it and yet there it is. Rather touchingly, I think, he doesn’t until today seem to have taken against Dessy. But I’ve trembled lest he should suddenly rear back and have a wallop at Harry.”

“Hit him?”

“Yes. Bang-bang. Whereas Gertie doesn’t vent all she’s got on her rival but hisses and stings away at the faithless one.”

“And so Miss Meade is let off lightly at both ends and Grove is the object of a dual resentment?”

“And that’s throwing roses at it,” said Peregrine.

“Knight and Miss Bracey have a real, solid hatred for him? Is that putting it too high?”

“No, it’s not but—” Peregrine said quickly: “What is all this? What’s it matter how Marco and Gertie feel about Harry?”

“Nothing at all, I daresay. What about Random? Any comment on character?”

“Charlie? No trouble to anyone. Not, as you may have discerned, a hundred per cent he-man, but what of that? He doesn’t bring it into the theatre. It was quite all right to let him dress with the boy, for instance.”

“Hobbies?”

“Well, as you’ve heard: Ximenes-class crosswords. Cyphers. And old manuscripts. He’s quite an antiquarian, I’m told, is Charles. Jer says he’s one of those characters who possess an infallible nose for a rare item. He spends half his time among the sixpenny and shilling bins in Long Acre and the Charing Cross Road. Good, conscientious actor. Minor public school and drama academy.”

“Did all the members of the company know each other before this production?”

“Oh, yes. Except Emily. She’s at the beginning,” Peregrine said tenderly, “and doesn’t know many people in the West End yet.”

“Tell me, are you familiar with Harry Grove’s overcoats?”

“I caught sight of him going away the other night wearing a contraption that screamed its way up the lane like a fire-engine and heard a lot of carry-on about it among the company.”

“What was it?”

“I wasn’t close enough to—” Peregrine’s voice faded. He gaped at Alleyn. “Oh no!” he cried. “It can’t be. It’s not possible.”

“What?”

“On — on Henry Jobbins?”

“Grove gave his overcoat to Jobbins on Friday evening. He said nobody seemed to like it. Didn’t you know?”

Peregrine shook his head.

“I can’t imagine,” he said slowly, “I simply cannot imagine why I didn’t recognize it on poor Jobbins. I actually cracked a joke about it and he said it was a present.”

“Perhaps the scarf made a difference.”

“Scarf? I dont think he had a scarf on.”

“Did he not? A bright yellow scarf?”

“Wait. Yes,” said Peregrine, looking sick, “of course. I — I remember. Afterwards.”

“But not before? When you spoke to him?”

“I don’t remember it then. It wasn’t showing.”

“Please say nothing about the overcoat, Jay. It’s of the first importance that you don’t. Not even,” Alleyn said with a friendly air, “to your Emily.”

“Very well. May I know why it matters so much?”

Alleyn told him.

“Yes, I see. But it won’t really get you much further, will it?”

“If nobody knows of the transfer—”

“Yes, of course. Stupid of me.”

“And that really is all. I’m sorry to have kept you such an unconscionable time.”

Peregrine went to the door, hesitated and turned back.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, “to write down my Conduciae or should it be Conducii?”

“Or Conduciosis? Never mind. I’m glad you’ve decided to help. Thank you. Could you let me have it as soon as it’s ready?”

“Yes. All right. Where will you be?”

“Here for another hour I should think. And then wherever developments send me. We’ll leave a P.C. on duty in the theatre. If I’ve gone he’ll take a message. Do you really mind doing this?”

“No. Not if it’s remotely useful.”

“There now!” said Alleyn. “Goodbye for the moment, then. On your way out, would you ask Mr. Knight to come in?”

“Certainly. It’s half past twelve,” Peregrine said. “He’ll have got a bit restive, I daresay.”

“Will he indeed?” said Alleyn. “Send him in.”