Killer Dolphin (18 page)

“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.”

“I didn’t knock you up when I came in,” Peregrine said. “There seemed no point. It was getting light. I just thought I’d leave the note to wake me at seven. And oddly enough I did sleep. Heavily.”

Jeremy stood with his back to Peregrine, looking out of the bedroom window. “Is that all?” he asked.

“All?”

“That happened?”

“I should have thought it was enough, my God!”

“I know,” Jeremy said without turning. “I only meant: did you look at the glove?”

“I saw it, I told you: the Sergeant brought it to Alleyn with the two documents and afterwards Alleyn laid them out on Winty’s desk.”

“I wondered if it was damaged.”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t
examine
it. I wouldn’t have been let. Fingerprints and all that. It seems they really do fuss away about fingerprints.”

“What’ll they do with the things?”

“I don’t know. Lock them up at the Yard, I imagine, until they’ve finished with them and then return them to Conducis.”

“To Conducis. Yes.”

“I must get up, Jer. I’ve got to ring Winty and the cast and the understudy and find out about the boy’s condition. Look, you know the man who did the carpets. Could you ring him up at wherever he lives and tell him he simply must send men in, first thing tomorrow or if necessary tonight, to replace about two or three square yards of carpet on the half-landing. We’ll pay overtime and time again and whatever.”

“The half-landing?”

Peregrine said very rapidly in a high-pitched voice: “Yes. The carpet. On the half-landing. It’s got Jobbins’s blood and brains all over it. The carpet.”

Jeremy turned gray and said: “I’m sorry. I’ll do that thing,” and walked out of the room.

When Peregrine had bathed and shaved he swallowed with loathing two raw eggs in Worcestershire sauce and addressed himself to the telephone. The time was now twenty past seven.

On the South Bank in the borough, of Southwark, Superintendent Alleyn, having left Inspector Fox to arrange the day’s business, drove over Blackfriars Bridge to St. Terence’s Hospital and was conducted to a ward where Trevor Vere, screened from general view and deeply sighing, lay absorbed in the enigma of unconsciousness. At his bedside sat a uniformed constable with his helmet under his chair and a notebook in his hand. Alleyn was escorted by the ward sister and a house-surgeon.

“As you see, he’s deeply concussed,” said the house-surgeon. “He fell on his feet and drove his spine into the base of his head and probably crashed the back of a seat. As far as we can tell there’s no profound injury internally. Right femur and two ribs broken. Extensive bruising. You may say he was bloody lucky. A twenty foot fall, I understand.”

“The bruise on his jaw?”

“That’s a bit of a puzzle. It doesn’t look like the back or arm of a seat. It’s got all the characteristics of a nice hook to the jaw. I wouldn’t care to say definitely, of course. Sir James has seen him.” (Sir James Curtis was the Home Office pathologist.) “
He
thinks it looks like a punch.”

“Ah. Yes, so he said. It’s no use my asking, of course, when the boy may recover consciousness? Or how much he will remember?”

“The usual thing is complete loss of memory for events occurring just before the accident.”

“Alas.”

“What? Oh, quite. You must find that sort of thing very frustrating.”

“Very. I wonder if it would be possible to take the boy’s height and length of his arms, would it?”

“He can’t be disturbed.”

“I know. But if he might he uncovered for a moment. It really is important.”

The young house-surgeon thought for a moment and then nodded to the sister, who folded back the bed-clothes.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” Alleyn said three minutes later and replaced the clothes.

“Well, if that’s all—?”

“Yes. Thank you very much. I mustn’t keep you. Thank you, Sister. I’ll just have a word with the constable, here, before I go.”

The constable had withdrawn to the far side of the bed.

“You’re the chap who came here with the ambulance, aren’t you?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“You should have been relieved. You heard about instructions from Mr. Fox concerning the boy’s fingernails?”

“Yes, I did, sir, but only after he’d been cleaned up.”

Alleyn swore in a whisper.

“But I’d happened to notice—” The constable — wooden-faced — produced from a pocket in his tunic a folded paper. “It was in the ambulance, sir. While they were putting a blanket over him. They were going to tuck his hands under and I noticed they were a bit dirty like a boy’s often are but the fingernails had been manicured. Colourless varnish and all. And then I saw two were broken back and the others kind of choked up with red fluff and I cleaned them out with my penknife.” He modestly proffered his little folded paper.

“What’s your name?” Alleyn asked.

“Grantley, sir.”

“Want to move out of the uniformed arm?”

“I’d like to.”

“Yes. Well, come and see me if you apply for a transfer.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Trevor Vere sighed lengthily in his breathing. Alleyn looked at the not-quite-closed eyes, the long lashes and the full mouth that had smirked so unpleasingly at him that morning in The Dolphin. It was merely childish now. He touched the forehead which was cool and dampish.

“Where’s his mother?” Alleyn asked.

“They say, on her way.”

“She’s difficult, I’m told. Don’t leave the boy before you’re relieved. If he speaks: get it.”

“They say he’s not likely to speak, sir.”

“I know. I know.”

A nurse approached with a covered object. “All right,” Alleyn said, “I’m off.”

He went to the Yard, treating himself to coffee and bacon and eggs on the way.

Fox, he was told, had come in. He arrived in Alleyn’s office looking, as always, neat, reasonable, solid and extremely clean. He made a succinct report. Jobbins appeared to have no near relations, but the landlady at The Wharfinger’s Friend had heard him mention a cousin who was lockkeeper near Marlow. The stage-crew and front-of-house people had been checked and were out of the picture. The routine search before locking up seemed to have been extremely thorough.

Bailey and Thompson had finished at the theatre, where nothing of much significance had emerged. The dressing-rooms had yielded little beyond a note from Harry Grove that Destiny Meade had carelessly tucked into her make-up box.

“Very frank affair,” Mr. Fox said primly.

“Frank about what?”

“Sex.”

“Oh. No joy for us?”

“Not in the way you mean, Mr. Alleyn.”

“What about the boy’s room?”

“He shares with Mr. Charles Random. A lot of horror comics including some of the American type that come within the meaning of the act respecting the importation of juvenile reading. One strip was about a well-developed female character called Slash who’s really a vampire. She carves up Olympic athletes and leaves her mark on them — ‘Slash,’ in blood. It seems the lad was quite struck with this. He’s scrawled ‘Slash’ across the dressing-room looking-glass with red greasepaint and we found the same thing on the front-of-house lavatory mirrors and on the wall of one of the upstairs boxes. The one on the audience’s left.”

“Poor little swine.”

“The landlady at The Wharfinger’s Friend reckons he’ll come to no good and blames the mother, who plays the steel guitar at that strip-tease joint behind Magpie Alley. Half the time she doesn’t pick the kid up after his show and he gets round the place till all hours, Mrs. Jancy says.”

“Mrs.—?”

“Jancy. The landlady. Nice woman. The Blewitts don’t live far off as it happens. Somewhere behind Tabard Street at the back of the Borough.”

“Anything more?”

“Well—dabs. Nothing very startling. Bailey’s been able to pick up some nice, clean, control specimens from the dressing-rooms. The top of the pedestal’s a mess of the public’s prints, half dusted off by the cleaners.”

“Nothing to the purpose?”

“Not really. And you would expect,” Fox said with his customary air of placid good sense, “if the boy acted vindictively, to find his dabs — two palms together where he pushed the thing over. Nothing of the kind, however, nice shiny surface and all. The carpet’s hopeless, of course. Our chaps have taken up the soiled area. Is anything the matter, Mr. AUeyn?”

“Nothing, Br’er Fox, except the word ‘soiled.’ ”

“It’s not too
strong
,” Fox said, contemplating it with surprise.

“No. It’s dreadfully moderate.”

“Well,” Fox said, after a moment’s consideration, “you have a feeling for words, of course.”

“Which gives me no excuse to talk like a pompous ass. Can you do some telephoning? And, by the way, have you had any breakfast? Don’t tell me. The landlady of The Wharfinger’s Friend stuffed you full of new-laid eggs.”

“Mrs. Jancy
was
obliging enough to make the offer.”

“In that case here is the cast and management list with telephone numbers. You take the first half and I’ll do the rest. Ask them with all your celebrated tact to come to the theatre at eleven. I think we’ll find that Peregrine Jay has already warned them.”

But Peregrine had not warned Jeremy because it had not occurred to him that Alleyn would want to see him. When the telephone rang it was Jeremy who,answered it; Peregrine saw his face bleach. He thought, “How extraordinary: I believe his pupils have contracted.” And he felt within himself a cold sliding sensation which he refused to acknowledge.

Jeremy said: “Yes, of course. Yes,” and put the receiver down. “It seems they want me to go to the theatre, too,” he said.

“I don’t know why. You weren’t there last night.”

“No. I was here. Working.” .

“Perhaps they want you to check that the glove’s all right.”

Jeremy made a slight movement, almost as if a nerve had been flicked. He pursed his lips and raised his sandy brows. “Perhaps,” he said and returned to his work-table at the far end of the room.

Peregrine, with some difficulty, got Mrs. Blewitt on the telephone and was subjected to a tirade in which speculation and avid cupidity were but thinly disguised under a mask of sorrow. She suffered, unmistakably from a formidable hangover. He arranged for a meeting, told her what the hospital had told him and assured her that everything possible would be done for the boy.

“Will they catch whoever done it?”

“It may have been an accident, Mrs. Blewitt.”

“If it was, the Management’s responsible,” she said, “and don’t forget it.”

They rang off.

Peregrine turned to Jeremy, who was bent over his table but did not seem to be working.

“Are you all right, Jer?”

“All right?”

“I thought you looked a bit poorly.”

“There’s nothing the matter with me. You look pretty sickly, yourself.”

“I daresay I do.”

Peregrine waited for a moment and then said: “When will you go to The Dolphin?”

“I’m commanded for eleven.”

“I thought I’d go over early. Alleyn will use our office and the company can sit about the circle foyer or go to their dressing-rooms.”

“They may be locked up,” Jeremy said.

“Who — the actors?”

“The dressing-rooms, half-wit.”

“I can’t imagine why, but you may be right. Routine’s what they talk about, isn’t it?”

Jeremy did not answer. Peregrine saw him wipe his hand across his mouth and briefly close his eyes. Then he stooped over his work: he was shaping a piece of balsa wood with a mounted razor blade. His hand jerked and the blade slipped. Peregrine let out an involuntary ejaculation. Jeremy swung round on his stool and faced him. “Do me a profound kindness and get the hell out of it, will you, Perry?”

“All right. See you later.”

Peregrine, perturbed and greatly puzzled, went out into the weekend emptiness of Blackfriars. An uncoordinated insistence of church bells jangled across the Sunday quietude.

He had nothing to do between now and eleven o’clock. “One might go into the church,” he thought but the idea dropped blankly on a field of inertia. “I can’t imagine why I feel like this,” he thought. “I’m used to taking decisions, to keeping on top of a situation.” But there were no decisions to take and the situation was out of his control. He couldn’t think of Superintendent Alleyn in terms of a racalcitrant actor.

He thought: “I know what I’ll do. I’ve got two hours, I’ll walk, like a character in Fielding or in Dickens, I’ll walk northwards, towards Hampstead and Emily. If I get blisters I’ll take the bus or a tube and if there’s not enough time left for that I’ll take a taxi. And Emily and I will go down to The Dolphin together.”

Having come to this decision his spirits lifted. He crossed Blackfriars Bridge and made his way through Bloomsbury towards Marylebone and Maida Vale.

His thoughts were divided between Emily, The Dolphin and Jeremy Jones.

Gertrude Bracey had a mannerism. She would glance pretty sharply at a companion but only for a second and would then, with a brusque turn of the head, look away. The effect was disconcerting and suggested not shiftiness so much as a profound distaste for her company. She smiled readily but with a derisive air and she had a sharp edge to her tongue. Alleyn, who never relied upon first impressions, supposed her to be vindictive.

He found support for this opinion in the demeanour of her associates. They sat round the office in The Dolphin on that Sunday afternoon, with all the conditioned ease of their training but with restless eyes and overtones of discretion in their beautifully controlled voices. This air of guardedness was most noticeable, because it was least disguised, in Destiny Meade. Sleek with fur, not so much dressed as gloved, she sat back in her chair and looked from time to time at Harry Grove who, on the few occasions when he caught her eye, smiled brilliantly in return. When Alleyn began to question Miss Bracey, Destiny Meade and Harry Grove exchanged one of these glances: on her part with brows raised significantly and on his with an appearance of amusement and anticipation.

Marcus Knight looked as if someone had affronted him and also as if he was afraid Miss Bracey was about to go too far in some unspecified direction.