Killer Dolphin (21 page)

He continued in this vein and it became evident that this able, essentially kind little man was at considerable pains to stop short of the suggestion that, properly controlled, the disaster, from a box-office angle, might turn out to be no such thing. “But we don’t
need
it,” he said unguardedly and embarrassed himself and most of his hearers. Harry Grove, however, gave one of his little chuckles.

“Well, that’s all perfectly splendid,” he said. “Everybody happy. We’ve no need of bloody murder to boost our door sales and wee Trevor can recover his wits as slowly as he likes. Grand.” He placed his arm about Destiny Meade, who gave him a mock-reproachful look, tapped his hand and freed herself.

“Darling,
do
be good,” she said. She moved away from him, caught Gertrude Bracey’s baleful eye and said with extreme graciousness: “Isn’t he
too
frightful?” Miss Bracey was speechless.

“I can see I’ve fallen under the imperial displeasure,” Grove murmured in a too-audible aside. “The Great King Dolphin looks as if it’s going to combust...”

Knight walked across the office and confronted Grove, who was some three inches shorter than himself. Alleyn was uncannily reminded of a scene between them in Peregrine’s play when the man of Stratford confronted the man of fashion while the Dark Lady, so very much more subtle than the actress who beautifully portrayed her, watched catlike in the shadow.

“You really are,” Marcus Knight announced, magnificently inflecting, “the most objectionable person—I will not honour you by calling you an actor—with whom it has been my deep, deep misfortune to appear in any production.”

“Well,” Grove remarked with perfect good humour, “it’s nice to head the dishonours list, isn’t it? Not having prospects in the other direction. Unlike yourself, Mr. Knight.
Mr. Knight
,” he continued, beaming at Destiny. “A contradiction in terms when one comes to think of it. Never mind: it simply
must
turn into Sir M. Knight (Knight) before many
more
New Years have passed.”

Peregrine said: “I am sick of telling you to apologize, Harry, for grossly unprofessional behaviour and begin to think you must be an amateur, after all. Please wait outside in the foyer until Mr. Alleyn wants you. No. Not another word. Out.”

Harry looked at Destiny, made a rueful grimace and walked off.

Peregrine went to Alleyn: “I’m sorry,” he muttered, “about that little dust-up. We’ve finished. What would you like us to do?”

“I’d like the women and Random to take themselves off and the rest of the men to wait outside on the landing.”

“Me included?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

“As a sort of control.”

“In the chemical sense?”

“Well—”

“O.K.,” Peregrine said. “What’s the form?”

“Just that.” Alleyn returned to the group of players. “If you wouldn’t mind moving out to the circle foyer,” he said. “Mr. Jay will explain the procedure.”

Peregrine marshalled them out.

They stood in a knot in front of the shuttered bar and they tried not to look down in the direction of the half-landing. The lowest of the three steps from the foyer to the half-landing, and the area where Jobbins had lain, were stripped of carpet. The police had put down canvas sheeting. The steel doors of the wall safe above the landing were shut. Between the back of the landing and the wall, three steps led up to a narrow strip of floor connecting the two halves of the foyer, each with its own door into the circle.

Destiny Meade said, “I’m not going down those stairs.”

“We can walk across the back to the other flight,” Emily suggested.

“I’d still have to set foot on the landing. I can’t do it. Harry!” She turned with her air of expecting everyone to be where she required them and found that Harry Grove had not heard her. He stood with his hands in his pockets contemplating the shut door of the office.

Marcus Knight, flushed and angry, said: “Perhaps you’d like me to take you down,” and laughed very unpleasantly.

She looked coolly at him. “Sweet of you,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” and turned away to find herself face-to-face with Jeremy Jones. His freckled face was pink and anxious and his manner diffident “There’s the circle,” he said, “and the pass-door. Could I—?”

“Jeremy,
darling
. Yes — please, please. I know I’m a fool but, well, it’s just how one’s made, isn’t it?
Thank
you, my angel.” She slipped her arm into his.

They went into the circle and could be heard moving round the back towards the Prompt-side box.

Charles Random said, “Well, I’ll be off,” hesitated for a moment, and then ran down the canvas-covered steps, turned on the landing and descended to the ground floor. Gertrude Bracey stood at the top near the remaining bronze dolphin. She looked at it and then at the mark in the carpet where its companion had stood. She compressed her lips, lifted her head and walked down with perfect deliberation.

All this was observed by Peregrine Jay.

He stopped Emily, who had made as if to follow. “Are you all right, Emily?”

“Yes, quite all right. You?”

“All the better for seeing you. Shall we take lunch together? But I don’t know how long I’ll be. Were you thinking of lunch later on?”

“I can’t say I’m wolfishly ravenous.”

“One must eat.”

Emily said, “You can’t possibly tell when you’ll get off. The pub’s no good, nor is The Younger Dolphin. They’ll both be seething with curiosity and reporters. I’ll buy some ham rolls and go down to the wharf below Phipps Passage. There’s a bit of a wall one can sit on.”

“I’ll join you if I can. Don’t bolt your rolls and hurry away. It’s a golden day on the river.”

“Look,” Emily said. “What’s Harry up to
now
!”

Harry was tapping on the office door. Apparently in answer to a summons he opened it and went in.

Emily left the theatre by the circle and pass-door. Peregrine joined a smouldering Marcus Knight and an anxious Winter Meyer. Presently Jeremy returned, obviously flown with gratification.

On the far side of the office door Harry Grove confronted Alleyn.

His manner quite changed. He was quiet and direct and spoke without affectation.

“I daresay,” he said, “I haven’t commended myself to you as a maker of statements, but a minute or two ago—after I had been sent out in disgrace, you know — I remembered something. It may have no bearing on the case whatever but I think perhaps I ought to leave it to you to decide.”

“That,” Alleyn said, “by and large, is the general idea we like to establish.”

Harry smiled. “Well then,” he said, “here goes. It’s rumoured that when the night watchman, whatever he’s called—”

“Hawkins.”

“That when Hawkins found Jobbins and, I suppose, when you saw him, he was wearing a light overcoat.”

“Yes.”

“Was it a rather large brown and white check with an overcheck of black?”

“It was.”

“Loudish, one might say?”

“One might, indeed.”

“Yes. Well, I gave him that coat on Friday evening.”

“Your name is still on the inside pocket tag.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. “The wind,” he said, “to coin a phrase, has departed from my sails. I’d better chug off under my own steam. I’m sorry, Mr. Alleyn. Exit actor, looking crestfallen.”

“No, wait a bit, as you are here. I’d like to know what bearing you think this might have on the case. Sit down. Confide in us.”

“May I?” Harry said, surprised. “Thank you, I’d like to.”

He sat down and looked fully at Alleyn. “I don’t always mean to behave as badly as in fact I do,” he said and went on quickly: “About the coat. I don’t think I attached any great importance to it. But just now you did rather seem to make a point of what he was wearing. I couldn’t quite see what the point
was
but it seemed to me I’d better tell you that until Friday evening the coat had been mine.”

“Why on earth didn’t you say so there and then?”

Harry flushed scarlet. His chin lifted and he spoke rapidly as if by compulsion. “Everybody,” he said, “was fabulously amusing about my coat. In the hearty, public-school manner, you know. Frightfully nice chaps. Jolly good show. I need not, of course, tell you that I am not even a prodnct of one of our Dear Old Minor Public Schools. Or, if it comes to that, of a county school like the Great King Dolphin.”

“Knight?”

“That’s right but it’s slipped his memory.”

“You
do
dislike him, don’t you?”

“Not half as heartily as he dislikes me,” Harry said and gave a short laugh. “I know I sound disagreeable. You see before you, Superintendent, yet another slum kid with a chip like a Yule log on his shoulder. I take it out in clowning.”

“But,” Alleyn said mildly, “is your profession absolutely riddled with old Etonians?”

Harry grinned. “Well, no,” he said. “But I assure you there are enough more striking and less illustrious O.B. ties to strangle all the extras in a battle scene for Armageddon. As a rank outsider I find the network nauseating. Sorry. No doubt you’re a product yourself. Of Eton, I mean.”

“So you’re a post-Angry at heart? Is that it?”

“Only sometimes. I compensate. They’re afraid of my tongue, or I like to think they are.”

He waited for a moment and then said: “None of this, by the way and for what it’s worth, applies to Peregrine Jay. I’ve no complaints about him: he has not roused my lower-middle-class rancour and I do not try to score off him. He’s a gifted playwright, a good producer and a very decent citizen. Perry’s all right.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the others. They were arrogant about your coat, you considered?”

“The comedy line was relentlessly pursued. Charles affected to have the dazzles. Gertrude, dear girl, shuddered like a castanet. There were lots of asides. And even the lady of my heart professed distaste and begged me to shuffle off my checkered career-coat. So I did. Henry Jobbins was wheezing away at the stage-door saying his chubes were chronic and believe it or not I did a sort of your-need-is-greater-than-mine thing, which I could, of course, perfectly well afford. I took it off there and then and gave it to him. There was,” Harry said loudly, “and is, absolutely no merit in this gesture. I simply off-loaded an irksome vulgar mistaken choice on somebody who happened to find it acceptable. He was a good bloke, was old Henry. A good bloke.”

“Did anyone know of this spontaneous gift?”

“No. Oh, I suppose the man that relieved him did. Hawkins. Henry Jobbins told me this chap had been struck all of a heap by the overcoat when he came in on Friday night.”

“But nobody else, you think, knew of the exchange?”

“I asked Jobbins not to say anything. I really could
not
have stomached the recrudescence of comedy that the incident would have evoked.” Harry looked sidelong at Alleyn. “You’re a dangerous man, Superintendent. You’ve missed your vocation. You’d have been a wow on the receiving side of the confessional grille.”

“No comment,” said Alleyn and they both laughed.

Alleyn said, “Look here. Would anyone expect to find
you
in the realm of the front foyer after the show?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Immediately after. Winty Meyer for one. I’ve been working in a T.V. show and there’s been a lot of carry-on about calls. In the event of any last-minute changes I arranged for them to ring this theatre and I’ve been looking in at the office after the show in case there was a message.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Last night, though, I didn’t go round because the telly thing’s finished. And anyway I was bound for Dessy Meade’s party. She commanded me, as you’ve heard, to fetch my guitar and I lit off for Canonbury to get it.”

“Did you arrive at Miss Meade’s flat in Cheyne Walk before or after she and her other guests did?”

“Almost a dead heat. I was parking when they arrived. They’d been to the little joint in Wharfingers Lane, I understand.”

“Anyone hear or see you at your own flat in Canonbury?”

“The man in the flat overhead may have heard me. He complains that I wake him up every night. The telephone rang while I was in the loo. That would be round about eleven. Wrong number. I daresay it woke him but I don’t know. I was only there long enough to give myself a drink, have a wash, pick up the guitar and out.”

“What’s this other flatter’s name?”

Harry gave it. “Well,” he said cheerfully. “I hope I
did
wake him, poor bugger.”

“We’ll find out, shall we? Fox?”

Mr. Fox telephoned Harry’s neighbour, explaining that he was a telephone operative checking a faulty line. He extracted the information that Harry’s telephone had indeed rung just as the neighbour had turned his light off at eleven o’clock.

“Well, God bless him, anyway,” said Harry.

“To go back to your overcoat. Was there a yellow silk scarf in the pocket?”

“There was indeed. With an elegant H embroidered by a devoted if slightly witchlike and acquisitive hand. The initial was appropriate at least. Henry J. was as pleased as punch, poor old donkey.”

“You liked him very much, didn’t you?”

“As I said, he was a good bloke. We used to have a pint at the pub and he’d talk about his days on the river. Oddly enough I think he rather liked me.”

“Why should that be so odd?”

“Oh,” Harry said. “I’m hideously unpopular, you know. I really
am
disliked. I have a talent for arousing extremes of antipathy, I promise you. Even Mr. Conducis,” Harry said, opening his eyes very wide, “although he feels obliged to be helpful, quite hates my guts, I assure you.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Friday afternoon,” Harry said promptly.

“Really?”

“Yes. I call on him from time to time as a matter of duty. After all, he got me this job. Did I mention that we are distantly related? Repeat:
distantly
.”

“No.”

“No. I don’t mention it very much. Even I,” Harry said, “draw the line somewhere, you know.”

“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.