Killer Dolphin (22 page)

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.”