by Ngaio Marsh
‘It appears that the BM and V and A have shot their bolts. So has the British syndicate that was set up.’
Jeremy raised a cry of the passionately committed artist against the rest of the world. ‘But why! He’s lousy with money. He’s got so much it must have stopped meaning anything. What’ll he do with this lot? Look, suppose he gives it away? So what! Let him give William Shakespeare’s handwriting and Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove away. Let him give them to Stratford or the V and A. Let him give them to the nation. Fine. He’ll be made a bloody peer and good luck to him.’
‘Let him do this and let him do that. He’ll do what he’s worked out for himself.’
‘You’ll have to see him, Perry. After all he’s got a good thing out of you and The Dolphin. Capacity business for six months and booked out for weeks ahead. Small cast. Massive prestige. The lot.’
‘And a company of Kilkenny cats as far as good relations are concerned.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know jolly well. Destiny waltzing over to Harry Grove. Gertrude and Marco reacting like furies.’ Peregrine hesitated. ‘And so on,’ he said.
‘You mean me lusting after Destiny and getting nowhere? Don’t let it give you a moment’s pause. I make no trouble among the giants, I assure you.’
‘I’m sorry, Jer.’
‘No, no. Forget it. Just you wade in to Conducis.’
‘I can’t.’
‘For God’s sake! Why?’
‘Jer, I’ve told you. He gives me the jim-jams. I owe him nothing and I don’t want to owe him anything. Still less do I want to go hat in hand asking for anything. Anything.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because I might get it.’
‘Well, if he’s not an old queer, and you say you don’t believe he is, what the hell? You feel like I do about the glove and the letter. You say you do. That they ought to be here among Shakespeare’s people in his own city or country town – here. Well?’
‘I can’t go pleading again. I did try, remember, when he came to The Dolphin. I made a big song and dance and got slapped right down for my trouble. I won’t do it again.’
Jeremy now lost his temper.
‘Then, by God, I will,’ he shouted.
‘You won’t get an interview.’
‘I’ll stage a sit-down on his steps.’
‘Shall you carry a banner?’
‘If necessary I’ll carry a sledge hammer.’
This was so startlingly in accord with Emily’s half-joking prediction that Peregrine said loudly: ‘For the Lord’s sake, pipe down. That’s a damn’ silly sort of thing to say and you know it.’
They had both lost their tempers and shouted foolishly at each other. An all-day and very superior help was now in their employment and they had to quieten down when she came in. They walked about their refurnished and admirably decorated studio, smoking their pipes and not looking at each other. Peregrine began to feel remorseful. He himself was so far in love with Emily Dunne and had been given such moderate encouragement that he sympathized with Jeremy in his bondage and yet thought what a disaster it was for him to succumb to Destiny. They were, in common with most men of their age, rather owlish in their affairs of the heart and a good deal less sophisticated than their conversation seemed to suggest.
Presently Jeremy halted in his walk and said:
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Look. I have been a morsel precipitate.’
Peregrine said: ‘Not at all, Jer.’
‘Yes. I don’t really envisage a sit-down strike.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Jeremy looked fixedly at his friend. ‘On the whole,’ he said, and there was a curious undertone in his voice, ‘I believe it would be a superfluous exercise.’
‘You do! But – well really, I do not understand you.’
‘Think no more of it.’
‘Very well,’ said the astonished Peregrine. ‘I might as well mention that the things are to be removed from the safe on this day week and will be replaced by a blown-up photograph. Greenslade is sending two men from the office to take delivery.’
‘Where are they to go?’
‘He says for the time being to safe storage at his offices. They’ll probably be sold by private treaty but if they are put up at Sotheby’s the result will be the same. The customer’s hell bent on getting them.’
Jeremy burst out laughing.
‘I think you must be mad,’ said Peregrine.
V
The night before the Shakespeare relics were to be removed from The Dolphin Theatre was warm and very still with a feeling of thunder in the air which, late in the evening, came to fulfilment. During the third act, at an uncannily appropriate moment a great clap and clatter broke out in the Heavens and directly over the theatre.
‘Going too far with the thunder-sheet up there,’ Morris said to Peregrine who was having a drink with him in the office.
There were several formidable outbreaks followed by the characteristic downpour. Peregrine went out to the circle foyer. Jobbins was at his post on the half-landing under the treasure.
Peregrine listened at the double doors into the circle and could just hear his own dialogue spoken by strange disembodied voices. He glanced at his watch. Half past ten. On time.
‘Good night, Jobbins,’ he said and went downstairs. Cars, already waiting in Wharfingers Lane, glistened in the downpour. He could hear the sound of water hitting water on the ebony night tide. The stalls attendant stood by to pen the doors. Peregrine slipped in to the back of the house. There was the man of Stratford, his head bent over his sonnet: sitting in the bow window of a house in Warwickshire. The scratch of his quill on parchment could be clearly heard as the curtain came down.
Seven curtains and they could easily have taken more. One or two women in the back row were crying. They blew their noses, got rid of their handkerchiefs and clapped.
Peregrine went out quickly. The rain stopped as he ran down the side alleyway to the stage-door. A light cue had been missed and he wanted a word with the stage-director.
When he had had it he stood where he was and listened absently to the familiar sounds of voices and movement in the dressing-rooms and front-of-house. Because of the treasure a systematic search of the theatre was conducted after each performance and he had seen to it that this was thoroughly performed. He could hear the staff talking as they moved about the stalls and circle and spread their dust sheets. The assistant stage-manager organized the back-stage procedure. When this was completed he and the stage-crew left. A trickle of back-stage visitors came through and groped their alien way out. How incongruous they always seemed.
Destiny was entertaining in her dressing-room. He could hear Harry Grove’s light impertinent laughter and the ejaculations of the guests. Gertrude Bracey and, a little later, Marcus Knight appeared, each of them looking furious. Peregrine advised them to go through the front of the house and thus avoid the puddles and overflowing gutters in the stage-door alleyway.
They edged through the pass-door and down the stairs into the stalls. There seemed to be a kind of wary alliance between them. Peregrine thought they probably went into little indignation huddles over Destiny and Harry Grove.
Charles Random, quiet and detached as usual, left by the stage-door and then Emily came out.
‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘are you benighted?’
‘I’m waiting for you. Would you come and have supper at the new bistro near the top of Wharfingers Lane? The Younger Dolphin it’s artily called. It’s got an extension licence till twelve for its little tiny opening thing and it’s asked me to look in. Do come, Emily.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d be proud.’
‘How lovely!’ Peregrine exclaimed, ‘and it’s stopped raining, I think. Wait a jiffy and I’ll see.’
He ran to the stage-door. Water still dripped from the gutters in the alleyway but the stars shone overhead. Destiny and her smart frie
nds came out, making a great to-do. When she saw Peregrine she stopped them all and introduced him. They said things like: ‘Absolutely riveting’ and ‘Loved your play’ and ‘Heaven’. They made off, warning each other about the puddles. Harry Grove said: ‘I’ll go on, then, and fetch it, if you really want me to. See you later, angel.’ ‘Don’t be too long, now,’ Destiny called after him. Peregrine heard Harry’s sports car start up.
Peregrine told the stage-door keeper he could shut up shop and go. He returned to Emily. As he walked towards the darkened set he was aware of a slight movement and thought it must have been the pass-door into front-of-house. As if somebody had just gone through and softly closed it. A back-stage draught no doubt.
Emily was on the set. It was shut in by the fire-curtain and lit only by a dim infiltration from a working lamp back-stage; a dark, warm, still place.
‘I always think it feels so strange,’ she said, ‘after we’ve left it to itself. As if it’s got a life of its own. Waiting for us.’
‘Another kind of reality?’
‘Yes. A more impressive kind. You can almost imagine it breathes.’
A soughing movement of air up in the grille gave momentary confirmation of Emily’s fancy.
‘Come on,’ Peregrine said. ‘It’s a fine starry night and no distance at all to the top of Wharfingers Lane.’ He had taken her arm and was guiding her to the pass-door when they both heard a thud.
They stood still and asked each other: ‘What was that?’
‘Front-of-house?’ Emily said.
‘Yes. Winty or someone, I suppose.’
‘Wouldn’t they all have gone?’
‘I’d have thought so.’
‘What was it? The noise?’
Peregrine said: ‘It sounded like a seat flapping up.’
‘Yes. It did sound like that.’
‘Wait a bit.’
‘Where are you going?’ she said anxiously.
‘Not far. Just to have a look.’
‘All right.’
He opened the pass-door. The little twisting stair was in darkness but he had a torch in his pocket. Steps led down to the stalls box and up from where he stood, to the box in the circle. He went down and then out into the stalls. They were in darkness. He flapped a seat down and let it spring back. That was the sound.
Peregrine called: ‘Hallo. Anyone there?’ but his voice fell dead in an upholstered silence.
He flashed his torch across walls and shrouded seats. He walked up the new central aisle and into the foyer. It was deserted and dimly lit and street doors were shut. Peregrine called up the stairs.
‘Jobbins.’
‘Eh?’ Jobbins’s voice said. ‘That you, guv? Anything up?’
‘I heard a seat flap. In front.’
‘Didjer, guv?’
Jobbins appeared on the stairs. He wore an extremely loud brown, black and white checked overcoat, a woollen cap and carpet slippers.
‘Good lord!’ Peregrine ejaculated. ‘Are you going to the Dogs or Ally Pally or what? Where’s your brown bowler?’
‘You again, guv?’ Jobbins wheezed. ‘I’d of ‘eld back me quick change if I’d known. Pardon the dishy-bill. Present from a toff this ‘ere coat is and very welcome. Gets chilly,’ he said descending, ‘between nah and the witching ar, when my relief comes in. What’s this abaht a seat?’
Peregrine explained. To his astonishment Jobbins pushed the doors open, strode into the auditorium and uttered in a sort of hoarse bellow –
‘Nah then. Out of it. Come on. You ‘eard.’
Silence.
Then Emily’s voice sounded worried and lonely: ‘What goes on?’ She had groped her way down into the house.
‘It’s all right,’ Peregrine shouted. ‘Won’t be long.’ And to Jobbins: ‘What does go on? You sound as if you’re used to this.’
‘Which I am,’ Jobbins sourly endorsed. ‘It’s that perishing childwonder, that’s what it is. ’E done it before and ‘e’ll do it again and once too often.’
‘Does what?’
“‘Angs abaht.’Is mum plays the steel guitar in a caff, see, acrost the river. She knocks off at eleven and ’er ’earts-delight sallies forth to greet ’er at the top of the lane. And ’e fills in the gap, buggering rhand the theyater trying to make out ’e’s a robber or a spectrum. ’E knows full well I can’t leave me post so ’e ’ides ’isself in various dark regions. “’Ands Up,” ’e yells. “Stick ’em up,” ’e ’owls, and crawls under the seats making noises like ’e’s bein’ strangulated which ’e will be if ever I lay me ‘ands on ’im. Innit marvellous?’
From somewhere backstage a single plangent sound rang out and faded. It was followed by an eldritch screech of laughter, a cat-call and a loud slam.
‘There ’e goes,’ said Jobbins and flung an ejaculation of startling obscenity into the auditorium.
‘I’ll get that little bastard,’ Peregrine said. He foolishly made a dash for the treble-locked doors into the portico.
‘You’ll never catch ‘im, guv,’ Jobbins said. His voice had almost vanished with excessive vocal exercise. ’E’ll be ‘alf-way up the lane and going strong. His mum meets ’im at the top when she’s sober.’
‘I’ll have the hide off him tomorrow,’ Peregrine said. ‘All right, Jobbins. I’ll see you’re not pestered again. And anyway as far as the treasure is concerned this is your last watch.’
‘That’s right, sir. Positively the last appearance in this epoch-making role.’
‘Good night again.’
‘Good night, guv. Best of British luck.’
Peregrine went into the stalls. ‘Emily!’ he called. ‘Where are you, my poor girl?’
‘Here,’ Emily said, coming up the aisle.
‘Did you see the little swine?’
‘No. I was in front. He came down from the circle. I could hear him on the steps.’
Peregrine looked at his watch. Five past eleven. He took her arm. ‘Let’s forget him,’ he said, ‘and sling our hooks. We’ve wasted ages. They shut at midnight. Come on.’
They slammed the stage-door behind them. The night was still fine and quite warm. They climbed Wharfingers Lane and went in under the illuminated sign of the new bistro: ‘The Younger Dolphin’.
It was crowded, noisy and extremely dark. The two waiters were dressed as fishermen in tight jeans, striped jumpers and jelly-bag caps. A bas relief of a dolphin wearing a mortarboard was lit from below.
As their eyes adjusted to the gloom they saw that Destiny and her three audience friends were established at a table under the dolphin and had the air of slumming. Destiny waggled her fingers at them and made faces to indicate that she couldn’t imagine why she was there.
They ate grilled sole, drank lager, danced together on a pockethandkerchief and greatly enjoyed themselves. Presently Destiny and her friends left. As they passed Emily and Peregrine she said: ‘Darlings! We thought we would but oh, no, no.’ They went away talking loudly about what they would have to eat when they got to Destiny’s flat in Chelsea. At ten to twelve Peregrine said: ‘Emily: why are you so stand-offish in the elder Dolphin and so come-toish in the younger one?’
‘Partly because of your prestige and anyway I’m not all that oncoming, even here.’
‘Yes, you are. You are when we’re dancing. Not at first but suddenly, about ten minutes ago.’
‘I’m having fun and I’m obliged to you for providing it.’
‘Do you at all fancy me?’
‘Very much indeed.’
‘Don’t say it brightly like that: it’s insufferable.’
‘Sorry.’
‘And what do you mean, my prestige. Are you afraid people like Gertie, for example, will say you’re having an advantageous carry-on with the author-producer?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘How bloody silly. “They say. What say they? Let them say”.’
‘That aphorism was coined by a murdering cad.’
‘What of it? Emily: I
find you more attractive than any of my former girls. Now, don’t flush up and bridle. I know you’re not my girl, in actual fact. Emily,’ Peregrine shouted against a screaming crescendo from the saxophonist. ‘Emily, listen to me. I believe I love you.’
The little band had crashed to its climax and was silent. Peregrine’s declaration rang out as a solo performance.
‘After that,’ Emily said, ‘I almost think we had better ask for the bill, don’t you?’
Peregrine was so put out that he did so. They left The Younger Dolphin assuring the anxious proprietor that they would certainly return.
Their plan had been to stroll over to Blackfriars, pick up Peregrine and Jeremy’s car and drive to Hampstead.
They walked out of The Younger Dolphin into a deluge.
Neither of them had a mackintosh or an umbrella. They huddled in the entrance and discussed the likelihood of raising a cab. Peregrine went back and telephoned a radio taxi number to be told nothing would be available for at least twenty minutes. When he rejoined Emily the rain had eased off a little.
‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a gamp and a mac in the office. Let’s run down the hill, beat Jobbins up and collect them. Look, it’s almost stopped.’
‘Come on, then.’
‘Mind you don’t slip.’
Hand in hand they ran wildly and noisily down Wharfingers Lane. They reached the turning at the bottom, rounded the corner and pulled up outside The Dolphin. They laughed and were exhilarated.
‘Listen!’ Emily exclaimed, ‘Peregrine, listen. Somebody else is running in the rain.’
‘It’s someone in the stage-door alley.’
‘So it is.’
The other runner’s footsteps rang out louder and louder on the wet cobblestones. He came out of the alley into the lane and his face was open-mouthed like a gargoyle.
He saw them and he flung himself upon Peregrine, pawed at his coat and jabbered into his face. It was the night-watchman who relieved Jobbins.
‘For Gawsake!’ he said. ‘Oh, my Gawd, Mr Jay, for Gawsake.’
‘What the devil’s the matter? What is it? What’s happened!’
‘Murder,’ the man said, and his lips flabbered over the word. ‘That’s what’s happened, Mr Jay. Murder.’
