by Ngaio Marsh
‘Mr Knight,’ Alleyn asked, ‘did you know Mr Conducis was there?’
Knight looked straight in front of him and said with exaggerated clarity as if voicing an affront, ‘It became evident.’
Destiny Meade, also looking neither to left or right and speaking clearly, remarked: ‘The less said about that the better.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Knight savagely agreed.
She laughed.
Winter Morris said: ‘Yes, but – ’ and stopped short. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘As you were.’
‘But in any case it can be of no conceivable significance,’ Jeremy Jones said impatiently. He had been silent for so long that his intervention caused a minor stir.
Alleyn rose to his considerable height and moved out into the room. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we’ve got as far as we can, satisfactorily, in a joint discussion. I’m going to ask Inspector Fox to read over his notes. If there is anything any of you wishes to amend will you say so?’
Fox read his notes in a cosy voice and nobody objected to a word of them. When he had finished Alleyn said to Peregrine: ‘I daresay you’ll want to make your own arrangements with the company.’
‘May I?’ said Peregrine. ‘Thank you.’
Alleyn and Fox withdrew to the distant end of the office and conferred together. The company, far from concerning themselves with the proximity of the police, orientated as one man upon Peregrine, who explained that Trevor Vere’s understudy would carry on and that his scenes would be rehearsed in the morning. ‘Everybody concerned, please, at ten o’clock,’ Peregrine said. ‘And look: about the Press. We’ve got to be very careful with this one, haven’t we, Winty?’
Winter Morris joined him, assuming at once his occupational manner of knowing how to be tactful with actors. They didn’t, any of them, did they, he asked, want the wrong kind of stories to get into the Press. There was no doubt they would be badgered. He himself had been rung up repeatedly. The line was regret and no comment. ‘You’d all gone,’ Morris said. ‘You weren’t there. You’ve heard about it, of course, but you’ve no ideas.’ Here everybody looked at Destiny.
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 – ’
‘OK,’ 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 and 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 Morris. Presently Jeremy returned, obviously flown with gratification.
On the far side of the office door Harry Grove confronted Alleyn.
His manner had 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 nightwatchman, 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 over-check 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 OK 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 product of one of our dear old minor public schools. Or, if it comes to that, of a dear old minor grammar 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 OB ties to strangle all the extras in the 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 chequered 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 Harry. 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 recrudescense 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 Morris for one. I’ve been working in a TV 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.’
CHAPTER 8
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.’
