Death at the Dolphin

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘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 Jobbins’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 him 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 12 and 12:10.’

  ‘Yerse,’ said Fox and a look of mild gratification settled upon his respectable face. ‘And at 12:5, or 10 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 bolt, 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 – have 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 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.

  II

  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 non-existent,’ 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, looked as if he found the conversation unpalatable, said impatiently: ‘Good God, what’s it matter! What a lot of balls.’

  ‘And Winty?’ Harry said.

  Morris 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 suf
fer 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 gestures 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 Harry 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 Morris 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 attrociously 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 Morris 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 Morris’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 you 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 Morris’s blotting pad.

  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 to 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 said.

  ‘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 door in the foyer wall. It opened and the interior lights went on behind the convex plateglass front of the cache. Then you shut the back door and spun the combination lock. And Peregrine Jay, Winter Morris, 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 greatly 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 their 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 fishglue 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.

  III

  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 suéde 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 he 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. I’d 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 OK,’ he said. ‘I won’t. And don’t, for God’s sake, gawp 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 USA.’