by Ngaio Marsh
“Quite a loss to the nightclubs,” Marcus Knight said to nobody in particular. “One wonders why the legitimate theatre should still attract.”
“I assure you, Marco dear,” Grove rejoined, “only the Lord Chamberlain stands between me and untold affluence.”
“Or you might call it dirty-pay,” said Knight. It was Miss Bracey’s turn to laugh very musically.
“Did any of you,” Alleyn went on, “at any time after the fall of curtain see or speak to Trevor Vere?”
“I did, of course,” Charles Random said. He had an impatient, rather injured manner which it would have been going too far to call feminine. “He dresses with me. And without wanting to appear utterly brutal I must say it would take nothing less than a twenty foot drop into the stalls to stop him talking.”
“Does he write on the looking-glass?”
Random looked surprised. “No,” he said. “Write what? Graffiti?”
“Not precisely. The word ‘Slash.’ In red greasepaint.”
“He’s always shrieking ‘Slash.’ Making a great mouthful of it. Something to do with his horror comics, one imagines.”
“Does he ever talk about the treasure?”
“Well, yes,” Random said uneasily. “He flaunts away about how—well, about how any fool could pinch it and—and: no, it’s of no importance.”
“Suppose we just hear about it?”
“He was simply putting on his act but he did say anyone with any sense could guess the combination of the lock.”
“Intimating that he had, in fact, guessed it?”
“Well — actually — yes.”
“And did he divulge what it was??’
Random was of a sanguine complexion. He now lost something of his colour. “He did not,” Random said, “and if he had, I should have paid no attention. I don’t believe for a moment he knew the combination.”
“And you ought to know, dear, oughtn’t you?” Destiny said with the gracious condescension of stardom to bit-part competence. “Always doing those ghastly puzzles in your intellectual papers. Right up your alleyway.”
This observation brought about its own reaction of discomfort and silence.
Alleyn said to Winter Meyer, “I remember I suggested that you would be well advised to make the five-letter key group rather less predictable. Was it in fact changed?”
Winter Meyer raised his eyebrows, wagged his head and his hands and said: “I was always going to. And then when we knew they were to go—one of those things.” He covered his face for a moment. “One of those things,” he repeated, and everybody looked deeply uncomfortable.
Alleyn said, “On that morning, besides yourself and the boy, there were present, I think, everybody who is here now except Miss Bracey, Mr. Random and Mr. Grove. Is that right? Miss Bracey?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with predictable acidity. “It was a photograph call, I believe. I was not required.”
“It was just for two pictures, dear,” little Meyer said. “Destiny and Marco with the glove. You know?”
“Oh, quite. Quite.”
“And the kid turned up so they used him.”
“I seem to remember,” Harry Grove observed, “that Trevor was quoted in the daily journals as saying that the glove made him feel kinda funny like he wanted to cry.”
“Am I wrong,” Marcus Knight suddenly demanded of no one in particular, “in believing that this boy is in a Critical Condition and May Die? Mr. — ah — Superintendent — ah — Alleyn?”
“He is still on the danger list,” Alleyn said.
“Thank you. Has anybody else got something funny to say about the boy?” Knight demanded. “Or has the fount of comedy dried at its source?”
“If,” Grove rejoined, without rancour, “you mean me, it’s dry as a bone. No more jokes.”
Marcus Knight folded his arms.
Alleyn said, “Miss Meade, Miss Dunne, Mr. Knight, Mr. Jay and Mr. Jones—and the boy of course—were all present when the matter of the lock was discussed. Not for the first time, I understand. The safe had been installed for some days and the locking system had been widely canvassed among you. You had heard from Mr. Meyer that it carried a five-number combination and that this was based on a five-letter key word and a very commonplace code. Mr. Meyer also said, before I stopped him, that an obvious key word had been suggested by Mr. Conducis. Had any of you already speculated upon what this word might be? Or discussed the matter?”
There was a long silence.
Destiny Meade said plaintively: “Naturally we discussed it. The men seemed to know what it was all about. The alphabet and numbers and not enough numbers for all the letters or something. And anyway it wasn’t as if any of us were going to do anything, was it? But everyone thought—”
“What everyone thought—” Marcus Knight began, but she looked coldly upon him and said: “Please don’t butt in, Marco. You’ve got such a way of butting in. Do you mind?”
“My God!” he said with all the repose of an unexploded land mine.
“Everyone thought,” Destiny continued, gazing at Alleyn, “that this obvious five-letter word would be ‘glove.’ But as far as I could see that didn’t get one any nearer to a five-figure number.”
Harry Grove burst out laughing. “Darling!” he said. “I adore you better than life itself.” He picked up her gloved hand and kissed it, peeled back the gauntlet, kissed the inside of her wrist and then remarked to the company in general that he wouldn’t exchange her for a wilderness of monkeys. Gertrude Bracey violently re-crossed her legs. Marcus Knight rose, turned his face to the wall and with frightful disengagement made as if to examine a framed drawing of The Dolphin in the days of Adolphus Ruby. A pulse beat rapidly under his empurpled cheek.
“Very well,” Alleyn said. “You all thought that ‘glove’ was a likely word and so indeed it was. Did anyone arrive at the code and produce the combination?”
“Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed,” cried Harry.
“Not at all,” Alleyn rejoined, “Unless (the security aspect of this affair being evidently laughable) you formed yourselves into a syndicate for robbery. If anyone did arrive at the combination it seems highly unlikely that he or she kept it to himself. Yes, Mr. Random?”
Charles Random had made an indeterminate sound. He looked up quickly at Alleyn, hesitated and then said rapidly, “As a matter of fact, I did. I’ve always been mildly interested in codes and I heard everybody muttering away about the lock on the safe and how the word might be ‘glove.’ I have to do a lot of waiting about in my dressing-room and thought I’d try to work it out. I thought it might be one of the sorts where you write down numerals from 1 to 0 in three rows one under another and put in succession under each row the letters of the alphabet, adding an extra A B C D to make up the last line. Then you can read the numbers off from the letters. Each number has three equivalent letters.”
“Quite so. And you got—? From the word ‘glove’?”
“Seven-two-five-two-five, or, if the alphabet was written from right to left, four-nine-six-nine-six.”
“And if the alphabet ran from right to left and then, at K, from left to right and finally, at U, from right to left again?”
“Four-two-five-nine-six, which seemed to me more likely as there are no repeated figures.”
“Fancy you remembering them like that!” Destiny ejaculated, and appealed to the company. “I mean—isn’t it? I can’t so much as remember anyone’s telephone number—scarcely even my own.”
Winter Meyer moved his hands, palms up, and looked at Alleyn. “But, of course,” Random said, “there are any number of variants in this type of code. I might have been all wrong.”
“Tell me,” Alleyn said, “are you and the boy on in the same scenes? I seem to remember that you are.”
“Yes,” Peregrine and Random said together, and Random added: “I didn’t leave any notes about that Trevor could have read. He tried to pump me. I thought it would be extremely unwise to tell h
im.”
“Did you, in fact, tell anybody of your solutions?”
“No,” Random said, looking straight in front of him. “I discussed the code with nobody.” He looked at his fellow players. “You can all bear me out in this,” he said.
“Well, I must say!” Gertrude Bracey remarked, and laughed.
“A wise decision,” Alleyn murmured, and Random glanced at him.
“I wonder,” he said, fretfully.
“I think there’s something else you have to tell me, isn’t there?”
In the interval that followed Destiny said with an air of discovery: “No, but you must all admit it’s terribly clever of Charles.”
Random said, “Perhaps it’s unnecessary to point out that if I had tried to steal the treasure I would certainly not have told you what I have told you; still less what I’m going to tell you.”
Another pause was broken by Inspector Fox, who sat by the door and had contrived to be forgotten. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Random, startled.
“What are you going to tell us, Mr. Random?”
“That, whatever the combination may be, Trevor didn’t know it. He’s not really as sharp as he sounds. It was all bluff. When he kept on about how easy it was I got irritated — I find him extremely tiresome, that boy — and I said I’d give him a pound if he could tell me and he did a sort of ‘Yah-yah-yah, I’m not going to be caught like that’ act.” Random made a slight, rather finicky movement of his shoulders and his voice became petulant. “He’d been helping himself to my make-up and I was livid with him. It blew up into quite a thing and—well, it doesn’t matter but in the end I shook him and he blurted out a number—five-five-five-three-one. Then we were called for the opening.”
“When was this?”
“Before last night’s show.” Random turned to Miss Bracey. “Gertie dresses next door to me,” he said. “I daresay she heard the ongoings.”
“I certainly did. Not very helpful when one is making one’s preparation which I, at any rate, like to do.”
“Method in her madness. Or is it,” Harry Grove asked, “madness in her Method?”
“That will do, Harry.”
“Dear Perry. Of course.”
“You told us a moment ago, Mr. Random,” Alleyn said, “that the boy didn’t reveal the number.”
“Nor did he. Not the correct number.” Random said quickly.
Destiny Meade said: “Yes, but why were you so sure it was the wrong number?”
“It’s the Dolphin telephone number, darling,” Grove said. “Five-five-five-three-one. Remember?”
“Is it? Oh, yes. Of course it is.”
“First thing to enter his head in his fright, I suppose,” Random said.
“You really frightened him?” asked Alleyn.
“Yes, I did. Little horror. He’d have told me if he’d known.” Random added loudly: “He didn’t know the combination and he couldn’t have opened the lock.”
“He was forever badgering me to drop a hint,” Winter Meyer said. “Needless to say, I didn’t.”
“Precisely,” said Random.
Peregrine said: “I don’t see how you can be so sure, Charlie. He might simply have been holding out on you.”
“If he knew the combination and meant to commit the theft,” Knight said, flinging himself down into his chair again, “he certainly wouldn’t tell you what it was.”
There was a general murmur of fervent agreement. “And after all,” Harry Grove pointed out, “you couldn’t have been absolutely sure, could you, Charles, that you hit on the right number yourself or even the right type of code? Or could you?” He grinned at Random. “Did you try?” he asked. “Did you prove it, Charles? Did you have a little twiddle? Before the treasure went in?”
For a moment Random looked as if he would like to hit him but he tucked in his lips, gave himself time and then spoke exclusively to Alleyn.
He said: “I do not believe that Trevor opened the safe and consequently I’m absolutely certain he didn’t kill Henry Jobbins.” He settled his shoulders and looked defiant.
Winter Meyer said: “I suppose you realize the implication of what you’re saying, Charles?”
“I think so.”
“Then I must say you’ve an odd notion of loyalty to your colleagues.”
“It doesn’t arise.”
“Doesn’t it!” Meyer cried and looked restively at Alleyn.
Alleyn made no answer to this. He sat with his long hands linked together on Peregrine’s desk.
The superb voice of Marcus Knight broke the silence.
“I may be very dense,” he said, collecting his audience, “but I cannot see where this pronouncement of Charles’s leads us. If, as the investigation seems to establish, the boy never left the theatre and if the theatre was locked up and only Hawkins had the key to the stage-door: then how the hell did a third person get in?”
“Might he have been someone in the audience who stayed behind?” Destiny asked, brightly. “You know? Lurked?”
Peregrine said, “The ushers, the commissionaire, Jobbins and the A.S.M. did a thorough search front and back after every performance.”
“Well, then, perhaps Hawkins is the murderer,” she said, exactly as if a mystery-story were under discussion. “Has anyone thought of that?” She appealed to Alleyn, who thought it better to disregard her.
“Well, I don’t know,” Destiny rambled on. “Who could it be if it’s not Trevor? That’s what we’ve got to ask ourselves. Perhaps, though I’m sure I can’t think why, and say what you like motive is important—” She broke off and made an enchanting little grimace at Harry Grove. “Now don’t you laugh,” she said. “But for all that just suppose. Just suppose—It was Mr. Conducis.”
“My dear girl—”
“Destiny, honestly.”
“Oh for God’s sake, darling—”
“I know it sounds silly,” Destiny said, “but nobody seems to have any other suggestion and after all he was there.”
The silence that followed Destiny’s remark was so profound that Alleyn heard Fox’s pencil skate over a page in his notebook.
He said, “You mean, Miss Meade, that Mr. Conducis was in the audience? Not backstage?”
“That’s right. In front. In the upstairs O.P. box. I noticed him when I made my first entrance. I mentioned it to you, Charles, didn’t I, when you were holding me up. ‘There’s God,’ I said, ‘in the O.P. box.’ ”
“Mr. Meyer, did you know Mr. Conducis was in front?”
“No, I didn’t. But he’s got the O.P. box forever,” Meyer said. “It’s his whenever he likes to use it. He lends it to friends and for all I know occasionally slips in himself. He doesn’t let us know if he’s coming. He doesn’t like a fuss.”
“Nobody saw him come or go?”
“Not that I know.”
Gertrude Bracey said loudly: “I thought our mysterious Mr. W.H. was supposed to be particularly favoured by Our Patron. Quite a Shakespearean situation or so one hears. Perhaps he can shed light.”
“My dear Gertie,” Harry Grove said cheerfully, “you really should try to keep a splenetic fancy within reasonable bounds. Miss Bracey,” he said, turning to Alleyn, “refers, I think, to the undoubted fact that Mr. Conducis very kindly recommended me to the Management. I did him a slight service once upon a time and he is obliging enough to be obliged. I had no idea he was in front, Gertie dear, until I heard you hissing away about it as you lay on the King Dolphin’s bosom at the end of Act I.”
“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 nor right and speaking clearly, remarked: “The less said about that the better.”
“Undoubtedly,” Knight savagely agreed.
She laughed.
Winter Mey
er 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 gone 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 Meyer 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,” Meyer 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.
