Death at the Dolphin

  Alleyn listened to Peregrine’s voice going on and on and Peregrine listened to it, too, as if it belonged to someone else. He realized with complete detachment that for a year and three months some rather terrible notion about Mr Conducis had been stuffed away at the back of the mind that was Peregrine. It had been and still was, undefined and unacknowledged but because he was so tired and ravaged by anxiety it had almost come out to declare itself. He was very relieved to hear himself telling this unusual policeman exactly what had happened that morning. When he had related everything down to the last detail he said: ‘And it was all to be kept quiet, except for Jeremy Jones, so now I’ve broken faith, I suppose, and I couldn’t care, by and large, less. I feel better,’ said Peregrine loudly.

  ‘I must say you look several shades less green about the gills. You’ve half-killed yourself over this production, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, one does, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry I dragged you up and down all those stairs. Where does that iron curtain work from? The prompt side. Oh, yes I see. Don’t move. I’ll do it. Dead against the union rules, I expect, but never mind.’

  The fire curtain inched its way down. Alleyn glanced at his watch. Any time now the party from the museum should arrive.

  He said: ‘That was an extraordinary encounter, I must say. But out of it – presumably – has grown all this: the theatre – your play. And now: tonight.’

  ‘And now tonight. Oh, God!’

  ‘Would it be a good idea for you to go home and put your boots up for an hour or two?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’m perfectly all right. Sorry to have behaved so oddly,’ Peregrine said, rubbing his head. ‘I simply have no notion why I bored you with my saga. You won’t, I trust, tell Mr Conducis.’

  ‘I shall,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘preserve an absolute silence.’

  ‘I can’t begin to explain what an odd man he is.’

  ‘I have met Mr Conducis.’

  ‘Did you think him at all dotty? Or sinister? Or merely plutocratic?’

  ‘I was quite unable to classify him.’

  ‘When I asked him where he found the treasure he said: at sea. Just that: at sea. It sounded rum.’

  ‘Not in the yacht Kalliope by any chance?’

  ‘The yacht – Kalliope. Wait a moment – what is there about the yacht Kalliope?’ Peregrine asked. He felt detached from his surroundings, garrulous and in an odd way rather comfortable but not quite sure that if he stood up he might not turn dizzy. ‘The yacht Kalliope,’ he repeated.

  ‘It was his private yacht and it was run down and split in two in a fog off Cape St Vincent.’

  ‘Now I remember. Good lord –’

  A commotion of voices broke out in the entrance.

  ‘I think,’ Alleyn said, ‘that the treasure has arrived. Will you stay here for a breather? Or come and receive it?’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  When they reached the foyer, Emily and Jeremy Jones and the assistant from the museum had arrived. The assistant carried a metal case. Winter Morris had run downstairs to meet them. They all went up to the office and the whole affair became rather formal and portentous. The assistant was introduced to everybody. He laid his metal case on Peregrine’s desk, unlocked and opened it and stood back.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking round the little group and settling on Peregrine, ‘we should have formal possession taken. If you will just examine the contents and accept them as being in good order.’

  ‘Jeremy’s the expert,’ Peregrine said. ‘He must know every stitch and stain on the glove by this time, I should think.’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said the assistant warmly. ‘Mr Jones, then – will you?’

  Jeremy said: ‘I’d love to.’

  He removed the little desk from the case and laid it on the desk.

  Peregrine caught Alleyn’s eye. ‘Stained, as you see,’ he murmured, ‘with water. They say: sea-water.’

  Jeremy opened the desk. His delicate, nicotine-stained fingers folded back the covering tissues and exposed the little wrinkled glove and two scraps of documents.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Shall I?’

  ‘Please do.’

  With great delicacy he lifted them from their housing and laid them on the desk.

  ‘And this,’ said the assistant pleasantly, ‘is when I bow myself out. Here is an official receipt, Mr Morris, if you will be good enough to sign it.’

  While Morris was doing this Peregrine said to Alleyn: ‘Come and look.’

  Alleyn moved forward. He noticed as he did so that Peregrine stationed himself beside Miss Emily Dunne, that there was a glint of fanaticism in the devouring stare that Jeremy Jones bent upon the glove, that Winter Morris expanded as if he had some proprietary rights over it and that Emily Dunne appeared to unfold a little at the approach of Peregrine. Alleyn then stooped over the notes and the glove and wished that he could have been alone. There could, at such a moment, be too much anticipation, too much pumping up of appropriate reactions. The emotion the relics were expected to arouse was delicate, chancy and tenuous. It was not much good thinking: ‘But the Hand of Glory moved warmly across that paper and four centuries ago a small boy’s sick fist filled out that glove and somewhere between then and now a lady called M. E. wrote a tidy little memorandum for posterity.’ Alleyn found himself wishing very heartily that Peregrine’s play would perform the miracle of awareness which would take the sense of death away from Shakespeare’s note and young Hamnet’s glove.

  He looked up at Peregrine. ‘Thank you for letting me come so close,’ he said.

  ‘You must see them safely stowed.’

  ‘If I may.’

  Winter Morris became expansive and a little fussy. Jeremy, after a hesitant glance, laid the treasure on Peregrine’s blotter. There was a discussion with the museum man about temperature and fire risks and then a procession of sorts formed up and they all went into the back of the circle, Jeremy carrying the blotter.

  ‘On your right,’ Morris said unnecessarily.

  The panel in the circle was open and so was the door of the safe. Jeremy drew out the black velvet easel-shaped unit, tenderly disposed the glove upon its sloping surface and flanked the glove with the two documents.

  ‘I hope the nap of the velvet will hold them,’ he said. ‘I’ve tilted the surface like this to give a good view. Here goes.’

  He gently pushed the unit into the safe.

  ‘How do the front doors work?’ he asked.

  ‘On your left,’ Morris fussed. ‘On the inside surface of the wall. Shall I?’

  ‘Please, Winty.’

  Morris slipped his fingers between the safe and the circle wall. Concealed lighting appeared and with a very slight whisper the steel panels on the far side slid back.

  ‘Now!’ he said. ‘Isn’t that quite something?’

  ‘We can’t see from here, though, Winty,’ Peregrine said. ‘Let’s go out and see.’

  ‘I know,’ Jeremy agreed. ‘Look, would you all go out and tell me if it works or if the background ought to be more tilted? Sort of spread yourselves.’

  ‘ “Some to kill cankers in the moss-rose buds”?’ Alleyn asked mildly.

  Jeremy looked at him in a startled manner and then grinned.

  ‘The superintendent,’ he said, ‘is making a nonsense of us. Emily, would you stay in the doorway, love, and be a liaison between me in the circle and the others outside?’

  ‘Yes. All right.’

  The men filed out. Morris crossed the circle foyer. Peregrine stood on the landing and the man from the museum a little below him. Alleyn strolled to the door, passed it and remained in the circle. He was conscious that none of these people except, of course, the museum man, was behaving in his or her customary manner but that each was screwed up to a degree of inward tension over which a stringent self-discipline was imposed. ‘And for them,’ he thought, ‘this sort of thing occurs quite often, it’s a regular occupational hazard. They
are seasoned troops and about to go into action.’

  ‘It should be more tilted, Jer,’ Peregrine’s voice was saying. ‘And the things’ll have to be higher up on the easel.’

  The museum assistant, down on the first flight, said something nasal and indistinguishable.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Jeremy demanded.

  ‘He says it doesn’t show much from down below but he supposes that is unavoidable,’ said Emily.

  ‘Wait a bit.’ Jeremy reached inside the safe. ‘More tilt,’ he said. ‘Oh, blast, it’s collapsed.’

  ‘Can I help?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Not really. Tell them to stay where they are.’

  Alleyn walked over to the safe. Jeremy Jones was on his knees gingerly smoothing out the glove and the documents on the velvet surface. ‘I’ll have to use beastly polythene and I hoped not,’ he said crossly. He laid a sheet of it over the treasures and fastened it with black velvet-covered drawing pins. Then he replaced the easel in the safe at an almost vertical angle. There was a general shout of approval from the observers.

  ‘They say: much joy,’ Emily told him.

  ‘Shall I shut the doors and all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Twiddle the thing and all?’

  ‘Winty says yes.’

  Jeremy shut the steel door and spun the lock.

  ‘Now let’s look.’

  He and Emily went out.

  Alleyn came from the shadows, opened the wall panel and looked at the safe. It was well and truly locked. He shut the panel and turned to find that at a distance of about thirty feet down the passageway leading to the boxes, a boy stood with his hands in his pockets, watching him: a small boy, he thought at first, of about twelve, dressed in over-smart clothes.

  ‘Hallo,’ Alleyn said. ‘Where did you spring from?’

  ‘That’s my problem,’ said the boy. ‘Would you mind.’

  Alleyn walked across to him. He was a pretty boy with big eyes and an impertinent, rather vicious mouth. ‘Would you mind!’ he said again. ‘Who are you staring at? If it’s not a rude question?’

  The consonants and vowels were given full attention.

  ‘At you,’ Alleyn said.

  Peregrine’s voice outside on the landing asked: ‘Where’s Superintendent Alleyn?’

  ‘Here!’ Alleyn called. He turned to go.

  ‘Aeoh, I beg pardon, I’m sure,’ said Trevor Vere. ‘You must be the bogey from the Yard. What could I have been thinking of! Manners.’

  Alleyn went out to the front. He found that Marcus Knight and Destiny Meade had arrived and joined the company of viewers.

  Above the sunken landing where the two flights of stairs came out was an illuminated peepshow. Yellow and black for the heraldic colours of a gentleman from Warwickshire, two scraps of faded writing and a small boy’s glove.

  Jeremy fetched his framed legend from the office and fixed it in position underneath.

  ‘Exactly right,’ said the man from the museum. ‘I congratulate you, Mr Jones. It couldn’t be better displayed.’

  He put his receipt in his breast pocket and took his leave of them.

  ‘It’s perfect, Jer,’ said Peregrine.

  Trevor Vere strolled across the landing and leant gracefully on the balustrade.

  ‘I reckon,’ he observed at large, ‘any old duff could crack that peter with his eyes shut. Kid steaks.’

  Peregrine said: ‘What are you doing here, Trevor? You’re not called.’

  ‘I just looked in for my mail, Mr Jay.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

  ‘I took one of my turns last night, Mr Jay. They quite understand at school.’

  ‘You’re not needed here. Much better go home and rest.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Jay.’ A terribly winning smile illuminated Trevor’s photogenic face. ‘I wanted to wish you and the play and everybody the most fabulous luck. Mummy joins me.’

  ‘Thank you. The time for that is later. Off you go.’

  Trevor, still smiling, drifted downstairs.

  ‘Dear little manikin,’ Jeremy said with venom.

  Emily said: ‘Men and cameras, Winty, in the lane.’

  ‘The Press, darling,’ Morris said. ‘Shots of people looking at the glove. Destiny and Marcus are going to make a picture.’

  ‘It won’t be all that easy to get a shot,’ Knight pointed out, ‘with the things skied up there.’

  ‘Should we have them down again?’

  ‘I trust,’ Jeremy said suddenly, ‘that somebody knows how to work the safe. I’ve locked it, you might remember.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said little Morris whose reaction to opening nights took the form of getting slightly above himself. ‘I know. It was all cooked up at the offices and Greenslade, of course, told me. Actually The Great Man himself suggested the type of code. It’s all done on a word. You see? You think of a word of five letters –’

  Down below the front doors had opened to admit a number of people and two cameras.

  ‘ – and each letter stands for a figure. Mr Conducis said he thought easily the most appropriate word would be – ’

  ‘Mr Morris.’

  Winter Morris stopped short and swung round. Alleyn moved out on the landing.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How long has this safe been in position?’

  ‘Some days. Three or four. Why?’

  ‘Have you discussed the lock mechanism with your colleagues?’

  ‘Well – I – well – I – only vaguely, you know, only vaguely.’

  ‘Don’t you think that it might be quite a good idea if you kept your five letter word to yourself?’

  ‘Well, I – well we’re all – well –’

  ‘It really is the normal practice, you know.’

  ‘Yes – but we’re different. I mean – we’re all –’

  ‘Just to persuade you,’ Alleyn said, and wrote on the back of an envelope. ‘Is the combination one of these?’

  Morris looked at the envelope.

  ‘Christ,’ he said.

  Alleyn said: ‘If I were you I’d get a less obvious code word and a new combination and keep them strictly under your Elizabethan bonnet. I seriously advise you to do this.’ He took the envelope back, blacked out what he had written and put it in his breast pocket.

  ‘You have visitors,’ he said, amiably.

  He waited while the pictures were taken and was not at all surprised when Trevor Vere reappeared, chatted shyly to the pressman whom he had instinctively recognized as the authority and ended up gravely contemplating the glove with Destiny Meade’s arm about him and his cheek against hers while lamps flashed and cameras clicked.

  The picture, which was much the best taken that morning, appeared with the caption: ‘Child player, Trevor Vere, with Destiny Meade, and the Shakespeare glove. “It makes me feel kinda funny like I want to cry,” says young Trevor.’

  II

  Peregrine answered half a dozen extremely intelligent questions and for the rest of his life would never know in what words. He bowed and stood back. He saw himself doing it in the glass behind the bar: a tall, lank, terrified young man in tails. The doors were swung open and he heard the house rise with a strange composite whispering sound.

  Mr Conducis, who wore a number of orders, turned to him.

  ‘I must wish you success,’ he said.

  ‘Sir – I can’t thank you –’

  ‘Not at all. I must follow.’

  Mr Conducis was to sit in the Royal box.

  Peregrine made for the left hand doors into the circle.

  ‘Every possible good luck,’ a deep voice said.

  He looked up and saw a grandee who turned out to be Superintendent Alleyn in a white tie with a lovely lady on his arm.

  They had gone.

  Peregrine heard the anthem through closed doors. He was the loneliest being on earth.

  As the house settled he slipped into the circle and down to the box on the OP side. Jeremy was the
re.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said.

  ‘Here we go.’

  III

  ‘Mr Peregrine Jay successfully negotiates the tightrope between Tudor-type schmaltz and unconvincing modernization. His dialogue has an honest sound and constantly surprises by its penetration. Sentimentality is nimbly avoided. The rancour of the insulted sensualist has never been more searchingly displayed since Sonnet cxxix was written.’

  ‘After all the gratuitous build-up and deeply suspect antics of the promotion boys I dreaded this exhibit at the newly tarted-up Dolphin. In the event it gave no offence. It pleased. It even stimulated. Who would have thought –’

  ‘Marcus Knight performs the impossible. He makes a credible being of the Bard.’

  ‘For once phenomenal advance-promotion has not foisted upon us an inferior product. This play may stand on its own merits.’

  ‘Wot, no four letter words? No drag? No kinks? Right. But hold on, mate –’

  ‘Peregrine Jay’s sensitive, unfettered and almost clinical examination of Shakespeare is shattering in its dramatic intensity. Disturbing and delightful.’

  ‘Without explicitly declaring itself, the play adds up to a searching attack upon British middle-class mores.’

  ‘ – Met in the foyer by Mr Vassily Conducis and escorted to a box stunningly tricked out with lilies of the valley, she wore – ’

  ‘It will run.’

  IV

  Six months later Peregrine put a letter down on the breakfast table and looked across at Jeremy.

  ‘This is it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The decision. Conducis is going to sell out. To an American collector.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Greenslade, as usual, breaks the news. The negotiations have reached a point when he thinks it appropriate to advise me there is every possibility that they will go through.’

  The unbecoming mauvish-pink that belongs to red hair and freckles suffused Jeremy’s cheeks and mounted to his brow. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘This can’t happen. This can’t be allowed to happen. This man’s a monster.’