Killer Dolphin (17 page)

“Do you reckon it could have been used as a kind of club?” Fox asked.

“Only by a remarkably well-muscled-up specimen, Br’er Fox.” Alleyn replaced the dolphin and looked at it. “Nice,” he said. “He does that sort of thing beautifully.” He turned to Gibson. “What about routine, Fred?”

“We’re putting it round the divisions. Anybody seen in the precincts of The Dolphin or the Borough or further out. Might be bloody, might be nervous. That’s the story. I’d be just as glad to get back, Rory. We’ve got a busy night in my Div as it happens. Bottle fight at the Cat and Crow with a punch-up and knives. Probable fatality and three break-and-enters.
And
a suspected arson. You’re fully equipped, aren’t you?”

“Yes. All right, Fred, cut away. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Goodnight, then. Thanks.”

When Gibson had gone Alleyn said: “We’ll see where the boy was and then have a word with Peregrine Jay and Miss Dunne. How many chaps have you got here?” he asked the Sergeant

“Four at present, sir. One in the foyer, one at the stage-door, one with Hawkins and another just keeping an eye, like, on Mr. Jay and Miss Dunne.”

“Right. Leave the stage-door man and get the others going on a thorough search. Start in the circle. Where was this boy?”

“In the stalls, sir. Centre aisle and just under the edge of the circle.”

“Tell them not to touch the balustrade. Come on, Fox.”

When Alleyn and Fox went into the now fully lit stalls the first thing they noticed was a rather touching group made by Peregrine and Emily. They sat in the back row by the aisle. Peregrine’s head had inclined to Emily’s shoulder and her arm was about his neck. He was fast asleep. Emily stared at Alleyn, who nodded. He and Fox walked down the aisle to the chalk outline of Trevor’s body.

“And the doctor says a cut on the head, broken thigh and ribs, a bruise on the jaw and possible internal injuries?”

“That’s correct,” Fox agreed.

Alleyn looked at the back of the aisle seat above the trace of the boy’s head. “See here, Fox.”

“Yes. Stain all right. Still damp, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Yes.”

They both moved a step or two down the aisle and looked up at the circle. Three policemen and the Sergeant with Thompson and Bailey were engaged in a methodical search.

“Bailey,” Alleyn said, raising his voice very slightly.

“Sir?”

“Have a look at the balustrade above us here. Look at the pile in the velvet. Use your torch if necessary.”

There was a longish silence broken by Emily’s saying quietly: “It’s all right. Go to sleep again.”

Bailey moved to one side and looked down into the stalls. “We got something here, Mr. Alleyn,” he said. “Two sets of tracks with the pile dragged slantways in a long diagonal line outwards towards the edge. Some of it removed. Looks like fingernails. Trace of something that might be shoe-polish.”

“All right. Deal with it, you and Thompson.”

Fox said, “Well, well: a fall, eh?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it? A fall from the circle about twenty feet. I suppose nobody looked at the boy’s fingernails. Who found him?” Fox, with a jerk of his head, indicated Peregrine and Emily. “They’d been sent in here,” he said, “to get them out of the way.”

“We’ll talk to them now, Fox.”

Peregrine was awake. He and Emily sat hand-in-hand and looked more like displaced persons than anything else, an effect that was heightened by the blueness of Peregrine’s jaws and the shadows under their eyes.

Alleyn said: “I’m sorry you’ve been kept so long. It’s been a beastly business for both of you. Now, I’m going to ask Mr. Fox to read over what you have already said to Mr. Gibson and his Sergeant and you shall tell us if, on consideration, this is a fair statement.”

Fox did this and they nodded and said yes: that was it.

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Then there’s only one other question. Did either of you happen to notice Trevor Vere’s fingernails?”

They stared at him and both repeated in pallid voices: “His fingernails?”

“Yes. You found him and I think you, Miss Dunne, stayed with him until he was taken away.”

Emily rubbed her knuckles in her eyes. “Oh dear,” she said, “I
must
pull myself together. Yes. Yes, of course I did. I stayed with him.”

“Perhaps you held his hand as one does with a sick child?”

“It’s hard to think of Trevor as a child,” Peregrine said. “He was born elderly. Sorry.”

“But I did,” Emily exclaimed. “You’re right. I felt his pulse and then, you know, I just went on holding his hand.”

“Looking at it?”

“Not specially. Not
glaring
at it. Although—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I remember I did sort of look at it. I moved it between my own hands and I remember noticing how grubby it was, which made it childish and—then—there was something—” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I thought he’d got rouge or carmine make-up under his nails and then I saw it wasn’t grease. It was fluff.”

“I tell you what,” Alleyn said. “We’ll put you up for the Police Medal, you excellent girl. Fox: get on to St. Terence’s Hospital and tell them it’s as much as their life is worth to dig out that boy’s nails. Tell our chap there he can clean them himself and put the harvest in an envelope and get a witness to it. Throw your bulk about. Get the top battleaxe and give her fits. Fly.”

Fox went off at a stately double.

“Now,” Alleyn said. “You may go, both of you. Where do you live?”

They told him. Blackfriars and Hempstead, respectively.

“We could shake you down, Emily,” Peregrine said. “Jeremy and I.”

“I’d like to go home, please, Perry. Could you call a taxi?”

“I think we can send you,” Alleyn said. “I shan’t need a car yet awhile and there’s a gaggle of them out there.”

Peregrine said: “I ought to wait for Greenslade, Emily.”

“Yes, of course you ought.”

“Well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll bundle you off to Hampstead, Miss Dunne. Where’s the Sergeant?”

“Here, sir,” said the Sergeant unexpectedly. He had come in from the foyer.

“What’s the matter?” Alleyn asked. “What’ve you got there?”

The Sergeant’s enormous hands were clapped together in front of him and arched a little as if they enclosed something that fluttered and might escape.

“Seventh row of the stalls, sir,” he said, “centre aisle. On the floor about six foot from where the boy lay. There was a black velvet kind of easel affair and a sheet of polythene laying near them.”

He opened his palms like a book and disclosed a little wrinkled glove and two scraps of paper.

“Would they be what was wanted?” asked the Sergeant.

“To me,” said Mr. Greenslade with palapable self-restraint, “there can be only one explanation, my dear Alleyn. The boy, who is, as Jay informs us, an unpleasant and mischievous boy, banged the door to suggest he’d gone but actually stayed behind and, having by some means learned the number of the combination, robbed the safe of its contents. He was caught in the act by Jobbins, who must have seen him from his post on the half-landing. As Jobbins made for him the boy, possibly by accident, overturned the pedestal. Jobbins was felled by the dolphin and the boy, terrified, ran into the circle and down the centre aisle. In his panic he ran too fast, stumbled across the balustrade, clutched at the velvet top and fell into the stalls. As he fell he let go the easel with the glove and papers and they dropped, as he did, into the aisle.”

Mr. Greenslade, looking, in his unshaven state, strangely unlike himself, spread his hands and threw himself back in Winter Meyer’s office chair. Peregrine sat behind his own desk and Alleyn and Fox in two of the modish seats reserved for visitors. The time was twelve minutes past three and the air stale with the aftermath of managerial cigarettes and drinks.

“You say nothing,” Mr. Greenslade observed. “You disagree?”

Alleyn said: “As an open-and-shut theory it has its attractions. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It means that we all sit back and hope for the boy to recover consciousness and health so that we can send him up to the Juvenile Court for manslaughter.”

“What I can’t quite see—” Peregrine began and then said, “Sorry.”

“No. Go on,” Alleyn said.

“I can’t see why the boy, having got the documents and glove, should come out to the circle foyer where he’d be sure to be seen by Jobbins on the half-landing. Why didn’t he go down through the circle by the box, stairs, and pass-door to the stage and let himself out by the stage-door?”

“He might have wanted to show off. He might have —I am persuaded,” Mr. Greenslade said crossly, “that your objections can be met.”

“There’s another thing,” Peregrine said, “and I should have thought of it before. At midnight, Jobbins had to make a routine report to police and fire-station. He’d do it from the open telephone in the downstairs foyer.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Greenslade. “That would give the boy his opportunity. What do you say, Alleyn?”

“As an investigating officer I’m supposed to say nothing,” Alleyn said lightly. “But since the people at the bistro up the lane and the wretched Hawkins all put Jay out of the picture as a suspect and you yourself appear to have been some thirty miles away—”

“Well, I must say!”

“—there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask you to consider under what circumstances the boy, still clutching his booty, could have fallen from the circle with his face towards the balustrade and as he fell have clawed at the velvet top, palms down in such a posture that he’s left nail-tracks almost parallel with the balustrade but slanting towards the outside. There are also traces of boot polish that suggest one of his feet brushed back the pile at the same time. I cannot, myself, reconcile these traces with a nose-dive over the balustrade. I can relate them to a blow to the jaw, a fall across the balustrade, a lift, a sidelong drag and a drop. I also think Jay’s objections are very well urged. There may be answers to them but at the moment I can’t think of any. What’s more, if the boy’s the thief and killer, who unshot the bolts and unslipped the iron bar on the little pass-door in the main front entrance? Who left the key in the lock and banged the door shut from outside?”

“
Did
someone do this?”

“That’s how things were when the police arrived.”

“I—I didn’t notice. I didn’t notice that,” Peregrine said, putting his hand to his eyes. “It was the shock, I suppose.”

“I expect it was.”

“Jobbins would have bolted the little door and dropped the bar when everyone had gone and I think he always hung the key in the corner beyond the box-office. No,” Peregrine said slowly, “I can’t see the boy doing that thing with the door. It doesn’t add up.”

“Not really, does it?” Alleyn said mildly.

“What action,” Mr. Greenslade asked, “do you propose to take?”

“The usual routine, and a very tedious affair it’s likely to prove. There may be useful prints on the pedestal or the dolphin itself but I’m inclined to think that the best we can hope for there is negative evidence. There may be prints on the safe but so far Sergeant Bailey has found none. The injuries to the boy’s face are interesting.”

“If he recovers consciousness,” Peregrine said, “he’ll tell the whole story.”

“Not if he’s responsible,” Mr. Greenslade said obstinately.

“Concussion,” Alleyn said, “can be extremely tricky. In the meantime, of course, we’ll have to find out about all the members of the company and the front-of-house staff and so on.”

“Find out?”

“Their movements for one thing. You may be able to help us here,” Alleyn said to Peregrine. “It seems that apart from the boy, you and Miss Dunne were the last to leave the theatre. Unless, of course, somebody lay doggo until you’d gone. Which may well be the case. Can you tell us anything about how and when and by what door the other members of the cast went out?”

“I think I can,” Peregrine said. He was now invested with the kind of haggard vivacity that follows emotional exhaustion: a febrile alertness such as he had often felt after some hideously protracted dress-rehearsal. He described the precautions taken at the close of every performance to insure that nobody was left on the premises. A thorough search of the house was made by backstage and front-of-house staff. He was certain it would have been quite impossible for anybody in the audience to hide anywhere in the theatre.

He related rapidly and accurately how the stage-crew left the theater in a bunch and how Gertrude Bracey and Marcus Knight went out together through the auditorium to escape the wet. They had been followed by Charles Random, who was alone and used the stage-door, and then by Emily, who stayed offstage with Peregrine.

“And then,” Peregrine said, “Destiny Meade and Harry Grove came out with a clutch of friends. They were evidently going on to a party. They went down the stage-door alley and I heard Harry call out that he’d fetch something or another and Destiny tell him not to be too long. And it was then—I’d come back from having a look at the weather—It was then that I fancied—” He stopped.

“Yes?”

“I thought that the pass-door from stage to front-of-house moved. It was out of the tail of my eye, sort of. If I’m right, and I think I am, it must have been that wretched kid, I suppose.”

“But you never saw him?”

“Never. No. Only heard him.” And Peregrine described how he had gone out to the front and his subsequent interview with Jobbins. Alleyn took him over this again because, so he said, he wanted to make sure he’d got it right “You shaped up to chasing the boy, did you? After you heard him catcall and slam the stage-door?”

“Yes. But Jobbins pointed out he’d be well on his way. So we said goodnight and—”

“Yes?”

“I’ve just remembered. Do you know what we said to each other? I said: ‘This is your last watch,’ and he said: ‘That’s right. Positively the last appearance.’ Because the treasure was to be taken away today, you see. And after that Jobbins wouldn’t have had to be glued to the half-landing.”

Greenslade and Fox made slight appropriate noises. Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “And so you said goodnight and you and Miss Dunne left? By the stage-door?”