Killer Dolphin (27 page)

As he moved towards them Alleyn wondered if Mr. Conducis was ill or if his pallor was brought about by some refraction of light from the apple-green walls. He wore a gardenia in his coat and an edge of crimson silk showed above his breast pocket.

“Good evening,” he said. “I am pleased that you were able to come. Glad to see you again.”

He offered his hand. Large and white, it withdrew itself—it almost snatched itself away—from contact.

Mawson came in with a drinks tray, put it down, hovered, was glanced at and withdrew.

“You will have a drink,” Mr. Conducis stated.

“Thank you, but no,” Àlleyn said. “Not on duty, I’m afraid. This won’t stop you from having one, of course.”

“I am an abstainer,” said Mr. Conducis. “Shall we sit down?”

They did so. The crimson leather chairs received them like sultans.

Alleyn said, “You sent word you wanted to see us, sir, but we would in any case have asked for an interview. Perhaps the best way of tackling this unhappy business will be for us to hear any questions that it may have occurred to you to ask. We will then, if you please, continue the conversation on what I can only call routine investigation lines.”

Mr. Conducis raised his clasped hands to his mourn and glanced briefly over them at Alleyn. He then lowered his gaze to his fingers. Alleyn thought: “I suppose that’s how he looks when he’s manipulating his gargantuan undertakings.”

Mr. Conducis said, “I am concerned with this affair. The theatre is my property and the enterprise is under my control. I have financed it. The glove and documents are mine. I trust, therefore, that I am entitled to a detailed statement upon the case as it appears to your Department. Or rather, since you are in charge of the investigation, as it appears to you.”

This was said with an air of absolute authority. Alleyn was conscious, abruptly, of the extraordinary force that resided in Mr. Conducis.

He said very amiably: “We are not authorized, I’m afraid, to make detailed statements on demand—not even to entrepreneurs of businesses and owners of property, especially where a fatality has occurred on that property and a crime of violence may be suspected. On the other hand, I will, as I have suggested, be glad to consider any questions you like to put to me.”

And he thought: he’s like a lizard or a chameleon or whatever the animal is that blinks slowly. It’s what people mean when they talk about hooded eyes.”

Mr. Conducis did not argue or protest. For all the reaction he gave, he might not have heard what Alleyn said.

“In your opinion,” he said, “were the fatality and the injury to the boy caused by an act of violence?”

“Yes.”

“Both by the same hand?”

“Yes.”

“Have you formed an opinion on why it was done?”

“We have arrived at a working hypothesis.”

“What is it?”

“I can go so far as to say that I think both were defensive actions.”

“By a person caught in the act of robbery?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Do you think you know who this person is?”

“I am almost sure that I do. I am not positive.”

“Who?”

“That,” Alleyn said, “I am not at liberty to tell you. Yet.”

Mr. Conducis looked fully at him, if the fact that those extraordinarily blank eyes were focussed on his face could justify this assertion.

“You said you wished to see me. Why?”

“For several reasons. The first concerns your property: the glove and the documents. As you know they have been recovered, but I think you should also know by what means.”

He told the story of Jeremy Jones and the substitution and he could have sworn that as he did so the sweet comfort of a reprieve flooded through Conducis. The thick white hands relaxed. He gave an almost inaudible but long sigh.

“Have you arrested him?”

“No. We have, of course, uplifted the glove. It is in a safe at the Yard with the documents.”

“I cannot believe, Superintendent Alleyn, that you give any credence to his story.”

“I am inclined to believe it.”

Then in my opinion you are either incredibly stupid or needlessly evasive. In either case, incompetent.”

This attack surprised Alleyn. He had not expected his slow-blinking opponent to dart his tongue so soon. As if sensing his reaction Mr. Conducis recrossed his legs and said: “I am too severe. I beg your pardon. Let me explain myself. Can you not see that Jones’s story was an impromptu invention? He did not substitute the faked glove for the real glove six months ago. He substituted it last night and was discovered in the act. He killed Jobbins, was seen by the boy and tried to kill him. He left the copy behind—no doubt if he had not been interrupted he would have put it in the safe—and he took the real glove to the safe-deposit.”

“First packing it with most elaborate care in an insulated box with four wrappings, all sealed.”

“Done in the night. Before Jay got home.”

“We can check, you know, with the safe-deposit people. He says he had a witness when he deposited the glove six months ago.”

“A witness to a dummy package, no doubt”

“If you consider,” Alleyn said, “I’m sure you will come to the conclusion that this theory won’t answer. It really won’t, you know.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want me to spell it out, sir? If, as he states, he transposed the gloves six months ago and intended to maintain the deception, he had no need to do anything further. If the theft was a last-minute notion, he could perfectly well have effected the transposition today or tomorrow, when he performed his authorized job of removing the treasure from the safe. There was no need for him to sneak back into the theatre at dead of night and risk discovery. Why on earth, six months ago, should he go through an elaborate hocus-pocus of renting a safe-deposit and lodging a fake parcel in it?”

“He’s a fanatic. He has written to me expostulating about the sale of the items to an American purchaser. He even tried, I am told, to secure an interview. My secretary can show you his letter. It is most extravagant.”

“I shall be interested to see it.”

A brief silence followed this exchange. Alleyn thought: “He’s formidable but he’s not as tough as I expected. He’s shaken.”

“Have you any other questions?” Alleyn asked.

He wondered if the long, unheralded silence was one of Mr. Conducis’s strategic weapons: whether it was or not, he now employed it and Alleyn, with every appearance of tranquillity, sat it out. The light had changed in the long green room and the sky outside the far windows had darkened. Beneath them, at the exquisite table, Peregrine Jay had first examined the documents and the glove. And against the left-hand wall under a picture—surely a Kandinsky—stood the bureau, an Oeben or Riesener perhaps, from which Mr. Conducis had withdrawn his treasures. Fox, who in a distant chair had performed his little miracle of self-effacement, gave a slight cough.

Mr. Conducis said without moving, “I would ask for information as to the continued running of the play and the situation of the players.”

“I understand the season will go on: we’ve taken no action that might prevent it.”

“You will do so if you arrest a member of the company.”

“He or she would be replaced by an understudy.”

“She,” Mr. Conducis said in a voice utterly devoid of inflection. “That, of course, need not be considered.”

He waited, but Alleyn thought it was his turn to initiate a silence and made no comment.

“Miss Destiny Meade has spoken to me,” Mr. Conducis said. “She is very much distressed by the whole affair. She tells me you called upon her this afternoon and she finds herself, as a result, quite prostrated. Surely there is no need for her to be pestered like this.”

For a split second Alleyn wondered what on earth Mr. Conducis would think if he and Fox went into fits of laughter. He said: “Miss Meade was extremely helpful and perfectly frank. I am sorry she found the exercise fatiguing.”

“I have no more to say,” Mr. Conducis said and stood up. So did Alleyn.

“I’m afraid that I have,” he said. “I’m on duty, sir, and this
is
an investigation.”

“I have nothing to bring to it.”

“When we are convinced of that we will stop bothering you. I’m sure you’d prefer us to deal with the whole matter here rather than at the Yard. Wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Conducis went to the drinks tray and poured himself a glass of water. He took a minute gold case from a waistcoat pocket, shook a tablet on his palm, swallowed it and chased it down.

“Excuse me,” he said, “it was time.”

Ulcers? wondered Alleyn.

Mr. Conducis returned and faced him. “By all means,” he said. “I am perfectly ready to help you and only regret that I am unlikely to be able to do so to any effect. I have, from the time I decided to promote The Dolphin undertaking, acted solely through my executives. Apart from an initial meeting and one brief discussion with Mr. Jay I have virtually no personal contacts with members of the management and company.”

“With the exception, perhaps, of Miss Meade?”

“Quite so.”

“And Mr. Grove.”

“He was already known to me. I except him.”

“I understand you are related?”

“A distant connection.”

“So he said,” Alleyn lightly agreed. “I understand,” he added, “that you were formerly acquainted with Mr. Marcus Knight.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Peregrine Jay recognized his signature on the menu you destroyed in his presence.”

“Mr. Jay was not himself that morning.”

“Do you mean, sir, that he made a mistake and Knight was not a guest in the
Kalliope
?”

After a long pause Mr. Gonducis said: “He was a guest. He behaved badly. He took offense at an imagined slight. He left the yacht, at my suggestion, at Villefranche.”

“And so escaped the disaster?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Conducis had seated himself again: this time in an upright chair. He sat rigidly erect, but as if conscious of this, crossed his legs and put his hands in his trouser pockets. Alleyn stood a short distance from him.

“I am going to ask you,” he said, “to talk about something that may be painful to you. I want you to tell me about the night of the fancy-dress dinner party on board the
Kalliope
.”

Alleyn had seen people sit with the particular kind of stillness that now invested Mr. Conducis. They sat like that in the cells underneath the dock while they waited for the jury to come back. In the days of capital punishment, he had been told by a warder that they sat like that while they waited to hear if they were reprieved. He could see a very slight rhythmic movement of the crimson silk handkerchief and he could hear, ever so faintly, the breathing of Mr. Conducis.

“It was six years ago, wasn’t it?” Alleyn said. “And the dinner party took place on the night of the disaster?”

Mr. Conducis’s eyes closed in a momentary assent but he did not speak.

“Was Mrs. Constantin Guzmann one of your guests in the yacht?”

“Yes,” he said indifferently.

“You told Mr. Jay, I believe, that you bought the Shakespeare relics six years ago?”

“That is so.”

“Had you this treasure on board the yacht?”

“Why should you think so?”

“Because Jay found under the glove the menu for a dinner in the
Kalliope
—he thinks it was headed ‘Villefranche.’ Which you burnt in the fireplace over there.”

“The menu must have been dropped in the desk. It was an unpleasant reminder of a painful event”

“So the desk and its contents were in the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why, sir?”

Mr. Conduds’s lips moved, were compressed and moved again. “I bought them,” he said, “from—” he gave a grotesque little cough—“ from a person in the yacht.”

“Who was this person, if you please?”

“I have forgotten.”

“Forgotten?”

“The name.”

“Was it Knight?”

“
No
.”

“There are maritime records. We shall be able to trace it. Will you go on, please?”

“He was a member of the ship’s complement. He asked to see me and showed me the desk which he said he wanted to sell. I understand that it had been given him by the proprietress of a lodging-house. I thought the contents were almost certainly worthless but I gave him what he asked for them.”

“Which was—?”

“Thirty pounds.”

“What became of this man?”

“Drowned,” said a voice from somewhere inside Mr. Conducis.

“How did it come about that the desk and its contents were saved?”

“I cannot conjecture by what fantastic process of thought you imagine any of this relates to your inquiry.”

“I hope to show that it does. I believe it does.”

“I had the desk on deck. I had shown the contents, as a matter of curiosity, to some of my guests.”

“Did Mrs. Guzmann see it, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Was she interested?”

A look which Alleyn afterwards described as being profoundly professional drifted into Mr. Conducis’s face.

He said, “She is a collector.”

“Did she make an offer?”

“She did. I was not inclined to sell.”

Alleyn was visited by a strange notion.

“Tell me,” he said, “were you both in fancy dress?”

Mr. Conducis looked at him with an air of wondering contempt. “Mrs. Guzmann,” he said, “was in costume: Andalusian, I understand. I wore a domino over evening dress.”

“Gloved, either of you?”

“No!” he said loudly and added: “We had been playing bridge.”

“Were any of the others gloved?”

“A ridiculous question. Some may have been.”

“Were the ship’s company in fancy dress?”

“Certainly not!”

“The stewards?”

“As eighteenth-century flunkeys.”

“Gloved?”

“I do not remember.”

“Why do you dislike pale gloves, Mr. Conducis?”

“I have no idea,” he said breathlessly, “what you mean.”

“You told Peregrine Jay that you dislike them.”

“A personal prejudice. I cannot account for it.”

“Were there gloved hands that disturbed you on the night of the disaster? Mr. Conducis, are you ill?”