Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

“He made them himself. The note says ‘Mayde by my father.’ ”

“Is the writing all crabbed and squiggly like his signatures?”

“Yes. But not exactly like any of them. People’s writing isn’t always like their signatures. The handwriting experts have all found what they call ‘definitive’ points of agreement.”

“ What will happen to them, Perry? Will he sell to the highest bidder or will he have any ideas about keeping them here? Oh,” Emily cried, “they should be kept here.”

“I tried to say as much but he shut up like a spring-trap.”

“Jeremy,” Emily said, “will probably go stark ravers if they’re sold out of the country.”

“Jeremy?”

“Yes. He’s got a manic thing about the draining away of national treasures, hasn’t he? I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised, would you, if it had turned out to be Jeremy who stole the Goya Wellington. Simply to keep it in England, you know.” Emily chuckled indulgently and Peregrine thought he detected the proprietary air of romance and was greatly put out. Emily went on and on about Jeremy Jones and his shop and his treasures and how moved and disturbed he was by the new resolution. “Don’t you feel he is perfectly capable,” she said, “of bearding Mr. Conducis in his den and telling him he mustn’t let them go?”

“I do hope you’re exaggerating.”

“I really don’t believe I am. He’s a fanatic.”

“You know him very well, don’t you?”

“Quite well. I help in their shop sometimes. They are experts, aren’t they, on old costume? Of course Jeremy has to leave most of it to his partner because of work in the theatre but in between engagements he does quite a lot. I’m learning how to do all kinds of jobs from him like putting old tinsel on pictures and repairing bindings. He’s got some wonderful prints and books.”

“I know,” Peregrine said rather shortly. “I’ve been there.”

She turned her head and looked thoughtfully at him. “He’s madly excited about making the gloves for the show. He was saying just now he’s got a pair of Jacobean gloves, quite small, and he thinks they might be suitable if he took the existing beadwork off and copied the embroidery off Hamnet’s glove onto them.”

“I know, he told me.”

“He’s letting me help with that, too.”

“Fun for you.”

“Yes. I like him very much. I do hope if he’s madly in love with Destiny that it works out but I’m afraid I rather doubt it.”

“Why?”

“He’s a darling but he hasn’t got anything like enough of what it takes. Well, I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Really?” Peregrine quite shouted in an excess of relief. He began to talk very fast about the glove and the play and what they should have for dinner. He had been wildly extravagant and had bought all the things he himself liked best: smoked salmon with caviare folded inside, cold partridge and the ingredients for two kinds of salad. It was lucky that his choice seemed to coincide with Emily’s. They had Bernkasteler Doktor with the smoked salmon and it was so good they went on drinking it with the partridge. Because of Jeremy’s defection there was rather a lot of everything and they ate and drank it all up.

When they had cleared away they returned to the window-seat and watched the Thames darken and the lights come up on Bankside. Peregrine began to think how much he wanted to make love to Emily. He watched her and talked less and less. Presently he closed his hand over hers. Emily turned her hand, gave his fingers a brief matter-of-fact squeeze and then withdrew.

“I’m having a lovely time,” she said, “but I’m not going to stay very late. It takes ages to get back to Hampstead.”

“But I’ll drive you. Jeremy hasn’t taken the car. It lives in a little yard round the corner.”

“Well, that’ll be grand. But I still won’t stay very late.”

“I’d like you to stay forever and a day.”

“That sounds like a theme song from a rather twee musical.”

“Emily: have you got a young man?”

“No.”

“Do you have a waiting list, at all?”

“No, Peregrine.”

“No preferential booking?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Are you ever so non-wanton?”

“Ever so.”

“Well,” he sighed, “it’s original, of course.”

“It’s not meant to madden and inflame.”

“That was what I feared. Well, O.K. I’ll turn up the lights and show you my photographs.”

“You jolly well do,” said Emily.

So they looked at Peregrine’s and Jeremy’s scrap-books and talked interminable theatre shop and presently Emily stood up and said now she must go.

Peregrine helped her into her coat with rather a perfunctory air and banged round the flat getting his own coat and shutting drawers.

When he came back and found Emily with her hands in her pockets looking out of the window he said loudly: “All the same, it’s scarcely fair to have cloudy hair and a husky voice and your sort of face and body and intelligence and not even think about being provocative.”

“I do apologize.”

“I suppose I can’t just give you ‘a single famished kiss’?”

“All right,” said Emily. “But not too famished.”

“ Emily !” Peregrine muttered and became, to his astonishment, breathless.

When they arrived at her flat in Hampstead she thanked him again for her party and he kissed her again but lightly this time. “For my own peace of mind,” he said. “Dear Emily, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, dear Peregrine.”

“Do you know something?”

“What?”

“We open a fortnight tonight.”

BLISS FOR BARDOLITERS

STAGGERING DISCOVERY

Absolutely Priceless Say Experts

MYSTERY GLOVE

WHO FOUND IT?

Dolphin Discovery

FIND OF FOUR CENTURIES

NO FAKING SAY EGG-HEADS

Shakespeare’s Dying Son

“IN HIS OWN WRITE”

BARD’S HAND AND NO KIDDING

Inspires Playwright Jay

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

Exhaustive tests have satisfied the most distinguished scholars and experts of the authenticity…

GLOVE-LETTER-SENSATION

“It’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,” says tall, gangling playwright Peregrine Jay.

WHO OWNS THE DOLPHIN GLOVE?

WE GIVE YOU ONE GUESS

“No Comment” — Conducis

FABULOUS OFFER FROM U.S.A.

AMAZING DEVELOPMENTS

DOLPHIN GLOVE MYSTERY

Spokesman for Conducis Says No Decision on Sale. May Go to States.

COMING EVENTS

The restored Dolphin Theatre on Bankside will open on Thursday with a new play, The Glove , written and directed by Peregrine Jay and inspired, it is generally understood, by the momentous discovery of…

OPENING TOMORROW

At The Dolphin. Bankside. Under Royal Patronage. The Glove by Peregrine Jay. The Dolphin Glove with Documents will be on view in the foyer. Completely sold out for the next four weeks. Waiting list now open.

“You’ve been so very obliging,” Jeremy Jones said to the learned young assistant at the museum, “letting us have access to the glove and take up so much of your time, that Miss Dunne suggested you might like to see the finished copies.”

“That’s very nice of you. I shall be most interested.”

“They’re only stage-props, you know,” Jeremy said, opening a cardboard box. “But I’ve taken a little more trouble than usual because the front row of the stalls will be comparing them to the real thing.”

“ And because it was a labour of love,” Emily said. “Mostly that, Jeremy, now, wasn’t it?”

“Well, perhaps. There you are.”

He turned back a piece of old silk and exposed the gloves lying neatly, side by side. The assistant bent over them. “I should think the front row of the stalls will be perfectly satisfied,” he said. “They are really very good copies. Accurate in the broad essentials and beautifully worked. Where did you get your materials?”