Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

“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.

“Hullo,” 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 leaned gracefully on the balustrade.

“I reckon,” he observed at large, “any old duff could crack that peter with his eyes shut. Kid stakes.”

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 mannikin,” Jeremy said with venom.

Emily said: “Men and cameras, Winty, in the lane.”

“The press, darling,” Meyer 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 Meyer, 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. Meyer .”

Winter Meyer 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?”

Meyer 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 .

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 O.P. side. Jeremy was there.

“Here we go,” he said.

“Here we go.”

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 offense. 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—