Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

It will run.

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 where 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.”

“It appears that the B.M. and the V. and A. have shot their bolts. So has the British syndicate that was set up.”

Jeremy raised the cry of the passionately committed artist against the rest of the world. “But why ! He’s lousy with money. He’s got so much it must have stopped meaning anything. What’ll he do with this lot? Look, suppose he gives it away? So what! Let him give William Shakespeare’s handwriting and Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove away. Let him give them to Stratford or the V. and A. Let him give them to the nation. Fine. He’ll be made a bloody peer and good luck to him.”

“Let him do this and let him do that. He’ll do what he’s worked out for himself.”

“ You’ll have to see him, Perry. After all he’s got a good thing out of you and The Dolphin. Capacity business for six months and booked out for weeks ahead. Small cast. Massive prestige. The lot.”

“And a company of Kilkenny cats as far as good relations are concerned?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know jolly well. Destiny waltzing over to Harry Grove. Gertrude and Marco reacting like furies.” Peregrine hesitated. “And so on,” he said.

“You mean me lusting after Destiny and getting nowhere? Don’t let it give you a moment’s pause. I make no trouble among the giants, I assure you.”

“I’m sorry, Jer.”

“No, no. Forget it. Just you wade in to Conducis.”

“I can’t.”

“For God’s sake! Why?”

“Jer, I’ve told you. He gives me the jim-jams. I owe him nothing and I don’t want to owe him anything. Still less do I want to go hat in hand asking for anything. Anything .”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I might get it.”

“Well, if he’s not an old queer and you say you don’t believe he is, what the hell? You feel like I do about the glove and the letter. You say you do. That they ought to be here among Shakespeare’s people in his own city or country town— here . Well?”

“I can’t go pleading again. I did try, remember, when he came to The Dolphin. I made a big song and dance and got slapped right down for my trouble. I won’t do it again.”

Jeremy now lost his temper.

“Then, by God, I will,” he shouted.

“You won’t get an interview.”

“I’ll stage a sit-down on his steps.”

“Shall you carry a banner?”

“If necessary I’ll carry a sledgehammer.”

This was so startlingly in accord with Emily’s half-joking prediction that Peregrine said loudly: “For the Lord’s sake pipe down. That’s a damn silly sort of thing to say and you know it.”

They had both lost their tempers and shouted foolishly at each other. An all-day and very superior help was now in their employment and they had to quiet down when she came in. They walked about their refurnished and admirably decorated studio, smoking their pipes and not looking at each other. Peregrine began to feel remorseful. He himself was so far in love with Emily Dunne and had been given such moderate encouragement that he sympathized with Jeremy in his bondage and yet thought what a disaster it was for him to succumb to Destiny. They were, in common with most men of their age, rather owlish in their affairs of the heart and a good deal less sophisticated than their conversation seemed to suggest.

Presently Jeremy halted in his walk and said:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Look. I have been a morsel precipitate.”

Pregrine said: “Not at all, Jer.”

“Yes. I don’t really envisage a sit-down strike.”

“No?”

“No.” Jeremy looked fixedly at his friend. “On the whole,” he said, and there was a curious undertone in his voice, “I believe it would be a superfluous exercise.”

“You do ! But—well really, I do not understand you.”

“Think no more of it.”

“Very well,” said the astonished Peregrine. “I might as well mention that the things are to be removed from the safe on this day week and will be replaced by a blown-up photograph. Greenslade is sending two men from the office to take delivery.”

“Where are they to go?”

“He says for the time being to safe storage at his offices. They’ll probably be sold by private treaty but if they are put up at Sotheby’s the result will be the same. The client’s hell bent on getting them.”

Jeremy burst out laughing.

“I think you must be mad,” said Peregrine.

The night before the Shakespeare relics were to be removed from The Dolphin Theatre was warm and very still with a feeling of thunder in the air which, late in the evening, came to fulfillment. During the third act, at an uncannily appropriate moment a great clap and clatter broke out in the heavens and directly over the theatre.

”Going too far with the thunder-sheet up there,” Meyer said to Peregrine, who was having a drink with him in the office.

There were several formidable outbreaks followed by the characteristic downpour. Peregrine went out to the circle foyer. Jobbins was at his post on the half-landing under the treasure.

Peregrine listened at the double doors into the circle and could just hear his own dialogue spoken by strange disembodied voices. He glanced at his watch. Half past ten. On time.

“Goodnight, Jobbins,” he said and went downstairs. Cars, already waiting in Wharfingers Lane, glistened in the downpour. He could hear the sound of water hitting water on the ebony night tide. The stalls attendant stood by to open the doors. Peregrine slipped in to the back of the house. There was a man of Stratford, his head bent over his sonnet: sitting in the bow window of a house in Warwickshire. The scratch of his quill on parchment could be clearly heard as the curtain came down.

Seven curtains and they could easily have taken more. One or two women in the back row were crying. They blew their noses, got rid of their handkerchiefs and clapped.

Peregrine went out quickly. The rain stopped as he ran down the side alleyway to the stage-door. A light cue had been missed and he wanted a word with the stage-director.

When he had had it he stood where he was and listened absently to the familiar sounds of voices and movement in the dressing-rooms and front-of-house. Because of the treasure a systematic search of the theatre was conducted after each performance, and he had seen to it that this was thoroughly performed. He could hear the staff talking as they moved about the stalls and circle and spread their dust sheets. The assistant stage-manager organized the backstage procedure. When this was completed he and the stagecrew left. A trickle of backstage visitors came through and groped their alien way out. How incongruous they always seemed.

Destiny was entertaining in her dressing-room. He could hear Harry Grove’s light impertinent laughter and the ejaculations of the guests. Gertrude Bracey and, a little later, Marcus Knight appeared, each of them looking furious. Peregrine advised them to go through the front of the house and thus avoid the puddles and overflowing gutters in the stage-door alleyway.