Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

“Partly because of your prestige and anyway I’m not all that oncoming, even here.”

“Yes, you are. You are when we’re dancing. Not at first but suddenly, about ten minutes ago.”

“I’m having fun and I’m obliged to you for providing it.”

“Do you at all fancy me?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Don’t say it brightly like that: it’s insufferable.”

“Sorry.”

“And what do you mean, my prestige. Are you afraid people like Gertie, for example, will say you’re having an advantageous carry-on with the author-producer?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How bloody silly. ‘ They say. What say they? Let them say .’ ”

“That aphorism was coined by a murdering cad.”

“What of it? Emily: I find you more attractive than any of my former girls. Now, don’t flush up and bridle. I know you’re not my girl, in actual fact. Emily,” Peregrine shouted against a screaming crescendo from the saxophonist, “Emily, listen to me. I believe I love you.”

The little band had crashed to its climax and was silent. Peregrine’s declaration rang out as a solo performance.

“After that,” Emily said, “I almost think we had better ask for the bill, don’t you?”

Peregrine was so put out that he did so. They left The Younger Dolphin assuring the anxious proprietor that they would certainly return.

Their plan had been to stroll over to Blackfriars, pick up Peregrine’s and Jeremy’s car and drive to Hampstead.

They walked out of The Younger Dolphin into a deluge.

Neither of them had a mackintosh or an umbrella. They huddled in the entrance and discussed the likelihood of raising a cab. Peregrine went back and telephoned a radio-taxi number to be told nothing would be available for at least twenty minutes. When he rejoined Emily the rain had eased off a little.

“I tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got a gamp and a mac in the office. Let’s run down the hill, beat Jobbins up and collect them. Look, it’s almost stopped.”

“Come on, then.”

“Mind you don’t slip.”

Hand in hand they ran wildly and noisily down Wharfingers Lane. They reached the turning at the bottom, rounded the corner and pulled up outside The Dolphin. They laughed and were exhilarated.

“Listen!” Emily exclaimed. “Peregrine, listen. Somebody else is running in the rain.”

“It’s someone in the stage-door alley.”

“So it is.”

The other runner’s footsteps rang out louder and louder on the wet cobblestones. He came out of the alley into the lane and his face was open-mouthed like a gargoyle.

He saw them and he flung himself upon Peregrine, pawed at his coat and jabbered into his face. It was the night watchman who relieved Jobbins.

“For Gawsake!” he said. “Oh, my Gawd, Mr. Jay, for Gawsake.”

“What the devil’s the matter? What is it? What’s happened !”

“Murder,” the man said, and his lips flabbered over the word. “That’s what happened, Mr. Jay. Murder.”

While he let them in at the stage-door the man—he was called Hawkins—said over and over again in a shrill whine that it wasn’t his fault if he was late getting down to the theatre. Nobody, he said, could blame him. He turned queer, as was well known, at the sight of blood. It was as much as Peregrine could do to get the victim’s name out of him. He had gone completely to pieces.

They went through the stage-door into the dark house, and up the aisle and so to the foyer. It was as if they had never left the theatre.

Peregrine said to Emily: “Wait here. By the box-office. Don’t come any further.”

“I’ll come if you want me.”

“ Oh Gawd no. Oh Gawd no, Miss .”

“Stay here, Emily. Or wait in front. Yes. Just wait in front.” He opened the doors into the stalls and fastened them back. She went in. “Now, Hawkins,” Peregrine said.

“You go, Mr. Jay. Up there. I don’t ’ave to go. I can’t do nothing. I’d vomit. Honest I would.”

Peregrine ran up the graceful stairway towards the sunken landing: under the treasure where both flights emerged. It was dark up there but he had a torch and used it. The beam shot out and found an object.

There, on its back in a loud overcoat and slippers lay the shell of Jobbins. The woollen cap had not fallen from the skull but had been stove into it. Out of what had been a face, broken like a crust now, and glistening red, one eye stared at nothing.

Beside this outrage lay a bronze dolphin, grinning away for all it was worth through a wet, unspeakable mask.

Everything round Peregrine seemed to shift a little as if his vision had swivelled like a movie camera. He saw without comprehension a square of reflected light on the far wall and its source above the landing. He saw, down below him, the top of Hawkins’s head. He moved to the balustrade, held on to it and with difficulty controlled an upsurge of nausea. He fetched a voice out of himself.

“Have you rung the police?”

“I better had, didn’t I? I better report, didn’t I?” Hawkins gabbled without moving.

“Stay where you are. I’ll do it.”

There was a general purposes telephone in the downstairs foyer outside the box-office. He ran down to it and, controlling his hand, dialled the so celebrated number. How instant and how cool the response.

“No possibility of survival, sir?”

“God, no. I told you—”

“Please leave everything as it is. You will be relieved in a few minutes. Which entrance is available? Thank you.”

Peregrine hung up. “Hawkins,” he said. “Go back to the stage-door and let the police in. Go on.”

“Yes. O.K. Yes, Mr. Jay.”

“Well, go on , damn you.”

Was there an independent switch anywhere in the foyer for front-of-house lighting or was it all controlled from backstage? Surely not. He couldn’t remember. Ridiculous. Emily was out there in the darkened stalls. He went in and found her standing just inside the doors.

“Emily?”

“Yes. All right. Here I am.”

He felt her hands in his. “This is a bad thing,” he said hurriedly. “It’s a very bad thing, Emily.”

“I heard what you said on the telephone.”

“They’ll be here almost at once.”

“I see. Murder,” Emily said, trying the word.

“We can’t be sure.”

They spoke aimlessly. Peregrine heard a high-pitched whine inside his own head and felt sickeningly cold. He wondered if he was going to faint and groped for Emily. They put their arms about each other. “We must behave,” Peregrine said, “in whatever way one is expected to behave. You know? Calm? Collected? All the things people like us are meant not to be.”

“That’s right. Well, so we will.”

He stooped his head to hers. “Can this be you?” he said.

A sound crept into their silence: a breathy intermittent sound with infinitesimal interruptions that seemed to have some sort of vocal quality. They told each other to listen.

With a thick premonition of what was to come, Peregrine put Emily away from him.

He switched on his torch and followed its beam down the centre aisle. He was under the overhang of the dress-circle but moved on until its rim was above his head. It was here, in the centre aisle of the stalls and below the circle balustrade, that his torchlight came to rest on a small, breathing, faintly audible heap which, as he knelt beside it, revealed itself as an unconscious boy.

“Trevor,” Peregrine said. “ Trevor .”

Emily behind him said, “Has he been killed? Is he dying?”

“I don’t know. What should we do? Ring for the ambulance? Ring the Yard again? Which?”

“Don’t move him. I’ll ring Ambulance.”