Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

“Yes.”

“Listen. Sirens.”

“Police.”

Emily said: “I’ll ring, all the same,” and was gone.

There seemed to be no interval of time between this moment and the occupation of The Dolphin by uniformed policemen with heavy necks and shoulders and quiet voices. Peregrine met the Sergeant.

“Are you in charge? There’s something else since I telephoned. A boy. Hurt but alive. Will you look?”

The Sergeant looked. He said: “This might be serious. You haven’t touched him, sir?”

“No. Emily—Miss Dunne who is with us—Is ringing Ambulance.”

“Can we have some light?”

Peregrine, remembering at last where they were, put the houselights on. More police were coming in at the stage-door. He rejoined the Sergeant. A constable was told to stay by the boy and report any change.

“I’ll take a look at this body, if you please,” the Sergeant said.

Emily was at the telephone in the foyer saying, “It’s very urgent. It’s really urgent. Please.”

“If you don’t mind, Miss,” said the Sergeant and took the receiver. “Police here,” he said and was authoritative. “They’ll be round in five minutes,” he said to Emily.

“Thank God.”

“Now then, Mr. Jay.” He’d got Peregrine’s name as he came in.

“May I go back to the boy?” Emily asked. “In case he regains consciousness and is frightened? I know him.”

“Good idea,” said the Sergeant with a kind of routine heartiness. “You just stay there with the boy, Miss—?”

“Dunne.”

“Miss Dunne. Members of the company here, would it be?”

“Yes,” Peregrine said. “We were at the new restaurant in Wharfingers Lane and came back to shelter from the rain.”

“Is that so? I see. Well, Miss Dunne, you just stay with the boy and tell the Ambulance all you know. Now, Mr. Jay.”

A return to the sunken landing was a monstrous thing to contemplate. Peregrine said, “Yes, I’ll show you. If you don’t mind, I won’t—” and reminded himself of Hawkins. “It’s terrible,” he said. “I’m sorry to baulk. This way.”

“Up the stairs?” the Sergeant asked conversationally, as if he inquired his way to the Usual Offices. “Don’t trouble to come up again, Mr. Jay. The less traffic, you know, the better we like it.”

“Yes, of course. I forgot.”

“If you’ll just wait down here.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The Sergeant was not long on the landing. Peregrine could not help looking up at him and saw that, like himself, the Sergeant did not go beyond the top step. He returned and went to the telephone. As he passed Peregrine he said: “Very nasty, sir, isn’t it,” in a preoccupied voice.

Peregrine couldn’t hear much of what the Sergeant said into the telephone. “Some kind of caretaker—Jobbins—and a young lad—looks like it. Very good, sir. Yes. Yes. Very good.” And then after a pause and in a mumble of words, one that came through very clearly:

“—robbery—”

Never in the wide world would Peregrine have believed it of himself that a shock, however acute, or a slight, however appalling, could have so bludgeoned his wits. There, there on the wall opposite the one in which the treasure was housed, shone the telltale square of reflected light and there above his head as he stood on the stairs had been the exposed casket—exposed and brightly lit when it should have been shut off and—

He gave a kind of stifled cry and started up the stairs.

“Just a moment, sir. If you please.”

“The glove,” Peregrine said. “The letters and the glove. I must see. I must look.”

The Sergeant was beside him. A great hand closed without undue force round his upper arm.

“All right, sir. All right. But you can’t go up there yet, you know. You join your young lady and the sick kiddy. And if you’re referring to the contents of that glassed-in cabinet up there, I can tell you right away. It’s been opened from the back and they seem to have gone.”

Peregrine let out an incoherent cry and blundered into the stalls to tell Emily.

For him and for Emily the next half-hour was one of frustration, confusion and despair. They had to collect themselves and give statements to the Sergeant who entered them at an even pace in his notebook. Peregrine talked about hours and duties and who ought to be informed and Mr. Greenslade and Mr. Conducis, and he stared at the Sergeant’s enormous forefinger, flattened across the image of a crown on a blue cover. Peregrine didn’t know who Jobbin’s next-of-kin might be. He said, as if that would help: “He was a nice chap. He was a bit of a character. A nice chap.”

The theatre continually acquired more police: plainclothes, unhurried men, the most authoritative of whom was referred to by the Sergeant as the Div-Super and addressed as Mr. Gibson. Peregrine and Emily heard him taking a statement from Hawkins, who cried very much and said it wasn’t a fair go.

The ambulance came. Peregrine and Emily stood by while Trevor, the whites of his eyes showing under his heavy lashes and his breathing very heavy, was gently examined. A doctor appeared: the divisional-surgeon, Peregrine heard someone say. Mr. Gibson asked him if there was any chance of a return to consciousness and he said something about Trevor being deeply concussed.

“He’s got broken ribs and a broken right leg,” he said, “and an unbroken bruise on his jaw. It’s a wonder he’s alive. We won’t know about the extent of internal injuries until we’ve had a look-see,” said the divisional-surgeon. “Get him into St. Terence’s at once.” He turned to Peregrine. “Would you know the next-of-kin?”

Peregrine was about to say: “Only too well,” but checked himself. “Yes,” he said, “his mother.”

“Would you have the address?” asked Mr. Gibson. “And the telephone number.”

“In the office. Upstairs. No, wait a moment. I’ve a cast list in my pocketbook. Here it is: Mrs. Blewitt.”

“Perhaps you’d be so kind as to ring her, Mr. Jay.

She ought to be told at once. What’s the matter, Mr. Jay?”

“She meets him, usually. At the top of the lane. I— Oh God, poor Jobbins told me that. I wonder what she did when Trevor didn’t turn up. You’d have thought she’d have come to the theatre.”

“Can we get this boy away?” asked the divisional-surgeon crisply.

“O.K., Doc. You better go with them,” Mr. Gibson said to the constable who had stayed by Trevor. “Keep your ears open. Anything. Whisper. Anything. Don’t let some starched battleaxe push you about. We want to know what hit him. Don’t leave him, now.”

Mr. Gibson had a piece of chalk in his hand. He ran it round Trevor’s little heap of a body, grinding it into the carpet. “O.K.,” he said and Trevor was taken away.

The divisional-surgeon said he’d take a look-see at the body and went off with the Sergeant. Superintendent Gibson was about to accompany them when Peregrine and Emily, who had been in consultation, said: “Er—” and he turned back.

“Yes, Mr. Jay? Miss Dunne? Was there something?”

“It’s just,” Emily said, “—we wondered if you knew that Mr. Roderick Alleyn—I mean Superintendent Alleyn—supervised the installation of the things that were in the wall-safe. The things that have been stolen.”

“Rory Alleyn !” the Superintendent ejaculated. “Is that so? Now, why was that, I wonder?”

Peregrine explained. “I think,” he said finally, “that Mr. Vassily Conducis, who owns the things—”

“So I understand.”

“—asked Mr. Alleyn to do it as a special favour. Mr. Alleyn was very much interested in the things.”

“He would be. Well, thank you,” said Mr. Gibson rather heavily. “And now, if you’d phone this Mrs. Blewitt. Lives in my Division, I see. Close to our headquarters. If she can’t get transport to the hospital tell her, if you please, that we’ll lay something on. No, wait on. Second thoughts. I’ll send a policewoman round from the station if one’s available. Less of a shock.”