Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

Mr. Greenslade, looking, in his unshaven state, strangely unlike himself, spread his hands and threw himself back in Winter Meyer’s office chair. Peregrine sat behind his own desk and Alleyn and Fox in two of the modish seats reserved for visitors. The time was twelve minutes past three and the air stale with the aftermath of managerial cigarettes and drinks.

“You say nothing,” Mr. Greenslade observed. “You disagree?”

Alleyn said: “As an open-and-shut theory it has its attractions. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It means that we all sit back and hope for the boy to recover consciousness and health so that we can send him up to the Juvenile Court for manslaughter.”

“What I can’t quite see—” Peregrine began and then said, “Sorry.”

“No. Go on,” Alleyn said.

“I can’t see why the boy, having got the documents and glove, should come out to the circle foyer where he’d be sure to be seen by Jobbins on the half-landing. Why didn’t he go down through the circle by the box, stairs, and pass-door to the stage and let himself out by the stage-door?”

“He might have wanted to show off. He might have —I am persuaded,” Mr. Greenslade said crossly, “that your objections can be met.”

“There’s another thing,” Peregrine said, “and I should have thought of it before. At midnight, Jobbins had to make a routine report to police and fire-station. He’d do it from the open telephone in the downstairs foyer.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Greenslade. “That would give the boy his opportunity. What do you say, Alleyn?”

“As an investigating officer I’m supposed to say nothing,” Alleyn said lightly. “But since the people at the bistro up the lane and the wretched Hawkins all put Jay out of the picture as a suspect and you yourself appear to have been some thirty miles away—”

“Well, I must say!”

“—there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask you to consider under what circumstances the boy, still clutching his booty, could have fallen from the circle with his face towards the balustrade and as he fell have clawed at the velvet top, palms down in such a posture that he’s left nail-tracks almost parallel with the balustrade but slanting towards the outside. There are also traces of boot polish that suggest one of his feet brushed back the pile at the same time. I cannot, myself, reconcile these traces with a nose-dive over the balustrade. I can relate them to a blow to the jaw, a fall across the balustrade, a lift, a sidelong drag and a drop. I also think Jay’s objections are very well urged. There may be answers to them but at the moment I can’t think of any. What’s more, if the boy’s the thief and killer, who unshot the bolts and unslipped the iron bar on the little pass-door in the main front entrance? Who left the key in the lock and banged the door shut from outside?”

“ Did someone do this?”

“That’s how things were when the police arrived.”

“I—I didn’t notice. I didn’t notice that,” Peregrine said, putting his hand to his eyes. “It was the shock, I suppose.”

“I expect it was.”

“Jobbins would have bolted the little door and dropped the bar when everyone had gone and I think he always hung the key in the corner beyond the box-office. No,” Peregrine said slowly, “I can’t see the boy doing that thing with the door. It doesn’t add up.”

“Not really, does it?” Alleyn said mildly.

“What action,” Mr. Greenslade asked, “do you propose to take?”

“The usual routine, and a very tedious affair it’s likely to prove. There may be useful prints on the pedestal or the dolphin itself but I’m inclined to think that the best we can hope for there is negative evidence. There may be prints on the safe but so far Sergeant Bailey has found none. The injuries to the boy’s face are interesting.”

“If he recovers consciousness,” Peregrine said, “he’ll tell the whole story.”

“Not if he’s responsible,” Mr. Greenslade said obstinately.

“Concussion,” Alleyn said, “can be extremely tricky. In the meantime, of course, we’ll have to find out about all the members of the company and the front-of-house staff and so on.”

“Find out?”

“Their movements for one thing. You may be able to help us here,” Alleyn said to Peregrine. “It seems that apart from the boy, you and Miss Dunne were the last to leave the theatre. Unless, of course, somebody lay doggo until you’d gone. Which may well be the case. Can you tell us anything about how and when and by what door the other members of the cast went out?”

“I think I can,” Peregrine said. He was now invested with the kind of haggard vivacity that follows emotional exhaustion: a febrile alertness such as he had often felt after some hideously protracted dress-rehearsal. He described the precautions taken at the close of every performance to insure that nobody was left on the premises. A thorough search of the house was made by backstage and front-of-house staff. He was certain it would have been quite impossible for anybody in the audience to hide anywhere in the theatre.

He related rapidly and accurately how the stage-crew left the theater in a bunch and how Gertrude Bracey and Marcus Knight went out together through the auditorium to escape the wet. They had been followed by Charles Random, who was alone and used the stage-door, and then by Emily, who stayed offstage with Peregrine.

“And then,” Peregrine said, “Destiny Meade and Harry Grove came out with a clutch of friends. They were evidently going on to a party. They went down the stage-door alley and I heard Harry call out that he’d fetch something or another and Destiny tell him not to be too long. And it was then—I’d come back from having a look at the weather—It was then that I fancied—” He stopped.

“Yes?”

“I thought that the pass-door from stage to front-of-house moved. It was out of the tail of my eye, sort of. If I’m right, and I think I am, it must have been that wretched kid, I suppose.”

“But you never saw him?”

“Never. No. Only heard him.” And Peregrine described how he had gone out to the front and his subsequent interview with Jobbins. Alleyn took him over this again because, so he said, he wanted to make sure he’d got it right “You shaped up to chasing the boy, did you? After you heard him catcall and slam the stage-door?”

“Yes. But Jobbins pointed out he’d be well on his way. So we said goodnight and—”

“Yes?”

“I’ve just remembered. Do you know what we said to each other? I said: ‘This is your last watch,’ and he said: ‘That’s right. Positively the last appearance.’ Because the treasure was to be taken away today, you see. And after that Jobbins wouldn’t have had to be glued to the half-landing.”

Greenslade and Fox made slight appropriate noises. Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “And so you said goodnight and you and Miss Dunne left? By the stage-door?”

“Yes.”

“Was it locked? Before you left?”

“No. Wait a moment, though. I think the Yale lock was on but certainly not the bolts. Hawkins came in by the stage-door. He had a key. He’s a responsible man from a good firm, though you wouldn’t think it from his behaviour tonight. He let himself in and then shot the bolts.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “We got that much out of him. Nothing else you can tell us?”

Peregrine said: “Not as far as I can think. But all the same I’ve got a sort of notion that there’s some damn thing I’ve forgotten. Some detail.”

“To do with what? Any idea?”

“To do with — I don’t know. The boy, I think.”

The boy?”

“I fancy I was thinking about a production of The Cherry Orchard , but — no, it’s gone and I daresay it’s of no consequence.”