“Do you reckon it could have been used as a kind of club?” Fox asked.
“Only by a remarkably well-muscled-up specimen, Br’er Fox.” Alleyn replaced the dolphin and looked at it. “Nice,” he said. “He does that sort of thing beautifully.” He turned to Gibson. “What about routine, Fred?”
“We’re putting it round the divisions. Anybody seen in the precincts of The Dolphin or the Borough or further out. Might be bloody, might be nervous. That’s the story. I’d be just as glad to get back, Rory. We’ve got a busy night in my Div as it happens. Bottle fight at the Cat and Crow with a punch-up and knives. Probable fatality and three break-and-enters. And a suspected arson. You’re fully equipped, aren’t you?”
“Yes. All right, Fred, cut away. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Goodnight, then. Thanks.”
When Gibson had gone Alleyn said: “We’ll see where the boy was and then have a word with Peregrine Jay and Miss Dunne. How many chaps have you got here?” he asked the Sergeant
“Four at present, sir. One in the foyer, one at the stage-door, one with Hawkins and another just keeping an eye, like, on Mr. Jay and Miss Dunne.”
“Right. Leave the stage-door man and get the others going on a thorough search. Start in the circle. Where was this boy?”
“In the stalls, sir. Centre aisle and just under the edge of the circle.”
“Tell them not to touch the balustrade. Come on, Fox.”
When Alleyn and Fox went into the now fully lit stalls the first thing they noticed was a rather touching group made by Peregrine and Emily. They sat in the back row by the aisle. Peregrine’s head had inclined to Emily’s shoulder and her arm was about his neck. He was fast asleep. Emily stared at Alleyn, who nodded. He and Fox walked down the aisle to the chalk outline of Trevor’s body.
“And the doctor says a cut on the head, broken thigh and ribs, a bruise on the jaw and possible internal injuries?”
“That’s correct,” Fox agreed.
Alleyn looked at the back of the aisle seat above the trace of the boy’s head. “See here, Fox.”
“Yes. Stain all right. Still damp, isn’t it?”
“I think so. Yes.”
They both moved a step or two down the aisle and looked up at the circle. Three policemen and the Sergeant with Thompson and Bailey were engaged in a methodical search.
“Bailey,” Alleyn said, raising his voice very slightly.
“Sir?”
“Have a look at the balustrade above us here. Look at the pile in the velvet. Use your torch if necessary.”
There was a longish silence broken by Emily’s saying quietly: “It’s all right. Go to sleep again.”
Bailey moved to one side and looked down into the stalls. “We got something here, Mr. Alleyn,” he said. “Two sets of tracks with the pile dragged slantways in a long diagonal line outwards towards the edge. Some of it removed. Looks like fingernails. Trace of something that might be shoe-polish.”
“All right. Deal with it, you and Thompson.”
Fox said, “Well, welclass="underline" a fall, eh?”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it? A fall from the circle about twenty feet. I suppose nobody looked at the boy’s fingernails. Who found him?” Fox, with a jerk of his head, indicated Peregrine and Emily. “They’d been sent in here,” he said, “to get them out of the way.”
“We’ll talk to them now, Fox.”
Peregrine was awake. He and Emily sat hand-in-hand and looked more like displaced persons than anything else, an effect that was heightened by the blueness of Peregrine’s jaws and the shadows under their eyes.
Alleyn said: “I’m sorry you’ve been kept so long. It’s been a beastly business for both of you. Now, I’m going to ask Mr. Fox to read over what you have already said to Mr. Gibson and his Sergeant and you shall tell us if, on consideration, this is a fair statement.”
Fox did this and they nodded and said yes: that was it.
“Good,” Alleyn said. “Then there’s only one other question. Did either of you happen to notice Trevor Vere’s fingernails?”
They stared at him and both repeated in pallid voices: “His fingernails?”
“Yes. You found him and I think you, Miss Dunne, stayed with him until he was taken away.”
Emily rubbed her knuckles in her eyes. “Oh dear,” she said, “I must pull myself together. Yes. Yes, of course I did. I stayed with him.”
“Perhaps you held his hand as one does with a sick child?”
“It’s hard to think of Trevor as a child,” Peregrine said. “He was born elderly. Sorry.”
“But I did,” Emily exclaimed. “You’re right. I felt his pulse and then, you know, I just went on holding his hand.”
“Looking at it?”
“Not specially. Not glaring at it. Although—”
“Yes?”
“Well, I remember I did sort of look at it. I moved it between my own hands and I remember noticing how grubby it was, which made it childish and—then—there was something—” She hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I thought he’d got rouge or carmine make-up under his nails and then I saw it wasn’t grease. It was fluff.”
“I tell you what,” Alleyn said. “We’ll put you up for the Police Medal, you excellent girl. Fox: get on to St. Terence’s Hospital and tell them it’s as much as their life is worth to dig out that boy’s nails. Tell our chap there he can clean them himself and put the harvest in an envelope and get a witness to it. Throw your bulk about. Get the top battleaxe and give her fits. Fly.”
Fox went off at a stately double.
“Now,” Alleyn said. “You may go, both of you. Where do you live?”
They told him. Blackfriars and Hempstead, respectively.
“We could shake you down, Emily,” Peregrine said. “Jeremy and I.”
“I’d like to go home, please, Perry. Could you call a taxi?”
“I think we can send you,” Alleyn said. “I shan’t need a car yet awhile and there’s a gaggle of them out there.”
Peregrine said: “I ought to wait for Greenslade, Emily.”
“Yes, of course you ought.”
“Well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll bundle you off to Hampstead, Miss Dunne. Where’s the Sergeant?”
“Here, sir,” said the Sergeant unexpectedly. He had come in from the foyer.
“What’s the matter?” Alleyn asked. “What’ve you got there?”
The Sergeant’s enormous hands were clapped together in front of him and arched a little as if they enclosed something that fluttered and might escape.
“Seventh row of the stalls, sir,” he said, “centre aisle. On the floor about six foot from where the boy lay. There was a black velvet kind of easel affair and a sheet of polythene laying near them.”
He opened his palms like a book and disclosed a little wrinkled glove and two scraps of paper.
“Would they be what was wanted?” asked the Sergeant.
“To me,” said Mr. Greenslade with palapable self-restraint, “there can be only one explanation, my dear Alleyn. The boy, who is, as Jay informs us, an unpleasant and mischievous boy, banged the door to suggest he’d gone but actually stayed behind and, having by some means learned the number of the combination, robbed the safe of its contents. He was caught in the act by Jobbins, who must have seen him from his post on the half-landing. As Jobbins made for him the boy, possibly by accident, overturned the pedestal. Jobbins was felled by the dolphin and the boy, terrified, ran into the circle and down the centre aisle. In his panic he ran too fast, stumbled across the balustrade, clutched at the velvet top and fell into the stalls. As he fell he let go the easel with the glove and papers and they dropped, as he did, into the aisle.”
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.