“I’ve no idea. What is it, dear?”
“A Jag, dear,” said Knight
“Any others?” Alleyn persisted.
“I really don’t know. I think I noticed — yours, Charles,” she said, glancing at Random. “Yes. I did, because it is rather conspicuous.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“A very, very old, old, old souped-up Morris sports,” said Random. “Painted scarlet.”
“And Miss Meade’s car?”
Destiny Meade opened her eyes very wide and raised her elegantly gloved and braceleted hands to her furs. She gently shook her head. The gesture suggested utter bewilderment. Before she could speak Gertrude Bracey gave her small, contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes, indeed. Drawn up in glossy state under the portico. As for Royalty.”
She did not look at Destiny.
Harry Grove said: “Destiny uses a hire-service, don’t you, love?” His manner, gay and proprietary, had an immediate effect upon Marcus Knight and Gertrude Bracey, who both stared lividly at nothing.
“Any other cars, Miss Bracey? Mr. Meyer’s?”
“I don’t remember. I didn’t go peering about for cars. I don’t notice them.”
“It was there,” Winter Meyer said. “Parked at the back and rather in the dark.”
“When you left, Mr. Meyer, were there any other cars apart from your own and Mr. Knight’s?”
“I really don’t know. There might have been. Do you remember, Marco?”
“No,” he said, widely and vaguely. “No, I don’t remember. As you say: it was dark.”
“I had an idea I saw your mini, Gertie,” Meyer said, “but I suppose I couldn’t have. You’d gone by then, of course.”
Gertrude Bracey darted a glance at Alleyn.
“I can’t swear to all this sort of thing,” she said angrily. “I — I didn’t notice the cars and I had—” She stopped and made a sharp movement with her hands. “I had other things to think of,” she said.
“I understand,” Alleyn said, “that Miss Dunne and Mr. Jay didn’t have cars at the theatre?”
“That’s right,” Emily said. “I haven’t got one anyway.”
“I left mine at home,” said Peregrine.
“Where it remained?” Alleyn remarked. “Unless Mr. Jones took it out?”
“Which I didn’t,” Jeremy said. “I was at home, working, all the evening.”
“Alone?”
“Entirely.”
“As far as cars are concerned that leaves only Mr. Grove. Did you by any chance notice Mr. Grove’s car in the bombsite, Miss Bracey?”
“Oh, yes!” she said loudly and threw him one of her brief, disfavoring looks. “I saw that one.”
“What is it?”
“A Panther ’55,” she said instantly. “An open sports car.”
“You know it quite well,” Alleyn lightly observed.
“Know it? Oh, yes,” Gertrude Bracey repeated with a sharp cackle. “I know it. Or you may say I used to.”
“You don’t think well, perhaps, of Mr. Grove’s Panther?”
“There’s nothing the matter with the car.”
Harry Grove said: “Darling, what an infallible ear you have for inflection. Did you go to R.A.D.A.?”
Destiny Meade let out half a cascade of her celebrated laughter and then appeared to swallow the remainder. Meyer gave a repressed snort.
Marcus Knight said, “This is the wrong occasion, in my opinion, for mistimed comedy.”
“Of course,” Grove said warmly. “I do so agree. But when is the right occasion?”
“If I am to be publicly insulted—” Miss Bracey began on a high note. Peregrine cut in.
“Look,” he said. “Shouldn’t we all remember this is a police inquiry into something that may turn out to be murder?”
They gazed at him as if he’d committed a social enormity.
“Mr. Alleyn,” Peregrine went on, “tells us he’s decided to cover the first stages as a sort of company calclass="underline" everybody who was in the theatre last night and left immediately, or not long before the event. That’s right isn’t it?” he asked Alleyn.
“Certainly,” Alleyn agreed and reflected sourly that Peregrine, possibly with the best will in the world, had effectually choked what might have been a useful and revealing dust-up. He must make the best of it
“This procedure,” he said, “if satisfactorily conducted, should save a great deal of checking and counter-checking and reduce the amount of your time taken up by the police. The alternative is to ask you all to wait in the foyer while I see each of you separately.”
There was a brief pause broken by Winter Meyer.
“Fair enough,” Meyer said and there was a slight murmur of agreement from the company. “Don’t let’s start throwing temperaments right and left, chaps,” Mr. Meyer added. “It’s not the time for it.”
Alleyn could have kicked him. “How right you are,” he said. “Shall we press on? I’m sure you all see the point of this car business. It’s essential that we make out when and in what order you left the theatre and whether any of you could have returned within the crucial time. Yes, Miss Meade?”
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Destiny Meade said. She caught her underlip between her teeth and gazed helplessly at Alleyn. “Only: I don’t quite understand.”
“Please go on.”
“May I? Well, you see, it’s just that everybody says Trevor, who is generally admitted to be rather a beastly little boy, stole the treasure and then killed poor Jobbins. I do admit he’s got some rather awful ways with him and of course one never knows so one wonders why, that being the case, it matters where we all went or what sort of cars we went in.”
Alleyn said carefully that so far no hard and fast conclusion could be drawn and that he hoped they would all welcome the opportunity of proving that they were away from the theatre during the crucial period, which was between eleven o’clock, when Peregrine and Emily left the theatre, and about five past twelve, when Hawkins came running down the stage-door alleyway and told them of his discovery.
“So far,” Alleyn said, “we’ve only got as far as learning that when Miss Bracey left the theatre the rest of you were still inside it.”
“Not I,” Jeremy said. “I’ve told you, I think, that I was at home.”
“So you have,” Alleyn agreed. “It would help if you could substantiate the statement. Did anyone ring you up, for instance?”
“If they did, I don’t remember.”
“I see,” said Alleyn.
He plodded back through the order of departure until it was established beyond question that Gertrude and Marcus had been followed by Charles Random, who had driven to a pub on the South Bank where he was living for the duration of the play. He had been given his usual late supper. He was followed by Destiny Meade and her friends, all of whom left by the stage-door and spent about an hour at The Younger Dolphin and then drove to her flat in Cheyne Walk where they were joined, she said, by dozens of vague chums, and by Harry Grove, who left the theatre at the same time as they did, fetched his guitar from his own flat in Canonbury, and then joined them in Chelsea. It appeared that Harry Grove was celebrated for a song sequence in, which, Destiny said, obviously quoting someone else, he sent the sacred cows up so high that they remained in orbit forevermore.
“Quite a loss to the nightclubs,” Marcus Knight said to nobody in particular. “One wonders why the legitimate theatre should still attract.”
“I assure you, Marco dear,” Grove rejoined, “only the Lord Chamberlain stands between me and untold affluence.”
“Or you might call it dirty-pay,” said Knight. It was Miss Bracey’s turn to laugh very musically.