“Oh, yes,” Jeremy said and, as if aware of being unforthcoming, he added: “It worked all right.”
“They tell me you’ve got a piece of that nice shop in Walton Street and are an authority on historic costume.”
“That’s putting it much too high.”
“Well, anyway, you designed the clothes and props for this show?”
“Yes.”
“The gloves for instance,” Alleyn said and lifted his copy of The Times from the desk. The gloves used in the play lay neatly together on Winter Meyer’s blotting pad.
Jeremy said nothing.
“Wonderfully accurate copies. And, of course,” Alleyn went on, “I saw you arranging the real glove and the documents on the velvet easel and putting them in the safe. That morning in the theatre some six months ago. I was there, you may remember.”
Jeremy half rose and then checked himself. “That’s right,” he said.
Alleyn lifted a tissue paper packet out of his open case, put it near Jeremy on the desk and carefully folded back the wrapping. He exposed a small, wrinkled, stained, embroidered and tasselled glove.
“This would be it?” he asked.
“I—yes,” said Jeremy, as white as a sheet.
“The glove you arranged on its velvet background with the two documents and covered with a sheet of polythene fastened with velvet-covered drawing pins?”
“Yes.”
“And then from the panel opening in the circle wall, you put this whole arrangement into the cache that you yourself had lined so prettily with padded gold silk. You used the switch that operates the sliding steel door in the foyer wall. It opened and the interior lights went on behind the convex plate-glass front of the cache. Then you shut the back door and spun the combination lock. And Peregrine Jay, Winter Meyer, Marcus Knight, young Trevor Vere, Miss Destiny Meade and Miss Emily Dunne all stood about, at your suggestion, in the circle foyer or the sunken landing and they all greately admired the arrangement. That right?”
“You were there, after all.”
“As I reminded you. I stayed in the circle, you know, and joined you when you were re-arranging the exhibits on their background.” He gave Jeremy a moment or two and, as he said nothing, continued.
“Last night the exhibits and their velvet background with the transparent cover were found in the centre aisle of the stalls, not far from where the boy lay. They had become detached from the black velvet display easel. I brought the glove in here and examined it very closely.”
“I know,” Jeremy said, “what you are going to say.”
“I expect you do. To begin with I was a bit worried about the smell. I’ve got a keen nose for my job and I seemed to get something foreign to the odour of antiquity, if one may call it that. There was a faint whiff of fish glue and paint which suggested another sort of occupational smell, clinging perhaps to somebody’s hands.”
Jeremy’s fingers curled. The nails were coloured rather as Trevor’s had been but not with velvet pile.
“So this morning I got my lens out and I went over the glove. I turned it inside out. Sacrilege, you may think. Undoubtedly, I thought, it really is a very old glove indeed and seems to have been worked over and redecorated at some time. And then, on the inside of the back where all the embroidery is—look, I’ll show you.”
He manipulated the glove, delicately turning it back on itself.
“Can you see? It’s been caught down by a stitch and firmly anchored and it’s very fine indeed. A single hair, human and—quite distinctly—red.”
He let the glove fall on its tissue paper. “This is a much better copy than the property ones and they’re pretty good. It’s a wonderful job and would convince anyone, I’d have thought, from the distance at which it was seen.” He looked up at Jeremy. “Why did you do it?” asked Alleyn.
Jeremy sat with his forearms resting on his thighs and stared at his clasped hands. His carroty head was very conspicuous. Alleyn noticed that one or two hairs had fallen on the shoulders of his suede jerkin.
He said: “I swear it’s got nothing to do with Jobbins or the boy.”
“That, of course, is our chief concern at the moment.”
“May Perry come in, please?”
Alleyn thought that one over and then nodded to Fox, who went out.
“I’d rather be heard now than any other way,” Jeremy said.
Peregrine came in, looked at Jeremy and went to him.
“What’s up?” he said.
“I imagine I’m going to make a statement. I want you to hear it.”
“For God’s sake, Jer, don’t make a fool of yourself. A statement? What about? Why?”
He saw the crumpled glove lying on the desk and the two prop gloves where Alleyn had displayed them.
“What’s all this?” he demanded. “Who’s been manhandling Hamnet’s glove?”
“Nobody, “ Jeremy said. “It’s not Hamnet’s glove. It’s a bloody good fake. I did it and I ought to know.” A long silence followed.
“You fool, Jer,” Peregrine said slowly. “You unspeakable fool.”
“Do you want to tell us about it, Mr. Jones?”
“Yes. The whole thing. It’s better.”
“Inspector Fox will take notes and you will be asked to sign them. If in the course of your statement I think you are going to incriminate yourself to the point of an arrest I shall warn you of this.”
“Yes. All right.” Jeremy looked up at Peregrine. “It’s O.K.,” he said. “I won’t. And don’t, for God’s sake, gawk at me like that. Go and sit down somewhere. And listen.”
Peregrine sat on the edge of his own desk.
“It began,” Jeremy said, “when I was going to the Vic and Alb to make drawings of the glove for the two props. Emily Dunne sometimes helps in the shop and she turned out a whole mass of old tatt we’ve accumulated to see what there was in the way of material. We found that pair over there and a lot of old embroidery silks and gold wire and some fake jewellery that was near enough for the props. But in the course of the hunt I came across”—he pointed—“that one. It’s genuine as far as age goes and within fifty years of the original. A small woman’s hand. It had the gauntlet and tassel but the embroidery was entirely different. I —I suppose I got sort of besotted on the real glove. I made a very, very elaborate drawing of it. Almost a trompe l’oeil job, isn’t it, Perry? And all the time I was working on the props there was this talk of Conducis selling the glove to a private collection in the U.S.A.”
Jeremy now spoke rapidly and directly to Alleyn.
“I’ve got a maggot about historic treasures going out of their native setting. I’d give back the Elgin Marbles to Athens tomorrow if I could. I started on the copy; first of all just for the hell of it. I even thought I might pull Peregrine’s leg with it when it was done or try it out on the expert at the Vic and Alb. I was lucky in the hunt for silks and for gold and silver wire and all. The real stuff. I did it almost under your silly great beak, Perry. You nearly caught me at it lots of times. I’d no intention, then, absolutely none, of trying substitution.”
“What did you mean to do with it ultimately? Apart from leg-pulling,” said Alleyn.
Jeremy blushed to the roots of his betraying hair. “I rather thought,” he said, “of giving it to Destiny Meade.”
Peregrine made a slight moaning sound.
“And what made you change your mind?”
“As you’ve guessed, I imagine, it was on the morning the original was brought here and they asked me to see it housed. I’d brought my copy with me. I thought I might just try my joke experiment. So I grabbed my chance and did a little sleight-of-hand. It was terribly easy: nobody, not even you, noticed. I was going to display the whole thing and if nobody spotted the fake, take the original out of my pocket, do my funny man ha-ha ever-been-had stuff, reswitch the gloves and give Destiny the copy. I thought it’d be rather diverting to have you and the expert and everybody doting and ongoing and the cameramen milling round and Marcus striking wonderful attitudes: all at my fake. You know?”