“Find out,” Peregrine angrily repeated to Emily. “I can’t go telling the police who they ought to call in, blast it. How can I find out if Alleyn’s been told?”
“Easily,” Emily rejoined with a flicker of a smile. “Because, look.”
The constable had opened the pass-door in the main entrance and now admitted Superintendent Alleyn in the nearest he ever got to a filthy temper.
Alleyn had worked late and unfruitfully at the Yard in company with Inspector Fox. As he let himself into his own house he heard the telephone ring, swore loudly and got to it just as his wife, Troy, took the receiver off in their bedroom.
It was the Chief Commander who was his immediate senior at the Yard. Alleyn listened with disgust to his story. “—and so Fred Gibson thought that as you know Conducis and had a hand in the installation, he’d better call us. He just missed you at the Yard. All things considered I think you’d better take over, Rory. It’s a big one. Murder. Double, if the boy dies. And robbery of these bloody, fabulous museum pieces.”
“Very good,” Alleyn said. “All right. Yes.”
“Got your car out or garaged?”
“Thank you. Out.”
It was nothing new to turn round in his tracks after one gruelling day and work through till the next. He took five minutes to have a word with Troy and a rapid shave and was back in the car and heading for the Borough within half an hour of leaving the Yard. The rain had lifted but the empty streets glistened under their lamps.
He could have kicked himself from Whitehall to Bankside. Why, why, why hadn’t he put his foot down about the safe and its silly window and bloody futile combination lock? Why hadn’t he said that he would on no account recommend it? He reminded himself that he had given sundry warnings but snapped back at himself that he should have gone further. He should have telephoned Conducis and advised him not to go on with the public display of the Shakespeare treasures. He should have insisted on that ass of a business manager scrapping his imbecile code word, penetrable in five minutes by a certified moron, and should have demanded a new combination. The fact that he had been given no authority to do so and had nevertheless urged precisely this action upon Mr. Winter Meyer made ao difference. He should have thrown his weight about.
And now some poor damned commissionaire had been murdered. Also, quite probably, that unspeakably ghastly little boy who had cheeked him in The Dolphin. And Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove and Hamnet’s father’s message had inspired these atrocities and were gone. Really, Alleyn thought, as he drew up by the portico of The Dolphin Theatre, he hadn’t been so disgruntled since he took a trip to Cape Town with a homicidal pervert.
Then he entered the theatre and came face-to-face with Peregrine and Emily and saw how white and desperate they looked and recognized the odd vagueness that so often overcomes people who have been suddenly confronted with a crime of violence. He swallowed his chagrin and summoned up the professionalism that he had once sourly defined as an infinite capacity to notice less and less with more and more accuracy.
He said: “This is no good at all, is it? What are you two doing here?”
“We got here,” Peregrine said, “just after.”
“You look as if you’d better go and sit down somewhere. ’Morning, Fred,” Alleyn said, meeting Superintendent Gibson at the foot of the stair. “What’s first?” He looked towards the half-landing and without waiting for an answer walked upstairs followed by Gibson.
Among the group of men and cameras was an elderly thick-set man with a grizzled moustache and bright eyes.
“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You again.”
“That’s right, Mr. Alleyn,” said Inspector Fox. “Just beat you to it. I was still at the Yard when they rang up so the C.C. said I might as well join in. Don’t quite know why and I daresay Fred doesn’t either.”
“More the merrier,” Mr. Gibson rejoined gloomily. “This looks like being an extra curly one.”
“Well,” Alleyn said, “I’d better see.”
“We covered him,” Gibson said. “With a dust sheet. It’s about as bad as they come. Worst I’ve ever seen. Now!”
“Very nasty,” Fox said. He nodded to one of the men. “O.K., Bailey.”
Detective-Sergeant Bailey, a finger-print expert, uncovered the body of Jobbins.
It was lying on its back with the glittering mask and single eye appallingly exposed. The loudly checked coat was open and dragged back into what must be a knotted lump under the small of the back. Between the coat and the dirty white sweater there was a rather stylish yellow scarf. The letter H had been embroidered on it. It was blotted and smeared. The sweater itself was soaked in patches of red and had ridden up over the chest. There was something almost homely and normal in the look of a tartan shirt running in sharp folds under the belted trousers that were strained across the crotch by spread-eagled legs.
Alleyn looked, waited an appreciable time and then said: “Has he been photographed? Printed?”
“The lot,” somebody said.
“I want to take some measurements. Then he can be moved. I see you’ve got a mortuary van outside. Get the men up.” The Sergeant moved to the stairhead. “Just make sure those two young people are out of the way,” Alleyn said.
He held out his hand and Fox gave him a steel springtape. They measured the distance from that frightful head to the three shallow steps that led up to the circle foyer and marked the position of the body. When Jobbins was gone and the divisional-surgeon after him, Alleyn looked at the bronze dolphin, glistening on the carpet
“There’s your weapon,” Gibson said unnecessarily.
The pedestal had been knocked over and lay across the shallow steps at the left-hand corner. The dolphin, detached, lay below it on the landing, close to a dark blot on the crimson carpet where Jobbins’s head had been. Its companion piece still made an elegant arc on the top of its own pedestal near the wall. They had stood to left and right at the head of the stairs in the circle foyer. Four steps below the landing lay a thick cup in a wet patch and below it another one and a small tin tray.
“His post,” Alleyn said, “was on this sunken landing under—”
He looked up. There, still brillantly lit, was the exposed casket, empty.
“That’s correct,” Gibson said. “He was supposed to stay there until he was relieved by this chap Hawkins at midnight.”
“Where is this Hawkins?”
“Ah,” Gibson said disgustedly, “sobbing his little heart out in the gent’s cloaks. He’s gone to pieces.”
Fox said austerely, “He seems to have acted very foolishly from the start. Comes in late. Walks up here. Sees deceased and goes yelling out of the building.”
“That’s right,” Gibson agreed. “And if he hadn’t run into this Mr. Jay and his lady friend he might be running still and us none the wiser.”
“So it was Jay who rang police?” Alleyn interjected.
“That’s correct.”
“What about their burglar alarm?”
“Off. The switch is back of the box-office.”
“I know. They showed me. What then, Fred?”
“The Sergeant’s sent in and gets support. I get the office and I come in and we set up a search. Thought our man might be hiding on the premises but not. Either got out of it before Hawkins arrived or slipped away while he was making an exhibition of himself. The pass-door in the main entrance was shut but not locked. It had been locked, they say, so it looked as if that was his way out.”
“And the boy?”
“Yes. Well, now. The boy. Mr. Jay says the boy’s a bit of a young limb. Got into the habit of hanging round after the show and acting the goat. Jobbins complained of him making spook noises and that. He was at it before Mr. Jay and Miss Dunne left the theatre to go out to supper. Mr. Jay tried to find him but it was dark and he let out a catcall or two and then they heard the stage-door slam and reckoned he’d gone. Not, as it turns out.”