“Evidently. I’ll see Hawkins now, Fred.”
Hawkins was produced in the downstage foyer. He was a plain man made plainer by bloodshot eyes, a reddened nose and a loose mouth. He gazed lugubriously at Alleyn, spoke of shattered nerves and soon began to cry.
“Who’s going to pitch into me next?” he asked. “I ought to be getting hospital attention, the shock I’ve had, and not subjected to treatment that’d bring about an inquiry if I made complaints. I ought to be home in bed getting looked after.”
“So you shall be,” Alleyn said. “We’ll send you home in style when you’ve just told me quietly what happened.”
“I have! I have told. I’ve told them others.”
“All right. I know you’re feeling rotten and it’s a damn shame to keep you but you see you’re the chap we’re looking to for help.”
“Don’t you use that yarn to me. I know what the police mean when they talk about help. Next thing it’ll be the Usual Bloody Warning.”
“No, it won’t. Look here—I’ll say what I think happened and you jump on me if I’m wrong. All right?”
“How do I know if it’s all right!”
“Nobody suspects you, you silly chap,” Fox said. “How many more times!”
“Never mind,” Alleyn soothed. “Now, listen, Hawkins. You come down to the theatre. When? About ten past twelve?”
Hawkins began a great outcry against buses and thunderstorms but was finally induced to say he heard the hour strike as he walked down the lane.
“And you came in by the stage-door. Who let you in?”
Nobody, it appeared. He had a key. He banged it shut and gave a whistle and shouted. Pretty loudly, Alleyn gathered, because Jobbins was always at his post on the half-landing and he wanted to let him know he’d arrived. He came in, locked the door and shot the bolt. He supposed Jobbins was fed up with him for being late. This account was produced piecemeal and with many lamentable excursions. Hawkins now became extremely agitated and said what followed had probably made a wreck of him for the rest of his life. Alleyn displayed sympathy and interest, however, and was flattering in his encouragement. Hawkins gazed upon him with watering eyes and said that what followed was something chronic. He had seen no light in the Property Room so had switched his torch on and gone out to front-of-house. As soon as he got there he noticed a dim light in the circle. And there—it had given him a turn—in the front row, looking down at him was Henry Jobbins in his flash new overcoat.
“You never told us this!” Gibson exclaimed.
“You never arst me.”
Fox and Gibson swore quietly together.
“Go on,” Alleyn said.
“I said: ‘That you, Hen?’ and he says ‘Who d’yer think it is’ and I said I was sorry I was late and should I make the tea and he said yes. So I went into the Props Room and made it.”
“How long would that take?”
“It’s an old electric jug. Bit slow.”
“Yes? And then?”
“Oh Gawd. Oh Gawd.”
“I know. But go on.”
He had carried the two cups of tea through the house to the front foyer and up the stairs.
Here Hawkins broke down again in a big way but finally divulged that he had seen the body, dropped the tray, tried to claw his way out at the front, run by the side aisle through the stalls and pass-door, out of the stage-door and down the alley, where he ran into Peregrine and Emily. Alleyn got his address and sent him home.
“What a little beauty,” Fred Gibson said.
“You tell me,” Alleyn observed, “that you’ve searched the theatre. What kind of search, Fred?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well—obviously, as you say, for the killer. But have they looked for the stuff?”
“Stuff?”
“For a glove, for instance and two scraps of writing?”
There was a very short silence and then Gibson said: “There hasn’t really been time. We would, of course.”
Fox said, “If he was surprised, you mean, and dropped them? Something of that nature?”
“It’s a forlorn hope, no doubt,” Alleyn said. He looked at Sergeant Bailey and the cameraman who was Sergeant Thompson-both of the Yard. “Have you tackled this dolphin?”
“Just going to when you arrived, sir,” Thompson said.
“Take it as it lies before you touch it. It’s in a ghastly state but there may be something. And the pedestal, of course. What’s the thing weigh?”
He went to the top of the stairs, took the other dolphin from its base, balanced and hefted it. “A tidy lump,” he said.
“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.