“Anything more?”
“Well—dabs. Nothing very startling. Bailey’s been able to pick up some nice, clean, control specimens from the dressing-rooms. The top of the pedestal’s a mess of the public’s prints, half dusted off by the cleaners.”
“Nothing to the purpose?”
“Not really. And you would expect,” Fox said with his customary air of placid good sense, “if the boy acted vindictively, to find his dabs — two palms together where he pushed the thing over. Nothing of the kind, however, nice shiny surface and all. The carpet’s hopeless, of course. Our chaps have taken up the soiled area. Is anything the matter, Mr. AUeyn?”
“Nothing, Br’er Fox, except the word ‘soiled.’ ”
“It’s not too strong,” Fox said, contemplating it with surprise.
“No. It’s dreadfully moderate.”
“Well,” Fox said, after a moment’s consideration, “you have a feeling for words, of course.”
“Which gives me no excuse to talk like a pompous ass. Can you do some telephoning? And, by the way, have you had any breakfast? Don’t tell me. The landlady of The Wharfinger’s Friend stuffed you full of new-laid eggs.”
“Mrs. Jancy was obliging enough to make the offer.”
“In that case here is the cast and management list with telephone numbers. You take the first half and I’ll do the rest. Ask them with all your celebrated tact to come to the theatre at eleven. I think we’ll find that Peregrine Jay has already warned them.”
But Peregrine had not warned Jeremy because it had not occurred to him that Alleyn would want to see him. When the telephone rang it was Jeremy who,answered it; Peregrine saw his face bleach. He thought, “How extraordinary: I believe his pupils have contracted.” And he felt within himself a cold sliding sensation which he refused to acknowledge.
Jeremy said: “Yes, of course. Yes,” and put the receiver down. “It seems they want me to go to the theatre, too,” he said.
“I don’t know why. You weren’t there last night.”
“No. I was here. Working.” .
“Perhaps they want you to check that the glove’s all right.”
Jeremy made a slight movement, almost as if a nerve had been flicked. He pursed his lips and raised his sandy brows. “Perhaps,” he said and returned to his work-table at the far end of the room.
Peregrine, with some difficulty, got Mrs. Blewitt on the telephone and was subjected to a tirade in which speculation and avid cupidity were but thinly disguised under a mask of sorrow. She suffered, unmistakably from a formidable hangover. He arranged for a meeting, told her what the hospital had told him and assured her that everything possible would be done for the boy.
“Will they catch whoever done it?”
“It may have been an accident, Mrs. Blewitt.”
“If it was, the Management’s responsible,” she said, “and don’t forget it.”
They rang off.
Peregrine turned to Jeremy, who was bent over his table but did not seem to be working.
“Are you all right, Jer?”
“All right?”
“I thought you looked a bit poorly.”
“There’s nothing the matter with me. You look pretty sickly, yourself.”
“I daresay I do.”
Peregrine waited for a moment and then said: “When will you go to The Dolphin?”
“I’m commanded for eleven.”
“I thought I’d go over early. Alleyn will use our office and the company can sit about the circle foyer or go to their dressing-rooms.”
“They may be locked up,” Jeremy said.
“Who — the actors?”
“The dressing-rooms, half-wit.”
“I can’t imagine why, but you may be right. Routine’s what they talk about, isn’t it?”
Jeremy did not answer. Peregrine saw him wipe his hand across his mouth and briefly close his eyes. Then he stooped over his work: he was shaping a piece of balsa wood with a mounted razor blade. His hand jerked and the blade slipped. Peregrine let out an involuntary ejaculation. Jeremy swung round on his stool and faced him. “Do me a profound kindness and get the hell out of it, will you, Perry?”
“All right. See you later.”
Peregrine, perturbed and greatly puzzled, went out into the weekend emptiness of Blackfriars. An uncoordinated insistence of church bells jangled across the Sunday quietude.
He had nothing to do between now and eleven o’clock. “One might go into the church,” he thought but the idea dropped blankly on a field of inertia. “I can’t imagine why I feel like this,” he thought. “I’m used to taking decisions, to keeping on top of a situation.” But there were no decisions to take and the situation was out of his control. He couldn’t think of Superintendent Alleyn in terms of a racalcitrant actor.
He thought: “I know what I’ll do. I’ve got two hours, I’ll walk, like a character in Fielding or in Dickens, I’ll walk northwards, towards Hampstead and Emily. If I get blisters I’ll take the bus or a tube and if there’s not enough time left for that I’ll take a taxi. And Emily and I will go down to The Dolphin together.”
Having come to this decision his spirits lifted. He crossed Blackfriars Bridge and made his way through Bloomsbury towards Marylebone and Maida Vale.
His thoughts were divided between Emily, The Dolphin and Jeremy Jones.
Gertrude Bracey had a mannerism. She would glance pretty sharply at a companion but only for a second and would then, with a brusque turn of the head, look away. The effect was disconcerting and suggested not shiftiness so much as a profound distaste for her company. She smiled readily but with a derisive air and she had a sharp edge to her tongue. Alleyn, who never relied upon first impressions, supposed her to be vindictive.
He found support for this opinion in the demeanour of her associates. They sat round the office in The Dolphin on that Sunday afternoon, with all the conditioned ease of their training but with restless eyes and overtones of discretion in their beautifully controlled voices. This air of guardedness was most noticeable, because it was least disguised, in Destiny Meade. Sleek with fur, not so much dressed as gloved, she sat back in her chair and looked from time to time at Harry Grove who, on the few occasions when he caught her eye, smiled brilliantly in return. When Alleyn began to question Miss Bracey, Destiny Meade and Harry Grove exchanged one of these glances: on her part with brows raised significantly and on his with an appearance of amusement and anticipation.
Marcus Knight looked as if someone had affronted him and also as if he was afraid Miss Bracey was about to go too far in some unspecified direction.
Charles Random watched her with an expression of nervous distaste, and Emily Dunne with evident distress. Winter Meyer seemed to be ravaged by anxiety and inward speculation. He looked restlessly at Miss Bracey as if she had interrupted him in some desperate calculation. Peregrine, sitting by Emily, stared at his own clasped hands and occasionally at her. He listened carefully to Alleyn’s questions and Miss Bracey’s replies. Jeremy Jones, a little removed from the others, sat bolt upright in his chair and stared at Alleyn.
The characteristic that all these people had in common was that of extreme pallor, guessed at in the women and self-evident in the men.
Alleyn opened with a brief survey of the events in their succession, checked the order in which the members of the company had left the theatre, and was now engaged upon extracting confirmation of their movements from Gertrude Bracey, with the reactions among his hearers that have been indicated.
“Miss Bracey, I think you and Mr. Knight left the theatre together. Is that right?” They both agreed.
“And you left by the auditorium, not by the stage-door?”
“At Perry’s suggestion,” Marcus Knight said.
“To avoid the puddles,” Miss Bracey explained.
“And you went out together through the front doors?”
“No,” they said in unison, and she added: “Mr. Knight was calling on the Management.”
She didn’t actually sniff over this statement but contrived to suggest that there was something to be sneered at in the circumstance.