“I looked in at the office,” Knight loftily said, “on a matter of business.”
“This office? And to see Mr. Meyer?”
“Yes,” Winter Meyer said. Knight inclined his head in stately acquiescence.
“So you passed Jobbins on your way upstairs?”
“I — ah — yes. He was on the half-landing under the treasure.”
“I saw him up there,” Miss Bracey said.
“How was he dressed?”
As usual, they said, with evident surprise. In uniform.
“Miss Bracey, how did you leave?”
“By the pass-door in the main entrance. I let myself out and slammed it shut after me.”
“Locking it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact I—I re-opened it.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see the time,” she said awkwardly, “by the clock in the foyer.”
“Jobbins,” Winter Meyer said, “barred and bolted this door after everyone had left.”
“When would that be?”
“Not more than ten minutes later. Marco—Mr. Knight—and I had a drink and left together. Jobbins came after us and I heard him drop the bar across and shoot the bolts. My God!” Meyer suddenly exclaimed.
“Yes?”
“The alarm! The burglar alarm. He’d switch it on when he’d locked up. Why didn’t it work?”
“Because somebody had switched it off.”
“My God!”
“May we return to Jobbins? How was he dressed when you left?”
Meyer said with an air of patience under trying circumstances, “I didn’t see him as we came down. He may have been in the men’s lavatory. I called out goodnight and he answered from up above. We stood for a moment in the portico and that’s when I heard him bolt the door.”
“When you saw him, perhaps ten minutes later, Mr. Jay, he was wearing an overcoat and slippers?”
“Yes,” said Peregrine.
“Yes. Thank you. How do you get home, Miss Bracey?”
She had a mini-car, she said, which she parked in the converted bombsite between the pub and the theatre.
“Were there other cars parked in this area belonging to the theatre people?”
“Naturally,” she said. “Since I was the first to leave.”
“You noticed and recognized them?”
“Oh, really, I suppose I noticed them. There were a number of strange cars still there but—yes, I saw—” she looked at Knight: her manner suggested a grudging alliance “—your car, Marcus.”
“What make of car is Mr. Knight’s?”
“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.”