“Oh for God’s sake, darling—”
“I know it sounds silly,” Destiny said, “but nobody seems to have any other suggestion and after all he was there.”
The silence that followed Destiny’s remark was so profound that Alleyn heard Fox’s pencil skate over a page in his notebook.
He said, “You mean, Miss Meade, that Mr. Conducis was in the audience? Not backstage?”
“That’s right. In front. In the upstairs O.P. box. I noticed him when I made my first entrance. I mentioned it to you, Charles, didn’t I, when you were holding me up. ‘There’s God,’ I said, ‘in the O.P. box.’ ”
“Mr. Meyer, did you know Mr. Conducis was in front?”
“No, I didn’t. But he’s got the O.P. box forever,” Meyer said. “It’s his whenever he likes to use it. He lends it to friends and for all I know occasionally slips in himself. He doesn’t let us know if he’s coming. He doesn’t like a fuss.”
“Nobody saw him come or go?”
“Not that I know.”
Gertrude Bracey said loudly: “I thought our mysterious Mr. W.H. was supposed to be particularly favoured by Our Patron. Quite a Shakespearean situation or so one hears. Perhaps he can shed light.”
“My dear Gertie,” Harry Grove said cheerfully, “you really should try to keep a splenetic fancy within reasonable bounds. Miss Bracey,” he said, turning to Alleyn, “refers, I think, to the undoubted fact that Mr. Conducis very kindly recommended me to the Management. I did him a slight service once upon a time and he is obliging enough to be obliged. I had no idea he was in front, Gertie dear, until I heard you hissing away about it as you lay on the King Dolphin’s bosom at the end of Act I.”
“Mr. Knight,” Alleyn asked, “did you know Mr. Conducis was there?”
Knight looked straight in front of him and said with exaggerated clarity as if voicing an affront, “It became evident.”
Destiny Meade, also looking neither to left nor right and speaking clearly, remarked: “The less said about that the better.”
“Undoubtedly,” Knight savagely agreed.
She laughed.
Winter Meyer said: “Yes, but—” and stopped short. “It’s nothing,” he said. “As you were.”
“But in any case it can be of no conceivable significance,” Jeremy Jones said impatiently. He had been silent for so long that his intervention caused a minor stir.
Alleyn rose to his considerable height and moved out into the room, “I think,” he said, “that we’ve gone as far as we can, satisfactorily, in a joint discussion. I’m going to ask Inspector Fox to read over his notes. If there is anything any of you wishes to amend will you say so?”
Fox read his notes in a cosy voice and nobody objected to a word of them. When he had finished Alleyn said to Peregrine: “I daresay you’ll want to make your own arrangements with the company.”
“May I?” said Peregrine. “Thank you.”
Alleyn and Fox withdrew to the distant end of the office and conferred together. The company, far from concerning themselves with the proximity of the police, orientated as one man upon Peregrine, who explained that Trevor Vere’s understudy would carry on and that his scenes would be rehearsed in the morning. “Everybody concerned, please, at ten o’clock,” Peregrine said. “And look: about the press. We’ve got to be very careful with this one, haven’t we, Winty?”
Winter Meyer joined him, assuming at once his occupational manner of knowing how to be tactful with actors. They didn’t, any of them, did they, he asked, want the wrong kind of stories to get into the press. There was no doubt they would be badgered. He himself had been rung up repeatedly. The line was regret and no comment. “You’d all gone,” Meyer said. “You weren’t there. You’ve heard about it, of course, but you’ve no ideas.” Here everybody looked at Destiny.
He continued in this vein and it became evident that this able, essentially kind little man was at considerable pains to stop short of the suggestion that, properly controlled, the disaster, from a box-office angle, might turn out to be no such thing. “But we don’t need it,” he said unguardedly and embarrassed himself and most of his hearers. Harry Grove, however, gave one of his little chuckles.
“Well, that’s all perfectly splendid,” he said. “Everybody happy. We’ve no need of bloody murder to boost our door sales and wee Trevor can recover his wits as slowly as he likes. Grand.” He placed his arm about Destiny Meade, who gave him a mock-reproachful look, tapped his hand and freed herself.
“Darling, do be good,” she said. She moved away from him, caught Gertrude Bracey’s baleful eye and said with extreme graciousness: “Isn’t he too frightful?” Miss Bracey was speechless.
“I can see I’ve fallen under the imperial displeasure,” Grove murmured in a too-audible aside. “The Great King Dolphin looks as if it’s going to combust...”
Knight walked across the office and confronted Grove, who was some three inches shorter than himself. Alleyn was uncannily reminded of a scene between them in Peregrine’s play when the man of Stratford confronted the man of fashion while the Dark Lady, so very much more subtle than the actress who beautifully portrayed her, watched catlike in the shadow.
“You really are,” Marcus Knight announced, magnificently inflecting, “the most objectionable person—I will not honour you by calling you an actor—with whom it has been my deep, deep misfortune to appear in any production.”
“Well,” Grove remarked with perfect good humour, “it’s nice to head the dishonours list, isn’t it? Not having prospects in the other direction. Unlike yourself, Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight,” he continued, beaming at Destiny. “A contradiction in terms when one comes to think of it. Never mind: it simply must turn into Sir M. Knight (Knight) before many more New Years have passed.”
Peregrine said: “I am sick of telling you to apologize, Harry, for grossly unprofessional behaviour and begin to think you must be an amateur, after all. Please wait outside in the foyer until Mr. Alleyn wants you. No. Not another word. Out.”
Harry looked at Destiny, made a rueful grimace and walked off.
Peregrine went to Alleyn: “I’m sorry,” he muttered, “about that little dust-up. We’ve finished. What would you like us to do?”
“I’d like the women and Random to take themselves off and the rest of the men to wait outside on the landing.”
“Me included?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“As a sort of control.”
“In the chemical sense?”
“Well—”
“O.K.,” Peregrine said. “What’s the form?”
“Just that.” Alleyn returned to the group of players. “If you wouldn’t mind moving out to the circle foyer,” he said. “Mr. Jay will explain the procedure.”
Peregrine marshalled them out.
They stood in a knot in front of the shuttered bar and they tried not to look down in the direction of the half-landing. The lowest of the three steps from the foyer to the half-landing, and the area where Jobbins had lain, were stripped of carpet. The police had put down canvas sheeting. The steel doors of the wall safe above the landing were shut. Between the back of the landing and the wall, three steps led up to a narrow strip of floor connecting the two halves of the foyer, each with its own door into the circle.
Destiny Meade said, “I’m not going down those stairs.”
“We can walk across the back to the other flight,” Emily suggested.
“I’d still have to set foot on the landing. I can’t do it. Harry!” She turned with her air of expecting everyone to be where she required them and found that Harry Grove had not heard her. He stood with his hands in his pockets contemplating the shut door of the office.
Marcus Knight, flushed and angry, said: “Perhaps you’d like me to take you down,” and laughed very unpleasantly.