Jeremy went out quickly. They heard him cross the foyer and run downstairs.
“Wait a moment, will you, Jay?” Alleyn said. “Fox, lay that on, please.”
Fox went to the telephone and established a sub-fusc conversation with the Yard.
“That young booby’s a close friend of yours, I gather,” Alleyn said.
“Yes, he is. Mr. Alleyn, I realize I’ve no hope of getting anywhere with this but if I may just say one thing—”
“Of course, why not?”
“Well,” Peregrine said, rather surprised, “thank you. Well, it’s two things, actually. First: from what Jeremy’s told you, there isn’t any motive whatever for him to burgle the safe last night. Is there?”
“If everything he has said is true — no. If he has only admitted what we were bound to find out and distorted the rest, it’s not difficult to imagine a motive. Motives, however, are a secondary consideration in police work. At the moment, we want a workable assemblage of cogent facts. What’s your second observation?”
“Not very compelling, I’m afraid, in the light of what you’ve just said. He is, as you’ve noticed, my closest friend and I must therefore be supposed to be prejudiced. But I do, all the same, want to put it on record that he’s one of the most non-violent men you could wish to meet. Impulsive. Hot-tempered in a sort of sudden red-headed way. Vulnerable. But essentially gentle. Essentially incapable of the kind of thing that was perpetrated in this theatre last night. I know this of Jeremy, as well as I know it of myself. I’m sorry,” Peregrine said rather grandly. “I realize that kind of reasoning won’t make a dent in a police investigation. But if you would like to question anyone else who’s acquainted with the fool, I’m sure you’ll get the same reaction.”
“Speaking as a brutal and hide-bound policeman,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “I’m much obliged to you. It isn’t always the disinterested witness who offers the soundest observations and I’m glad to have your account of Jeremy Jones.”
Peregrine stared at him. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“What for? Before we press on, though, I wonder if you’d feel inclined to comment on the Knight-Meade-Bracey-Grove situation. What’s it all about? A character actress scorned and a leading gent slighted? A leading lady beguiled and a second juvenile in the ascendant? Or what?”
“I wonder you bother to ask me since you’ve got it off so pat,” said Peregrine tartly.
“And a brilliant young designer in thrall with no prospect of delight?”
“Yes. Very well.”
“All right,” Alleyn said. “Let him be for the moment. Have you any idea who the U.S. customer for the treasure might be?”
“No. It wasn’t for publication. Or so I understood from Greenslade.”
“Not Mrs. Constantia Guzmann by any chance?”
“Good God, I don’t know,” Peregrine said. “I’ve no notion. Mr. Conducis may not so much as know her. Not that that would signify.”
“I think he does, however. She was one of his guests in the Kalliope at the time of the disaster. One of the few to escape, if I remember rightly.”
“Wait a bit. There’s something. Wait a bit.”
“With pleasure.”
“No, but it’s just that I’ve remembered—It might not be of the smallest significance—but I have remembered one incident, during rehearsals when Conducis came in to tell me we could use the treasure for publicity. Harry walked in here while we were talking. He was as bright as a button, as usual, and not at all disconcerted. He greeted Mr. Conducis like a long lost uncle, asked him if he’d been yachting lately and said something like: remember him to Mrs. G. Of course there are a thousand and one Mrs. G’s but when you mentioned the yacht—”
“Yes, indeed. How did Conducis take this?”
“Like he takes everything. Dead pan.”
“Any idea what the obligation was that Grove seems to have laid upon him?”
“Not a notion.”
“Blackmail by any chance, would you think?”
“Ah, no! And Conducis is not a queer in my opinion if that’s what you’re working up to. Nor, good Lord, is Harry! And nor, I’m quite sure, is Harry a blackmailer. He’s a rum customer and he’s a bloody nuisance in a company. Like a wasp. But I don’t believe he’s a bad lot. Not really.”
“Why?”
Peregrine thought for a moment. “I suppose,” he said at last, with an air of surprise, “that it must be because, to me, he really is funny. When he plays up in the theatre I become furious and go for him like a pick-pocket and then he says something outrageous that catches me on the hop and makes me want to laugh.” He looked from Alleyn to Fox. “Has either of you,” Peregrine asked, “ever brought a clown like Harry to book for murder?”
Alleyn and Fox appeared severally to take glimpses into their professional pasts.
“I can’t recall,” Fox said cautiously, “ever finding much fun in a convicted homicide, can you, Mr. Alleyn?”
“Not really,” Alleyn agreed, “but I hardly think the presence or absence of the Comic Muse can be regarded as an acid test.”
Peregrine, for the first time, looked amused.
“Did you,” Alleyn said, “know that Mr. Grove is distantly related to Mr. Conducis?”
“I did not,” Peregrine shouted. “Who told you this?”
“He did.”
“You amaze me. It must be a tarradiddle. Though, of course,” Peregrine said, after a long pause, “it would account for everything. Or would it?”
“Everything?”
“The mailed fist of Management. The recommendation for him to be cast.”
“Ah, yes. What’s Grove’s background, by the way?”
“He refers to himself as an Old Borstalian but I don’t for a moment suppose it’s true. He’s a bit of an inverted snob, is Harry.”
“Very much so, I’m sure.”
“I rather think he started in the R.A.F. and then drifted on and off the boards until he got a big break a couple of years ago in Cellar Stairs. He was out of a shop, he once told me, for so long that he got jobs as a lorry-driver, a steward and a waiter in a strip-tease joint. He said he took more in tips than he ever made speaking lines.”
“When was that?”
“Just before his break, he said. About six years ago. He signed off one job and before signing on for another took a trip round the agents and landed star-billing in Cellar Stairs. Such is theatre.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Is that all?” Peregrine asked after a silence.
“I’m going to ask you to do something else for me. I know you’ve got the change of casting and internal affairs on your hands, but as soon as you can manage it I wonder if you’d take an hour to think back over your encounters with Mr. Conducis and your adventures of last night, and note down everything you can remember. Everything. And any other item, by the way, that you may have overlooked in the excitement.”
“Do you really think Condueis has got anything to do with last night?”
“I’ve no idea. He occurs. He’ll have to be found irrelevant before we may ignore him. Will you do this?”
“I must say it’s distasteful.”
“So,” said Alleyn, “is Jobbins’s corpse.”
“Whatever happened,” Peregrine said, looking sick, “and whoever overturned the bronze dolphin, I don’t believe it was deliberate, cold-blooded murder. I think he saw Jobbins coming at him and overturned the pedestal in a sort of blind attempt to stop him. That’s what I think and, my God,” Peregrine said, “I must say I do not welcome an invitation to have any part in hunting him down: whoever it was, the boy or anyone else.”
“All right. And if it wasn’t the boy, what about the boy? How do you fit him in as a useful buffer between your distaste and the protection of the common man? How do you think the boy came to be dropped over the circle? And believe me he was dropped. He escaped, by a hundred-to-one chance, being spilt like an egg over the stalls. Yes,” Alleyn said, watching Peregrine, “that’s a remark in bad taste, isn’t it? Murder’s a crime in bad taste. You’ve seen it, now. You ought to know.” He waited for a moment and then said, “That was cheating and I apologize.”