Peregrine said, “You needn’t be so bloody upright. It’s nauseating.”
“All right. Go away and vomit. But if you have second thoughts, sit down and write out every damn thing you remember of Conducis and all the rest of it. And now, if you want to go—go. Get the hell out of it.”
“Out of my own office, I’d have you remember. To kick my heels on the landing.”
Alleyn broke into laughter. “You have me there,” he said. “Never mind. It’s better, believe me, than kicking them in a waiting-room at the Yard. But all right, we’ll have another go. What can you tell me, if your stomach is equal to it, of the background of the other members of your company.” Alleyn raised a hand. “I know you have a loyalty to them and I’m not asking you to abuse it. I do remind you, Jay, that suspicion about this crime will fall inside your guild, your mystery, if I may put it like that, and that there’s going to be a great deal of talk and speculation. With the exception of yourself and Miss Dunne and Miss Meade, whose alibis seem to us to be satisfactory, and possibly Harry Grove, there isn’t one of the company, and I’m including Winter Meyer and Jeremy Jones, who absolutely could not have killed Jobbins and attacked the boy.”
“I can’t see how you make it out. They were all, except Trevor, seen to leave. I saw them go. The doors were locked and bolted and barred.”
“The stage-door was locked but not bolted and barred. Hawkins unlocked it with his own key. The small pass-door in the front was unlocked when Miss Bracey left and was not bolted and barred until after Meyer and Knight left. They heard Jobbins drop the bar.”
“That cuts them out, then, surely.”
“Look,” Alleyn said. “Put this situation to yourself and see how you like it. Jobbins is still alive. Somebody knocks on the pass-door in the front entrance. He goes down. A recognized voice asks him to open up—an actor has left his money in his dressing-room or some such story. Jobbins lets him in. The visitor goes backstage saying he’ll let himself out at the stage-door. Jobbins takes up his post. At midnight he does his routine telephoning and the sequel follows.”
“How do you know all this?”
“God bless my soul, my dear chap, for a brilliant playwright you’ve a quaint approach to logic. I don’t know it. I merely advance it as a way in which your lock-up theory could be made to vanish. There is at least one other, even simpler solution, which is probably the true one. The only point I’m trying to make is this. If you clamp down on telling me anything at all about any member of your company, you may be very fastidious and loyal and you may be protecting the actual butcher, but you’re not exactly helping to clear the other six—even if you count Conducis.”
Peregrine thought it over. “I think,” he said at last, “that’s probably a lot of sophistical hooey but I get your point. But I ought to warn you, you’ve picked a dud for the job. I’ve got a notoriously bad memory. There are things,” Peregrine said slowly, “at the back of my mind that have been worrying me ever since this catastrophe fell upon us. Do you think I can fetch them up? Not I.”
“What do you connect them with?”
“With noises made by Trevor, I think. And then, with Conducis. With that morning when he showed me the treasure. But of course then I was drunk so I’m unreliable in any case. However, tell me what you want to know and I’ll see about answering.”
“Too kind,” said Alleyn dryly. “Start with—anyone you like. Marcus Knight. What’s his background apart from the press hand-outs? I know all about his old man’s stationer’s shop in West Ham and how he went to a county school and rose to fame. Is it true he’s temperamental?”
Peregrine looked relieved. “If it’s only that sort of thing! He’s hell and well-known for it but he’s such a superb actor we all do our best to lump the temperament. He’s a jolly nice man really, I daresay, and collects stamps, but he can’t take the lightest criticism without going up like a rocket. An unfavourable notice is death to him and he’s as vain as a peacock. But people say he’s a sweetie at bottom even if it’s a fair way to bottom.”
Alleyn had strolled over to a display of photographs on the far walclass="underline" all the members of the cast in character with their signatures appended. Marcus Knight had been treated to a montage with his own image startlingly echoed by the Grafton portrait and the Droushout engraving. Peregrine joined him.
“Extraordinary,” Alleyn said. “The likeness. What a piece of luck!” He turned to Peregrine and found him staring, not at the picture but at the signature.
“Bold!” Alleyn said dryly.
“Yes. But it’s not that. There’s something about it. Damn! I thought so before. Something I’ve forgotten.”
“You may yet remember. Leave it. Tell me: is the sort of ribbing Knight got from Grove just now their usual form? All the King Dolphin nonsense?”
“Pretty much. It goes on.”
“If he’s as touchy as you say, why on earth hasn’t Knight shaken the Dolphin dust off his boots? Why does he stand it for one second?”
“I think,” Peregrine said with great simplicity, “he likes his part. I think that might be it.”
“My dear Jay, I really do apologize: of course he does. It’s no doubt the best role, outside Shakespeare, that he’ll ever play.”
“You think so? Really?”
“Indeed I do.”
Peregrine suddenly looked deeply happy. “Now, of course,” he said, “I’m completely wooed.”
“What can it matter what I think! You must know how good your play is.”
“Yes, but I like to be told. From which,” Peregrine said, “you may gather that I have a temperamental link with Marco Knight.”
“Were he and Destiny Meade lovers?”
“Oh yes. Going steady, it seemed, until Harry chucked poor Gertie and came rollicking in. We thought the casting was going to work out very cosily with Dessy and Marco as happy as Larry on the one hand and Gertie and Harry nicely fixed on the other. Maddening, this dodging round in a company. It always makes trouble. And with Marco’s capacity to cut up plug-ugly at the drop of a hat—anything might happen. We can only keep our fingers crossed.”
“Miss Meade is — she’s — I imagine, not an intellectual type.”
“She’s so stupid,” Peregrine said thoughtfully. “But so, so stupid it’s a kind of miracle. Darling Dessy. And yet,” he added, “there’s an element of cunning, too. Certainly, there’s an element of cunning.”
“What a problem for her director, in such a subtle role!”
“Not really. You just say: ‘Darling, you’re sad. You’re heartbroken. You can’t bear it,’ and up come the welling tears. Or: ‘Darling, you’ve been clever, don’t you see, you’ve been one too many for them,’ and she turns as shrewd as a marmoset. Or, simplest of alclass="underline" ‘Darling, you’re sending him in a big way,’ and as she never does anything else it works like a charm. She does the things : the audience thinks them.”
“Temperamental?”
“Only for form’s sake when she fancies it’s about time she showed up. She’s quite good-natured.”
“Did she slap Knight back smartly or gradually?”
“Gradually. You could see it coming at rehearsals. In their love scenes. She began looking at her fingernails over his shoulder and pulling bits of mascara off her eyelashes. And then she took to saying could they just walk it because she was rethinking her approach. She talks like that but of course she never has an approach. Only an instinct backed up by superb techniques and great dollops of star-quality.”