“And Mr. Conducis? After all, it’s his affair.”
“Greenslade can tackle that one. Emily, are you in a muddle like me? I can’t get on top of this. Jobbins. That appalling kid. Shakespeare’s note and the glove. All broken or destroyed or stolen. Isn’t it beastly, all of it? What are human beings? What’s the thing that makes monsters of us all?”
“It’s out of our country. We’ll have to play it by ear.”
“No, but we act it. It’s our raw material. Murder. Violence. Theft. Sexual greed. They’re commonplace to us. We do our Stanislavsky over them. We search out motives and associated experiences. We try to think our way into Macbeth or Othello or a witch-hunt or an Inquisitor or a killer-doctor at Auschwitz and sometimes we think we’ve succeeded. But confront us with the thing itself! It’s as if a tractor had rolled over us. We’re nothing. Superintendent Gibson is there instead to put it all on a sensible, factual basis.”
“Good luck to him,” said Emily rather desperately.
“Good luck? You think? All right, if you say so.”
“Perhaps I can now ring up Mrs. Blewitt.”
“I’ll come with you.”
The foyer was brilliantly lit and there were voices and movement upstairs where Jobbins lay. Cameramen’s lamps flashed and grotesquely reminded Peregrine of the opening night of his play. Superintendent Gibson’s voice and that of the divisional-surgeon were clearly distinguishable. There was also a new rather comfortable voice. Downstairs, a constable stood in front of the main doors. Peregrine told him that Mr. Gibson had said they might use the telephone, and the constable replied pleasantly that it would be quite all right he was sure.
Peregrine watched Emily dial the number and wait with the receiver to her ear. How pale she was. Her hair was the kind that goes into a mist after it has been out in the rain and her wide mouth drooped at the corners like a child’s. He could hear the buzzer ringing, on and on. Emily had just shaken her head at him when the telephone quacked angrily. She spoke for some time, evidently to no avail and at last hung up.
“A man,” she said. “A landlord, I should think. He was livid. He says Mrs. Blewitt went to a party after her show and didn’t meet Trevor tonight. He says she’s ‘flat out to it’ and nothing would rouse her. So he hung up.”
“The policewoman will have to cope. I’d better rouse Greenslade, I suppose. He lives at some godawful place in the stockbrokers’ belt. Here goes.”
Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Greenslade had a bedside telephone. She could be heard, querulous and half asleep, in the background. Mr. Greenslade said: “Shut up, darling. Very well, Jay, I’ll come down. Does Alleyn know?”
“I—don’t suppose so. I told the Superintendent that Alleyn would be concerned.”
“He should have been told. Find out, will you? I’ll come at once.”
“Find out,” Peregrine angrily repeated to Emily. “I can’t go telling the police who they ought to call in, blast it. How can I find out if Alleyn’s been told?”
“Easily,” Emily rejoined with a flicker of a smile. “Because, look.”
The constable had opened the pass-door in the main entrance and now admitted Superintendent Alleyn in the nearest he ever got to a filthy temper.
Alleyn had worked late and unfruitfully at the Yard in company with Inspector Fox. As he let himself into his own house he heard the telephone ring, swore loudly and got to it just as his wife, Troy, took the receiver off in their bedroom.
It was the Chief Commander who was his immediate senior at the Yard. Alleyn listened with disgust to his story. “—and so Fred Gibson thought that as you know Conducis and had a hand in the installation, he’d better call us. He just missed you at the Yard. All things considered I think you’d better take over, Rory. It’s a big one. Murder. Double, if the boy dies. And robbery of these bloody, fabulous museum pieces.”
“Very good,” Alleyn said. “All right. Yes.”
“Got your car out or garaged?”
“Thank you. Out.”
It was nothing new to turn round in his tracks after one gruelling day and work through till the next. He took five minutes to have a word with Troy and a rapid shave and was back in the car and heading for the Borough within half an hour of leaving the Yard. The rain had lifted but the empty streets glistened under their lamps.
He could have kicked himself from Whitehall to Bankside. Why, why, why hadn’t he put his foot down about the safe and its silly window and bloody futile combination lock? Why hadn’t he said that he would on no account recommend it? He reminded himself that he had given sundry warnings but snapped back at himself that he should have gone further. He should have telephoned Conducis and advised him not to go on with the public display of the Shakespeare treasures. He should have insisted on that ass of a business manager scrapping his imbecile code word, penetrable in five minutes by a certified moron, and should have demanded a new combination. The fact that he had been given no authority to do so and had nevertheless urged precisely this action upon Mr. Winter Meyer made ao difference. He should have thrown his weight about.
And now some poor damned commissionaire had been murdered. Also, quite probably, that unspeakably ghastly little boy who had cheeked him in The Dolphin. And Hamnet Shakespeare’s glove and Hamnet’s father’s message had inspired these atrocities and were gone. Really, Alleyn thought, as he drew up by the portico of The Dolphin Theatre, he hadn’t been so disgruntled since he took a trip to Cape Town with a homicidal pervert.
Then he entered the theatre and came face-to-face with Peregrine and Emily and saw how white and desperate they looked and recognized the odd vagueness that so often overcomes people who have been suddenly confronted with a crime of violence. He swallowed his chagrin and summoned up the professionalism that he had once sourly defined as an infinite capacity to notice less and less with more and more accuracy.
He said: “This is no good at all, is it? What are you two doing here?”
“We got here,” Peregrine said, “just after.”
“You look as if you’d better go and sit down somewhere. ’Morning, Fred,” Alleyn said, meeting Superintendent Gibson at the foot of the stair. “What’s first?” He looked towards the half-landing and without waiting for an answer walked upstairs followed by Gibson.
Among the group of men and cameras was an elderly thick-set man with a grizzled moustache and bright eyes.
“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You again.”
“That’s right, Mr. Alleyn,” said Inspector Fox. “Just beat you to it. I was still at the Yard when they rang up so the C.C. said I might as well join in. Don’t quite know why and I daresay Fred doesn’t either.”
“More the merrier,” Mr. Gibson rejoined gloomily. “This looks like being an extra curly one.”
“Well,” Alleyn said, “I’d better see.”
“We covered him,” Gibson said. “With a dust sheet. It’s about as bad as they come. Worst I’ve ever seen. Now!”
“Very nasty,” Fox said. He nodded to one of the men. “O.K., Bailey.”
Detective-Sergeant Bailey, a finger-print expert, uncovered the body of Jobbins.
It was lying on its back with the glittering mask and single eye appallingly exposed. The loudly checked coat was open and dragged back into what must be a knotted lump under the small of the back. Between the coat and the dirty white sweater there was a rather stylish yellow scarf. The letter H had been embroidered on it. It was blotted and smeared. The sweater itself was soaked in patches of red and had ridden up over the chest. There was something almost homely and normal in the look of a tartan shirt running in sharp folds under the belted trousers that were strained across the crotch by spread-eagled legs.