“I don’t say that,” Meyer said unhappily. “You see, after that morning they did all know about the five-letter word being an obvious one and — and — well, Dessy did say one day, ‘Is it “glove,” Winty? We all think it might be? Do you swear it’s not “glove.” ’ Well, you know Dessy. She’d woo the Grand Master to let the goat out of the Lodge. I suppose I boggled a bit and she laughed and kissed me. I know. I know. I ought to have had it changed. I meant to. But — in the theatre we don’t go about wondering if someone in the company’s a big-time bandit.”
“No, of course you don’t, Mr. Meyer: thank you very much. I think we can now return your office to you. It was more than kind to suggest that we use it.”
“There hasn’t been all that much for me to do. The press is our big worry but we’re booked out solid for another four months. Unless people get it into their heads to cancel we should make out. You never know, though, which way a thing like this will take the public.”
They left him in a state of controlled preoccupation.
The circle foyer was deserted, now. Alleyn paused for a moment. He looked at the shuttered bar, at the three shallow steps leading on three sides from the top down to the half-landing and the two flights that curved down from there to the main entrance; at the closed safe in the wall above the landing, the solitary bronze dolphin and the two doors into the circle. Everything was quiet, a bit muffled and stuffily chilly.
He and Fox walked down the three canvas-covered steps to the landing. A very slight sound caught Alleyn’s ear. Instead of going on down he crossed to the front of the landing, rested his hands on its elegant iron balustrade and looked into the main entrance below.
His gaze lighted on the crown of a smart black hat and the violently foreshortened figure of a thin woman.
For a second or two the figure made no move. Then the hat tipped back and gave way to a face like a white disc, turned up to his own.
“Do you want to see me, Miss Bracey?”
The face tipped backwards and forwards in assent. The lips moved, but if she spoke her voice was inaudible.
Alleyn motioned to Fox to stay where he was and himself went down the curving right-hand stairway.
There she stood, motionless. The fat upsidedown cupids over the box-office and blandly helpful caryatids supporting the landing made an incongruous background for that spare figure and yet it crossed Alleyn’s mind, her general appearance was evocative, in a cock-eyed way, of the period: of some repressed female character from a Victorian play or novel. Rosa Dartle, he thought, that was the sort of thing: Rosa Dartle.
“What is it?” Alleyn asked. “Are you unwell?”
She looked really ill. He wondered if he had imagined that she had swayed very slightly, and then pulled herself together.
“You must sit down,” he said. “Let me help you.”
When he went up to her he smelt brandy and saw that her eyes were off-focus. She said nothing but let him propel her to Jeremy Jones’s plushy settee alongside the wall. She sat bolt upright. One corner of her mouth drooped a little as if pulled down by an invisible hook. She groped in her handbag, fetched up a packet of cigarettes and fumbled one out. Alleyn lit it for her. She made a great business of this. She’s had a lot more than’s good for her, he thought, and wondered where, on a Sunday afternoon, she’d get hold of it. Perhaps Fox’s Mrs. Jancy at The Wharfinger’s Friend had obliged.
“Now,” he said, “what’s the trouble?”
“Trouble? What trouble? I know trouble when I see it,” she said. “I’m saturated in it.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Not a question of me telling you. It’s what he told you. That’s what matters.”
“Mr. Grove?”
“Mr. W. Hartly Grove. You know what? He’s a monster. You know? Not a man but a monster. Cruel. My God,” she said and the corner of her mouth jerked again, “how cruel that man can be!”
Looking at her, Alleyn thought there was not much evidence of loving-kindness in her own demeanour.
“What,” she asked with laborious articulation, “did he say about me? What did he say?”
“Miss Bracey, we didn’t speak of you at all.”
“What did you speak about? Why did he stay behind to speak to you. He did, didn’t he? Why?”
“He told me about his overcoat.”
She glowered at him and sucked at her cigarette as if it were a respirator. “Did he tell you about his scarf?” she asked.
“The yellow one with H. on it?”
She gave a sort of laugh. “Embroidered,” she said. “By his devoted Gerts. God, what a fool! And he goes on wearing it. Slung round his neck like a halter and I wish it’d throttle him.”
She leaned back, rested her head against the crimson plush and shut her eyes. Her left hand slid from her lap and the cigarette fell from her fingers. Alleyn picked it up and threw it into a nearby sandbox. “Thanks,” she said without opening her eyes.
“Why did you stay behind? What do you want to tell me?”
“Stay behind? When?”
“Now.”
“Then, you mean.”
The clock above the box-office ticked. The theatre made a settling noise up in its ceiling. Miss Bracey sighed.
“Did you go back into the theatre?”
“Loo. Downstairs cloaks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She said very distinctly: “Because it didn’t matter.”
“Or because it mattered too much?”
“No.”
“Did you see or hear anyone while you were in the downstairs foyer?”
“No. Yes, I did. I heard Winty and Marco in the office upstairs. They came out. And I left, then. I went away. Before they saw me.”
“Was there someone else you saw? Jobbins?”
“No,” she said at once.
“There was someone, wasn’t there?”
“No.No. No.”
“Why does all this distress you so much?”
She opened her mouth and then covered it with her hand. She rose and swayed very slightly. As he put out a hand to steady her she broke from him and ran hazardously to the pass-door. It was unlocked. She pulled it open and left it so. Alleyn stood in the doorway and she backed away from him across the portico. When she realized he wasn’t going to follow she flapped her hand in a lunatic fashion and ran towards the car park. He was in time to see her scramble into her mini-car. Someone was sitting in the passenger seat who caught sight of Alleyn and turned away. It was Charles Random.
“Do you want her held?” Fox said at his elbow.
“No. What for? Let her go.”
“I think that’s the lot,” Peregrine said. He laid down his pen, eased his fingers and looked up at Emily.
The bottom of Phipps Passage having turned out to be windy and rich in dubious smells, they had crossed the bridge and retired upon the flat. Emily got their lunch ready while Peregrine laboured to set down everything he could remember of his encounters with Mr. Conducis. Of Jeremy there was nothing to be seen.
Emily said: “ ‘What I did in the Hols. Keep it bright, brief and descriptive.’ ”
“I seem to have done an unconscionable lot,” Peregrine rejoined. “It’s far from brief. Look.”
“No doubt Mr. Alleyn will mark it for you. ‘Quite G. but should take more pains with his writing.’ Are you sure you haven’t forgotten the one apparently trifling clue round which the whole mystery revolves?”
“You’re very jokey, aren’t you? I’m far from sure. The near-drowning incident’s all complete, I think, but I’m not so sure about the visit to Drury Place. Of course, I was drunk by the time that was over. How extraordinary it was,” Peregrine said. “Really, he was rum. Do you know, Emmy, darling, it seems to me now as if he acted throughout on some kind of compulsion. As if it had been he, not I, who was half-drowned and behaving (to mix my metaphor, you pedantic girl) like a duck that’s had its head chopped off. He was obsessed while I was merely plastered. Or so it seems, now.”