by Ngaio Marsh
Peregrine moved round the circle and entered the O. P. box, which stank. He backed out of it, opened a door in the circle wall and found an iron stair leading to the stage.
He climbed down. Even these iron steps were muffled with dust but they gave out a half-choked clang as if he were soft-pedalling them.
Now, he was onstage, as a man of the theatre should be, and at once he felt much easier; exhilarated even, as if some kind of authority had passed to him by right of entry. He peered through the shaft of sunshine which he saw was dense with motes that floated, danced and veered in response to his own movement. He walked into it, stood by the broken chair and faced the auditorium. Quite dazzled and bemused by the strange tricks of light he saw the front of the house as something insubstantial and could easily people it with Mr Ruby’s patrons. Beavers, bonnets, ulsters, shawls. A flutter of programmes. Rows of pale discs that were faces. ‘O, wonderful!’ Peregrine thought and in order to embrace it all took a pace backwards.
III
To fall without warning, even by the height of a single step, is disturbing. To fall as he did now, by his height and the length of his arms into cold, stinking water, is monstrous, nightmarish, like a small death. For a moment he only knew that he had been physically insulted. He stared into the shaft of light with its madly jerking molecules, felt wood slip under his gloved fingers and tightened his grip. At the same time he was disgustingly invaded, saturated up to the collarbone in icy stagnant water. He hung at arm’s length.
‘O God!’ Peregrine thought, ‘why aren’t I a bloody Bond? Why can’t I make my bloody arms hitch me up? O God, don’t let me drown in this unspeakable muck. O God, let me keep my head.’
Well, of course, he thought, his hands and arms didn’t have to support his entire weight. Eleven stone. He was buoyed up by whatever he had fallen into. What? A dressing-room turned into a well for surface water? Better not speculate. Better explore. He moved his legs and dreadful ambiguous waves lapped up to his chin. He could find nothing firm with his feet. He thought: How long can I hang on like this? And a line of words floated in: ‘How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?’
What should he do? Perhaps a frog-like upward thing? Try it and at least gain a better finger hold? He tried it: he kicked at the water, pulled and clawed at the stage. For a moment he thought he had gained but his palms slid back, scraping on the edge and sucking at his soaked gloves. He was again suspended. The clerk? If he could hang on, would the clerk send someone to find out why he hadn’t returned the keys? When? When? Why in God’s name had he shaken off the man with the oil can from Phipps Bros? Jobbins. Suppose he were to yell? Was there indeed a broken window where tramps crept in? He took a deep breath and being thus inflated, rose a little in the water. He yelled.
‘Hallo! Hallo! Jobbins!’
His voice was silly and uncannily stifled. Deflated, he sank to his former disgusting level.
He had disturbed more than water when he tried his leap. An anonymous soft object bobbed against his chin. The stench was outrageous. I can’t, he thought, I can’t stay like this. Already his fingers had grown cold and his arms were racked. Presently – soon – he would no longer feel the edge, he would only feel pain and his fingers would slip away. And what then? Float on his back in this unspeakable water and gradually freeze? He concentrated on his hands, tipping his head back to look up the length of his stretched arms at them. The details of his predicament now declared themselves: the pull on his pectoral muscles, on his biceps and forearms and the terrible strain on his gloved fingers. The creeping obscenity of the water. He hung on for some incalculable age and realized that he was coming to a crisis when his body would no longer be controllable. Something must be done. Now. Another attempt? If there were anything solid to push against. Suppose, after all, his feet were only a few inches from the bottom? But what bottom? The floor of a dressing-room? An understage passage? A boxed-in trap? He stretched his feet and touched nothing. The water rose to his mouth. He flexed his legs, kicked, hauled on the edge and bobbed upwards. The auditorium appeared. If he could get his elbows on the edge. No.
But at the moment when the confusion of circle and stalls shot up before his eyes, he had heard a sound that he recognized, a protracted groan, and at the penultimate second, he had seen – what? A splinter of light? And heard? Somebody cough.
‘Hi!’ Peregrine shouted. ‘Here! Quick! Help!’
He sank and hung again by his fingers. But someone was coming through the house. Muffled steps on the rags of carpet.
‘Here! Come here, will you? On stage.’
The steps halted.
‘Look here! I say! Look, for God’s sake come up. I’ve fallen through the stage. I’ll drown. Why don’t you answer, whoever you are?’
The footsteps started again. A door opened nearby. Pass-door in the prompt side box, he thought. Steps up. Now: crossing the stage. Now.
‘Who are you?’ Peregrine said. ‘Look out. Look out for the hole. Look out for my hands. I’ve got gloves on. Don’t tread on my hands. Help me out of this. But look out. And say something.’
He flung his head back and stared into the shaft of light. Hands covered his hands and then closed about his wrists. At the same time heavy shoulders and a head wearing a hat came as a black silhouette between him and the light. He stared into a face he could not distinguish.
‘It doesn’t need much,’ he chattered. ‘If you could just give me a heave I can do it.’
The head was withdrawn. The hands changed their grip. At last the man spoke.
‘Very well,’ said a voice. ‘Now.’
He gave his last frog leap, was heaved up, was sprawled across the edge and had crawled back on the stage to the feet of the man. He saw beautiful shoes, sharp trouser ends and the edge of a fine overcoat. He was shivering from head to foot.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be more grateful. My God, how I stink.’
He got to his feet.
The man was, he thought, about sixty years old. Peregrine could see his face now. It was extremely pale. He wore a bowler hat and was impeccably dressed.
‘You are Mr Peregrine Jay, I think,’ said the man. His voice was toneless, educated and negative.
‘Yes – I – I?’
‘The people at the estate agents told me. You should have a bath and change. My car is outside.’
‘I can’t get into anyone’s car in this state. I’m very sorry, sir,’ Peregrine said. His teeth were going like castanets. ‘You’re awfully kind but –’
‘Wait a moment. Or no. Come to the front of the theatre.’
In answer to a gesture, Peregrine walked through the pass-door down into the house and was followed. Stagnant water squelched and spurted in his shoes. They went through a box and along a passage and came into the foyer. ‘Please stay here. I shall only be a moment,’ said his rescuer.
He went into the portico leaving the door open. Out in Wharfingers Lane Peregrine saw a Daimler with a chauffeur. He began to jump and thrash his arms. Water splashed out of him and clouds of dust settled upon his drenched clothes. The man returned with the chauffeur who carried a fur rug and a heavy mackintosh.
‘I suggest you strip and put this on and wrap the rug round you,’ the man said. He stretched out his arms as if he were actually thinking of laying hands on Peregrine. He seemed to be suspended between attraction and repulsion. He looked, it struck Peregrine, as if he were making some kind of appeal. ‘Let me – ’ he said.
‘But, sir, you can’t. I’m disgusting.’
‘Please.’
‘No, no – really.’
The man walked away. His hands were clasped behind him. Peregrine saw, with a kind of fuddled astonishment, that they were trembling. ‘My God!’ Peregrine thought, ‘this is a morning and a half. I’d better get out of this one pretty smartly but how the hell – ’
‘Let me give you a hand, sir,’ said the chauffeur to Peregrine. ‘You’re that cold, aren’t you?’
‘I can manage. If only I could wash.’
‘Never mind, sir. That’s the idea. Leave them there, sir. I’ll attend to them. Better keep your shoes on, hadn’t you? The coat’ll be a bit of help and the rug’s warm. Ready, sir?’
‘If I could just have a taxi, I wouldn’t be such an infernal nuisance.’
His rescuer turned and looked, not fully at him but at his shoulder. ‘I beg you to come,’ he said.
Greatly worried by the extravagance of the phrase Peregrine said no more.
The chauffeur went ahead quickly and opened the doors of the car. Peregrine saw that newspaper had been spread over the floor and back seat.
‘Please go,’ his rescuer said, ‘I’ll follow.’
Peregrine shambled across the portico and jumped in at the back. The lining of the mackintosh stuck to his body. He hitched the rug around him and tried to clench his chattering jaw.
A boy’s voice in the street called, ‘Hey, look! Look at that bloke!’ The caretaker from Phipps Bros had appeared at the top of his alley and stared into the car. One or two people stopped and pointed him out to each other.
As his master crossed the portico the chauffeur locked the theatre doors. Holding Peregrine’s unspeakable clothes at arm’s length he put them in the boot of the car and got into the driver’s seat. In another moment they were moving up Wharfingers Lane.
His rescuer did not turn his head or speak. Peregrine waited for a moment or two and then, controlling his voice with some success, said:
‘I’m giving you far too much trouble.’
‘No.’
‘If – if you would be so very kind as to drop me at The Unicorn Theatre I think I could –’
Still without turning his head the man said with extreme formality, ‘I really do beg that you will allow me to –’ he stopped for an unaccountably long time and then said loudly, ‘– to rescue you. I mean to take you to my house and set you right. I shall be most upset otherwise. Dreadfully upset.’
Now he turned and Peregrine had never seen an odder look in anyone’s face. It was an expression almost, he thought, of despair.
‘I am responsible,’ said his extraordinary host. ‘Unless you allow me to make amends I shall – I shall feel – very guilty.’
‘Responsible? But –’
‘It will not take very long I hope. Drury Place.’
‘Oh lord!’ Peregrine thought, ‘what poshery.’ He wondered, suddenly, if perhaps the all too obvious explanation was the wrong one and if his rescuer was a slightly demented gentleman and the chauffeur his keeper.
‘I really don’t see, sir –’ he began but an inaudible conversation was taking place in the front seat.
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the chauffeur and drew up outside the estate agents. He pulled the keys out of his pocket as he entered. The clerk’s face appeared looking anxiously and crossly over the painted lower pane of his window. He disappeared and in a moment came running out and round to the passenger’s side.
‘Well, sir,’ he obsequiously gabbled, ‘I’m sure I’m very sorry this has occurred. Very regrettable, I’m sure. But as I was saying to your driver, sir, I did warn the viewer.’ He had not yet looked at Peregrine but he did so now, resentfully. ‘I warned you,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes,’ Peregrine said. ‘You did.’
‘Yes, well, thank you. But I’m sure –’
‘That will do. There has been gross negligence. Good morning.’ The voice was so changed, so brutally icy that Peregrine stared and the clerk drew back as if he’d been stung. They moved off.
The car’s heating system built up. By the time they had crossed the river Peregrine was a little less cold and beginning to feel drowsy. His host offered no further remarks. Once when Peregrine happened to look at the rear-vision glass on the passenger’s side he found he was being observed, apparently with extreme distaste. Or no. Almost with fear. He looked away quickly but out of the tail of his eye saw a gloved hand change the angle of the glass.
‘Oh well,’ he thought bemusedly, ‘I’m bigger and younger than he is. I suppose I can look after myself but how tricky it all is. Take away a man’s clothes, after all, and you make a monkey of him. What sort of public image will I present, fleeing down Park Lane in a gent’s mack and a fur rug, both the property of my pursuer?’
They were in Park Lane now and soon turned off into a side street and thence into the cul-de-sac called Drury Place. The car pulled up. The chauffeur got out and rang the bell of No.7. As he returned to the car, the house door was opened by a manservant.
Peregrine’s host said in a comparatively cheerful voice: ‘Not far to go. Up the steps and straight in.’
The chauffeur opened the door. ‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘shan’t be long, shall we?’
There really was nothing else for it. Three impeccable men, an errand boy and a tightly encased lady carrying a little dog, walked down the footpath.
Peregrine got out and instead of bolting into the house, made an entrance of it. He ascended the steps with deliberation leaving a trail of filthy footprints behind him and dragging his fur rug like a ceremonial train. The manservant stood aside.
‘Thank you,’ Peregrine said grandly. ‘I have fallen, as you see, into dirty water.’
‘Quite so, sir.’
‘Up to my neck.’
‘Very unfortunate, sir.’
‘For all concerned,’ said Peregrine.
His host had arrived.
‘First of all, of course, a bath,’ he was saying, ‘and something to defeat that shivering, Mawson?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘And then come and see me.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The man went upstairs. Peregrine’s host was now behaving in so normal a manner that he began to wonder if he himself had perhaps been bemused by his hideous experience. There was some talk of the efficacy of Epsom salts in a hot bath and of coffee laced with rum. Peregrine listened in a trance.
‘Do forgive me for bossing you about like this. You must be feeling ghastly and really, I do blame myself.’
‘By why?’
‘Yes, Mawson?’
‘If the gentleman will walk up, sir.’
‘Quite so. Quite so. Good.’
Peregrine walked up and was shown into a steaming and aromatic bathroom.
‘I thought pine, sir, would be appropriate,’ said Mawson. ‘I hope the temperature is as you like it. May I suggest a long, hot soak, sir?’
‘You may indeed,’ said Peregrine warmly.
‘Perhaps I may take your rug and coat. And shoes,’ said Mawson with an involuntary change of voice. ‘You will find a bath wrap on the rail and a hot rum and lemon within easy reach. If you would be good enough to ring, sir, when you are ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘To dress, sir.’
It seemed a waste of time to say: ‘In what?’ so Peregrine merely said ‘Thank you’ and Mawson said ‘Thank you’ and withdrew.
It was rapture beyond compare in the bath. Essence of pine. A lovely longhandled brush. Pine-smelling soap. And the hot rum and lemon. He left off shivering, soaped himself all over, including his head, scrubbed himself scarlet, submerged completely, rose, drank and tried to take a responsible view of the situation. In this he failed. Too much had occurred. He realized after a time that he was becoming light-headed and without at all fancying the idea took a hard-hitting cold shower. This restored him. Rough-dried and wrapped in a towelling bathrobe he rang the bell. He felt wonderful.
Mawson came and Peregrine said he would like to telephone for some clothes though when he thought about it he didn’t quite know where he would ring. Jeremy Jones with whom he shared a flat would certainly be out and it wasn’t the morning for their charlady. The Unicorn Theatre? Somebody would be there, of course, but who?
Mawson showed him to a bedroom where there was a telephone.
There were also clothes laid out on the bed. ‘I think they are approximat
ely your size, sir. It is hoped that you will have no objection to making use of them in the meantime,’ said Mawson.
‘Yes, but look here –’
‘It will be much appreciated if you make use of them. Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘I – honestly – I –’
‘Mr Conducis sends his compliments, sir, and hopes you will join him in the library.’
Peregrine’s jaw dropped.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mawson neatly and withdrew.
Conducis? Conducis! It was as if Mawson had said ‘Mr Onassis’. Could this possibly be Mr Vassily Conducis? The more Peregrine thought about it the more he decided that it could. But what in the wide world would Mr Vassily Conducis be up to in a derelict theatre on the South Bank at half past ten in the morning when he ought to have been abominably lolling on his yacht in the Aegean? And what was he, Peregrine, up to in Mr Conducis’s house which (it now dawned upon him) was on a scale of insolently quiet grandeur such as he had never expected to encounter outside the sort of book which, in any case, he never read.
Peregrine looked round the room and felt he ought to curl his lip at it. After all he did read his New Statesman. He then looked at the clothes on the bed and found them to be on an equal footing with what, being a man of the theatre, he thought of as the décor. Absently, he picked up a gayish tie that was laid out beside a heavy silk shirt. ‘Charvet’ said the label. Where had he read of Charvet?
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he thought. He sat on the bed and dialled several numbers without success. The theatre didn’t answer. He put on the clothes and saw that though they were conservative in style he looked startlingly presentable in them. Even the shoes fitted.
He rehearsed a short speech and went downstairs where he found Mawson waiting for him.
He said: ‘Did you say: Mr Conducis?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Vassily Conducis. Will you step this way, sir?’
Mr Conducis stood in front of his library fire and Peregrine wondered how on earth he had failed to recognize a face that had been so widely publicized with, it was reported, such determined opposition from its owner. Mr Conducis had an olive, indeed a swarthy complexion and unexpectedly pale eyes. These were merely facial adjuncts and might, Peregrine afterwards thought, have been mass produced for all the speculation they inspired. The mouth, however, was disturbing, being, or so Peregrine thought, both ruthless and vulnerable. The chin was heavy. Mr Conducis had curly black hair going predictably grey at the temples. He looked, by and large, enormously expensive.