Killer Dolphin

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Dear me.”

  “As for Conducis! But no matter. No matter.”

  “Do you discover the same traits in Mr. Conducis?”

  “I — I — am not familiar with Mr. Conducis.”

  “You have met him, surely?”

  “Formal meeting. On the opening night.”

  “But never before that?”

  “I may have done so. Years ago. I prefer—” Knight said surprisingly—“to forget the occurrence.” He swept it away.

  “May I ask why?”

  There was an appreciable pause before he said: “I was once his guest, if you can call it that, and I was subjected to an insolent disregard which I would have interpreted more readily if I had at that time been acquainted with Smidt. In my opinion,” Knight said, “Smidt should be compulsory reading for all police forces. You don’t mind my saying this?” he added in a casual, lordly manner.

  “Indeed no.”

  “Good. Want me any more, dear boy?” he asked, suddenly gracious.

  “I think not. Unless — and believe me I wouldn’t ask if the question was irrelevant to the case — unless you care to tell me if Mrs. Constantia Guzmann really confided to you that she is a buyer of hot objects d’art on the intercontinental black market.”

  It was no good. Back in a flash came the empurpled visage and the flashing eye. Back, too, came an unmistakable background of sheepishness and discomfort

  “No comment,” said Marcus Knight

  “No? Not even a tiny hint?”

  “You are mad to expect it,” he said, and with that they had to let him go.

  “Well, Br’er Fox, we’ve caught a snarled up little job this time, haven’t we?”

  “We have that,” Fox agreed warmly. “It’d be nice,” he added wistfully, “if we could put it down to simple theft, discovery and violence.”

  “It’d be lovely but we can’t, you know. We can’t. For one thing the theft of a famous object is always bedevilled by the circumstance of its being indisposable through the usual channels. No normal high-class fence, unless he’s got very special contacts, is going to touch Shakespeare’s note or his son’s glove.”

  “So, for a start you’ve got either a crank who steals and gloats or a crank of the type of young Jones who steals to keep the swag in England or a thorough wised-up, high grade professional in touch with the top international racket And at the receiving end somebody of the nature of this Mrs. Guzmann, who’s a millionaire crank in her own right and doesn’t care how she gets her stuff.”

  “That’s right. Or a kidnapper who holds the stuff for ransom. And you might have a non-professional thief who knows all about Mrs. G. and believes she’ll play and he’ll make a pocket.”

  “That seems to take in the entire boiling of this lot, seeing Mr. Grove’s broadcast the Guzmann-Knight anecdote for all it’s worth. I tell you what, Mr. Alleyn; it wouldn’t be the most astonishing event in my working life if Mr. Knight took to Mr. Grove. Mr. Grove’s teasing ways seem to put him out to a remarkable degree, don’t you think?”

  “I think,” Alleyn said, “we’d better, both of us, remind ourselves about actors.”

  “You do? What about them?”

  “One must always remember that they’re trained to convey emotion. On or off the stage, they make the most of everything they feel. Now this doesn’t mean they express their feelings up to saturation point. When you and I and all the rest of the non-actors do our damnedest to understate and be ironical about our emotional reflexes, the actor, even when he underplays them, does so with such expertise that he convinces us laymen that he’s in extremis. He isn’t. He’s only being professionally articulate about something that happens offstage instead of in front of an official audience.”

  “How does all this apply to Mr. Knight, then?”

  “When he turns purple and roars anathemas against Grove it means A: that he’s hot-tempered, pathologically vain and going through a momentary hell and B: that he’s letting you know up to the nth degree just how angry and dangerous he’s feeling. It doesn’t necessarily mean that once his present emotion has subsided he will do anything further about it, and nor does it mean that he’s superficial or a hypocrite. It’s his job to take the micky out of an audience, and even in the throes of a completely genuine emotional crisis, he does just that thing if it’s only an audience of one.”

  “Is this what they call being an extrovert?”

  “Yes, Br’er Fox, I expect it is. But the interesting thing about Knight, I thought, was that when it came to Conducis he turned uncommunicative and cagey.”

  “Fancied himself slighted over something, it seemed. Do you reckon Knight believes all that about Grove? Being a homicidal type? All that stuff about pale eyes etcetera. Because,” Fox said with great emphasis, “it’s all poppycock: there aren’t any facial characteristics for murder. What’s that you’re always quoting about there being no art to find the mind’s construction in the face? I reckon it’s fair enough where homicide’s concerned. Although,” Fox added, opening his own eyes very wide, “I always fancy there’s a kind of look about sex offenders of a certain type. That I will allow.”

  “Be that as it may it doesn’t get us much further along our present road. No news from the hospital?”

  “No. They’d ring through at once if there was.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “What do we do about Mr. Jeremy Jones?”

  “Oh, blast! What indeed! I think we take delivery of the glove and documents, give him hell and go no further. I’ll talk to the A.C. about him and I rather think I’ll have to tell Conducis as soon as possible. Who’ve we got left here? Only little Meyer. Ask him into his own office, Br’er Fox. We needn’t keep him long, I think.”

  Winter Meyer came in quoting Queen Mary. “This,” he said wearily, “is a pretty kettle of fish. This is a carry-on. I’m not complaining, mind, and I’m not blaming anybody but what, oh what, has set Marco off again? Sorry. Not your headache, old boy.”

  Alleyn uttered consolatory phrases, sat him at his own desk, checked his alibi, which was no better and no worse than anyone else’s in that after he left the theatre with Knight he drove to his house at Golders Green where his wife and family were all in bed. When he wound up his watch he noticed it said ten to twelve. He had heard the Knight-Guzmann story. “I thought it bloody sad,” he said. “Poor woman. Terrible, you know, the problem of the plain, highly sexed woman. Marco ought to have held his tongue. He ought never to have told Harry. Of course Harry made it sound a bit of a yell, but I didn’t like Marco telling about it. I don’t think that sort of thing’s funny.”

  “It does appear that on her own admission to Knight, she’s a buyer on a colossal scale under the museum-piece counter.”

  Winter Meyer spread his hands. “We all have our weaknesses,” he said. “So she likes nice things and she can pay for them. Marcus Knight should complain!”

  “Well!” Alleyn ejaculated. ’That’s one way of looking the Big Black Market in the eyes, I must say! Have you ever met Mrs. Guzmann, by the way?”

  Winter Meyer had rather white eyelids. They now dropped a little. “No,” he said, “not in person. Her husband was a most brilliant man. The equal and more of Conducis.”

  “Self-made?”

  “Shall we say self-created? It was a superb achievement.”

  Alleyn looked his enjoyment of this phrase and Meyer answered his look with a little sigh. “Ah yes!” he said. “These colossi! How marvellous!”

  “In your opinion,” Alleyn said, “without prejudice and within these four walls and all that: how many people in this theatre know the combination of that lock?”

  Meyer blushed. “Yes,” he said. “Well. This is where I don’t exactly shine with a clear white radiance, isn’t it? Well, as he’s told you, Charlie Random for one. Got it right, as you no doubt observed. He says he didn’t pass it on and personally I believe that. He’s a very quiet type, Charlie. Never opens up about his own or anybo
dy else’s business. I’m sure he’s dead right about the boy not knowing the combination.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “Because as I said, the bloody kid was always pestering me about it.”

  “And so you would have been pretty sure, would you, that only you yourself, Random, and Mr. Conducis knew the combination?”

  “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.”

  “But what did he do that was so odd?”

  “Do? He—well, there was an old menu card from the yacht Kalliope. It was in the desk and he snatched it up and burnt it.”

  “I suppose if your yacht’s wrecked under your feet you don’t much enjoy being reminded of it.”

  “No, but I got the impression it was something on the card—” Peregrine went into a stare and after a long pause said in a rather glazed manner: “I think I’ve remembered.”

  “What?”

  “On the menu. Signatures: you know? And, Emmy, listen.”

  Emily listened. “Well,” she said. “For what it’s worth, put it in.”

  Peregrine put it in. “There’s one other thing,” he said. “It’s about last night. I think it was when I was in front and you had come through from backstage. There was the disturbance by the boy—catcalls and the door-slamming. Somewhere about then, it was, that I remember thinking of The Cherry Orchard. Not consciously but with one of those sort of momentary, back-of-the-mind things.”

  “The Cherry Orchard?”

  “Yes, and Miss Joan Littlewood.”

  “Funny mixture. She’s never produced it, has she?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, damn, I wish I could get it. Yes,” Peregrine said excitedly. “And with it there was a floating remembrance, I’m sure — of what? A quotation: ‘Vanished with a — something perfume and a most melodious—’ what? I think it was used somewhere by Walter de la Mare. It was hanging about like the half-recollection of a dream when we walked up the puddled alleyway and into Wharfingers Lane. Why? What started it up?”

  “It mightn’t have anything to do with Trevor or Jobbins.”

  “I know. But I’ve got this silly feeling it has.”

  “Don’t try to remember and then you may.”