“What’s up, Mr. Alleyn?” Fox asked. “Anything wrong?”

“Oh, my dear Br’er Fox, I’m afraid so. I’m afraid there’s no saving grace in this catastrophe, after all, for Peregrine Jay.”

SEVEN

Sunday Morning

“I didn’t knock you up when I came in,” Peregrine said. “There seemed no point. It was getting light. I just thought I’d leave the note to wake me at seven. And oddly enough I did sleep. Heavily.”

Jeremy stood with his back to Peregrine, looking out of the bedroom window. “Is that all?” he asked.

“All?”

“That happened?”

“I should have thought it was enough, my God!”

“I know,” Jeremy said without turning. “I only meant: did you look at the glove?”

“I saw it, I told you: the Sergeant brought it to Alleyn with the two documents and afterwards Alleyn laid them out on Winty’s desk.”

“I wondered if it was damaged.”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t examine it. I wouldn’t have been let. Fingerprints and all that. It seems they really do fuss away about fingerprints.”

“What’ll they do with the things?”

“I don’t know. Lock them up at the Yard, I imagine, until they’ve finished with them and then return them to Conducis.”

“To Conducis. Yes.”

“I must get up, Jer. I’ve got to ring Winty and the cast and the understudy and find out about the boy’s condition. Look, you know the man who did the carpets. Could you ring him up at wherever he lives and tell him he simply must send men in, first thing tomorrow or if necessary tonight, to replace about two or three square yards of carpet on the half-landing. We’ll pay overtime and time again and whatever.”

“The half-landing?”

Peregrine said very rapidly in a high-pitched voice: “Yes. The carpet. On the half-landing. It’s got Jobbins’s blood and brains all over it. The carpet.”

Jeremy turned gray and said: “I’m sorry. I’ll do that thing,” and walked out of the room.

When Peregrine had bathed and shaved he swallowed with loathing two raw eggs in Worcestershire sauce and addressed himself to the telephone. The time was now twenty past seven.

On the South Bank in the borough, of Southwark, Superintendent Alleyn, having left Inspector Fox to arrange the day’s business, drove over Blackfriars Bridge to St. Terence’s Hospital and was conducted to a ward where Trevor Vere, screened from general view and deeply sighing, lay absorbed in the enigma of unconsciousness. At his bedside sat a uniformed constable with his helmet under his chair and a notebook in his hand. Alleyn was escorted by the ward sister and a house-surgeon.

“As you see, he’s deeply concussed,” said the house-surgeon. “He fell on his feet and drove his spine into the base of his head and probably crashed the back of a seat. As far as we can tell there’s no profound injury internally. Right femur and two ribs broken. Extensive bruising. You may say he was bloody lucky. A twenty foot fall, I understand.”

“The bruise on his jaw?”

“That’s a bit of a puzzle. It doesn’t look like the back or arm of a seat. It’s got all the characteristics of a nice hook to the jaw. I wouldn’t care to say definitely, of course. Sir James has seen him.” (Sir James Curtis was the Home Office pathologist.) “He thinks it looks like a punch.”

“Ah. Yes, so he said. It’s no use my asking, of course, when the boy may recover consciousness? Or how much he will remember?”

“The usual thing is complete loss of memory for events occurring just before the accident.”

“Alas.”

“What? Oh, quite. You must find that sort of thing very frustrating.”

“Very. I wonder if it would be possible to take the boy’s height and length of his arms, would it?”

“He can’t be disturbed.”

“I know. But if he might he uncovered for a moment. It really is important.”

The young house-surgeon thought for a moment and then nodded to the sister, who folded back the bed-clothes.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” Alleyn said three minutes later and replaced the clothes.

“Well, if that’s all—?”

“Yes. Thank you very much. I mustn’t keep you. Thank you, Sister. I’ll just have a word with the constable, here, before I go.”

The constable had withdrawn to the far side of the bed.

“You’re the chap who came here with the ambulance, aren’t you?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“You should have been relieved. You heard about instructions from Mr. Fox concerning the boy’s fingernails?”

“Yes, I did, sir, but only after he’d been cleaned up.”

Alleyn swore in a whisper.

“But I’d happened to notice—” The constable — wooden-faced — produced from a pocket in his tunic a folded paper. “It was in the ambulance, sir. While they were putting a blanket over him. They were going to tuck his hands under and I noticed they were a bit dirty like a boy’s often are but the fingernails had been manicured. Colourless varnish and all. And then I saw two were broken back and the others kind of choked up with red fluff and I cleaned them out with my penknife.” He modestly proffered his little folded paper.

“What’s your name?” Alleyn asked.

“Grantley, sir.”

“Want to move out of the uniformed arm?”

“I’d like to.”

“Yes. Well, come and see me if you apply for a transfer.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Trevor Vere sighed lengthily in his breathing. Alleyn looked at the not-quite-closed eyes, the long lashes and the full mouth that had smirked so unpleasingly at him that morning in The Dolphin. It was merely childish now. He touched the forehead which was cool and dampish.

“Where’s his mother?” Alleyn asked.

“They say, on her way.”

“She’s difficult, I’m told. Don’t leave the boy before you’re relieved. If he speaks: get it.”

“They say he’s not likely to speak, sir.”

“I know. I know.”

A nurse approached with a covered object. “All right,” Alleyn said, “I’m off.”

He went to the Yard, treating himself to coffee and bacon and eggs on the way.

Fox, he was told, had come in. He arrived in Alleyn’s office looking, as always, neat, reasonable, solid and extremely clean. He made a succinct report. Jobbins appeared to have no near relations, but the landlady at The Wharfinger’s Friend had heard him mention a cousin who was lockkeeper near Marlow. The stage-crew and front-of-house people had been checked and were out of the picture. The routine search before locking up seemed to have been extremely thorough.

Bailey and Thompson had finished at the theatre, where nothing of much significance had emerged. The dressing-rooms had yielded little beyond a note from Harry Grove that Destiny Meade had carelessly tucked into her make-up box.

“Very frank affair,” Mr. Fox said primly.

“Frank about what?”

“Sex.”

“Oh. No joy for us?”

“Not in the way you mean, Mr. Alleyn.”

“What about the boy’s room?”

“He shares with Mr. Charles Random. A lot of horror comics including some of the American type that come within the meaning of the act respecting the importation of juvenile reading. One strip was about a well-developed female character called Slash who’s really a vampire. She carves up Olympic athletes and leaves her mark on them — ‘Slash,’ in blood. It seems the lad was quite struck with this. He’s scrawled ‘Slash’ across the dressing-room looking-glass with red greasepaint and we found the same thing on the front-of-house lavatory mirrors and on the wall of one of the upstairs boxes. The one on the audience’s left.”

“Poor little swine.”

“The landlady at The Wharfinger’s Friend reckons he’ll come to no good and blames the mother, who plays the steel guitar at that strip-tease joint behind Magpie Alley. Half the time she doesn’t pick the kid up after his show and he gets round the place till all hours, Mrs. Jancy says.”