“As I said, he was a good bloke. We used to have a pint at the pub and he’d talk about his days on the river. Oddly enough I think he rather liked me.”

“Why should that be so odd?”

“Oh,” Harry said. “I’m hideously unpopular, you know. I really am disliked. I have a talent for arousing extremes of antipathy, I promise you. Even Mr. Conducis,” Harry said, opening his eyes very wide, “although he feels obliged to be helpful, quite hates my guts, I assure you.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Friday afternoon,” Harry said promptly.

“Really?”

“Yes. I call on him from time to time as a matter of duty. After all, he got me this job. Did I mention that we are distantly related? Repeat: distantly.”

“No.”

“No. I don’t mention it very much. Even I,” Harry said, “draw the line somewhere, you know.”

EIGHT

Sunday Afternoon

“What did you think of that little party, Br’er Fox?”

“Odd chap, isn’t he? Very different in his manner to when he was annoying his colleagues. One of these inferiority complexes, I suppose. You brought him out, of course.”

“Do you think he’s dropped to the obvious speculation?”

“About the coat? I don’t fancy he’d thought of that one, Mr. Alleyn, and if I’ve got you right I must say it strikes me as being very far-fetched. You might as well say—well,” Fox said in his scandalized manner, “you might as well suspect I don’t know who. Mr. Knight. The sharp-faced lady Miss Bracey, or even Mr. Conducis.”

“Well, Fox, they all come into the field of vision, don’t they? Overcoat or no overcoat.”

“That’s so,” Fox heavily agreed. “So they do. So they do.” He sighed and after a moment said majestically, “D’you reckon he was trying to pull our legs?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. All the same there is a point, you know, Fox. The landing was very dim even when the safe was open and lit.”

“How does that interior lighting work? I haven’t had a look, yet”

“There’s a switch inside the hole in the wall on the circle side. What the thief couldn’t have realized is the fact that this switch works the sliding steel front door and that in its turn puts on the light.”

“Like a fridge.”

“Yes. What might have happened is something like this. The doors from the circle into the upper foyer were shut and the auditorium was in darkness. The thief lay doggo in the circle. He heard Jay and Miss Dunne go out and bang the stage-door. He waited until midnight and then crept up to the door nearest the hole in the wall and listened for Jobbins to put through his midnight report to Fire and Police. You’ve checked that he made this call. We’re on firm ground there, at least.”

“And the chap at the Fire Station, which was the second of his two calls, reckons he broke off a bit abruptly.”

“Exactly. Now, if I’m right so far—and I know damn well I’m going to speculate—our man would choose this moment to open the wall panel—It doesn’t lock—and manipulate the combination. He’s already cut the burglar alarm off at the main. He must have had a torch, but I wouldn’t mind betting that by intention or accident he touched the inner switch button and, without knowing he’d done so, rolled back the front door, which in its turn put on the interior lighting. If it was accidental he wouldn’t realize what he’d done until he’d opened the back of the safe and removed the black velvet display stand with its contents and found himself looking through a peephole across the upper foyer and sunken landing.”

“With the square of light reflected on the opposite wall.”

“As bright as ninepence. Quite bright enough to attract Jobbing’s attention.”

“Now it gets a bit dicey.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“What happens? This chap reckons he’d better make a bolt for it. But why does he come out here to the foyer?” Fox placidly regarded his chief. “This,” he continued, “would be asking for it. This would be balmy. He knows Jobbins is somewhere out here.”

“I can only cook up one answer to that, Fox. He’s got the loot. He intends to shut the safe, fore and aft, and spin the lock. He means to remove the loot from the display stand but at this point he’s interrupted. He hears a voice, a catcall, a movement. Something. He turns round to find young Trevor Vere watching him. He thinks Jobbins is down below at the telephone. He bolts through the door from the circle to this end of the foyer meaning to duck into the loo before Jobbins gets up. Jobbins would then go into the circle and find young Trevor and assume he was the culprit. But he’s too late. Jobbins, having seen the open safe, comes thundering up from below. He makes for this chap, who gives a violent shove to the pedestal, and the dolphin lays Jobbins flat. Trevor comes out to the foyer and sees this. Our chap goes for him. The boy runs back through the door and down the central aisle with his pursuer hard on his heels. He’s caught at the foot of the steps. There’s a struggle during which the boy grabs at the display stand. The polythene cover is dislodged, the treasure falls overboard with it. The boy is hit on the face. He falls across the balustrade, face down, clinging to it. He’s picked up by the seat of his trousers, swung sideways and heaved over, his nails dragging semi-diagonally across the velvet pile as he goes. At this point Hawkins comes down the stage-door alley.”

“You are having yourself a ball,” said Mr. Fox, who liked occasionally to employ the contemporary idiom. “How long does all this take?”

“From the time he works the combination it needn’t take more than five minutes. If that. Might be less.”

“So the time’s now—say—five past midnight”

“Say between twelve and twelve-ten.”

“Yerse,” said Fox and a look of mild gratification settled upon his respectable face. “And at twelve-five, or -ten or thereabouts Hawkins comes in by the stage-door, goes into the stalls and has a little chat with the deceased, who is looking over the circle balustrade.”

“I see you are in merry pin,” Alleyn remarked. “Hawkins, Mr. Smartypants, has a little chat with somebody wearing Jobbins’s new coat which Hawkins is just able to recognize in the scarcely lit circle. This is not, of necessity, Jobbins. So, you see, Harry Grove had a point about the coat.”

“Now then, now then.”

“Going too far, you consider?”

“So do you, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Well, of course I do. All this is purest fantasy. If you can think of a better one, have a go yourself.”

“If only,” Fox grumbled, “that kid could recover his wits, we’d all know where we were.”

“We might.”

“About this howd’yedo with the overcoat. Is your story something to this effect? The killer loses his loot, heaves the kid overboard and hears Hawkins at the stage-door. All right! He bolts back to the circle foyer. Why doesn’t he do a bunk by the pass-door in the front entrance?”

“No time. He knows that in a matter of seconds Hawkins will come through the auditorium into the front foyer. Consider the door. A mortice lock with the key kept on a hook behind the office. Two dirty great bolts and an iron bar. No time.”

“So you’re making out he grabs the coat off the body, puts it on, all mucky as it is with blood and Gawd knows what—”

“Only on the outside. And I fancy he took the scarf from the overcoat pocket and used it to protect his own clothes.”

“Ah. So you say he dolls himself up and goes back to the circle and tells Hawkins to make the tea?”

“In a croaking bronchial voice, we must suppose.”

“Then what? Humour me, Mr. Alleyn. Don’t stop.”

“Hawkins goes off to the Property Room and makes the tea. This will take at least five minutes. Our customer returns to the body and re-dresses it in the coat and puts the scarf round the neck. You noticed how the coat was: bunched up and stuffed under the small of the back. It couldn’t have got like that by him falling in it.”