Death at the Dolphin

‘There is one other matter.’ Mr Greenslade opened a drawer in his desk and with an uncanny re-enacting of his principal’s gestures on the previous morning, withdrew from it the small Victorian writing desk. ‘You are already familiar with the contents, I understand, and expressed some anxiety about their aunthenticity.’

‘I said I wished they could be shown to an expert.’

‘Quite. Mr Conducis has taken your point, Mr Jay, and wonders if you yourself would be so obliging as to act for him in this respect.’

Peregrine, in a kind of trance, said: ‘Are the glove and documents insured?’

‘They are covered by a general policy but they have not been specifically insured since their value is unknown.’

‘I feel the responsibility would be –’

‘I appreciate your hesitation and I may say I put the point to Mr Conducis. He still wishes me to ask you to undertake this mission.’

There was a short silence.

‘Sir,’ said Peregrine, ‘why is Mr Conducis doing all this? Why is he giving me at least the chance of undertaking such fantastically responsible jobs? What possible motive can he have? I hope,’ Peregrine continued with a forthrightness that became him very well, ‘that I’m not such an ass as to suppose I can have made an impression in the least degree commensurable with the proposals you’ve put before me and I – I – ‘ He felt himself reddening and ran out of words. Mr Greenslade had watched him, he thought, with renewed attention. He now lifted his spectacles with both hands, held them poised daintily over his blotter and said, apparently to them:

‘A reasonable query.’

‘Well – I hope so.’

‘And one which I am unable to answer.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I will,’ said Mr Greenslade, evenly, ‘be frank with you, Mr Jay. I am at a loss to know why Mr Conducis is taking this action. If, however, I have interpreted your misgivings correctly I can assure you they are misplaced.’ Suddenly, almost dramatically, Mr Greenslade became human, good-tempered and coarse. ‘He’s not that way inclined,’ he said and laid down his spectacles.

‘I’m extremely glad to hear it.’

‘You will undertake the commission?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Splendid.’

III

The expert folded his hands and leant back in his chair.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think we may say with certainty this is a glove of late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century workmanship. It has, at some time, been exposed to saltwater but not extensively. One might surmise that it was protected. The little desk is very much stained. Upon the letters H.S. inside the gauntlet I am unable to give an authoritative opinion but could, of course, obtain one. As for these two, really rather startling documents: they can be examined and submitted to a number of tests – infra red, spectography and so on – not in my province, you know. If they’ve been concocted it will certainly be discovered.’

‘Would you tell me how I can get the full treatment for them?’

‘Oh, I think we could arrange that, you know. But we would want written permission from the owner, full insurance and so on. You’ve told me nothing, so far, of the history, have you?’

‘No,’ Peregrine said. ‘But I will. With this proviso, if you don’t mind: the owner, or rather his solicitor on his behalf, has given me permission to disclose his name to you on your undertaking to keep it to yourself until you have come to a conclusion about these things. He has a – an almost morbid dread of publicity which you’ll understand, I think, when you learn who he is.’

The expert looked very steadily at Peregrine. After a considerable silence he said: ‘Very well. I am prepared to treat the matter confidentially as far as your principal’s name is concerned.’

‘He is Mr Vassily Conducis.’

‘Good God.’

‘Quite,’ said Peregrine, doing a Greenslade. ‘I shall now tell you as much as is known of the history. Here goes.’

And he did in considerable detail.

The expert listened in a startled manner.

‘Really, very odd,’ he said when Peregrine had finished.

‘I assure you I’m not making it up.’

‘No, no. I’m sure. I’ve heard of Conducis, of course. Who hasn’t? You do realize what a – what a really flabbergasting thing this would be if it turned out to be genuine?’

‘I can think of nothing else. I mean: there they lie – a child’s glove and a letter asking one to suppose that on a summer’s morning in the year 1596 a master-craftsman of Stratford made a pair of gloves and gave them to his grandson who wore them for a day and then –’

‘Grief filled the room up of an absent child?’

‘Yes. And a long time afterwards – twenty years – the father made his Will – I wonder he didn’t chuck in a ghastly pun – Will’s Will – don’t you? And he left his apparel to his sister Joan Hart. And for her information wrote that note there. I mean – his hand moved across that bit of paper. If it’s genuine. And then two centuries go by and somebody called E. M. puts the glove and paper in a Victorian desk with the information that her great-great-grandmother had them from J. Hart and her grandmother insisted they were the Poet’s. It could have been Joan Hart. She died in 1664.’

‘I shouldn’t build on it,’ the expert said drily.

‘Of course not.’

‘Has Mr Conducis said anything about their value? I mean – even if there’s only a remote chance they will be worth – well, I can’t begin to say what their monetary value might be but I know what we’d feel about it, here.’

Peregrine and the expert eyed each other for a moment or two. ‘I suppose,’ Peregrine said, ‘he’s thought of that but I must say he’s behaved pretty casually over it.’

‘Well, we shan’t,’ said the expert. ‘I’ll give you your receipt and ask you to stay and see the things safely stowed.’

He stooped for a moment over the little, dead wrinkled glove. ‘If it were true!’ he murmured.

‘I know, I know,’ Peregrine cried. ‘It’s frightening to think what would happen. The avid attention, the passionate greed for possession.’

‘There’s been murder done for less,’ said the expert lightly.

IV

Five weeks later Peregrine, looking rather white about the gills and brownish under the eyes, wrote the last word of his play and underneath it: ‘Curtain.’ That night he read it to Jeremy who thought well of it.

There had been no word from Mr Greenslade. The stage-house of The Dolphin could still be seen on Bankside. Jeremy had asked at the estate agents for permission to view and had been told that the theatre was no longer in their hands and they believed had been withdrawn from the market. Their manner was stuffy.

From time to time the two young men talked about The Dolphin but a veil of unreality seemed to have fallen between Peregrine and his strange interlude: so much so that he sometimes almost felt as if he had invented it.

In an interim report on the glove and documents, the museum had said that preliminary tests had given no evidence of spurious inks or paper and so far nothing inconsistent with their supposed antiquity had been discovered. An expert on the handwriting of ancient documents, at present in America, would be consulted on his return. If his report was favourable, Peregrine gathered, a conference of authorities would be called.

‘Well,’ Jeremy said, ‘they haven’t laughed it out of court, evidently.’

‘Evidently.’

‘You’ll send the report to the man Greenslade?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Jeremy put his freckled hand on Peregrine’s manuscript.

‘What about opening at The Dolphin this time next year with The Glove, a new play by Peregrine Jay?’

‘Gatcha!’

‘Well – why not? For the hell of it,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s do a shadow casting. Come on.’

‘I have.’

‘Give us a look.’

Peregrine produced a battered sheet of paper, covered in his irregular handwriting.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I know what would be said. That it’s been done before. Clemence Dane for one. And more than that: it’d be a standing target for wonderful cracks at synthetic Bardery. The very sight of the cast. Ann Hathaway and all that lot. You know? It’d be held to stink. Sunk before it started.’

‘I for one don’t find any derry-down tatt in the dialogue.’

‘Yes: but to cast “Shakespeare”. What gall!’

‘He did that sort of thing. You might as well say: “Oo-er! To cast Henry VIII!” Come on: who would you cast for Shakespeare?’

‘It sticks out a mile, doesn’t it?’

‘Elizabethan Angry, really, isn’t he? Lonely. Chancy. Tricky. Bright as the sun. A Pegasus in the Hathaway stable? Enormously over-sexed and looking like the Grafton portrait. In which I entirely believe.’

‘And I. All right. Who looks and plays like that?’

‘Oh God!’ Jeremy said, reading the casting list.

‘Yes,’ Peregrine rejoined. ‘What I said. It sticks out a mile.’

‘Marcus Knight, my God.’

‘Of course. He is the Grafton portrait and as for fire! Think of his Hotspur. And Harry Five. And the Mercutio. And, by heaven, his Hamlet. Remember the Peer Gynt?’

‘What’s his age?’

‘Whatever it is he doesn’t show it. He can look like a stripling.’

‘He’d cost the earth.’

‘This is only mock-up, anyway.’

‘Has he ever been known to get through a production without creating a procession of dirty big rows?’

‘Never.’

‘Custombuilt to wreck the morale of any given company?’

‘That’s Marco.’

‘Remember the occasion when he broke off and told latecomers after the interval to sit down or get the hell out of it?’

‘Vividly.’

‘And when the rest of the cast threw in their parts as one man?’

‘I directed the fiasco.’

‘He’s said to be more than usually explosive just now on account of no knighthood last batch.’

‘He is, I understand, apoplectic, under that heading.’

‘Well,’ said Jeremy, ‘it’s your play. I see you’ve settled for rolling the lovely boy and the seduced fair friend and “Mr W. H.” all up in one character.’

‘So I have.’

‘How you dared!’ Jeremy muttered.

‘There have been madder notions over the centuries.’

‘True enough. It adds up to a damn’ good part. How do you see him?’

‘Very blond. Very male. Very impertinent.’

‘W. Hartly Grove?’

‘Might be. Type casting.’

‘Isn’t he held to be a bad citizen?’

‘Bit of a nuisance.’

‘What about your Dark Lady? The Rosaline? Destiny Meade, I see you’ve got here.’

‘I rather thought: Destiny. She’s cement from the eyes up but she gives a great impression of smouldering depths and really inexhaustible sex. She can produce what’s called for in any department as long as it’s put to her in basic English and very slowly. And she lives, by the way, with Marco.’

‘That might or might not be handy. And Ann H.?’

‘Oh, any sound unsympathetic actress with good attack,’ Peregrine said.

‘Like Gertie Bracey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Joan Hart’s a nice bit. I tell you who’d be good as Joan. Emily Dunne. You know? She’s been helping in our shop. You liked her in that TV show. She did some very nice Celias and Nerissas and Hermias at Stratford. Prick her down on your list.’

‘I shall. “See, with a blot I damn her”.’

‘The others seem to present no difficulty but the spirit sinks at an infant phenomenon.’

‘He dies before the end of Act I.’

‘Not a moment too soon. I am greatly perturbed by the vision of some stunted teenager acting its pants off.’

‘It’ll be called Gary, of course.’

‘Or Trevor.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Would you give me the designing of the show?’

‘Don’t be a bloody ass.’

‘It’d be fun,’ Jeremy said grinning at him, ‘face it: it would be fun.’

‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen. I have an instinct and I know it won’t. None of it: the glove, the theatre, the play. It’s all a sort of miasma. It won’t happen.’

Their post box slapped.

‘There you are. Fate knocking at the door,’ said Jeremy.

‘I don’t even wonder if it might be, now,’ Peregrine said. ‘However, out of sheer kindness I’ll get the letters.’

He went downstairs, collected the mail and found nothing for himself. He climbed up again slowly. As he opened the door, he said: ‘As I foretold you. No joy. All over. Like an insubstantial pageant faded. The mail is as dull as ditchwater and all for you. Oh, sorry!’

Jeremy was talking on the telephone.

He said: ‘Here he is, now. Would you wait a second?’

He held out the receiver with one hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Mr Greenslade,’ he said, ‘wishes to speak to you. Ducky – this is it.’

CHAPTER 3

Party

‘A year ago,’ Peregrine thought, ‘I stood in this very spot on a February morning. The sun came out and gilded the stage tower of the injured Dolphin and I lusted after it. I thought of Adolphus Ruby and wished I was like him possessed. And here I am again, as the Lord’s my judge, a little jumped-up Cinderella-man in Mr Ruby’s varnished boots.’

He looked at the restored caryatids, the bouncing cetaceans and their golden legend, and the immaculate white frontage and elegance of ironwork and he adored them all.

He thought: ‘Whatever happens, this is, so far, the best time of my life. Whatever happens I’ll look back at today, for instance, and say: “Oh that was the morning when I knew what’s meant by bliss”.’

While he stood there the man from Phipps Bros came out of Phipps Passage.

‘Morning, guvnor,’ he said.

‘Good morning, Jobbins.’

‘Looks a treat, dunnit?’

‘Lovely.’

‘Ah. Different. From what it was when you took the plunge.’

‘Yes: indeed.’

‘Yes. You wouldn’t be looking for a watchman, I suppose? Now she’s near finished-like? Night or day. Any time?’

‘I expect we shall want someone. Why? Do you know of a good man?’

‘Self-praise, no recommendation’s what they say, ainnit?’

‘Do you mean you’d take it on?’

‘Not to deceive yer, guvnor, that was the idea. Dahn the Passage in our place, it’s too damp, for me chubes, see? Something chronic. I got good references, guvnor. Plenty’d speak up for me. ‘Ow’s it strike yer? Wiv a sickening thud or favourable?’

‘Why,’ said Peregrine. ‘Favourably, I believe.’

‘Will you bear me in mind, then?’

‘I’ll do that thing,’ said Peregrine.

‘Gor’ bless yer, guv,’ said Jobbins and retired down Phipps Passage.

Peregrine crossed the lane and entered the portico of his theatre. He looked at the framed notice:

DOLPHIN THEATRE

REOPENING SHORTLY

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

It hung immediately under the tatter of a Victorian playbill that he had seen on his first remarkable visit.

THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING

In response to

Overwhelming Solicitation!! –

Mr Adolphus Ruby

When the painters cleaned and resurfaced the façade, Peregrine had made them work all round that precarious fragment without touching it. ‘It shall stay here,’ he had said to Jeremy Jones, ‘as long as I do.’

He opened the front doors. They had new locks and the doors themselves had been stripped and scraped and restored to their original dignity.

The foyer was alive. It was being painted, gilded, polished and furbished. There were men on scaffolds, on long ladders, on pendant platforms. A great chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor. The two fat cherubim, washed and garnished, beamed upside-down into the resuscitated box-office.

Peregrine said good morning to the workmen and mounted the gently curving stairs.

There was still a flower-engraved looking-glass behind the bar but now he advanced towards himself across shining mahogany, framed by brass. The bar was all golden syrup and molasses in colour. ‘Plain, serviceable, no tatt,’ Peregrine muttered.

The renovations had been completed up here and soon a carpet would be laid. He and Jeremy and the young decorator had settled in the end for the classic crimson, white and gilt and the panelling blossomed, Peregrine thought, with the glorious vulgarity of a damask rose. He crossed the foyer to a door inscribed ‘Management’ and went in.

The Dolphin was under the control of ‘Dolphin Theatres Incorporated’. This was a subsidiary of Consolidated Oils. It had been created, broadly speaking, by Mr Greenslade, to encompass the development of the Dolphin project. Behind his new desk in the office sat Mr Winter Morris, an extremely able theatrical business manager. He had been wooed into the service by Mr Greenslade upon Peregrine’s suggestion, after a number of interviews and, he felt sure, exhaustive inquiries. Throughout these preliminaries, Mr Conducis had remained, as it were, the merest effluvium: far from noxious and so potent that a kind of plushy assurance seemed to permeate the last detail of renaissance in The Dolphin. Mr Morris had now under his hand an entire scheme for promotion, presentation and maintenance embracing contracts with actors, designers, costumiers, front of house staff, stage crew and press agents and the delicate manipulation of such elements as might be propitious to the general mana of the enterprise.

He was a short, pale and restless man with rich curly hair, who, in what little private life belonged to him, collected bric-à-brac.

‘Good morning, Winty.’

‘Perry,’ said Mr Morris as a defensive statement rather than a greeting.

‘Any joy?’

Mr Morris lolled his head from side to side.

‘Before I forget. Do we want a caretaker, watchman, day or night, stage-door-keeper or any other lowly bod about the house?’

‘We shall in a couple of days.’

Peregrine told him about Mr Jobbins.

‘All right,’ said Mr Morris. ‘If the references are good. Now, it’s my turn. Are you full cast?’

‘Not quite. I’m hovering.’

‘What do you think of Harry Grove?’

‘As an actor?’

‘Yes.’

‘As an actor I think a lot of him.’

‘Just as well. You’ve got him.’

‘Winty, what the hell do you mean?’

‘A directive, dear boy: or what amounts to it. From Head Office.’

‘About W. Hartly Grove?’

‘You’ll probably find something in your mail.’

Peregrine went to his desk. He was now very familiar with the looks of Mr Greenslade’s communications and hurriedly extracted the latest from the pile.

Dear Peregrine Jay,

Your preliminaries seem to be going forward smoothly and according to plan. We are all very happy with the general shaping and development of the original project and are satisfied that the decision to open with your own play is a sound one, especially in view of your current success at The Unicorn. This is merely an informal note to bring to your notice Mr W. Hartly Grove, an actor, as you will of course know, of repute and experience. Mr Conducis personally will be very pleased if you give favourable attention to Mr Grove when forming your company.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

STANLEY GREENSLADE

When Peregrine read this note he was visited by a sense of misgiving so acute as to be quite disproportionate to its cause. In no profession are personal introductions and dear-boy-manship more busily exploited than in the theatre. For an actor to get the ear of the casting authority through an introduction to régisseur or management is a commonplace manoeuvre. For a second or two, Peregrine wondered with dismay if he could possibly be moved by jealousy and if the power so strangely, so inexplicably put into his hands had perhaps already sown a detestable seed of corruption. But no, he thought, on consideration and he turned to Morris to find the latter watching him with a half-smile.

‘I don’t like this,’ Peregrine said.

‘So I see, dear boy. May one know why?’

‘Of course. I don’t like W. Hartly Grove’s reputation. I try to be madly impervious to gossip in the theatre and I don’t know that I believe what they say about Harry Grove.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Vaguely shady behaviour. I’ve directed him once and knew him before that. He taught voice production at my drama school and disappeared over a weekend. Undefined scandal. Most women find him attractive, I believe. I can’t say,’ Peregrine added, rumpling up his hair, ‘that he did anything specifically objectionable in the latter production and I must allow that personally I found him an amusing fellow. But apart from the two women in the company nobody liked him. They said they didn’t but you could see them eyeing him and knowing he eyed them.’

‘This,’ said Morris, raising a letter that lay on his desk, ‘is practically an order. I suppose yours is, too.’

‘Yes, blast it.’

‘You’ve been given a fabulously free hand up to now, Perry. No business of mine, of course, dear boy, but frankly I’ve never seen anything like it. General management, director, author – the lot. Staggering.’

‘I hope,’ Peregrine said with a very direct look at his manager, ‘staggering though it may be, I got it on my reputation as a director and playwright. I believe I did. There is no other conceivable explanation, Winty.’

‘No, no, old boy, of course not,’ said Winter Morris in a hurry.

‘As for W. Hartly Grove, I suppose I can’t jib. As a matter of fact he would be well cast as Mr W. H. It’s his sort of thing. But I don’t like it. My God,’ Peregrine said, ‘haven’t I stuck my neck out far enough with Marcus Knight in the lead and liable to throw an average of three dirty great temperaments per rehearsal? What have I done to deserve Harry Grove as a bonus?’

‘The Great Star’s shaping up for trouble already. He’s calling me twice a day to make difficulties over his contract.’

‘Who’s winning?’

‘I am,’ said Winter Morris. ‘So far.’

‘Good for you.’

‘I’m getting sick of it,’ Morris said. ‘Matter-of-fact it’s on my desk now.’ He lifted a sheet of blotting paper and riffled the pages of the typewritten document he exposed. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘he’s signed and he can’t get past that one. We almost had to provide an extra page for it. Take a gander.’

The enormous and completely illegible signature did indeed occupy a surprising area. Peregrine glanced at it and then looked more closely.

‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said. ‘It looks like a cyclone.’

‘Once seen never forgotten.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ Peregrine said, ‘recently. Where, I wonder.’

Winter Morris looked bored.

‘Did he sign your autograph book?’ he asked bitterly.

‘It was somewhere unexpected. Ah, well. Never mind. The fun will start with the first rehearsal. He’ll want me to rewrite his part, of course, adding great hunks of ham and corn and any amount of fat. It’s tricky enough as it is. Strictly speaking a playwright shouldn’t direct his own stuff. He’s too tender with it. But it’s been done before and by the Lord I mean to do it again. Marco or no Marco. He looks like the Grafton portrait of Shakespeare. He’s got the voice of an angel and colossal prestige. He’s a brilliant actor and this is a part he can play. It’ll be a ding-dong go which of us wins but by heaven I’m game if he is.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Morris. ‘Live for ever, dear boy. Live for ever.’

They settled at their respective desks. Presently Peregrine’s buzzer rang and a young woman provided by the management and secreted in an auxiliary cubby-hole said: ‘Victoria and Albert for you, Mr Jay.’

Peregrine refrained from saying: ‘Always available to Her Majesty and the Prince Consort.’ He was too apprehensive. He said: ‘Oh yes. Right. Thank you,’ and was put into communication with the expert.

‘Mr Jay,’ the expert said, ‘is this a convenient time for you to speak?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I thought it best to have a word with you. We will, of course, write formally with full reports for you to hand to your principal but I felt – really,’ said the expert and his voice, Peregrine noticed with mounting excitement, was trembling, ‘really, it is the most remarkable thing. I – well, to be brief with you, the writing in question has been exhaustively examined. It has been compared by three experts with the known signatures and they find enough coincidence to give the strongest presumption of identical authorship. They are perfectly satisfied as to the age of the cheverel and the writing materials and that apart from salt-water stains there has been no subsequent interference. In fact, my dear Mr Jay, incredible as one might think it, the glove and the document actually seem to be what they purport to be.’