Death at the Dolphin

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 approximately 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.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Yes. Come in.’ His voice was a light tenor. Was there a faintly foreign inflection? A slight lisp, perhaps.

As Peregrine approached, Mr Conducis looked fixedly at his guest’s hands.

‘You are well?’ he asked. ‘Recovered?’

‘Yes, indeed. I can’t thank you enough, sir. As for – well, as for lending me these things – I really do feel –!’

‘Do they fit?’

‘Yes. Very well.’

‘That is all that is necessary.’

‘Except that after all they are yours,’ Peregrine said and tried a light laugh in order not to sound pompous.

‘I have told you. I am responsible. You might –’ Mr Conducis’s voice faded but his lips soundlessly completed the sentence: ‘– have been drowned.’

‘But honestly, sir!’ Peregrine launched himself on his little speech. ‘You’ve saved my life, you know. I would have just hung on by my fingers until they gave out and then – and then – well, finally and disgustingly drowned as you say.’

Almost soundlessly Mr Conducis said: ‘I should have blamed myself.’

‘But why on earth! For a hole in The Dolphin stage?’

‘It is my property.’

‘Oh,’ Peregrine ejaculated before he could stop himself, ‘how splendid!’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I mean: how splendid to own it. It’s such an adorable little playhouse.’

Mr Conducis looked at him without expression. ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘Splendid? Adorable? You make a study of theatres, perhaps?’

‘Not really. I mean I’m not an expert. Good lord, no! But I earn my living in theatres and I am enormously attracted by old ones.’

‘Yes. Will you join me in a drink?’ Mr Conducis said in his wooden manner. ‘I am sure you will.’ He moved to a tray on a sidetable.

‘Your man has already given me a very strong and wonderfully restoring hot rum and lemon.’

‘I am sure that you will have another. The ingredients are here.’

‘A very small one, please,’ Peregrine said. There was a singing sensation in his veins and a slight thrumming in his ears but he still felt wonderful. Mr Conducis busied himself at the tray. He returned with a steaming and aromatic tumbler for Peregrine and something that he had poured out of a jug for himself. Could it be barley water?

‘Shall we sit down,’ he suggested. When they had done so he gave Peregrine a hurried, blank glance and said: ‘You wonder why I was at the theatre, perhaps. There is some question of demolishing it and building on the site. An idea that I have been turning over for some time. I wanted to refresh my memory. The agents told my man you were there.’ He put two fingers in a waistcoat pocket and Peregrine saw his own card had been withdrawn. It looked incredibly grubby.

‘You – you’re going to pull it down?’ he said and heard a horribly false jauntiness in his own unsteady voice. He took a pull at his rum. It was extremely strong.

‘You dislike the proposal,’ Mr Conducis observed, making it a statement rather than a question. ‘Have you any reason other than a general interest in such buildings?’

If Peregrine had been absolutely sober and dressed in his own clothes it is probable that he would have mumbled something ineffectual and somehow or another made an exit from Mr Conducis’s house and from all further congress with its owner. He was a little removed however from his surroundings and the garments in which he found himself.

He began to talk excitedly. He talked about The Dolphin and about how it must have looked after Mr Adolphus Ruby had gloriously tarted it up. He described how, before he fell into the well, he had imagined the house: clean, sparkling with lights from chandeliers, full, warm, buzzing and expectant. He said that it was the last of its kind and so well designed with such a surprisingly large stage that it would be possible to mount big productions there.

He forgot about Mr Conducis and also about not drinking any more rum. He talked widely and distractedly.

‘Think what a thing it would be,’ Peregrine cried, ‘to do a season of Shakespeare’s comedies! Imagine Love’s Labour’s there. Perhaps one could have a barge – Yes. The Grey Dolphin – and people could take water to go to the play. When the play was about to begin we would run up a flag with a terribly intelligent dolphin on it. And we’d do them quickly and lightly and with elegance and O!’ cried Peregrine, ‘and with that little catch in the breath that never, never comes in the same way with any other playwright.’

He was now walking about Mr Conducis’s library. He saw, without seeing, the tooled spines of collected editions and a picture that he would remember afterwards with astonishment. He waved his arms. He shouted.

‘There never was such a plan,’ shouted Peregrine. ‘Never in all London since Burbage moved the first theatre from Shoreditch to Southwark.’ He found himself near his drink and tossed it off. ‘And not too fancy,’ he said, ‘mind you. Not twee. God, no! Not a pastiche either. Just a good theatre doing the job it was meant to do. And doing the stuff that doesn’t belong to any bloody Method or Movement or Trend or Period or what-have-you. Mind that.’

‘You refer to Shakespeare again?’ said Mr Conducis’s voice. ‘If I follow you.’

‘Of course I do!’ Peregrine suddenly became fully aware of Mr Conducis. ‘Oh dear!’ he said.

‘Is something the matter?’

‘I’m afraid I’m a bit tight, sir. Not really tight but a bit uninhibited. I’m awfully sorry. I think perhaps I’d better take myself off and I’ll return all these things you’ve so kindly lent me. I’ll return them as soon as possible, of course. So, if you’ll forgive me –’

‘What do you do in the theatre?’

‘I direct plays and I’ve written two.’

‘I know nothing of the theatre,’ Mr Conducis said heavily. ‘You are reasonably successful?’

‘Well, sir, yes. I think so. It’s a jungle, of course. I’m not at all affluent but I make out. I’ve had as much work as I could cope with over the last three months and I think my mana’s going up. I hope so. Goodbye, sir.’

He held out his hand. Mr Conducis, with an expression that really might have been described as one of horror, backed away from it.

‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘I have something that may be of interest to you. You can spare a moment?’

‘Of course.’

‘It is in this room,’ Mr Conducis muttered and went to a bureau that must, Peregrine thought, be of fabulous distinction. He followed his host and watched him pull out a silky, exquisitely inlaid, drawer.

‘How lovely that is,’ he said.

‘Lovely?’ Mr Conducis echoed as he had echoed before. ‘You mean the bureau? Yes? It was found for me. I understand nothing of such matters. That is not what I wished to show you. Will you look at this? Shall we move to a table?’

He had taken from the drawer a very small wooden Victorian hand-desk, extremely shabby, much stained, and Peregrine thought, of no particular distinction. A child’s possession perhaps. He laid it on a table under a window and motioned to a chair beside it. Peregrine now felt as if he was playing a part in somebody else’s dream. ‘But I’m all right,’ he thought. ‘I’m not really drunk. I’m in that pitiable but enviable condition when all things seem to work together for good.’

He sat before the table and Mr Conducis, standing well away from him, opened the little desk, pressed inside with his white, flat thumb and revealed a false bottom. It was a commonplace device and Peregrine wondered if he was meant to exclaim at it. He saw that in the exposed cavity there was a packet no bigger than a half-herring and much the same shape. It was wrapped in discoloured yellow-brown silk and tied with a morsel of tarnished ribbon. Mr Conducis had a paper knife in his hand. ‘Everything he possesses,’ Peregrine thought, ‘is on museum-piece level. It’s stifling.’ His host used the paper knife as a sort of server, lifting the little silk packet out on its blade and, as it were, helping Peregrine to it like a waiter.