‘Dolphin,’ said the clerk, ‘Aeo, yerse. Here we are.’ He unhooked a bunch of keys and pushed them across the desk. ‘You may find them a bit hard to turn,’ he said. ‘We don’t keep on oiling the locks. There aren’t all that many inquiries.’ He made what seemed to be a kind of joke. ‘It’s quite a time since the blitz,’ he said.

‘Quarter of a century,’ said Peregrine, taking the keys.

‘That’s right. What a spectacle! I was a kid. Know your way I suppose, Mr – er – Jay?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the clerk suddenly plumping for deference, but establishing at the same time his utter disbelief in Peregrine as a client. ‘Terrible weather. You will return the keys?’

‘Indubitably,’ said Peregrine, aping, he knew not why, Mr Robertson Hare.

He had got as far as the door when the clerk said: ‘Oh, be-the-way, Mr – er – Jay. You will watch how you go. Underfoot. On stage particularly. There was considerable damage.’

‘Thank you. I’ll be careful.’

‘The hole was covered over but that was some time ago. Like a well,’ the clerk added, worrying his first finger. ‘Something of the sort. Just watch it.’

‘I will.’

‘I – er – I don’t answer for what you’ll find,’ the clerk said. ‘Tramps get in, you know. They will do it. One died a year or so back.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not that it’s likely to happen twice.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Well, we couldn’t help it,’ the clerk said crossly. ‘I don’t know how they effect an entrance, really. Broken window or something. You can’t be expected to attend to everything.’

‘No,’ Peregrine agreed and let himself out.

Rain drove up Wharfingers Lane in a slanting wall. It shot off the pavement, pattering against doors and windows and hit Peregrine’s umbrella so hard that he thought it would split. He lowered it in front of him and below its scalloped and beaded margin saw, as if at rise of curtain in a cinema, the Thames, rain-pocked and choppy on its ebb-tide.

There were not a great many people about. Vans passed him grinding uphill in low gear. The buildings were ambiguous: ware-houses? Wharfingers offices? Farther down he saw the blue lamp of a River Police Station. He passed a doorway with a neat legend: ‘Port of London Authority’ and another with old-fashioned lettering ‘Camperdown and Carboys Rivercraft Company. Demurrage. Wharfage. Inquiries.’

The lane turned sharply to the left; it now ran parallel with the river. He lifted his umbrella. Up it went, like a curtain, on The Dolphin. At that moment, abruptly, there was no more rain.