There was even sunshine. It washed thinly across the stagehouse of The Dolphin and picked it out for Peregrine’s avid attention. There it stood: high, square and unbecoming, the object of his greed and deep desire. Intervening buildings hid the rest of the theatre except for the wrought-iron ornament at the top of a tower. He hurried on until, on his left, he came to a pub called The Wharfinger’s Friend and then the bomb site and then, fully displayed, the wounded Dolphin itself.

On a fine day, Peregrine thought, a hundred years ago, watermen and bargees, ship’s chandlers, business gents, deep-water sailors from foreign parts and riverside riffraff looked up and saw The Dolphin. They saw its flag snapping and admired its caryatids touched up on the ringlets and nipples with tasteful gilt. Mr Adolphus Ruby, your very own Mr Ruby, stood here in Wharfingers Lane with his thumbs in his armholes, his cigar at one angle and his hat at the other and feasted his pop eyes on his very own palace of refined and original entertainment. ‘Oh, Oh!’ thought Peregrine, ‘and here I stand but not, alas, in Mr Ruby’s lacquered high-lows. And the caryatids have the emptiest look in their blank eyes for me.’

They were still there, though, two on each side of the portico. They finished at their waists, petering out with grimy discretion in pastrycook’s scrolls. They supported with their sooty heads and arms a lovely wrought-iron balcony and although there were occasional gaps in their plaster foliations they were still in pretty good trim. Peregrine’s doting fancy cleaned the soot from upper surfaces. It restored, too, the elegant sign: supported above the portico by two prancing cetaceous mammals, and regilded its lettering: ‘The Dolphin Theatre’.

For a minute or two he looked at it from the far side of the lane. The sun shone brightly now. River, shipping and wet roofs reflected it and the cobblestones in front of the theatre began to send up a thin vapour. A sweep of seagulls broke into atmospheric background noises and a barge honked.

Peregrine crossed the wet little street and entered the portico.

It was stuck over with old bills including the agents’ notice which had evidently been there for a very long time and was torn and discoloured. ‘This Valuable Commercial Site’, it said.

‘In that case,’ Peregrine wondered, ‘why hasn’t it been sold? Why had no forward-looking commercial enterprise snapped up the Valuable Site and sent the Dolphin Theatre crashing about its own ears?’

There were other moribund bills. ‘Sensational!’ one of them proclaimed but the remainder was gone and it was anybody’s guess what sensation it had once recommended. ‘Go home – ’ was chalked across one of the doors but somebody had rubbed out the rest of the legend and substituted graffiti of a more or less predictable kind. It was all very dismal.