He saw them and he flung himself upon Peregrine, pawed at his coat and jabbered into his face. It was the night-watchman who relieved Jobbins.

‘For Gawsake!’ he said. ‘Oh, my Gawd, Mr Jay, for Gawsake.’

‘What the devil’s the matter? What is it? What’s happened!’

‘Murder,’ the man said, and his lips flabbered over the word. ‘That’s what’s happened, Mr Jay. Murder.’

CHAPTER 6
Disaster

While he let them in at the stage-door the man – he was called Hawkins – said over and over again in a shrill whine that it wasn’t his fault if he was late getting down to the theatre. Nobody, he said, could blame him. He turned queer, as was well-known, at the sight of blood. It was as much as Peregrine could do to get the victim’s name out of him. He had gone completely to pieces.

They went through the stage-door into the dark house, and up the aisle and so to the foyer. It was as if they had never left the theatre.

Peregrine said to Emily: ‘Wait here. By the box-office. Don’t come any farther.’

‘I’ll come if you want me.’

‘O Gawd no. O Gawd no, Miss.’

‘Stay here, Emily. Or wait in front. Yes. Just wait in front.’ He opened the doors into the stalls and fastened them back. She went in. ‘Now, Hawkins,’ Peregrine said.

‘You go, Mr Jay. Up there. I don’t ’ave to go. I can’t do nothing. I’d vomit. Honest I would.’

Peregrine ran up the graceful stairway towards the sunken landing: under the treasure where both flights emerged. It was dark up there but he had a torch and used it. The beam shot out and found an object.

There, on its back in a loud overcoat and slippers lay the shell of Jobbins. The woollen cap had not fallen from the skull but had been stove into it. Out of what had been a face, broken like a crust now, and glistening red, one eye stared at nothing.

Beside this outrage lay a bronze dolphin, grinning away for all it was worth through a wet, unspeakable mask.

Everything round Peregrine seemed to shift a little as if his vision had swivelled like a movie camera. He saw, without comprehension, a square of reflected light on the far wall and its source above the landing. He saw, down below him, the top of Hawkins’s head. He moved to the balustrade, held on to it and with difficulty controlled an upsurge of nausea. He fetched a voice out of himself.

‘Have you rung the police?’

‘I better had, didn’t I? I better report, didn’t I?’ Hawkins gabbled without moving.

‘Stay where you are. I’ll do it.’

There was a general purposes telephone in the downstairs foyer outside the box-office. He ran down to it and, controlling his hand, dialled the so celebrated number. How instant and how cool the response.

‘No possibility of survival, sir?’

‘God, no. I told you –’