CHAPTER 7
Sunday Morning

‘I didn’t knock you up when I came in,’ Peregrine said. ‘There seemed no point. It was getting light. I just thought I’d leave the note to wake me at seven. And oddly enough I did sleep. Heavily.’

Jeremy stood with his back to Peregrine, looking out of the bedroom window. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘All?’

‘That happened?’

‘I should have thought it was enough, my God!’

‘I know,’ Jeremy said without turning. ‘I only meant: did you look at the glove?’

‘I saw it, I told you. The sergeant brought it to Alleyn with the two documents and afterwards Alleyn laid them out on Winty’s desk.’

‘I wonder if it was damaged.’

‘I don’t think so. I didn’t examine it. I wouldn’t have been let. Fingerprints and all that. It seems they really do fuss away about fingerprints.’

‘What’ll they do with the things?’

‘I don’t know. Lock them up at the Yard, I imagine, until they’ve finished with them and then return them to Conducis.’

‘To Conducis. Yes.’

‘I must get up, Jer. I’ve got to ring Winty and the cast and the understudy and find out about the boy’s condition. Look, you know the man who did the carpets. Could you ring him up at wherever he lives and tell him he simply must send men in, first thing tomorrow or if necessary tonight. To replace about two or three square yards of carpet on the half-landing. We’ll pay overtime and time again and whatever.’

‘The half-landing?’

Peregrine said very rapidly in a high-pitched voice: ‘Yes. The carpet. On the half-landing. It’s got Jobbins’s blood and brains all over it. The carpet.’

Jeremy turned grey and said: ‘I’m sorry. I’ll do that thing,’ and walked out of the room.

When Peregrine had bathed and shaved he swallowed with loathing two raw eggs in Worcester Sauce and addressed himself to the telephone, a task made no easier by a twanging fault on his line. The time was twenty past seven.

On the South Bank in the borough of Southwark, Superintendent Alleyn, having left Inspector Fox to arrange the day’s business, drove over Blackfriars Bridge to St Terence’s Hospital, and was conducted to a ward where Trevor Vere, screened from general view and deeply sighing, lay absorbed in the enigma of unconsciousness. At his bedside sat a uniformed constable whose helmet was under his chair and his notebook in his hand. Alleyn was escorted by the ward sister and a house-surgeon.

‘As you see, he’s deeply concussed,’ said the house-surgeon. ‘He fell on his feet and drove his spine into the base of his head and probably crashed the back of a seat. As far as we can tell there’s no profound injury internally. Right femur and two ribs broken. Extensive bruising. You may be sure he was bloody lucky. A twenty foot fall, I understand.’

‘The bruise on his jaw?’