Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 11 by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Ngaio Marsh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007531455
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Development

‘I suppose I ought to be feeling all glowing and grateful,’ said Peregrine, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t. They are nice old boys all of them but they’re dab hands at passing the buck and making it look like a compliment.’

‘You’ve been given a completely free hand and if it turns out a dead failure you’ll find yourself out on a limb and all of them saying, ever so delicately, that they felt at the time the decision was a mistaken one,’ Alleyn observed.

‘That’s right.’

‘If it’s any comfort, which it isn’t, I’m familiar with these tactics.’

‘Why don’t we leave them to make the decision? Why don’t I say I feel it would be better, in the circumstances, for somebody less intimately concerned with the Dolphin to produce the next show? God knows, it’d be true.’

‘Yes?’

‘But I’d feel I was ratting.’ He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m fond of them. We’ve taken a journey together and come out on the golden sands. We’ve found Macbeth. It’s a marvellous feeling. Or was. Are you any further on?’

‘A little, I think. Not enough, not anything like enough, to think of an arrest.’

Peregrine’s fingers had been playing with something in his pocket. They closed round it and fetched it out, a dilapidated little figure, jet black, flourishing a bent weapon behind its shoulder.

‘Where did you find that?’ Alleyn asked.

‘It’s one of my boy’s toy soldiers – a Crusader. William found it.’

‘William?’

‘Smith. He spent the day with us. He’s the same age as young Robin. They got on like a house on fire playing with the boys’ electric train. This thing was a passenger, picked up at Crewe. He said he was hurt but he had to get to the theatre at seven. It gave me quite a shock – all black and with a claymorish thing – like Sir Dougal. Only they called him Sears. Extraordinary, how children behave. You know? William didn’t know what had happened in the theatre but he guessed Sir Dougal was dead. Robin didn’t know, or wasn’t certain about the decapitation, though he’d been very much upset when it happened. I’d realized that, but he didn’t ask any questions and now there he was making a sort of game of it.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said Alleyn. ‘May I see it? The Crusader?’

Peregrine handed it over. ‘It might be Sir Dougal or Barrabell or Sears or nobody,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look tall enough for Simon Morten. It’s masked, of course.’

‘He wasn’t masked. And in any case –’

‘No. In any case the whole thing’s a muddle and a coincidence. William fished this thing out of a box full of battered Crusaders.’

‘And called it – what? Sears?’

‘Not exactly. I mean it became Sears. They picked him up at Crewe. Before that, William – being Sears at the moment when he used the telephone – rang up the station for an emergency stop. He said – what the hell did he say? That he was hurt and had to get to the Dolphin by seven.

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