Killer Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh Page A

“As I foretold you. No joy. All over. Like an insubstantial pageant faded. The mail is as dull as ditchwater and all for you. Oh, sorry!”
    Jeremy was talking on the telephone.
    He said, “Here he is, now. Would you wait a second?”
    He held out the receiver with one hand over the mouthpiece.
    “Mr. Greenslade,” he said, “wishes to speak to you. Ducky—this is it.”

THREE

Party
    “A year ago,” Peregrine thought, “I stood in this very spot on a February morning. The sun came out and gilded the stage tower of the injured Dolphin and I lusted after it. I thought of Adolphus Ruby and wished I was like him possessed. And here I am again, as the Lord’s my judge, a little jumped-up Cinderella-man in Mr. Ruby’s varnished boots.”
    He looked at the restored caryatids, the bouncing cetaceans and their golden legend, and the immaculate white frontage and elegance of ironwork and he adored them all.
    He thought: “Whatever happens, this is, so far, the best time of my life. Whatever happens I’ll look back at today, for instance, and say: ‘Oh
that
was the morning when I knew what’s meant by bliss.’ ”
    While he stood there the man from Phipps Bros, came out of Phipps Passage.
    “Morning, guvnor,” he said.
    “Good morning, Jobbins.”
    “Looks a treat, dunnit?”
    “Lovely.”
    “Ah. Different. From what it was when you took the plunge.”
    “Yes: indeed.”
    “Yus. You wouldn’t be looking for a watchman, I suppose? Now she’s near finished-like? Night or day. Any time?”
    “I expect we
shall
want someone. Why? Do you know of a good man?”
    “Self-praise, no recommendation’s what they say, ainnit?”
    “Do you mean you’d take it on?”
    “Not to deceive yer, guvnor, that was the idea. Dahn the Passage in our place, it’s too damp for me chubes, see? Somethink chronic. I got good references, guvnor. Plenty’d speak up for me. ’Ow’s it strike yer? Wiv a sickening thud or favourable?”
    “Why,” said Peregrine. “Favourably, I believe.”
    “Will you bear me in mind, then?”
    “I’ll do that thing,” said Peregrine.
    “Gor’ bless yer, guv,” said Jobbins and retired down Phipps Passage.
    Peregrine crossed the lane and entered the portico of his theatre. He looked at the framed notice:
     
    DOLPHIN THEATRE
    REOPENING SHORTLY
    UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
     
    It hung immediately under the tattered Victorian playbill that he had seen on his first remarkable visit.
     
    THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING
    IN RESPONSE TO
    OVERWHELMING SOLICITATION!!——
    MR. ADOLPHUS RUBY…
     
    When the painters cleaned and resurfaced the façade Peregrine had made them work all round that precarious fragment without touching it. “It shall stay here,” he had said to Jeremy Jones, “as long as I do.”
    He opened the front doors. They had new locks and the doors themselves had been stripped and scraped and restored to their original dignity.
    The foyer was alive. It was being painted, gilded, polished and furbished. There were men on scaffolds, on long ladders, on pendant platforms. A great chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor. The two fat cherubim, washed and garnished, beamed upside-down into the resuscitated box-office.
    Peregrine said good morning to the workmen and mounted the gently curving stairs.
    There was still a flower-engraved looking-glass behind the bar, but now he advanced towards himself across shining mahogany, framed by brass. The bar was all golden syrup and molasses in colour. “Plain, serviceable, no tatt,” Peregrine muttered.
    The renovations had been completed up here and soon a carpet would be laid. He and Jeremy and the young decorator had settled in the end for the classic crimson, white and gilt, and the panelling blossomed, Peregrine thought, with the glorious vulgarity of a damask rose. He crossed the foyer to a door inscribed management and went in.
    The Dolphin was under the control of “Dolphin Theatres Incorporated.” This was a subsidiary of