were still there, though, two on each side of the portico. They finished at their waists, petering out with grimy discretion in pastry-cook’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.
But as Peregrine approached the doors he found, on the frontage itself high up and well protected, the tatter of a playbill. It was the kind of thing that patrons of the Players Theatre cherish and Kensington Art shops turn into lampshades.
THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING
In response to
Overwhelming Solicitation!! –
Mr Adolphus Ruby
Presents
A Return Performa –
The rest was gone.
When, Peregrine speculated, could this overwhelming solicitation have moved Mr Ruby? In the eighties? He knew that Mr Ruby had lived to within ten years of the turn of the century and in his heyday had bought, altered, restored and embellished The Dolphin, adding his plaster and jute caryatids, his swags, his supporting marine mammals and cornucopia, his touches of gilt and lolly-pink to the older and more modest elegance of wrought iron and unmolested surfaces. When did he make all these changes? Did he, upon his decline, sell The Dolphin and, if so, to whom? It was reputed to have been in use at the outbreak of the Second World War as a ragdealer’s storehouse.
Who was the ground landlord now?
He confronted the main entrance and its great mortice lock for which he had no trouble in selecting the appropriate key. It was big enough to have hung at the girdle of one of Mr Ruby’s very own stage-gaolers. The key went home and engaged but refused to turn. Why had Peregrine not asked the clerk to lend him an oil-can? He struggled for some time and a voice at his back said:
‘Got it all on yer own, mate, aincher?’
Peregrine turned to discover a man wearing a peaked cap like a waterman’s and a shiny blue suit. He was a middle-aged man with a high colour, blue eyes and a look of cheeky equability.
‘You want a touch of the old free-in-one,’ he said. He had a gritty hoarseness in his voice. Peregrine gaped at him. ‘Oil, mate. Loobrication,’ the man explained.
‘Oh. Yes, indeed, I know I do.’
‘What’s the story, anyway? Casing the joint?’
‘I want to look at it,’ Peregrine grunted. ‘Ah, damn, I’d better try the stage-door.’
‘Let’s take a butcher’s.’
Peregrine stood back and the man stooped. He tried the key, delicately at first and then with force. ‘Not a hope,’ he wheezed. ‘’Alf a mo’.’
He walked away, crossed the street and disappeared between two low buildings and down a narrow passageway that seemed to lead to the river.
‘Damnation!’ Peregrine thought, ‘he’s taken the key!’
Two gigantic lorries with canvas-covered loads roared down Wharfingers Lane and past the theatre. The great locked doors shook and rattled and a flake of plaster fell on Peregrine’s hand. ‘It’s dying slowly,’ he thought in a panic. ‘The Dolphin is being shaken to death.’
When the second lorry had gone by there was the man again with a tin and a feather in one hand and the key in the other. He re-crossed the street and came through the portico.
‘I’m very much obliged to you,’ Peregrine said.
‘No trouble, yer Royal ’Ighness,’ said the man. He oiled the lock and after a little manipulation turned the key. ‘Kiss yer ’and,’ he said. Then he pulled back the knob. The tongue inside the lock shifted with a loud clunk. He pushed the door and it moved a little. ‘Sweet as a nut,’ said the man, and stepped away. ‘Well, dooty calls as the bloke said on ’is way to the gallers.’
‘Wait a bit –’ Peregrine said, ‘you must have a drink on me. Here.’ He pushed three half crowns into the man’s hand.
‘Never say no to that one, Mister. Fanks. Jolly good luck.’
Peregrine longed to open the door but thought the man, who was evidently a curious fellow, might attach himself. He wanted to be alone in The Dolphin.
‘Your job’s somewhere round about here?’ he asked.
‘Dahn Carboy Stairs. Phipps Bros. Drugs and that. Jobbins is the name. Caretaker, uster be a lighterman but it done no good to me chubes. Well, so long, sir. Hope you give yerself a treat among them spooks. Best of British luck.’
‘Goodbye, and thank you.’
The door opened with a protracted groan and Peregrine entered The Dolphin.
II
The windows were unshuttered and though masked by dirt, let enough light into the foyer for him to see it quite distinctly. It was surprisingly big. Two flights of stairs with the prettiest wrought-iron balustrades curved up into darkness. At the back and deep in shadow, passages led off on either side giving entrance no doubt to boxes and orchestra stalls. The pit entrance must be from somewhere outside.
On Peregrine’s right stood a very rococo box-office, introduced, he felt sure, by Mr Ruby. A brace of consequential plaster putti hovered upside down with fat-faced insouciance above the grille and must have looked in their prime as if they were counting the doorsales. A fibre-plaster bust of Shakespeare on a tortuous pedestal lurked in the shadows. The filthy walls were elegantly panelled and he thought must have originally been painted pink and gilded.
There was nothing between Peregrine and the topmost ceiling. The circle landing, again with a wrought-iron balustrade, reached less than half-way across the well. He stared up into
