Killer Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh Page B

confused on learning that the glove was “historic” and persisted in thinking they would use it as a prop in the production. Marcus Knight was clearly too angry to pay more than token attention. He had seen Destiny return, five minutes late and in hilarious company with W. Hartly Grove. Gertrude Bracey was equally disgruntled by the same phenomenon.
    When Harry Grove heard about the glove he professed the greatest interest and explained, in his skittish manner, “Someone ought to tell Mrs. Constantia Guzmann about this.”
    “Who in earth,” Peregrine had asked, “is Mrs. Constantia Guzmann?”
    “Inquire of the King Dolphin,” Harry rejoined. He insisted on referring to Marcus Knight in these terms, to the latter’s evident annoyance. Peregrine saw Knight turn crimson to the roots of his hair and thought it better to ignore Harry.
    The two members of the company who were wholeheartedly moved by Peregrine’s announcement were Emily Dunne and Charles Random and their reaction was entirely satisfactory. Random kept saying: “Not true! Well, of
course
. Now, we know what inspired you. No—It’s incredible. It’s too much.”
    He was agreeably incoherent.
    Emily’s cheeks were pink and her eyes bright, and that, too, was eminently satisfactory.
    Winter Meyer, who was invited to the meeting, was in ecstasy.
    “So what have we got?” he asked at large. “We have got a story to make the front pages wish they were double elephants.”
    Master Trevor Vere was not present at this rehearsal.
    Peregrine promised Jeremy that he would arrange for him to see the glove as often as he wanted to, at the museum. Meyer was to get in touch with Mr. Greenslade about safe-housing it in the theatre and the actors were warned about secrecy for the time being, although the undercover thought had clearly been that a little leakage might be far from undesirable as long as Mr. Conducis was not troubled by it.
    Stimulated perhaps by the news of the glove, the company worked well that afternoon. Peregrine began to block the tricky second act and became excited about the way Marcus Knight approached his part.
    Marcus was an actor of whom it was impossible to say where hard thinking and technique left off and the pulsing glow that actors call star-quality began. At earlier rehearsals he would do extraordinary things: shout, lay violent emphasis on oddly selected words, make strange, almost occult gestures and embarrass his fellow players by speaking with his eyes shut and his hands clasped in front of his mouth as if he prayed. Out of all this inwardness there would occasionally dart a flash of the really staggering element that had placed him, still a young man, so high in his chancy profession. When the period of incubation had gone by the whole performance would step forward into full light “And,” Peregrine thought, “there’s going to be much joy about this one.”
    Act Two encompassed the giving of the dead child Hamnet’s gloves on her demand to the Dark Lady: a black echo, this, of Bertram’s and Bassanio’s rings and of Berowne’s speculation as to the whiteness of his wanton’s hand. It continued with the entertainment of the poet by the infamously gloved lady and his emergence from “the expense of passion in a waste of shame.” It ended with his savage reading of the sonnet to her and to W.H. Marcus Knight did this superbly.
    W. Hardy Grove lounged in a window seat as Mr. W.H. and, already mingling glances with Rosaline, played secretly with the gloved hand. The curtain came down on a sudden cascade of his laughter. Peregrine spared a moment to reflect that here, as not infrequently in the theatre, a situation in a play reflected in a cock-eyed fashion the emotional relationships between the actors themselves. He had a theory that, contrary to popular fancy, this kind of overlap between the reality of their personalities in and out of their roles was an artistic handicap. An actor, he considered, was embarrassed