‘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?’

‘That’s a bit of a puzzle. It doesn’t look like the back or arm of a seat. It’s got all the characteristics of a nice hook to the jaw. I wouldn’t care to say definitely, of course. Sir James has seen him.’ (Sir James Curtis was the Home Office pathologist.) ‘He thinks it looks like a punch.’

‘Ah. Yes, so he said. It’s no use my asking, of course, when the boy may recover consciousness?’

‘I’m afraid no use at all. Can’t tell.’

‘Or how much he will remember?’

‘The usual thing is complete loss of memory for events occurring just before the accident.’

‘Alas.’