Alleyn rose to his considerable height and moved out into the room. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we’ve got as far as we can, satisfactorily, in a joint discussion. I’m going to ask Inspector Fox to read over his notes. If there is anything any of you wishes to amend will you say so?’

Fox read his notes in a cosy voice and nobody objected to a word of them. When he had finished Alleyn said to Peregrine: ‘I daresay you’ll want to make your own arrangements with the company.’

‘May I?’ said Peregrine. ‘Thank you.’

Alleyn and Fox withdrew to the distant end of the office and conferred together. The company, far from concerning themselves with the proximity of the police, orientated as one man upon Peregrine, who explained that Trevor Vere’s understudy would carry on and that his scenes would be rehearsed in the morning. ‘Everybody concerned, please, at ten o’clock,’ Peregrine said. ‘And look: about the Press. We’ve got to be very careful with this one, haven’t we, Winty?’

Winter Morris joined him, assuming at once his occupational manner of knowing how to be tactful with actors. They didn’t, any of them, did they, he asked, want the wrong kind of stories to get into the Press. There was no doubt they would be badgered. He himself had been rung up repeatedly. The line was regret and no comment. ‘You’d all gone,’ Morris said. ‘You weren’t there. You’ve heard about it, of course, but you’ve no ideas.’ Here everybody looked at Destiny.

He continued in this vein and it became evident that this able, essentially kind little man was at considerable pains to stop short of the suggestion that, properly controlled, the disaster, from a box-office angle, might turn out to be no such thing. ‘But we don’t need it,’ he said unguardedly and embarrassed himself and most of his hearers. Harry Grove, however, gave one of his little chuckles.

‘Well, that’s all perfectly splendid,’ he said. ‘Everybody happy. We’ve no need of bloody murder to boost our door-sales and wee Trevor can recover his wits as slowly as he likes. Grand.’ He placed his arm about Destiny Meade who gave him a mock-reproachful look, tapped his hand and freed herself. ‘Darling, do be good,’ she said. She moved away from him, caught Gertrude Bracey’s baleful eye and said with extreme graciousness: ‘Isn’t he too frightful?’ Miss Bracey was speechless.

‘I can see I’ve fallen under the imperial displeasure,’ Grove murmured in a too-audible aside. ‘The Great King Dolphin looks as if it’s going to combust.’

Knight walked across the office and confronted Grove who was some three inches shorter than himself. Alleyn was uncannily reminded of a scene between them in Peregrine’s play when the man of Stratford confronted the man of fashion while the Dark Lady, so very much more subtle than the actress who beautifully portrayed her, watched catlike in the shadow.