‘You are having yourself a ball,’ said Mr Fox, who liked occasionally to employ the contemporary idiom. ‘How long does all this take?’

‘From the time he works the combination it needn’t take more than five minutes. If that. Might be less.’

‘So the time’s now – say – five past midnight.’

‘Say between 12 and 12:10.’

‘Yerse,’ said Fox and a look of mild gratification settled upon his respectable face. ‘And at 12:5, or 10 or thereabouts, Hawkins comes in by the stage-door, goes into the stalls and has a little chat with the deceased who is looking over the circle balustrade.

‘I see you are in merry pin,’ Alleyn remarked. ‘Hawkins, Mr Smartypants, has a little chat with somebody wearing Jobbins’s new coat which Hawkins is just able to recognize in the scarcely lit circle. This is not, of necessity, Jobbins. So, you see, Harry Grove had a point about the coat.’

‘Now then, now then.’

‘Going too far, you consider?’

‘So do you, Mr Alleyn.’

‘Well, of course I do. All this is purest fantasy. If you can think of a better one, have a go yourself.’

‘If only,’ Fox grumbled, ‘that kid could recover his wits, we’d all know where we were.’

‘We might.’

‘About this howd’yedo with the overcoat. Is your story something to this effect? The killer loses his loot, heaves the kid overboard and hears Hawkins at the stage-door. All right! He bolts back to the circle foyer. Why doesn’t he do a bunk by the pass-door in the front entrance?’

‘No time. He knows that in a matter of seconds Hawkins will come through the auditorium into the front foyer. Consider the door. A mortice lock with the key kept on a hook behind the office. Two dirty great bolts and an iron bar. No time.’

‘So you’re making out he grabs the coat off the body, puts it on, all mucky as it is with blood and Gawd knows what –’

‘Only on the outside. And I fancy he took the scarf from the overcoat pocket and used it to protect his own clothes.’

‘Ah. So you say he dolls himself up, and goes back to the circle and tells Hawkins to make the tea?’

‘In a croaking bronchial voice, we must suppose.’

‘Then what? Humour me, Mr Alleyn. Don’t stop.’

‘Hawkins goes off to the property room and makes the tea. This will take at least five minutes. Our customer returns to the body and re-dresses it in the coat and puts the scarf round the neck. You noticed how the coat was: bunched up and stuffed under the small of the back. It couldn’t have got like that by him falling in it.’

‘Damn, I missed that one. It’s an easy one too.’