‘I can only cook up one answer to that, Fox. He’s got the loot. He intends to shut the safe, fore and aft and spin the lock. He means to remove the loot from the display stand but at this point he’s interrupted. He hears a voice, a catcall, a movement. Something. He turns round to find young Trevor Vere watching him. He thinks Jobbins is down below at the telephone. He bolts through the door from the circle to this end of the foyer meaning to duck into the loo before Jobbins gets up. Jobbins would then go into the circle and find young Trevor and assume he was the culprit. But he’s too late. Jobbins having seen the open safe comes thundering up from below. He makes for this chap who gives him a violent shove to the pedestal and the dolphin lays Jobbins flat. Trevor comes out to the foyer and sees this. Our chap goes for him. The boy runs back through the door and down the central aisle with his pursuer hard on his heels. He’s caught at the foot of the steps. There’s a struggle during which the boy grabs at the display stand. The polythene cover is dislodged, the treasure falls overboard with it. The boy is hit on the face. He falls across the balustrade, face down, clinging to it. He’s picked up by the seat of his trousers, swung sideways and heaved over, his nails dragging semi-diagonally across the velvet pile as he goes. At this point Hawkins comes down the stage-door alley.’

‘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.’