Alleyn broke into laughter. ‘You have me there,’ he said. ‘Never mind. It’s better, believe me, than kicking them in a waiting-room at the Yard. But all right, we’ll have another go. What can you tell me, if your stomach is equal to it, of the background of the other members of your company?’ Alleyn raised a hand. ‘I know you have a loyalty to them and I’m not asking you to abuse it. I do remind you, Jay, that suspicion about this crime will fall inside your guild, your mystery, if I may put it like that, and that there’s going to be a great deal of talk and speculation. With the exception of yourself and Miss Dunne and Miss Meade, whose alibis seem to us to be satisfactory and possibly Harry Grove, there isn’t one of the company, and I’m including Winter Morris and Jeremy Jones, who absolutely could not have killed Jobbins and attacked the boy.’

‘I can’t see how you make it out. They were all, except Trevor, seen to leave. I saw them go. The doors were locked and bolted and barred.’

‘The stage-door was locked but not bolted and barred. Hawkins unlocked it with his own key. The small pass-door in the front was unlocked when Miss Bracey left and was not bolted and barred until after Morris and Knight left. They heard Jobbins drop the bar.’

‘That cuts them out, then, surely.’

‘Look,’ Alleyn said. ‘Put this situation to yourself and see how you like it. Jobbins is still alive. Somebody knocks on the pass-door in the front entrance. He goes down. A recognized voice asks him to open up – an actor has left his money in his dressing-room or some such story. Jobbins lets him in. The visitor goes backstage saying he’ll let himself out at the stage-door. Jobbins takes up his post. At midnight he does his routine telephoning and the sequel follows.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘God bless my soul, my dear chap, for a brilliant playwright you’ve a quaint approach to logic. I don’t know it. I merely advance it as a way in which your lock-up theory could be made to vanish. There is at least one other, even simpler solution which is probably the true one. The only point I’m trying to make is this. If you clamp down on telling me anything at all about any member of your company you may be very fastidious and loyal and you may be protecting the actual butcher but you’re not exactly helping to clear the other six – seven if you count Conducis.’

Peregrine thought it over. ‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that’s probably a lot of sophistical hooey but I get your point. But I ought to warn you, you’ve picked a dud for the job. I’ve got a notoriously bad memory. There are things,’ Peregrine said slowly, ‘at the back of my mind that have been worrying me ever since this catastrophe fell upon us. Do you think I can fetch them up? Not I.’