‘All right. And if it wasn’t the boy, what about the boy? How do you fit him in as a useful buffer between your distaste and the protection of the common man? How do you think the boy came to be dropped over the circle? And believe me he was dropped. He escaped, by a-hundred-to-one chance, being spilt like an egg over the stalls. Yes,’ Alleyn said, watching Peregrine, ‘that’s a remark in bad taste, isn’t it? Murder’s a crime in bad taste. You’ve seen it, now. You ought to know.’ He waited for a moment and then said, ‘That was cheating and I apologize.’

Peregrine said: ‘You needn’t be so bloody upright. It’s nauseating.’

‘All right. Go away and vomit. But if you have second thoughts, sit down and write out every damn’ thing you remember of Conducis and all the rest of it. And now, if you want to go – go. Get the hell out of it.’

‘Out of my own office, I’d have you remember. To kick my heels on the landing.’

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.’