Winter Morris came in quoting Queen Mary. ‘This,’ he said wearily, ‘is a pretty kettle of fish. This is a carry-on. I’m not complaining, mind, and I’m not blaming anybody but what, oh what, has set Marco off again? Sorry. Not your headache, old boy.’

Alleyn uttered consolatory phrases, sat him at his own desk, checked his alibi which was no better and no worse than anyone else’s, in that after he left the theatre with Knight he drove to his house at Golder’s Green where his wife and family were all in bed. When he wound up his watch he noticed it said ten to twelve. He had heard the Knight-Guzman story. ‘I thought it bloody sad,’ he said. ‘Poor woman. Terrible, you know, the problem of the plain highly-sexed woman. Marco ought to have held his tongue. He ought never to have told Harry. Of course Harry made it sound a bit of a yell, but I didn’t like Marco telling about it. I don’t think that sort of thing’s funny.’

‘It does appear that on her own admission to Knight, she’s a buyer on a colossal scale under the museum-piece counter.’

Winter Morris spread his hands. ‘We all have our weaknesses,’ he said. ‘So she likes nice things and she can pay for them. Marcus Knight should complain!’

‘Well!’ Alleyn ejaculated. ‘That’s one way of looking the Big Black Market in the eyes I must say! Have you ever met Mrs Guzman, by the way?’

Winter Morris had rather white eyelids. They now dropped a little. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not in person. Her husband was a most brilliant man. The equal and more of Conducis.’

‘Self-made?’

‘Shall we say self-created? It was a superb achievement.’

Alleyn looked his enjoyment of this phrase and Morris answered his look with a little sigh. ‘Ah yes!’ he said. ‘These colossi! How marvellous!’

‘In your opinion,’ Alleyn said, ‘without prejudice and within these four walls and all that: how many people in this theatre know the combination of that lock?’

Morris blushed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well. This is where I don’t exactly shine with a clear white radiance, isn’t it? Well, as he’s told you, Charlie Random for one. Got it right, as you no doubt observed. He says he didn’t pass it on and personally I believe that. He’s a very quiet type, Charlie. Never opens up about his own or anybody else’s business. I’m sure he’s dead right about the boy not knowing the combination.’

‘You are? Why?’

‘Because as I said, the bloody kid was always pestering me about it.’

‘And so you would have been pretty sure, would you, that only you yourself and Mr Conducis knew the combination?’