‘We’ll be talking to Conducis in half an hour, Fox, and it’s going to be tricky.’

‘I should damn’ well think so,’ Fox warmly agreed. ‘What with orchids and her just seeing him quietly from time to time. Hi!’ he ejaculated. ‘Would Mr Grove know about Mr Conducis and would Mr Conducis know about Mr Grove?’

‘Who is, remember, his distant relation. Search me, Fox. The thing at the moment seems to be that Knight knows about them both and acts accordingly. Big stuff.’

‘How a gang like this hangs together beats me. You’d think the resignations’d be falling in like autumn leaves. What they always tell you, I suppose,’ Fox said. ‘The Show Must Go On.’

‘And it happens to be a highly successful show with fat parts and much prestige. But I should think that even they won’t be able to sustain the racket indefinitely at this pitch.’

‘Why are we going to see Mr Conducis, I ask myself. How do we shape up to him? Does he matter, as far as the case is concerned?’

‘In so far as he was in the theatre and knows the combination, yes.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I thought him an exceedingly rum personage, Fox. A cold fish and yet a far from insensitive fish. No indication of any background other than wealth or of any particular race. He carries a British passport. He inherited one fortune and made lord knows how many more, each about a hundred per cent fatter than the last. He’s spent most of his time abroad and a lot of it in the Kalliope, until she was cut in half in a heavy fog under his feet. That was six years ago. What did you make of Jay’s account of the menu card?’

‘Rather surprising if he’s right. Rather a coincidence, two of our names cropping up in that direction.’

‘We can check the passenger list with the records. But it’s not really a coincidence. People in Conducis’s world tend to move about expensively in a tight group. There was, of course, an inquiry after the disaster and Conducis was reported to be unable to appear. He was in a nursing home on the Côte d’Azur suffering from exhaustion, exposure and severe shock.’

‘Perhaps,’ Mr Fox speculated, ‘it’s left him a bit funny for keeps.’

‘Perhaps. He certainly is a rum ‘un and no mistake. Jay’s account of his behaviour that morning – by George, Alleyn said suddenly. ‘Hell’s boots and gaiters!’

‘What’s all this, now?’ Fox asked placidly.

‘So much hokum I daresay, but listen, all the same.’

Fox listened.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You always say don’t conjecture but personally, Mr Alleyn, when you get one of your hunches in this sort of way I reckon it’s safe to go nap on it. Not that this one really gets us any nearer an arrest.’