Really, for him, Peregrine thought, Marco was behaving rather well and he tried to ignore the little hammer that pounded away under Marco’s oval cheek.

‘Who is this –’

Again they built up to her line. When it came it was merely shouted offstage without meaning and apparently without intention.

‘Great Christ in Heaven!’ Marcus Knight suddenly bellowed, ‘how long must this endure! What, in the name of all the suffering clans of martyrdom am I expected to do? Am I coupled with a harridan or a bloody dove? My author, my producer, my ART tell me that here is a great moment. I should be fed, by Heaven, fed: I should be led up to. I have my line to make. I must show what I am. My whole being should be lacerated. And so, God knows it is, but by what!’ He strode to the door and flung it wide. Gertrude Bracey was exposed looking both terrified and determined. ‘By a drivelling, piping peahen!’ He roared, straight into her face. ‘What sort of an actress are you, dear? Are you a woman, dear? Has nobody ever slighted you, trifled with you, deserted you? Have you no conception of the gnawing serpent that ravages a woman scorned?’

Somewhere in the front of the house Harry Grove laughed. Unmistakably, it was he. He had a light, mocking, derisive laugh, highly infectious to anybody who had not inspired it. Unhappily both Knight and Gertrude Bracey, for utterly opposed reasons, took it as a direct personal affront. Knight spun round on his heel, advanced to the edge of the stage and roared into the darkness of the auditorium. ‘Who is that! Who is it! I demand an answer.’

The laughter ran up to a falsetto climax and somewhere in the shadows Harry Grove said delightedly: ‘Oh dear me, dear me, how very entertaining. The King Dolphin in a rage.’

‘Harry,’ Peregrine said turning his back on the stage and vainly trying to discern the offender. ‘You are a professional actor. You know perfectly well that you are behaving inexcusably. I must ask you to apologize to the company.’

‘To the whole company, Perry dear? Or just to Gertie for laughing about her not being a woman scorned?’

Before Peregrine could reply, Gertrude re-entered, looking wildly about the house. Having at last distinguished Grove in the back stalls, she pointed to him and screamed out with a virtuosity that she had hitherto denied herself: ‘This is a deliberate insult.’ She then burst into tears.