Bailey moved to one side and looked down into the stalls. ‘We’ve got something here, Mr Alleyn,’ he said. ‘Two sets of tracks with the pile dragged slantways in a long diagonal line outwards towards the edge. Some of it removed. Looks like fingernails. Trace of something that might be shoe-polish.’

‘All right. Deal with it, you and Thompson.’

Fox said: ‘Well, well: a fall, eh?’

‘Looks that way, doesn’t it? A fall from the circle about twenty feet. I suppose nobody looked at the boy’s fingernails. Who found him?’ Fox, with a jerk of his head indicated Peregrine and Emily. ‘They’d been sent in here,’ he said, ‘to get them out of the way.’

‘We’ll talk to them now, Fox.’

Peregrine was awake. He and Emily sat hand-in-hand and looked more like displaced persons than anything else, an effect that was heightened by the blueness of Peregrine’s jaws and the shadows under their eyes.

Alleyn said: ‘I’m sorry you’ve been kept so long. It’s been a beastly business for both of you. Now, I’m going to ask Mr Fox to read over what you have already said to Mr Gibson and his sergeant and you shall tell us if, on consideration, this is a fair statement.’

Fox did this and they nodded and said yes: that was it.

‘Good,’ Alleyn said. ‘Then there’s only one other question. Did either of you happen to notice Trevor Vere’s fingernails?’

They stared at him and both repeated in pallid voices: ‘His fingernails?’

‘Yes. You found him and I think you, Miss Dunne, stayed with him until he was taken away.’

Emily rubbed her knuckles in her eyes. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I must pull myself together. Yes. Yes, of course I did. I stayed with him.’

‘Perhaps you held his hand as one does with a sick child?’

‘It’s hard to think of Trevor as a child,’ Peregrine said. ‘He was born elderly. Sorry.’

‘But I did,’ Emily exclaimed. ‘You’re right. I felt his pulse and then, you know, I went on holding his hand.’

‘Looking at it?’

‘Not specially. Not glaring at it. Although –’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I remember I did sort of look at it. I moved it between my own hands and I remember noticing how grubby it was which made it childish and – then – there was something – ‘ She hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘I thought he’d got rouge or carmine make-up under his nails and then I saw it wasn’t grease. It was fluff.’

‘I tell you what,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ll put you up for the Police Medal, you excellent girl. Fox: get on to St Terence’s hospital and tell them it’s as much as their life is worth to dig out that boy’s nails. Tell our chap there he can clean them himself and put the harvest in an envelope and get a witness to it. Throw your bulk about. Get the top battle-axe and give her fits. Fly.’

Fox went off at a stately double.