‘Now,’ Alleyn said. ‘You may go, both of you. Where do you live?’

They told him Blackfriars and Hampstead respectively.

‘We could shake you down, Emily,’ Peregrine said. ‘Jeremy and I.’

‘I’d like to go home, please, Perry. Could you call a taxi?’

‘I think we can send you,’ Alleyn said. ‘I shan’t need a car yet awhile and there’s a gaggle of them out there.’

Peregrine said: ‘I ought to wait for Greenslade, Emily.’

‘Yes, of course you ought.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ll bundle you off to Hampstead, Miss Dunne. Where’s the sergeant?’

‘Here, sir,’ said the sergeant unexpectedly. He had come in from the foyer.

‘What’s the matter?’ Alleyn asked. ‘What’ve you got there?’

The sergeant’s enormous hands were clapped together in front of him and arched a little as if they enclosed something that fluttered and might escape.

‘Seventh row of the stalls, sir,’ he said, ‘centre aisle. On the floor about six foot from where the boy lay. There was a black velvet kind of easel affair and a sheet of polythene laying near them.’

He opened his palms like a book and disclosed a little wrinkled glove and two scraps of parchment.

‘Would they be what was wanted?’ asked the sergeant.

III

‘To me,’ said Mr Greenslade with palpable self-restraint, ‘there can be only one explanation, my dear Alleyn. The boy, who is, as Jay informs us, an unpleasant and mischievous boy, banged the door to suggest he’d gone but actually stayed behind and, having by some means learnt the number of the combination, robbed the safe of its contents. He was caught in the act by Jobbins who must have seen him from his post on the half-landing. As Jobbins made for him the boy, possibly by accident, overturned the pedestal. Jobbins was felled by the dolphin and the boy, terrified, ran into the circle and down the centre aisle. In his panic he ran too fast, stumbled across the balustrade, clutched at the velvet top and fell into the stalls. As he fell he let go the easel with the glove and papers and they dropped, as he did, into the aisle.’

Mr Greenslade, looking, in his unshaven state, strangely unlike himself, spread his hands and threw himself back in Winter Morris’s chair. Peregrine sat behind his own desk and Alleyn and Fox in two of the modish seats reserved for visitors. The time was twelve minutes past three and the air stale with the aftermath of managerial cigarettes and drinks.

‘You say nothing,’ Mr Greenslade observed. ‘You disagree?’

Alleyn said: ‘As an open-and-shut theory it has its attractions. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It means that we all sit back and hope for the boy to recover consciousness and health so that we can send him to the Juvenile Court for manslaughter.’

‘What I can’t quite see –’ Peregrine began and then said, ‘Sorry.’

‘No. Go on,’ Alleyn said.