‘Very well,’ said Dr Harkness, trying to flatten his hair with both hands. ‘Never, never, never, any of you, chase up four whiskies with three glasses of champagne. Don’t do it!’ he added furiously as if somebody had shown signs of taking this action. He went out.

‘We’ll wait,’ Alleyn said composedly, ‘for Mr Templeton,’ and arranged his papers.

Warrender cleared his throat. ‘Don’t like the look of sawbones,’ he said.

‘Poor pet,’ Bertie sighed. ‘And yet I almost wish I were in his boots. A pitiable but not unenviable condition.’

‘Bad show!’ Warrender said. ‘Fellar’s on duty.’

‘Are you true?’ Gantry asked suddenly, gazing at Warrender with a kind of devotion.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

Gantry clasped his hands and said ecstatically: ‘One would never dare! Never! And yet people say one’s productions tend towards caricature! You shall give them the lie in their teeth, Colonel. In your own person you shall refute them.’

‘I’m damned if I know what you’re talking about, Gantry, but if you’re trying to be abusive …’

‘ “No abuse,” ’ Alleyn quoted unexpectedly. He was reading his notes. ‘ “No abuse in the world: no, faith, boys, none.” ’

They stared at him. Gantry, thrown off his stride, looked round the table as if calling attention to Alleyn’s eccentricity.

Pinky, greatly disconcerted, had opened her mouth to reply but was prevented by the appearance of Charles Templeton. He had come in with Dr Harkness. He was a bad colour, seemed somehow to have shrunk and walked like the old man he actually was. But his manner was contained and he smiled faintly at them.

Alleyn got up and went to him. ‘He’s all right,’ Dr Harkness said. ‘He’ll do. Won’t you, Charles?’

‘I’ll do,’ Charles repeated. ‘Much better.’

‘Would you rather sit in a more comfortable chair?’ Alleyn suggested. ‘As you see, we are making free with your dining-room table.’

‘Of course. I hope you’ve got everything you want. I’ll join you.’

He took the nearest chair. Richard had got up and now, gripping Charles’s shoulders, leant over him. Charles turned his head and looked up at him. During that moment, Alleyn thought, he saw a resemblance.

Richard said: ‘Are you well enough for all this?’

‘Yes, yes. Perfectly.’

Richard returned to his place, Dr Harkness and Fox took the two remaining seats, and the table was full.

Alleyn clasped his hands over his papers, said: ‘Well, now,’ and wishing, not for the first time, that he could find some other introductory formula, addressed himself to his uneasy audience.

Anelida thought: ‘Here we all sit like a committee meeting and the chairman thinks one of us is a murderer.’ Richard, very straight in his chair, looked at the table. When she stirred a little he reached for her hand, gripped it and let it go.

Alleyn was talking.