‘You’re being mewed up,’ Alleyn said with some evidence of toughness, ‘because of death. Death, for your information, with what are known as unexplained features. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be here. If you’re hungry, we shall arrange for food to be sent in. If you’re stuffy you may walk in the garden. If you want to talk, you may use the telephone and the usual offices are last on the right at the far end of the hall.’

There was an appreciable pause.

‘And the worst of it is, Timmy, angel,’ Bertie said, ‘you can’t tell him the casting’s gone wrong and you’ll let him know if he’s wanted.’

Pinky was staring at Alleyn. ‘I never,’ she muttered, ‘could have thought to see the day.’

There can be no dictator whose discomfiture will not bring some slight degree of pleasure to his most ardent disciples. Bertie and Pinky, involuntarily, had given this reaction. There was a suggestion of repressed glee.

Gantry gave them the sort of look he would have thrown at an inattentive actor. They made their faces blank.

He drew in his breath. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘One submits. Naturally. Perhaps one would prefer to know a little more, but elucidation is evidently not an ingredient of the Yardly mystique.’

From his ramrod station inside the door, Warrender said: ‘Foul play. What it amounts to. They’re suggesting foul play.’

‘Oh, my God!’ cried Pinky and Bertie in unison. They turned sheet-white and began to talk at the tops of their voices. Fox took out his notebook.

Alleyn raised his hand and they petered out. ‘It doesn’t,’ he said crossly, ‘amount to anything of the sort. The situation is precisely as I have tried to define it. There are unexplained discrepancies. They may add up to accident, suicide or homicide and I know no better than any one of you what the answer will be. And now, if you please, we will try to arrive at a few possibly unimportant facts.’

To his surprise he found himself supported.

Timon Gantry said: ‘We’re being emotional and tedious. Pay no attention. Your facts?’