‘Only one?’ Alleyn said. ‘Do you really think so?’

For the first time she looked frightened but her answer was unexpected. ‘I don’t want what I’ve said to go no further,’ she said with a look at Fox, who had been quietly taking notes. ‘I don’t fancy being quoted, particularly in some quarters. There’s some that’d turn very nasty if they knew what I said.’

‘Old Ninn?’ Alleyn suggested. ‘For one?’

‘Smart,’ Florence said with spirit, ‘aren’t you? All right. Her for one. She’s got her fancy like I had mine. Only mine,’ Florence said, and her voice was desolate, ‘mine’s gone where it won’t come back, and that’s the difference.’ A spasm of something that might have been hatred crossed her face and she cried out with violence: ‘I’ll never forgive her! Never. I’ll be even with her no matter what comes out of it, see if I’m not. Clara Plumtree!’

‘But what did she do?’

He thought she was going to jib, but suddenly it all came out. It had happened, she said, after the tragedy. Charles Templeton had been taken to his dressing-room and Ninn had appeared on the landing while Florence was taking him a hot bottle. Florence herself had been too agitated to tell her what had happened in any detail. She had given Mr Templeton the bottle and left him. He was terribly distressed and wanted to be left alone. She had returned to the landing and seen Dr Harkness and Timon Gantry come out of the bedroom and speak to Mrs Plumtree who had then gone into the dressing-room. Florence herself had been consumed with a single overwhelming desire.

‘I wanted to see after her. I wanted to look after my Lady. I knew what she’d have liked me to do for her. The way they’d left her! The way she looked! I wasn’t going to let them see her like that and take her away like that. I knew her better than anybody. She’d have wanted her old Floy to look after her.’

She gave a harsh sob but went on very doggedly. She had gone to the bedroom door and found it locked. This, Alleyn gathered, had roused a kind of fury in her. She had walked up and down the landing in an agony of frustration and had then remembered the communicating door between the bedroom and dressing-room. So she had stolen to the door from the landing into the dressing-room and had opened it very carefully, not wishing to disturb Mr Templeton. She had found herself face to face with Mrs Plumtree.

It must, Alleyn thought, have been an extraordinary scene. The two women had quarrelled in whispers. Florence had demanded to be allowed to go through into the bedroom. Mrs Plumtree had refused. Then Florence had told her what she wanted to do.