‘And then?’

‘The next thing that happened was a servant at the banquet swept off the dish-cover and there underneath was the man’s head again. Grinning at Macbeth. It was – well, awful. You know?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I addressed the actors. All of them. I said – the expected things, I suppose. That it was a rather disgusting trick but as none of them was prepared to own up to being the perpetrator I thought the best thing we could do was ignore it. Something like that.’

‘Yes. It must have thrown a spanner in your works, didn’t it?’

‘Of course. But we rose above. Actors are resilient, you know. They react to something with violence and they talk a great deal but they go on. Nobody walked out on us, though there was a nasty feeling in the air. But I really think Rangi’s rat’s head was the worst.’

‘Rangi’s rat’s head?’ Alleyn repeated.

‘Well, it was the head that mattered. In his marketing bag. That’s what we called their bags – a sort of joke. For the things they collected for their spell, you know – some of them off the corpse on the gallows. Did you know the items they enumerate are really authentic?’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, they are. “For a charm of powerful trouble.” There’s no mention of a rat’s head, though.’

‘Have you got your own ideas about the author of these tricks?’

‘I have, yes. But they are not supported by any firm evidence. Merely unsecured ideas. They couldn’t be vaguer. They arise from a personal distaste.’

‘Can we hear them? We won’t attach too much importance to them.’

Peregrine hesitated. Mr Fox completed his notes and looked benevolently at him, his vast hand poised over the notebook.

‘Have you spoken to Barrabell? The Banquo.’

‘Not really,’ said Alleyn. ‘Only to get his name and address and a very few bits of information about the other people’s positions.’

‘He’s a strange one. Beautiful voice, well managed. A mischief-maker. He belongs to some way-out society, the Red Fellowship, I think it’s called. He enjoys making sneaky little underhand jokes about other actors. I find myself thinking of him as a sea-lawyer. He’s always making objections to “business” in the play, which doesn’t endear him to me, of course.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I think he knows about young William.’

Alleyn took the folded paper from his pocket, opened it and showed it to Peregrine.

‘This was left in Winter Morris’s office and typed on the machine there?’

Peregrine looked at it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Winty told me.’

‘Did you guess who did it?’

‘Yes. I thought so. Barrabell. It was only a guess but he was about. In the theatre at that time. The sort of thing he’d do, I thought.’

‘Did you say so to Winter?’

‘I did, yes. Winty says he went to the loo. It was the only time the room was free. About five minutes. There’s a window into the foyer. Anybody there could look in, see it was empty and – do it.’