Peregrine peered at him. ‘Barrabell?’ he said. ‘Are you going to audition?’

‘I thought so. For Burbage.’

He doesn’t come on until the second act, Peregrine thought. He would be good. And he felt a sudden violent dislike of Barrabell. I don’t want him in the cast, he thought. I can’t have him. I don’t want to hear him audition. I don’t want to speak to him.

The part of Burbage was of a frantically busy man of affairs and an accomplished actor in the supposed Elizabethan manner. Silvertongued, blast it, thought Peregrine. He’s ideal, of course. Oh damn and blast!

The actors began to trickle in from the offices and Mrs Abrams came down to take notes for Peregrine and say, ‘Thank you, darling. We’ll let you know.’ The Ross auditioned for Dr Hall. He read it nicely with a good appreciation of the medical man of his day and his anxious and lethal treatment of young Hamnet. The Gentlewoman tried for Joan Hart, the poet’s sister. That had been Emily’s part and Peregrine tried not to let himself be influenced by this. If he suggested she came back and played it she would say she was too old now.

They plodded on. Someone came and sat behind Peregrine. He felt a hand on his arm.

‘Has Barrabell read for you?’ the voice murmured.

‘No.’

‘I wouldn’t cast him.’ The hand was withdrawn and Alleyn left quietly.

III

Before he left the theatre, Alleyn had a short talk with Peregrine and told him of Barrabell’s confession, if confession it could be called.

Back at the Yard he went through the statements and put the regulation conclusion before himself and Mr Fox, who remained, as it were, anonymous.

‘If all reasonable explanations fail, the investigation must consider the explanation which, however outlandish, is not contradicted?’

‘And what in this case is the outlandish explanation that is not contradicted?’

‘There is not time for the murder to be accomplished between the end of the fight and the appearance of Macbeth’s head on the claidheamh-mor so it must have been done before the fight.’

‘But Macbeth spoke during the fight. True, his voice was hoarse and breathless.’

Alleyn took his head in his hands and did his best to listen to the past. ‘Get thee back. My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.’ Sir Dougal had had the slight but unmistakable burr of Scots in his voice. He had given it a little more room for the Thane: ‘too much charrged’. A grievous sound. It drifted through his memory, but his recollection held no personality behind it. Just the broken despair of any breathless, beaten fighter.