There was nobody waiting for her. She hailed a taxi. That’s settled their hashes, she thought as she gave her address. And the metallic voice will work wonders if I get it right. She made an arrangement in her vocal cords and spoke.

‘“Who would have thought the old man to have’ so much blood in him.”’

‘What’s that, lady?’ asked the startled driver.

‘Nothing, nothing. I’m an actress. It’s my part.’

‘Oh. One of them. Takes all sorts, don’ it?’ he replied.

‘It certainly does.’

Ross, Lennox, Menteith, Caithness and Angus were called for three o’clock, so had time to get a good tuck-in at the Swan. They walked along the Embankment and the sun shone upon them: four young men with a fifth – the Ross – who was older. They had a certain air about them. They walked well. They spoke freely and clearly and they laughed loudly. Their faces had a pale smoothness as if seldom exposed to the sun. When they were separated by other pedestrians they raised their voices and continued their conversation without self-consciousness. Lennox, when not involved, sang tunefully:

‘“Not a flower, not a flower sweet,’

On my black coffin let there be strown.”

‘Wrong play, dear boy,’ said Ross. ‘That’s from Twelfth Night.’

‘Bloody funny choice for a comedy.’

‘Strange, isn’t it?’

Lennox said: ‘Do any of you find this play…I don’t know…oppressive? Almost too much. I mean, we can’t escape it. Do you?’

‘I do,’ Ross confessed. ‘I’ve been in it before. Same part. It does rather stick with one, doesn’t it?’

‘Well,’ Menteith said reasonably, ‘what’s it about? Five murders. Three witches. A fiendish lady. A homicidal husband. A ghost. And the death of the name-part with his severed head on the end of a claymore. Rather a bellyful to shake off, isn’t it?’

‘It’s melodrama pure and simple,’ said Angus. ‘It just happens to be written by a man with a knack for words.’

Lennox said: ‘What a knack! No. That doesn’t really account for the thing I mean. We don’t get it in the other tragedies, do we? Not in Hamlet or Lear or Antony and Cleopatra.’

‘Perhaps it’s the reason for all the superstitions.’

‘I wonder,’ Ross said. ‘It may be. They all say the same thing, don’t they? Don’t speak his name. Don’t quote from it. Don’t call it by its title. Keep off.’

They turned into a narrow side street.

‘I tell you what,’ Caithness said. ‘I don’t mind betting anyone who’s prepared to take up that Perry’s the only one of the whole company who really doesn’t believe a word of it. I mean that – really. He doesn’t do anything but that’s so that our apple-carts won’t be upset.’

‘You sound bloody sure of yourself, little man, but how do you know?’ asked Menteith.