‘Away we go, then.’

They staggered up the steps. Emmy got the giggles. ‘If Mrs Sleigh next door sees us she’ll think we’re tight.’

‘You needn’t help me, after all. Once I’ve straightened up I’m all right. My legs are absolutely OK. Let go.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course,’ he said. He straightened up and gave a short howl. ‘Absolutely all right,’ he said, walked rather quickly up the steps into the house and fell into an armchair. Emily went to the telephone.

‘What are you doing, Em?’

‘Ringing up the doctor.’

‘I don’t think – ‘

‘I do,’ said Emily. She had an incisive conversation. ‘How did it happen?’ she broke off.

‘I fell on a sword. On the wooden hilt.’

She repeated this into the telephone and hung up. ‘He’s looking in on his way home,’ she said.

‘I’d like a drink.’

‘I suppose it won’t do you any harm?’

‘It certainly will not.’

She fetched him a drink. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said.

‘I am,’ said Peregrine. He swallowed it. ‘That’s better. Why did you come running out of the house?’

‘I’ve got something to show you but I don’t know that you’re in a fit state to see it.’

‘Bad news?’

‘Not directly.’

‘Then show me.’

‘Here, then. Look at this.’

She fetched an envelope from the table and pulled out a cutting from one of the more lurid Sunday tabloids. It was a photograph of a woman and a small boy. They were in a street and had obviously been caught unawares. She was white-faced and stricken; the little boy looked frightened. ‘Mrs Geoffrey Harcourt-Smith and William,’ the caption read. ‘After the Verdict.’

‘It’s three years old,’ said Emily. ‘It came in the post this morning. It was a murder. Decapitation. Last of six, I think. The husband was found guilty but insane and he got a life sentence.’

Peregrine looked at it for a minute and then held it out. ‘Burn it?’ he said.

‘Gladly.’ She lit a match and he held the cutting over an ashtray. It turned black and disintegrated.

‘This too?’ Emily asked, holding up the envelope. It was addressed in capital letters.

‘Yes. No. No, not that. Not yet,’ said Peregrine. ‘Put it in my desk.’

Emily did so. ‘You’re quite sure? It was William?’

‘Three years younger. Absolutely sure. And his mother. Damn.’

‘Perry, you’ve never seen the thing. Put it out of your mind.’

‘I can’t do that. But it makes no difference. The father was a schizophrenic monster. Life sentence in Broadmoor. They called him the Hampstead Chopper.’

‘You don’t think – it’s – anybody in the theatre who sent this?’

‘No!’

Emily was silent.

‘They’ve no cause. None.’

After a pause he said: ‘I suppose it might be a sort of warning.’

‘You haven’t told me how you came to fall on the claymore.’