‘What’d I do that for, Mr Jay? Gawd, no.’

‘Did you miss it?’

‘I didn’t know how many there was, did I? Its mates are all laid out in the walking gents’ room. Gawd, it’d give you the willies, woon’ it? Seeing it unexpected, like.’

‘Take it down and put it with the others. And Ernie?’

‘Guv?’

‘Don’t mention this. Don’t say you’ve seen it. Not to anyone.’

‘OK.’

‘I mean it. Hope to die.’

‘Hope to die.’

‘Cross your heart, Ernie. Go on. Do it. And say it.’

‘Aw, hell, guv.’

‘Go on.’

‘Cross me ‘art. ‘Ope to die.’

‘That’s the style. Now. Take this thing and put it with the others. Half a jiffy.’

Peregrine was wrapping the head in the shroud. He turned back the hem and found a stick of green wood about two feet long slotted at either end into the hem of the shroud. The string was knotted halfway across into another and very much longer piece. He took it to the edge of the floor and let the loose end fall. It reached to within three feet of the stage.

Peregrine coiled it up, detached it and put it in his pocket. He gave Ernie the head, neatly parcelled. He looked at the place where the head had rested and, above it, saw a strut of rough wood.

‘Preposterous!’ he muttered.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘We push on.’ He went downstairs.

‘Second part,’ he called. ‘Settle down, please.’

VI

The second part opened with Banquo alone, suspecting the truth yet not daring to cut and run. Next, Macbeth’s scene with the murderers and Seyton nearer, ever present, and then the two Macbeths together. This is perhaps the most moving scene in the play and reveals the most about them. It opens up, in extraordinary language, the nightmare of guilt, their sleeplessness, and when at last they sleep the terrifying dreams that beset them. She fights on but knows now, without any shadow of doubt, that her power over him is less than she had bargained for, while he is acting on his own, hinting at what he plans but not telling. There follows the coming of darkness and night and the release of night’s creatures. It ends with self-dedication to the dark. Now comes the murder of Banquo and the escape of Fleance. And now the great banquet.

It opens as a front scene before curtains. Macbeth, crowned and robed, seems for the moment in command as if he actually thrives on the shedding of blood. He is a little too loud, too boisterous in his welcome. He is sending his guests through the curtains and is about to follow when he sees Seyton in the downstage entrance. He waits for the last guest to pass through and then goes to him.

‘There’s blood upon thy face.’

‘’Tis Banquo’s then.’