‘I believe with the others that it was suicide,’ said J.G. He had sat down again beside Gay. His legs were stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his hands were in his trouser pockets and his chin on his chest. It was the attitude of a distinguished MP during a damaging speech from the opposite side of the House.

Alleyn said: ‘And we still don’t know when Miss Gainsford left the greenroom.’

‘Oh, lawks!’ Parry ejaculated. ‘This is too tiresome, J.G., you looked in at the greenroom door when we came back for the curtain call, don’t you remember? Was she there then? Were you there, then, Gay darling?’

Gay opened her mouth to speak but J.G. said quickly: ‘Yes, of course I did. Stupid of me to forget. Gay was sound asleep in the armchair, Mr Alleyn. I didn’t disturb her.’ He passed his right hand over his beautifully groomed head. ‘It’s a most extraordinary thing,’ he said vexedly, ‘that I should have forgotten this. Of course she was asleep. Because later, when—well, when, in point of fact the discovery had been made—I asked where Gay was and someone said she was still in the greenroom and I was naturally worried and went to fetch her. She was still asleep and the greenroom, by that time, reeking with gas. I brought her back here.’

‘Have you any idea, Miss Gainsford,’ Alleyn asked, ‘about when you dropped off?’

‘I was exhausted, Mr Alleyn. Physically and emotionally exhausted. I still am.’

‘Was it, for instance, before the beginning of the last act?’

‘N-n-no. No. Because J.G. came in to see how I was in the second interval. Didn’t you, darling? And I was exhausted, wasn’t I?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘And he gave me some aspirins and I took two. And I suppose, in that state of utter exhaustion, they work. So I fell into a sleep—an exhausted sleep, it was.’

‘Naturally,’ Helena murmured with a glance at Alleyn. ‘It would be exhausted.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Jacko, ‘it was exhausted.’

‘Well, it was,’ said Gay crossly. ‘Because I was. Utterly.’

‘Did anyone else beside Mr Darcey go into the greenroom during the second interval?’

Gay looked quickly at J.G. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I’m so muddled about times it really isn’t safe to ask me. I’m sure to be wrong.’

‘Mr Darcey?’

‘No,’ J.G. said.

‘Well, my dearest J.G.,’ Parry said, ‘I couldn’t be more reluctant to keep popping in like one of the Eumenides in that utterly incomprehensible play but I do assure you that you’re at fault here. Ben went into the greenroom in the second interval.’

‘Dear Heaven!’ Helena said, on a note of desperation. ‘What has happened to us all!’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Ella darling,’ Parry said and sounded it.

‘But why should you be sorry? Why shouldn’t Ben go and see his niece in the interval? He played the whole of the third act afterwards. Of course you should say so, Parry, if you know what you’re talking about. Shouldn’t he, Adam? Shouldn’t he, Mr Alleyn?’