‘What you might call negative evidence on the whole, Mr Alleyn. Clearance for the understudies who watched the show from the back of the circle and then went home. Clearance for the two dressers (male), the stage-manager and his assistant and the stagehands. They were all watching the play or on their jobs. On statements taken independently, they clear each other.’

‘That’s something.’

‘No female dresser,’ Mr Fox observed. ‘Which seems odd.’

‘Miss Tarne was the sole female dresser and she’d been promoted overnight to what I believe I should call starletdom. Which in itself seems to me to be a rum go. I’ve always imagined female dressers to be cups-of-tea in alpaca aprons and not embryo actresses. I don’t think Miss Tarne could have done the job but she comes into the picture as the supplanter of Uncle Ben’s dear little niece whom I find an extremely irritating ass with a certain amount of low cunning. Miss Tarne, on the other hand, seems pleasant and intelligent and looks nice. You must allow me my prejudices, Br’er Fox.’

‘She’s Mr Poole’s third cousin or something.’

‘The case reeks with obscure relationships—blood, marital and illicit, as far as one can see. Did you get anything from Bennington’s dresser?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Fox, sighing. ‘It seems the deceased didn’t like him to hang about on account of being a silent drinker. He was in the dressing-room up to about 7 p.m. and was then told to go and see if he could be of any use to the other gentlemen and not to come back till the first interval when the deceased changed his clothes. I must say that chap earns his wages pretty easily. As far as I could make out the rest of his duties for the night consisted in tearing off chunks of cotton-wool for the deceased to do up his face with. I checked his visits to the dressing-room by that. The last time he looked in was after the deceased went on the stage in the third act. He cleared away the used cotton-wool and powdered a clean bit. In the normal course of events I suppose he’d have put Mr Bennington into the fancy-dress he was going to wear to the ball and then gone home quite worn out.’

‘Was he at all talkative?’

‘Not got enough energy, Mr Alleyn. Nothing to say for himself barring the opinion that the deceased was almost on the DT mark. The other dresser, Cringle, seems a bright little chap. He just works for Mr Poole.’

‘Have you let him go?’

‘Yes, sir, I have. And the stage-hands. We can look them out again if we want them but for the moment I think we’ve just about cleaned them up. I’ve let the assistant stage-manager—ASM they call him—get away, too. Wife’s expecting any time and he never left the prompting book.’