Alleyn said with a smile: ‘You’re quite complicated enough for us at the moment. Is there anything else you’ve remembered that you think perhaps you ought to tell me about?’

Parry shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. Alleyn saw, as Martyn had seen before him, that he was not an exceedingly young man. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing I can think of.’

‘You may go to your dressing-room now, if you’d like to change into—what should I say?—into plain clothes?’

‘Thank you. I simply loathe the thought of my room after all this but I shall be glad to change.’

‘Do you mind if Lamprey does a routine search before you go? We’ll ask this of all of you.’

Parry showed the whites of his eyes but said at once: ‘Why should I mind?’

Alleyn nodded to young Lamprey who advanced upon Parry with an apologetic smile.

‘It’s a painless extraction, sir,’ he said.

Parry raised his arms in a curve with his white hands held like a dancer’s above his head. There was a silence and a swift efficient exploration. ‘Thank you so much, sir,’ said Mike Lamprey. ‘Cigarette-case, lighter, and handkerchief, Mr Alleyn.’

‘Right. Take Mr Percival along to his room, will you?’

Parry said: ‘There couldn’t be a more fruitless question but it would be nice to know, one way or the other, if you have believed me.’

‘There couldn’t be a more unorthodox answer,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘but at the moment I see no reason to disbelieve you, Mr Percival.’

When Lamprey came back he found his senior officer looking wistfully at his pipe and whistling under his breath.

‘Mike,’ Alleyn said. ‘The nastiest cases in our game are very often the simplest. There’s something sticking out under my nose in this theatre and I can’t see it. I know it’s there because of another thing that, Lord pity us all, Fox and I can see.’

‘Really, sir? Am I allowed to ask what it is?’

‘You’re getting on in the service, now. What have you spotted on your own account?’

‘Is it something to do with Bennington’s behaviour, sir?’

‘It is indeed. If a man’s going to commit suicide, Mike, and his face is made up to look loathsome, what does he do about it? If he’s a vain man (and Bennington appears to have had his share of professional vanity), if he minds about the appearance of his own corpse, he cleans off the greasepaint. If he doesn’t give a damn, he leaves it as it is. But with time running short he does not carefully and heavily powder his unbecoming make-up for all the world as if he meant to go on and take his curtain-call with the rest of them. Now, does he?’

‘Well, no, sir,’ said Mike. ‘If you put it like that, I don’t believe he does.’