‘It’s quite right,’ she said. ‘Am I to sign it?’

‘If you please. There will be statements for most of the others to sign later on but yours is so short I thought we might as well get it over now.’

He gave her his pen and she went to the table and signed. PC Lamprey smiled reassuringly at her and escorted her to the door.

Alleyn said: ‘Thank you so much, Miss Tarne. Do you live far from here?’

‘Not very far. A quarter of an hour’s walk.’

‘I wish I could let you go home now but I don’t quite like to do that. Something might crop up that we’d want to refer to you.’

‘Might it?’

‘You never know,’ he said. ‘Anyway you can change now.’ Lamprey opened the door and she went to the dressing-room.

When she had gone Alleyn said: ‘What did you make of her, Mike?’

‘I thought she was rather a sweetiepie, sir,’ said PC Lamprey. Fox, in his disregarded corner, snorted loudly.

‘That was all too obvious,’ said Alleyn. ‘Sweetness apart, did you find her truthful?’

‘I’d have said so, sir, yes.’

‘What about you, Br’er Fox? Come out of cover and declare yourself.’

Fox rose, removed his spectacles and advanced upon them. ‘There was something,’ he observed, ‘about that business of when the deceased went for her.’

‘There was indeed. Not exactly lying, wouldn’t you think, so much as leaving something out?’

‘Particularly in respect of whether there was a witness.’

‘She had her back to you but she looked at this portrait of Adam Poole. I’d make a long bet, Poole found Bennington slanging that child and ordered him off.’

‘Very possibly, Mr Alleyn. He’s sweet on the young lady. That’s plain to see. And she on him.’

‘Good Lord!’ Mike Lamprey ejaculated. ‘He must be forty! I’m sorry, sir.’

Mr Fox began a stately reproof but Alleyn said: ‘Go away, Mike. Go back to the stage. Wake Dr Rutherford and ask him to come here. I want a change from actors.’

Dr Rutherford, on his entry into the greenroom, was a figure of high fantasy. For his greater ease in sleeping he had pulled his boiled shirt from its confinement and it dangled fore and aft like a crumpled tabard. Restrained only by his slackened braces, it formed a mask, Alleyn conjectured, for a free adjustment of the doctor’s trouser buttoning. He had removed his jacket and assumed an overcoat. His collar was released and his tie dangled on his bosom. His hair was tousled and his face blotched.

He paused in the doorway while Lamprey announced him and then, with a dismissive gesture, addressed himself to Alleyn and Fox.