‘To my knowledge,’ said the doctor, ‘none whatever. There may have been a rude mechanical or so.’

‘As far as your presence in the box is concerned there was the audience. Nine hundred of them.’

‘In spite of its mangling at the hands of two of the actors, I believe the attention of the audience to have been upon My Play. In any case,’ the doctor added, helping himself to a particularly large pinch of snuff and holding it poised before his face, ‘I had shrunk in modest confusion behind the curtain.’

‘Perhaps someone visited you?’

‘Not after the first act. I locked myself in,’ he added, taking his snuff with uncouth noises, ‘as a precautionary measure. I loathe company.’

‘Did you come back-stage at any other time during the performance?’

‘I did. I came back in both intervals. Primarily to see the little wench.’

‘Miss Tarne?’ Alleyn ventured.

‘She. A tidy little wench it is and will make a good player. If she doesn’t allow herself to be debauched by the sissies that rule the roost in our lamentable theatre.’

‘Did you, during either of these intervals, visit the dressing-rooms?’

‘I went to the usual office at the end of the passage if you call that a dressing-room.’

‘And returned to your box—when?’

‘As soon as the curtain went up.’

‘I see.’ Alleyn thought for a moment and then said: ‘Dr Rutherford, do you know anything about a man called Otto Brod?’

The doctor gave a formidable gasp. His eyes bulged, his nostrils wrinkled and his jaw dropped. The grimace turned out to be the preliminary spasm of a gargantuan sneeze. A handkerchief not being at his disposal, he snatched up the tail of his shirt, clapped it to his face and revealed a state of astonishing disorder below the waist.

‘Otto Brod?’ he repeated looking at Alleyn over his shirt tail as if it was an improvised yashmak. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘His correspondence seems to be of some value,’ Alleyn said vaguely but the doctor merely gaped at him. ‘I don’t,’ he said flatly, ‘know what you’re talking about.’

Alleyn gave up Otto Brod. ‘You’ll have guessed,’ he said, ‘that I’ve already heard a good deal about the events of the last few days: I mean as they concerned the final rehearsals and the change in casting.’

‘Indeed? Then you will have heard that Ben and I had one flaming row after another. If you’re looking for motive,’ said Dr Rutherford with an expansive gesture, ‘I’m lousy with it. We hated each other’s guts, Ben and I. Of the two I should say, however, that he was the more murderously inclined.’

‘Was this feeling chiefly on account of the part his niece was to have played?’