‘Fundamentally it was the fine flower of a natural antipathy. The contributive elements were his behaviour as an actor in My Play and the obvious and immediate necessity to return his niece to her squalid little métier and replace her by the wench. We had at each other on that issue,’ said Dr Rutherford with relish, ‘after both auditions and on every other occasion that presented itself.’

‘And in the end, it seems, you won?’

‘Pah!’ said the doctor with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Cat’s meat!’

Alleyn looked a little dubiously at the chaotic disarray of his garments. ‘Have you any objection,’ he asked, ‘to being searched?’

‘Not I,’ cried the doctor and hauled himself up from his chair. Fox approached him.

‘By the way,’ Alleyn said. ‘As a medical man, would you say that a punch on the jaw such as Bennington was given, could have been the cause of his fainting some time afterwards? Remembering his general condition?’

‘Who says he had a punch on the jaw? It’s probably a hypostatic discoloration. What do you want?’ Dr Rutherford demanded of Fox.

‘If you wouldn’t mind your taking your hands out of your pockets, sir,’ Fox suggested.

The doctor said: ‘Let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty,’ and obligingly withdrew his hands from his trouser pockets. Unfortunately he pulled the linings out with them. A number of objects fell about his feet—pencils, his snuffbox, scraps of paper, a pill-box, a programme, a notebook and a half-eaten cake of chocolate. A small cloud of snuff floated above this collection. Fox bent down and made a clucking sound of disapproval. He began to collect the scattered objects, inhaled snuff and was seized with a paroxysm of sneezing. The doctor broke into a fit of uncouth laughter and floundered damagingly among the exhibits.

‘Dr Rutherford,’ Alleyn said with an air of the liveliest exasperation, ‘I would be immensely obliged to you if you’d have the goodness to stop behaving like a pantaloon. Get off those things, if you please.’

The doctor backed away into his chair and examined an unlovely mess of chocolate and cardboard on the sole of his boot. ‘But, blast your lights my good ass,’ he said, ‘there goes my spare ration. An ounce of the best rapee, by heaven!’ Fox began to pick the fragments of the pill-box from his boot. Having collected and laid aside the dropped possessions, he scraped up a heap of snuff. ‘It’s no good now, Dogberry,’ said the doctor with an air of intense disapproval. Fox tipped the scrapings into an envelope.

Alleyn stood over the doctor. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you had better give this up, you know.’