The doctor favoured him with an antic grimace but said nothing. ‘You’re putting on an act, Dr Rutherford, and I do assure you it’s not at all convincing. As a red-herring it stinks to high heaven. Let me tell you this. We now know that Bennington was hit over the jaw. We know when it happened. We know that the bruise was afterwards camouflaged with make-up. I want you to come with me while I remove this make-up. Where’s your jacket?’

‘Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.’

Fox went out and returned with a tail-coat that was in great disorder. ‘Nothing in the pockets, Mr Alleyn,’ he said briefly. Alleyn nodded and he handed it to Dr Rutherford who slung it over his shoulder.

Alleyn led the way down the passage where Gibson was still on guard and round the back of the stage to the dock. PC Lamprey came off the set and rolled the doors back.

Bennington had stiffened a little since they last looked at him. His face bore the expression of knowledgeable acquiescence that is so often seen in the dead. Using the back of a knife-blade, Alleyn scraped away the greasepaint from the left jaw. Fox held a piece of card for him and he laid smears of greasepaint on it in the manner of a painter setting his palette. The discoloured mark on the jaw showed clearly.

‘There it is,’ Alleyn said, and stood aside for Dr Rutherford.

‘A tidy buffet, if buffet it was. Who gave it him?’

Alleyn didn’t answer. He moved round to the other side and went on cleaning the face.

‘The notion that it could have contributed to his death,’ the doctor said, ‘is preposterous. If, as you say, there was an interval between the blow and the supposed collapse. Preposterous!’

Fox had brought cream and a towel with which Alleyn now completed his task. The doctor watched him with an air of impatience and unease. ‘Damned if I know why you keep me hanging about,’ he grumbled at last.

‘I wanted your opinion on the bruise. That’s all, Fox. Is the mortuary van here?’

‘On its way, sir,’ said Fox who was wrapping his piece of card in paper.

Alleyn looked at the doctor. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that his wife will want to see him?’

‘She won’t want to. She may think she ought to. Humbug, in my opinion. Distress herself for nothing. What good does it do anybody?’

‘I think, however, I should at least ask her.’

‘Why the blazes you can’t let her go home, passes my comprehension. And where do I go, now? I’m getting damn bored with Ben’s company.’

‘You may wait either on the stage or, if you’d rather, in the unoccupied dressing-room. Or the office, I think, is open.’