‘The post-mortem,’ Alleyn said, ‘will of course settle this one way or the other. It will be exhaustive. Now, it’s quite certain that the dresser didn’t go into the room after Mr Bennington entered it this last time and it is equally certain that the dresser left it in good order—the powder-pad prepared, the clothes hung up, the fire burning and the door unlocked. It is also certain that the powder was not overturned by the men who carried Mr Bennington out. It was spilt by someone who was in the room after he was on the floor with the coat over his head. This person, the police will maintain, was his murderer. Now, the question arises, doesn’t it, how it came about that he was in such a condition—comatose or unconscious—that it was possible to get him down on the floor, put out the gas-fire, and then disengage the connecting tube, put the rubber end in his mouth and turn the gas on again, get his fingerprints on the wing-tap and cover him with his own overcoat. There is still about one sixth of brandy left in his flask. He was not too drunk to make up his own face and he was more or less his own man, though not completely so, when he spoke to Miss Tarne just before he went into his room. During the second interval Mr Darcey hit him on the jaw and raised a bruise. I suppose it is possible that his murderer hit him again on the same spot—there is no other bruise—and knocked him out. A close examination of the bruise may show if this was so. In that case the murderer would need to pay only one visit to the room: he would simply walk in, a few minutes before the final curtain, knock his victim out and set the stage for apparent suicide.

‘On the other hand it’s possible that he was drugged.’

He waited for a moment. Helena Hamilton said: ‘I don’t believe in all this. I don’t mean, Mr Alleyn, that I think you’re wrong: I mean it just sounds unreal and rather commonplace like a case reported in a newspaper. One knows that probably it’s all happened but one doesn’t actively believe it. I’m sorry I interrupted.’