He was again about to withdraw when his sergeant came in at the OP entrance.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ the sergeant said in what Martyn, for one, felt was the regulation manner. ‘Very sorry to keep you, I’m sure. Sad business. In these cases we have to do a routine check-up as you might say. My superior officers will be here in a moment and then, I hope, we shan’t be long. Thank you.’

He tramped across the stage, said something inaudible to the constable and was heard to go into the dock. The constable took a chair from the prompt corner, placed it in the proscenium entrance and, with a modest air, sat on it. His glance fell upon Martyn and he smiled at her. They were the youngest persons there and it was as if they signalled in a friendly manner to each other. In turning away from this pleasant exchange, Martyn found that Poole was watching her with fixed and, it seemed, angry glare. To her fury she found that she was very much disturbed by this circumstance.

They had by this time all cleaned their faces. Helena Hamilton with an unsteady hand put on a light street make-up. The men looked ghastly in the cold working lights that bleakly illuminated the stage.

Parry Percival said fretfully: ‘Well, I must say I do not see the smallest point in our hanging about like this.’

The constable was about to answer when they all heard sounds of arrival at the stage-door. He said: ‘This will be the party from the Yard, sir,’ and crossed to the far exit. The sergeant was heard to join him there.

There was a brief conversation off-stage. A voice said: ‘You two go round with Gibson then, will you? I’ll join you in a moment.’

The young constable reappeared to usher in a tall man in plain clothes.

‘Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn,’ he said.

Martyn, in her weary pilgrimage round the West End, had seen men of whom Alleyn at first reminded her. In the neighbourhood of the St James’s Theatre, they had emerged from clubs, from restaurants and from enchanting and preposterous shops. There had been something in their bearing and their clothes that gave them a precise definition. But when she looked more closely at Inspector Alleyn’s face, this association became modified. It was a spare and scholarly face with a monkish look about it.

Martyn had formed the habit of thinking of people’s voices in terms of colour. Helena Hamilton’s voice, for instance, was for Martyn golden, Gay Gainsford’s pink, Darcey’s brown and Adam Poole’s violet. When Alleyn spoke she decided that his voice was a royal blue of the clearest sort.

Reminding herself that this was no time to indulge this freakish habit of classification she gave him her full attention.