Poole lifted his head. His face was very white and a lock of black hair had fallen over his forehead turning him momentarily into the likeness, Martyn thought inconsequently, of Michelangelo’s ‘Adam’. He said: ‘There’s the fact itself, Alleyn. There’s what he did.’

Alleyn said carefully: ‘There’s an interval of perhaps eight minutes between what he said and when he was found.’

‘Look here—’ Parry Percival began and then relapsed. ‘Let it pass,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Pipe up, Narcissus,’ Dr Rutherford adjured him, ‘the inspector won’t bite you.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Parry shouted and was awarded a complete and astonished silence. He rose and addressed himself to the players. ‘You’re all being so bloody frank and sensible about this suicide,’ he said. ‘You’re so anxious to show everybody how honest you are. The doctor’s so unconcerned he can even spare a moment to indulge in his favourite pastime of me-baiting. I know what the doctor thinks of me and it doesn’t say much for his talents as a diagnostician. But if it’s Queer to feel desperately sorry for a man who was miserable enough to choke himself to death at a gas-jet, if it’s Queer to be physically and mentally sick at the thought of it then, by God, I’d rather be Queer than normal. Now!’

There followed a silence broken only by the faint whisper of the young constable’s pencil.

Doctor Rutherford struggled to his feet and lumbered down to Parry.

‘Your argument, my young coxcomb,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘is as seaworthy as a sieve. As for my diagnosis, if you’re the normal man you’d have me believe, why the hell don’t you show like one? You exhibit the stigmata of that waterfly whom it is a vice to know, and fly into a fit when the inevitable conclusion is drawn.’ He took Parry by the elbow and addressed himself to the company in the manner of a lecturer. ‘A phenomenon,’ he said, ‘that is not without its dim interest. I invite your attention. Here is an alleged actor who, an hour or two since, was made a public and egregious figure of fun by the deceased. Who was roasted by the deceased before an audience of a thousand whinnying nincompoops? Who allowed his performance to be prostituted by the deceased before this audience? Who before his final and most welcome exit suffered himself to be tripped up contemptuously by the deceased, and who fell on his painted face before this audience? Here is this phenomenon, ladies and gents, who now proposes himself as Exhibit A in the Compassion Stakes. I invite your—’

Poole said: ‘Quiet!’ and when Dr Rutherford grinned at him added: ‘I meant it, John. You will be quiet if you please.’

Parry wrenched himself free from the doctor and turned on Alleyn. ‘You’re supposed to be in charge here—’ he began and Poole said quickly: ‘Yes, Alleyn, I really do think that this discussion is getting quite fantastically out of hand. If we’re all satisfied that this case of suicide—’