Alleyn said: “I’m sorry you’ve been kept so long. It’s been a beastly business for both of you. Now, I’m going to ask Mr. Fox to read over what you have already said to Mr. Gibson and his Sergeant and you shall tell us if, on consideration, this is a fair statement.”

Fox did this and they nodded and said yes: that was it.

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Then there’s only one other question. Did either of you happen to notice Trevor Vere’s fingernails?”

They stared at him and both repeated in pallid voices: “His fingernails?”

“Yes. You found him and I think you, Miss Dunne, stayed with him until he was taken away.”

Emily rubbed her knuckles in her eyes. “Oh dear,” she said, “I must pull myself together. Yes. Yes, of course I did. I stayed with him.”

“Perhaps you held his hand as one does with a sick child?”

“It’s hard to think of Trevor as a child,” Peregrine said. “He was born elderly. Sorry.”

“But I did,” Emily exclaimed. “You’re right. I felt his pulse and then, you know, I just went on holding his hand.”

“Looking at it?”

“Not specially. Not glaring at it. Although—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I remember I did sort of look at it. I moved it between my own hands and I remember noticing how grubby it was, which made it childish and—then—there was something—” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I thought he’d got rouge or carmine make-up under his nails and then I saw it wasn’t grease. It was fluff.”

“I tell you what,” Alleyn said. “We’ll put you up for the Police Medal, you excellent girl. Fox: get on to St. Terence’s Hospital and tell them it’s as much as their life is worth to dig out that boy’s nails. Tell our chap there he can clean them himself and put the harvest in an envelope and get a witness to it. Throw your bulk about. Get the top battleaxe and give her fits. Fly.”

Fox went off at a stately double.

“Now,” Alleyn said. “You may go, both of you. Where do you live?”

They told him. Blackfriars and Hempstead, respectively.

“We could shake you down, Emily,” Peregrine said. “Jeremy and I.”

“I’d like to go home, please, Perry. Could you call a taxi?”

“I think we can send you,” Alleyn said. “I shan’t need a car yet awhile and there’s a gaggle of them out there.”

Peregrine said: “I ought to wait for Greenslade, Emily.”

“Yes, of course you ought.”

“Well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll bundle you off to Hampstead, Miss Dunne. Where’s the Sergeant?”

“Here, sir,” said the Sergeant unexpectedly. He had come in from the foyer.

“What’s the matter?” Alleyn asked. “What’ve you got there?”

The Sergeant’s enormous hands were clapped together in front of him and arched a little as if they enclosed something that fluttered and might escape.

“Seventh row of the stalls, sir,” he said, “centre aisle. On the floor about six foot from where the boy lay. There was a black velvet kind of easel affair and a sheet of polythene laying near them.”

He opened his palms like a book and disclosed a little wrinkled glove and two scraps of paper.

“Would they be what was wanted?” asked the Sergeant.

“To me,” said Mr. Greenslade with palapable self-restraint, “there can be only one explanation, my dear Alleyn. The boy, who is, as Jay informs us, an unpleasant and mischievous boy, banged the door to suggest he’d gone but actually stayed behind and, having by some means learned the number of the combination, robbed the safe of its contents. He was caught in the act by Jobbins, who must have seen him from his post on the half-landing. As Jobbins made for him the boy, possibly by accident, overturned the pedestal. Jobbins was felled by the dolphin and the boy, terrified, ran into the circle and down the centre aisle. In his panic he ran too fast, stumbled across the balustrade, clutched at the velvet top and fell into the stalls. As he fell he let go the easel with the glove and papers and they dropped, as he did, into the aisle.”

Mr. Greenslade, looking, in his unshaven state, strangely unlike himself, spread his hands and threw himself back in Winter Meyer’s office chair. Peregrine sat behind his own desk and Alleyn and Fox in two of the modish seats reserved for visitors. The time was twelve minutes past three and the air stale with the aftermath of managerial cigarettes and drinks.

“You say nothing,” Mr. Greenslade observed. “You disagree?”

Alleyn said: “As an open-and-shut theory it has its attractions. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It means that we all sit back and hope for the boy to recover consciousness and health so that we can send him up to the Juvenile Court for manslaughter.”

“What I can’t quite see—” Peregrine began and then said, “Sorry.”

“No. Go on,” Alleyn said.

“I can’t see why the boy, having got the documents and glove, should come out to the circle foyer where he’d be sure to be seen by Jobbins on the half-landing. Why didn’t he go down through the circle by the box, stairs, and pass-door to the stage and let himself out by the stage-door?”

“He might have wanted to show off. He might have —I am persuaded,” Mr. Greenslade said crossly, “that your objections can be met.”

“There’s another thing,” Peregrine said, “and I should have thought of it before. At midnight, Jobbins had to make a routine report to police and fire-station. He’d do it from the open telephone in the downstairs foyer.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Greenslade. “That would give the boy his opportunity. What do you say, Alleyn?”

“As an investigating officer I’m supposed to say nothing,” Alleyn said lightly. “But since the people at the bistro up the lane and the wretched Hawkins all put Jay out of the picture as a suspect and you yourself appear to have been some thirty miles away—”

“Well, I must say!”

“—there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask you to consider under what circumstances the boy, still clutching his booty, could have fallen from the circle with his face towards the balustrade and as he fell have clawed at the velvet top, palms down in such a posture that he’s left nail-tracks almost parallel with the balustrade but slanting towards the outside. There are also traces of boot polish that suggest one of his feet brushed back the pile at the same time. I cannot, myself, reconcile these traces with a nose-dive over the balustrade. I can relate them to a blow to the jaw, a fall across the balustrade, a lift, a sidelong drag and a drop. I also think Jay’s objections are very well urged. There may be answers to them but at the moment I can’t think of any. What’s more, if the boy’s the thief and killer, who unshot the bolts and unslipped the iron bar on the little pass-door in the main front entrance? Who left the key in the lock and banged the door shut from outside?”

“Did someone do this?”

“That’s how things were when the police arrived.”

“I—I didn’t notice. I didn’t notice that,” Peregrine said, putting his hand to his eyes. “It was the shock, I suppose.”

“I expect it was.”

“Jobbins would have bolted the little door and dropped the bar when everyone had gone and I think he always hung the key in the corner beyond the box-office. No,” Peregrine said slowly, “I can’t see the boy doing that thing with the door. It doesn’t add up.”

“Not really, does it?” Alleyn said mildly.

“What action,” Mr. Greenslade asked, “do you propose to take?”

“The usual routine, and a very tedious affair it’s likely to prove. There may be useful prints on the pedestal or the dolphin itself but I’m inclined to think that the best we can hope for there is negative evidence. There may be prints on the safe but so far Sergeant Bailey has found none. The injuries to the boy’s face are interesting.”

“If he recovers consciousness,” Peregrine said, “he’ll tell the whole story.”

“Not if he’s responsible,” Mr. Greenslade said obstinately.