“I can’t say I’m wolfishly ravenous.”

“One must eat.”

Emily said, “You can’t possibly tell when you’ll get off. The pub’s no good, nor is The Younger Dolphin. They’ll both be seething with curiosity and reporters. I’ll buy some ham rolls and go down to the wharf below Phipps Passage. There’s a bit of a wall one can sit on.”

“I’ll join you if I can. Don’t bolt your rolls and hurry away. It’s a golden day on the river.”

“Look,” Emily said. “What’s Harry up to now!”

Harry was tapping on the office door. Apparently in answer to a summons he opened it and went in.

Emily left the theatre by the circle and pass-door. Peregrine joined a smouldering Marcus Knight and an anxious Winter Meyer. Presently Jeremy returned, obviously flown with gratification.

On the far side of the office door Harry Grove confronted Alleyn.

His manner quite changed. He was quiet and direct and spoke without affectation.

“I daresay,” he said, “I haven’t commended myself to you as a maker of statements, but a minute or two ago—after I had been sent out in disgrace, you know — I remembered something. It may have no bearing on the case whatever but I think perhaps I ought to leave it to you to decide.”

“That,” Alleyn said, “by and large, is the general idea we like to establish.”

Harry smiled. “Well then,” he said, “here goes. It’s rumoured that when the night watchman, whatever he’s called—”

“Hawkins.”

“That when Hawkins found Jobbins and, I suppose, when you saw him, he was wearing a light overcoat.”

“Yes.”

“Was it a rather large brown and white check with an overcheck of black?”

“It was.”

“Loudish, one might say?”

“One might, indeed.”

“Yes. Well, I gave him that coat on Friday evening.”

“Your name is still on the inside pocket tag.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. “The wind,” he said, “to coin a phrase, has departed from my sails. I’d better chug off under my own steam. I’m sorry, Mr. Alleyn. Exit actor, looking crestfallen.”

“No, wait a bit, as you are here. I’d like to know what bearing you think this might have on the case. Sit down. Confide in us.”

“May I?” Harry said, surprised. “Thank you, I’d like to.”

He sat down and looked fully at Alleyn. “I don’t always mean to behave as badly as in fact I do,” he said and went on quickly: “About the coat. I don’t think I attached any great importance to it. But just now you did rather seem to make a point of what he was wearing. I couldn’t quite see what the point was but it seemed to me I’d better tell you that until Friday evening the coat had been mine.”

“Why on earth didn’t you say so there and then?”

Harry flushed scarlet. His chin lifted and he spoke rapidly as if by compulsion. “Everybody,” he said, “was fabulously amusing about my coat. In the hearty, public-school manner, you know. Frightfully nice chaps. Jolly good show. I need not, of course, tell you that I am not even a prodnct of one of our Dear Old Minor Public Schools. Or, if it comes to that, of a county school like the Great King Dolphin.”

“Knight?”

“That’s right but it’s slipped his memory.”

“You do dislike him, don’t you?”

“Not half as heartily as he dislikes me,” Harry said and gave a short laugh. “I know I sound disagreeable. You see before you, Superintendent, yet another slum kid with a chip like a Yule log on his shoulder. I take it out in clowning.”

“But,” Alleyn said mildly, “is your profession absolutely riddled with old Etonians?”

Harry grinned. “Well, no,” he said. “But I assure you there are enough more striking and less illustrious O.B. ties to strangle all the extras in a battle scene for Armageddon. As a rank outsider I find the network nauseating. Sorry. No doubt you’re a product yourself. Of Eton, I mean.”

“So you’re a post-Angry at heart? Is that it?”

“Only sometimes. I compensate. They’re afraid of my tongue, or I like to think they are.”

He waited for a moment and then said: “None of this, by the way and for what it’s worth, applies to Peregrine Jay. I’ve no complaints about him: he has not roused my lower-middle-class rancour and I do not try to score off him. He’s a gifted playwright, a good producer and a very decent citizen. Perry’s all right.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the others. They were arrogant about your coat, you considered?”

“The comedy line was relentlessly pursued. Charles affected to have the dazzles. Gertrude, dear girl, shuddered like a castanet. There were lots of asides. And even the lady of my heart professed distaste and begged me to shuffle off my checkered career-coat. So I did. Henry Jobbins was wheezing away at the stage-door saying his chubes were chronic and believe it or not I did a sort of your-need-is-greater-than-mine thing, which I could, of course, perfectly well afford. I took it off there and then and gave it to him. There was,” Harry said loudly, “and is, absolutely no merit in this gesture. I simply off-loaded an irksome vulgar mistaken choice on somebody who happened to find it acceptable. He was a good bloke, was old Henry. A good bloke.”

“Did anyone know of this spontaneous gift?”

“No. Oh, I suppose the man that relieved him did. Hawkins. Henry Jobbins told me this chap had been struck all of a heap by the overcoat when he came in on Friday night.”

“But nobody else, you think, knew of the exchange?”

“I asked Jobbins not to say anything. I really could not have stomached the recrudescence of comedy that the incident would have evoked.” Harry looked sidelong at Alleyn. “You’re a dangerous man, Superintendent. You’ve missed your vocation. You’d have been a wow on the receiving side of the confessional grille.”

“No comment,” said Alleyn and they both laughed.

Alleyn said, “Look here. Would anyone expect to find you in the realm of the front foyer after the show?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Immediately after. Winty Meyer for one. I’ve been working in a T.V. show and there’s been a lot of carry-on about calls. In the event of any last-minute changes I arranged for them to ring this theatre and I’ve been looking in at the office after the show in case there was a message.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Last night, though, I didn’t go round because the telly thing’s finished. And anyway I was bound for Dessy Meade’s party. She commanded me, as you’ve heard, to fetch my guitar and I lit off for Canonbury to get it.”

“Did you arrive at Miss Meade’s flat in Cheyne Walk before or after she and her other guests did?”

“Almost a dead heat. I was parking when they arrived. They’d been to the little joint in Wharfingers Lane, I understand.”

“Anyone hear or see you at your own flat in Canonbury?”

“The man in the flat overhead may have heard me. He complains that I wake him up every night. The telephone rang while I was in the loo. That would be round about eleven. Wrong number. I daresay it woke him but I don’t know. I was only there long enough to give myself a drink, have a wash, pick up the guitar and out.”

“What’s this other flatter’s name?”

Harry gave it. “Well,” he said cheerfully. “I hope I did wake him, poor bugger.”

“We’ll find out, shall we? Fox?”

Mr. Fox telephoned Harry’s neighbour, explaining that he was a telephone operative checking a faulty line. He extracted the information that Harry’s telephone had indeed rung just as the neighbour had turned his light off at eleven o’clock.

“Well, God bless him, anyway,” said Harry.

“To go back to your overcoat. Was there a yellow silk scarf in the pocket?”

“There was indeed. With an elegant H embroidered by a devoted if slightly witchlike and acquisitive hand. The initial was appropriate at least. Henry J. was as pleased as punch, poor old donkey.”

“You liked him very much, didn’t you?”