“Damn, I missed that one. It’s an easy one, too.”

“Having done this he goes downstairs, gets the key, unlocks the pass-door in the front entrance, pulls the bolts, unslips the iron bar, lets himself out and slams the door. There’s a good chance that Hawkins, busily boiling up on the far side of the iron curtain, won’t hear it or if he does won’t worry. He’s a coolish customer, is our customer, but the arrival of Trevor and then Hawkins and still more the knowledge of what he has done—he didn’t plan to murder—having rattled him. He can’t do one thing.”

“Pick up the swag?”

“Just that. It’s gone overboard with Trevor.”

“Maddening for him,” said Mr. Fox primly. He contemplated Alleyn for some seconds.

“Mind you,” he said, “I’ll give you this. If it was Jobbins and not a murderer rigged out in Jobbins’s coat we’re left with a crime that took place after Jobbins talked to Hawkins and before Hawkins came round with the tea and found the body.”

“And with a murderer who was close by during the conversation and managed to work the combination, open the safe, extract the loot, kill Jobbins, half kill Trevor, do his stuff with the door and sling his hook—all within the five minutes it took Hawkins to boil up.”

“Well,” Fox said after consideration, “it’s impossible, I’ll say that for it. It’s impossible. And what’s that look mean, I wonder,” he added.

“Get young Jeremy Jones in and find out,” said Alleyn.

When Harry Grove came out of the office he was all smiles. “I bet you lot wonder if I’ve been putting your pots on,” he said brightly. “I haven’t really. I mean not beyond mentioning that you all hate my guts, which they could hardly avoid detecting, one would think.”

They can’t detect something that’s nonexistent,” Peregrine said crisply. “I don’t hate your silly guts, Harry. I think you’re a bloody bore when you do your enfant terrible stuff. I think you can be quite idiotically mischievous and more than a little spiteful. But I don’t hate your guts: I rather like you.”

“Perry: how splendidly detached! And Jeremy?”

Jeremy, looking as if he found the conversation unpalatable, said impatiently: “Good God, what’s it matter! What a lot of balls.”

“And Winty?” Harry said.

Meyer looked very coolly at him. “I should waste my time hating your guts?” He spread his hands. “What nonsense,” he said. “I am much too busy.”

“So, in the absence of Charlie and the girls, we find ourselves left with the King Dolphin.”

As soon as Harry had reappeared Marcus Knight had moved to the far end of the circle foyer. He now turned and said with dignity: “I absolutely refuse to have any part of this,” and ruined everything by shouting: “And I will not suffer this senseless, this insolent, this insufferable name-coining.”

“Ping!” said Harry. “Great strength rings the bell. I wonder if the Elegant Rozzer in there heard you. I must be off. Best of British luck—” he caught himself up on this familiar quotation from Jobbins and looked miserable. “That,” he said, “was not intentional,” and took himself off.

Marcus Knight at once went into what Peregrine had come to think of as his First Degree of temperament. It took the outward form of sweet reason. He spoke in a deathly quiet voice, used only restrained gesture and, although that nerve jumped up and down under his empurpled cheek, maintained a dreadful show of equanimity.

“This may not be, indeed emphatically is not, an appropriate moment to speculate upon the continued employment of this person. One has been given to understand that the policy is adopted at the instigation of the Management. I will be obliged, Winter, if at the first opportunity, you convey to the Management my intention, unless Hartly Grove is relieved of his part, of bringing my contract to its earliest possible conclusion. My agents will deal with the formalities.”

At this point, under normal circumstances he would undoubtedly have effected a smashing exit. He looked restlessly at the doors and stairways and, as an alternative, flung himself into one of the Victorian settees that Jeremy had caused to be placed about the circle foyer. Here he adopted a civilized and faintly Corinthian posture but looked, nevertheless, as if he would sizzle when touched.

“My dear, dear Perry and my dear Winty,” he said. “Please do take this as definite. I am sorry, sorry, sorry that it should be so. But there it is.”

Perry and Meyer exchanged wary glances. Jeremy, who had looked utterly miserable from the time he came in, sighed deeply.

Peregrine said, “Marco, may we, of your charity, discuss this a little later? The horrible thing that happened last night is such a black problem for all of us. I concede everything you may say about Harry. He behaves atrociously and under normal circumstances would have been given his marching orders long ago. If there’s any more of this sort of thing I’ll speak about it to Greenslade and if he feels he can’t take a hand I shall—I’ll go to Conducis himself and tell him I can no longer stomach his protégé. But in the meantime—please be patient, Marco.”

Marcus waved his hand. The gesture was beautiful and ambiguous. It might have indicated dismissal, magniloquence or implacable fury. He gazed at the ceiling, folded his arms and crossed his legs.

Winter Meyer stared at Peregrine and then cast up his eyes and very, very slightly rolled his head.

Inspector Fox came out of the office and said that if Mr. Jeremy Jones was free Superintendent Alleyn would be grateful if he could spare him a moment.

Peregrine, watching Jeremy go, suffered pangs of an undefined anxiety.

When Jeremy came into the office he found Alleyn seated at Winter Meyer’s desk with his investigation kit open before him and, alongside that, a copy of The Times. Jeremy stood very still just inside the door. Alleyn asked him to sit down and offered him a cigarette.

“I’ve changed to a pipe. Thank you, though.”

“So have I. Go ahead, if you want to.”

Jeremy pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch. His hands were steady but looked self-conscious.

“I’ve asked yon to come in,” Alleyn said, “on a notion that may quite possibly turn out to be totally irrelevant. If so you’ll have to excuse me. You did the decor for this production, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“If I may say so it seemed to me to be extraordinarily right. It always fascinates me to see the tone and character of a play reflected by its background without the background itself becoming too insistent.”

“It often does.”

“Not in this instance, I thought. You and Jay share a flat, don’t you? I suppose you collaborated over the whole job?”

“Oh, yes,” Jeremy said and, as if aware of being unforthcoming, he added: “It worked all right.”

“They tell me you’ve got a piece of that nice shop in Walton Street and are an authority on historic costume.”

“That’s putting it much too high.”

“Well, anyway, you designed the clothes and props for this show?”

“Yes.”

“The gloves for instance,” Alleyn said and lifted his copy of The Times from the desk. The gloves used in the play lay neatly together on Winter Meyer’s blotting pad.

Jeremy said nothing.

“Wonderfully accurate copies. And, of course,” Alleyn went on, “I saw you arranging the real glove and the documents on the velvet easel and putting them in the safe. That morning in the theatre some six months ago. I was there, you may remember.”

Jeremy half rose and then checked himself. “That’s right,” he said.

Alleyn lifted a tissue paper packet out of his open case, put it near Jeremy on the desk and carefully folded back the wrapping. He exposed a small, wrinkled, stained, embroidered and tasselled glove.

“This would be it?” he asked.