“Kind, kind,” she said, holding out her hand at her white arm’s length for Alleyn to do what he thought best with. “Good afternoon,” she said to Mr. Fox.

“Now, Miss Meade,” Alleyn said briskly, “what’s the matter?” He reminded himself of a mature Hamlet.

“Please sit down. No, please. I’ve been so terribly distressed and I need your advice so desperately.”

Alleyn sat, as she had indicated it, in a pink velvet buttoned chair. Mr. Fox took the least luxurious of the other chairs and Miss Meade herself sank upon a couch, tucked up her feet, which were beautiful, and leaned superbly over the arm to gaze at Alleyn. Her hair, coloured raven black for the Dark Lady, hung like a curtain over her right jaw and half her cheek. She raised a hand to it and then drew the hand away as if it had hurt her. Her left ear was exposed and embellished with a massive diamond pendant.

“This is so difficult,” she said.

“Perhaps we could fire point-blank.”

“Fire? Oh, I see. Yes. Yes, I must try, mustn’t I?”

“If you please.”

Her eyes never left Alleyn’s face. “It’s about—” she began and her voice resentfully indicated the presence of Mr. Fox. “It’s about me?”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I must be terribly frank. Or no. Why do I say that? To you of all people who, of course, understand—” she executed a circular movement of her arm—“everything. I know you do. I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t known. And you see I have Nowhere to Turn.”

“Oh, surely!”

“No. I mean that,” she said with great intensity. “I mean it. Nowhere. No one. It’s all so utterly unexpected. Everything seemed to be going along quite naturally and taking the inevitable course. Because—I know you’ll agree with this—one shouldn’t—indeed one can’t resist the inevitable. One is fated and when this new thing came into our lives we both faced up to it, he and I, oh, over and over again. It’s like,” she rather surprisingly added, “Anthony and Cleopatra. I forget the exact line. I think, actually, that in the production it was cut but it puts the whole thing in a nutshell, and I told him so. Ah, Cleopatra,” she mused, and such was her beauty and professional expertise that, there and then, lying (advantageously of course) on her sofa she became for a fleeting moment the Serpent of the old Nile. “But now,” she added crossly as she indicated a box of cigarettes that was not quite within her reach, “now, with him turning peculiar and violent like this I feel I simply don’t know him. I can’t cope. As I told you on the telephone, I’m terrified.”

When Alleyn leaned forward to light her cigarette he fancied that he caught a glint of appraisal and of wariness, but she blinked, moved her face nearer to his and gave him a look that was a masterpiece.

“Can you,” Alleyn said, “perhaps come to the point and tell us precisely why and of whom you are frightened. Miss Meade?”

“Wouldn’t one be? It was so utterly beyond the bounds of anything one could possibly anticipate. To come in almost without warning and I must tell you that of course he has his own key and by a hideous chance my married couple are out this afternoon. And then, after all that has passed between us to—to—”

She turned her head aside, swept back the heavy wing of her hair and superbly presented herself to Alleyn’s gaze.

“Look,” she said.

Unmistakably someone had slapped Miss Meade very smartly indeed across the right-hand rearward aspect of her face. She had removed the diamond earring on this side but its pendant had cut her skin behind the point of the jaw, and the red beginnings of a bruise showed across the cheek.

“What do you think of that?” she said.

“Did Grove do this!” Alleyn ejaculated.

She stared at him. An indescribable look of—what: pity? contempt? mere astonishment?—broke across her face. Her mouth twisted and she began to laugh.

“Oh you poor darling,” said Destiny Meade. “Harry? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. No, no, no, my dear, this is Mr. Marcus Knight. His Mark.”

Alleyn digested this information and Miss Meade watched him apparently with some relish.

“Do you mind telling me,” he said at length, “why all this blew up? I mean, specifically why. If, as I understand, you have finally broken with Knight.”

“I had,” she said, “but you see he hadn’t. Which made things so very tricky. And then he wouldn’t give me back the key. He has, now. He threw it at me.” She looked vaguely round the drawing-room. “It’s somewhere about,” she said. “It might have gone anywhere or broken anything. He so egotistic.”

“What had precipitated this final explosion, do you think?”

“Well—” She dropped the raven wing over her cheek again. “This and that. Harry, of course, has driven him quite frantic. It’s very bad of Harry and I never cease telling him so. And then it really was too unfortunate last night about the orchids.”

“The orchids?” Alleyn’s gaze travelled to a magnificent stand of them in a Venetian goblet.

“Yes, those,” she said. “Vass had them sent round during the show. I tucked his card in my décolletage like a sort of Victorian courtesan, you know, and in the big love scene Marco spotted it and whipped it out before I could do a thing. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t had that flare-up in the yacht a thousand years ago. He hadn’t realized before that I knew Vass so well. Personally, I mean. Vassy has got this thing about no publicity and of course I respect it. I understand. We just see each other quietly from time to time. He has a wonderful brain.”

“ ‘Vassy’? ‘Vass’?”

“Vassily, really. I call him Vass. Mr. Conducis.”

TEN

Monday

As Fox and Alleyn left the flat in Cheyne Walk they encountered in the downstairs entrance a little old man in a fusty overcoat and decrepit bowler. He seemed to be consulting a large envelope.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, touching the brim of the bowler, “but can you tell me if a lady be-the-namer Meade resides in these apartments? It seems to be the number but I can’t discover a name board or indication of any sort.”

Fox told him and he was much obliged.

When they were in the street Alleyn said: “Did you recognize him?”

“I had a sort of notion,” Fox said, “that I ought to. Who is he? He looks like a bum.”

“Which is what he is. He’s a Mr. Grimball who, twenty years ago and more, was the man in possession at the Lampreys.”

“God bless my soul!” Fox said. “Your memory!”

“Peregrine Jay did tell us that the Meade’s a compulsive gambler, didn’t he?”

“Well, I’ll be blowed! Fancy that! On top of all the other lot—in Queer Street. Wonder if Mr. Conducis—”

Fox continued in a series of scandalized ejaculations.

“We’re not due with Conducis for another hour and a half,” Alleyn said. “Stop clucking and get into the car. We’ll drive to the nearest box and ring the Yard in case there’s anything.”

“About the boy?”

“Yes. Yes. About the boy. Come on.”

Fox returned from the telephone box in measured haste.

“Hospital’s just rung through,” he said. “They think he’s coming round.”

“Quick as we can,” Alleyn said to the driver, and in fifteen minutes, with the sister and house-surgeon in attendance, they walked round the screens that hid Trevor’s bed in the children’s casualty ward at St Terence’s.

P.C. Grantley had returned to duty. When he saw Alleyn he hurriedly vacated his chair and Alleyn slipped into it.

“Anything?”

Grantley showed his notebook.

“It’s a pretty glove,” Alleyn read, but it doesn’t warm my hand. Take it off.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, sir. Nothing else, sir. Just that.”

“It’s a quotation from his part.”

Trevor’s eyes were closed and he breathed evenly. The sister brushed back his curls.