“Chief Inspector Alleyn,” said P. C. Lamprey, “is in the Greenroom I think, Miss.”

“My dear, you do it quite marvellously. You ought, again to coin a phrase, to go on the stage.”

Evidently Miss Gainsford lingered in the passage.

Alleyn heard his subordinate murmur: “Shall I go first?” His regulation boots clumped firmly to the door, which he now opened.

“Will you see Miss Gainsford, sir?” asked P. C. Lamprey, who was pink in the face.

“All right, Mike,” Alleyn said. “Show her in and take notes.”

“Will you come this way, Miss?”

Miss Gainsford made her entrance with a Mayfairish gallantry that was singularly dated. Alleyn wondered if she had decided that her first reading of her new role was mistaken. “She’s abandoned the brave little woman for the suffering mondaine who goes down with an epigram,” he thought, and sure enough, Miss Gainsford addressed herself to him with staccato utterance and brittle high-handedness.

“Ought one to be terribly flattered because one is the first to be grilled?” she asked. “Or is it a sinister little hint that one is top of the suspect list?”

“We have to start somewhere,” Alleyn said. “I thought it might be convenient to see you first. Will you sit down, Miss Gainsford?”

She did so elaborately, gave herself a cigarette, and turned to P. C. Lamprey. “May one ask The Force for a light,” she asked, “or would that be against the rules?”

Alleyn lit her cigarette while his unhappy subordinate retired to the table. She turned in her chair to watch him. “Is he going to take me down and use it all in evidence against me?” she asked. Her nostrils dilated, she raised her chin and added jerkily, “That’s what’s called the Usual Warning, isn’t it?”

“A warning is given in police practice,” Alleyn said as woodenly as. possible, “if there is any chance that the person under interrogation will make a statement that is damaging to himself. Lamprey will note down this interview and, if it seems advisable, you will be asked later on to give a signed statement.”

“If that was meant to be reassuring,” said Miss Gainsford, “I can’t have heard it properly. Could we get cracking?”

“Certainly. Miss Gainsford, you were in the Greenroom throughout the performance. During the last interval you were visited by Mr. J. G. Darcey and by your uncle. Do you agree that as the result of something the deceased said, Mr. Darcey hit him on the jaw?”

She said: “Wasn’t it too embarrassing! I mean the Gorgeous Primitive Beast is one thing, but one old gentleman banging another about is so utterly another. I’m afraid I didn’t put that very clearly.”

“You agree that Mr. Darcey hit Mr. Bennington?”

“But madly. Like a sledge-hammer. I found it so difficult to know what to say. There just seemed to be no clue to further conversation.”

“It is the conversation before than after the blow that I should like to hear about, if you please.”

Alleyn had turned away from her and was looking at Jacko’s portrait of Poole. He waited for some moments before she said sharply: “I suppose you think because I talk like this about it I’ve got no feeling. You couldn’t be more at fault.” It was as if she called his attention to her performance.

He said, without turning: “I assure you I hadn’t given it a thought. What did your uncle say that angered Mr. Darcey?”

“He was upset,” she said sulkily, “because I was ill and couldn’t play.”

“Hardly an occasion for hitting him.”

“J.G. is very sensitive about me. He treats me like a piece of china.”

“Which is more than he did for your uncle, it seems.”

“Uncle Ben talked rather wildly.” Miss Gainsford seemed to grope for her poise and made a half-hearted return to her brittle manner. “Let’s face it,” she said, “he was stinking, poor pet.”

“You mean he was drunk?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And abusive?”

“I didn’t care. I understood him.”

“Did he talk about Miss Hamilton?”

“Obviously J.G.’s already told you he did, so why ask me?”

“We like to get confirmation of statements.”

“Well, you tell me what he said and I’ll see about confirming it.”

For the first time Alleyn looked at her. She wore an expression of rather frightened impertinence. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that won’t quite do. I’m sure you’re very anxious to get away from the theatre, Miss Gainsford, and we’ve still a lot of work before us. If you will give me your account of this conversation I shall be glad to hear it; if you prefer not to do so I’ll take note of your refusal and keep you no longer.”

She gaped slightly, attempted a laugh and seemed to gather up the rags of her impersonation.

“Oh, but I’ll tell you,” she said. “Why not? It’s only that there’s so pathetically little to tell. I can’t help feeling darling Aunty — she likes me to call her Helena — was too Pinero and Galsworthy about it. It appears that poorest Uncle Ben came in from his club and found her in a suitable setting and — well, there you are, and — well, really, even after all these years of segregation, you couldn’t call it a seduction. Or could you? Anyway, she chose to treat it as such and raised the most piercing hue-and-cry and he went all primitive and when he came in here he was evidently in the throes of a sort of hangover, and seeing J.G. was being rather sweet to me he put a sinister interpretation on it and described the whole incident and was rather rude about women generally and me and Aunty in particular. And J.G. took a gloomy view of his attitude and hit him. And, I mean, taking it by and large one can’t help feeling: what a song and dance about nothing in particular. Is that all you wanted to know?”

“Do you think any other members of the company know of all this?”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Oh yes,” she said. “Adam and Jacko, anyway. I mean Uncle Ben appeared to have a sort of nation-wide hook-up idea about it but even if he didn’t mention it, she’d naturally tell Adam, wouldn’t you think? And Jacko, because everybody tells Jacko everything. And he was doing dresser for her. Yes, I’d certainly think she’d tell Jacko.”

“I see. Thank you, Miss Gainsford. That’s all.”

“Really?” She was on her feet. “I can go home?”

Alleyn answered her as he had answered J.G. “I’m sorry, not yet. Not just yet.”

P. C. Lamprey opened the door. Inevitably, she paused on the threshold. “Never tell me there’s nothing in atmosphere,” she said. “I knew when I came into this theatre. As if the very walls screamed it at me. I knew.”

She went out.

“Tell me, Mike,” Alleyn said, “are many young women of your generation like that?”

“Well, no, sir. She’s what one might call a composite picture, don’t you think?”

“I do, indeed. And I fancy she’s got her genres a bit confused.”

“She tells me she’s been playing in Private Lives, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Sleeping Partners in the provinces.”

“That may account for it,” said Alleyn.

An agitated voice — Parry Percival’s — was raised in the passage, to be answered in a more subdued manner by Sergeant Gibson’s.

“Go and see what it is, Mike,” Alleyn said.

But before Lamprey could reach the door it was flung open and Parry burst in, slamming it in Gibson’s affronted face. He addressed himself instantly and breathlessly to Alleyn.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve just remembered something. I’ve been so hideously upset, I just simply never gave it a thought. It was when I smelt gas. When I went back to my room, I smelt gas and I turned off my fire. I ought to have told you. I’ve just realized.”

“I think perhaps what you have just realized,” Alleyn said, “is the probability of our testing your gas fire for finger-prints and finding your own.”