Alleyn went to the door and looked into the passage, where Fox waited with Gibson. He shook his head and Fox went away. When Alleyn came back to her she looked up at him and said: “What else?”

“A question or two. Have you ever known or heard of a man called Otto Brod?”

Her eyes widened. “But what a strange question!” she said. “Otto Brod? Yes. He’s a Czech or an Austrian, I don’t remember which. An intellectual. We met him three years ago when we did a tour of the continent. He had written a play and asked my husband to read it. It was in German and Ben’s German wasn’t up to it. The idea was that he should get someone over here to look at it, but he was dreadfully bad at keeping those sorts of promises and I don’t think he ever did anything about it.”

“Have they kept in touch, do you know?”

“Oddly enough, Ben said a few days ago that he’d heard from Otto. I think he’d written from time to time for news of his play but I don’t suppose Ben answered.” She pressed her thumb and fingers on her eyes. “If you want to see the letter,” she said, “it’s in his coat.”

Alleyn said carefully: “You mean the jacket he wore to the theatre? Or his overcoat?”

“The jacket. He was always taking my cigarette case in mistake for his own. He took it out of his breastpocket when he was leaving for the theatre and the letter was with it.” She waited for a moment and then said: “He was rather odd about it.”

“In what way?” Alleyn asked. She had used Martyn’s very phrase, and now when she spoke again it was with the uncanny precision of a delayed echo: “He was rather strange in his manner. He held the letter out with the cigarette case and drew my attention to it. He said, I think: ‘That’s my trump card.’ He seemed to be pleased in a not very attractive way. I took my case. He put the letter back in his pocket and went straight out.”

“Did you get the impression he meant it was a trump card he could use against somebody?”

“Yes. I think I did.”

“And did you form any idea who that person could be?”

She leant forward and cupped her face in her hands. “Oh yes,” she said. “It seemed to me that it was I myself he meant. Or Adam. Or both of us. It sounded like a threat.” She looked up at Alleyn. “We’ve both got alibis, haven’t we? If it was murder.”

“You have, undoubtedly,” Alleyn said, and she looked frightened.

He asked her why she thought her husband had meant that the letter was a threat to herself or to Poole but she evaded this question, saying vaguely that she had felt it to be so.

“You didn’t come down to the theatre with your husband?” Alleyn said.

“No. He was ready before I was. And in any case—” She made a slight expressive gesture and didn’t complete her sentence. Alleyn said: “I think I must tell you that I know something of what happened during the afternoon.”

The colour that flooded her face ebbed painfully and left it very white. She said: “How do you know that? You can’t know.” She stopped and seemed to listen. They could just hear Poole in the next room. He sounded as if he was moving about irresolutely. She caught her breath and after a moment she said loudly: “Was it Jacko? No, no, it was never Jacko.”

“Your husband himself—” Alleyn began and she caught him up quickly. “Ben? Ah, I can believe that. I can believe he would boast of it. To one of the men. To J.G.? Was it J.G.? Or perhaps even to Gay?”

Alleyn said gently: “You must know I can’t answer questions like these.”

“It was never Jacko,” she repeated positively and he said: “I haven’t interviewed Mr. Doré yet.”

“Haven’t you? Good.”

“Did you like Otto Brod?”

She smiled slightly and lifted herself in her chair. Her face became secret and brilliant. “For a little while,” she said, “he was a fortunate man.”

“Fortunate?”

“For a little while I loved him.”

“Fortunate indeed,” said Alleyn.

“You put that very civilly, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Do you think there was some connection here? I mean between your relationship with Brod and the apparent threat when your husband showed you the letter?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think Ben realized. It was as brief as summer lightning, our affair.”

“On both parts?”

“Oh no,” she said, as if he had asked a foolish question. “Otto was very young, rather violent and dreadfully faithful, poor sweet. You are looking at me in an equivocal manner, Mr. Alleyn. Do you disapprove?”

Alleyn said formally: “Let us say that I am quite out of my depth with—”

“Why do you hesitate? With what?”

“I was going to say with a femme fatale,” said Alleyn.

“Have I been complimented again?”

He didn’t answer and after a moment she turned away as if she suddenly lost heart in some unguessed-at object she had had in mind.

“I suppose,” she said, “I may not ask you why you believe Ben was murdered?”

“I think you may. For one reason: his last act in the dressing-room was not consistent with suicide. He refurbished his make-up.”

“That’s penetrating of you,” she said. “It was an unsympathetic make-up. But I still believe he killed himself. He had much to regret and nothing in the wide world to look forward to. Except discomfiture.”

“The performance to-night, among other things, to regret?”

“Among all the other things. The change in casting, for one. It must have upset him very much. Because yesterday he thought he’d stopped what he called John’s nonsense about Gay. And there was his own behaviour, his hopeless, hopeless degradation. He had given up, Mr. Alleyn. Believe me, he had quite given up. You will find I’m right, I promise you.”

“I wish I may,” Alleyn said. “And I think that’s all at the moment. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with my job.”

“Get on with it, then,” she said and looked amused. She watched him go and he wondered after he’d shut the door if her expression had changed.

Adam Poole greeted Alleyn with a sort of controlled impatience. He had changed and was on his feet. Apparently Alleyn had interrupted an aimless promenade about the room.

“Well?” he said. “Are you any further on? Or am I not supposed to ask?”

“A good deal further, I think,” Alleyn said. “I want a word with you, if I may have it, and then with Mr. Doré. I shall then have something to say to all of you. After that I think we shall know where we are.”

“And you’re convinced, are you, that Bennington was murdered?”

“Yes, I’m quite convinced of that.”

“I wish to God I knew why.”

“I’ll tell you,” Alleyn said, “before the night is out.”

Poole faced him. “I can’t believe it,” he said, “of any of us. It’s quite incredible.” He looked at the wall between his own room and Helena’s. “I could hear your voices in there,” he said. “Is she all right?”

“She’s perfectly composed.”

“I don’t know why you wanted to talk to her at all.”

“I had three things to say to Miss Hamilton. I asked her if she wanted to see her husband before he was taken away. She didn’t want to do so. Then I told her that I knew about an event of yesterday afternoon.”

“What event?” Poole demanded sharply.

“I mean an encounter between her husband and herself.”

“How the hell did you hear about that?”

“You know of it yourself, evidently.”

Poole said: “Yes, all right. I knew,” and then, as if the notion had just come to him and filled him with astonishment, he exclaimed: “Good God, I believe you think it’s a motive for me!” He thrust his hand through his hair. “That’s about as ironical an idea as one could possibly imagine.” He stared at Alleyn. An onlooker coming into the room at that moment would have thought that the two men had something in common and a liking for each other. “You can’t imagine,” Poole said, “how inappropriate that idea is.”

“I haven’t yet said I entertain it, you know.”

“It’s not surprising if you do. After all, I suppose I could, fantastically, have galloped from the stage to Ben’s room, laid him out, turned the gas on and doubled back in time to re-enter! Do you know what my line of re-entry is in the play?”