‘Do you really think so?’ Alleyn said with such gravity that Cliff looked fixedly at him and turned red. ‘If you can spare the time,’ Alleyn went on, ‘I’d like to lend you a manual on police law. It would give you an immense feeling of security. You would learn from it that I am forbidden to quote in a court of law anything that you tell me about your relationship with Mrs Rubrick unless it is to read aloud a statement that you’ve signed before witnesses. And I’m not asking you to do that. I’m asking you to give me the facts of the case, so that I can make up my mind whether they have any bearing on her death.’

‘They haven’t.’

‘Very good. What are they?’

Cliff bent forward, driving his fingers through his hair. Alleyn felt suddenly impatient. ‘But it is the impatience,’ he thought, ‘of a middle-aged man,’ and he reminded himself of the enclosed tragedies of youth. ‘Like green figs,’ he said to himself, ‘closed in upon themselves. He is not yet eighteen,’ he thought, growing more tolerant, ‘and I bring a code to bear upon him.’ Then, since the habit was habitual with him, he disciplined his thoughts and prepared himself for another assault upon Cliff’s over-tragic silence. Before he could speak, Cliff raised his head and spoke with simplicity. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘In a way, it’ll be a relief. But I’m afraid it’s a long story. You see, it all hangs on her. The kind of woman she was.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

According to Cliff Johns

‘YOU DIDN’T KNOW her,’ Cliff said. ‘That’s what makes everything so impossible. You don’t know what she was like.’

‘I’m learning,’ Alleyn said.

‘But it doesn’t make sense. I’ve read about that sort of thing, of course, but somehow I never dropped to it when it was happening to me—I mean not until it was too late to avoid a row. I was only a kid, of course. In the beginning.’

‘Yes,’ said Alleyn and waited.

Cliff turned his foot sideways and looked at the sole of his boot. Alleyn was surprised to see that he was blushing. ‘I suppose I’d better explain,’ he said at last, ‘that I’m not absolutely positive what the Oedipus Complex exactly is.’

‘And I’m not at all sure that I can help you. Let’s just have the whole story, clinical or otherwise, may we?’