Cliff stared at the portrait. Alleyn saw him wet his lips and, a moment later, give the uncanny little half-yawn of nervous expectancy. Alleyn was familiar with this grimace. He had seen it made by prisoners awaiting sentence and by men under suspicion when the investigating officer carried the interrogation towards danger point.

‘Will it help,’ he said, ‘if I tell you this? Anything that is not relevant to my inquiry will not appear in any subsequent report. I can give you my word, if you’ll take it, that I’ll never repeat or use such statements if, in fact, they are irrelevant.’ He waited for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘what about this scene with Mrs Rubrick in the kitchen? Was it so very bad?’

‘You’ve been told what they heard. The other two. It was bad enough then. Before they went. Almost as if she was glad to be able to go for me. It’s as real now as if it had happened last night. Only it’s a queer kind of reality. Like the memory of a nightmare.’

‘Have you ever spoken to anybody about it?’

‘Never.’

‘Then bring the monster out into the light of day and let’s have a look at it.’

He saw that Cliff half-welcomed, half-resisted this insistence. ‘After all,’ Alleyn said, ‘was it so terrible?’

‘Not terrible exactly,’ Cliff said. ‘Disgusting.’

‘Well?’

‘I suppose I had a kind of respect for her. Partly bogus, I know that. An acceptance of the feudal idea. But partly genuine too. Partly based on the honest gratitude I’d have felt for her if she hadn’t demanded gratitude. I don’t know. I only know it made me feel sick to see her lips shake and to hear her voice tremble. There was a master at school who used to get like that before he caned us. He got the sack. She seemed to be acting too. Acting the lady of the house who controlled herself before the servants. It’d have been better if she’d yelled at me. When they’d gone, she did—once. When I said I wasn’t stealing it. Then she sort of took hold of herself and dropped back into a whisper. All the same, even then; in a way, I thought she was putting it on. Acting. Really it was almost as if she enjoyed herself. That was what was so particularly beastly.’

‘I know,’ said Alleyn.