‘Do you? And her being old. That made it worse. I started by being furious because she wouldn’t believe me. Then I began to be sorry for her. Then I simply wanted to get away and get clean. She began to—to cry. She looked ghastly. I felt as if I could never bear to look at her again. She held out her hand and I couldn’t touch it. I was furious with her for making me feel so ashamed, and I turned round and cleared out of it. I suppose you know about the next part.’

‘I know you spent the rest of that night and a good bit of the next day, walking towards the Pass.’

‘That’s right. It sounds silly. An hysterical kid, you’ll think. I couldn’t help it. I made a pretty good fool of myself. I was out of training and my feet gave out. I’d have gone on, though, if Dad hadn’t come after me.’

‘You didn’t make a second attempt.’

Cliff shook his head.

‘Why?’

‘They got on to me at home. Mum got me to promise. There was a pretty ghastly scene, when I got home.’

‘And in the evening you worked it off with Bach on the outhouse piano? That’s how it was, isn’t it?’ Alleyn insisted, but Cliff was monosyllabic again. ‘That’s right,’ he mumbled, rubbing the arm of his chair. Alleyn tried to get him to talk about the music he played that night in the darkling room while Florence Rubrick and her household sat in deck-chairs on the lawn. All through their conversation it had persisted, and through the search for the brooch. Florence Rubrick must have heard it as she climbed up her improvised rostrum. Her murderer must have heard it when he struck her down and stuffed her mouth and nostrils with wool. Murder to Music, thought Alleyn, and saw the words splashed across a news bill. Was it because of these associations that Cliff would not speak of his music? Was it because this, theatrically enough, had been the last time he played? Or was it merely that he was reluctant to speak of music with a Philistine? Alleyn found himself satisfied with none of these theories.

‘Losse,’ he said, ‘tells me you played extremely well that night.’

‘What’s he mean!’ Cliff stopped dead, as if horrified at his own vehemence. ‘I’d worked at it,’ he said indistinctly. ‘I told you.’

‘It’s strange to me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that you don’t go on with your music. I should have thought that not to go on would be intolerable.’

‘Would you,’ he muttered.

‘Are you sure you are not a little bit proud of your abstinence?’

This seemed to astonish Cliff. ‘Proud!’ he repeated. ‘If you only realized…’ He got up. ‘If you’ve finished with me,’ he said.

‘Almost, yes. You never saw her again?’