‘It’s no use talking to Cliff. I tell you straight, it’s no use. It’s something cruel what those others done to Cliff. Pestering him, day after day, and him proved to be innocent. They proved it themselves with what they found put and even then they couldn’t let him alone. He’s not like other lads. Not tough. Different.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘he’s an exceptional chap, isn’t he?’

‘They broke his spirit,’ she said, frowning, refusing to look at him. ‘He’s a different boy. I’m his mother and I know what they done. It’s wicked. Getting on to a bit of a kid when it was proved he was innocent.’

‘The piano?’ Alleyn said.

‘Mrs Duck saw him. Mrs Duck who cooks for them down there. She was out for a stroll, not having gone to the dance, and she saw him sit down and commence to play. They all heard him and they said they heard him, and me and his Dad heard him too. On and on, and him dead beat, till I couldn’t stand it any longer and come over myself and fetched him home. What more do they want?’

‘Mrs Johns,’ Alleyn began, ‘what sort—’ He stopped short, feeling that he could not repeat once more the too-familiar phrase. ‘Did you like Mrs Rubrick?’ he said.

For the first time she looked sharply at him. ‘Like her?’ she said unwillingly. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. She was kind. Always the same to everyone. She made mistakes as I well know. Things didn’t pan out the way she’d reckoned.’

‘With Cliff?’

‘That’s right. There’s been a lot of rubbish talked about the interest she took in my boy. People are funny like that. Jealous.’ She passed her roughened hand over her face with a movement that suggested the wiping away of a cobweb. ‘I don’t say I wasn’t a bit jealous myself,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I don’t say I didn’t think it might make him discontented like with his own home. But I saw what a big thing it was for my boy and I wouldn’t stand in his light. But there it is. I won’t say I didn’t feel it.’

She said all this with the same air of antagonism, but Alleyn felt a sudden respect for her. He said: ‘But this feeling didn’t persist?’

‘Persist? Not when he grew older. He grew away from her, if you can understand. Nobody knows a boy like his mother and I know you can’t drive Cliff. She tried to drive him and in the finish she set him against her. He’s a good boy,’ said Mrs Johns coldly, ‘though I say it, but he’s very unusual. And sensitive.’

‘Did you regret taking her offer to send him to school?’