‘You sat in the annexe with the door open. If, after you stopped playing and the radio took up the theme, you sat on the piano chair, you would be able to see down the track. You would be able to see Mrs Rubrick come through the gate at the end of the lavender path and walk up the track towards you. You’d see her turn off to the wool-shed and then she would disappear. I don’t for a moment suggest that you expected to see her. You couldn’t possibly do so. I merely suggest that you did see her. The door was open, otherwise they would not have been able to hear the Bach from the tennis lawn. Why did you leave the Art of Fugue and follow her to the wool-shed?’

Watching Cliff, Alleyn thought: ‘When people are afraid, how little their faces express. They become wooden, dead almost. There’s only a change of colour and a kind of stiffness in the mouth.’

‘Is there to be an answer?’ he asked.

‘I am innocent,’ said Cliff, and this gracious phrase came straight from his lips.

‘If that’s true, wouldn’t it be wise to tell me the facts? Do you want the murderer to be found?’

‘I haven’t got the hunter’s nose,’ said Cliff harshly.

‘At least, if you’re innocent, you want to clear yourself.’

‘How can I? How can I clear myself when there’s only me to say what happened! She’s dead, isn’t she?’ His voice rose shrilly. ‘And even if the dead could talk, she might still bear witness against me. If she had a moment to think, to realize she’d been hit, she may have thought it was me that did it. That may have been the last thought that flashed up in her mind before she died—that I was killing her.’

As if drawn by an intolerable restlessness, he moved aimlessly about the room, blundering short-sightedly against chairs. ‘That’s a pretty ghastly idea to get into your head, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ he demanded, his back to Alleyn.

‘Then she was alive when you went into the shed? Did you speak to her?’

Cliff turned on him. ‘Alive? You must be crazy. Alive! Would I feel like this if I’d been able to speak to her?’ His hands were closed on the back of a chair and he took in a shuddering breath. ‘Now,’ Alleyn thought, ‘it’s coming.’