Alleyn stirred a little in his armchair and joined his long fingers. ‘It’s a truism to say that if the whole facts of a case are known there can be no miscarriage of justice. It’s very seldom indeed, in homicide investigations, that the police arrive at the whole truth. Sometimes they get enough of the truth to enable them to build up a case and make an arrest. Most often they get a smattering of essential facts, a plethora of inessential facts and a maddening accumulation of lies. If you really do stick to your original plan of thrashing out the whole story here tonight, in this room, you will, I think, bring off a remarkable, indeed a unique performance.’

He saw that they were young enough to be flattered and stimulated by this assurance. ‘There, now!’ said Fabian triumphantly. ‘But,’ said Alleyn, ‘I don’t believe for a moment that you will succeed. How long does it take a psychoanalyst to complete his terrifying course of treatment? Months, isn’t it? His aim, as I understand it, is to get to the bottom, to spring-clean completely, to arrive, in fact, at the clinical truths. Aren’t you, Losse, attempting something of that sort? If so, I’m sure you cannot succeed, nor, as a policeman, would I want you to do so. As a policeman, I am not concerned with the whole clinical truth. Faced with it, I should probably find myself unable to make any arrest, ever. I am required only to produce facts. If your discussion of Mrs Rubrick’s character and that of her husband can throw the smallest ray of light along the path that leads to an unknown murderer who struck her from behind, suffocated her, bound up her body, and concealed it in a wool-press, then from the official point of view it will have been valuable. If, at the same time, somewhere along that path, there is the trace of an enemy agent, then again from my point of view, as an investigator of espionage in this country, it will have been valuable. If finally, it relieves the burden of secrecy under which you have all suffered, you, also, may profit by it, though, as you have already seen, the process is painful and may be dangerous.’

‘We realize that,’ Fabian said.