“We don’t expect to attract billionaires, but most people care, believe me. This is an upwardly mobile society. No one likes to be socially insecure. And we’re doing well. We’ve got twenty-eight clients already, and they pay five hundred and fifty pounds for a four-week course. Part-time, that is. Cheap at the price. It’s the only one of Robin’s schemes that ever showed any promise of making money. He got chucked out of his flat a couple of weeks ago, so he’s been living here, in one room at the back. He isn’t—he wasn’t—exactly a considerate house guest, but basically it suited us both. He kept an eye on the house, and he was here when it was his turn to take a class. It might be hard to believe but he was a good teacher and he knew his stuff. The clients liked him. The problem with Robin is that he is—was—unreliable and volatile. Madly enthusiastic one minute and chasing off after some new hare-brained scheme the next. He could be maddening, but I never wanted to cast him off. It just never occurred to me. If you can explain the chemistry which keeps disparate people together, I’d be interested to hear it.”

“And what about his relationship with Rhoda Gradwyn?”

“Ah, that’s more difficult. He didn’t talk much about her, but he obviously liked having her as a friend. It gave him kudos in his own eyes, which is what matters after all.”

Kate said, “Was it sex?”

“Oh, hardly. I fancy that the lady swam with bigger fish than Robin. And I doubt whether she fancied him. People don’t. Too beautiful perhaps, a bit asexual. Rather like making love to a statue. Sex wasn’t important to him, but she was. I think she represented a stabilising authority. He did once say that he could talk to her and be told the truth, or what passes for it. I used to wonder if she reminded him of someone who had influenced him that way—a schoolteacher, perhaps. And he lost his mother when he was seven. Some kids never get over that. He could’ve been looking for a substitute. Psychobabble, I know, but there could be something in it.”

Benton reflected that “maternal” wasn’t a word he’d have used of Rhoda Gradwyn, but, then, what did they really know about her? Wasn’t that part of the fascination of his job, the unknowingness of other people? He asked, “Did Robin tell you that Miss Gradwyn was having a scar removed and where it was being done?”