‘Right,’ said Alleyn. ‘I take the point.’
‘She didn’t. She’d got it all taped out. I was to go Home to the Royal College of Music. At her expense. She was delighted when they said I’d never pass fit. When I tried to explain, she treated me like a silly kid. Then, when I stuck to it, she accused me of ingratitude. She had no right,’ said Cliff passionately. ‘Nobody has the right to take a kid of ten and teach him to accept everything without knowing what it means, and then use that generosity as a weapon against him. She’d always talked about the right of artists to be free. Free! She’d got vested interests in me and she meant to use them. It was horrible.’
‘What was the upshot of the discussion?’
Cliff had turned in his chair. His face was dark against the glare of the plateau, and it was by the posture of his body and the tilt of his head that Alleyn first realized he was staring at the portrait of Florence Rubrick.
‘She sat, just like that,’ he said. ‘Her hands were like that and her mouth, not quite shut. She hadn’t got much expression, ever, and you couldn’t believe, looking at her, that she could say the things she said. What everything had cost and how she’d thought I was fond of her. I couldn’t stand it. I walked out.’
‘When was this?’
‘The night I got home for the summer holidays. I didn’t see her again until – until –’
‘We’re back at the broken bottle of whisky, aren’t we?’
Cliff was silent.
‘Come,’ said Alleyn, ‘you’ve been very frank up to now. Why do you jib at this one point?’
Cliff shuffled his feet and began mumbling. ‘All very well, but how do I know … not a free agent … Gestapo methods … Taken down and used against you …’
‘Nonsense,’ said Alleyn, ‘I’ve taken nothing down and I’ve no witness. Don’t let’s go over all that again. If you won’t tell me what you were doing with the whisky, you won’t, but really you can’t blame Sub-Inspector Jackson for taking a gloomy view of your reticence. Let’s get back to the bare bones of fact. You were in the dairy-cum-cellar with the bottle in your hand. Markins looked through the window, you dropped the bottle, he hauled you into the kitchen. Mrs Duck fetched Mrs Rubrick. There was a scene in the middle of which she dismissed Mrs Duck and Markins. We have their several accounts of the scene up to the point when they left. I should now like to have yours of the whole affair.’
Cliff stared at the portrait. Alleyn saw him wet his lips and, a moment later, give the uncanny little half-yawn of nervous expectancy. Alleyn was familiar with this grimace. He had seen it made by prisoners awaiting sentence and by men under suspicion when the investigating officer carried the interrogation towards danger point.
‘Will it help,’ he said, ‘if I tell you this? Anything that is not relevant to my inquiry will not appear in any subsequent report. I can give you my word, if you’ll take it, that I’ll never repeat or use such statements if, in fact, they are irrelevant.’ He waited for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘what about this scene with Mrs Rubrick in the kitchen? Was it so very bad?’
‘You’ve been told what they heard. The other two. It was bad enough then. Before they went. Almost as if she was glad to be able to go for me. It’s as real now as if it had happened last night. Only it’s a queer kind of reality. Like the memory of a nightmare.’
‘Have you ever spoken to anybody about it?’
‘Never.’
‘Then bring the monster out into the light of day and let’s have a look at it.’
He saw that Cliff half-welcomed, half-resisted this insistence. ‘After all,’ Alleyn said, ‘was it so terrible?’
‘Not terrible exactly,’ Cliff said. ‘Disgusting.’
‘Well?’
‘I suppose I had a kind of respect for her. Partly bogus, I know that. An acceptance of the feudal idea. But partly genuine too. Partly based on the honest gratitude I’d have felt for her if she hadn’t demanded gratitude. I don’t know. I only know it made me feel sick to see her lips shake and to hear her voice tremble. There was a master at school who used to get like that before he caned us. He got the sack. She seemed to be acting too. Acting the lady of the house who controlled herself before the servants. It’d have been better if she’d yelled at me. When they’d gone, she did – once. When I said I wasn’t stealing it. Then she sort of took hold of herself and dropped back into a whisper. All the same, even then, in a way, I thought she was putting it on. Acting. Really it was almost as if she enjoyed herself. That was what was so particularly beastly.’
‘I know,’ said Alleyn.
‘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?’
Cliff seemed to take this question as a statement of fact. He moved towards the french window. ‘Is that right?’ Alleyn said and he nodded. ‘And you won’t tell me what you were doing with the whisky?’
‘I can’t.’
‘All right. I think I’ll just take a look