"Why do you feel your father owns you, Jinx?"
"I don't. That's how Adam sees it. He thinks he can control us all." She glanced at him. "You, too, Dr. Protheroe."
He frowned. "Because he's paying this clinic to look after you? That's hardly control."
She smiled. "But if push came to shove, whose interests would you put first? Your own and your daughter's, or mine and the other patients'?"
He found that amusing and gave a short bark of laughter. "That's like asking me if I'd rather be the Archbishop of Canterbury or Jack the Ripper. Why should I be faced with such a dramatic choice?"
"Because if you do something my father doesn't like, you'll probably find yourself out of a job," she said bluntly. "Why do you think that, at the age of forty, Russell suddenly left a comfortable well-paid career in Oxford to buy a down-at-heel art gallery in London? Not through choice, believe me." She smiled grimly. "To coin a phrase, my father made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
Interesting use of words, he thought. "What was the offer?"
"Leave voluntarily, or leave in disgrace."
"You'll have to explain, I'm afraid."
"Adam doesn't play by civilized rules. He uses information to destroy people who get in his way." She shrugged. "He paid fifty thousand pounds for the information on Russell, and that's discounting what he paid his team of investigators to unearth the fact that it existed at all. He doesn't mess about."
He hid his skepticism. "Am I allowed to know what this piece of information was?''
She looked at him. "You don't believe me, do you?" She could see that he didn't. "Then it'll be your funeral, Dr. Protheroe. Everybody underestimates Adam. He encourages people to believe they're dealing with a gentleman when they're not. You see, he's not like Betty. You can't tell his origins by looking at him or speaking to him. He's far too clever for that."
Protheroe felt he was being drawn once again towards a choice between her and her father, and chose to sidestep the issue. "I neither believe nor disbelieve," he said. "I am merely wondering what Russell could have done that was so bad. Even ten years ago, and particularly at a liberal university like Oxford, leaving in disgrace seems a somewhat old-fashioned concept."
"Not if you go to jail it isn't." She sighed. "Russell went to Europe every summer on lecture tours. When he came back he'd bring upwards of fifty kilos of cannabis packed into the chassis of his car. It was a straightforward transaction. He made the collection in Italy and was paid on delivery in England. He used the money to fund his art collection. He had no conscience about it. His view was that cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes and that the government was mad to criminalize its use. But the penalty for smuggling is prison. Adam offered him resignation or prosecution. Russell chose resignation."
"Did you know he was smuggling drugs?"
She shook her head. "Not till afterwards."
"How did Adam find out?"
"According to Russell, he traced the contact in Italy and bought him off. Adam works on the principle that everyone has a chink in his armor, and if he keeps going long enough, he'll find it. I think what probably happened is that his people calculated the value of Russell's collection, realized he couldn't have afforded it on his salary, and started digging into the trips abroad."
"Presumably it was Russell who told you about it, not your father."
"Yes."
"Did he explain why your father wanted him to leave Oxford?"
"To get him away from me."
"Then why did Russell marry you, Jinx? Why didn't the blackmail hold good after he'd left? Presumably he was no keener to go to prison afterwards than he was before."
She gave a hollow laugh. "You sound as though you think I'm making this up."
"Not at all. I'm just trying to understand."
She didn't believe him. "I've told you before, Dr. Protheroe. We got married without my father's knowledge. I persuaded Russell that Adam would back off the minute I became Mrs. Landy, because whatever he might want to do to Russell, Adam would never drag me in the mud. And I was right. He didn't."
Alan pondered over that for a moment, thinking that far from being passive, Jinx was describing herself as a consummate manipulator. "Didn't it ever occur to you that your father would react the way he did?"
She frowned, but didn't say anything.
"If my math is correct, Russell was only twelve years his junior. Did you seriously think Adam would welcome him as a son-in-law?"
"Of course not, but at the time Adam found out, there was no question of my marrying Russell. Look, we were having a quiet little affair which was nobody's business but our own." She stared wretchedly at her hands.
"Who told him?"
"My brothers."
"And how did they know?"
She smoothed the sheet across her lap. "Russell used to write to me during vacations, and they opened one of his letters and showed it to Adam. I should have expected it, really. They were always looking for my clay feet." She paused. "The irony is, my father's hated them for it ever since. I think he knows that nothing would have come of the affair if they hadn't drawn it to his attention."
"Are you saying you wouldn't have married Russell if you hadn't felt guilty about what your father did?"
She gave her faint smile. "He was thoroughly miserable, so yes, Reader, I married him. Actually, I was pretty miserable too. I had another year at Oxford after he'd gone and it was just a series of tearful phone calls. I thought we'd both be happier if we made the thing official."
"But you weren't?"
She didn't answer.
"How long were you married?" asked Protheroe.
She looked at him. "Three years."
"And you didn't enjoy it?" he persisted.
"I found it very stifling. He was afraid I was going to leave him for a younger man, and became jealous of everyone." She seemed to think she was being disloyal. "Look, it wasn't that bad. He was very funny when he was on form, and when I think of him now it's with affection. On the whole, the good times far outweighed the bad."
Quite unconsciously, Alan echoed Fraser's thoughts of the day before. What a dismal epitaph on a dead husband. When I think of him now it's with affection. But how clear it was to Alan that she tried not to think of him at all.
"As a matter of interest," he asked curiously, "did you approve of his smuggling?"
She picked at her fingernails. "I shared his views on the idiocy of criminalizing cannabis. Or any drugs in fact. Black markets always undermine social orders. But I thought he was a fool to have done it. Someone was bound to find out about it sooner or later."
"What sort of a lover was he?"
She gave a snort of laughter. "I wondered when we'd get round to that. Sigmund Freud has a lot to answer for. Why do you give so much credence to the fantastic theories of a cocaine addict? I've never understood that."
He smiled. "I don't think we do anymore, or not to the extent you're suggesting. Freud has his place in history." He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs, deliberately extending the space between them. "But wouldn't you agree that the sexual relationship between a man and a woman is an integral part of the whole relationship?"
"No. I don't have sex with Eric Clancey and I get on better with him than anyone else."
"He being your elderly neighbor?" She nodded. "Yes, well, I was referring to relationships where there is a sexual content."
"And you've had my answer. In my experience the best relationships have no sexual content whatsoever." She reached for her cigarettes. "In fact, Russell was a good lover. He knew which buttons to press, and when, and he was considerate and not overly demanding. Bed was one of the few places where we could communicate on a level playing field because it was only there that Russell could put aside his jealousy." She lit a cigarette. "There was no telephone in our bedroom, so Adam couldn't reach me."