by Cleeves, Ann
Vera saw it would be impossible to talk to him now. The artists would feel short-changed if she dragged him away. She’d come back at the end of the class.
She stood behind Veronica, who was sketching out a landscape from a photo propped on the top of the easel. ‘The view from my kitchen window. Isn’t it joyous?’
Vera supposed it was, but this was her home, this space and these skies, and she took it for granted. ‘Have you heard from Constance?’
‘No. I tried phoning but I don’t have any signal in here. Perhaps she didn’t feel she could come so soon after Lorna’s death. They were very close.’
Vera nodded, but decided she’d find out what had kept the teacher away. Connie would have decent coffee and home-made biscuits, and Vera was interested to know why the woman hadn’t mentioned Lorna’s attendance at the art class or her friendship with Josh Heslop. She must have understood that the information would be important. ‘I’ll be back before you finish.’
They were all so focused that she didn’t think any of the others had noticed her leaving.
She left her car outside the hall and walked back to the village. There was ice on the river still and the wind was from the north again. Perhaps the bairns would have snow back for Christmas after all. She’d forgotten her gloves and kept her hands in her pockets, tried to pull her hat down over her ears, before realizing that her head was too big. Or that the hat was too small.
The curtains were open in Constance Browne’s bungalow, but looking through the window, Vera saw the woman wasn’t in the living room. Vera rang the bell. No answer. She tried the door. As she had expected, it was locked. She was about to turn away when she remembered she’d taken the car keys from Constance’s car when she’d found it on the Friday night. The automatic response of a police officer. There had been other keys on the ring. Connie hadn’t needed them and Vera had intended to pass them over to Billy Cartwright to go to the lab. She had her work bag with her and, pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves, she tried the keys one by one in the lock. At last the door opened.
Vera stood inside the door and shouted. Perhaps the woman was in the bath or the shower and the sound of an intruder would scare her. Still there was no response. Vera stopped, pulled shoe covers from the bag and put them over her boots, wobbling in the attempt. She was probably overreacting and she’d look like a proper twat if Connie bowled in from the Co-op with a bottle of milk, but she was feeling uneasy. Connie had been distressed by Lorna’s death, but not over-wrought. She wasn’t a woman who missed appointments. And she’d told Vera that she had an obsession about punctuality. She wouldn’t have missed the art class without telling Veronica.
A corridor led down the length of the house with doors leading off. Vera opened them one by one. The living room was much as Vera had seen it on her previous visit. Tidy. She continued. To the left a big bedroom, bed made, a couple of garments folded on a chair, a wicker laundry basket, its contents waiting to be put away. A faint scent of talcum powder and washing powder. Connie’s smell. The woman had slept there the night before.
Next to it a bathroom, empty. Then a smaller bedroom, cold, impersonal, seldom used. At the end of the corridor was a large kitchen, an extension built out into the garden, with a view over the village and across the valley to the forest beyond. It seemed clear that this was where Connie spent most of her time. A couple of easy chairs had been placed by the window. Over the hills on the horizon more clouds were gathering and the light was turning grey.
This was the last room left to search and Vera paused on the threshold before walking in. A Tupperware box of muesli stood on the table, next to a bowl, a tub of yoghurt, a supermarket container of blueberries. Of course, Constance would be a woman who went for a healthy breakfast. But the bowl and the spoon were clean. Constance had prepared her breakfast but not eaten it. A cafetière stood on the workbench close to the kettle. Coffee had been spooned into the glass jug, but no water had been added.
Vera saw these details from the doorway. Again, she told herself that she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t help considering this as a crime scene. In her head, she was talking to the woman. Oh, Connie, if you’d told me everything you knew, everything you suspected, when I drank your tea and ate your biscuits, would you still be here, eating oats and fruit, drinking your upmarket coffee?
She couldn’t see the whole room from where she stood and now she moved in, so she could see the floor beyond the counter. In her head she’d pictured another body, more blood, bone and brain spilled onto the quarry-tiled floor, a confident older woman reduced to an interesting corpse for Paul Keating to pick over. In the end there was nothing. The room was empty. She was turning back to the rest of the house when a noise made her start and sent a shot of adrenaline through her body, but when she turned it was the big tabby pushing through the cat flap in the kitchen door. There was food for it in a bowl on the floor.
Vera was flooded with relief, a physical sensation that felt like drowning. Then came anticlimax, then suspicion. What had sent Constance Browne hurrying away from home before she’d eaten breakfast? Who had she been running away from? A killer who thought she knew too much, or the team who were investigating Lorna’s death?
Chapter Twenty-One
IT WAS MONDAY MORNING AND JULIET thought Brockburn was returning to a semblance of normality. A team of officers was still searching the grounds, but they’d moved further away from the house now and seemed less intrusive. Mark had left early for Newcastle and his work at the theatre. Sometimes he went to the city on Sunday evening and slept in the flat he rented on the quayside, but this week she’d persuaded him to stay the night at Brockburn and leave first thing on Monday. She’d needed his company. By the time they’d returned after church and had lunch with the Charltons, Dorothy had retreated to the cottage, and Juliet had thought she couldn’t bear an evening on her own with Harriet. Church and lunch had been ordeal enough.
In the end, she and Mark had spent the evening in Dorothy’s cottage, babysitting Duncan while the couple went to a party at the Heslops’ place. With all the drama, Juliet had quite forgotten she’d promised to look after the boy. She and Mark had passed a peaceful evening, enjoying the warmth and the quiet of the cottage, sharing a bottle of Dorothy’s wine. Once, Juliet had gone into Duncan’s room to breathe in the scent of him, to stare at him in the dim light. It had been a restful evening after a fraught and unpleasant day.
Mark didn’t have a religious bone in his body, but he always rather enjoyed the ritual of attendance at church in Kirkhill. Juliet thought it made him feel grand. He had images in his head of the royal family, turning out from Balmoral or Sandringham to spend an hour worshipping with the common people. But perhaps that was doing him an injustice – he would have hated to be considered that kind of snob – and it was the ritual he liked. Church was theatre of a kind too. He had a beautiful tenor voice and he joined in the hymns and the responses with great gusto. After the service, the weather had been too bad to stand talking in the churchyard, so there’d been an excuse to run straight back to the car, without having to discuss the drama at Brockburn with the other parishioners.
Sunday lunch with the Charltons had an element of ritual too. It had been a fixture every month since Crispin’s death. Margaret Charlton was Harriet’s second cousin, so it was considered a gesture of support to a widowed relative. It was also an opportunity for Margaret to boast about her children and for her husband Henry to drink more than he would normally be allowed. This wasn’t one of the Sundays on the schedule, but when Margaret had phoned with the invitation, Juliet had accepted. The Charltons were gentle souls, and Juliet had thought it would be an excuse to get away from Brockburn, to eat a meal cooked by somebody else, and to escape having to deal with Lorna’s murder. However, there had been no escape. Margaret and Henry Charlton had been desperate to talk about the killing, had leaned over the table, demanding information. They had reminded Juliet of the hounds from the Brockburn kennels on hunt
day, red tongues out, noses thrust forward in search of prey.
Now, it was Monday and Juliet could almost believe that nothing dramatic had occurred. Dorothy was upstairs, still stripping beds and cleaning bathrooms after the party on Friday. The hum of the hoover was reassuring, almost hypnotic. Harriet had taken herself off immediately after breakfast. ‘I might park in Hexham and get a train into the city. There’s an exhibition at the Laing Gallery that I rather fancy.’
Juliet thought any examination of the art would be superficial and quick. Harriet adored shopping, but would have thought it undignified to admit to browsing the city’s clothes shops as a form of therapy. The exhibition provided an excuse. She would have lunch or afternoon tea with one of her friends. Usually Juliet was anxious when Harriet disappeared to Newcastle – she had an ability to spend money that was close to addictive, and Mark became almost puritan when Harriet came back dripping with upmarket clothes bags – but today she was delighted to be free of her mother.
Juliet was setting out a simple lunch for herself and Dorothy – the remains of the cheese and fruit left over from the Friday party – when the doorbell rang. Though there was a police officer on the gate, the previous day some journalists had found their way into the grounds and now Juliet answered the door with a little trepidation. She found it hard to be rude and to shut the door in the faces of the reporters, even when they’d climbed over a wall to intrude, so when she saw Vera standing there, it was almost with a sense of relief.
‘Come in!’
Vera walked past her and made her way, without being asked, into the kitchen. She stood with her back to the Aga. ‘It’s still bloody freezing out there. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more snow.’ She looked at the places set at the table. ‘Just the two of you today?’
‘Just Dorothy and me. Mark’s at work and Mother has gone into Newcastle to get her monthly fix of the shops.’
‘Have you and Dorothy been in all morning?’
‘I’ve not left the house. Dorothy drove into Kirkhill first thing to pick up bread and milk. I thought we had some in the freezer, but your forensic chaps cleared us out.’ Juliet couldn’t see where this was leading. She wondered if all Vera’s conversations sounded a bit like an interrogation.
Vera sat heavily on one of the wooden chairs by the table. ‘Stick the kettle on, pet. I’m parched and this might take a while. It’s not a courtesy call.’
‘You’ve found out who killed Lorna?’ Then this might be over, Juliet thought. We can go back to how things were, worrying about money, Mark’s project, the need for a new boiler, but not thinking about a killer who might be lurking in the trees in the park. Not worrying that someone we know is a murderer or that all our family secrets will spill out.
‘No.’
The kettle squealed and Juliet moved towards it to make tea. There were footsteps on the stairs and Dorothy appeared in the doorway carrying the hoover as if it had no weight at all. She looked at Vera. ‘I thought I heard the door.’
‘It’s Constance Browne,’ Vera said. ‘She’s disappeared. I wondered if you had any idea where she might be.’
‘What do you mean, disappeared?’
Juliet poured boiling water into the teapot and carried it to the table.
‘She left home suddenly, without telling anyone.’ Vera sat heavily on the nearest chair. ‘Anyone else, whose car had been involved in a murder, and who disappeared off the face of the earth, we’d think of them as a suspect.’
‘You don’t believe Miss Browne killed Lorna?’ Juliet thought this was so ridiculous that she wondered if Vera meant it as some weird joke. She felt herself begin to giggle, the rise of hysteria. She turned away to fetch mugs from a cupboard and only looked back when she’d composed herself.
‘Why not? She was fit, strong. We only have her word that Lorna had borrowed the car last Friday. She could have been driving.’ Vera reached out to pour tea into her mug before waiting to be asked, stared at Juliet. ‘Or don’t you think an older woman could be capable of planning something like that? Don’t you think she’d have the nerve?’
‘Constance had plenty of nerve,’ Juliet said. ‘But couldn’t she just have gone off to Newcastle for a day’s Christmas shopping? Or off to visit relatives for the holidays?’
‘A day’s Christmas shopping, maybe,’ Vera conceded, ‘but not the holiday. As far as we can tell, she didn’t take anything with her. We’re checking taxi firms and bus companies now. We still have her car, so she’d not have been driving.’
Dorothy fetched milk from the fridge and set another knife and plate for Vera. Lunch, it seemed, would be eaten, despite the new mini-drama.
‘Constance might have the strength,’ Dorothy said, ‘and she’s certainly intelligent enough to plan something like that, but why would she? There’s no reason at all.’
‘No skeletons in her cupboard?’ Vera asked. ‘Some secret Lorna might have discovered?’
‘Of course not!’ Juliet felt the hysteria bubbling again. ‘This is ludicrous. Like some dreadful TV crime drama. In real life, retired village teachers don’t go around hitting people over the head.’
‘You’re probably right, pet. She’ll turn up at teatime and I’ll look a right fool for having half of Northumbria police on the lookout for her.’ Vera turned her attention to Dorothy. ‘Did you enjoy the party at Home Farm last night?’
‘Very much. It was kind of Mark and Juliet to babysit. We don’t get out much.’
‘And your fella’s helping the Heslop girl with her exams?’
‘Cath’s struggling a bit. It can’t be easy having such a bright elder sister.’
‘So, Nettie’s the brainy one?’
‘According to Neil and Rosemary.’
‘A bit like you and me, Dorothy.’ Juliet couldn’t help joining in. She tended to babble when she was nervous. ‘I always felt a bit stupid compared to you.’
Vera took no notice of that and carried on speaking before Dorothy could comment. ‘Nice that you’re both settling into the community.’
‘It is,’ Dorothy said. ‘We both feel very much at home already.’
Now Vera turned back to Juliet. ‘There’s something I need to ask you. It’s a family matter. Perhaps we should discuss it on our own.’
Dorothy stood up. ‘Of course. I’ll leave you to it. There’s plenty to do upstairs. Lunch can wait.’
The last thing Juliet needed was to be left alone with Vera. ‘No, no. Please stay. Dorothy’s my friend, Vera. I would tell her anyway, once you’ve gone.’
Vera nodded again and Dorothy returned to her chair. ‘My sergeant’s just been to Halstead House, the private hospital where Lorna was treated for anorexia. It’s a pricey business being ill, it seems, if you don’t want to queue with the NHS.’ She paused, seeming reluctant at first to ask her question. ‘Lorna’s bills were paid by your father, Juliet. Did you know about that? Was it some kind of loan to the Falstones?’
For a while, Juliet said nothing. So, after all, the family secrets would leak out. Harriet’s efforts over the years to keep a lid on things, to smile as she walked into church, to host garden parties for the Women’s Flower Guild and the WI, to pretend that there was no gossip, had all been in vain. Poor Mother. It was such a strain. Perhaps it’ll be a relief not to have to pretend any more. But she knew Harriet would be mortified.
‘I didn’t know about that,’ she said at last. ‘I knew my father had relationships with other women. He was famous for it. Nobody talked of it, of course. When he was younger it was almost as if he were admired for it, for his ability to charm.’
‘He’d had a relationship with Lorna?’
‘No!’ Juliet was horrified. ‘She was still a child when he became ill. He died not long after she left the clinic.’
‘So it was Jill Falstone he had the affair with?’
Again, Juliet took a while to answer and wondered how much she should tell. But Vera was a witch; she’d find out anyway. ‘Jill was different
from the others. I think she got under his skin.’
‘How do you know? You’d only have been a bairn.’
Another silence. The deep dense silence that could only be experienced this far from neighbours and a road. ‘I was an only child,’ Juliet said. ‘I spent a lot of time listening to conversations I wasn’t supposed to hear. When my mother was out of the house, my father made telephone calls to Jill. He loved her, I think.’ A pause. ‘Once, I went into his office and he was crying.’
‘Was Lorna his daughter?’
‘No!’ This time there was no hesitation. ‘No! My father could be reckless when it came to his own safety. He rode like a madman and drove like a maniac. But he wouldn’t have allowed anything like that. Not something that would have affected the reputation of the family.’ There was a pause and Juliet considered the question again and pushed it away. Just as she had since she’d first met Lorna when she was still a child, riding a horse that was just too small for her.
Now, there was another silence, and when Vera spoke it was very gently. ‘You do know we’ll be able to find out,’ she said. ‘We’ll ask to take a sample of your DNA and compare it to Lorna’s.’ Another pause. ‘Of course, we’ll be discreet.’
This was much worse than Juliet had been expecting. ‘My father felt an obligation to Jill Falstone. When her daughter was struggling, he wanted to help. I think he would have acted in the same way for any of his tenants who were in trouble, for Nettie or Cath Heslop at Home Farm, for example.’
