The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  ‘He always did care what folks thought of him.’ Vera was muttering under her breath and hadn’t realized Jill had heard her.

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘He was a distant relation.’ Not that distant but there was no need to complicate things now. Vera paused for a moment. ‘Was he Lorna’s father?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He could have been.’ The woman looked up and gave a twisted smile. ‘I always thought Lorna looked more like Crispin than she did Robert as she got older, but that could have been my imagination.’

  ‘Wishful thinking?’

  Jill shook her head. ‘Rob’s a good man. Crispin was a year of madness. An infatuation. I might have left Robert and this place, if he’d asked me at the time, but later I was glad he never did. I’d have hated living in the big house and Crispin would never have left it. I had a good life here.’ She paused. ‘We ended things just before I realized I was pregnant. Just as well. It might have made things more complicated.’

  ‘Did Robert know? About the affair?’

  ‘Not at the time,’ Jill said. She added, with the same twisted smile, ‘Crispin had practice in being discreet.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘Later, Rob might have had his suspicions because the lass looked a bit like Crispin’s real daughter, Juliet. They could have been sisters. And there was gossip. This place there’s always gossip. He never said anything.’ Jill paused. ‘By that time, we were settled as a family. He’d think there was no need to rock the boat. And he did love her as if she was his own.’

  Vera thought of Connie Browne’s words. She’d said the Falstones didn’t speak of anything except sheep and the farm. Had that been a bad thing? They’d rubbed along happily enough even when Lorna had been ill, and that would have caused more stress than most couples could weather.

  ‘What about Lorna?’ Vera asked. ‘Did she suspect that Robert wasn’t her dad?’

  Jill bent once more to build the pile of bricks for her grandson. ‘Lorna might have heard things. Kids can be cruel. They might have listened in to the adults speculating and passed the rumours on as facts. She was an easy target.’

  Vera nodded. ‘Do you think that might have led to the anorexia?’

  ‘I did wonder.’ The woman straightened. ‘Me feeling guilty again. It haunted me all the time she was ill. Impossible to get rid of.’

  And you couldn’t talk about it to your husband. Because in this marriage things don’t get spoken of.

  Vera thought they were an oddly matched couple. Now that Jill had started talking, she was articulate, what Vera’s hippy friend and neighbour Joanna would call emotionally intelligent. Quite different from Robert, who dealt with problems by shutting down, hiding away from them. ‘Where did you and Robert meet?’

  Jill seemed surprised by the question, but she answered readily enough. ‘At the Kirkhill show. I was working for a little craft brewery based on the coast, and we had a stand. Robert was showing his animals. He kept coming back for beer. I thought he was an alcoholic . . .’

  ‘But it was you he came back for?’ Vera paused. ‘I’ve seen that photo of you as a lass.’ She nodded to the picture on the mantelpiece. ‘More than bonny. You must have had your pick of admirers. What attracted you to Robert? He wasn’t much of a looker, even when he was young.’

  ‘He was a farmer,’ Jill said. ‘I’d always dreamed of marrying a farmer and living in a place like this.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been enough, though.’

  ‘He was kind. My parents had been through a messy divorce. They were both a bit flaky and self-obsessed. It was all shouting and throwing things, and not caring that I was stuck in the middle. I couldn’t see Robert behaving like that. Kindness is very attractive when you’re not used to it.’

  ‘But sometimes not enough?’ Jill didn’t answer and Vera continued. ‘You must have fallen for Crispin’s charms.’

  ‘Maybe. For a while. But then I saw sense and just threw myself into the work on the farm. I love it here, love the place and the animals.’ A pause. ‘And I love my husband. Robert and I are partners in every sense of the word. We don’t feel the need to bare our souls.’

  Vera wasn’t quite sure she believed that. Robert’s dourness and reluctance to engage seemed like a kind of self-absorption to her. A selfishness.

  Jill was talking again: ‘Besides, we’ve got this little one to think about now. A new start.’

  ‘I was wondering,’ Vera paused for a moment, then looked directly at Jill, ‘if that was a case of history repeating itself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s another man at Brockburn now, lording it over the place. Juliet’s bloke Mark Bolitho. He couldn’t be your Thomas’s dad?’

  ‘No.’ The response came slowly after she’d taken time to consider. ‘I don’t think he and Lorna ever met.’

  ‘Seems she was quite arty, though, your lass. She could have met him at his theatre? Or one of his community arts days at the big house.’

  Jill shook her head. ‘She didn’t mention it. And she never did go to Brockburn. Never went near the place. I think because she’d heard the rumours and she thought it would be too close to home. Embarrassing. I never went either for the same reason.’

  ‘Apparently young Josh Heslop was keen on her too.’

  ‘Oh?’ Now Vera did have her attention. ‘He seems like a good lad. And they’re a lovely family. Rosemary called in yesterday just to offer her condolences. The rest of the valley haven’t been anywhere near. She brought a casserole, thinking I wouldn’t have much time for cooking.’ The grin again. ‘Not that I ever have much time for cooking.’

  ‘According to Josh, Lorna didn’t return his affections.’

  Thomas was getting bored with the bricks. Vera could understand that. They didn’t seem to provide much in the way of entertainment, and if he had Stanhope blood, he’d be easily bored. The child started to grizzle and Jill took him up onto her lap, reached out and gave him a biscuit. ‘You’ve found out more about Lorna in the four days since she died than I had in the last three years. What sort of mother does that make me?’

  ‘The sort of mother who respected her daughter’s privacy, knowing that was the best thing to keep her well,’ Vera said. ‘I can’t do that. My job’s all about digging out information that other people would rather keep hidden.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll leave you in peace to spend some time with the bairn.’

  As Vera made her way to the door, Jill spoke again. ‘I’m glad it’s you looking into it. Lorna would have liked you. You’d have made her feel safe.’

  Vera wasn’t sure what to say to that. She started to feel herself come over all emotional, so she just nodded, and went outside.

  She could see Robert Falstone, just where Jill had said he’d be, in a lower meadow, fixing a fence. He was almost done, but taking his time, looking for an excuse not to come back to the house, because he’d have seen her Land Rover in the yard. Not knowing who was calling, but imagining she was some other neighbour bringing pity and home-cooked food. He was two fields away but she decided to walk across the grass past the sheep, making sure to fasten the gates carefully behind her, instead of driving down the track. He must have been aware of her approaching, but he didn’t stand and look at her until she had almost reached him.

  ‘Are you one of them social workers, coming to check up on us?’

  Vera was horrified. ‘Do I look like a bloody social worker?’

  ‘Who are you then? You don’t look young or smart enough for a reporter. We’ve had a few of those and all.’

  ‘I’m a police officer, the officer in charge of the investigation into your daughter’s murder.’ She held out her hand, but didn’t give her name. The Stanhope connection might not be welcome here.

  He stood for a minute, then wiped his hand on his overalls and took hers ‘I can’t chat. I want to finish up here.’

  ‘No reason why we can’t talk while you finish off.’

  He seemed a
bout to argue, then realized she wasn’t about to shift, that she was as immovable as the hill behind them, and nodded.

  ‘All people seem to do is talk. Gossip everywhere about my lass being killed. Why can’t you do something to find out who did that to her?’ A pause. ‘That’s all I can think about. Her, cold, in the snow. Scared. And I wasn’t there to save her.’

  ‘Folk are scared too,’ Vera said. ‘Murder coming so close. That’s why they talk.’ A pause. ‘What do you make of Miss Browne? She seems to have gone missing.’

  ‘Wor lass liked her well enough. I thought she stuck her nose in when it wasn’t wanted.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘She came to the house a while ago. Just before Bonfire Night because the excuse was her asking if we had any wood for the fire in the village. Pallets, dry stuff that would burn. There’s always a big firework display in Kirkhill. A community do.’

  ‘But that wasn’t really why she was there?’

  He looked up from his work. ‘Jill was taken in, but I wasn’t.’

  ‘What do you think was going on?’

  ‘She was telling us that Lorna was struggling. I think she’s got into a relationship and is a bit out of her depth. Something like that. Nothing useful. Nothing that would help us sort things out for Lorna. Just stirring. Making herself feel good by doing something. Shifting the load onto us.’ He started packing away his tools. ‘I know that Jill was visiting Lorna. Every Friday, regular as clockwork. Until this last week when the weather was so bad. She’d have seen if anything was seriously amiss.’

  ‘Jill told my sergeant those visits were secret.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘She might have thought that I didn’t know what was happening, but I was glad for her to go. I just couldn’t face the lass myself. I wouldn’t know what to say to her. It’s gone on this long.’ He hoisted his tools into the back of his jeep. ‘You’ll have heard the rumours about Jill and old man Stanhope if you’ve been asking around about us all.’

  Vera nodded.

  ‘It hurt,’ he said. ‘I knew I was punching above my weight with Jill. She was such a beauty when she was younger. Lorna got all her looks from her mother. But I thought I was giving her what she wanted. What she needed. A bit of stability. Respect. It was a kind of bargain and I believed I was getting loyalty in return. Then along came old Stanhope, slimy as a toad, with his money and his fancy talk. I knew the affair wouldn’t last. He’d had most eligible women in the valley at one time or another. I’d thought Jill would have more sense than to fall for him.’ He looked up. ‘I suppose it was my pride that was most hurt.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy,’ Vera said. ‘All that gossip again.’

  ‘It was hard.’ He fell silent for a moment. A skein of geese flew overhead, honking. ‘I heard folk talking about how Lorna looked so like him. Like his daughter Juliet, at least. It hadn’t occurred to me before then, but once it was in my mind, I couldn’t shift the thought. I was reminded every time I looked at her.’

  ‘You and Jill must have talked about it. She must have known you were hurt.’

  He looked up at her. ‘Of course she knew and she hated what she’d done to me. I knew she was sorry. What was the point of talking? It was over.’

  ‘Except that Lorna reminded you.’

  He started walking towards his vehicle, but turned back to face her. ‘She was my daughter, and I loved the bones of her. I was a better father to her than that man would ever have been.’

  ‘Crispin paid for her treatment in the clinic when she was ill.’

  ‘He could afford to! It was the least he could do. He did bugger all else for her.’ Falstone paused again. ‘Except leave her alone.’

  ‘He never tried to get in touch when she was growing up?’ Vera wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but she wanted to keep Falstone talking.

  The man shook his head. ‘I saw him watching her, though, when he thought nobody was looking.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was mad about horses when she was growing up.’

  ‘Aye, your wife said she was a canny little rider.’

  ‘Sometimes, at the local shows, when Lorna was competing on her pony, I’d catch Stanhope staring at her,’ Falstone said. ‘Looking kind of proud but sad. Usually he was there to open the event, give out the prizes, and if Lorna won, he’d be handing the rosette to her. But it was us she ran back to as soon as the ceremony was over. We were the people she wanted to congratulate her. Those times, I just felt sorry for him.’

  ‘Lorna never suspected Crispin might be her dad?’ Vera wondered what that might be like. It had been bad enough being Hector’s daughter. Hector, the black sheep, despised by his family and his respectable neighbours. Vera had been the object of pity and suspicion. But at least there’d been no denying her parentage. She might not have liked Hector, but she’d known where she’d come from.

  ‘Not until she was a teenager. She heard stuff from the other kids when she got to the high school. They were a cruel bunch. I saw them sometimes when I was dropping her off for the bus. All pointing and whispering. No wonder it made her ill.’ He paused. ‘We should have taken her away, sent her to a different school.’

  ‘Was there anyone specific making fun of her? The Heslop kids?’

  Falstone shook his head. ‘I think they were all as bad as each other.’

  ‘Did she talk to you about it?’ Vera asked.

  ‘Do you mean, did she ask if I was her real dad?’ He stood looking out at the river, brown and swollen with melted snow. ‘No. We weren’t that sort of family. We just got on with things.’

  ‘And she’d not have wanted to hurt you,’ Vera said. ‘You’d always cared for her.’

  ‘But I couldn’t save her, could I? She still got ill. And she still got killed.’ Falstone climbed into his vehicle, revved the engine and drove away. Vera walked back through the fields towards the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  JULIET WAS IN THE BEDROOM WRAPPING Christmas presents when Vera arrived. There was still no heating upstairs and she was wearing a thermal vest, two jumpers and a down jacket. No wonder, she thought, that she and Mark had few romantic moments at this time of the year; spontaneity was tricky when it took half an hour to undress. Dorothy had lit a fire for Harriet in the small drawing room, and now the housekeeper was back in the kitchen clearing up after lunch. As Dorothy and Harriet would be recipients of some of the Christmas gifts, Juliet had retreated into the freezing room upstairs.

  She was still unsettled, anxious. Earlier, the older male detective had arrived, asking if he could take a DNA sample. No explanation, just that it was routine. She could refuse if she liked, he’d said, but really, she’d known there was no option and perhaps it would be a good thing to know, once and for all, one way or another. Her hands, cutting the shiny wrapping paper, were still trembling.

  She heard the Land Rover first, wheezing and coughing down the drive, and was looking out of the window to see Vera descend, looking remarkably sprightly for someone of her build, approach the front door and ring the bell. Juliet left what she was doing and ran down the stairs, shouting towards the kitchen that she’d get the door. She knew Harriet wouldn’t move from the fire and she thought that Dorothy would hate being treated as some sort of parlourmaid or female butler. Juliet was always uncomfortable that her friend, so much brainier than her, so much more competent, should be expected to wait on them. It was bad enough that she did most of the cleaning.

  Vera was wearing mud-covered wellingtons, a woollen hat and a padded jacket. Juliet’s heart sank at the thought of the mud that would be carried into the house. They stood for a moment looking at each other, while Juliet wondered how she could tactfully ask Vera to take off her boots.

  ‘Were you just off out, pet?’ Vera nodded at Juliet’s jacket.

  ‘I thought I might go for a walk. The sun’s so glorious and it probably won’t last.’ A spur-of-the-moment decision and it did feel warmer out
side than in her bedroom.

  ‘Shall we go together? We can chat just as well outside and what I have to say’s a bit delicate. I wouldn’t want your mam earwigging.’

  ‘Let me just let Dorothy know where I’m going and fetch some boots. You don’t mind waiting here?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Vera smiled, as if she knew what Juliet had been thinking all along about the wellies.

  Juliet called the dogs; she needed friends with her. The Labradors were mother and son. Wren was elderly, Dipper was younger, still lively, very randy. He went ahead, leading the way through the park and to the wild part of the garden by the river. There was a public footpath here that led along the bank and out through the forest towards the Pennine Way, but today it was empty. Few people ever used it at this time of the year. Harriet hated the intrusion in the summer: the families with their picnics and the hardened walkers with their leather boots and their shorts and their maps. She’d stood watching one party march along the path and exploded to Juliet and Mark who were with her, ‘Can’t we just block it off?’

  Juliet had explained that would be impossible and that it was a legal requirement to keep the path clear. Harriet had muttered about privacy and invasion. Juliet didn’t mind the walkers at all – it made her feel less guilty about having the house and the rest of the grounds virtually to herself – and Mark said it was a positive benefit:

  ‘When we have the theatre and arts centre open, those people will be our customers. They’ll look at the exhibitions, eat and drink in the bar. We’ll open up a path to the house.’

  Juliet allowed these thoughts and memories to run through her mind as a kind of distraction, because she suspected she knew what Vera was going to say next, and she didn’t want to hear it. They came to a narrow stone bridge across the river. Once it might have been a wagonway; it had never been wide enough for a motorized vehicle. It stood in full sunlight, and the women stopped there, where it was almost warm, looking down at the water. The dogs were sniffing in the undergrowth.

  ‘Your dad,’ Vera said. ‘What was he really like?’