The Glass Room

Chapter Twenty-One

Joe Ashworth arrived just as Vera finished talking to Nina Backworth. He pushed open the heavy door and peered inside.

‘Come in!’ Vera said. It disturbed her how glad she was to see her sergeant; she realized that she’d come to depend on his presence at these interviews. It wasn’t the same with Holly. Vera couldn’t relax with her to the same extent. Not the girl’s fault, and probably not fair. ‘Holly, take Ms Backworth up to her room and help her to pack.’

‘I can manage on my own.’ Nina’s hands were fiddling with a tissue. She looked at the moving fingers as if they didn’t belong to her.

‘I know you can, pet. But the murderer would have scattered lots of blood around when they made that wound. Spatter, we call it. You can see it on the terrace floor. We’ll need to look at your clothes and take some of them away. It’s not personal: it’s not just you that we’ve helped to pack.’ Vera stood up and gave her a little pat on the shoulder.

They waited until both women had left the room. ‘I came as quickly as I could,’ Joe said.

‘I know.’ Vera saw he was expecting a bollocking for arriving late, but she was thinking about Miranda Barton. If the novelist had had suspicions about the murderer’s identity, why hadn’t she shared them with the police? Because her thoughts were still too vague? Or because she’d seen the opportunity for making money? Vera wouldn’t have put it past Miranda to try a spot of blackmail. This was a big place to keep up and maybe, with money tighter all round, folk weren’t willing to pay a fortune to sit round talking about books. Maybe it had occurred to prospective visitors that they could stay at home and write and it would cost them nothing. ‘Come and look at the scene,’ she said. ‘Then I want to show you something.’

The sun was up now and the garden flooded with cold light. It was still slippery underfoot and their breath came in clouds. ‘My bloody car wouldn’t start,’ Joe said. ‘And then there was an accident on the A1 caused by the ice.’

‘Nightmare!’ Vera said automatically, but she wasn’t really listening.

They put on scene suits and stood just outside the tent. Vera pulled open the flap door so that they could see inside. At the same moment one of the CSIs took a photo of Miranda’s body. It came to Vera that, in life, the woman would have loved this attention – the photographs, the audience. Perhaps that was why she had established the Writers’ House. Not for the money, but because she needed the admiration and envy of the young writers who had yet to be published. She needed to feel that she was still part of the publishing world, in the same way as ageing television actresses made guest appearances to open supermarkets or award prizes to schoolchildren.

‘What do you think?’ Vera stood aside so that Ashworth had a clear view.

‘Multiple knife wounds,’ Ashworth said. ‘The same cause of death as Tony Ferdinand. Same style too. Unnecessary violence.’

‘But not quite the same,’ Vera said. ‘That gash across the throat. It’s post-mortem, according to Paul Keating. Ferdinand was stabbed repeatedly, but there was nothing as showy as that here.’

‘Is that relevant?’

‘It certainly is. Come back inside and I’ll read you a story.’

She was about to leave, then stopped and called to one of the CSIs, ‘What have you done with the hankie that was on the floor?’

‘Already bagged ready for testing. I thought you’d want it fast-tracked for DNA.’

‘Let’s have a look before it goes off.’

The young CSI held it out for them. ‘Distinctive,’ he said. ‘Plain white, but it’s got some embroidery in the corner. Looks home-made. Something a child might have done for a Mother’s Day present? Or Valentine’s? It looks like a little red heart.’

Back in the chapel, Vera showed Joe Nina’s notebook. ‘She’s written that since she was here. Look at the detail. Everything’s the same in the description of the scene: the candle, the number of glasses, the way they’re arranged on the table. Nothing about the handkerchief, though, which could suggest it was dropped by accident.’

‘If the killer used the story as a model, this murder wasn’t planned that far in advance,’ Joe said.

‘Well, Miranda Barton might have been chosen as the intended victim, but the execution of the plan couldn’t have been decided until the killer had seen the story.’

Vera thought execution was a good word. That was how this seemed to her. There was a ritual to the killings. But then these people were experts in crime fiction. Perhaps that was the intention: to provide layers of meaning that were only for distraction. In Vera’s experience, the motive for most murders was simple. It came down in the end to money or sex.

‘Keating thinks the same knife was used as to kill Ferdinand,’ she said. It was time to get real, to concentrate on concrete facts. ‘Where the hell had it been hidden? The search team did a pretty thorough job of the house and garden. And where is it now? Barton must have been killed sometime after I saw Joanna, Rickard and Jack out here on the terrace last night. We might get something a little more precise from Paul Keating on time of death, but I won’t hold my breath. So the killer could have had all night to get rid of the weapon.’

‘Would the son be able to help with time of death?’ Joe had been listening intently. She loved that about him. The way he hung on her every word.

Vera shook her head. ‘I had a quick chat with him earlier. He says he took himself off to bed after that ruckus kicked off with Jack. “The whole thing was just embarrassing,” he said. “I knew what it would be like. The whole lot of them, slagging off the chap for daring to interrupt the stupid dinner. Actually, I thought Joanna’s partner spoke a lot of sense.”’

‘That’s a strange attitude to take when he makes a living from the writers.’ Joe paused. ‘And when his mam’s just been killed.’

‘Aye, well, I have the impression he’s a strange sort of chap.’ Vera still had a picture of the young man, as he’d been when she’d first arrived that morning. She’d found him in the kitchen, still in his whites, lifting a tray of croissants from the oven. It was as if he couldn’t take in the fact that his mother had died. Or as if he didn’t care. He still felt the need to feed his visitors.

‘He didn’t hear his mother come in last night?’ Joe interrupted her daydream.

‘He says not.’

‘You’d think,’ Joe said, and she thought he could be a persistent bugger, ‘after all the fuss, he’d want to talk to her about it. Jack’s scene in the dining room, I mean. He’d want to know how it all ended.’

‘Well, I’m not the person to ask about that, am I? We need to chat to the boy.’

‘Where did Jack stay last night? Did he go back to the farm?’

‘No.’ Vera spoke slowly. ‘Joanna didn’t want him driving back, the state he was in. They bunked up together in Joanna’s room. This morning I shipped them both off to the hotel with the other residents. Why? What are you thinking? That Jack was the murderer? Unlikely surely. He wasn’t in the place when Ferdinand was killed.’

‘We don’t know that, do we?’ Joe looked up at her and Vera saw he had some sort of theory. And that he thought it’d take a hard sell to convince her. ‘When I was driving on the afternoon Ferdinand was murdered, something – or someone – ran across the track in front of my car.’

‘You think it could have been Jack?’

He looked at her. He hadn’t expected her to take him seriously. ‘I don’t know, but we’ve always assumed the killer was someone staying in the house. No reason that has to be the case.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’ll check any CCTV between here and the farm for Jack’s van. Though I don’t know what his motive might have been.’

‘Probably a stupid idea,’ Joe said. Now she’d agreed to look into it, he was happy to let the notion go. ‘Why don’t we go and have a chat with Alex Barton? Where is he?’

Vera gave a little smile. In the end she always did get her own way. ‘I didn’t send him off to the hotel with all the others. It seemed a tad heartless. Besides, I thought we might get more out of him on home territory. He’s in the cottage with a minder.’

They walked into the yard, and into sunshine so bright that it made Vera’s eyes water.

‘You always call him a boy,’ Joe said suddenly. ‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty-three.’ Vera fished into her jacket pocket for a tissue and found half a roll of toilet paper. She tore off a handful and wiped her eyes. ‘Still a boy to me.’

Alex Barton was sitting in the kitchen of the cottage, with an overfed cat on his lap. Vera had knocked at the door, then walked straight in without waiting for an answer, but he didn’t seem surprised or startled to see them. A uniformed constable sat at the table and looked relieved when Vera waved for him to go.

‘I always hated this cat,’ Alex said. ‘It stinks. And when it was more active, it killed birds.’

‘I could never see the point of pets myself.’ Vera leaned against the Aga and felt the heat penetrate her jacket and warm her spine and her buttocks. ‘Your mother liked it, though?’

‘Spoilt it rotten,’ Alex said. ‘It’s ancient. When I was growing up I thought she loved it more than me.’

‘It’s a tricky relationship: single parent and only child. Too much guilt and duty swimming around.’ Vera knew Ashworth would think she was speaking from personal experience. So she was.

‘I should have got away,’ Alex said. ‘But I couldn’t see how she’d make a go of this place on her own. Not any longer. She needed me.’

Vera realized that he hadn’t yet referred to his mother other than by her or she. ‘You’ll have a chance now,’ Vera said. ‘To get away, I mean. This place must be worth a few bob, even if it’s got a mortgage. Sell it and you’re free to go wherever you like.’

He pushed the cat off his lap and looked at her with big, sad eyes. He was a pretty boy, she saw. There was something feminine about him, despite the dark hair on his arms. When she’d first seen him she’d described him to herself as a wolf. Now she wasn’t so sure. He didn’t seem sufficiently cruel. She’d expected a response to her words. Anger. A denial that he would choose to benefit from his mother’s death, an outburst that such an idea was the last thing on his mind. But he said nothing.

‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ Again she was deliberately trying to provoke him to speech.

Alex shook his head.

‘Of course, why would you? A young lad like you wouldn’t want to be tied down. And plenty of chance for sex without commitment here. I’d guess most of the women would be here on their own. Away from home. From their husbands and kids. And it must be intense. Older than you, but there’s nothing wrong with experience. All this talk of emotions. They’d be looking for a fling.’

He looked at her as if she was mad and she saw she’d have to try a different way in. Simple questions, she thought. Facts. Maybe that would work.

‘How long have you lived here?’

Now he did answer. ‘Nearly fifteen years.’

‘So you arrived when you were a small boy?’

He nodded. ‘I went to the village school up the lane, then to the high school in Alnwick.’

‘What brought your mam to this place then?’

There was a pause and Vera thought again there would be no answer. It required judgement, opinion, and it seemed Alex still wasn’t ready for that. But in the end he spoke.

‘She grew up in Newcastle and always dreamed of living on the coast. One of her books was adapted for television that year. Tony had written an article the Christmas before and described her as one of the best writers of her generation. It made a huge difference to her career. Until then she’d still been working in London, in the university library. Suddenly we had money to spend. She saw the house as an investment for our future. And a pleasant place to bring up a child.’

It was, Vera thought, almost as if he were reciting a story he’d learned by heart. The words were Miranda’s, not his own.

‘So at first you just lived here?’ Vera said. ‘She hadn’t set up the Writers’ Centre.’

‘No.’ Alex sounded dreamy now, half-asleep. ‘Then it was our home. A proper home. I loved it. We’d been living in London, a tiny flat because my mother was just assistant librarian at St Ursula’s – and even when her first book was published, it made peanuts – and suddenly I had the garden to play in and the beach. All that freedom.’

‘When did your mother start the business?’ Vera wondered what it must have been like to have the place overrun with strangers. Surely Miranda must have felt as if her home had been invaded. Or had she relished it? The talk about writing and the gossip, the like-minded people sitting round the table for dinner. It must have been lonely for her here, with only her son for company.

‘I was twelve,’ Alex said. It was clear that he, at least, hadn’t relished the intrusion. ‘Mum’s books weren’t doing so well. She’d thought that the TV adaptation of Cruel Women would be the start of a great flowering of her career. It turned out to be the high point. We needed the money. Mum had always enjoyed mentoring younger writers, so she had the idea of running the residential courses.’

‘How did that work?’ Vera asked. She was genuinely interested. Hector had claimed lack of money as the reason for his night-time adventures, had made Vera feel guilty – How can I get a proper job when I have you to look after? He’d drawn her in that way. ‘You can’t have done the cooking then?’ she said. ‘You’d still be at school.’

‘I helped. But the students cooked for themselves then. There was a sort of rota. That was when I first got interested in food. I loved it: an activity that’s practical and satisfying at the same time.’

‘What happened to your dad?’ She hadn’t meant to be so abrupt, but the question had come to her suddenly.

He shook his head. ‘I never knew him.’

‘Dead? Divorced?’

‘Neither,’ Alex said. ‘My mother never married him. I never met him.’

‘But you knew who he was?’

‘She told me who he was.’ Alex bent down to stroke the cat that was rubbing against his legs. ‘I’m not sure I believed her.’

‘What did she tell you?’ Vera demanded. This was like wading through treacle. ‘Let’s hear the fiction – if that’s what it was.’

‘My father was an older man. A publisher. She’d met him at a book launch and fell for his intelligence and his wit. They had an affair. It was the most exciting and wonderful time of her life. He introduced her to theatre and opera, took her away for romantic weekends – Barcelona, Rome, Paris. He was charming and attentive, and she’d never known anyone like him.’

‘But he was married,’ Vera put in.

Alex nodded. ‘With a child whom he adored. When she discovered she was pregnant she finished the affair. She didn’t want my father to be forced to choose between the families.’

‘Did the man have a name?’ Vera failed to keep the scepticism from her voice.

‘I’m sure he did, Inspector.’ For the first time Alex showed a flash of humour. ‘If he existed at all. But my mother never told me.’

‘You didn’t try to find him?’

Alex shrugged. ‘I was worried what I might discover. Like my mother, I preferred the fantasy.’

‘I did wonder if Tony Ferdinand might be your dad,’ Vera said. She looked at Alex, hunched in the rocking chair. He’s still just a child himself, she thought. A bright, screwed-up child.

‘So did I,’ Alex said bitterly. ‘Like I said, I preferred the fantasy.’

‘Did you ask your mother about him?’

‘No. I was scared she might tell me the truth. Tony was a manipulative man and I wanted nothing to do with him.’ He looked up at Vera. ‘He never liked me, you know. I wasn’t bright enough to catch his interest.’

They sat in silence. Joe Ashworth seemed to be looking out of the window. He managed to make himself still – almost invisible – during interviews, but Vera knew he was completely engaged with the conversation.

‘Are you sure you didn’t hear your mother come in last night?’ he said now, turning back to the room. Vera took the interruption as a sort of rebuke: Joe thought she should focus on the time of death. Important information that might move the investigation on. There would be time enough for all the relationship crap later. When Alex didn’t answer immediately, Ashworth continued, ‘You do see how it might be important? If your mother came in yesterday evening after the readings had finished and then went out again, or if she went to bed and went out early this morning, that would make us look differently at her death.’

But Vera knew Miranda hadn’t gone to bed. She was still wearing the garments she’d been in the night before. White silk shirt and long black skirt. Not the clothes for an early walk on a freezing October morning.

‘I didn’t hear her,’ Alex said. He looked up at Joe. ‘I didn’t want to hear her. I listened to music until I fell asleep.’

There was another moment of silence. Then outside a shout, so loud that it penetrated the thick walls of the cottage. ‘Has anyone seen the boss? They’ve found something!’

Joe slipped out of the door, but Vera stayed where she was. She pulled herself slowly to her feet. ‘Where did your mother keep her books then?’ she asked. ‘I’d have thought they’d be in pride of place in the main house, but I couldn’t find any in the library.’

‘She didn’t want the students noticing that it’s years since she’s been published,’ Alex said. ‘They’re upstairs in her bedroom.’

‘I’ll see myself up there, shall I?’ Vera said.

He seemed not to hear her and sat where he was.