The Glass Room

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘Of course I knew the book was important,’ Vera said. ‘That’s why I took it from Miranda’s cottage.’ She didn’t care if Joe believed her or not. His description of the final chapter of Cruel Women was firing sparks in her brain. Confusing sparks. She’d thought she was groping towards a solution. Did this new information confirm her theory or would she have to think again? They were in Hector’s Land Rover, breaking all the rules about officers using their own vehicles, but she had plans for later in the day and didn’t want to be tied to a pool car.

She looked at Joe, expecting him to challenge her, but he let the comment go. He probably realized she’d have got round to reading Miranda’s book in the end. She changed into four-wheel drive to go down a steep bank. In the night there’d been hail and the roads were still greasy.

‘So that’s why Miranda was so hysterical when she found the professor’s body,’ Vera said. ‘It would have been like walking into one of her own books. Or into a nightmare.’

‘Like Nina finding Miranda on the terrace and recognizing her own short story.’

Vera looked at him sharply. She couldn’t work out what was going on between Joe and the Backworth woman. This was something else that confused her. A month ago she’d have bet her home on Joe Ashworth’s fidelity. Now she wasn’t so sure. And she’d never have thought he’d go for someone intellectual and skinny.

‘Aye.’ They’d reached the bottom of the hill and she changed gear again.

‘Is that coincidence, do you think?’ Joe said. ‘The writers discovering the bodies? Or did the killer organize it that way?’

‘Joanna could have found the first one.’ Vera thought she shouldn’t have had to remind Joe of that. He was losing his focus on the case. ‘And she was meant to. All that business with the different knives and the note. Miranda came along later and screamed the house down. I don’t think that was intended.’ It wasn’t grief that had caused the hysteria, Vera saw now, but shock because she recognized the scenario; she’d created it. And Miranda had recovered from that more quickly than anyone would have expected. It seemed she hadn’t really cared for Tony Ferdinand at all.

‘Why didn’t she tell us that the scene came from her book?’ Joe frowned and looked like a school kid doing difficult sums. ‘That’s been bothering me since I read that last chapter.’

‘Perhaps she was worried that we’d see her as the killer.’ Vera paused. ‘And then she decided she could use the situation to her advantage. If she worked out who was playing games with her stories.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘It’s always seemed likely as a motive for the second murder.’ But Vera thought that wasn’t the big question. The big question was, why had the killer created the fictional scenes in the first place? A warped sense of fun? Or was there a greater significance? And you could ask the same questions about the objects he’d left behind.

Now they’d reached the highest point of the road and there was a view of the coast and the house below them. The earlier storm had stripped the trees of leaves, so the outline of the building was clearer than Vera had remembered. It was strange being back here with the place almost empty. No CSIs, no students, theirs the only car in the visitors’ car park. Alex had heard the Land Rover and came out of the cottage to meet them. He seemed calm enough, but slightly dazed. Vera thought he was probably still on tranquillizers. Or maybe it was losing a mother he’d never been close to.

‘I’ve just had Chrissie Kerr on the phone,’ Alex said, his voice distant and uninterested. ‘She seems to ring about three times a day. This time it was about what time the caterers can get here on Friday. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal for her.’

Oh, I do, Vera thought. It’s her big chance.

‘You’re not doing the cooking yourself then?’ Joe was concerned for the young man. He probably thought Vera was a callous cow to allow the party to take place here. Vera saw that he wasn’t sure what they were doing here now. Why was it so important for them to visit the Writers’ House? And she didn’t know that she had an answer for him.

‘Chrissie asked if I’d like to do the cooking,’ Alex said. ‘She told me that she’d pay the going rate. But I didn’t think I could take it on. These days I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘Are you sure you’re up for the party?’ Vera knew she was going through the motions even as she put the question. She was desperate for the event to take place. Like Chrissie, she saw this as her last chance. Her only opportunity to get this killer. How would she react if Alex said he wasn’t sure, that the last thing he wanted was his home invaded by a bunch of strangers?

But Alex reacted exactly as she’d hoped: ‘My mother would have loved it. All this fuss in her name. It’s the least I can do. Then maybe I can move on.’ The last phrase sounded trite and uncertain, as if it had been suggested by one of the doctors in the hospital.

‘Show us round then, will you, pet? Show us where it’s all going to take place.’

And Alex did as he was told, leading them through the grand rooms as if he were an estate agent and was showing around a prospective customer, as if he had no emotional tie to the Writers’ House at all.

It was only as they were drinking coffee in the kitchen that they discussed his mother’s book. Vera was aware of time passing. She had another place to be. ‘Have you ever read your mother’s novel?’ she asked. ‘The famous one that was adapted for telly?’

Alex seemed confused by the question. ‘Years ago, when I was a teenager. At least I tried. I’m not sure I actually finished it.’

And Vera left it at that. She could sense that Joe wanted her to push the point. Why else were they there? They’d achieved nothing by trailing round the house after Alex. Joe even opened his mouth to ask more questions, but she hurried him out of the house. ‘Come on, Joe, man. I’ve got a train to catch.’ And she drove straight to the station at Alnmouth. They got there just as the London train was pulling in, so she left Joe to park her Land Rover and to arrange for a taxi to get himself back to the office. Looking out of the window as the train moved away from the station, she saw that he was still frowning.

London. She could find her way round well enough. If Hector had taught her anything it was to read a map. And the city didn’t scare her. She knew you could get scary people anywhere. She just didn’t like it much. She didn’t like any city. Even a visit to Newcastle was a bit of a chore and she was glad when it was time for her to leave.

First stop was St Ursula’s College. A mellow redbrick built around a north-London square. The horse-chestnut and plane trees had shed their leaves and the late-afternoon sun threw shadows of the branches onto the pavement. Vera had arranged to meet Sally Wheldon there and found the poet in a small office, sitting at her desk behind a pile of books. Vera had picked up a copy of her work from the independent bookshop in Kimmerston, had been surprised that she’d enjoyed it. Much of it concerned the domestic and was funny. One poem had moved her to tears. Sally was tiny, dark-haired and dark-eyed. From her voice, Vera had expected a larger woman and it took a few seconds to reconcile her imagined picture with the reality.

Vera had just introduced herself when a student knocked at the door. A young man with thick glasses and wild hair.

‘I’m busy, Ollie,’ Sally said. Her voice was amused and a little impatient. ‘I’m sure it can wait until the tutorial.’ He sighed and left the room, and she turned to Vera. ‘Sorry about that. Some of them are so intense. Occasionally I’m tempted to tell them to get a life so that they’ll have something real to write about.’

‘You’re keeping things going then? Without Tony Ferdinand?’

‘We’re just about managing.’ A smile to show she was being sarky, but not malicious. Vera liked that in a woman. Sally went on, ‘Shall we go for a walk in the square? That way we’ll be sure we’ll not be interrupted.’

They wandered across the road and found a bench to sit on.

‘I’ve been asked to take it on,’ Sally said. ‘To run the creative-writing MA.’

‘Will you do it?’

‘I think I will. Just for a limited time. It saps the energy, working with students. They suck the life from you. But I’ll consider it as a sabbatical, a time away from my own writing. I’d like to change the ethos of the course, make it gentler and more positive. It’ll be worthwhile, I think, if I can pull it off.’ She paused. ‘And of course it’ll raise my profile professionally.’

‘What do you know about Tony Ferdinand’s family?’ Vera asked. ‘Did he talk about them? We haven’t been able to trace anyone.’

‘He doesn’t have one. He was an only child and his parents died ages ago. No wife.’

‘No children?’ Vera couldn’t help herself.

‘If he had, he never acknowledged them.’ Sally gave a quick smile. ‘I told you, when he was mugged that time I was his only visitor. Most of the writers and editors in London would recognize him, might even describe him as a friend, but there was nobody really that he was close to. Rather sad.’

‘Where did the attack happen?’ Vera didn’t know where all this was going or how it could be important.

‘Just about here. He was crossing the square on his way back to his flat. It wasn’t particularly late, about eight o’clock at night, but the square is quiet in the evening once all the students have gone home. It was last February, foggy. He would have been very badly hurt, but one of our office staff came along and frightened the guy away.’

‘It was definitely a man?’

‘Must have been, mustn’t it?’ Sally looked at Vera strangely. ‘How often do you get female muggers?’

‘Yeah.’ But Vera was lost in thought. ‘Yeah, of course.’ It was beginning to get cold and she pulled her coat around her. ‘Did you know Miranda Barton? She worked in the library here before she became a full-time writer.’

‘No, that was before I started.’

‘An odd coincidence.’ Vera could have been talking to herself. ‘Both victims connected to St Ursula’s.’

‘But surely it must be a coincidence,’ Sally said. ‘It’s years since Miranda worked here.’

‘Aye.’ But Vera wasn’t convinced. ‘There must have been talk about them, even when you started here. Tony and Miranda. Him turning her into a star overnight. Like a kind of fairy story. What was it with the two of them? And what held them together after all this time? What persuaded him north, to do her a favour by being a tutor in her house in the wilds?’

‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I try not to listen to departmental gossip.’

‘An affair, do you think?’

‘Maybe, but Tony was never romantic, even with women he took to bed.’

A group of students, laughing and teasing, crossed the square in front of them. They seemed not to notice the two middle-aged women sitting on a bench.

‘Did Miranda ever come back to St Ursula’s?’ Vera asked.

‘Occasionally. Tony would take her out to lunch. He never invited her to the SCR or to any of the college dinners.’

‘Like he was ashamed of her?’

‘Perhaps.’ Sally stood up. ‘But really I’m not prepared to speculate. I didn’t know enough about the pair of them to do so. Now I’m sorry, Inspector, but I have to go back to work. I’ve got a meeting this evening and I need to prepare.’

‘Is there anyone in the college who might remember Miranda?’ Vera got to her feet too. She felt that the encounter had been unsatisfactory. She’d arranged a meeting with an admin officer to look at college records, and that might prove more fruitful, but so far it had been a long train journey for so little.

‘Jonathan Barnes, our senior librarian, has been there for years. You might talk to him.’

St Ursula’s library was housed in a new building behind the college and hidden from the square. Barnes was a small, round man with a huge belly. He made coffee for Vera in his office and he, it seemed, had no qualms about passing on gossip.

‘Of course I remember Miranda. She was rather glamorous at that time. All shiny make-up and big hair. We knew she had ambitions as a writer. The day she found a publisher she brought in champagne. She thought it would change her life. Unfortunately the book sank without trace.’

‘Until Tony Ferdinand wrote an article about it.’ Vera sipped her coffee.

‘That’s right! He must have seen something in the work that none of the rest of us recognized. He always had a knack of picking up on the mood of the reading public. It wasn’t that he created best-sellers. More that he could tell which books readers would like, if they came to them. That’s a little different, don’t you think?’

Vera didn’t answer. She had other things on her mind.

‘Were Ferdinand and Miranda lovers?’ she asked.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Really, I don’t think so. She had a baby by then, and no way was Tony going to be saddled with a child.’

‘Who was the baby’s father?’ Vera looked up at him. His face was round and, for an older man, it was remarkably smooth.

‘Miranda would never say. It was her one big secret. She always implied that it was someone grand in the publishing world, but I never believed that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, my dear, she would never have kept that to herself. I suspected the boy was the result of a rather sordid one-night stand and that was why she refused to speak of it.’

It was clear that Barnes would have been prepared to talk to her for hours, but Vera had an appointment with a woman in HR to keep, and a boring trawl through college records in the hope of finding another connection between Miranda, Ferdinand and any of the other suspects in the case. She drank the rest of her coffee and left.

Later Vera met up with a lad who’d worked with her until he’d got ambition and moved to the Met. They ended up in a pub behind King’s Cross, so she wouldn’t have far to go to get her train at the end of the night. They were drinking brown ale because the man was homesick and she wanted to keep him sweet. At the end of the evening she was a lot more sober than he was. One more bottle and he’d be singing ‘The Blaydon Races’ and applying for a transfer back north.

But the trip to London had provided her with the information she wanted. Hurtling through the night in the carriage with exhausted businessmen and a couple of pissed housewives who’d spent the day Christmas shopping for themselves, she thought she knew what had happened in the Writers’ House. Now, she just had to prove it.