Telling Tales (41 page)
“I don’t know. A couple of months.” Wendy was grinning, couldn’t help herself. She perched on the arm of the chair where Danny was sitting, could hardly stop herself from touching him.
“Why did you keep it quiet?”
“Wouldn’t you? A place like this?”
“Aye, maybe.” She stood by the window, looked out. “It’s all over,” she said. “There’s someone in custody.”
“Who?” Danny asked.
“Mary Winter, the mother of the lass who found the body.”
“My God!” He sat quite still for a moment, trying to take it in. “Why did she kill them?”
“God knows,” Vera said. “She says she thought she was acting for the best, but I’m not sure I believe her. Simple jealousy perhaps, because the lass was young and bonny and the husband fancied her. That’s for the lawyers to fight over. But it’ll make no difference to the verdict. It’s over.”
“A bit late for Jeanie Long.”
“Not for you, though. Time to set it behind you.” A tanker was easing slowly up the river. “I found that file in your desk.”
“I wondered if you’d seen it.”
“For a while I wondered if you’d killed her.”
“No,” he said. “That was a different kind of obsession. I thought one day I might be able to put it right. Find the real murderer. Not that I did anything about it. Just took the file out every now and again to rub salt in the wound.”
“What will you do with it now?”
“Burn it.”
“Good luck,” Vera said, ‘with everything.”
“Thanks.”
“Right then. I’m off.”
“Home?”
“Aye,” she said. “North of the Tyne. Civilization.” She smiled broadly. “No offence.”
She had to drive through the village to pick Ashworth up from the hotel. She was forced to slow down at the Captain’s House to let a couple of kids run across the road and saw that Emma Bennett had returned home to James. She was sitting in the bedroom window, looking out over the square, apparently lost in thought. Like the heroine of some Victorian melodrama, Vera thought.
It was about time she got a life.
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