The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5) (12 page)

Vera beamed. ‘Champion,’ she said. ‘There’s a casserole I made a couple of days ago when I was feeling domestic. I get the urge sometimes, but it soon passes. We’ll have a bite to eat before we talk to the dippy hippies, shall we? I can’t concentrate when I’ve got an empty stomach.’

‘And you’ll let me lead the interview?’

‘Of course, bonny lad. It’s only right. We can’t compromise the inquiry.’

The house was cold and Vera put a match to the fire. From the kitchen, heating up the chicken casserole and sticking a couple of jacket potatoes in the microwave, she heard Ashworth grovelling to his wife.

‘Yeah, I know I promised, but this is something I can’t get out of.’

They ate sitting by the fire with plates on their knees.

‘Is there anything I should know,’ Ashworth said. ‘Before we go in there?’

‘I wouldn’t want to influence you.’ And that was true enough, Vera thought. She’d be glad of Joe’s take on the pair. He disapproved of them instinctively, just because of their clothes and the way they looked, the fact that they didn’t have a real job or the whole 2.4 kids thing. Vera wasn’t sure of the way her sergeant voted, but she knew that by temperament he was conservative. He’d be sceptical about the pair and wouldn’t be taken in by the romance of their relationship. That was just what Vera needed.

They saw the couple before they realized Vera and Joe were there. Again the lights had been switched on, but the curtains – if there were any at the Myers Farm kitchen window – hadn’t been drawn. Jack and Joanna were sitting at the table. Supper plates were piled on the draining board. Jack was wearing thick woollen socks. His feet were stretched towards the ancient Rayburn and he drank beer from a bottle. The pose suggested complete exhaustion, and Vera thought he couldn’t have slept much even after Joanna’s release from custody. Joanna was sitting at an old-fashioned sewing machine, turning the handle with her right hand and guiding the fabric under the dipping needle with the other.

‘My nana used to have one of those Singers,’ Joe Ashworth said. He sounded wistful. Perhaps he thought his wife should spend her time sewing clothes for the kids instead of making a life of her own.

‘No time for nostalgia, lad.’ Vera knocked sharply at the door and marched in without waiting for a reply. Jack jumped to his feet. It was almost as if they’d woken him from a deep sleep. Joanna just looked up from the sewing.

‘What is it, Vera? Have you come to arrest me?’ The question was amused and impassive, as if the answer would have been of purely academic interest.

‘Nothing to make a joke about.’ Vera took a seat at the end of the table, leaving the one opposite the woman free for Joe. ‘We’ve just got a few questions.’

‘What will you have?’ Jack said. ‘Beer? Coffee?’ Now he was on his feet, it seemed he couldn’t keep still. He bounced towards the dresser on the balls of his feet, shook the stiffness out of his arms and shoulders.

‘This isn’t a social call.’ Vera looked at him. ‘Maybe there’s something you could be getting on with. We could do with some privacy.’

‘I’m not sure.’ He glared at them. ‘I think I should stay. You hear all sorts of things about the police. You might need a witness.’

‘This is Vera, Jack!’ Joanna threw back her head and laughed. ‘She’s not going to fit me up.’

He seemed about to respond, but glowered at the detectives and walked out without a word. They all watched him leave the room. After Jack’s bluster, the place seemed very quiet and calm, like a house after all the kids have been put to bed. Eventually they heard his boots cross the yard as he made his way to the barn.

‘Someone’s trying to fit you up,’ Joe Ashworth said. ‘That’s how it seems at least.’

Oh yes!
Vera said to herself.
Good opening, Joey-boy. Nice way in!

‘What do you mean?’ Joanna was sitting very upright in her chair.

‘The note, apparently from Ferdinand. If it wasn’t from him, perhaps the killer wanted you at the murder scene. What did you do with it, by the way? The note, I mean.’ The question was thrown in as an afterthought, although it was what he’d wanted to know from the start.

‘I’m not sure. I have looked for it. I thought perhaps you’d be able to test the handwriting, though only the initials were written. The rest was done on the computer and printed out.’

‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’ Joe said. ‘A note as short as that, why not just scribble it on a bit of paper? Why not speak to you, if it comes to that? Ferdinand must have seen you at lunch. He could have told you whatever he wanted then.’

‘Everything about that place was weird,’ Joanna said. ‘And I did wonder if the note was a ruse and Ferdinand just wanted to get me into his room on our own. But while there was a chance he had information about a publisher I decided to play along with it.’ She paused and returned to Joe’s initial question. ‘I rather think I must have chucked the thing into the basket by the fire in the drawing room as soon as I got it. I put all my waste paper in there. They use it to lay the grate every evening.’

‘So it’s probably burned?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It probably is. And if that’s the case, there’s no proof I received it at all.’ The last words were thrown towards Ashworth like a challenge:
I dare you to call me a liar!

Ashworth looked at her for a moment and then changed the subject. ‘Had you met anyone at the Writers’ House before?’

Sitting at the end of the table, Vera thought this was another good question.

This time Joanna paused before answering. ‘It’s possible.’

‘You don’t seem very sure,’ Ashworth said.

‘That’s because I’m not.’ Joanna frowned. ‘Look, it’s probably not relevant to Ferdinand’s death. I don’t see how it can be.’

‘But . . .’

‘But I thought I recognized one of the tutors. An old guy. Giles Rickard. The name was familiar when I got the list of participants.’

‘He’s a writer,’ Ashworth said. ‘They tell me he’s famous. Maybe you’ve read one of his books.’ The tone was sceptical:
Don’t play games with me, lady.

‘I’m trying to be honest here, Sergeant.’ Joanna was holding her temper, but only just. ‘I’m telling you how it is. Maybe I only recognized the name because I’d seen it on a bookshelf somewhere, but I don’t think so. And then when I saw him on the first night of the course, I was convinced I’d met him before. Even before I was told who he was. It was a long time ago and he’d changed, got bigger, softer. Old. But the features were the same. I’ve got a good visual memory.’

‘Where do you know him from?’ Vera asked the question. Ashworth frowned at the interruption, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d become involved in the conversation. She looked at Joe, a sort of apology, before turning back to Joanna to wait for the answer.

‘He was a friend of my ex-husband’s,’ Joanna said. ‘If it’s the man I believe him to be, that’s how I know him.’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’ Ashworth demanded. ‘I mean, he’s a famous writer and you’re trying to get published, so surely you’d use any contact you had in that world.’

Again Joanna took time before replying. ‘It wasn’t a happy time for me,’ she said at last. ‘The marriage was a disaster almost from the beginning. I was young. The separation was brutal. My husband was so convinced of his brilliance that he believed I must be mad to want to leave him. Literally mad. And by the end of the experience I probably was. Giles knew me from that time.’

‘So it would have been embarrassing to introduce yourself to him?’ Ashworth said. ‘Because the last time you met, you were . . .’ he paused to find an acceptable term. Vera saw that
mad
would be too stark for him. Too unkind. ‘. . . mentally ill.’

‘No!’ This time Joanna’s response was immediate. ‘I’ve never been embarrassed in my life. People can take me or leave me.’

‘Then I don’t understand.’ And Vera saw that Ashworth really didn’t understand. His experience of domestic life was limited and suburban. People married. If they separated, usually it was because one party had an affair. And Joe disapproved of affairs.

‘Paul, my husband, was an unpleasant man. Controlling and violent. Also rich, which was a complicating factor. Giles was his closest friend, despite the difference in their ages. Like a surrogate father. I thought that if Giles recognized me, he might tell Paul where I was.’ She looked up and stared first at Ashworth and then at Vera. ‘I was scared,’ she said. ‘It all happened nearly twenty years ago, but still I was scared.’

Vera watched Joe drive down the lane. She waited until his lights had disappeared and then she went back to Myers Farm. Through the kitchen window she saw Jack standing behind Joanna, his arms around her shoulders. Was Joanna telling him about Rickard? Sharing her anxiety. This time when Vera knocked she waited for them to call her in.

‘What is it now?’ Jack was reproachful. ‘Don’t you think Joanna needs to be left alone? It’s late. We were thinking of going to bed.’

‘I’m here as a friend,’ Vera said. ‘Not as a cop. I should have nothing to do with this investigation. Conflict of interests. When we come to courts the defence could use that. You do see?’

‘So you’ll have a beer then?’ Jack stood away from Joanna. ‘If you’re here as a friend. If it’s not a professional visit.’

‘Aye, why not?’ Vera leaned across the table towards Joanna. For the first time she saw how tense and strained the woman was. The performance for Joe had been a brilliant effort. ‘You submitted a piece of writing to get the bursary for the writing course.’ Her voice was low, and Jack, in the pantry, wouldn’t have been able to hear.

‘Yes.’

‘It was about your marriage,’ Vera said. ‘Your marriage turned into fiction. You told me that and so did Nina Backworth. Very personal, she said. It must have been hard to write.’

‘No.’ Joanna was drinking wine from the Bristol Blue glass. Jack had obviously poured it for her as soon as Ashworth and Vera had left. ‘It wasn’t hard at all. I’d been bottling up the hatred for years and when I saw the advertisement for the Writers’ House, I sat here one afternoon and spewed it all out. Then I sent the story off, before I had a chance to change my mind.’

‘Did the writing come easily because you’d stopped taking the medication?’ Vera asked. ‘Is that why you came off it?’

‘To make me more creative, you mean?’ Joanna was self-mocking. ‘No, it wasn’t that. Not in that sense, at least.’

‘In what sense then?’ Vera thought of Jack’s words before all this had started, his fear that Joanna had found a new lover.

But he came back into the room then and Joanna just shook her head and refused to answer.

‘Can I read the story?’ Vera was leaning back in her chair, the bottle raised towards her mouth. She could tell the question came as a surprise. ‘Ashworth should have asked to see it, but I didn’t want to make a deal of it while he was here.’

‘I can’t see what that could have to do with Tony Ferdinand’s death.’

‘Ferdinand had read it, hadn’t he? And he was known as something of a sexual predator.’

‘You think it might have turned him on?’ Joanna threw back her head and laughed. ‘Nah, he was just an ordinary perv.’

‘Rickard had seen it too?’ Vera was trying to grope her way through the complexities of the situation. She didn’t care if her ideas seemed ridiculous.

‘A copy of all submitted work was shown to every tutor,’ Joanna said.

‘Did Rickard recognize you?’

‘If he did,’ Joanna said, ‘he didn’t say anything.’

‘What did he make of your story?’

‘I don’t know. I was due to have a tutorial with him the afternoon Tony Ferdinand died.’

There was a silence while they considered the implication of that fact. ‘So it might be important,’ Vera said. ‘Probably not, but you see how it could be?’

When Joanna didn’t answer, Vera went on:

‘I could get a copy from Miranda Barton, you know. But I wanted to ask you first.’

Joanna nodded. She went to a drawer in the dresser and took out an A4 envelope. ‘This is all I have left,’ she said. ‘I deleted it from the computer.’

‘Because you didn’t want Jack to read it?’ Vera kept her voice light. On the other side of the table Jack seemed about to speak, but said nothing. Not like him to keep quiet, Vera thought. Maybe he’s growing up at last.

‘Not because there’s anything secret,’ Joanna said. ‘And nothing really I’m ashamed of. Except being taken in by a bastard. But you know what Jack’s like.’ She turned towards her partner and gave him a smile that was almost maternal. ‘I thought it would make him angry. I thought he’d decide to go off and play the hero.’

‘Eh,’ Jack said, trying to keep it light. ‘Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.’

Vera ignored the interruption. ‘You thought he’d confront your ex, you mean?’

‘Something like that. He’d have had a go at Paul, if he’d been able to find him.’

‘And would you have done that?’ Now Vera did look at Jack. The knuckles were white on the hand that clasped the bottle. If he squeezed it much harder it’d smash into pieces.

‘Yeah I would,’ Jack said. ‘If I’d found him I’d have killed him.’

‘And I wouldn’t have wanted that,’ Joanna said, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t blame Paul Rutherford or Giles Rickard any more. They didn’t turn me into a victim, Vera. I did that all by myself. Sometimes you just have to take responsibility.’

Vera sat up in bed and read the manuscript Joanna had given to her. The bedroom was cold. The fire she’d lit for Joe had long gone out and she hadn’t bothered switching on the central heating. She had two pillows at her back and a spare duvet wrapped around her shoulders. On the bedside table some hot milk with a good splash of whisky in it. Outside it was still; there was no sound at all. In her head she heard the voices of the people in the story.

This was fiction, but the central character, Maggie, was a barely disguised version of Joanna, and when Vera read the piece, she found Joanna there, speaking in her aristocratic tone, confused and angry.