Somehow, it had all spilled out. ‘I think my father’s going to leave us.’
Miss Browne had said seriously:
‘That wouldn’t be the end of the world though, would it? It would be sad, of course, but not worth crying about. Other pupils in the school have had parents who’ve divorced. You’d cope, Juliet. I promise.’
That hadn’t been what Juliet had wanted to hear. She’d wanted reassurance, for Miss Browne to laugh and to tell her how stupid she was being. Because, deep down, Juliet had known she wasn’t like the other pupils, she’d known that people gossiped about her family in a way that they never did about anyone else, that as Mummy was always saying, they had a position to maintain. She’d been brought up to believe that she was different.
Juliet stared back at Vera. ‘I didn’t tell Connie anything that the rest of the village hadn’t guessed. I really can’t see how it might have prompted any drama after all this time.’ She managed a little smile. ‘We’re old news now. It’s three years since my father died.’
Vera drank her tea. Nobody had eaten anything. Juliet cut a few slices of bread to start them off, in the hope of bringing things back to normal. Vera reached out for a slice, buttered it, cut a lump of cheese. ‘If Lorna was Crispin’s daughter, would she be entitled to anything from the estate?’
‘No,’ Juliet said. ‘Absolutely not! I would be the oldest child. Whatever happened, it comes to me. It has come to me. Mummy’s entitled to live here until her death, of course, but I inherited.’
‘There was a will then?’
‘A very old one. My father made it soon after I was born.’ Juliet wondered if Vera was thinking she might be due some kind of inheritance, but Hector had never been in the running and he’d died several years before Crispin.
But Vera only seemed mildly amused. ‘Eh, it seems very old-fashioned, doesn’t it? This talk of wills and inheritance. Very genteel. As you say, it’s hard to believe they could have anything to do with the brutal murder of a young woman.’ She bit into a doorstop sandwich. ‘Would it make any difference that Lorna had a son? Don’t boys matter more in situations like this?’
Juliet kept calm. ‘Not if there was a will. Besides, the house is already mine.’
Vera turned her attention to Dorothy. ‘You were in Kirkhill this morning? You didn’t see Constance?’
‘Yes, I was in the village. We needed a few things from the shop, but I was only gone for twenty minutes. Juliet will tell you.’ Dorothy looked at Juliet, who nodded. ‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t see her.’
‘I’ll have to speak to Harriet and Mark,’ Vera said. ‘Are you expecting them home today?’
‘Mother will be back for dinner. Mark will stay another night in the city. He has meetings all day tomorrow.’
‘You’re sure he didn’t know Lorna?’
‘Quite sure.’ Juliet managed a little laugh. ‘They didn’t move in the same circles at all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Apparently, Lorna was quite arty. Perhaps they had more in common than we’d think.’ Vera didn’t seem to expect a response, which was just as well. She finished the food on her plate. ‘Very tasty. I don’t think I’ve got any more questions now. But if you think of anything, you will be in touch?’ She got to her feet.
‘Of course.’ Juliet stood too. She walked with Vera to the door. In the far distance, the blue-suited officers were still in the woodland, moving so slowly that they could have been motionless, some strange art installation. Antony Gormley, perhaps. Vera reached out and touched Juliet’s shoulder. ‘Someone will be back to take that DNA sample. You just take care.’ Then she disappeared into her Land Rover without a backward glance.
Later, when Dorothy had gone back to the cottage to spend an hour with Karan and Duncan, Juliet slipped upstairs. Again, she remembered being a child, snooping, listening. She’d gone through her parents’ letters then, looking for anything that would make sense of what was going on around her. Now, she paused outside her mother’s room and wondered if it was time for her to search again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
HOLLY SPENT THE MORNING IN KIMMERSTON police station. She was there when Vera called through Constance Browne’s disappearance, and still at her desk in the early afternoon, answering calls from the public, staring at blotchy CCTV picked up from the main street in Kirkhill. She thought the boss had lost it big style this time and that she was seriously overreacting. Constance Browne had been close to Lorna Falstone, so surely it wasn’t beyond the bounds of reason that she might change her routine a little, decide she wanted to escape the village for a day. If Holly lived in Kirkhill, she’d want to escape. And so what, if it was a spur-of-the-moment decision and she’d left before breakfast? Perhaps Connie had suddenly lusted after eggs Benedict for brunch in one of the classier coffee shops in Newcastle. That would have been Holly’s idea of heaven. As the morning wore on, though, and Connie still wasn’t responding to her phone or her email, Holly began to understand Vera’s disquiet.
It was two o’clock when Vera phoned again.
‘Can you go into Newcastle and have a chat to Mark Bolitho? Apparently, he left home at six this morning to get into town before the morning rush hour. If he has witnesses to say he was in the theatre that early, I can’t see how he could have been involved in Connie’s disappearance. But you know there are rumours in the village that Lorna made trips into Newcastle to see a wealthy fancy man. And Bolitho has a reputation
