‘. . . To stop without a farmhouse near /
Between the woods and frozen lake /
The darkest evening of the year.
‘And it ends like this:
‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep, /
But I have promises to keep /
And miles to go before I sleep /
And miles to go before I sleep.’
Holly looked up. ‘She must have got the title of the painting from the poem, don’t you think? There’s a feeling of a fairy tale in it.’
The room was growing even more restless; poetry obviously wasn’t their thing. Vera felt sorry for her.
‘You think it’s relevant that Constance gave her the book?’
‘I don’t know.’ Holly ploughed on: ‘But I wonder if the place she painted could be real. A real cottage. If Lorna needed somewhere to hide from the world . . .’ She paused. ‘And then she seems to have been very low recently, anxious. That would chime with the title. “The Darkest Evening”.’
Now, Vera could tell, Holly was anxious, scared she looked stupid, or pretentious, or both. The lass cared far too much what other people thought. ‘I assume you took a photo. Let’s have a look. Kirkhill’s my patch. I might recognize it.’
Of course, there wasn’t just one photo, there were several, all turned into images that could be linked to Holly’s computer and projected onto a screen. Vera could see why Holly might at first have thought that Lorna had imagined the place. There was something idealized about it, even when it had been painted as dark and brooding. The poem caught the essence of it. She shook her head. ‘Sorry, Hol, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Can you send it across? I’ve got a contact, a former Wildlife Liaison Officer. If it’s anywhere local to Kirkhill, he’ll recognize it.’
Holly nodded, relieved.
‘Anyone else?’ Vera scanned the room.
There was a brief silence before Joe asked, ‘Did the CSIs find a diary in Lorna’s house? The hospital psychologist said she kept one and she’d talked about turning her experiences into a book or a blog.’
Vera looked at Billy Cartwright. ‘Your lot come across anything like that?’
‘Sorry.’ Cartwright paused. ‘No laptop either, which is a bit strange for a lass of that age. Especially if she was thinking about doing some sort of blog. And no phone.’
Vera thought about that. ‘Are we saying she had them with her in the car and they were taken after she was killed? Or did someone go into her house and nick them?’
‘It could have happened,’ Billy said, ‘but they’d have to have gone in early the morning after she died. It took us a while to get there because most of the team were tied up at Brockburn.’ A pause. ‘They’d have needed a key, though. The place was locked when we got there.’
‘Someone worried about what she might go public with, perhaps?’ Vera looked out into the room. The team were tired and edgy. Instead of an immediate result, or even a possible prime suspect, after two days they had nothing but more questions. And an elderly woman’s disappearance.
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Four different individuals, beside Lorna. Nothing that matches anyone on the database.’
Vera nodded. ‘One will be her mam, another Constance maybe.’ She looked out into the room. ‘You’ll have heard that Constance Browne is missing. She’s still not home and not answering her phone, so it’s unlikely she’s just been to town for a day’s shopping. I’ve been asking around the village. Constance helps out at the village school once a week. Tomorrow afternoon is their Christmas show and she’s supposed to be there. If she’s not, we start worrying big style. There was no sign of a break-in or violence at the house. So, either something freaked her out and she’s in hiding, or she’s responsible for Lorna’s death and she’s run away.’
There was no response. They were all exhausted.
‘Get home,’ she said. ‘Have some rest. You’ve got your actions for tomorrow. Charlie, let’s chase that DNA analysis. It might not be relevant. I can’t see that the Brockburn bunch would have any financial gain from Lorna’s death even if they were related.’
They got to their feet as soon as she stopped talking, but she stood at the front of the emptying room, lost in space and time. Her mind had suddenly jumped back to her youth. Visits to Kimmerston library had provided welcome escape from home on Saturdays and during school holidays. As a teenager, Vera had loved reading traditional detective novels. Hector had thrown that back at her when she’d joined the police as a cadet. She could still remember the sneer in his voice and wondered now if there had been something else there too. A fear of being left alone? Or a fear of his daughter passing on information about his squalid criminality?
It won’t be like Agatha Christie, you know. It won’t be all country houses, vicars, butlers and wills.
This case was like that, though. The vicar was female these days and there might not be a butler, unless Dorothy counted as an updated version, but there was a country house. And there might be a will. Was it possible that, when Crispin had seen how Lorna was struggling with anorexia, he’d changed his will to leave something to her? Not the house, perhaps, because as Vera understood it, that had already passed to Juliet, but some income from the tenant farms or some savings. If that was the case, what might have happened to the will? Vera imagined a scenario like a scene from one of the books she’d escaped into as a teenager: Harriet coming across it before it could reach a solicitor and throwing it onto the fire. Vera smiled at the image, but she thought Harriet would be ruthless enough to do it. And perhaps Lorna had found out and was about to reveal all through her diary made public.
‘Boss? What would you like from us?’ Joe was bringing her back to the present. He and Holly were the only people left in the room.
‘Eh, I’m sorry, you two.
