Holly saw that every moment of that last meeting was imprinted in his mind. ‘Did she phone you to say she wouldn’t be coming?’
‘She sent me a text.’ The bitterness of rejection was back in his voice. ‘I’d been trying to call her all week, but she finally texted me on the Thursday afternoon, to say she wouldn’t make it.’ He got out his phone, clicked a few buttons and passed it to Holly.
Sorry. It’s been a shit week. Can’t make tomorrow, but all fine now.
‘I thought it was the most self-centred message ever,’ he said. ‘It seemed as if she didn’t care about me at all. It was probably my fault – I’d built the party up into something important, a chance for her to be part of my life away from the valley, and perhaps she hadn’t realized.’ A pause. ‘But it wasn’t all fine, was it? Now she’s dead.’ There were tears in his eyes.
Holly went back to the counter for more coffee, a chance for him to regain control. When she returned, his eyes were dry and he was looking out over the river.
‘How well do you know Constance Browne?’
He seemed surprised by the question, but he answered readily enough. ‘She’s always been there,’ he said. ‘A part of my childhood and my growing up. She’s like that with all the kids in the valley. She’s never had children and perhaps we’re a substitute family. She certainly encouraged my art. When she was our teacher, she saw it as her mission to broaden our minds. She took us on trips to the theatre and to museums in the city. She said we might end up farming with our families, but we had to know there were options.’
‘So, the special interest she took in Lorna wasn’t unusual?’
Josh shook his head. ‘Though perhaps Lorna needed her more than the rest of us.’
Holly framed the next question carefully. ‘You were late arriving at the art class this Monday. Why was that?’
‘Trouble with my car,’ he said. ‘It’s clapped out and a nightmare.’ He looked up. ‘You can check with my mother. I needed to borrow one.’
‘Were you surprised when Connie wasn’t there?’
‘Yeah, but she’d been so close to Lorna, I thought she might not be up to it.’
‘Miss Browne seems to have disappeared,’ Holly said. ‘Any idea where she might be?’
He shook his head. ‘Connie Browne’s adventurous. Brave. Last year she travelled through India on her own. Not a trip with an organized group. She might just have wanted to go away.’
Later, they walked together round the gallery. Holly was impatient. She felt she’d got everything she could out of the man and she wanted to get back to the station to pass the information on to Vera. But it was almost as if she’d lured him here with her interest in his work, and she didn’t feel she could just walk away. He was shy, awkward, and stood back, not soliciting any response. When she turned around, halfway through the gallery, he’d disappeared altogether.
The paintings were very different from Lorna’s: small, detailed, domestic. Strange points of view and changes in perspective made Holly see the landscape where Josh and his family lived and farmed in a new light. Often, the forest provided the backdrop, circling, dense, overwhelming the buildings and the people. Holly wondered if this was some kind of message about the strength and importance of nature, but she was given to over-analysing and didn’t want to ask Josh in case he thought the idea ludicrous. Occasionally a view was seen from the edge of the forest and then the light was startling, dazzling, a moment of revelation.
She walked round both rooms of the gallery, hoping that she might see the cottage which had featured in Lorna’s paintings, but there was nothing that resembled it.
Josh was waiting for her by the main door into the building. He was wearing his coat and seemed in a hurry to leave before she could make any comment on his art, but Holly asked him to give her another couple of moments.
‘Do these pictures mean anything to you? I assume you recognize the paintings?’ Holly got out her phone and showed him the photographs she’d taken of Lorna’s work. ‘I found them in Lorna’s spare room.’
‘No,’ he said. He sounded genuine enough. Sad. ‘She didn’t show me all her stuff.’
‘Do you recognize the place? The building?’
He hesitated and she thought he might provide the answer, but he shook his head. ‘No. Sorry.’
‘She called one of the paintings “The Darkest Evening”. Does that mean anything to you? I think it’s a quote from a poem.’
He shook his head again.
‘Well, if anything comes to you, do get back in touch. If I email the pictures perhaps you could ask your family.’ She held out her hand. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’
‘It was good to speak about Lorna. It’s hard to do that at home. My sisters are sorry she’s dead, of course, but they didn’t really know her and they’re at that age when everything just seems funny. My dad’s still traumatized by finding her and my mother just wants to pretend nothing’s happened, for everything to get back to normal.’ He paused. ‘You know it was Cath’s birthday party at the weekend. None of us really felt like celebrating, Dad especially after finding Lorna’s body, but Mam insisted we go ahead. Maybe she was right. Things can’t just stop because she’s dead.’
Holly wasn’t sure how to reply to that. ‘If you think of anything that might help us find out who killed her, you will get in touch?’
He hesitated again and she thought he might be about to share something relevant, but he just shook her hand briefly and hurried away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
IT WAS VERA’S FIRST VISIT TO Broom Farm, the place where Lorna had grown up. She must have driven past it a few times, on those trips to Brockburn with
