She was still unsettled, anxious. Earlier, the older male detective had arrived, asking if he could take a DNA sample. No explanation, just that it was routine. She could refuse if she liked, he’d said, but really, she’d known there was no option and perhaps it would be a good thing to know, once and for all, one way or another. Her hands, cutting the shiny wrapping paper, were still trembling.
She heard the Land Rover first, wheezing and coughing down the drive, and was looking out of the window to see Vera descend, looking remarkably sprightly for someone of her build, approach the front door and ring the bell. Juliet left what she was doing and ran down the stairs, shouting towards the kitchen that she’d get the door. She knew Harriet wouldn’t move from the fire and she thought that Dorothy would hate being treated as some sort of parlourmaid or female butler. Juliet was always uncomfortable that her friend, so much brainier than her, so much more competent, should be expected to wait on them. It was bad enough that she did most of the cleaning.
Vera was wearing mud-covered wellingtons, a woollen hat and a padded jacket. Juliet’s heart sank at the thought of the mud that would be carried into the house. They stood for a moment looking at each other, while Juliet wondered how she could tactfully ask Vera to take off her boots.
‘Were you just off out, pet?’ Vera nodded at Juliet’s jacket.
‘I thought I might go for a walk. The sun’s so glorious and it probably won’t last.’ A spur-of-the-moment decision and it did feel warmer outside than in her bedroom.
‘Shall we go together? We can chat just as well outside and what I have to say’s a bit delicate. I wouldn’t want your mam earwigging.’
‘Let me just let Dorothy know where I’m going and fetch some boots. You don’t mind waiting here?’
‘Not at all.’ Vera smiled, as if she knew what Juliet had been thinking all along about the wellies.
Juliet called the dogs; she needed friends with her. The Labradors were mother and son. Wren was elderly, Dipper was younger, still lively, very randy. He went ahead, leading the way through the park and to the wild part of the garden by the river. There was a public footpath here that led along the bank and out through the forest towards the Pennine Way, but today it was empty. Few people ever used it at this time of the year. Harriet hated the intrusion in the summer: the families with their picnics and the hardened walkers with their leather boots and their shorts and their maps. She’d stood watching one party march along the path and exploded to Juliet and Mark who were with her, ‘Can’t we just block it off?’
Juliet had explained that would be impossible and that it was a legal requirement to keep the path clear. Harriet had muttered about privacy and invasion. Juliet didn’t mind the walkers at all – it made her feel less guilty about having the house and the rest of the grounds virtually to herself – and Mark said it was a positive benefit:
‘When we have the theatre and arts centre open, those people will be our customers. They’ll look at the exhibitions, eat and drink in the bar. We’ll open up a path to the house.’
Juliet allowed these thoughts and memories to run through her mind as a kind of distraction, because she suspected she knew what Vera was going to say next, and she didn’t want to hear it. They came to a narrow stone bridge across the river. Once it might have been a wagonway; it had never been wide enough for a motorized vehicle. It stood in full sunlight, and the women stopped there, where it was almost warm, looking down at the water. The dogs were sniffing in the undergrowth.
‘Your dad,’ Vera said. ‘What was he really like?’
‘He was always rather lovely to me. Kind, gentle, generous.’ Quite different from my mother, she was going to add, but that would have been disloyal.
‘Seems he had a bit of a reputation for chasing the women.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Juliet was already being defensive, but really, how could she defend Crispin? She knew he’d been a nightmare, charming and entitled. ‘I never saw that side of him.’
‘You know that some folk say he was Lorna Falstone’s father?’
Juliet had been expecting the question, but still it came like a punch to her stomach, winding her. ‘I’d heard rumours.’
‘But you must have seen for yourself.’ Vera was quite ruthless now. ‘The pair of you looked quite alike. Until Lorna lost all that weight.’ She paused. ‘I did wonder if that was how the anorexia started. She wanted to shrink away until she was nothing like her former self. Until there was nothing to remind her of you and Crispin.’
‘You can’t blame my father for her illness. I know he wasn’t a saint, but really, that’s too much.’
‘Maybe he blamed himself,’ Vera said. ‘He paid her hospital bills after all.’
‘He was a generous man. He felt some obligation to all his tenants.’
‘Eh, pet.’ Vera turned and smiled. ‘That sounds almost like your mother speaking.’ She paused. ‘You can’t help but admire Harriet, though, keeping her dignity through it all, ignoring the gossip, keeping the show on the road.’
Juliet looked at her relative, suspecting sarcasm, but she saw that the admiration was real.
‘We’ll know soon enough anyway,’ Vera went on. ‘Charlie came and took the DNA sample earlier?’
Juliet nodded. A buzzard was sailing above them, the sunlight shining through the thinner feathers.
‘It might take a while to come back, but we should know in a few days. What I was wondering . . .’ Vera let her voice tail away. It was as if she wanted to choose the right words. She started again. ‘I was wondering if Crispin felt an obligation to her. Might he have made some other financial provision
