She must have guessed his thoughts. ‘Most of our churches are freezing and I haven’t got any formal services today. Come in. There’ll be soup if you’re hungry. I’m starving.’ A pause. ‘I suppose you’re here about Lorna Falstone. Poor little thing. We gave a statement to your colleagues the day after she died, but we couldn’t help much.’
It seemed the news about Constance Browne hadn’t reached her yet. The team would be starting to canvass Kirkhill now and Vera had asked comms to put out a media release. Soon the information would be everywhere.
Joe followed her into an untidy house. A couple of small kids’ bikes stood in the hall and they climbed past them into a big kitchen. An older man sat at a scrubbed pine table, a pile of papers in front of him. He got up when they came in, seemed genuinely pleased to see her, gave her a hug and a kiss.
‘This is Doug, my rock. He’s an academic, semi-retired. He holds all this together.’ She waved an arm around the kitchen, taking in the clothes horse, the laundry basket, the ironing board, the washed dishes piled on the draining board. ‘This is a detective. Joe Ashworth. I promised him soup.’
Doug got to his feet and cleared the papers into a tidier pile. ‘You’re in luck then. There is soup.’
‘Are you okay talking in front of my husband?’ They were sitting at the cleared end of the table. Doug had ladled vegetable soup into big blue bowls. There was a loaf of home-made bread too. Joe felt swept along by the flow of her energy and had found it impossible to resist the hospitality. ‘If it’s confidential we can go into the office afterwards.’
‘I’m happy to talk here,’ he said. ‘Doug might be able to help.’
‘It is about Lorna?’
‘Did you know her?’
‘I knew of her, of course. I visited a couple of times, once when she was pregnant and once when she was back home with the baby, but she was resistant, prickly. She saw me as an interfering do-gooder, which I probably was.’
Joe paused. ‘We’re trying to trace the father of her child. Do you have any idea who that might be?’
Jane shook her head. ‘I didn’t ask. I wasn’t there to judge, just to offer help and support.’
‘You’ll know the farming families in the valley,’ Joe said. ‘What do you make of Lorna’s parents?’
The vicar shrugged. ‘I don’t know them well. They’re not church members and they don’t take part in village functions.’
‘What about the Heslops?’
‘Ah, I know them better.’ Jane smiled. ‘They’re not regulars – I suspect that church for them is more a matter of tradition than faith, something to hold the community together – but they’re always here for the big festivals. I saw Rosemary in the village yesterday and I know she’s worried about Neil. He’s not slept properly since he found Lorna’s body. Sometimes we forget that there’s often more than one victim of a crime.’
‘You were at Brockburn the night Lorna was found. Are you close to the Stanhopes?’
Across the table, Doug gave a kind of snort. Jane grinned. ‘You’ll have to excuse my husband, Joe. He doesn’t enjoy the social obligations of being the partner of a country vicar. We were invited, I suspect, because the family has always asked the parish priest to these occasions. A kind of tradition. Harriet would have preferred an elderly man, of course, but I had to do. Perhaps the Brockburn clan likes the sense that they have God on their side.’
Joe wasn’t sure what to say about that. ‘You left early?’
‘As soon as we decently could. Immediately after dinner. We had an excuse because of the weather. We were walking.’
‘Isn’t it a long walk back into Kirkhill?’
‘It would be by road. Not by the footpaths.’
Joe finished the soup in his bowl and set down the spoon. ‘Did you see anything unusual?’ He thought nobody else would have been out that night.
‘We saw nothing at all. It was rather beautiful.’
Doug began to pile up the bowls. Joe spoke before the man left his seat. ‘Yesterday Constance Browne’s body was found in Brockburn forest. She’d been murdered.’
There was a shocked silence. ‘Are you sure it’s Connie?’ Jane asked at last.
He nodded.
‘It’s just that she always seemed indestructible. I never saw her tired or upset or vulnerable. She was one of those women who can face anything the world has to throw at her.’
‘We know she wasn’t married and that she lived alone,’ Joe said, ‘but was there a partner? Someone special we should notify?’
Jane shook her head.
‘Connie’s been single for as long as I’ve known her. We’ve been here for five years. She mentioned men she’d known in the past – there was someone she met at university and they were engaged for a while – but I had the impression that she’d been alone for ages.’ Jane paused. ‘I think she had admirers, but she always said she was too long in the tooth to put up with another person’s mess.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘On Sunday. It was ten-thirty Holy Communion in Kirkhill and she never missed if she was home.’
‘Did you have a chance to talk after the service?’
‘Only briefly.’ Jane got to her feet and switched on the kettle. ‘It was a foul day. Nobody felt like chatting and I had another service to go on to.’
‘I had a word with her.’ Doug had hardly spoken throughout the exchange and now he seemed diffident, uncertain. ‘She and I were on sides duty and we put out the hymn books, greeted people as they came in.’ He looked at his wife. ‘She asked if she might pop round sometime. There was something she needed to discuss with you.’ He paused, stared into the distance. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. I said
