Rachael glared at her furiously. They hadn’t discussed telling Vera about the trip.
“Who’s she when she’s at home?” Vera asked.
“She was Bella’s head teacher “Ah.” There was a pause. “So you know about the court case.” She turned to Rachael. “I couldn’t tell you, could I? Not my place if Bella hadn’t.”
“What was your involvement?”
“I was in uniform, new to the job, taken along as the statutory WPC in case Bella Noble broke down in tears and the blokes didn’t know what to do.”
“Did she break down?”
“No.”
“Why did you go to her funeral? It must have been one case out of thousands.”
“I always felt for her. We were about the same age, in similar circumstances. I lived with my father. He wasn’t ill and he probably wasn’t as much of a bully as Alderman Noble but there were certainly times when I felt like hitting him on the head with a brass statue.”
“Did you keep in touch with her?”
“No, but I saw the notice of her funeral in the paper and thought I’d go along to pay my last respects.”
“But you must have known she was married,” Edie said. “How else would you have recognized her name in the Gazette?”
“She sent me an invitation to her wedding. Out of the blue, to the station. I don’t know why. Perhaps she had no one else to ask.” She shrugged. “And you get close to people in times of high drama. Perhaps that was it.”
“Did you go?”
“Yeah. I spent a quarter of an hour at the register office, signed my name and wished her luck.”
“Who was the other witness?”
“A dark young man. The husband’s son by a previous marriage.”
“Neville Furness,” Edie said.
The inspector grinned. “Did you ever think about taking up police work, Mrs. Lambert? You’d have made a bloody good interviewer.” “Miss.,” Edie said automatically. “It’s Miss. Lambert.”
Vera grinned again. “Like that, is it?”
“Did you know that Bella spent time in St. Nicholas’ hospital in preparation for release?” “No,” Vera said. “I wouldn’t have known that.”
“It would be interesting to find out if she was there at the same time as Edmund Fulwell.”
“Unlikely I’d have thought.”
“But if she was… “
“If she was, so what?” Vera was brutal. “Bella killed herself. Grace Fulwell was strangled. Another coincidence.”
Chapter Thirty-Five.
The coincidences were too much for Anne. She dug away at them, sifted them like the soil in her quadrat. Godfrey had been a regular at the Harbour Lights restaurant where Edmund Fulwell cooked. They were, she knew, more than passing acquaintances. At one of their illicit meetings Godfrey had admitted to a hangover. This was unusual for him.
“So how did you come by that?” she’d asked, amused.
He’d told her he’d arranged to meet a business contact at the restaurant. The client hadn’t arrived and he, Rod and Edmund had ended up having a bit of a session. At this session hadn’t Edmund mentioned a daughter? Godfrey hadn’t said. But he had stormed out of Baikie’s chasing Grace up the hill. And she had died.
Anne was sitting in the garden at Baikie’s as she was thinking this, sheltered by the cottage from a cool easterly breeze. Now the trees were in full leaf and the view down to the Skirl was obscured. The survey was almost over and they had time to relax. Rachael had final visits to make to two of her sites and Anne had one quadrat to check in detail the one nearest to the mine working. She was saving that as a treat.
Once their own work was finished Rachael wanted them to complete Grace’s report on the otters. She thought it wouldn’t take long but Anne thought it was more complicated. She’d never trusted Grace’s results.
Squinting her eyes against the sun Anne could see above the trees to the hill. The team who’d been searching there had gone but Vera and Joe were still camped out in Black Law with a small team of detectives.
They’d made themselves at home there. Joe Ashworth had stuck photographs of his son all over the kitchen wall.
This afternoon Rachael and Edie were in the farm too, talking to Vera Stanhope, bending her ear about something. Bella probably. Rachael had an obsession about Bella, seemed to think the two deaths were connected. And Edie egged her on. Anne thought Edie was a hoot. She couldn’t understand why Rachael complained about her. She wished her mother had been half as sympathetic.
Anne was sitting in a canvas striped deck chair The bar was wedged in the lowest notch so she was lying almost horizontal and dozing when she heard footsteps on the path which led from the yard where they parked their cars, round the house to the front garden. She struggled to sit upright, felt suddenly nervous, vulnerable. All around her empty landscape stretched to the horizon. She hadn’t heard a car but perhaps she’d been more deeply asleep than she’d realized. There was no one within shouting distance despite all Vera’s claimed precautions. Edie and Rachael wouldn’t be back from Black Law yet. In the brief moment of scrambling to her feet she wondered if it might be Godfrey. Perhaps he’d decided to tell the police, after all, that he’d been here on the day Grace died. Perhaps he’d come to see her.
But it wasn’t Godfrey. Once she was standing she could tell that from the footsteps which were light and hurrying. It was Lily Fulwell, trying for some reason to be friendly.
“This really is the dinkiest little house.” She backed onto the lawn, looking the house up and down. “I’ve seen it from a distance during shoots but I’ve never actually been here. Robert has, of course.
Connie held house parties and occasionally he was invited for dinner.
Perhaps she hoped to convert him. She hated shooting. He was very young, hardly more than a boy, but I think he was in love with Connie.
She was such a character.”
“Was Edmund invited too?”
“I don’t know.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Before my time. You’d have to ask Robert. Probably not. Edmund was several years younger.” She paused. “I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”
They were both standing awkwardly. Anne nodded to the deck chair “Why don’t you sit down?”
So Lily was sprawled, at a disadvantage. Anne sat on the grass beside her.
“Perhaps you’d like some tea.”
But Lily had her speech ready prepared. She shifted her position of gravity so she was leaning forward towards Anne, her bum poking back through the canvas.
“I just wanted to say how shocked we were. About the murder. And to say if there’s anything we can do. I mean anything.” “It’s a bit late,” Anne said, ‘ Grace.” Immediately she thought that at one time she’d have been chuffed to bits just to have her here.
“Ah,” Lily said. “That’s another thing. I wanted to explain about Grace.”
So this is it, Anne thought, remembering Vera’s words. This is where we get the spin.
“You do know that it all happened long before I married Robert,” Lily said earnestly. “I mean I wasn’t involved in any way at all.”
“Of course.”
“And Robert actually didn’t have much say in the matter. The old lady was still alive then. You never met the old lady.”
It wasn’t a question. Lily had done her homework. Robert’s mother had died before Anne moved to Langholme. Still a response was expected.
“No.”
“She was formidable, a real tyrant. Robert was scared of her, you know. Can you imagine being that scared of your own mother?” She paused, lowered her voice, spoke confidentially. “I don’t think she was terribly stable. I wouldn’t say anything to Robert of course he’s very loyal but I wonder sometimes if that’s where Edmund’s problems came from. They do say, don’t they, that mental illness is genetic.”