Vera crossed the room and drew the curtains over the French windows.
“That’s a lot more cosy,” she said. Then: “Is there any of that booze left? I could murder a Scotch.”
Edie poured some into a tumbler.
“Mrs. Preece’ll have told you what happened.”
“That Edmund’s dead,” Rachael said. “Is it all over then? He killed Grace because she wouldn’t lie for him to stop the quarry, and now he’s killed himself.”
“Too early to say.”
Whatever the pathologist had told her had been in confidence. She might be a gabby cow who broke more rules than she kept but that information wasn’t to be passed on.
“But he couldn’t have been murdered?” They’ve been celebrating, Vera thought. Not with a great fuss because that wouldn’t be very nice with two people dead. But they really think it’s all over. Case closed. No more looking over their shoulders on the hill or in their mirrors on the road.
“Look,” she said. “It’s impossible to tell until the doctor’s done all his tests. I have to assume it’s a suspicious death until I hear otherwise. If I didn’t I’d waste hours, even days of an investigation.
So there’ll be questions to ask. And no doubt you’ve got questions too.”
“What was he doing here?” Edie asked.
“Hiding out, though we’re not sure why. We didn’t really consider him as a suspect until he disappeared.”
“Guilt perhaps,” Edie said. “If he’d killed his daughter.”
“Perhaps.” Vera looked at Anne and Rachael. She wanted them to lighten up. She felt responsible for bringing their celebration to an end. “He was at Nancy Deakin’s when you went there to talk to her.” “No!” She had succeeded. They were amused by the old lady’s duplicity. “He must have been in the bedroom all the time. No wonder she didn’t want us to go upstairs.”
“I heard a noise but I thought it was the budgie.”
“Is that why he moved on to the estate?” Rachael asked. “Because we went to Nancy’s?”
“Probably.”
“So we might have provoked his death. At least he had someone to keep an eye on him there.”
“It’s not your fault,” Vera said. “I asked you to go.” She leant across the table. They had discarded their cards which lay on the table as down-turned fans. “Now look. I’ve got to carry on as if Edmund was murdered. It doesn’t mean he was but that’s the assumption I’ve got to make. Do you understand?”
They nodded.
“When Rachael suggested that Bella and Edmund might have known each other, that they might have been in hospital at the same time, I didn’t take it seriously because it didn’t seem relevant. Grace was the victim. Edmund had hardly had any contact with her. But now it could be more important. Perhaps Rachael was right all along. Can you remember anything Bella said which could have linked them?”
“No. How could I? I didn’t even know she’d been in hospital until after her suicide.”
“I mean more recently. Anything to suggest Bella and Edmund kept in touch?”
“No, she never mentioned friends. Apart from people in Langholme who’d known Dougie for years and she wasn’t close to any of them.”
“But she must have left the farm sometimes.”
“She went to Kimmerston on Wednesdays. Market day. That was when she did all the shopping. And she always had lunch out. Her little treat.
Social services sent someone to sit with Dougie while she was away.”
“Where did she go for lunch when she was in town?”
“I don’t know. I suppose the White Hart, like all the other farmers.”
Vera had a picture of Bella and Edmund sitting in the gloomy dining room. Surely they wouldn’t have met there. Not if Bella valued her privacy. Not where they could have been seen by any of Dougie’s farming friends.
“No.” Rachael interrupted her thoughts. “There’s a coffee shop in the precinct where she went. I remember her coming back one day when I was staying at Baikie’s. She came in for some tea and a chat but wouldn’t have a biscuit. She said she’d had the biggest meringue in the world.
The coffee shop did the best she’d ever tasted.” Rachael stopped.
“This seems so trivial.”
“That’s what most of my job is. Trivia. Chat and gossip. That’s why I’m so bloody good at it.” It came out confidently enough but to Vera it sounded hollow. “Tell me again what happened when you last went to see Charlie Noble.” “We told you.”
“OK. I wasn’t listening properly. It didn’t seem important. Edie?”
“Bella had phoned a week before she died and got through to Charlie’s wife, Louise. Louise promised to tell Charles that she’d been in touch but she didn’t until much later, until after our first visit. Bella said that she’d phone back.”
“But they never heard from her again?” “That’s what they said.”
“Do you think they might be lying?”
“I don’t know. I got the impression that Louise hadn’t wanted Charlie to tell me about the call. Perhaps they both regretted it. Certainly they weren’t very forthcoming. And it seems strange that Bella didn’t phone back.”
Anne had been listening in silence. She stood up and seemed very thin and gaunt lit below by the lamp. Shadows fell over her face, lengthening her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so tired. I’ll have to go to bed.”
“Of course!”
“I probably won’t see you tomorrow. I’m leaving early.” “I’ll be in touch,” Vera said.
“More questions?”
“Oh, there are always more questions. And you two will be going tomorrow too,” Vera said after Anne had left the room, after they’d heard her footsteps on the bare stairs. “This place will be empty.
Nothing left but Connie’s ghost.” She paused awkwardly, tried to phrase her question to Rachael delicately, then decided that bluff and hearty was more her style and got to the point quicker anyway. “Are you planning to see Mr. Furness again?”
“Why?”
“Because you should know I’ll be asking him more questions too.”
“What has he got to do with Edmund’s death?”
“Nothing. Probably. Except that he used to live in that house. And according to Robert Fulwell no one can remember him handing back his keys.”
There was a silence. “We’re kidding ourselves, aren’t we?” Rachael said
“Edmund was murdered.”
Vera didn’t answer.
Chapter Fifty-Five.
Vera woke early, just before the first Edinburgh train started to growl in the distance. She waited until it had screamed past, rattling the sash windows in her bedroom, before she got up. The train hadn’t woken her. She’d grown up with the trains, could remember steam, trolleys of milk churns on the platform, wicker baskets of racing pigeons delivered by old men in tweed caps.
Vera didn’t know why Hector had bought this house by the railway line soon after she was born. She would never have asked him. The junction, closed long ago, had served a hamlet half a mile away and nearby farms. Their house, grey stone, small windowed, stood end on to the track. She supposed it had suited him. It was near enough to the hills for his forays after birds’ eggs and then, while the trains still stopped, it was only a twenty-minute ride away from Kimmerston where he taught in the grammar school. He was solitary by nature. She couldn’t imagine him on a smart new estate making conversation about the mortgage rate or the latest model of Vauxhall.
It had occurred to her as an adult that the Gregorys had attracted him there. Mr. Gregory had been the stationmaster and his wife looked after Vera until she was old enough to let herself in from school and have her dad’s tea ready by the time his train got in. It was possible that some arrangement had been made with Mrs. Gregory before they moved. Nothing was said but Vera fancied that Mr. Gregory could have been one of the brotherhood of egg collectors. He had that pedantic, meticulous way about him. And certainly Hector hadn’t minded being by the railway line. She’d caught him writing down train numbers in one of his bird-watching notebooks.