‘This room is just above the drawing room,’ Alex went on, ‘so everyone who was having tea could hear her. They all ran out to see what was going on. The last thing I wanted was some sort of circus, so I told them to wait downstairs. It didn’t take much to wind my mother up. If anything, I was embarrassed. I thought she was just causing a scene. When I saw Tony, I brought Mother downstairs and asked another tutor, Giles Rickard, to take her into our cottage. I went back to the office to phone the police.’
‘And the ambulance,’ Vera said.
For the first time he gave a wry little smile. ‘I know, that was ridiculous. But I’d never seen anybody dead before. I suppose I needed confirmation, someone medical to tell me I wasn’t making it all up. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.’
The front doorbell started to ring. ‘That’ll be the local police,’ Vera said. ‘You’d best go and let them in. Tell them I’m here and bring them up. They can secure the scene for us, and I can start my investigation.’
Alex stood up and gave her a strange look. ‘What investigation?’
‘Why, that’s what I do for a living. I catch criminals.’ Again, trapped in this small space, with the low red light throwing odd shadows on the white walls, she felt as if she’d wandered into someone’s weird dream. She needed her sergeant, Joe Ashworth, to turn up full of youthful energy and common sense.
‘But I told them on the phone!’ Now the man seemed to be losing patience with her altogether. ‘We know who killed Tony Ferdinand.’
‘Your mother saw the murderer?’
‘No! I did. As I’ve just said. And as I told your colleagues. On my way to the glass room, while Mother was still screaming, I bumped into the woman here in the corridor. She had a knife in her hand.’
‘Very convenient.’ Bugger, Vera thought. So it was back to working the boring stuff, the pathetic druggies and the pub brawls, just when she’d thought there might be something more exciting to sustain her interest. Then she had another thought, which was even more disturbing. ‘I suppose your murderer has a name?’
‘It’s one of the students. We’ve shut her in her bedroom. She’s called Joanna Tobin.’
Chapter Four
Joanna’s room was small. A single bed set against one wall, and against another a desk, with an anglepoise lamp and a chair. A narrow wardrobe. There was a red carpet on the floor and the duvet cover and the curtains were a deeper red. A door led to a tiny shower room. This was slightly more comfortable than the cell in Low Newton prison where she’d more than likely end up, but not much bigger. Of course, Vera thought, the court might decide Joanna was mad, and then she’d go to a secure psychiatric hospital instead. Vera wasn’t sure which would be worse. If she had a choice in a similar situation, she would probably opt for the prison. It would still be full of psychos, but at least you’d have a date for getting out. Places like Broadmoor, you were dependent for a release date on the whim of a team of psychiatrists and politicians.
There’d been a man standing outside the closed door of the room. He was tall and heavily built. She thought he’d been fit once, but had slightly run to flab. Dressed in cheap jeans and sweatshirt, he stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. Classic bouncer posture. You couldn’t tell from his face, but Vera thought he was probably enjoying himself. Deep down, everyone loved a murder almost as much as she did. They loved the drama of it, the frisson of fear, the exhilaration of still being alive. People had been putting together stories of death and the motives for killing since the beginning of time, to thrill and to entertain. It was different of course if you were close to the victim. Or to the killer. Vera hadn’t begun to think yet how she would tell Jack what had gone on here.
‘Who are you?’ Vera had demanded of Joanna’s warder before he opened the door.
‘Lenny Thomas.’ In those four syllables she could tell this was a voice that came from Ashington or one of the other ex-pit villages in the south-east of the county, not from rural Northumberland.
‘Work here, do you? Or are you one of the writers?’ Vera saw him as a handyman or gardener, but she’d met more scruffy academics.
‘I’m a writer.’ He looked suddenly astonished, as if he’d never said the words before.
‘Student or tutor?’
‘Student, but that Professor Ferdinand had said I had the potential to be published. He said he might take me on as one of his postgraduate students. Imagine that! Me doing an MA in creative writing, and I only scraped five GCSEs. He said that wouldn’t matter. He was going to put in a word. And a word from him would make a difference. Everyone knew that.’ Lenny gave a little laugh that had no resentment in it. ‘But that’ll never work out now, eh? I knew deep down it was too good to be true. People like me never get that sort of luck. But it was nice to believe it, like, while it was happening.’
‘If he thought you were good enough, other people will too,’ Vera said.
‘Aye, maybe.’ And Vera saw that Lenny probably didn’t want success enough, or wasn’t confident enough to push his work. She nodded to the door. ‘How is she?’
‘No bother,’ Lenny said. ‘Calm as owt.’ And he moved away to let Vera in. ‘Do you want me there with you, like?’
‘Nah,’ Vera said. ‘We’ll be fine. Go off and get yourself a cup of tea.’
She could tell the man was disappointed, but he wandered off without comment.
Joanna was sitting on a window seat, looking out into the garden. It was quite dark by now, so there was nothing for her to see. She must have heard the door opening, but she didn’t turn her head and seemed lost in a world of her own.
‘Why, lass, you’ve got yourself into a bit of a pickle.’
Vera sat on the edge of the bed. She could have chosen the chair by the desk, but the bed was more comfortable and closer to Joanna. If Joanna shifted her head just a bit, Vera would be within her line of vision.
‘One question,’ Vera went on. ‘Did you make him sit out on the balcony before you stabbed him, or did you do it in the room, then stick him outside? It doesn’t quite make sense. We’ll know, of course, once the pathologist gets here, but it’d save us a bit of time if you explain how he ended up there. I couldn’t see any blood in the room itself, so I guess you got him outside.’
Now Joanna did twist her body so that she was looking into the room. It was as if she noticed Vera for the first time. Her posture, sitting on the window seat, her back to the glass, was almost regal.
‘I didn’t kill him at all.’ She was, as Lenny had said, quite calm.
‘Come on, pet. You were wandering around the corridor outside the glass room with a knife in your hand!’
‘So I was,’ Joanna agreed, in the posh southern accent that made Vera think of a lady of the manor opening a village fete. Or the wife of a colonial governor. ‘How very Lady Macbeth!’
‘I’ll need to take your clothes for forensic examination.’ Vera decided the woman must be quite insane, and that it was best to get the clothes away from her while she was being cooperative.
‘I was there in the room,’ Joanna said. ‘But I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even see him. I suppose he must have been dead already.’ Despite the denial, she slid off the window seat and began to strip. She’d never been embarrassed by nudity. One very hot July day, Vera had caught her swimming naked in the tarn close to the farm. She’d laughed out loud at Vera’s surprise: Why don’t you come in. It’s lovely!