Joe thought he was like one of those big soft dogs that follow you round, desperate to be taken for a walk. ‘No thanks, mate.’ He waited for Lenny to disappear back down the hall before knocking and going inside.
He recognized Joanna Tobin at once. He’d taken a dislike to Vera’s neighbours when he first met them, thought them feckless and irresponsible, though over the years he’d recognized the work they put in on the small hill farm and had developed a grudging respect. By keeping an eye out for Vera, they took some of the pressure off him. But this was probably the first time he’d looked at Joanna properly, and now he stared at her as if she were an artist’s model and he was about to paint her. She sat against the uncurtained window in a dressing gown of blue and green silk. Her clothes were in a transparent scene bag on the floor, and a blue jersey inside matched the blue of the silk. Her legs and feet were bare and brown. There were a few remnants of polish on her toenails: vivid pink. Her hair had been tied into a loose plait, but strands had become loose and fell across her face. She was frowning and it seemed that she’d hardly noticed him come in.
‘You know Joanna Tobin,’ Vera said. ‘It seems she’s mixed up in this, one way or another.’
He nodded. Joanna looked at him and smiled.
‘We need to get Joanna back to the station to take a proper statement,’ Vera went on. ‘She admits to picking up the murder weapon, but not to killing the man.’
Joe found himself with nothing to say.
‘Organize it, will you, Joe? Don’t just stand there.’ Vera was losing her patience. ‘Get a couple of the uniforms downstairs to take her in, and ask Holly to do the interview. Drag Charlie in too. I’ll stay here while Joanna makes herself decent. You’ll have other clothes you can put on, won’t you, pet? Tell Holly to drop her home afterwards.’
‘You’re not arresting me?’ Joanna turned her gaze slowly towards Vera. Joe thought she was almost disappointed. Was she a drama junkie then? One of the weirdos that turned up at the station on occasions, admitting to crimes they’d seen on the television news.
‘Not if you didn’t kill the man,’ Vera snapped back. ‘What’s the problem? Don’t you want to go home? Scared of facing Jack, are you?’
‘I don’t know what to say to him.’
‘Whatever you like, as long as it doesn’t hurt him,’ Vera said. ‘I don’t want him turning up in my house again, like some sort of whipped mongrel.’ Then she turned to Joe and let her anger loose on him too. ‘Are you still there? Sort out transport for Joanna to the station, then tell all the other guests and staff that I want to talk to them. Herd them into one place and start putting together a list of names and contact addresses. And find out where Tony Ferdinand’s bedroom is. Tape it, and get an officer on the door. I’ll be down as soon as I can.’
Joe nodded and left the room. He was used to Vera yelling at him. It was like him shouting at the kids when he’d had a bad day – just a way of letting off steam. The time to worry was when she was being pleasant.
He wandered along the corridor and must have taken a wrong turn, because instead of coming down the narrow stone steps that Lenny had taken him up, he found himself at the top of rather a grand staircase, all curves and polished wooden balustrades.
Joe looked down into an entrance hall and beyond to a double door, which must once have been the main way into the house. Another uniformed officer stood just inside the door. The sound of a gong reverberated through the space, startling him for a moment. The noise was loud and must have been made just outside his line of vision. It seemed that murder wouldn’t stop the residents eating dinner, and a line of people crossed the hall at the foot of the stairs into what was obviously a dining room. Most carried drinks in their hands. Somewhere there must be a bar. Walking further down the stairs, he could see them inside a panelled room with an arched ceiling. A long table had been laid with silver and a white cloth, and glasses reflected the candlelight. Joe thought some of the diners had dressed especially for the meal – there were long skirts, and a couple of the men wore suits. It seemed there was no dress code, though. Lenny was still in his jeans and sweatshirt. They all took their places at the table and sat with a hushed reverence. They could have been waiting for someone to say grace. Usually, Joe supposed, they’d be talking over the matters of the day. Today there was an air of anticipation, as if nobody knew quite what to expect.
A large middle-aged woman walked to the head of the table. She was dressed in wide black trousers and a raspberry-coloured velvet jacket that was so long it reached her knees. Her unnaturally blonde hair was pinned to the top of her hair with a tortoiseshell comb. She wore a string of large, diamond-shaped black beads around her neck. She seemed to Joe to be terribly pale. Was this the woman Vera had described shouting to alert the company to the tragedy? If so, there was no sign of hysteria now, and only the pallor of her skin indicated her distress.
‘You’ll all have heard of Tony’s death,’ she said. ‘A terrible tragedy. A loss to the literary life of the country. And a sadness for poor, unbalanced Joanna and her family too. The police are in the house and have promised to cause as little disruption to our lives as possible. There is, after all, no mystery about what happened here this afternoon. I’m sure Tony would want us to continue with our programme, and we’ll do that, and although it’ll be impossible for some of his old friends to concentrate on fiction at this terrible time, we owe it to him to try.’ She poured red wine from a bottle on the table into a glass. ‘Let’s drink,’ she said, ‘to the memory of Professor Tony Ferdinand.’
The group stood up and raised their glasses. The scene had, Joe thought, a strangely theatrical air. It was as if they knew they had an audience watching them from halfway up the sweeping staircase.
He wondered what Vera would make of it, and of the general assumption that Joanna Tobin was a murderer.
Chapter Six
It seemed to Joe that Vera’s bad-tempered instructions, issued from Joanna’s room, had already been carried out. He’d found Ferdinand’s room. It had the same layout as Joanna’s, but was bigger and rather more grand. He’d stood at the door and looked in, tempted to look in drawers and pockets, but knowing the CSIs would want to be there first. The residents of the Writers’ House were all in one place. He’d give them time to eat, then he could start taking their contact details. Or perhaps Vera would be free by then. She loved being the centre of attention, and it would be like all her Christmases had come at once, to walk into that fancy dining room and lay down the law. He didn’t really do public speaking and still got nervous at the team briefings, if someone from outside was there.
He continued down the stairs. The dining-room door had been shut. He called over to the officer standing by the main entrance, ‘Keep an eye on things in there and give me a shout if it looks as if they’re coming to a close. I should be back in plenty of time, but just in case.’ He passed over a card so that the man had his mobile-phone number.
While it was quiet he wanted to get a feel for the space. Especially in the dark, with no views from the windows, he’d lost all sense of direction, of the way the house was laid out. He presumed the big double doors faced east towards the sea. He wandered around the ground floor, peering into empty rooms. It was a large house with the feel of a country hotel, and too plush for a college. There were dark wooden floors and the furniture was large and looked comfortable. The smell of flowers and furniture polish. In one room the chairs had been pulled into a semicircle facing a whiteboard, which still contained a list of underlined headings: Crime scene? Weapon? Suspects? A strange parody of the board they’d soon be looking at in the incident room back at the station. On the lecturer’s table there was a pile of handouts. He glanced down briefly. They seemed to contain a book list. The sheet was headed North Farm Press.