‘What makes you think that?’ Hannah asked.
‘Mike hated the way she drank so much, it reminded him of Niamh. And he couldn’t bear her raking up the past. He’d accepted his son was dead, he’d moved on. It was up to Orla to do the same.’
‘He told you this?’
‘Mike wears his heart on his sleeve.’ Bryan grunted scornfully to make clear he didn’t share Gareth’s charitable assessment. ‘Snag is, he has a shocking temper. If Orla got the wrong side of it …’
‘She might have taken it so hard that she felt life wasn’t worth living?’
Gareth downed the last of his champagne. ‘If that’s the way it was, I pray that he can cope. Bad enough to lose one child, but to lose two …’
‘Poor Hansel and Gretel,’ Purdey said.
Three heads turned towards her.
‘Hansel and Gretel?’ Hannah asked.
‘Yes, that’s what they called themselves.’
‘Who?’
‘Orla and Callum. She told me they thought of themselves like the kids in the fairy tale.’ Purdey gave a theatrical shiver. ‘Except that neither of them had a happy ending.’
‘So what did you make of Orla Payne?’ Louise Kind asked.
Eyes closed, Daniel stretched to soak up the warmth of late evening. This was the life, lazing on a vast and colourful Mexican hammock. He’d set up the stand beside the path that wound around the garden of Tarn Cottage. The cipher garden, he called it, secluded and secretive grounds that stretched to the foot of Tarn Fell. The hammock had room enough for three or four, but his sister hadn’t joined him. She lounged in a deckchair with canvas decorated with artwork from Evil Under the Sun. Their glasses and the empty wine bottle stood on the paving. The alcohol had done its job, and blunted his sorrow at the death of a woman he’d liked.
‘She was an unhappy woman.’
‘Sounds like it, if she’s killed herself. This story that her uncle didn’t murder her brother, was there anything in it?’
Louise’s tongue was as sharp as her spiky new haircut. A lawyer to her fingertips, she kept asking questions until she prised out an answer. Years ago, she had left private practice for academe; at times Daniel felt a pang of sympathy for her students.
‘She convinced herself, for sure. I felt sorry for her.’
Louise gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I bet the moment she knew who you were, she latched on to you. Another lame duck you took pity on?’
He tried to shrug, tricky in a hammock. Louise had never hit it off with Aimee; after their first meeting, she’d caused a row by asking Daniel if the woman was always so neurotic. Maybe that’s why he’d scarcely mentioned Orla to her until now. Orla reminded him of Aimee, if only because they were guided by instinct, not reason, and their instincts drove them to self-destruct.
‘Not fair. Orla and I talked once or twice when I took a break from writing. She told me she loved history before she knew I was a historian; she described herself as a failed history undergraduate. There was something unworldly about her, which appealed to me. Eventually someone recognised me, usual story, and before long the principal came and said hello.’
‘Goodbye to anonymity?’
‘He urged me to become involved with the library, and asked Orla to talk to me about ways of publicising St Herbert’s and raising cash. Her job was to improve the library’s profile in the region and further afield, but she didn’t seem cut out for it. She preferred mooching through books to hitting the phones. The principal brought in an events organiser to help, so Orla could focus on public relations while he packed the guest rooms with conference attendees.’
Louise stretched her arms, soaking up the last of the sun as it set behind the Sacrifice Stone on the top of the fell. ‘Was Orla afraid of losing her job?’
‘I can’t imagine the principal firing anyone. No, getting the sack was the least of her worries, even though she told me that before she came to the Lakes, she’d been unemployed following a period of illness.’
‘What was wrong with her?’
A heron flew across the garden, and perched at the far side of the tarn. Daniel contemplated its elegant form before answering.
‘I gather she had some kind of breakdown, and her drinking didn’t help. Booze had killed her mother — maybe neither of them got over the loss of Callum. Orla was emphatic that she never felt uncomfortable with her uncle, quite the opposite. He used to tell her fairy tales and she adored that, said it gave her a lifelong love of the stories.’
‘He might have been more interested in boys than little girls.’
‘And perhaps she blanked stuff out, who knows?’
‘So she committed suicide on her father’s farm? Did she talk about her relationship with him?’
‘It was difficult, I gather. Like everyone else, he reckoned his brother killed Callum. But Orla was adamant that there must be some other explanation for what happened.’
‘Such as?’
‘She didn’t say. The last time we spoke, she was in a state. Not making much sense.’
Louise clicked her tongue. ‘Hey, you’re the one who claims that historians make great detectives. Didn’t you ask?’
‘It wasn’t healthy, this dwelling on the tragedy. I tried to steer her off the subject of Callum, but without any success.’
‘You always say that to understand the present, you have to understand the past.’
‘Yeah, yeah, hoist with my own petard.’
Louise narrowed her eyes. ‘I suppose she fancied you.’
Orla’s eager face sprang into his mind as his gaze settled on the Sacrifice Stone, its dark bulk outlined against the sky. What she liked, he thought, was the fact he listened to her without passing judgement. She’d spent a lifetime being ignored.
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘You didn’t fancy her, by any chance?’ He shook his head. ‘Not your type?’
Louise had this habit of turning conversation into cross-examination.
‘I don’t have a type.’
‘How about Aimee and Miranda?’
‘Are you kidding? They couldn’t be more different.’
‘Only on the surface. You’re a sucker when it comes to needy women.’
‘Thanks for that.’ Better not remind her that she kept falling for selfish bastards who did their best to mess up her life. ‘Orla was fixated, desperate to unravel a mystery everyone else thought was solved twenty years ago. Her stepfather was unhappy about it, she told me; he thought it was doing her no good.’
‘And her father?’
‘I sensed she was afraid of him. I even wondered if she thought she bore some kind of responsibility for his disappearance herself.’
‘How?’
‘Something I heard her mutter to herself on Friday, the last time we met. She’d been working in the library, rather than her office, and we had lunch together. She wasn’t with it, frankly. It was as if something in her life had changed, but don’t ask me what.’
‘What did she say?’
‘“How could you do that to your own brother?”’
‘Meaning?’
‘Dunno. When I asked what was bothering her, she brushed me off. At first, I thought she was quoting Callum. But perhaps in some way she thought she’d betrayed him. If she started torturing herself, that might be why she committed suicide.’
‘Where’s your evidence for that?’
‘If I’d known what she meant to do, I could have asked-’
Louise interrupted. ‘If you are even thinking you may be partly at fault because of what happened to her, I will scream. Please, Daniel, forget it. People are responsible for their own actions, OK? You did your utmost to help her, I’m certain.’
‘On Friday, I suggested she might talk to the police.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘I gave her Hannah Scarlett’s name.’
‘You did?’ Louise sat up in the deckchair.
‘Callum’s disappearance is a cold case. Right up Hannah’s street. Orla may have been obsessive, but she wasn’t stupid. Suppose she was right, and the uncle didn’t kill Callum? If anyone could make sense of whatever was whirling round in Orla’s brain, Hannah could.’