‘My wife,’ he said. ‘She took up watercolours again when we retired, and she’s ever so good – she did all these…’ He nodded at the walls. ‘But she usually takes a breather at about this time.’ He sounded very proud of his wife, and for the first time Vera felt herself soften. Good God, woman, don’t despise the man because of the way he’s decorated his house. You’re turning into a snob, like your father. Hector was always sneering about the nouveaux riches who bought property in the country without understanding its ways.
Lorraine turned out to be slender and pale, with high cheekbones and hair that was almost white. Vera thought she was younger than her husband by at least ten years. She wore jeans and sandals and a loose silk top. Was that the style they called hippy-chic? Silver earrings. Make-up. Vera wondered if she was on her way out to a special lunch or if she always made the effort. It was clear that her husband doted on her. Vera thought for a moment that she might have found a man if she’d scrubbed up a bit better, then decided that no man was worth the time it took to plaster stuff on your face in the morning, when you could have an extra cup of tea instead.
‘How can we help you, Inspector?’ Lorraine had the same accent as the husband, but gentler. He’d disappeared into the kitchen and there was the sound of grinding beans, cups being put onto a tray. A performance for the audience on the leather sofa.
‘Patrick Randle…’ Vera looked at her and waited. No response. ‘He was house-sitting for the Carswells.’
‘Ah yes.’ A small frown to indicate sympathy. ‘Susan said there’d been an accident and that he was dead. Terrible.’
‘Someone killed him. Hit him over the head with a blunt instrument.’
Lorraine looked horrified. Vera thought she was upset not so much by the young man’s murder as by the fact that Vera had been so forthright.
‘Percy found him in the ditch by the lane,’ Vera went on, ‘and then there was another body in the attic flat in the big house. A middle-aged man named Martin Benton. Ring any bells?’
Lorraine shook her head slowly. ‘We moved here to escape all that. Robberies. Violence. We spent all our lives in the city, and when we retired we thought: “Why not live the dream?” We’d been to Northumberland on holiday. We put in an offer on this place online. We hadn’t even seen it then.’
Vera was tempted to say that they’d have been unlikely to come across a double-murder even in the city, but decided that wouldn’t help. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Two years. It’s taken us this long to get it as we want it. Nigel project-managed it all himself. He had his own business, with offices all over the South. Lucas Security. You’ve probably heard of it. He’s used to running a big show, so this was a doddle.’
So he got craftspeople in and bossed them around. ‘And you don’t get bored?’
Nigel walked in then, carrying a tray with a coffee pot, a milk jug and a plate of home-made biscuits. You must be bored, pet. Someone like you doesn’t bake biscuits unless you need to fill your day.
Lorraine was about to answer, but Nigel got in first. ‘We don’t have time to be bored, Inspector. There’s something going on in the valley every day. Life’s one big impromptu party, here in the farm conversions. One of our neighbours calls us “the retired hedonists’ club”. We all took early retirement. Kids flown the nest. Those of us who had kids… We all have reasonable occupational or private pensions. This is the time of life when we can enjoy ourselves.’
Lorraine had been staring out of the window, but looked back into the room. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t speak like that, Nige. Not when there’s been a murder.’ She paused. ‘Two murders. The inspector says they found another body in the house-sitter’s flat.’
There was a moment of silence. Vera thought they were trying to find a suitable response. Something tasteful, after Nigel’s boast of indulgent pleasures. She almost felt sorry for them.
‘The man in the big house was middle-aged,’ she said. ‘Grey hair. Glasses. His name was Martin Benton. Does that mean anything to you?’
Again it was Nigel who answered. ‘We don’t mix much with the Carswells. I mean, they’re pleasant enough when we meet them in the lane. But they’re almost aristocracy, aren’t they? Their family has had that place for generations. We might have got them out of a fix financially by buying the farmhouse, but they’re not going to ask us down to the Hall for dinner.’ There was a brief hint of resentment and then he smiled again.
‘I don’t think Mr Benton was a friend of the family, either,’ Vera said. ‘You didn’t see anyone of that description in the lane yesterday?’
‘No.’ Lorraine had the coffee cup poised between the tray and her mouth. ‘But we probably wouldn’t. He wouldn’t come past here to get to the Hall.’
‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’
They looked at each other. ‘I went into Kimmerston to do some shopping,’ Nigel said. ‘Stocking up. It doesn’t do to run out of milk all the way out here.’ As if he lived in a remote community halfway up the Amazon.
‘And you, Mrs Lucas?’
‘I was here,’ she said.
‘In the house?’ Vera was about to ask if there’d been any phone calls to the landline, any visitors to corroborate the story.
‘No. Outside. The garden at the back leads onto the hill. I was sketching the view across the valley.’
‘So you’d have seen anyone driving up the lane? Or out walking?’
‘I suppose so.’ Though she seemed uncertain. Everything about her seemed a little unfocused. Vera wondered if she had a hangover, or if she was taking prescription drugs. ‘I get lost in my work.’
‘Well, did you see anyone at all?’ She tried to keep the impatience from her voice.
There was a beat of hesitation, the little frown again. ‘No. No, I don’t think I did.’
Vera got to her feet. ‘One of my colleagues will be along later today to take a statement. If you can remember anything else – even if it seems to have no importance at all – please let us know.’
They walked out through the grand kitchen and Vera paused there for a moment. ‘Your neighbours, the other members of “the retired hedonists’ club”. What can you tell me about them?’
Nigel rubbed his hands together. Vera wondered if he was real. Surely there was more to the man than this caricature who seemed to have stepped out of a 1970s sitcom.
‘The O’Kanes are in the house to our right. John’s a retired academic, a history professor. She was a kind of social worker. Divorce-court mediation – something of the sort. You know the type. Guardian readers. They keep hens. She’s a veggie.’ As if there was nothing more for Vera to know. He paused for a moment. ‘Lovely people, though.’
‘And the house on the left?’
‘Annie and Sam. They ran their own business in Kimmerston, before they sold up and moved out here. They’re local. Know everyone in a ten-mile radius of Gilswick. Great if you need a plumber in a hurry.’ Another pause. ‘Salt-of-the-earth.’
Outside, Vera sat in the car to phone Joe and Holly and catch up on their news. She was aware of Nigel and Lorraine Lucas staring at her through their huge picture window.
Chapter Ten
Annie Redhead was making biscuits. A fat woman in a dreadful coat had just come out of the Lucas house and was sitting in her car making a phone call. Annie wondered if she had anything to do with the death of the Randle boy. Surely she must do. Could she be a reporter? They’d been bothered by the press a few times after Lizzie was sent away.
The biscuits were made with dried ginger and golden syrup and the kitchen was full of the smell of them. She lifted a tray out of the cooker and prised each biscuit onto a wire tray to cool and harden. She and Sam couldn’t possibly eat them all and she’d give most of them away to the neighbours, but baking reminded her of the old life, before they’d come back to Gilswick. When they’d run the restaurant, she’d made tiny pieces of shortbread or brownie to go with after-dinner coffee. Otherwise Sam had never allowed her into his kitchen.