The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  ‘He was always rather lovely to me. Kind, gentle, generous.’ Quite different from my mother, she was going to add, but that would have been disloyal.

  ‘Seems he had a bit of a reputation for chasing the women.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Juliet was already being defensive, but really, how could she defend Crispin? She knew he’d been a nightmare, charming and entitled. ‘I never saw that side of him.’

  ‘You know that some folk say he was Lorna Falstone’s father?’

  Juliet had been expecting the question, but still it came like a punch to her stomach, winding her. ‘I’d heard rumours.’

  ‘But you must have seen for yourself.’ Vera was quite ruthless now. ‘The pair of you looked quite alike. Until Lorna lost all that weight.’ She paused. ‘I did wonder if that was how the anorexia started. She wanted to shrink away until she was nothing like her former self. Until there was nothing to remind her of you and Crispin.’

  ‘You can’t blame my father for her illness. I know he wasn’t a saint, but really, that’s too much.’

  ‘Maybe he blamed himself,’ Vera said. ‘He paid her hospital bills after all.’

  ‘He was a generous man. He felt some obligation to all his tenants.’

  ‘Eh, pet.’ Vera turned and smiled. ‘That sounds almost like your mother speaking.’ She paused. ‘You can’t help but admire Harriet, though, keeping her dignity through it all, ignoring the gossip, keeping the show on the road.’

  Juliet looked at her relative, suspecting sarcasm, but she saw that the admiration was real.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough anyway,’ Vera went on. ‘Charlie came and took the DNA sample earlier?’

  Juliet nodded. A buzzard was sailing above them, the sunlight shining through the thinner feathers.

  ‘It might take a while to come back, but we should know in a few days. What I was wondering . . .’ Vera let her voice tail away. It was as if she wanted to choose the right words. She started again. ‘I was wondering if Crispin felt an obligation to her. Might he have made some other financial provision for her? If she might have been mentioned in his will.’

  Silence apart from the river, distant sheep.

  Vera persisted. ‘You must have seen the will?’

  ‘He’d transferred ownership of the house to me some years before his death.’

  ‘Oh, I know about that. A wheeze to avoid inheritance tax. But he had other assets. The rent from the tenancies. And there must have been savings, stocks and shares.’

  Juliet wanted to laugh. ‘There were mostly debts. Why do you think most of the house is so fucking Arctic?’ Mark’s phrase again, but she felt the need to shock Vera, to make her see that what she was implying was impossible.

  ‘Did you see the will?’

  ‘There was no need. Mother was my father’s executor and a solicitor in Kimmerston drew it up and held it. I knew what was in it. Dad discussed it with me before it was all arranged. I’d just turned twenty-one and the house was transferred into my name. He still ran the estate, of course. The remaining assets would go to my mother for her lifetime and then to me and my children.’

  ‘But you have no children.’ Vera’s voice was gentle now. ‘And nor do I, and as far as I can see I’m the only other living relative. Officially. These men love the idea of family, don’t they? Their family. Their bloodline. Like fancy race horses or prize cows. It occurred to me that Crispin might have changed his will, put in something about any child Lorna might have. If that child happened to be a boy. That he might have wanted any son to inherit a part of the estate, to keep it going. A man running the place again.’ A pause. ‘Unless you were planning to have bairns yourself?’ She left the question hanging and the silence returned.

  ‘I would love children,’ Juliet said. ‘It just hasn’t happened.’

  Vera looked at her, not shocked at all. ‘I thought it might be like that. I could tell by the way you were with Thomas.’ A pause and something close to a shiver of distaste. ‘I’ve never fancied the idea of motherhood myself.’

  Then Juliet found the words spewing out, gushing, and she was telling Vera about the tests and the IVF, the circle of hope and nightmare disappointment, of failure and early pregnancies and miscarriage. The realization that there was no way she could put herself through the stress of another cycle, the dull, empty ache. The panic of time passing, of approaching middle age. Suddenly, somehow, Vera had taken her in her arms, wrapped her up, and Juliet was crying, certain that there would be tears and possibly snot on Vera’s coat, and even in that moment of embarrassment, it occurred to her that Harriet had never held her like this, not even when she was very young.

  ‘What does your chap make of all this?’ Vera asked. ‘It must be hard for him too.’

  Now the embarrassment did kick in. Juliet freed herself and moved away a little, found a tissue in her jeans pocket and turned so she could dry her eyes without Vera watching. ‘I think it’s different for men,’ she said at last. ‘Mark’s disappointed, of course, but I think he sees it as a failure, in an almost professional way. Like a project at work that he couldn’t quite complete or a play he’s directed that has had bad reviews. Though I’m the problem, not him. He could father a child with someone else.’ She bent to tickle Wren’s neck.

  ‘And your mother?’ Vera asked. ‘She’ll have been some support?’

  ‘Oh, Mother was a failure too,’ Juliet said. ‘In the eyes of my father, at least. Only one child and that was a girl. My father loved me, of course, doted on me even, but it was never the same as if I was a boy. I was a kind of indulgence. A boy would have been a responsibility. There would have been expectations – university or the army, then to be trained in the ways of the estate.’ She paused. ‘I think Mother would have been a different woman, their relationship might have been different, if there’d been more children.’

  ‘Oh, hinnie, it sounds like something from another era. Something you see on TV on Sunday evenings. All long frocks and footmen.’

  Juliet couldn’t help laughing at that. There was, after all, still something very feudal about rural Northumberland.

  ‘Your father will never have known that Lorna had a lad.’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘He died before Lorna was pregnant.’

  Now Vera seemed almost to be talking to herself. ‘I’m not sure where that leaves us then. I had some crazy scheme in my head about wills and inheritance. It’s this place.’ She nodded up the bank towards the house, which was half-hidden by trees. ‘It drags you back into the past.’ She paused. ‘But even if your dad had left all his money and the estate lands to Lorna, none of you would get your hands on it now, because it would go to her lad. At least, I presume it would.’

  ‘You think any of us would kill for this?’ Juliet felt herself on the verge of hysteria just at the thought of it. ‘Mother would rather a place in the city, close to her friends and the shops, Mark likes the idea of being lord of the manor, but the discomfort is already starting to bore him. And me? I’d give the whole place up in a second in return for a child.’ She found that she was crying again and turned away. She’d made enough of a scene already. Harriet would be furious at the idea that Juliet had lost control in front of Hector’s daughter.

  This time there was no hug from Vera. Only a nod of understanding when Juliet turned back to face her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  They walked back towards the house then. Vera seemed deep in thought and didn’t speak until they were nearly there. As they approached the door, she stopped, arms folded below the massive bosom. ‘You and your Mark get on all right, do you? I mean, you’re solid. All these problems with conceiving, I understand they can put a strain on a marriage.’

  ‘Yes,’ Juliet said. ‘Of course we’re fine.’ Because she’d been well brought up and really, what else was there to say? The idea of Vera, who’d been single all her life, offering relationship counselling, made her grin, and when she went back into the house to continue wrapping pre
sents, the dogs following behind, she felt lighter, almost cheerful.

  Later that evening, Harriet announced that she was going out. There was a charity carol concert in the church in Kirkhill. She’d been invited to open it, to say a few words of welcome, and they couldn’t keep running away from their duty. The last thing they needed was for the people in the village to think they had something to hide. Dorothy had given them an early supper in the kitchen and after Harriet went, she sat at the table with Juliet drinking coffee. The silence was companionable, easy, and Juliet was tempted to break it, to tell her about Vera’s crazy ideas. But just as the thought appeared Dorothy started speaking:

  ‘Do you mind if I go back to the cottage? I’ve hardly seen Duncan for days and Karan is going stir-crazy. He usually plays squash in Kimmerston with his mates on a Tuesday. You could come too, though, if you don’t want to be here on your own.’

  ‘Of course you must! And I’ll be glad of a little time to myself.’

  ‘Make sure you lock up behind me.’

  For the first time, Juliet had a sense of danger, the notion that there might be a killer lurking in the forest, watching for somebody else to prey on. She imagined a shadow, sliding between the trees, peering into the house. Before that moment, the events of the last few days had seemed unreal, a fiction. ‘You shouldn’t walk up to the cottage on your own.’

  ‘I won’t. Karan’s coming down to get me.’

  At that, as if he’d been summoned, there was a tap on the door and Karan came into the kitchen. He was wearing a waxed jacket, a hat and gloves, and Duncan was in a rucksack on his back, only his eyes visible because the hood of his snow suit was pulled low over his face and a scarf was wound round his chin.

  Karan gave his wonderful smile. ‘It’s freezing out there now. Sorry to drag Dorothy away, but I need to get her back before the wood-burner dies.’

  By the time Juliet could answer, Dorothy had already pulled on her boots and her jacket.

  ‘Lock the door behind me,’ she said again, and Juliet felt the same panic. It seemed to scramble her brain, so she could hardly put together the words to say goodbye.

  When Dorothy and her family left, the house was silent. It felt as dark and imposing as the forest surrounding it. Juliet’s mobile rang. It was Mark, calling she thought from the theatre bar. There was conversation and laughter in the background.

  ‘How are you?’

  But she could tell that he didn’t really want to know. It was a form of greeting; he could just as well have said hello. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Will you be back tomorrow?’ She thought now how unfair and thoughtless it was to leave her alone when there was a murderer on the loose, how unlike Karan her husband was.

  ‘Yeah, I hope so. Should be back in time for dinner.’ Then he started talking about the school matinee they’d had on that afternoon. ‘It was bloody brilliant. The actors really got it, you know. So physical. And the kids responded big style. Then the writer led a discussion afterwards. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back tomorrow. It’s just the sort of performance I’d hope to do at Brockburn.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, but she could tell he’d already stopped listening, that his attention had shifted to someone more important, a reviewer, or one of the pretty young women he always seemed to employ. She switched off the phone and the house became silent again.

  If the call hadn’t made her so angry, she would have sat by the fire in the small drawing room, drinking tea and watching the television programmes that Harriet and Mark despised: soap operas and old murder mysteries. Instead she made her way upstairs to her mother’s room. Towards the end of her parents’ marriage, this had just been her mother’s. Her father had slept in a smaller room on the other side of the corridor. Growing up, she’d thought the separate sleeping arrangements were an affectation, an aping of royalty; now she thought her parents had probably disliked each other intensely and couldn’t bear to be in the same bed. She’d stood outside the day before, while Harriet was in Newcastle, trying to conjure the courage to go in. Now, she pushed open the heavy door.

  The room was large, with two long windows covered with heavy curtains to keep out the draughts. The radiators seemed to work here and Harriet had left on an electric fan heater too. No wonder she was unmoved whenever Juliet tried to bring up the subject of a new boiler. The bed was large with a carved bedhead and a quilt in reds and golds. Regal. Juliet went to a desk standing against one wall. One of the drawers was locked, but Juliet had been a watchful, curious child and she’d known for years where her mother kept the key. It was in a little music box, which stood on Harriet’s dressing table. The tune played ‘Bobby Shafto’, which seemed inappropriate for such a delicate object. The key was still there and Juliet opened the drawer, the tune tinkling in the background, becoming slower until it stopped and the deep silence returned.

  She found what she was looking for almost immediately: an envelope in the heavy cream paper her father had favoured. The name on the front – Harriet Stanhope – was written in her father’s hand. The envelope was unsealed and Juliet removed the single sheet inside. She’d suspected the letter’s existence for years; her father had mentioned it obliquely a few days before his death in a whisper although nobody else was in the room. She’d thought later that perhaps he’d had a premonition that he was about to die. Harriet had never mentioned it, though, and Juliet had been too much of a coward to challenge her. Now Juliet read the contents with a rising anger that pushed fear of an anonymous killer out of her mind. She took a photograph of the letter on her mobile phone and replaced it in the envelope. She was just returning the key to the music box when she heard Harriet’s car on the drive.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  HOLLY DROVE HOME FOR A COUPLE of hours before the evening briefing. In her sleek, clean flat, with its view of the graveyard, she made camomile tea and changed into her running gear. It was dark and the rush hour was over, so the streets were quiet. Running was a habit that was fast becoming an obsession. A ruling addiction. If she missed a daily run, because of the demands of work or because she’d come home exhausted, she felt guilty. She wondered if Lorna had felt like that when she was cutting down on calories, if each mouthful of food was followed by guilt then more exercise. Holly told herself this was quite different. Running relaxed her and it made her stronger and healthier. Running was an antidote to the irritation of working with Vera, it wasn’t an illness. As she moved down the deserted streets, passing the flicker of television behind occasional uncurtained windows, she felt the stress leave her and her mind become clear again.

  She returned to thoughts of the forthcoming briefing, and what she would say. Vera seemed to assume that none of the women linked to Lorna had a motive for killing her. Now, Holly thought that was a false assumption. Apart from Josh Heslop, all the men with connections to Lorna had partners. Even Josh had a mother, who seemed anxious to protect him from harm. If any of the suspect men had been Lorna’s lover, wasn’t it possible that a woman could have murdered her? Out of jealousy if, as Lorna had implied in her last conversation with Olivia, the man in her life had been willing at last to acknowledge his son.

  Holly’s thoughts were interrupted by the screech of a police car driving too fast, the scream of a siren, but the rhythm of her running continued, and the beat of her training shoes on the pavement allowed her to concentrate on the case once again.

  The faces of the women she’d come to know through photographs on the whiteboard, even if she’d not met them in person, came into her mind one by one. Could the gentle Juliet, who was apparently so anxious and timid, have killed Lorna? Or her mother Harriet, who seemed desperate to preserve the reputation of the Stanhope family, that branch of the family at least? Because surely, she’d see Vera Stanhope as beyond salvation.

  Holly turned a corner and came into a less affluent street. There were fewer trees, tiny front gardens, a house gaudy with external Christmas lights. She’d never met Rosemary Heslop, though they’
d spoken on the telephone. She’d sounded busy, pleasant. It was hard to imagine she’d kill anyone to save the reputations of the men in her life. And surely Jill Falstone couldn’t have murdered her own daughter.

  Holly was on her way home now. She was moving easily, her muscles warm, despite the chill air and the fact that her breath was coming in clouds. Another face came into her mind. Dorothy Felling. Holly had admired her for her strength, for her courage in choosing an unconventional career path, had envied the close family in the small cottage, the easy relationship between man and woman.

  In the shower, her mind was still whirring. She knew she was a competitive woman. It was pathetic, but she saw her colleagues as rivals and collaborative working had never come easily to her. Now she thought she’d do as Vera would want and check into the background of the male suspects of the case, but she’d do some of her own research too. Perhaps the ladies of the manor and the farmers’ wives weren’t as harmless or ineffectual as they first appeared, and she’d find the murderer before the rest of the team. Holly had never considered Dorothy to be ineffectual but now it occurred to her that the sudden decision to leave well-paid posts in law and accountancy could be seen as suspicious rather than laudable. Perhaps Dorothy and the charming Karan had something to hide. Would a woman who’d sailed through A levels and into Cambridge, then been sufficiently ambitious to pursue a career in the law, really be satisfied with a life of cleaning up other people’s domestic messes?

  Holly changed into her work clothes, made more tea, and looked out over the dead.

  The call came just before they started the evening briefing. Everyone was there; Vera at the front was writing furiously on the whiteboard. She reminded Holly of some elderly, eccentric graffiti artist, arms flying in wide sweeps, occasionally balancing on her toes to reach the top of the board. Finally satisfied, the inspector turned back to face them, eyes narrowed, soft bum planted on the edge of the desk behind her, stretching the dreadful crimplene trousers, which were her go-to office wear, into wrinkles round her belly. ‘Well, team, what have you got for me?’