The Darkest Evening

in any hurry to rush off. Mark looked remarkably fresh, just out of the shower, hair still damp. He came into the kitchen to find her:
‘Come on, darling. You must have breakfast with us. They’re your friends too and we do need them if we’re going to keep this crumbling pile in your family.’
What family? she’d wanted to ask. I’m the only one left. Officially. Apart from Vera and I doubt she has any offspring hidden away, ready to inherit. But of course Juliet said nothing. She left Thomas with Dorothy and followed him to the dining room, where she drank coffee until the caffeine gave her a headache.
There was an awkward moment when Harriet arrived. She stood in the doorway, immaculate in a tweed jacket and tailored black trousers, a silk scarf round her neck. Demanding attention.
‘What is going on in the garden?’ She looked at Juliet for an answer, and Juliet saw that of course she’d slept through everything, the discovery of the body and the arrival of Vera’s team.
‘There’s been some kind of incident, Mummy.’ Burbling. Harriet always made her nervous. ‘Neil Heslop found a dead woman when he came to pick up his girls last night.’
‘What do you mean by “incident”?’
‘It looks like murder, Harriet.’ Mark stood up to speak across the table to his mother-in-law. ‘There are police all over the place.’
‘And nobody thought to tell me!’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Who is the supposed victim?’
‘There hasn’t been any confirmation yet, but they think it’s Lorna Falstone, and that it was her baby that Vera brought in last night.’
There was a moment of silence. No expression of grief or shock. But Harriet hadn’t expressed grief even after finding her husband dead in the drawing room, early one morning. He’d had a heart attack the night before, but she hadn’t found him until breakfast time. By then they were no longer sharing a bedroom. ‘How did Lorna get here? To the house?’ As if it was the height of bad manners to appear without invitation.
‘We don’t know, Mummy.’ Again, Juliet felt herself to be a gibbering teenager again. ‘That’s what the police are trying to find out.’
At that point, Vera appeared, crumpled, still wearing the clothes in which she’d fallen asleep, but so full of life and energy that she pulled the room’s attention away from Harriet.
‘I think you all deserve a bit of an explanation. Come on in and sit down, Harriet. Dorothy’s just bringing in some fresh coffee, and then we’ll start.’
Harriet, astonished, did as she was told.
Vera stood at the head of the table and leaned towards them. ‘First, the good news. The plough’s been down the lane and cleared from here to Kirkhill, so as long as you take it easy up the drive, there’s no problem about getting you all home. My colleagues, Joe Ashworth and Holly Jackman, will join us when I’m done. They’ll take a quick statement from each of you, asking if you saw anything unusual when you drove in. We’re interested in a white Polo that went off the road about a mile from the house. We think the dead woman’s name is Lorna Falstone. She lived in Kirkhill. Does that mean anything to you?’ She paused, looked at them, was met with blank faces and shakes of the head, except from Harriet, who seemed about to intervene. And a young couple, the Blackstocks. The woman was about to speak, but the man touched her arm, warning her to stay silent. Juliet saw that Vera had noticed that too.
‘Of course we’ll talk to the family later, Harriet,’ Vera said, meaning, so shut up for now. For a moment Juliet was lost in admiration. She would never have the nerve to talk to her mother in that way.
And so the morning rolled on. Mark played the jovial host, flirting with the women, joking with the men. The younger female detective took him off to his study for a chat, but he emerged smiling as if he’d enjoyed the encounter. Juliet thought he always enjoyed the opportunity to perform. It was as if the body in the garden had been laid on just for their entertainment: See what a marvellous backdrop to drama we have here! There was no sadness, no sense of a tragedy unfolding, but then he was an outsider. Lorna Falstone’s death wouldn’t have the same meaning for him.
The younger detectives took over from Vera and led each of the guests into a corner of the drawing room to ask their questions. It seemed straightforward enough, though Sophie Blackstock seemed to warrant more attention than the others. Juliet recognized her as one of Mark’s team, one of the bevy of admirers who supported him in his artistic endeavours. Sophie was his job-share. One of the women who always made her feel inadequate.

Chapter Seven
Holly thought this was one of the strangest cases she’d ever worked. She was slightly thrown by it: by the big house, the suspects trapped by the weather, the snow. It reminded her of the TV dramas her parents had forced her to watch when she went home for Christmas. They expected her to solve the mystery before they did and were disappointed when she showed no interest.
‘You must know who the killer is, darling. It’s what you do for a living.’
She sat in a small room with Mark Bolitho. A Calor gas heater sent fumes, but not much heat, into the space. It was furnished with a desk and office chair, and three scratched leather chairs grouped around a coffee table. On the wall hung gloomy portraits of people Holly assumed were Stanhope ancestors. There was a computer on the desk, a printer and a pile of scripts next to a landline phone. The view from the window was of an outhouse and the bins. Bolitho was soft, just a little flabby. He might once have been fit, but the beginning of middle-aged spread meant his jersey was stretched