The Darkest Evening

read, though Vera suspected the couple only lit it when friends had been invited for dinner and they wanted to impress. She couldn’t see Sal emptying ashes. Now, as most of the heat seemed to disappear up the chimney, Vera wondered if it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to take Joe’s advice while the house was being renovated.
She heated a tin of soup in the tiny kitchen, leaving the door wide open so she could keep an eye on the fire, then ate it in the sitting room, the bowl on a tray. The bread was stale so when the soup was finished, she toasted two slices, one after another, using the long-handled fork that again held childhood memories, holding it towards the flames, squatting on the hearth until her cheeks were red and at last, she could take off her coat.
All the time she was thinking of Lorna Falstone, trying to understand her, feeling some sympathy. They had things in common, after all. Lorna had been a girl with a difficult man as a father too. Vera thought her mother would have been different from Lorna’s: more sociable, livelier. While Jill Falstone was a farmer, Mary Stanhope had been a teacher in a village school, like Connie Browne. If she’d lived long enough, not been taken away by cancer, Mary might have painted watercolours in her spare time too. Hector had always said she was a brilliant artist. Hector had adored his wife and had disliked Vera because she was nothing like her mother, no possible sort of substitute. That, at least, was how it had seemed to Vera.
She allowed herself a moment of self-pity, while she thought how different her life would have been if her mother had lived. Because her mother would have loved her, wouldn’t she? Unconditionally. She would have taken her into town and bought her the sort of clothes the other girls wore, had tea ready on the table when she got in from school, taken an interest. All the things that Hector had never managed to do. It occurred to her that with a mother like that, she’d have grown into a different woman. Softer, weaker. Not so good at her job. All the same, she thought, maybe that would have been a price worth paying.
In contrast to Vera, Lorna Falstone had had two parents who doted on her, at least according to Joe Ashworth, and he usually got families right. But wouldn’t loving parents have noticed that she was miserable, that she was starving herself, apparently hoping to disappear? Vera thought they needed to speak to an expert, someone who would understand these things. What sort of man might be attracted to a young woman like Lorna? Someone compassionate, who wanted to rescue her? Or a bully who’d see she was easy to dominate?
Vera carried her tray back to the kitchen and left it on the wooden draining board. She made instant coffee and poured a small whisky, then went back to sit by the fire.
Since she’d got in, she’d been immersed in thoughts and memories of Brockburn past and present. That had been Hector’s home and had shaped him. She knew he’d never got on with his elder brother, Sebastian, and that he’d turned his back on Crispin and Harriet, only visiting when he needed cash. He’d scarcely spoken of the family. Now, she thought, there was one person who’d know everything about her Brockburn relatives. It still wasn’t late, only early evening, but she was too knackered to go out again. She reached for the phone and dialled.

Chapter Eleven
BY LATE AFTERNOON, ALL THE GUESTS had disappeared and Brockburn was quiet, but Juliet thought the place still didn’t feel like home. Though Vera’s people were no longer working in the main house, they were still outside, some searching the garden, others hovering over the body in the thin white tent, like raptors taking their fill of a dead lamb. Juliet had no idea how long they would stay. Soon it would be dark. The black crescent of the forest beyond the high stone wall was already shadowy and indistinct.
Dorothy had taken charge of the arrangements with the investigating team. She’d suggested that the officers could use an outhouse, an old workshop, as their base. It had a lavatory and small hand-basin, and power points for a kettle and for computers and phone chargers, though there was little reception for either. Dorothy had taken out old mugs, teabags, milk and sugar for them. The forensic boss with the grin and the cheeky smile had protested, said they could do a run to Kirkhill for supplies now the roads were clear, but Juliet thought Dorothy had been right to make them comfortable. Surely it was better to keep these people on side and make friends of them.
Dorothy had left the big house just over an hour ago; Karan and the baby had walked down to meet her.
‘I hardly need a bodyguard.’ Dorothy had nodded towards the figures in blue overalls moving slowly through the trees. ‘Not with all these people about.’ But she’d smiled and tucked her arm into her partner’s, so when they’d moved down the track, they’d looked like one very large person, not a family of three. Watching, Juliet had felt the familiar stab of envy.
Now, she stood for a moment, feeling a little alone and without support, like one of the saplings they’d planted in the park, which needed a stake to hold it up. Mark said she was becoming reliant on Dorothy: ‘I know she’s brilliant and all that. In an old-school kind of way. But I’m not sure she’ll have a role in the new regime. We’ll need a different kind of staff then and we won’t have the cash to employ everyone we want.’
Juliet hadn’t replied to that. She still wasn’t sure what Mark had against Dorothy, except that she’d been to school with Juliet, then off to Cambridge, and it made him