The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

she was miles away, caught up in her story.
    ‘I’ll make him some coffee, shall I?’ Jack persisted.
    ‘Yes.’ But she frowned, looked at Joe. ‘Will you be long?’
    ‘Just a couple of questions.’ He sat at the table beside her.
    ‘I’ve got a deadline,’ she said. Her voice was excited. He thought she sounded unwell. Had she stopped taking her pills again? ‘Chrissie Kerr is bringing out a pamphlet of our work. A kind of sampler. To raise publicity for the Writers’ House and its work. Only a thousand words each, but it has to be good. It’s an opportunity to prove I can write. A showcase. I’m writing something new. A crime short story.’
    ‘Alex Barton is in hospital,’ Joe said.
    At last she did drag her attention away from the screen. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
    Joe made sure Jack was listening too. ‘Someone stuck a knife in his mother’s cat and laid it out like a sacrifice in the chapel, along with a dead robin. It freaked him out. I suppose it would.’
    ‘And you think we would do something like that?’ Jack was round the table squaring up to Joe.
    ‘You wouldn’t be squeamish about killing animals,’ Joe said. ‘It’s something you do all the time.’
    ‘That isn’t like wringing the neck of a hen that’s stopped laying.’ Jack’s face was so close to Joe’s that he could see the hairs in Jack’s nostrils, the gold cap on one tooth. ‘That’s sick!’
    ‘Is Alex okay?’ Joanna asked. Both men looked at her, distracted for a moment from their hostility. ‘He’s young and he’s been through so much.’
    ‘Sergeant Ashworth wants to know where we were late yesterday afternoon,’ Jack said.
    ‘Jack was out.’ She smiled. ‘His weekly trip to Kimmerston. The one day he gets an escape from me. Shopping for the farm and then supper in the Red Lion. Quiz night with his mates. The highlight of the week, eh, Jack? What exciting lives we lead!’
    ‘And you?’ Joe wasn’t sure how he should address her. Ms Tobin? Joanna? In the end he left the question as it was and thought it sounded blunt, almost rude. ‘Where were you yesterday?’
    ‘I was here,’ she said. ‘Where else would I be? We only have one vehicle, Sergeant. Without that I’m stranded.’
    Joe thought she’d escaped by taxi once before, but said nothing.
    Before leaving the house he glanced over Joanna’s shoulder at the computer screen and read the first paragraph. It was a description of a dead man lying on a beach. His face was covered in scratch marks. ‘As if he had been attacked by a wolf.’ Joanna’s idea of an entertaining read.

Chapter Thirty-Four
    Chrissie wouldn’t hear of Nina going back to the flat in Jesmond.
    ‘Really, you can’t! Not with some nutter about. I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to you.’
    So Nina allowed herself to be persuaded. And after a few days she found she was really enjoying her stay in the big house in the country. There was no cooking or shopping to do, and the Kerrs employed a cleaner, so there were none of the chores that distracted her from her writing at home. It was like staying in a friendly hotel. She was given a guest room on the second floor, had her own bathroom and even a little study in which to work. Chrissie’s mother was a good cook; she studied recipes with the assiduous concentration of an academic. Her father was pleasant and mild-mannered. Nina felt almost that she was recreating the working atmosphere of her grandparents’ house and imagined herself back during that summer when she’d produced her first book. The crime story was growing. She could see how it might become a novel. Different from anything she’d written before, but perhaps even better. The form of the mystery gave her the structure that had been lacking in earlier work.
    At mealtimes the talk was about the collection of short pieces Chrissie aimed to put together to celebrate Miranda’s work and establish her own claim on the Writers’ House. From the beginning Nina saw that this was the prime motive for the book. Chrissie wanted to spread her empire, and for some reason the Writers’ House was at the centre of her plans. She could talk of little else. It had become an obsession.
    ‘That detective phoned,’ Chrissie said.
    They were eating dinner. Nina had been at the university all day. She’d been given a glass of wine as soon as she got through the door and now there was a lasagne on the table as good as any she’d tasted. Bread