The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

hear it? To remember and realize what he’d done?’
    ‘It was her song,’ Winterton said. ‘It was for her.’
    ‘You wrote the note for Joanna and hoped that she would pick up the knife.’ Let’s move this on, Vera thought. Get it over with. The futility of his actions made her want to weep. And if she didn’t get her breakfast soon she’d faint. ‘Tell me about the handkerchief on the terrace after you killed Miranda,’ she said briskly. ‘Another play?’
    ‘ Othello .’
    Vera smiled as if she’d known all along; she thought Google was a wonderful thing. ‘Desdemona’s hankie,’ she said. ‘White cloth embroidered with strawberries. And we thought it was a heart. Embroidery’s not one of your talents, pet.’
    The solicitor cleared his throat. They all looked at him. It would be his first utterance. ‘I don’t quite understand the significance of the apricots,’ he said.
    Vera gave him a superior smile. ‘They feature in a play too,’ she said. ‘ The Duchess of Malfi . A Revenge Tragedy. And the dead robin’s from The White Devil .’
    Winterton lay back in his chair and closed his eyes, reciting:
    Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren.
    Since o’er shady groves they hover,
    And with leaves and flow’rs do cover
    The friendless bodies of unburied men.
    He sat upright. ‘That’s Cornelia mourning her dead child.’
    The room was very quiet. Nobody knew what to say. Vera broke the silence. ‘You certainly gave Miranda a fright. Killing Ferdinand in a scene from her most successful book. Very weird.’
    ‘When I heard her screaming,’ Winterton said, ‘it was the happiest I’d been since Lucy died.’
    ‘While everyone believed that Joanna killed Tony Ferdinand, Miranda could persuade herself that the scene was a coincidence,’ Vera went on. ‘It was only after Joanna was released from custody that she began to reconsider.’
    ‘She was a stupid, greedy woman,’ Winterton said.
    ‘She tried to blackmail you.’
    ‘She had grand ideas. For the Writers’ House and her own work.’ Winterton looked disdainful. ‘She needed money. She thought it was only Ferdinand I blamed for my daughter’s death.’
    ‘And this time you used the scene from Nina Backworth’s short story.’ Vera thought that by then his lust for revenge had taken over. Though he’d held it together in public – slipping ideas to Joe about Miranda Barton having lost a daughter, sending them in quite the wrong direction.
    Winterton looked up. ‘It seemed fitting,’ he said. He gave a little smile. ‘They care so much about their fiction, after all. For Lucy it was a matter of life and death.’
    Vera said nothing. She looked at Joe to see if he had any further questions. He shook his head. On the other side of the table Winterton was sitting upright and still. Now he didn’t care at all what might happen to him.
    Vera thought it was time for breakfast. Maybe if she bought him a decent fry-up, Joe would forgive her.

Chapter Forty
    Joe Ashworth caught up with Nina at her flat in Jesmond. He’d expected her to be with Chrissie Kerr at North Farm, thinking she’d want company after her ordeal with Winterton. But she was alone. She’d been sitting by the window looking out over the cemetery. Her arm was bandaged and she wore a red cardigan over her shoulder like a shawl. In the street outside, schoolgirls were making their way into the playground.
    ‘Perhaps you don’t want to be disturbed,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing that won’t wait.’
    ‘No, please! Do come in.’
    She made him coffee and he sat beside her at the table.
    ‘Of course I’d gone over the events in my head, wondering who the murderer might be,’ she said. ‘Mark was at the bottom of the list. He seemed such a gentle man.’
    ‘Who did you have at the top?’ Joe thought they’d never have had this conversation while the investigation was still running.
    She paused and seemed ashamed for a moment. ‘Lenny Thomas,’ she said. ‘Dreadful, isn’t it? The assumptions we make. Just because he’d been in prison.’
    ‘We had our suspicions about him for a while.’ Joe supposed he should be more discreet, but he didn’t think Nina would be talking to the press. ‘He wouldn’t tell us where he was the night of your break-in and the afternoon the cat was found in the chapel. Turned out he’d been working for a mate, a plumber from Ashington. He was being paid cash, nothing on the books. He hadn’t told the benefit