The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

that this would work well. There were no fixed pews inside and she arranged the chairs around the table that stood where once an altar had been. She’d asked Alex to show the chapel to her. She found him easier to deal with than Miranda, and she’d always had a soft spot for a man who could cook.
    ‘We keep it heated to stop the damp,’ he’d said. ‘The students use it as a quiet room, a place where they can write in peace.’
    It was a bare and simple space. No stained glass in the windows. No ornate carving. Hardly bigger than Vera’s living room, it had unplastered walls and a wooden ceiling like an upturned boat.
    Vera thought there was no harm in asking Nina Backworth to wait while she prepared the room. In theory Vera liked strong women; in practice they often irritated her. Nina, with her strident voice and her emphasis on rights, the challenge to Vera’s authority, had certainly irritated. And Vera had to admit there was something intimidating about the woman that coloured her response. It was the expensive haircut, the red lipstick, the fitted linen jacket and wide trousers, all in black. The black boots with the heels and the pointed toes. According to the lad on door duty, Nina had gone for a walk on the beach before taking her lecture this morning. Had she gone out in those clothes? It was hard to imagine her scrambling over rocks and shingle. If Nina Backworth had been ugly and poorly dressed, Vera would have considered her much more kindly. Now the inspector thought it would be good for the woman to wait to be interviewed, as if she were the student and Vera were her tutor.
    ‘Bring her in, pet.’ Vera had arranged the table so that she was facing the door. There was a chair for the witness in front of her. Joe Ashworth would take a place to one side, out of the eye-line. He’d make notes.
    Joe returned followed by Nina. She took the seat offered and looked, to Vera, pale and uncertain. Vera felt a twinge of sympathy. Perhaps the make-up and the sophisticated clothes were protection. Everyone had their own way of facing a hostile world.
    ‘Would you like anything?’ Vera asked. ‘Coffee? Water?’ She could tell it was the last thing Nina had expected. Kindness could be a great weapon.
    Nina shook her head. ‘No. Thank you.’
    ‘This is an informal chat,’ Vera said. ‘Nothing official. Not yet. Later we’ll take a formal witness statement that could be used in court. But I need to get a feel for what happened here, the people involved.’ She looked up sharply. ‘Seems to me writers must be nosy buggers. A bit like cops. You collect characters and places, don’t you, for your books? You’ll be interested in everything and everybody, because you never know when the detail will come in handy for a story.’
    ‘Yes,’ Nina said. ‘Yes, it is exactly like that.’ It seemed to Vera that the woman looked at her with a new respect.
    ‘I’m the same myself,’ Vera went on. ‘Other people call it gossip; I say it’s research.’
    Nina relaxed and gave a little grin.
    ‘So tell me about Professor Tony Ferdinand. What sort of character was he? Did you know him before you met here at the Writers’ House?’
    It was an undemanding question and Nina must have realized it was one she’d be asked, but she hesitated. Vera thought she was debating how much she should say. She leaned back in her chair as if she had all the time in the world, as if the woman’s silence was entirely natural.
    ‘As I explained, he supervised me for a while at St Ursula’s.’
    Vera put her elbows on the table. ‘Tell me how that works,’ she said. ‘I never went to college myself. This is a new world to me.’
    ‘ I’m not quite sure how it works generally,’ Nina said. ‘I think perhaps I had an unfortunate experience.’
    ‘Then tell me how it worked for you.’
    Nina looked out of the long window, and spoke without looking at Vera at all. ‘I was very young when I wrote my first book. I’d just left university and I spent the summer not very far from here. My grandparents lived on the Northumberland coast and I felt more at home with them than I did with my parents.’ She shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, none of this is relevant.’
    ‘But it is gossip,’ Vera said. ‘Nothing I like better than gossip.’
    ‘It was the sort of book you write once in a lifetime. I didn’t understand the rules of storytelling – all this information we’re passing on during this course would have