The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

was cold. The fire she’d lit for Joe had long gone out and she hadn’t bothered switching on the central heating. She had two pillows at her back and a spare duvet wrapped around her shoulders. On the bedside table some hot milk with a good splash of whisky in it. Outside it was still; there was no sound at all. In her head she heard the voices of the people in the story.
    This was fiction, but the central character, Maggie, was a barely disguised version of Joanna, and when Vera read the piece, she found Joanna there, speaking in her aristocratic tone, confused and angry.
    Maggie grew up in a house in Somerset governed by unspoken and unwritten rules. Everything from the correct folding of napkins to her inadequate schooling was prescribed in advance. Then she met Paul and every rule was broken or irrelevant. He was her saviour and her devil. He walked into her life one evening, rangy and spare, a hungry lion looking for food. For a woman and admiration. For money and a woman to worship him. In his life there were no rules, except one: take what you want. And she was seduced by his wickedness, by the absence of rules. It liberated her from the tedious life of duty. That evening, a guest in her father’s house, he made love to her while the other guests were at dinner. The next morning she ran away with him.
    That was the start. Very melodramatic, Vera thought. She remembered snatches of a book programme on Radio 4 and came up with a different word. Very gothic. She wondered if it had really happened that way, or if Joanna had re-created a story to suit her heightened mood. Perhaps her relationship with Paul had been more mundane, almost sleazy. She was a schoolgirl who wanted to escape from strict parents and a boring home life. And he was an older man who wasn’t going to turn away a bonny lass when she’d thrown herself at him. Was the overblown language of the story the result of Joanna’s lack of medication at the time of writing? Or had she first seen her husband as the romantic figure described in the story? And as the theatrical villain he later became in the work?
    As she read on, the lack of factual detail in the piece irritated Vera. She’d hoped there would be something here to help her in the investigation. But while the scenes of the couple’s life in Paris, especially those describing Maggie’s unravelling into depression, were vivid, little was specific. Paul left the apartment every day to go to work, but there was no mention of the address of their home or of exactly what he did to earn a living. Of course Vera could ask Joanna about her life in France, but Joanna was still a major suspect.
    Besides, how could this be relevant to the murder? Did Vera really think Joanna’s ex-husband had manipulated events at the Writers’ House? The notion that a stranger had been murdered just to implicate Joanna, to torment her further, seemed fanciful even at this time of night. Why bother now after all these years? Perhaps Joe Ashworth had been right not to pursue the idea. After reading the pages through for a second time, Vera put them on the floor beside the bed. After all, she could hardly justify spending more time and energy on this line of enquiry. She fancied another whisky as a nightcap – she deserved it after reading all that stuff – but by now the room was freezing and she couldn’t face her cold feet on the bare kitchen floor. Her last thought was that she should have brought the bottle to bed with her.
    At the team briefing the next morning the question of Joanna’s past came up. Joe Ashworth was leading the session. Vera sat at the back, determined to keep her mouth shut and let him get on with it. She didn’t want to compromise the investigation by taking a leading role. Nor was she keen to let slip that she’d been back to visit Joanna the night before. He began with a recap.
    ‘Of all the folk staying at the Writers’ House, only seven had the opportunity to kill Tony Ferdinand. The rest were together between lunch and the discovery of the body. There’s no news yet from the search team on the murder weapon.’
    Holly stuck up her hand. Vera thought she would have been the sort of child to sit in the front row of the classroom and tell the teacher if he’d got something wrong.
    ‘Yeah?’ Joe reacted just as the teacher would have done.
    ‘There’s Chrissie Kerr, the publisher, too. She was at the Writers’ House in the morning to give a guest lecture. She stayed for