The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

lunch.’
    ‘And drove away before Ferdinand died.’ Joe glared at her.
    ‘Nothing to stop her pulling in at the top of the bank and coming back on foot.’
    Vera thought they were like squabbling kids and decided it was time to step in or they’d be there all day. ‘Any connection between Kerr and Ferdinand?’ she asked. ‘Any possible motive?’
    ‘Not that I can find,’ Holly said.
    ‘Let’s put her down as an outsider and carry on, then.’ Vera sat back in her chair and waited for Joe to continue.
    He pointed to the photos of the Bartons, stuck on the whiteboard. ‘So we have mother and son, Miranda Barton and her son Alex. They run the place.’ He turned to Holly, icily polite: ‘You were going to dig around into the business’s finances. What have you come up with?’
    ‘Well, it’s hardly making them a fortune,’ Holly said. ‘But they’re not on the verge of bankruptcy, either. Miranda bought the house years ago when she was making a decent living out of her writing. There’s hardly any mortgage. She must have got the idea of setting it up as a writers’ retreat when her books stopped selling. It makes sense really. A sort of value-added B&B. And New Writing North covers the cost of the bursaries, so it’s all profit .’
    She looked at Ashworth over her specs. ‘I don’t see any motive for either of them. If anything, they have something to lose if the murder has an impact on bookings.’
    Vera thought there was an edge of competition in every conversation between these two. Holly was waiting for Joe to contradict her and was looking forward to another argument, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction.
    Vera raised a finger. ‘They seem an odd pair to me,’ she said. ‘The woman’s all showy emotion, and you’d think the lad was made of ice. Chalk and cheese.’
    Joe looked at her expecting more, but she shook her head. ‘Just making the point.’
    He turned back to the whiteboard and pointed to another photo. ‘Next, Lenny Thomas. Worked for Banks Open-cast until he developed back problems two years ago. Since then he’s lived off invalidity benefit. He’s got a council house in Red Row. Divorced with one kid. A bit of a history when he was a kid – car theft, burglary. One period of probation and six months’ imprisonment. Nothing recent. Not since he started with Banks.’
    ‘How does he fit in with the arty set?’ This from Charlie, bags under his eyes you could carry golf clubs in, last night’s takeaway curry on his jersey.
    Vera was tempted to jump in again at this point, but she allowed Ashworth to speak first. ‘They’ve adopted him as their own working-class pet,’ Ashworth said. ‘They’re kind, but patronizing. They wouldn’t want to be thought snobby.’
    Well done, lad!
    ‘Motive?’ Holly asked. She was still sulking because Joe was getting all the attention.
    ‘According to Lenny Thomas, Tony Ferdinand had said he could find him a publisher and turn him into a star. Maybe it was all talk, and Lenny got resentful and lost it.’
    ‘The trick with the knife, and the forged note to Joanna, would hardly be his style, would it?’ This was Holly betraying her own prejudices.
    ‘You mean he’s not bright enough to think of it, because he once drove a truck on an open-cast for a living?’
    Don’t let her bug you, Joey-boy, Vera thought.
    ‘Besides,’ Joe went on, ‘we don’t know the note to Joanna was forged. And we’re not going to find out. She claims it was burned. She’s still got to be our prime suspect.’ He pointed to the photo of Joanna. It had been taken recently, and Vera wondered where they’d got hold of it. She was wearing a red sweater and her hair was blowing away from her face. ‘Joanna Tobin. Living the good life with her partner, Jack Devanney, in the hills above Clachan Lough. Like Thomas, she was one of the students who’d been awarded a free place on the writers’ course. She was found close to the body with a knife in her hand. Problem is, the knife doesn’t fit the wound. So was she set up? Or was she playing some sort of elaborate game with us? A sort of double bluff.’
    He paused and turned towards Vera. ‘She spent ten years of her married life in France, and records of that time only came through this morning. She assaulted her husband, attacked him with a knife, then attempted suicide. The doctors diagnosed some sort of psychotic episode and she was never charged. She escaped from a French psychiatric