The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

She hadn’t taken any tablets the night before. Her doctor had told her they’d be ineffective if she used them too often.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, no, I haven’t noticed.’
    ‘Had you told anyone here that you had them in your possession?’
    Nina thought back. Had she mentioned her insomnia on the first evening of the course? Everyone had seemed so tense and ill at ease, talking too much as they clasped their glasses of wine, trying to make an impression, and she’d admitted that she too felt anxious in this new place and in this gathering of strangers. ‘Most people knew I had problems sleeping,’ she said. ‘I didn’t talk about taking stuff for it.’
    ‘But someone might have put two and two together?’
    ‘I suppose so.’ But Nina was sceptical. This all sounded too elaborate to her. Murder wasn’t a parlour game, the moves planned out in advance. Surely it was usually a brutal outburst of anger, sudden and unforeseen? Not in her story, of course. The action there was as elegant as a Regency dance. But in real life.
    ‘I’m trying to help you out here!’ Vera said. ‘If your pills weren’t stolen, you become the murderer. You do see that?’
    Nina didn’t answer.
    Vera suddenly seemed to lose patience. ‘Take Sergeant Ashworth to your room and show him your tablets,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to take them away, of course. Do you keep your room locked?’
    ‘Only from the inside at night,’ Nina said. ‘Not during the day.’
    ‘Ever had the feeling that someone’s been in there, rifling through your things?’
    ‘No,’ Nina said. ‘Never.’
    It seemed to be the answer Vera was expecting. ‘Get along!’ she said. ‘I have other people to see.’

Chapter Fifteen
    Ashworth didn’t know what to make of Nina Backworth. She was the sort of woman who would usually terrify him. But following her up the main stairs away from the lobby he found himself aware of her body, a sudden and powerful attraction that left him breathless. At her bedroom door she turned and gave an unexpected grin:
    ‘I thought police officers were supposed to be fit.’
    He felt confused, unsure what to make of the observation – had she noticed the effect she was having on him? His words came out as brusque, almost rude.
    ‘The pills, Ms Backworth, if you don’t mind.’
    Her room was on the same floor as those of all the other tutors. While she went into the bathroom, he stood by the window and looked out at the sea, trying to regain his composure. At an angle below him was the terrace, with its wrought-iron furniture. The garden, rather overgrown and unkempt, sloped steeply to a path that led down to the beach.
    He looked back into the room. It had a faint smell of citrus. Her perfume. He’d noticed it as he’d come up the stairs. Everything was ordered. She’d made her own bed, and her pyjamas – white silk – were folded on the pillow. On the desk were a notebook and a fountain pen, neatly aligned. He hadn’t realized that anyone wrote with a real pen and ink any more. He was thinking how classy she was, well outside his sphere, when she returned from the bathroom carrying a red toilet bag.
    ‘The pills are inside,’ she said. ‘I didn’t touch the bottle. I thought I might smudge fingerprints. Something like that.’
    Her prints would already be on the bottle, of course, but he should have thought of that, should focus now entirely on the task in hand. This was ridiculous. He was behaving like a teenager. Though when he’d been a teenager he’d already had his future mapped out. He’d met his wife when he was still at school. Sixteen years old and I was already middle-aged.
    He took a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and, using it as a glove, he slipped the bottle inside. Then he held it to the light and tilted it so that he could count the tablets.
    ‘There are four left,’ he said. ‘Is that what you would have expected?’
    ‘No.’ He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her face was white and set. The red lipstick like a splash of fresh blood on her face. ‘My GP gave me a prescription for a month’s supply. I’d used about ten.’
    He did the arithmetic in his head and checked it before he spoke. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of this woman. ‘So there are sixteen missing?’
    ‘I can’t be precise, but certainly about that. At least a dozen.’ She slumped, so that she was sitting on the bed, leaning forward. The