The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

his grey eyes. Someone in the investigation had described Ferdinand as charismatic and for the first time she understood what they’d meant. Then suddenly the piece was over. She switched the television off.
    She wished she’d met Tony Ferdinand. She found it hard relying on the descriptions of the other witnesses. Most of them had disliked him, and that was unusual after a murder. Usually there were contradictions. This almost unanimous hostility made her suspicious. Had the suspects discussed their attitude to the man before giving their statements? It seemed unlikely. She’d been on the scene almost as soon as the body had been found. Unless there’d been some sort of collaboration surrounding his death, an agreement about alibis and timing. That would be a nightmare. It would widen the circle of possible suspects. But even among a covey of writers, people who created impossible situations for a living, this seemed fanciful.
    So what had the man been like? A predator, it seemed, sexually and in his academic life. At least according to Nina and Joanna. What had made him that way?
    She pulled a file from her bag: notes Holly had made following her phone calls to Ferdinand’s staff. The notes contained the home phone number of one of them who’d worked with him on the creative-writing MA. Sally Wheldon, Holly had written. Then: Poet. It was seven o’clock. Was this a good time to catch a poet at home? Vera had never met one before. She fetched the phone and returned to her chair by the fire. Hector’s chair. Looking out, she saw that there was already frost on the windscreen of the Land Rover, a hazy moon.
    The voice that answered the phone was older than Vera had expected. A London voice. Motherly and without pretension.
    ‘Yes? Sally Wheldon.’
    Vera explained who she was. ‘I think you’ve already spoken to one of my colleagues, but I wonder if you’ve got time to talk to me. Informally. Younger officers don’t always take the time. They get the facts, but they’re not so good at listening.’
    ‘If you think it would help.’ The woman sounded pleased to be asked. It seemed time wasn’t a problem for her. Perhaps she wasn’t a mother after all, but middle-aged and lonely. There were no young kids at home this evening, certainly. You’d hear them, wouldn’t you, this time of night? Or a television in the background. Those computer games that made noises. Or were the children of poets not allowed television and computers? Vera realized the woman was waiting for her to continue the conversation.
    ‘I’m just interested in the sort of man Professor Ferdinand was,’ Vera said. ‘I never met him, so it’s hard to tell.’
    There was a pause on the other end of the line. Ms Wheldon was choosing her words carefully. A good sign. But then a poet would be careful with words. ‘He was one of those people who need an audience,’ she said at last. ‘None of his relationships lasted very long and he lived by himself, but he never seemed comfortable with his own company. He’d walk into a room and look for someone to perform to. That made him rather a selfish teacher. He wasn’t really interested in the students’ work, only in his own reaction to it.’
    ‘Is that why people didn’t like him?’ Vera wished she were in the same room as Tony Ferdinand’s colleague. She imagined them chatting over tea and biscuits, then she could pick up the gestures and small smiles that would reveal more than words.
    ‘He never really fitted into academia,’ the woman said. ‘Not into St Ursula’s at least, which always considered itself a cut above the other London colleges. He was too brash and too full of himself. He’d been a freelance journalist, of course, before he started here. He’d never published any fiction or poetry and there was a lot of resentment when he was invited to set up the course. There were people in college who thought they’d be better suited. People who’d been to university together, who spoke in the same way. Tony wasn’t prepared to play their games. He didn’t have to. He was a celebrity and he could pull in quality students, the kids of playwrights and film-makers. Of politicians. He made the course and the college famous.’ Sally paused. ‘He gave the rich kids a hard time sometimes. We argued about it. Just because they came from affluent families, it didn’t mean they had the confidence to take his stick. But he didn’t listen. He had a chip on his shoulder