The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

at all. Professional.’
    Now Joe did look up. ‘Backworth said that they were all going to read pieces last night over dinner. Even Miranda Barton. Although Jack broke up the party, most of them carried on in the lounge. Nina might know if Miranda read, and if she explained the background to her story.’
    ‘So she might.’ Vera gave him a long, lazy smile. ‘Why don’t you nip upstairs and ask her, pet? Take your time. You’ve got a way with the women. We need all the details she can give.’ She nodded towards the cutting on the table. ‘Take that with you. Our Nina might know where it came from. She was being taught by Ferdinand after Miranda became rich and famous, after all. She might just remember if there was more to it than we’ve got here. I’ll wait for you.’
    When Joe Ashworth had left the room, Vera switched on the kettle again. She made more coffee and found a tin with a few home-made biscuits still inside. It’d be a shame for them to be wasted. Her phone rang. Holly.
    ‘I’ve just had a call from the incident room. A member of the public wants to talk to you.’
    ‘Oh, aye.’ People who fancied they had vital information always wanted to speak to the senior investigating officer. They didn’t trust the person at the end of the phone to pass it on. Not without reason. If Vera read every scrap of gossip, she’d get nothing else done. ‘So what’s so urgent that they contacted you?’
    ‘It came from a politician. An MEP.’
    ‘Let me guess,’ Vera said. ‘Paul Rutherford.’ Joanna’s ex - husband.

Chapter Twenty-Five
    Joe Ashworth knocked on Nina Backworth’s door and waited to be invited in. She’d been lying on top of the bed and was scrambling upright when he opened the door. He felt as embarrassed as if he’d walked in on her in the shower. He knew she would hate to have her private space invaded.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Were you trying to get some sleep?’
    ‘Trying,’ she said. ‘Not very successfully.’ She swung her legs onto the floor. ‘I can make you some tea or coffee, if you’d like. Miranda always made sure the rooms were well stocked.’
    ‘Better at running this place than she was a writer, you reckon?’
    ‘Would it be very bitchy if I said she was?’ Nina had gone into the bathroom to fill the kettle and looked round the door to get his answer.
    ‘You’ve already told us you didn’t think much of her books.’
    She plugged in the kettle and switched it on, giving herself time to form a reply. ‘That was while she was still alive. I thought they were pretentious and overwritten. Like poor copies of other people writing literary fiction at the time. But it seems much worse to be rude about her when she’s dead. And perhaps I got her wrong.’
    ‘I need you to be honest with me,’ Joe said. ‘That’s the most important thing now.’ He sat on the desk chair and watched Nina play with the small cartons of milk and the teabags on strings. Her fingers were very long and white.
    ‘I haven’t lied to you at all,’ she said. ‘Why would I do that?’
    He left the question unanswered. She poured boiling water into a mug and looked at it. ‘How strong do you like it? Do you want to fish it out for yourself?’
    ‘Last night,’ he said. ‘After Jack Devanney kicked off in the dining room, you went with the others to the lounge to listen to them read their stories.’
    ‘To the drawing room.’ She corrected him absent-mindedly. A teacher correcting a bairn’s grammar. ‘Yes, I didn’t think I could get out of it.’
    ‘Did they all read from their own work?’
    ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Inspector Stanhope has already asked me that. I couldn’t face it, after the scene over dinner. It just seemed like a sham. Whoever set up the scene on the terrace must have looked at my notes without my realizing.’
    Joe saw she was blaming herself for Miranda’s death; somehow she felt she had made it happen by imagining the crime scene and writing it down. Like a bizarre kind of magic.
    ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said.
    ‘It feels as if it is. I was writing for entertainment. A bit of fun. I didn’t expect my story to be brought to life.’ She fished in her pocket for a tissue.
    ‘At the moment I’m more interested in the others.’ Joe kept his voice low and leaned towards her. ‘For example, you said Miranda read from her own work last night.’
    ‘Yes!’ Nina’s eyes were feverish and Joe thought she needed to get