They were in Baikie’s again. Waiting. There was the same smoky fire, the familiar furniture covered in dust, the moth-eaten fox leering out of the smudged glass case.
But now they sat, as self-conscious and wooden as actors in an amateur production, so the room seemed different. A stage set for a gothic thriller. A two-hander They stared at each other waiting for something to happen, to move the action on.
A young policewoman had been detailed to sit with them and she tried her best to lift the mood. The drizzle had turned into a downpour. She looked at the rain sluicing down the windows and said cheerfully that she’d been lucky to get a job indoors. She didn’t envy the rest of the team who were still out on the hill. She had a date that evening with a bloke who was drop-dead gorgeous and she couldn’t think what her hair would look like after a day out there.
Rachael turned politely to answer her but unexpectedly, from the kitchen, they heard another voice, quite different, hard and authoritative.
‘Don’t give me that crap, Joe. Just bugger off and see to it.’ Joe must have obeyed the order immediately, to be already on his way outside because the next question came in a shout.
‘In here, are they?’
So prepared, Anne and Rachael turned to watch her come in. She was a large woman – big bones amply covered, a bulbous nose, man-sized feet. Her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals. Her square toes were covered in mud. Her face was blotched and pitted so Rachael thought she must suffer from some skin complaint or allergy. Over her clothes she wore a transparent plastic mac and she stood there, the rain dripping from it onto the floor, grey hair sleeked dark to her forehead, like a middle-aged tripper caught in a sudden storm on Blackpool prom.
She dismissed the policewoman. ‘Tea please, love.’ Then she held out a hand like a shovel. Rachael stood up to take it and realized she’d seen the woman before. It was the bag lady who’d crashed into the chapel late during Bella’s funeral.
‘Vera Stanhope,’ the woman said. ‘Inspector. You’ll be seeing a lot of me. More of Joe Ashworth, my sergeant, but at the moment he’s out there getting wet. He’s still young. Less prone to arthritis.’ She stared at Rachael. ‘Don’t I know you?’
‘I was at Bella Furness’s funeral.’
‘So you were. I never forget a face.’ She smiled smugly. ‘One of my strengths.’
‘What were you doing there?’ Rachael asked.
For a moment the inspector seemed affronted that Rachael had the temerity to ask. ‘That was personal. Nothing to do with this business.’ Then, although she didn’t seem to be a woman who minded being rude she added more kindly, ‘I knew Bella from years back.’
‘How did you know her?’
‘Like I said,’ Vera’s voice was brisk, ‘that’s personal. And your chum’s lying up there with a string round her neck. More important now, wouldn’t you say, to sort that out.’
I’m not sure, Rachael thought. She had been shocked by Grace’s death but in this new detached state she didn’t feel any personal loss. Certainly she didn’t think of the zoologist as a ‘chum’. Grace had drifted into their lives at Baikie’s with so little emotional contact that it was hard now to think of her as ever having been alive. It was almost as if her death was inevitable, as if she had been progressing towards it since her arrival.
She realized that Vera Stanhope was waiting for an answer.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
She looked at Anne. Usually she would have expected a smart flip response to that sort of remark, but Anne seemed uncharacteristically upset and continued to stare into the fire.
‘Who was the last person to see her alive?’ Vera asked.
Now Anne did raise herself to speak. ‘Me,’ she said. ‘I suppose.’ She paused. ‘Rachael was at a meeting in Kimmerston. Grace went into the field. I stayed here to catch up on some paperwork. Unless she met someone else while she was out . . .’
‘Is that likely?’
‘It depends where she went. One of the Holme Park keepers might have seen her from the hill. Or a hiker. Sometimes she walked all the way to Langholme. There’d be more chance, I suppose, of someone bumping into her there.’
‘What time did you see her?’
‘Lunchtime. One, half past.’
‘Is that when she went out, or did she come back to the cottage to eat?’
‘No,’ Anne said, ‘she didn’t do eating much. She went out early and came back to leave the details of her afternoon walk. It’s a Health and Safety thing.’
Vera Stanhope had taken off her plastic mac and hung it over the glass case which held the stuffed fox, but she remained standing. Anne had seemed to be directing this conversation to the uneven hem of the inspector’s dress, but now she looked up into Vera’s face and asked abruptly, ‘What time was she killed?’
Vera gave a laugh which turned into a choking cough. ‘God knows. We don’t. Not yet. And we might never be able to tell with any certainty, especially if she hadn’t eaten. The scientists don’t work miracles whatever they have you believe.’
‘She was found so close to Baikie’s that she must either have been on her way out or her way back,’ Rachael said. ‘Do you think she realized she was in danger and was trying to reach the cottage . . .?’
No one answered. Vera continued in her matter of fact way. ‘Could she have been there all afternoon, without anyone seeing?’
‘Quite easily. Even if she was near to the footpath. Midweek and in this weather there’d not have been many walkers.’ Rachael turned to Anne. ‘You didn’t go that way? You were talking about sampling near the mine.’
‘No. I was in all day. Like I said, I thought I’d tidy up the paperwork.’
‘You must have been out shopping,’ Rachael said then stopped, realizing she sounded inquisitorial, the school prefect again, realizing too that the inspector might make more of it than she should. She continued lamely, ‘I mean the stuff for the casserole, the wine.’
‘Oh yeah, but that was earlier. In the morning before Grace came back.’
‘We might be able to tell from Grace’s notebook about what time she was killed,’ Rachael said. ‘Was it with her?’
Vera ignored the question. ‘How would that help?’
‘She was doing timed counts. She would have written down the time the last one started.’
Vera sat down in the armchair. She pulled it closer to the fire. The mud on her feet had already begun to dry in grey streaks. Today she had with her not a collection of carrier bags but a large briefcase. The leather was so soft and old that the shape had gone and the straps had curled and it looked like a postman’s sack. She took out a hard-backed notebook and jotted down a few words.
She crossed her legs giving Rachael a glimpse of white lardy flesh and leant forward with her elbows on her knees. Her face took on a more serious expression. This is it, Rachael thought, this is where the real questions start. But Vera Stanhope, despite her earlier insistence that she shouldn’t forget Grace lying strangled on the hill, began to talk about herself. And she told it like a fairy story so Rachael wasn’t sure if it was true.
‘When I was a little girl,’ she started, ‘I used to come and stay in this cottage. Occasionally. My dad would bring me. There was only my dad. I never knew my mum. She died giving birth to me. It’s not a nice thing to grow up with, that. As if being born was a crime. An act of violence at least. You could say that I had an interest in crime right from the start. My profession was chosen for me.’ She knew she had shocked them, but she smiled roguishly. She knew she had them hooked. Rachael thought she wanted to disconcert.
‘Connie Baikie lived here then. Large, loud Connie. More like an actress than a scientist. A real drama queen. I don’t know what stories you’ve heard about her. They’ll all be true. She was famous, you know, at the time. As well known as Peter Scott. My father adored her. He was a naturalist too. Only an amateur but well respected. He was a schoolmaster by profession. I can’t think he was much good at it. I knew from experience that he found children tedious and his real love was always natural history.
‘So. Picture the scene. Imagine the situation. A middle-aged man landed with a small child. A frail child who suffered from allergies: asthma, eczema. Psychosomatic, no doubt but real enough at the time. Did he allow that to cramp his style? Of course not. He was an obsessive. Until I was old enough to be left alone I was dragged along too. I walked miles round here, many of them. I learnt to keep quiet and stand still.
‘Then, occasionally, there were the wonderful weekends when we were invited to stay at Baikie’s. There was music and dancing on the lawn. Chinese lanterns and big fires, sweets and biscuits and other grown-ups to make a fuss of me. Ladies in silk dresses and fur coats wearing exotic perfume. Even the talk of plants, butterflies and animals seemed more exciting here. Whatever Constance Baikie was, whatever she became, she could put on a good show . . .’
She stopped abruptly and looked up at them. Her tone and mood changed. ‘I expect you think I’m odd,’ she said. ‘Eccentric. Even that I’m dragging up my past for effect. That’s not the case, and if I do have a reputation for eccentricity, I have one too for getting results. You couldn’t have got anyone better.’ She paused. ‘This isn’t my party piece, I don’t trot it out for everybody. I’m telling you, so you know I understand what goes on here. And I haven’t lost touch. You mustn’t think that. I lived with my father for forty-five years. Lived with the lists and the notes and the sketches. He died a year ago, but I’m in the same house. The scientific journals still drop on the doormat every month because I haven’t got round to cancelling them and sometimes I read them. Some of it must have rubbed off. I never shared his passion but at times I come close to understanding it.’
She leant back in her seat and closed her eyes. There was such a long silence that Rachael thought she had fallen asleep, imagined she and Anne sitting there for hours, too embarrassed to move. Then still with her eyes closed Vera said, ‘So explain what you’re doing here. I want to know all about the project and where Grace Fulwell fitted into it. Tell me about the survey so far. What you expected to find and the results you’ve achieved. By the time we leave this room I’m going to know as much as you do about the lass. You’re going to pass on everything she told you. About her work, her friends, her family. Everything.’
There was a pause, then Anne said, with a brief return of the old spirit, ‘That’s all right then. That’ll not take us very long. And I thought we’d be here all day.’