Joanna awoke with the feeling that something unpleasant was going to happen today. Matthew lay still beside her but she knew he was awake. It’s hard to fake sleep successfully. There is something about the breathing that gives the masquerader away; it is a little less laboured, slightly faster and less regular than the respirations of someone who is truly, deeply asleep. She worried for a couple of minutes over the emotion of impending trouble.
Then she remembered. Of course. Today Eloise would be arriving. When she returned from work, Matthew would be wearing the fixed, strained smile of a man who is only too well aware of the problem between his daughter and his partner. No. She almost sat up to protest. Fiancée. Next to the half-finished book, the pearl ring gazed back at her from her bedside cabinet, a faultless, beautiful witness to her altered state.
Matthew decided to stir. He reached out for her and found her, pulled her to him, and she thought how very lucky she was, how much she loved him and how glad she was that in a couple of short months they would be man and wife. She snuggled in close to whisper in his ear. ‘Want a coffee?’
He opened his eyes. ‘Mmm.’ Surely, surely, she thought, Eloise could not wreck this happiness, this contentment?
Oh yes she could and frequently did, deliberately. Joanna slipped out of bed, wrestled her way into her thick white towelling dressing gown and padded downstairs, returning minutes later with a cafetiére steaming with a rich, beautiful aroma, a jug of milk and two large mugs. Carefully she poured out their coffee and they sat up in bed, awakening to the day with the help of caffeine.
She broached the subject first. ‘What time is Eloise coming?’
She could never quite get rid of the frostiness in her voice the second she spoke the name. And Matthew noticed it too. He frowned over the cup of coffee.
‘Her interview’s at two so she’ll drive straight there,’ he said stiffly. ‘Then she has a written paper. She should be finished by five-ish. We’ll be back here by six-ish, depending on the traffic.’
He arched his eyebrows at her. ‘I suppose you’ll be late home?’
If she struggled to keep hostile tones out of her voice, Matthew struggled to keep irony out of his.
Perhaps now that she was to be his wife, things would improve? Briefly, she had thought they had while Matthew had been in the States and she had suffered a miscarriage; Eloise had sent her some flowers. But later, when she had been healthy enough to think about it more rationally, she had realised that the thought behind the flowers had been Matthew’s. Not Eloise’s. How could she ever have thought otherwise?
But she must try and build bridges. ‘I will try and finish early, Matt,’ she promised before springing out of bed and making her way to the shower. She put on her cycling shorts and top and folded work clothes into her rucksack before going downstairs for some Special K and a large tumblerful of apple juice. She heard Matthew upstairs, showering briskly, humming. He was happy to be seeing his daughter, she reflected. She shouldn’t spoil it. But it wasn’t just her fault. If she was guarded, Eloise was at least equally so – if not more so. In the beginning, Joanna had excused the child. After all, her perception would be that it had been Joanna who had broken up her mother and father, split apart the family home. But as Eloise had grown up, Joanna had become increasingly impatient with the sharp-featured, razor-tongued teenager, seeing in her more than simply a physical resemblance to Jane, Matthew’s ex-wife.
She finished her breakfast and went upstairs to clean her teeth just as Matthew was descending. He gave her a slightly wary look.
‘See you tonight then, Jo.’
She set off to work, glad to escape the coolness that threatened whenever Eloise’s presence was felt.
It did her good to be cycling across the moorland through a warm and misty fog, which blanketed the peaks and gave the area a mystical feel. She descended the hill from Waterfall and joined the Ashbourne road, conscious of the threat of the traffic that raced past.
She arrived at the station thirty-five minutes later, exhilarated and clear-minded. Full of determination. It had been this characteristic that had finally solved so many of their cases. A tenacious and stubborn optimism, a conviction that they would solve the case eventually. Joanna disliked failure. She had been brought up to despise failure by a father who thought of her as the son he had never had. As she locked her bike to the railings, her mouth had a firm set to it and her eyes smouldered.
She had a second quick shower before changing into her work clothes – a black skirt and scarlet T-shirt, low-heeled shoes. Now she was ready for work.
Surprisingly, Korpanski had beaten her to it. He grinned up at her, turning his gaze from the computer screen for no more than an instant before motioning towards two coffee cups already filled. ‘Just going through the statements, Jo,’ he said, ‘ready for the briefing.’
She felt appreciative that he, too, was putting extra energy into the case.
They drank companionably until nine fifteen, peering at the screen, searching for something that might lead them to a conclusion. But they found nothing they had not seen before, nothing that led them any nearer to Grimshaw’s murderer.
And yet as Joanna and Mike made their way to the briefing room their tread was quick and light.
The assembled officers seemed to have caught their optimism and looked alert and ready for action. Joanna and Mike exchanged glances. If only they could point them in the right direction. The only new information was that the handwriting on the note had been confirmed, surprisingly, by Gabriel Frankwell as being Grimshaw’s.
She directed their energies into analysing the existing statements, checking and rechecking people’s whereabouts for the Sunday evening – early.
They were almost through the briefing when a door opened at the back of the room. The desk sergeant, Alderley, stood in the doorway, hesitating. Korpanski walked the length of the room towards him. Listened to some whispered words. Joanna caught a look of complete consternation on her sergeant’s face. He looked at her, his mouth open, shoulders up in confusion. What on earth, she wondered, was Alderley telling him that had so imprinted on his face?
Then she saw that someone was standing behind Alderley. A smart woman, late fifties, maybe early sixties, dressed in a dark grey trouser suit, looking so like her daughter it was not possible to mistake her identity. Tall, slim, with nondescript features but a tight, hard, determined mouth and sandy coloured hair. Joanna felt a rushing in her head. This was not possible – surely? A grim voice answered her silent question. In life and death anything is possible. But this would turn the entire case on its head, remove every motive, every assumption. She fixed her gaze on the woman, as though worried she would disappear, walked up the room and waited for Alderley to introduce them, yet knowing already.
‘Th-this woman,’ Alderley was stammering, ‘says she’s Mrs Grimshaw.’
Joanna gaped at the woman, absorbing everything about her, from the thin, almost gaunt frame, to the hard stare of the hazel eyes, so like her daughter’s, the thin mouth, the defiant attitude.
‘We-ell.’ It was all she could manage.
She dismissed the briefing. It was pointless trying to proceed with the case until they had assimilated this new information, threaded this hitherto unknown and significant fact into the investigation. It would alter everything. Change the entire balance. At the back of Joanna’s mind, the policewoman in her had already added the new suspect to the list and begun to analyse motives. Grimshaw had died intestate. Avis was still his legal wife, therefore his main beneficiary. Had Grimshaw’s wife hated him? How would Judy respond to the resurrection of her mother? Had she realised that her father’s story was nothing but a cruel trick? Joanna met the woman’s eyes, held her hand out and received a limp shake. ‘Shall we go into an interview room?’
The woman’s gaze slid into hers. Joanna was again reminded of Avis’s daughter, stroppy, sneaky and unpleasant. There was something equally and overtly hostile about her mother’s stare.
The battle was about to begin.
She and Korpanski sat opposite Mrs Grimshaw, but Joanna found it hard to begin the questioning. Where do you start?
We believed you dead, fed to the pigs?
Where have you been for the last eight years?
Have you kept in touch with your daughter? Is she in on this?
What part did your neighbour, Dudson, play in this?
Was he your lover? If not he, whom?
Suddenly helpless, she looked at Korpanski, whose eyes were resting on her, warmed to the colour of toffee with humour. He well knew that for once she was at a loss for words and was enjoying every moment of it. He was laughing at her, hardly bothering to conceal it.
She put her hands on the desk. ‘Mrs Grimshaw,’ she began. ‘You are aware that your husband has been—’
She got no further.
‘Yes, yes,’ the woman replied impatiently. ‘I know Jakob met with a violent end.’
‘You left Prospect Farm.’
‘Years ago.’ The same impatient, irritated, rather rude tone. ‘Being a farmer’s wife didn’t suit me.’
Joanna replaced the words impatient and rude with condescending.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Is it anything to do with the investigation?’ Her voice was razor sharp.
Korpanski cut in, frostily. ‘We don’t know yet, Mrs Grimshaw. We’re just collecting facts at the moment. We had heard—’
Without warning, Mrs Grimshaw burst into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, the pig story,’ she said, then leaning in, added, ‘I never thought Jakob had such a vivid imagination.’
‘Can you think of any reason why your husband would confess to such a crime when it obviously isn’t true?’ Korpanski asked.
Mrs Grimshaw smiled. ‘Jakob had a mischievous sense of humour,’ she said. ‘He knew what a nosey little thing young Judy was. He knew she’d go prying, looking for things.’
Sense of humour? Joanna almost shuddered. She wasn’t exactly close to her own mother, but to plant this cruelly false evidence in the mind of a daughter didn’t seem like humour, exactly.
But an explanation of sorts.
‘Have you had anything to do with your daughter in the years of your absence?’
‘No.’ Said flatly, almost confrontationally. ‘I thought it best.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Abroad.’ Almost a smirk crossed the woman’s face. ‘I ran a bar in Spain. Then a few years ago I moved to Eastern Europe. Poland, the Czech Republic, and so on. I’ve travelled around.’
Mrs Grimshaw shook her head. Her pale eyes met Joanna’s. ‘He travels fastest who travels alone,’ she quoted.
‘Kipling,’ Joanna muttered under her breath.
Mrs Grimshaw continued. ‘Once I’d decided to go,’ she said, ‘I knew I must leave Judy behind.’
‘Why didn’t you just file for divorce?’ Korpanski asked, prosaic as ever.
She looked at him, then at Joanna. ‘I don’t expect either of you to believe this,’ she said haughtily, ‘but Jakob’s farm was his life – and his inheritance. If I had divorced him the farm would have been split up. It was hardly viable, anyway. Half would have been impossible.’
Joanna nodded. This, at least, made sense. Even if none of the rest did.
She decided to proceed on a different tack. ‘When did you return from your travels?’
‘A little over two weeks ago.’ There was a direct challenge in the woman’s statement. She must have known when her husband died.
‘Why?’ Korpanski asked bluntly.
‘I got bored with travelling.’
She hesitated. ‘And,’ her shoulders dropped, ‘to be honest, someone from Leek came into the bar where I was working in Bratislava. He recognised me and told me how things were at the farm. I realised that Jakob was probably about to sell up. He told me about the land deal and I realised I could use the money.’ She gave a smile that was really a sneer. ‘Bar work doesn’t exactly pay well, you know.’
Joanna nodded in mock sympathy, all the while thinking that this certainly complicated things for Judy Grimshaw. No longer her father’s next of kin, she was about to be supplanted. Interesting.
‘Have you seen your daughter since you’ve been back?’
‘No. Not yet.’ For the first time since the beginning of the interview some doubt crept into the woman’s voice. And this time her smile appeared genuine. ‘To be honest, I didn’t how to approach her. After the story Jakob had spun she might faint if I showed up at her house. She might be angry.’ Her eyes challenged. ‘But a telephone call seems a little cold, don’t you think? After all this time,’ she tacked on almost casually.
Joanna and Mike stared back woodenly.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at the reunion, Joanna thought.
‘How did you learn about the pig story?’
Avis Grimshaw licked her lips. ‘Judy told the friends I was staying with a couple of months ago.’ She smiled. ‘They never believed it and tried to tell Judy it couldn’t be the truth but she swallowed it.’ A wry smile twisted her face. ‘If you see what I mean.’
‘Didn’t that make you want to see her?’
‘Yes and no,’ Avis said. ‘More yes than no.’
Joanna leant across the table. ‘Did you see your husband on your return?’
Avis Grimshaw hesitated, so Joanna pressed on.
‘Do you know anything that might have a bearing on your husband’s death, Mrs Grimshaw?’
She shrugged. ‘Not a thing,’ she answered. ‘I’m well out of touch, Inspector.’
‘And where have you been in the time since you’ve been home?’
Again Mrs Grimshaw’s face changed. She stared at the wall. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I’d had a great idea of walking back into people’s lives.’
‘Anyone in particular?’ Korpanski asked with meaning.
But the spark had left Grimshaw’s widow. ‘I…tried to look up a few old friends.’
‘Where?’
‘I have – had – a brother in Somerset. He apparently died three years ago. I didn’t even know. And his widow is – with someone else now.’
She hesitated. ‘I contacted a few more friends.’ She crossed her legs. ‘Life has changed,’ she said, ‘in the years since I’ve been away. I expected to be the wanderer returned. The lost sheep. The prodigal son. In fact I am a stranger to everyone – even, probably, to my daughter.’
Joanna was tempted to blurt out, ‘What do you expect?’ but uncharacteristically she held the words back because Mrs Grimshaw looked truly and sincerely upset.
‘And the farm?’
She was holding something back. Joanna knew it and when she looked at Korpanski she could see he did too. The gaze from his dark eyes was unblinkingly on Avis Grimshaw, as though if he blinked he might miss some swift but vital sign.
‘The farm,’ Joanna repeated. ‘Did you go there?’
Mrs Grimshaw looked from one to the other, her eyes almost frightened. ‘I did call in,’ she said finally, ‘on the Monday.’
Korpanski interrupted. ‘Do you mean the 10th or the 17th?’
‘The 10th. I had rung him early in September just to warn him. He was furious. Absolutely furious.’ She was pale. ‘Angry with me for leaving him, the farm, our daughter.’ She gulped in some air. ‘I told him I wanted a divorce and that would mean I would be entitled to half the farm. It would finally have to be sold.’ Another of the twisted smiles. ‘So when I called in I didn’t exactly expect much of a welcome.’
Joanna gave a sharp glance at Korpanski. ‘How was he?’
Avis didn’t realise how significant the question was. She shook her head.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t see him. He wasn’t there.’
Joanna couldn’t resist giving Korpanski another swift glance.
He asked the next question. ‘And the dog,’ he asked, ‘Ratchet?’
‘Fast asleep,’ Avis said. ‘Not much of a bloody watchdog, if you ask me.’
‘Did you walk round the farm?’ Joanna asked.
Avis shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t. I knocked on the door, stuck my head round it, shouted for a bit, stood in the yard and yelled for a bit longer but the place…’ she turned innocent eyes on Joanna, ‘was completely deserted.’
‘Any animal noise?’
‘Not that I remember,’ she said. ‘Possibly from the barns. I can’t be sure. I stayed less than ten minutes and then went to an old friend’s house.’ She managed a watery smile. ‘One of the few I’d managed to track down who could stomach being with me.’ Her smile widened. ‘There’s something about being regurgitated from a pig that makes you less than an ideal dinner companion.’
For the first time since the beginning of the interview, Joanna was tempted to smile too. ‘Carry on,’ she said.
‘I stayed with her for a couple of days, went to London on the Thursday. She rang me and told me what had happened, including the fact that his body had lain undiscovered for around a week. I was frightened then. I knew it was unlikely that you would know exactly when Jakob had died, which would make it probable that I would become a suspect. I thought the best thing would be for me to come here and make a statement rather than have my story unravelled bit by bit during your investigations.’
Joanna could not help but feel some respect for the woman’s intelligence. Grimshaw’s widow had got it all worked out. And now she had got it all off her chest she seemed to relax. ‘That,’ she said quietly, ‘is the truth. I swear it.’
‘You may have to in court.’ Joanna let the words sink in. ‘Where will you be staying?’
‘You mean “don’t leave town”.’ The ghost of a smile accompanied her answer. ‘I won’t. I’ll be staying in Derby Street. I have a friend there.’
‘One more thing.’
It provoked an instantly wary look.
‘It was mentioned that you had been friendly with
Mr Dudson, the neighbouring farmer.’ Mrs Grimshaw composed her features into a neutral stare. ‘I was friendly with his wife. There was nothing else between us. His wife was dying. In fact, it was one of the reasons why I stayed for so long at Prospect Farm.’ A swift spasm of emotion crossed her face. ‘I was really fond of her. She was a lovely woman and appreciated the food I prepared and a few little things only a woman would do around the house. In an odd sort of way, her death paved the path for me to go.’
‘Oh?’
Mrs Grimshaw smiled. ‘I’m sure this is an indictable offence. I applied for a passport in her name,’ she said simply. ‘In one of our many conversations, she mentioned that she’d never been abroad so I knew she’d never had one before. It meant I really could disappear. But it wasn’t just that. I didn’t want to live my life like hers. She – and I – had done so little, married young, never travelled, had children, been a mother and a farmer’s wife. She died in that role. I wanted more from my life. As I watched her getting weaker, I strengthened my own resolve. It is not a decision I regret,’ she said with dignity.
‘I see.’ Again Joanna was at a loss for words. But she must ask one more thing.
‘Did you kill your husband, Mrs Grimshaw?’
Again, the woman’s answer was puzzling. ‘There would have been no point, Inspector,’ she said. ‘At least not for money.’
But that wasn’t strictly true. Jakob had died intestate. He and his wife had never divorced so she would be the beneficiary.
When the woman had gone, leaving behind traces of lemony perfume and sadness, Joanna turned to Mike and spread her hands out in a gesture of utter puzzlement. ‘So where does this leave us, Korpanski?’
He folded his arms. ‘With another suspect to add to the list,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘And an interesting story.’
She almost cuffed him.
‘Maybe we should have another talk to Mr Dudson,’ she said, pushing her chair back. ‘Was he in on this or not?’
They found the farmer sitting in a tractor, about to take a large and smelly machine across one of his fields. He looked less than pleased to see them but he was, at least, polite.
‘Inspector,’ he said, climbing down from the cab. ‘What can I do for you?’
She waited until he was on the ground, facing her. ‘It seems,’ she said, ‘that Mrs Grimshaw is alive.’
Nothing passed across his face. No surprise, puzzlement. His blunt features remained a perfect blank. ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘So—’
‘You didn’t know?’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I did not. I believed what she told me.’
‘Who, Mr Dudson?’
He looked faintly irritated with himself for having blurted that out. ‘Judy,’ he muttered.
‘And when did she tell you?’
Dudson looked furtive. ‘Can’t remember exactly.’
Korpanski climbed into the tractor and switched the ignition off. ‘I think it would be a good idea if you came down to the station. Maybe that’ll jog your memory.’
For a minute, Joanna thought the farmer would refuse. Then he bent his head. ‘Give me a minute,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll change out of these work clothes.’
He reappeared less than five minutes later in a clean pair of green corduroys and a Barbour coat.
Joanna knew that the answers Dudson gave would be significant. And that he knew this. So she took her time, skirted round the issue.
‘Your wife was a local girl?’
Dudson blinked then narrowed his eyes. ‘What the devil’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘She was,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Local born and bred.’
A twist of cynicism crossed his face. ‘You wouldn’t find anyone else to put up with the conditions round here.’
‘It’s a tough life,’ Joanna mused.
Dudson nodded in agreement.
‘And you haven’t married again?’
Dudson shook his head. ‘Didn’t really have the heart for it,’ he said gruffly.
‘You were friendly, though, with Mrs Grimshaw.’
Dudson smiled. ‘Friendly, yes. Anything more, no.’
‘Think back, Mr Dudson, to when you last saw Mrs Grimshaw.’
‘It were the day after the funeral,’ he said. ‘She came round with a shepherd’s pie. She looked sort of…’ he fumbled for the word, ‘distracted. Bothered about something. She put her arm round my shoulders and said we would both be mourning together.’ He smiled. ‘She looked smart. As though she were going somewhere. So when Jakob told me afterwards that she’d gone with another man it all made sense. I believed it.’
‘But then Judy told you otherwise.’ Joanna said softly.
Dudson nodded, glanced furtively around the room. ‘She’s a nasty girl, that one,’ he said. ‘Used to beat that poor little pony of hers something rotten. She had a cruel, unforgiving streak in her. Something like her dad. Jakob was like that,’ he mused. ‘He found things funny that weren’t. She took after him.’
‘So tell me about the day that Judy told you what her father said had been her mother’s fate.’
‘It were a Sunday,’ he said. ‘She appeared in the doorway holding a piece of paper. It were a letter. She read it out to me.’ Dudson was quietly chewing his lip. ‘At first I couldn’t believe it. I thought it were Jakob pulling the wool over my eyes. I couldn’t understand why he’d written it down. He’d know that she would find the letter one day.’
Korpanski leant in. ‘How did she seem? Angry?’
Dudson swivelled round to look at him, and then turned back to look Joanna straight in the eyes. ‘There’s two sorts of angry,’ he said. ‘There’s hot angry and there’s cold angry. She was cold angry. Every muscle in that woman’s body was full of hate.’
Joanna couldn’t ignore the look of triumph Mike gave her.
The noose was tightening around Judy’s neck.
They let Dudson go.
Joanna glanced at her watch. Six thirty. She’d promised Matthew she would sit down to dinner at seven thirty. More than anything, she wanted to haul Judy Grimshaw in and question her through half the night. But Matthew would not forgive her. Whatever the reason, he would think of it as an excuse. Korpanski was eyeing her expectantly. They’d worked together on enough cases for him to be able to anticipate her next move. With a sigh, she stood up. So this was what it meant to have conflicting loyalties: always to feel wrong-footed.
Avoiding Korpanski’s eyes, she spoke. ‘We’ll talk to Madam Wilkinson in the morning.’
Korpanski watched her, incredulous. ‘You’re kidding?’
He knew her methods. Knew she really wanted to grill the woman until she told them something. She felt the struggle inside her, and then picked up the phone, almost seeing Matthew’s lips curl in disbelief as he answered. ‘I’m really sorry, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Something’s come up. I’m sorry,’ she said again.
He spoke the words for her.
‘Don’t wait up,’ he supplied. ‘Funny,’ he said angrily, ‘that it should “come up” now, at this time, just when Eloise is here. Well, I’m sorry too, Jo. Sometimes, you know, you simply have to make an effort.’ And he put the phone down.
Joanna fingered the pearl on her finger. It hadn’t made things any easier, had it? More difficult, if anything. She was more than ever conscious of the grit that was at the centre of this lovely gem.
Judy was defiant, her pale eyes staring at them when she opened the door of her terraced house. ‘I don’t know why you keep bothering me,’ she said grumpily. ‘Typical of the police. Grab the next of kin and you’re halfway there.’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘So what is it this time?’
‘We simply want some clarification,’ Joanna said steadily. Initially, she’d felt dislike for this woman. Now it was turning into something much stronger. Not a good idea to feel such prejudice against a suspect; she was well aware that it could cloud her judgement.
Judy’s eyes became wary. ‘Clarification,’ she demanded, ‘on what?’
‘You knew about the letter your father wrote,’ Joanna said. ‘When did you realise it wasn’t true?’
Judy’s face changed. Still wary but tense now. ‘Sorry?’
‘Your mother is not dead, is she?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do.’
Judy took a long time to speak again. Her chest moved, her face moved but she said nothing. Finally, she did speak. Differently. She had lost some of her bounce, her aggression, and simply looked a skinny, sad woman. ‘Can I get this straight, Inspector?’ she said. ‘Are you telling me that my mother is still alive?’
Oddly enough there was anger underlying her voice. That and a terrible uncertainty. Joanna watched the emotions cross her face, wondering, what’s going on?
She nodded. ‘Yes. Your mother is alive.’
Judy sank back in her chair. ‘Bitch,’ she spat. ‘So where’s she been?’
‘She’s been working in Spain and other countries.’
‘And she never once got in touch with me. What a mother,’ she exploded. ‘What a fucking mother!’
Joanna had to agree with her.
Quite unexpectedly her own feelings towards Judy Grimshaw changed. She felt sorry for her. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that your mother wanted to escape the stifling atmosphere of farm life rather than you. You were the price she paid.’
And just as unexpectedly Judy looked furious rather than mollified by the words. ‘I don’t want your opinion on my mother and her dirty behaviour, Inspector,’ she said viciously. ‘Just find out who killed my father. And I suggest you do concentrate on his next of kin.’
Behind Joanna, Korpanski cleared his throat noisily.
They left soon afterwards and drove back to the station. ‘I’m toying with the idea that maybe we should consider getting a warrant to search Judy Grimshaw’s house,’ Joanna said. ‘And I would love to be a fly on the wall when mother and daughter are reunited.’
Korpanski nodded in agreement, his mouth pursed up.
It was nine o’clock when she crept in, feeling utterly guilty. Mike had given her a lift home, which seemed to rub in the conflict between work and home life. She had almost been tempted to stay the night in the police station but that would solve nothing. She could not stay there for ever taking evasive action.
They were talking as she entered the room. The two of them in earnest conversation, blonde heads close together, Eloise’s pale hair making a contrast with Matthew’s straw-coloured locks.
‘Hello.’
Matthew managed a smile. Eloise simply regarded her steadily, dislike sharpening her small features so she looked even more like her mother. It didn’t help. ‘Hello, Joanna.’ Eloise spoke finally. ‘Looks like you’ll be seeing even more of me in the future.’
Joanna couldn’t dream up a suitable response.
Matthew stood up. ‘Shall I pop some lasagne in the microwave?’ he said awkwardly.
She answered without turning her head. ‘That’d be nice. Thanks.’
He disappeared into the kitchen and Joanna settled into the armchair opposite. ‘So,’ she said to Eloise, ‘how did your interview go?’
‘They’ve offered me a place.’
Joanna’s heart sank. ‘Will you take it?’
Eloise was watching her. Too much perception in the green eyes. Her father’s eyes. Her father’s beautiful eyes.
She nodded. ‘I haven’t had the formal offer yet,’ she said. ‘There are the tiny fences of A levels. They’re bound to want high grades for entry, but I would like to go there. I was impressed with the university campus and the quality of teaching. It’s one of the best for practical medicine. Besides…’ Her eyes were still resting on Joanna, challenging her. ‘I’d like to be near Dad. He can help me with my studies and things.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to struggle with chemistry and they’ll insist on that to gain entry.’ She hesitated before her next sentence. ‘Don’t worry, Joanna, I’m not about to try and intrude on your little Arcadia but he is my dad and I’ve missed him in the time since he left. I’d like to stay close to him.’
Right on cue, Matthew walked in with a tray of food and three tall glasses.
‘So,’ he said, with hearty jollity. ‘Shall we toast?’
‘It could be a bit premature, Dad.’
‘No,’ Joanna said softly. ‘Let’s toast. To you, Eloise, to the grades that you need and to having your father near you.’ She felt happy, relieved. It would work out – surely?
Matthew popped the cork from some sparkling wine and the three of them drank, more companionable than they had ever been before.
Eloise sipped from her glass. ‘And to you, Joanna,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’
The green eyes looked perceptively deep into hers and Joanna flushed then drank the toast.
It was later when Matthew asked her about the events of the day.
‘Extraordinary,’ she said. ‘I don’t want any of this coming out.’ She gave a warning glance at father and daughter. ‘But Grimshaw’s wife turned up, right out of the blue.’
Matthew threw his head back and laughed, and she knew he wasn’t laughing because of what she’d said but because he was happy. Genuinely happy. After a second or two she and Eloise joined in.
‘Is nothing safe, nothing predictable?’
Joanna took a thoughtful sip of the wine. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘this has been the last straw. For a simple homicide it is proving to be the most frustrating of cases. Every time I think I know something it turns out to be false. It’s pissing me off, quite honestly.’
‘How does this affect the daughter’s inheritance?’ Eloise asked the question slowly.
‘We-ell,’ Joanna pondered the point. ‘Mrs Grimshaw will be the next of kin. Grimshaw died intestate. It might go to court for an expensive argument. Judy doesn’t strike me as the forgiving sort and there’s patently very bad blood between mother and daughter. Unless she and her mother have more to tell me and they have been in touch, this has been nothing more than a pointless charade. I’d say that they’d be well advised to come to a private agreement and keep it out of the courts. Of course, there’s no predicting what will actually happen.’
‘Hmm,’ Matthew said, grinning. ‘A three-pipe problem?’
She was tempted to aim a cushion at him.
But sitting, drinking quietly as father and daughter chattered, she rolled a few possibilities around in her mind. Was it possible that Judy had shown Dudson the letter to provoke him? To murder? Had Mrs Grimshaw returned out of the blue coincidentally or to claim her inheritance?
Was her reappearance cause or effect? Had she killed her husband?
They were questions she badly needed the answers to.