Paddy lit a cigarette before she replied. “Caroline blamed Lorna totally. I tried to talk her out of seeing it that way, but she wasn’t having any. I don’t know the full story, but apparently Lorna had an affair with Caroline’s father, which he was more wrapped up in than she was. The marriage broke up over it, but Lorna and he never really got it together. Caroline was very bitter at the time, and when she heard Lorna was coming to the school, she was furious. I was quite surprised when she volunteered for the program selling at the concert.”

“What about the girl who came to fetch you from Longnor? The one with the amazing head of red hair. Is there anything she might be able to tell us that could help?” Lindsay asked. Paddy shrugged again. “I doubt it. Though if there was, Jessica would certainly tell you. She’s another one who hated Lorna’s guts, you see. That’s why she wasn’t playing at the concert even though she’s one of our best young musicians. You remember that row I had with Margaret in the staffroom, Lindsay? That was about Jessica. She’d come to me at the last minute and explained she couldn’t go through with the concert with Lorna there.

“It was all to do with her brother, Dominic. He was a brilliant violinist, and Jessica worshiped the ground he walked on. There was some business between him and Lorna—she latched on to him and promised him the first vacancy in her string quartet. But things went wrong between them and she gave the post to someone else. Then there was some business about a reference she wouldn’t give him for some other orchestral job, and he didn’t get that either. The pressure of being rejected twice like that was too much for him—he killed himself. He clearly wasn’t at all stable; in fact, from what I’ve heard the blame was as much on his side as on Lorna’s, but Jessica will never see it that way.”

“I don’t see how you can be so bloody charitable about Lorna,” Cordelia burst out. “She was nothing but trouble to us while she was alive; and now she’s dead, she’s carrying on the good work.”

“Leave it, Cordelia,” soothed Lindsay. “What’s the girl’s full name, Paddy?”

“Jessica Bennett.”

“Thanks, we’ll have a chat with her. Now, what about Sarah Cartwright? Gillian tells us that she’s given the police a statement about Saturday morning.” Lindsay succinctly outlined what the lawyer had said on the phone. “What have you got to say to that, Paddy? Did it happen like she says?”