“She never mentioned a sister, but I know about Dominic, yes. He was quite a gifted young musician, Lorna said, and she’d encouraged his talent. She told him that one day she might be able to use him in her string quartet. But he wasn’t quite up to scratch when a vacancy came up, so of course she had to turn him down. He was more distressed than she realized, and he killed himself soon after. Where does his sister come into this?”

“She’s a pupil at the school. Does the name Margaret Macdonald mean anything?”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Caroline Barrington?”

“Barrington? Any relation to Anthony Barrington? He had a relationship with Lorna. She told me about him. Apparently he couldn’t accept it when she cooled off, and went to the extent of divorcing his wife to try to force Lorna to marry him. But she wouldn’t have it. They split up about six months before we got together. I got the impression that he caused her a lot of grief. But she never tried to make one feel sorry for her, for what she’d suffered in the past. She always said you start relationships with a clean sheet. God, I’m going to miss her,” and he pressed the back of his hands against his eyes in a curiously vulnerable gesture. “The worst thing is that I can’t get peace simply to sit and grieve. The police, the press, and now you. Not that I blame you. I like to think that I’d do the same for a friend of mine. But there will be no peace until after the court case. And probably not even then. It makes me so bloody sad. A complete waste.”

“And damage done to the living,” said Cordelia. “There’s been enough of that already and it’s not finished yet. One last thing before we go—how many people knew she was going up to Derbyshire last weekend? Is there anyone else you can think of who might have had a motive for wanting to harm her—I mean in the widest sense?”

“Thousands of people knew where she was going. There were a few paragraphs about it in the Daily Argus diary column last week. As for motives—no, I don’t know anyone who’d be crazy enough to want to harm her. It’s all insane. All of it. It doesn’t feel real. I’ve been working these last few days on the final stages of the Elgar documentary. It’s going out in three weeks. It’s very weird watching the film and hearing the soundtrack of her playing and knowing that’s all that’s left. I must have actually been working on that with the editor when she was being killed. It’s hell.”