So, not such a saint after all.

Driving down the narrow track towards the village, Vera was pleased. It was as if she was rediscovering the Jenny Lister of the welcoming little house and the charming daughter. Vera had always been more comfortable with sinners.

Lost in her thoughts, she had to stop suddenly to let a tractor past. She pulled off the road and saw the gateposts with the carved cormorants’ heads that she’d first noticed in the painting on Veronica’s wall. The vegetation had grown up around them and they wouldn’t have been visible from the road. On impulse Vera switched off the engine and got out of the car. She walked down the grass track between the pillars, through a spinney of alder and birch. There were wood anemones and violets, the colours very bright in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the trees. Then the woodland stopped and she saw where the house must once have stood.

There were still the remains of a formal garden, wide terraces and a walled patch where vegetables had been grown, where the skeleton of a greenhouse still leaned against the wall, but the brick and stone of the house had all been removed. Old dressed stone would be worth a fortune here in the Tyne valley. Why had the land never been sold? Did Veronica own it, or some other branch of the family? This would be a developer’s dream location. Perhaps it was in a conservation area and building was prohibited.

Grand stone steps led through the middle of the grass terraces. She walked down them, feeling as if she’d walked onto a film set. There was a series of statues on either side. Chipped and covered in lichen, they were mostly of strange mythical creatures. Some were hidden by ivy and a few had disappeared under a tangle of bramble. On one of the terraces there was the huge empty bowl of a fountain.

Looking down towards the river, she saw a pool. Trying to remember far-off geography lessons, Vera thought that perhaps the course of the river had changed over time and this lake had been left. Beside it, quite intact, was the boathouse, about which Veronica had spoken. It was made of wood that had recently been varnished; a deck on stilts was built out over the water. No boats were kept inside it now; the window was glazed and there were red-and-white curtains. A couple of dinghies, upended, lay beside it. Vera imagined it would be the perfect spot for grand family picnics, pictured Veronica presiding over a wicker hamper, trying to recapture the glory of her grandfather’s home.

Walking back to the car, she felt almost sorry for the woman.

Chapter Thirteen

Outside Connie Masters’s cottage, Ashworth hesitated for a moment to look at her car; it was pulled into the verge, so the cow parsley and the long grass had been flattened. A silver Micra seven years old, with a distinctive bump on the offside wing. He wrote down the registration number. If there was CCTV at the car park where she’d claimed to have left it in Hexham the previous day, it might be possible to rule her out of the inquiry altogether.