with our enquiries, however long they may take. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to say to me just now, Mr Dickinson?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Harry.
‘What’s that?’
‘Bugger off.’
No sooner had the police left than the little cottage was again full of people. Helen watched from the kitchen as her mother and father fussed into the back room, flapping round her grandparents as if they were naughty children who needed scolding and reassuring at the same time.
‘My goodness, you two, what’s been going on? All these police up here? What have you been doing, Harry?’
Andrew Milner was in a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a frivolous blue and green pattern, but he still had on the trousers of the dark-grey suit he wore for the office. He smelled faintly of soap and a suggestion of whisky fumes. Helen didn’t need to be told that her father had showered after arriving home from work and had already drunk his first Glenmorangie of the evening by the time she had phoned. He wore clip-on sun shades over his glasses, which he had to flip up as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the cottage. Now they stood out horizontally from his forehead like extravagant eyebrows.
Harry looked up at Andrew from his chair, no gesture of welcome breaking the rigidity of his expression.
‘I dare say young Helen’s told you what you need to know.’
Margaret Milner was fanning herself with a straw hat. She was a large woman and felt the heat badly. Her floral dress swirled and rustled around her knees and wafted powerful gusts of body spray throughout the room.
‘A dead body. How awful. You poor things.’
‘It was a shoe your dad found,’ said Gwen, who had not yet tired of the excitement. ‘One of those trainer things. They said there was a dead girl with it, but your dad didn’t see her. Did you, Harry?’
‘It was Jess,’ said Harry. ‘Jess that found it.’
‘But there was … Was there blood?’
‘So they reckon.’
‘The young policeman took it away,’ said Gwen. ‘The first one, the young one.’
‘The Cooper lad,’ said Harry.
‘Who?’
‘Sergeant Cooper’s son. The old copper. You remember all the fuss, surely?’
‘Oh, I know.’ Margaret turned to her daughter. ‘Didn’t you used to know him very well at school, Helen? Is that the one? I remember now. You liked him, didn’t you?’
Helen fidgeted, ready to escape back to the kitchen to make more tea. She loved her parents and her grandparents, but she was uncomfortable when they were all together. She could communicate with them one at a time, but when they were gathered in a family group there was a kind of blanket of incomprehension that descended between them.
‘Yes, Mum, Ben Cooper.’
‘You always seemed to get on well. But he never asked you out, did he? I always thought it was a shame.’
‘Mum –’
‘I know, I know – it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Forget it, Mum. This isn’t the time.’
‘We’ve had a body,’ said Gwen plaintively, appealing to the room, as if someone, somewhere could give her consolation, even tell her it hadn’t happened.
‘And it was the Vernons’ girl?’ said Andrew impatiently. Helen noticed her father’s faint Scottish accent creeping through in the ‘r’s, as it did when he was under stress. ‘Did they say it was definitely Laura Vernon?’
‘She had to be identified, they said.’ Gwen looked challengingly towards Harry, letting it be known that she had been listening at the door when the police had been interviewing him. Harry took no notice. He was feeling at his pocket, as if all he wanted to do was pull out his pipe and retire to the front room, to escape to his sanctuary.
‘They reckon it was her all right,’ said Harry.
‘Poor little thing,’ said Margaret. ‘She was only a kiddie. Who would do a thing like that, Helen?’
‘She was fifteen. Would you like some tea?’
‘Fifteen. Just a child. They gave her everything, her mother and father did. A private school, her own horse. All that money, just think of it. And look what it comes to.’
‘I wonder what Graham Vernon will think,’ said Andrew.
‘What do you mean, Dad?’
‘Well, it’s awkward. You know – just imagine what state he’s in over the girl. And then it has to be my own father-in-law who finds her.’
‘What does that matter to him, for heaven’s sake? Their daughter’s dead – it won’t make any difference to them who found her.’
‘Well, it’s just awkward, that’s all.’
‘Andrew thinks his role is to be Graham Vernon’s loyal lackey,’ said Margaret. ‘Being involved in the murder of his daughter rather ruins the image, doesn’t it?’
‘Involved? Well, hardly,’ protested Andrew.
‘However distantly, of course,’ said Margaret, with a smile of satisfaction. ‘I suppose it’s bound to make you feel tainted by association.’
‘Stop it, Margaret.’
‘Perhaps it would have been better if Dad had just walked on and ignored it, and said nothing. Better for you, anyway. I’m surprised he didn’t think of your reputation at the time. It was very remiss of you, Dad.’
Harry took his empty pipe out and sucked on its stem, looking from one to the other. Helen thought he was the only one of them who was enjoying the conversation.
‘Anyway, they haven’t much of a reputation up there to be worried about, have they?’ said Margaret.
‘That’s not fair. The Vernons are very well-respected.’
Margaret snorted contemptuously. ‘Respected. Not in this house. What do you say, Dad?’
‘Rich buggers. Ignorant rubbish.’
Helen smiled. ‘That needed saying too. They’ve done enough to this family. Why should we let something like this affect us? I’m sorry for their trouble, but it’s their trouble, not ours. It’s nothing to do with Granddad. Blow the Vernons. We have to see that Grandma and Granddad are all right.’
‘Of
