He was ready for a second crack at the good life. By calling Tony Di Venuto, he’d done the right thing. Paid his dues. The authorities would set wheels in motion. He was hazy about official procedures, but before long Emma’s body would be found and she could be given a belated Christian burial. Karen Erskine could get on with the rest of her life while the journalist earned kudos for breaking the story. Leaving Guy to make the most of his new life in which everybody was a winner.
Just like the endings to the stories he’d made up as a kid. Happy ever after.
Inchmore Hall, home to Cumbria’s Museum of Myth and Legend, stood on the edge of the village in grounds extending over six acres, up to the lower reaches of Wetherlam. The hall was a grey monstrosity of Victorian Gothic, boasting turrets, tall chimneys, and black and white gables, the whole edifice surmounted by an extravagant tower with a copper top. Blinds were drawn at the ground floor windows, protecting the exhibits from non-existent sunlight. Copper beeches and dank rhododendron bushes masked the curving drive. A signboard beside the stone gateposts cautioned that during the winter season, opening hours were by appointment only. Hannah parked outside the canopied front door and ran up a flight of worn stone steps to ring the bell.
‘Yes?’
The woman framed in the doorway wore a black trouser suit, so simple and chic that it must have cost a mint. Short dark hair contrasted with luminous skin. Her forehead was high, her chin sharp. She wore dangly sun and moon ear-rings and a crucifix of ebony and silver hung from her neck. Alexandra Clough’s signed statement suggested intelligence and a calm reluctance to give more away than she wished to reveal. So did her unflickering gaze as Hannah flourished her ID.
Alex led the way with dainty, precise steps into a galleried entrance hall. The ground floor was crowded with pots of dusty palms and aspidistras. Carved pitch panelling covered the walls and an arch-shaped stained-glass window at the far end of the hall depicted a purple sunset over brooding fells. The air was so cold that Hannah expected to see icicles on the huge brass candle-holders. She shivered.
‘Sorry we don’t keep the heating on when we’re not open to the public. We don’t receive any funding from the council, so we need to make economies.’ Alex unlocked a heavy door. ‘We can talk in my office. It’s a little warmer there.’
Only by a couple of degrees, Hannah discovered. Alex waved her into a leather-backed chair and sat behind a desk large enough to massage the ego of a tycoon. The electric reading lamp and computer squatting in front of her was the only concession to the twenty-first century. Bookcases stuffed with calfskin-bound tomes lined the walls, two gilt-framed oil-paintings occupied the corner alcoves behind her. A middle-aged man with a clipped moustache leaned on a walking stick in one picture. He wore a pin-striped suit and a frown suggesting that he didn’t suffer portrait painters gladly. In the other, a young woman with high cheekbones and an evening dress of pale blue tulle displaying plump milky-white breasts. Was it mere fancy to detect a resemblance between this woman and Alex Clough?
Alex Clough caught Hannah’s gaze. ‘My grandparents, Chief Inspector. Armstrong and Betty Clough. She was rather beautiful, don’t you agree?’
Hannah nodded. ‘Did you know her?’
‘Oh yes. My grandfather died soon after I was born, but she lived until she was eighty-six. A remarkable woman, we were very close. Now, you are reviewing Emma’s disappearance. How can I help?’
Hannah shifted in her chair. It was old and uncomfortable, like everything she’d seen of Inchmore Hall. ‘I’d be grateful if you could tell me about your relationship with her. How it began, why it ended.’
Alex took a breath and Hannah guessed that she’d rehearsed her answer. ‘She joined us twelve months before she vanished. At this time of year, we look to recruit in good time for the season. Apart from temporary staff and maintenance people, we only have one clerical post. Our previous administrator deserted us for a better paid job in Carlisle and so there was a vacancy. Emma had flitted from job to job. At one point she was employed on a short-term contract at the Liverpool Museum. Inchmore is scarcely in that league, but at least she had relevant experience and my father liked that.’
‘It was his decision to take her on?’
‘Then, as now, I was the manager here. But my father created this museum, Chief Inspector. He remains passionately committed to it and I consult him on all business matters. If you are wondering whether I recruited Emma because I was attracted to her, the answer is no.’
‘She’d tired of city life?’
‘Growing up in the countryside, she thought she was missing out on the bright lights. When the lights stopped dazzling her, she saw all the urban grime. Eventually she realised that the grass really was greener back home in the Lakes.’
‘Did she keep in touch with anyone in Merseyside?’
‘Not to my knowledge. Emma never kept up with people she went to school with, either. She didn’t make friends easily.’
‘Even so, the two of you became close. How did that come about?’
‘How do these things ever come about?’
Hannah glared at her watch. She was in no mood for fencing.
Alex fiddled with her earrings. ‘I suppose … Emma excited my curiosity.’
‘Well, this is a museum. A place to study exhibits.’
Tiny teeth showed in a mirthless smile. ‘Do I sound cold-blooded? I’m paying you the compliment of telling the truth, rather than fobbing you off with a self-serving lie. On first acquaintance, Emma seemed quiet and timid. I thought she was pretty, but she lacked confidence. When she was a teenager, she put on puppy fat and she used to say that she only had to look at a bar of chocolate to put on weight.’
Hannah thought of Emma’s puzzled look, captured by the photographer. ‘She was unsure of herself.’
‘Yes, her self-image was poor. She compared her looks unfavourably with her sister’s and her solution was to fade into the background. Yet the more I got to know her, the more I became convinced she was as capable of passion as my father. The difference was that she’d never found anything to become passionate about.’
‘Did she care about her work here?’
‘At first, yes. Even if she did leave school at sixteen with few qualifications to her name, she was bright. I’m afraid our universities these days are overflowing with students with far less native intelligence than Emma. The trouble was, she had a lazy streak. Once she lost interest, she didn’t put in the effort. She gave up too easily, that was why she kept changing jobs. She was looking for something she could commit to, long term. Something special.’ Alex sighed. ‘But with Emma, nothing lasted. Her moods kept swinging.’
‘When did the two of you first get together?’
‘Within a month of her starting. She was helping me one night with an application for a grant towards our running costs. Tiresome, long-winded form-filling, but important. The upkeep of this building costs an arm and a leg and the paying customers contribute buttons towards our overheads. Any scraps of outside funding are welcome. The cleaners had finished for the day and Father was speaking at a black tie dinner in Leeds. I told Emma how as a young man he’d dreamed of creating a museum to celebrate his fascination with the legends that swirl around the Lakes like fog. It was our first intimate conversation. Once we’d finalised the figures, I dug a bottle of rather nice wine out of Father’s private cellar. He and I have our quarters upstairs and in those days my grandmother lived here too. After I invited her to my sitting room, one thing duly led to another.’