‘They deny it.’
‘Is that surprising, if they’d mistreated her?’
‘Did Emma tell you that they had?’
‘We didn’t see anything of her while she was ill. A quick word on the phone was as close as we came. She may have been poorly, but I’m sure she wasn’t at death’s door. And of course, she got better.’
‘You visited her bungalow?’
Karen nodded. ‘The week after she moved in. She was pale, but she told me she’d lost a stone and a half and she was looking all the better for it. I hadn’t even known she was interested in reflexology. But that was Emma. She was prone to fits of enthusiasm, but they never lasted. Look at the way she kept changing jobs. That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when she upped sticks and left the district without a word.’
‘Without her car and her passport?’
‘She didn’t consult me before she moved to Liverpool, either. So she had form, isn’t that the word detectives use? And it wasn’t so strange if she wanted to start a brand new life. Travel, see the world. After paying out on the bungalow and a new car, there wasn’t much cash left. The building society repossessed the house, you know, because she wasn’t around to keep up the monthly payments.’
Hannah had already found that out. Pity, it removed a possible motive. She’d wondered if Karen had planned to have Emma declared dead so that, as nearest living relative, she would inherit her sister’s estate. But there wasn’t much left to inherit.
‘Surely she would have contacted you during a period of ten years?’
‘Emma could be frustrating. Unreliable. And don’t forget, she’d had the benefit of listening to Vanessa Goddard’s opinions of me. Views based on prejudice and envy. Could I help the fact the poor woman had a disfigurement?’
Hannah noticed Maggie’s eyes narrowing, sensed her DC was losing patience. Easy to believe in Vanessa’s bitterness over the betrayal, but was it credible that she’d poisoned Emma’s mind to such an extent that she would break off all contact — not only with Karen but with Vanessa herself and everyone else?
‘You saw her the day before she disappeared, Mr Erskine?’
‘You’ve read my statement. It was an entirely innocent visit.’
‘Of course. You had a bad back.’
His lips pursed, but if he detected irony, he was too smart to make an issue of it. ‘I’ve been a martyr to my vertebrae over the years. The legacy of an old rugby injury, it flares up every now and then. Karen mentioned it when she called on Emma and Emma reckoned she could help. Admittedly, for a few days after my visit, I felt better. But she didn’t achieve a lasting solution. These days I see an osteopath in Keswick, he’s first class.’
‘What did you talk about while you there?’ Maggie asked suddenly.
‘Good grief, Constable, you can’t expect me to remember a casual conversation at this distance of time.’
Maggie gave him the sort of baleful look her father might reserve for a mongrel worrying sheep. ‘She was your sister-in-law and it was the last time you spoke to her. Wouldn’t the conversation stick in your mind?’
Jeremy folded his arms. ‘Not my mind. Even when your people interviewed me before, I couldn’t recall details. She was pleasant, without being chatty. As if her mind was far away. On other things.’
Hannah said, ‘In your original statement, you suggested that she might have planned to leave the area and do something else.’
‘It seems a perfectly rational inference to draw.’
His careful syntax was getting under Hannah’s skin. She suspected him of yearning to give her a detention the moment she split an infinitive.
‘You said that she seemed — excited about something.’
‘Did I? Perhaps, but it is so long ago. Our conversation was superficial, the usual small talk, nothing beyond that.’
‘There was no argument between you? No difficulties between Emma and your wife?’
‘What would we argue about?’ Jeremy asked. ‘She lived a very different life from Karen and me. Each to his own, we weren’t judgmental.’
‘Any further light you can shed on Emma or what might have given rise to her disappearance?’
She asked the question for form’s sake, rather than in the hope of eliciting fresh information. The Erskines were hard work. Talk about blood and stones.
‘Nothing whatever,’ Karen said, as her husband slipped his arm around her shoulder.
No point in probing further without more to go on. Jeremy showed them out and as he led them through the living room, Hannah noticed a familiar glossy hardback on the coffee table. Daniel Kind had written it to accompany his series on BBC Television.
‘You’re a keen historian in your spare time as well as at work, Mr Erskine?’
‘As it happens, I’m this year’s chairman of the Grizedale and Satterthwaite Historical Association. The oldest society of its kind in Cumbria.’
‘So you know all about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’
He gave a little laugh, probably meant to be self-deprecating. ‘Well, I wouldn’t claim to be an authority, but of course I am aware of it.’
‘Someone was telling me it formed part of an unsuccessful business.’
‘Yes, the arsenic works ruined the Inchmores. At one time they were one of the richest families in the county. You only have to look at the hall to see the scale of Clifford Inchmore’s ambition. It may lack Brantwood’s glamour, but to my mind it’s an even more remarkable building. Sir Clifford dreamed of establishing a dynasty. Hubris, perhaps. But his son George blew it.’
‘Because of trading in arsenic?’
‘Not only that. He fell out with Albert Clough, whom Clifford had taken into partnership. Albert was a consummate businessman and George didn’t like the idea of playing second fiddle to him once Clifford retired. The outcome was that Albert left the firm and set up on his own in direct competition, the worst of all possible worlds from the Inchmores’ perspective. As their star fell, Albert’s rose.’
‘Must have been painful for them to sell the hall to Albert.’
‘Indeed. No wonder it’s been said that Mispickel Scar is cursed. A load of superstitious nonsense, no doubt, but local folk used to take it seriously.’
‘What’s the story of the curse?’
Jeremy resembled a High Court judge, invited to choose the winner of an end of pier talent show. ‘I really could not say. Folklore is scarcely history. You’d need to ask Alban Clough, he’s the expert. Of course, he’s always revelled in the triumph of his family over the Inchmores.’
‘He did give a job to young Tom Inchmore.’
‘Humiliating the Inchmores through unforced acts of generosity became a family tradition for the Cloughs. It started when George’s son William Inchmore had to accept charity from Armstrong Clough and take up a sinecure in the Cloughs’ booming firm. By all accounts, William was an idler, who preferred wine, women and song to the hard graft that made his family’s fortune. Yet even he must have found it a bitter pill, to see Cloughs living it up in the house his grandfather built.’
‘Clogs to clogs in three generations?’
‘Precisely.’ He noticed her gaze lingering on the glossy cover of Daniel’s book. ‘Does your own interest in history extend beyond cold case work, Chief Inspector? Perhaps you saw these programmes? They were quite tolerable, not the dumbed-down rubbish we usually get in return for our licence fee.’
‘You know that Daniel Kind has moved to the Lakes? He lives in Brackdale.’
‘Really?’ An opportunist spark flared in Jeremy’s eyes. ‘I wonder if he’d be interested in talking to the Association. Do I gather that you are acquainted with him?’
‘Our paths have crossed. His father was a police officer, that’s the connection.’
‘Good Lord. You don’t happen to know how I can get in touch with him?’
Hannah was conscious of Maggie’s solid presence beside her. Perhaps it was embarrassment that caused