The Ambleside Alibi E-Book

Rebecca Tope

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Lake District Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 415

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown is adjusting to life in Windermere, running her florist shop and trying to put her tragic past behind her. But just when Simmy thinks her life is quietly coming together at last, it begins to unravel at the seams. All thanks to the delivery of a bouquet of flowers with mysterious message attached.

Leseprobe

The Ambleside Alibi

REBECCA TOPE

Another one for Paula, the best of friends

Author’s Note

The towns and villages featured in this story are all real. However, the actual homes and shops, as well as the characters, are all products of my imagination.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About the Author

By Rebecca Tope

Copyright

Chapter One

The flowers fell short of Simmy’s usual standards by some distance. ‘I can only afford the cheapest,’ said the husky-voiced young woman who ordered them. ‘It’s the message that matters.’

The message said Happy Birthday from a granddaughter you never knew you had.

The recipient of the flowers lived in a little row of dwellings that was approached through the low-roofed ‘ginnel’ that led up to the steep Peggy Hill on the northern fringe of Ambleside. It was an unusual little passageway, white-painted and crooked, more a tunnel than an alley. Knowing there was unlikely to be anywhere to park, Simmy had left her van some distance away. When she arrived panting and self-conscious at the small but perfectly maintained cottage, she saw that she’d been right. There were cars everywhere, including a small red one close to the cottage in question and a big black Range Rover at an angle a few yards further along. She rang the bell and waited. The door was a long time opening and when it did, it came outwards towards Simmy, accompanied by an odd warbling chuckle that sounded scarcely human.

An elderly woman came into view, smiling apologetically. The door, Simmy realised, was a perennial cause of embarrassment. If a visitor stood too close, it would hit them when it opened.

She tightened her grip on the flowers, waiting for the woman to realise what she was there for. It was a moment she generally enjoyed – the surprised delight on the faces, the automatic questing for scent. But this time there was a long moment of sheer bewilderment. ‘Flowers? Surely not for me?’

‘Mrs Joseph?’ Simmy read confidently from the label. ‘I believe that’s you?’

‘Yes, that’s right. But who are they from?’

‘See for yourself. It’s on the card.’ The intriguing message ensured that Simmy hovered longer than usual, telling herself that the likely shock on reading it could result in the need for a steadying arm at the very least.

There was a false start, when the woman read, ‘Persimmon Petals? Is that you, dear? What a lovely name!’

‘Yes, it’s me. But look at the other side.’

Simmy need not have worried: the unwitting grandmother turned out to be made of sterner stuff than she’d feared. ‘Oh!’ she said on an intake of breath that contained less excitement than a sort of fury. Her eyes glittered and she clutched the flowers to her chest as if violently hugging the granddaughter herself. ‘I always knew this might happen,’ she explained. ‘I told Davy it would one day. And on my birthday, too!’

‘Davy?’

‘My daughter. Davida. This must be her baby; the one she gave up for adoption all those years ago.’

Simmy tried to calculate the chronology. Mrs Joseph looked about eighty. Her daughter was therefore likely to be over fifty and the rejected baby at least in her twenties and probably more. Or not. It was impossible to guess, when a woman could become a mother at any point from fourteen to forty-eight. ‘But …’ she began. ‘It says she’s a granddaughter you never knew you had. And you do know about the adoption. Do you have a son? Isn’t it more likely that this is a child of his?’

The old woman eyed her as if only then aware of her as an independent being capable of unwelcome thoughts. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No son. Just the two daughters, Davy and Nicola. They’re taking me for lunch today, so I mustn’t dilly-dally. Now, thank you for bringing the flowers. I don’t expect I owe you anything, do I?’

It was a sharp dismissal from a woman who didn’t look capable of sharpness. ‘No, nothing to pay,’ Simmy said, before heading down the hill again. She had been forced to leave her van some distance away, since the car park she preferred was out of commission on a Wednesday. There had been a plan to wish Mrs Joseph a happy birthday, but Simmy quickly lost the urge to do so. Had she been intrusive, she wondered? Had she asked too many questions? She very much feared that she had.

It was a quiet day and she was in no hurry to get back to her shop in Windermere. The van was good for a while yet, with traffic wardens hardly bothering to check when the allotted hour had expired at this time of year. There would be little activity back at the shop. In the winter months, custom dropped off to a trickle. Melanie would be there until lunchtime, and could easily manage any passing trade. A cup of strong coffee would warm Simmy, both physically and emotionally, after the abruptness of her customer, and give her time to pause and reflect.

There were few establishments to choose from, but one offered itself irresistibly. The Giggling Goose café was in a former mill, with the great wheel still standing on the edge of the beck. It had a fine reputation locally and Simmy had intended to try it for some months. It occupied a position on a sort of ledge above the beck, with an open air area that was closed off in winter. The approach to it was through a small arcade, past one or two other businesses designed to appeal to tourists. Simmy found her way quite easily, and once inside, the café was warm and full of enticing smells. A cheerful woman was waiting for orders. ‘Find a seat and I’ll bring it to you,’ she told Simmy.

‘It’s a shame we can’t sit outside,’ she said.

‘It’s much too chilly for that.’

‘I suppose it is,’ she agreed regretfully, looking out onto the attractive setting. ‘But it does look lovely out there.’

‘Sit by the window. It’s almost as good.’

She followed the advice, and stared ruminatively at the rushing water. Patchy cloud covered the sky, leaving encouraging stretches of blue here and there.

There was another person at the next table, doing the same thing. She half recognised him, but spent only a few seconds trying to remember where she’d seen him before. Then she went back to idle musings about nothing very much. The beck was called Stock Ghyll, she recalled, and it flowed over the famous Stock Force, a short distance out of town. It cried out for painters, poets, photographers to capture its elemental qualities, the hypnotic pace of its flow. The buildings scattered around it had all adapted to it in different ways – employing the power of the water, positioning their windows for the best possible views of it, and erecting bridges and walls to keep it in place. Making the most of these quiet moments, Simmy congratulated herself on coming here to live, where such beauty was so readily available.

It was nearly a year since she had moved to the Lake District, following her parents after her marriage broke down. The florist business had become a passion, much to her own surprise. She had never anticipated the scope it offered, the sidelines and specialities that presented themselves. She had impulsively bought a cottage in Troutbeck as a mark of her commitment to the area, and was doing her best to put down firm roots. The time had passed in a whirl of paperwork, flowers, business worries and learning from mistakes. She promised herself to get a better balance in the year to come, with a spring and summer of extensive explorations of the surrounding fells and forests, walking them all in turn and becoming an expert on every path and tucked-away settlement. ‘That’s all very well,’ said Melanie, ‘but you need to get to know more people first.’

Her house had been chosen quickly, in a scramble to beat off competing buyers. The allure of the landscape, with a great fell taking up the whole of the view from her front windows, dwarfed every other consideration. Only later did she pause to absorb the implications of the steep, narrow lanes in a bad winter. Reassurances abounded: everyone pulled together, they told her. The farmers, many of them living right there in Troutbeck, would forge a trail through the snow, or go for provisions and distribute them to anyone too timid to risk a slippery ice track. Besides, in a land where walking remained a means of transport as valid as any other, there was always going to be a way out to the civilised benefits of Ambleside and Windermere. Simmy had never seen so many walkers. They mainly operated in pairs, and they swarmed in all directions, with their backpacks and sticks and stout leather boots. They were like a distinct species of human, and she found them cheerful and appealing and rather enviable.

The local people were mainly friendly, but she had yet to establish any real intimacies. There was Julie, a hairdresser much her own age, who had caught her up in the first weeks and made a concerted effort to draw her into the Windermere social life. There were regular customers who asked after her health and her parents and her plans for the weekends. But by Melanie’s standards, there really weren’t any people in her life. Melanie believed in couplehood and romance and living life to the full. In her eyes, Simmy was a persistent failure.

The man sharing the waterside view with her was about her own age – a little short of forty, she judged. He was probably a fellow shopkeeper, glimpsed in one of the sporadic meetings called by the Chamber of Commerce. He had mid-brown hair and heavy-framed spectacles. He looked as if he had a great deal on his mind. When Simmy’s coffee was delivered, along with a wedge of home-made ginger cake, he glanced up as if only then aware of another person. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘It’s the Persimmon Petals lady, isn’t it? You probably don’t remember me.’

‘I know your face,’ she prevaricated. ‘Aren’t you from one of the Windermere shops as well?’

‘Actually, no. I came to you for the flowers for my mother’s funeral, a month ago now. You were very kind.’

‘Oh, yes. I should have known. Mr … don’t tell me … Mr Kitchener! It was a burial in that lovely little churchyard the other side of the lake. I drove up there the next day, and saw all the flowers on the grave.’

‘You did a great job,’ he assured her. ‘And I’m amazed you remember my name.’

She smiled self-deprecatingly. The name had stuck no more firmly than many others. The necessity of avoiding any mistakes when it came to funerals made sure the customers were all firmly logged in her mind.

The man went on, ‘It’s been very hard, you know – coming to terms with it all. I can’t seem to convince myself that she really has gone for good. I used to tell her everything, you see. She was such a good listener, always keeping up with my work and all the family’s doings. And it was all so terribly sudden …’ He trailed away, his gaze once again on the waters of Stock Ghyll.

‘I can imagine,’ said Simmy, not entirely honestly. The prospect of losing her own mother had not yet occurred to her as imminent, or even credible. Angie Straw was clearly set fair for at least another twenty years.

‘Well, I mustn’t bother you. You’ve probably come for a bit of peace.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll stay a while longer, but I won’t interrupt your thoughts.’

‘That’s all right,’ she laughed. ‘My thoughts can very easily bear interruption.’

But he stuck to his word and turned away from her, saying nothing more. He sighed heavily at one point, but was clearly in no mood for further conversation. It wasn’t Simmy’s thoughts he had any concern for, she realised, but his own. He probably resented her coming to sit near to him in the first place. The more she tried to ignore him, the more acutely she became aware of his presence. She drank her coffee quickly, and demolished the cake in three bites. Then she noticed a small scratch on her left thumb, caused by a staple she had used in a bouquet she’d made up that morning. The bouquet for the old lady in Ambleside, in fact. The staple that had attached the message card to the outer wrapping had not fully closed, and had snatched at her thumb when she gathered up the sheaf. She had not properly looked at it until now.

Her train of thought led quickly back to the message itself, from the unknown granddaughter. Again she went through the woman’s reaction, and her insistence that it was a baby she had known about all along. And again she found it nigglingly unconvincing. The husky voice on the telephone had suggested otherwise, the significance of the approach so great as to render her almost speechless. Or was that Simmy’s own unwarranted interpretation? She had personal reasons for overreacting to stories concerning lost babies, which were likely to cast doubt on her judgement.

Peals of girlish laughter diverted her attention. A group of three young women had arrived and were seating themselves at a table in the middle of the café, where she could not possibly ignore them. They all had long hair and inadequate clothing for December. Students, probably, she assumed, thinking they were slightly too old to be sixth-formers. Her acquaintance with people of this age group had become close in recent months, with Melanie who helped her in the shop, and Ben who had simply attached himself to her because he liked her. Since their involvement with a murder investigation, they had become firm friends.

The girls could easily be at the same college as Melanie. Term would be finishing in a few days’ time, and the imminence of Christmas was a likely source of their exuberance. Parties, free time – all the usual excitement would explain the flushed faces and high voices. They made Simmy feel middle-aged and jaded, with more in common with the depressed man at the next table than with giggling youngsters.

She tried to ignore them, only to find herself face to face with another girl, very much the same age as the others, but at a table on her own. She must have been there when Simmy first came in, quietly occupying a shadowy corner. Simmy wondered about it, in an idle sort of way. She was dark-haired and had a habit of fingering her mouth that suggested a desire to smoke. She had no book or magazine to distract her, but simply sat there, apparently in deep thought – very much like Mr Kitchener, in fact. Was this a place where people came to think, then? Wasn’t Simmy doing it herself? Was there some sort of magical aura that facilitated a relaxed introspection? If so, the group of three hadn’t noticed it – their chatter filling the whole place, their laughter irritating. The solitary girl had barely glanced at Simmy, or at anybody else. Something internal was absorbing all her attention.

It was time to go. Business called, as always, even if it was a quiet time of year. Christmas had little impact on flower shops, other than sporadic sales of poinsettias and wreaths, neither of which were especially popular in this area of the country. Even so, there was always work to do, and Melanie would not be there that afternoon.

In an odd piece of synchronicity, the man at the next table stood up at the precise moment that she did. They both headed for the exit from the café, on a course for collision. Simmy stood back, letting him go first, noting without rancour that he showed no inclination to allow her to precede him. He walked with a long stride that highlighted the fact of a limp, or a stiffness to his right knee. The leg did not bend normally, forcing him to throw it forward from the hip as if about to kick something. And then he really did kick the chair on which the dark girl was sitting. A glancing blow knocked it enough for her to spin round to see what had happened. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

She looked at his face, eyebrows raised, and nodded at him. Simmy still hung back, the way between the tables too narrow to do anything else. She was not absorbed in any gripping thoughts, not distracted by haste or anxiety. She saw both faces – the man and the girl, as they looked at each other. There was no small start of recognition. No lurking emotions dating back to past encounters. The man carried on to the street door and left without looking back. The girl threw a look at him that caused a ripple of giggles from the threesome. It was a moment so ordinary that it was highly unlikely to leave any trace on the memory of anybody present.

Except for Simmy. She had recognised him, recalled his name, winced at his evident unhappiness and observed his limp with real concern. She had assessed his character as he kicked the chair and imagined his next movements. He would go home, she surmised, and deal with some more minor paperwork concerning the death of his mother, before grabbing a minimal lunch and opening a bottle of beer. It was all quite vivid in her mind.

Chapter Two

Melanie looked bored, tinkering with the rack of ribbons that they sold to people wanting to create their own floral displays. ‘Any customers?’ Simmy asked, as she always did.

‘One. Wanted to know if we sold snowdrops. I told her they didn’t work as cut flowers and she should try a garden centre. And a bloke who makes vases. Thinks you should sell them for him.’

‘Right,’ Simmy nodded resignedly. ‘Not a profitable morning, then.’

‘Nope. How did you get on? You’ve been a long time.’

‘It was a bit weird. I stopped for some coffee in that Giggling Goose place, above the river.’

‘Weird? How?’

‘You know the message on the card? “From a granddaughter you never knew you had.” Well, the old lady said she did know she had her, but she was adopted as a baby. I don’t think she got it right. I don’t think it’s the same granddaughter.’

Melanie blinked in confusion. ‘I couldn’t follow that – what you just said. It was gibberish, in fact.’

‘Never mind. We’re never going to know, are we? And I saw Mr Kitchener. Remember him? He’s terribly sad, poor man.’

‘Who?’

‘We did his mother’s funeral flowers, four or five weeks ago. That little church – Grizedale, was it?’

‘Rusland, to be exact. It’s in the Grizedale Forest. I remember you said how lovely it was. Didn’t you go there for a look, specially, after the funeral?’

‘I did. It was an excuse to do a bit of exploring. It really is amazingly beautiful. You should go and have a look sometime.’

Melanie huffed a syllable of scorn. ‘Not my thing,’ she protested. ‘You want Ben for that sort of stuff.’

‘Arthur Ransome is buried there,’ Simmy went on, unable to stop herself. More than once, Melanie had accused her of being a teacher in disguise, her true vocation somehow missed.

‘I don’t care,’ she cried.

‘Even though you did remember its name,’ Simmy teased. ‘You know better than I do how much interesting history there is all around here. Stop pretending to be so cool.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Melanie muttered. ‘So can I go now? It’s gone twelve.’

‘Did you say snowdrops? It’s far too early for them, anyway.’

‘That’s what I told her. Some people are awful fools. Can I go?’

‘Yes, yes. Be off with you. I’ll see you tomorrow. The Christmas rush might be getting going by then.’

‘Not in Windermere. They all go to Keswick or buy everything online.’

Simmy nodded absently. She still had a mental picture of Mrs Kitchener’s hilltop grave in the serene setting between the two lakes, close to a large forest. It was a fairy-tale position in which to spend eternity. She thought she might go there again before too long, and perhaps take a few photos.

Wednesday afternoons tended not to be very busy, and this one was no exception. Still two weeks before Christmas, with the schools not yet broken up, there was very little festive atmosphere in evidence. Her parents were closing their B&B for ten days over the holiday, opening again on New Year’s Eve. As Angie said, anyone who was driven to stay at such an establishment during Christmas had to be too depressing to contemplate. Simmy thought that very unfair and said so. ‘There might be all kinds of interesting single women – writers, for example. They might just have terrible families they need to escape from.’

‘More likely sad divorced men who never get a turn with the kids when they’re at their most enjoyable. And widows with no idea what to do with themselves.’ The outrageous stereotypes flew to and fro until Simmy’s father pleaded for reason.

‘We just like a bit of a rest and time to ourselves,’ he summarised. ‘It can get pretty exhausting, changing all those beds and being pleasant at breakfast time.’

The shop window had been transformed the previous month with a model of a local landmark made largely by Ben Harkness. It had been his own idea, inspired by a visit to some botanical gardens in New York. It represented the Baddeley clock tower that stood on a junction slightly to the south of Windermere’s centre, and had been made of lengths of twig, embellished with beech mast, dry leaves, acorns and other natural materials gathered in the local woods. The project had taken a month or more to construct, Ben impatiently gathering as many small twigs and dry leaves as he could find in mid-November with more than one total collapse necessitating starting again from scratch. But Ben and Simmy had persevered, until the whole thing was finished. The tower itself was miniature – perhaps ten or twelve feet tall. The model was barely two feet high, which fitted perfectly into Simmy’s shop window. Countless people had been in and expressed admiration for it, and Melanie said it was fantastically good for business. She freely acknowledged Ben’s abilities in constructing it, despite a lingering reluctance to accept him as a friend. Ben’s brother Wilf had gone out with Melanie earlier that year, and there were awkwardnesses to navigate.

Half an hour after her assistant had left, a man came into the shop. He had hair tied in a ponytail and wore a baggy sweatshirt that was far from clean. His eyes were blue and he was at least six feet tall. ‘Mrs Brown?’ he asked. It was hard to discern from two small words, but she thought his accent was northern, but not local.

‘That’s me.’

‘I came in earlier today, and your colleague said you’d be back soon. My name is Ninian Tripp. I’m a potter. I do vases, among other things, and thought we might come to some arrangement.’

‘You want me to sell your pots?’

‘It makes sense. You can’t lose anything by it.’ His tone was in no way supplicatory, nor did he have the irritating brashness of many salesmen. He was confident and friendly, with a subtle expectation that other people would be the same.

‘Space. Paperwork. Liability if they get broken.’ She sounded pusillanimous in her own ear.

He waved each word away. ‘No need to get formal about it. I’m used to breakages, but they’re a lot less common than you might think. You can stand them right here, look.’ He sketched with his foot an area on the floor that was already full of other things. ‘You put your flowers in them, you see. That way you don’t need any more space. I promise you, the vases will make the flowers more appealing, so we’ll both gain.’

‘You make it sound ludicrously easy.’

‘It is. I had the idea last week, when I was walking past. I only just started making vases the past few weeks, and it’s working out well. They’re a great combination of decorative and functional – do you see? Nobody has to have displays of flowers in their house, but when they do, it makes a massive difference.’

Simmy felt she was being outmanoeuvred in some way. The man was using lines that rightfully belonged to her. ‘Of course I know that,’ she said.

‘Of course you do.’ He smiled easily, as if a joke had been made by one of them. ‘So that’s agreed then, is it?’

‘What are they like – your pots?’

‘Big. Bold. Expensive. I’ll bring you a few to see, shall I?’

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘So long as they’re not so big they take the place over.’

He gave a mock salute, meeting her eyes with a long blue scrutiny that she couldn’t ignore. Only the arrival of one of her regular customers forced her to break the connection. In another moment he was gone.

Mrs Weaver had developed the habit of calling in shortly before closing time on a Saturday and haggling over the price of flowers on the verge of drooping. ‘You’ll only throw them away,’ she insisted. ‘Let me have them half price, and we’re both happy.’ Simmy accepted that she had little grounds on which to argue, while at the same time feeling mild resentment. The woman did appear to be far from affluent, and the custom went back two centuries or more, she supposed – waiting for the stale and broken loaves, the meat on the edge of turning rancid, the overripe fruit and wilting vegetables, and then buying them for a pittance. But with flowers it felt different. If Mrs Weaver’s friends saw the tired blooms and knew they’d come from her shop, it would reflect badly on her. Either that, or they’d all be queuing for Saturday afternoon bargains when they should be buying them fresh and full-priced earlier in the week.

But all she said was, ‘You’re early this week, aren’t you? It’s only Wednesday.’

The woman was in her late fifties, with well-dyed fair hair and a deeply grooved frown line between her eyes. ‘I came to say I’d be in as usual at the weekend, and would really love a few over-the-top gerberas, if you’ve got any. I can take them off your hands for you.’

‘You know it doesn’t work like that,’ Simmy said crossly. ‘If you want gerberas, you should buy them now, at the proper price.’ It pained her to speak harshly to anybody, feeling quite fluttery as she did it.

‘Oh, no – I can’t have them now. I’m not going home yet – I can’t carry flowers around with me, can I? I’m going up to Ambleside in a minute,’ she said, slightly breathlessly. ‘Something’s happened. They’ve found an old lady, apparently. Haven’t you heard? It was on the local radio just now. She might be somebody I know.’

Simmy shook her head. After almost a year in Windermere, she still had to come to terms with the bush telegraph system for passing on news. The permanent residents of the little towns numbered sufficiently few for there to be a web of family connections and old schoolfellows who contacted each other constantly. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’

‘Well, I don’t know for sure, but it sounds as if somebody’s died – in suspicious circumstances.’ She hissed the last words like an excited child.

Simmy’s reaction came as a surprise. A tight hand squeezed her guts. ‘Do you know which road it’s in?’ she asked softly.

‘Compston Road, I think. The one near the church, opposite that row of shops. Don’t look so worried, love. After all, a funeral’s good for florists, you know.’ She laughed unfeelingly, and Simmy’s fragile liking for her took a final terminal knock. The phrase ‘ambulance-chaser’ came to mind, tainted with disagreeable associations. But the main thing was that the road mentioned was nowhere near that of Mrs Joseph, which brought considerable relief.

‘Mmnng,’ she said vaguely, hoping to convey distaste and disinterest, while she analysed her own undue sensitivity to any mention of violent death. It had been barely two months since she and Ben had been much too closely involved in a double murder, and any suggestion of a repeat experience made her shudder. The extremity of ill-doing had shaken her world view almost off its foundations. Her own moral compass needle had swung erratically off course at times. A major element in her settling down again afterwards had been the certainty that nothing so vile could ever happen to her again.

‘Anyway,’ she went on firmly, ‘I’ve decided not to let anything go at a discount again, even at the weekend. It’s not good for business.’

‘O-o-oh,’ sang Mrs Weaver sarcastically. ‘Like that, is it? Just you be careful, Miss. It doesn’t go down well in these parts to get all snotty. Keep on the right side of people, is my advice. You never know when you’ll need them.’

That was probably true, thought Simmy disconsolately. When the winter weather descended and the fells were deep in snow, it would be a big reassurance to know that everyone was prepared to help you out. The road down from Troutbeck that she had to traverse every day would be lethal if it iced over. The network of gossip would surely turn into something more benign and constructive when people had to huddle together in a blizzard. Simmy’s mother only laughed when she voiced these concerns. ‘It’s never as bad as you’re imagining,’ she said. ‘It’s not Iceland, you know. Here on the west coast we can sometimes get through a whole winter with no snow at all.’ But she’d been forced to admit that the past five or six winters had in fact seen weeks of disruption thanks to the weather.

‘Sorry,’ she said. Then a new customer came to the rescue and Mrs Weaver went off to investigate the death of an old lady in Ambleside.

The remaining hour or so of Wednesday afternoon drifted past without further event. Simmy sold three bowls of hyacinths, a week away from flowering; two Christmas wreaths that she had made herself; and a single, long-stemmed lily to a small boy who wanted something for his teacher. There were also two new Interflora orders on the computer, for the coming week.

Outside, the final flourish of December sunshine before twilight took over had long passed. It was almost dark by half past three. The shortest day was a little over a week away. There were no tourists in Windermere or Bowness this weekend, and would be very few for the next three months. Simmy’s shop felt like a fragrant little cave where she could pass the short days in peace, assessing the year gone by and making resolutions for the one to come. Her divorce from Tony was at last absolute, after a lengthy hiatus in which he had made a succession of tedious objections, or simply failed to sign the paperwork. Tony had become an unpredictable stranger whose motives and values suddenly made no sense to her. The final months of their marriage still carried a haze of bewilderment with them, a host of unanswered questions as to exactly what had been going on. Nothing so banal as adultery, nor so stark as domestic violence – although he had once hit her when she’d badgered him to justify himself. The easy explanation, given to friends and family, was that they had failed to coordinate their grief over their lost baby, and somehow that failure had eaten away at the seams of their couplehood, so they simply came apart. It had felt as if they were floating in space, the connecting umbilicus accidentally severed so they could no longer communicate. Tony had blamed her for little Edith’s death, wordlessly, almost secretly, but nonetheless implacably. He had wanted the baby so fiercely that the disappointment had changed him into a man Simmy no longer recognised. His eyes had filmed over with accusation and a terrifying rage. He tried passing the blame onto the hospital staff, in the traditional manner, but logic was against him. Edith had died before labour even started, the placenta failing to sustain her, for no good reason. All the tests had shown normality, until that thirty-ninth week when it suddenly went wrong. ‘It just happens sometimes,’ said the doctor helplessly. ‘There were no indications that it was going to.’ When Tony tried to insist that the small size of the baby should have warned them, he was shown charts to prove that Edith had been well within the parameters of normality.

Simmy did at first understand the male frustration of having to entrust the safety of the child to a capricious female body. But it was a core fact of nature, and to kick against it was foolish. She herself, holding the little blue body, seeing her own father’s features on the inert clay-like face, wanted something to blame, as well. She wanted reason and logic to hold onto. As the days and weeks crawled by, she realised that Tony, her husband, had become irrelevant. They ought to be rapidly working on creating a new baby, forging hopefully onwards, but they lacked the courage because they no longer trusted each other.

None of which quite explained why Tony had been so hesitant about the divorce. In Simmy’s case, the very word came redolent of failure and humiliation. Nobody in her family had been divorced – not that there were many people in her family, anyway. Tony’s sister, Cat, had been appalled at his behaviour. Simmy’s parents, proprietors of a bed and breakfast establishment in Lake Road, had held their breath and left her to work through it with relatively detached support. When she announced an intention to start a new life close to them in the Lake District, they had been uncertain as to the wisdom of that move.

So far it was working out nicely. Always treated with fondness by her father and a somewhat careless approval by her mother, she was finally getting to know them as individuals in their own right. Angie’s insistence on following her own principles in everything she did was both inspiring and embarrassing. It also served to highlight the prevalence of brainless rules across every aspect of life, which Simmy might otherwise have overlooked, despite the discomfort they could give rise to. Her mother would not let anything pass. She had no personal objections to tobacco, muddy dogs, junk food or minor household dangers, and could see no reason why petty officials should try to force her to change. These officials all regarded such things with horror, especially those who took it upon themselves to regulate B&B establishments. ‘I don’t expect we can get away with it for ever,’ admitted her father, ‘but it’s going pretty well up to now.’ Indeed, there was a growing crowd of enthusiasts for the home-from-home atmosphere of Beck View in Windermere.

The matter of Simmy’s divorce was seldom discussed. It had been assumed that it would come through eventually, and since neither party wished to remarry, there was no suggestion of urgency. Her father pointed out that there were unresolved financial details that might work against Simmy’s interests, if her business began to make appreciable profits. She shrugged it off. ‘Tony’s not interested in money,’ she said. But now, at last, the whole thing was settled.

She closed the shop ten minutes early, convinced there would be no more customers on this dark afternoon. As she carried the display rack in from the pavement, she thought again of Ninian Tripp, the potter. It would make a nice change, she supposed, to have some attractive vases carefully placed around the shop door, enticing people in. They would have to be stable, and relatively chunky – well weighted to prevent them from falling over. Nothing slender or too small. She stepped away to get a better impression of how they might look.

‘Careful!’ came a female voice behind her. It was Julie, one of the few people in Windermere she regarded as a genuine friend. Not because the general population was stand-offish, but because she was still new and busy with the business and had not quite grasped the social systems of the place.

‘Hi!’ she said, with a smile. ‘How’s things?’

‘Have you heard what’s happened in Ambleside?’ Julie seemed breathless, her eyes flashing with a sense of drama.

‘Not really.’ She had swept the story aside the moment she’d heard it from Mrs Weaver, anxious not to know anything about it. It had nothing whatever to do with her, and she lacked any wish to behave like a ghoul.

‘What does that mean? Either you have or you haven’t.’

‘Simply that a customer said something, but I took no notice.’

‘An old lady was done to death in her own house, in broad daylight. Everybody’s talking about it. It’ll be on the news. It’s a terrible thing to happen, Sim. You can’t just ignore it.’

‘No,’ said Simmy slowly. ‘I don’t expect I can. But I’m not going to dwell on it, either. It has nothing to do with me,’ she said loudly.

‘No man is an island,’ Julie reproached her. ‘It has to do with all of us – especially women living on their own in isolated little villages,’ she added. ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’

‘Only if people like you do their best to spread panic. And Troutbeck isn’t an “isolated little village”. It’s really quite big and I’m right in the middle of it, with houses on all sides.’

‘People like me?’ Julie frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Sorry.’ She could hear her mother inside her head, groaning at yet another taboo phrase that was sure to give offence. Julie subscribed wholeheartedly to such thinking, while at the same time laughing in genuine amusement and admiration at many of Simmy’s turns of phrase. It was as if she would have liked to share her attitude, but was afraid to. It made their friendship lopsided at times, but such was Simmy’s gratitude for Julie’s generosity with her time and attention that it was never seriously in jeopardy.

‘Anyway, I didn’t mean we ought to care because it scares us. I meant – nobody should have a thing like that happen to them. You agree with that, don’t you? It’s so wrong. It’s uncivilised.’

‘It’s barbaric,’ Simmy confirmed. ‘Utterly awful. I hope they catch him quickly, Whoever he is that did it.’

‘Yes. So do I. Although it might be a her, of course. Girls do wicked things these days, as well as boys. They break into houses carrying crowbars and baseball bats and think nothing of bashing people. On drugs usually.’ Julie shuddered. Simmy suppressed a smile at the world weariness of a divorced forty-year-old hairdresser. No doubt she heard some gruesome stories as she snipped and styled her customers.

‘I can’t really stop,’ she apologised. ‘I need to get on with the Christmas cards.’

‘Blimey! I don’t do mine for ages yet. I don’t even want to think about it – I send them to all my regulars, you know.’

‘How do you know their addresses?’ Simmy couldn’t recall ever giving such information to a hairdresser. ‘There must be hundreds of them.’

‘I’m very organised,’ boasted Julie. ‘I send them reminders about their appointments and special offers and so forth. I’m doing depilation from next year as well – and nails. I’ll be needing another girl.’

‘Great,’ Simmy approved absently. ‘Well …’

‘Yes, all right. Go and do your cards. And mind you lock your door properly. I’m serious. You just can’t trust people these days.’

Simmy’s urge to argue was weak enough to resist quite easily. Trusting people remained her default position despite Tony’s lapses and the shocking double murder a couple of months earlier. ‘Oh – one thing I wanted to ask you. Do you know a man called Ninian Tripp? He’s a potter.’

Julie’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve met him once or twice. He lives in a tumbledown cottage up on Brantfell. Doesn’t he make tiles mostly?’

‘I don’t know. He wants me to sell vases for him.’

‘He’s from Yorkshire or somewhere. Had a breakdown or something. He’s very good-looking.’ She gave Simmy a searching look – like Melanie, she was always on the lookout for a new love interest for her friend, having vowed she was herself sworn off men for ever.

‘Breakdown? Poor man.’ She supposed she’d come close to a breakdown of her own, when Edith had died, and a flash of fellow feeling went through her. ‘He seems okay now, though.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That I’d look at his stuff if he brings me some. I suppose it’s worth a go, if they’re any good.’

‘His tiles are gorgeous, apparently. Terribly expensive.’

‘Hmm,’ said Simmy. ‘Thanks for the information. I’m off now.’ She checked her bag for keys and headed for her car, parked in a nearby side street, while Julie disappeared in the other direction.

‘Mrs Brown?’ A man’s voice was calling to her from somewhere across the street. ‘Just a moment.’

She looked around in confusion, over the roofs of passing cars. An arm was waving at her, she realised. Then the man attached to it trotted over to her, through a gap in the traffic. ‘Hello, again,’ he said, before grimacing. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the police station to answer a few questions.’

Chapter Three

It was Detective Inspector Moxon, who had been centrally involved in the investigations into the local murders Simmy had witnessed two months earlier. His face was startlingly familiar to her, as if it had only been a few days ago that they had sat facing each other across a small table in a Windermere hotel. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Is it something to do with Bridget?’ – the young woman who had been at the heart of the previous trouble she had shared with Moxon.

His blank expression was almost comical. ‘No, she’s called Nancy. Miss Nancy Clark.’

‘Who is? What are you talking about?’

He threw a careful glance up and down the pavement. ‘Not here,’ he said, like a guilty lover. ‘We can’t talk here.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she protested. ‘What am I supposed to have done? Are you arresting me?’

‘No, of course not. Don’t be silly. I should have sent a constable for you, by rights, but I thought … after last time … When your name came up again, I just thought it should be me. We could talk in the car, if you’d rather, but I do need it to be official, you see.’

‘I’m not being silly,’ she corrected him. ‘I can’t imagine what you want. I don’t even know where the police station is.’ This was true – all her previous encounters with him had taken place in hotels or houses or her shop.

‘You must do,’ he said incredulously. ‘On Lake Road, going down into Bowness. You can’t miss it.’

‘It’s not the kind of thing I notice,’ she apologised.

‘So, will you come? It’s important.’

‘Taken in for questioning,’ she mused. ‘Is that what’s happening? I wish I knew what I’d done.’ Her mother’s broad rebellious streak had a habit of surfacing at such times, creating a lack of deference that DI Moxon had already commented on. Apparently most people went weak at the knees when addressed by a senior detective, and did everything they could to placate him. Simmy had been brought up to regard the police as public servants, deplorably inclined to exceed their powers at every opportunity. Somehow she failed to be afraid of them, despite an awareness that almost everybody else was.

‘You haven’t done anything,’ he snapped irritably. ‘You’ve been named as a witness by somebody we have reason to suspect of committing a crime. He claims you can vouch for him being in a certain place at a certain time.’

‘Me?’ she said daftly. ‘So who is he? Why can’t you just ask me now and get it over with?’

‘Because it has to be properly recorded, your statement signed, his identity established. Paperwork. I can’t just ask you here in the street and use that as evidence.’

‘Can’t you?’ Not for the first time, she wished she watched more police dramas on TV, or read more whodunnits. She had no idea what was usual procedure, or what some of the jargon actually meant. It seemed to her quite reasonable that a simple question could be posed and answered almost anywhere, with perfect validity.

‘No.’ He folded his arms and stared her down. He was two inches taller than her and about five years older. He had behaved politely with her every time she had met him, eliciting disclosure of the loss of baby Edith during their first interview. He had even suggested, in a light moment, that she consider joining the police force herself. When she laughed in his face, he had been dignified. He had no discernible personal vanity: his hair always needed a wash and his shirts were badly ironed. He did not strike her as especially intelligent or angry or frustrated. A man doing a job of work that often made him tired, and which engaged the whole of his attention, was her instinctive summary.

‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘You don’t change, do you?’

‘Should I?’

‘Some of my colleagues might think so. They might find you a bit … insolent.’

‘And some of my relatives might find you rather irritating. I thought this – whatever it is – was urgent? We’ve wasted a good five minutes already.’

He made an ushering motion with his right arm, and she walked ahead of him to a plain black car parked down the street. A young man was in the driving seat, and Moxon followed her into the back. ‘Right, Preston – let’s get going,’ he barked, in a tone quite different from that used with Simmy.

She waited in vain for any further elucidation as to what was required of her. Curiosity vied with impatience and a mild amusement as they drove the half mile to the police station in Lake Road. ‘Oh, now I recognise it,’ she exclaimed. ‘How silly of me. I never made the connection, somehow.’ It even had the traditional blue lamp outside, she noticed, for the first time. She could just hear Ben Harkness mocking her for her outrageous lack of observation.

He took her into a small room with a bright light and summoned Preston to join them. Then he asked her if she had been in Ambleside that morning.

‘Yes – I delivered some flowers. Why?’ Only then, again to her dismay at her dim-wittedness, did she connect his sudden appearance to the killing of an old lady somewhere in Ambleside. ‘Mrs Joseph isn’t hurt, is she?’

He glanced down at a page of notes on the table. ‘Joseph? Not that I know of. No – the person in question is a Mr Malcolm Kitchener. He says you saw him; that you spoke to him.’

‘Mr Kitchener? Yes – he was in that café above Stock Ghyll. The Giggling Goose.’ Her brain was slowly turning over the implications of the question. ‘We didn’t say much. His mother died.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Oh – eleven-ish. A bit before, possibly.’

‘How long did you stay?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ she hazarded. ‘Or half an hour. How long does it take to drink a cup of coffee? I wasn’t in a rush. Melanie was in the shop.’

‘How well do you know him?’

‘Not at all, really. Just to put a face and a name to. He recognised me and said hello. He was feeling sorry for himself. His mother died,’ she repeated.

‘You feel that’s important, do you?’

‘It’s how I know him. I did the flowers for her funeral. It was up at Grizedale.’ She spoke wonderingly, still bewildered at why the police should care about Mr Kitchener’s movements.

DI Moxon nodded thoughtfully. ‘We need to be sure we’re talking about the same man. He’s here, undergoing questioning. I’m going to go and open the door of the room, and I want you to walk past and make sure it’s him. All right?’

Simmy was repeating the word undergoing to herself. It made the process sound painful and distressing for the poor man. ‘Won’t he see me? Haven’t you got one of those clever mirrors that are really windows?’ At least she’d managed to glean that much from her minimal interest in TV crime dramas.

‘He won’t be surprised to see you. He gave us your name as an alibi.’