by Rebecca Tope
‘Good Lord – I had no idea. Does everybody have some terrible dark experience in their past? You with your baby, my dad with his … well, you know.’
‘But not you, right?’
He grimaced. ‘I expect I could come up with a few nasty moments if I tried. I haven’t told you everything about my travelling years. There was this Mayan bloke, in Guatemala. Face like a block of wood. He took a dislike to me and followed me around for a day or two. I got totally paranoid about it, ending up gibbering in a forest.’
‘Mayan? Didn’t they die out centuries ago?’
‘If they did, he must have been a ghost. That’s quite likely, actually. Although Guatemala has more than its share of hard men. They’re like golems, or robots. Think nothing of killing you – and each other. Remember never to ride on the buses in Guatemala City, okay?’
‘You’ll have to remind me.’
They had walked past a playground, and into a street called Swan Lane. Ahead she could see the traffic passing on the main road, with houses beyond. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my bearings now. But I’m not sure I really would like to live here full time, you know. There’s something so terribly self-conscious about it. Worse than Ambleside, even.’
‘Well, maybe we’ll have to think about Keswick, then. That’s got heaps of properties for sale, and it’s a lot more user-friendly, with supermarkets and all the other services. Doctors, schools, trains …’
‘Too far from Windermere,’ she objected. ‘I’d have to drive fifty miles every day.’
‘More like forty-five,’ he corrected her. ‘But I admit it wouldn’t be much fun.’
The hour passed quickly, with less than effective attention shown to the impossibly scanty supply of housing in Grasmere. It seemed enough that they had restored an emotional equilibrium between them, bringing themselves back to the easy intimacy they’d enjoyed during their holiday. Nagging at the back of Simmy’s mind was the knowledge that Ben would expect her to extract further details regarding the murder from Chris, but she ignored it. Chris clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and she understood that he had only agreed to meet the young pair because she’d asked him to, and they came as a package. If he wanted to see Simmy, he had to take them as well, at least on this particular evening.
But suddenly he took her by surprise by saying, ‘There really aren’t any obvious suspects, apart from Nick. And even he wasn’t angry enough to kill anybody. Lots of people found Jon annoying, but that’s a million miles from murder, as well. As I understand it, this sort of killing implies that the person thought he had something to gain. That doesn’t work with any of the things I know about Jon. Even with the money from the stumpwork he didn’t have much. And he hadn’t got that money yet.’
‘There are other motives. Revenge, for one. And jealousy. Did he have a girlfriend? Has he been carrying on with somebody’s wife?’
‘Not to my knowledge. He was rather scruffy. I’m not sure women found him very appealing.’
‘Can we see the house? Could you bear it?’
‘We can’t go in.’ Christopher looked scandalised. ‘Why do you want to go there?’
‘I don’t know. Curiosity, I suppose.’
‘Well, all right. It’s back down in the centre of town. A minute or two from where we left the car. Funny Ben didn’t want to have a look as well.’
‘Oh, he did. He’ll have known where it was before we got here.’
Chris led her back the way they’d come, past the car park, and took her to within twenty yards of a modest stone house down a small road opposite the school. Blue police tape still barred entry through the front gate. ‘Bit surplus to requirements, don’t you think?’ he said.
‘Does it bother you, being here again so soon?’
‘A bit. Mainly, I can hardly believe it really happened. It seems like a ghastly dream. I’ve already forgotten the details, like you do with a dream. I still can’t make any proper sense of it. I’ve run through it a hundred times, trying to think who could have done it, and why. Anybody would, I suppose. It’s not just your friend Ben.’
‘The police were lucky to get your statement so quickly, while it was still vivid in your mind. It was you who called them, wasn’t it?’
‘More or less. I came dashing out of the house and bumped into a man just about here. I took him back in with me, and he made the call. He stayed with me till the cops came, but when we explained that it was only me who’d found Jon, and he had nothing to do with it, they pretty much lost interest in him.’
‘Who was he? Did you get his name?’
Christopher shrugged irritably. ‘I think he knew who I was – lots of people do, of course. He gave his details to the cops.’
Simmy absorbed this scanty information with some unease. Wasn’t this man a potential suspect, hovering nearby to see who found the body of the man he’d killed? But would he then let himself be drawn into the aftermath to find himself questioned by the police? Highly unlikely, she decided. ‘What was he doing, exactly? When you came rushing out of the house?’ She looked round. ‘He can’t have been a passer-by, can he? This is a cul-de-sac. It doesn’t go anywhere.’
Christopher showed no sign of being caught out. He rubbed his cheek and said, ‘I don’t know. He seemed to be just walking along. I grabbed him. I wasn’t at all together, like I always thought I’d be if something like this happened. I was a real mess. He gave me a few funny looks, I can tell you.’
‘Did he think you’d killed Jonathan? It must have seemed very odd to him. Was he scared? How old was he?’
Still, Christopher seemed patient and unworried by her questions. ‘I don’t think he was scared. He’d be about middle fifties, maybe. And I think he believed what I told him. I was a mess,’ he said again.
Simmy was fairly sure that somebody who’d just committed murder would be in an emotional mess. She looked at her future husband and then put a hand on his arm. ‘Is that why you left it so long before calling me? Because you were a mess?’ It still rankled, she noted, the way he’d failed to keep her informed. ‘Because you had to convince everybody that it wasn’t you who killed him?’
‘What? No – well, maybe. There was never the right moment. The whole afternoon just vanished in a horrible swirling nightmare. They obviously thought I must have done it. They took my fingerprints and DNA.’ He shuddered. ‘I felt like a criminal. But they’ll have my car on camera somewhere, showing I could only have been in Grasmere for a few minutes. I’m hoping they can work out that Jon had been dead for at least an hour before I got there.’
‘They won’t be able to, Chris. It’s a myth about pinpointing the time of death. Especially as they won’t have got a police doctor to him for quite a while after you found him. Did you touch him?’
He nodded wearily. ‘Of course I did. I tried to loosen the belt. I think I slapped his face. Stupid things like that.’
‘Oh dear.’ She risked a further step in her questioning, prompted by a nagging sense that he was withholding something. ‘I’ve forgotten why you agreed to come here in the first place. That is, I presume you probably wanted to have a look at the house contents as soon as you could, just as Jonathan did. But it does seem very quick – there was no suggestion of meeting Jonathan here when you spoke to him on Sunday, was there?’
He looked directly at her and reached for her hand. ‘We were all waiting for the call from that treasury person, if Ben’s right that that’s who handles it. Me, Philip, Jonathan – all of us. It was especially unfinished business for poor old Philip. But it’s complicated for him in that home, even though he’s got his own phone. In the old days, they’d have sent a letter, but now it’s all emails and phone calls. So, we gave them my details, so I could deal with it for him. I was going to go and see him as soon as we knew anything, and before that I wanted to catch Jonathan and make sure we were all up to speed. I was planning to go and have a chat with Philip anyway, after seeing Jon.’
Yet again, Simmy took a
little time to process all this. One detail had snagged her attention. ‘Surely they do still send letters? Doesn’t there have to be a piece of paper to show all the authorities here?’ She had another thought. ‘And didn’t you say Jon wanted you as some sort of protection?’
‘He was a bit jumpy when he phoned, yes.’
‘So when did he call you?’
‘Come on, Sim. Trust me, okay? It’s exactly as I’ve told you. There’s no mystery to it. And I’ve been through it so many times already.’ She became freshly aware of how ravaged he looked. But she still couldn’t entirely abandon her need to understand what had happened.
‘It sounds awfully like a mad dash for the poor old lady’s possessions. Like a swarm of locusts. There must have been some sort of fight over who got first dibs and Jonathan came out worst.’
Now Christopher openly groaned. ‘Absolutely not like that in any way. For a start, there had to be authorisation from whoever they’d found to inherit the proceeds. That hadn’t happened, as far as I know. If there is anybody, that is. I still have no idea about that.’
‘And I still don’t really get why you and Jonathan both showed up here on Monday? There’s got to be something you’re not telling me.’
‘Please, please stop,’ he begged. ‘I’ve told you everything. There’s no reason to think Jon was doing anything underhand. He’d used the key when he shouldn’t, that’s all. He didn’t have any proper right to go into the house, but in practice nobody’s going to care. There is nobody, anyway, who’d have been around to stop him. Just faceless bureaucracy. Jon knew the ropes; he’d seen the same sort of thing before.’
‘And who kept Philip up to speed, if you never got there on Monday?’
Christopher heaved a sigh. ‘Nobody. I phoned the home yesterday and they said he’s got a virus, and they’re trying to keep him quietly in bed for a few days. He’s woozy, apparently, and they don’t think he should have visitors. Certainly not if they’re bringing bad news.’
‘But how could anybody have known Jonathan would be at the house? Whoever killed him obviously knew he was there.’
‘Good question.’
The remark came not from Christopher, but Ben Harkness, who had come up behind them without being seen. ‘Nice little house, isn’t it?’ he went on. ‘Just the thing for you two to live in.’
Chapter Ten
All four looked from face to face as the idea elicited different reactions. Christopher flushed, once the implications sank in, and said, ‘What the hell are you suggesting?’
Simmy gave the house a closer scrutiny, seeing for the first time the fine quality of the stonework and the generous size of the windows. There was a garden at the front and shady trees. She allowed herself to wonder what it might be like as a home. ‘Come on, Chris. You can’t pretend it’s a new idea. You mentioned it yourself only yesterday.’
‘Things are different now,’ said Christopher tightly.
Bonnie laughed, and said, ‘Trust you,’ to her boyfriend. ‘Nobody wants to live in a house where there’s been a murder, do they? That means it’ll go cheap when they sell it.’
‘Precisely,’ said Ben smugly. Then he turned to Christopher. ‘What’s wrong with the idea, anyway?’
‘The timing’s not great, for one thing. And it sounds bad, don’t you think? As if I might have had my eye on the place for a while.’
‘But it is rather nice, I must admit,’ said Simmy wistfully.
Ben chewed his upper lip for a few moments. ‘No, but that wouldn’t matter. It’s not Jonathan’s house, is it? Do we know whether they ever did find a distant relative who gets it?’
Christopher took a long breath. ‘I have absolutely no idea. I’m just an auctioneer, remember. People bring me things to sell, and I sell them. That’s it.’
Ben squared his shoulders. ‘Well, I think it’s highly likely that a person will be identified with a claim to the estate. The said person will be expected to authorise removal of contents of the house, on condition an exact inventory is made independently, and any item valued at over one hundred pounds or thereabouts should be set aside. Given that proviso, it would normally be assumed that the clearance would be paid for by sale of the contents in whatever way the person doing the clearing chose.’
In spite of himself, Christopher seemed impressed. ‘Is that a direct quote?’
Simmy was trying to suppress a thread of resentment at Ben’s easy access to arcane facts, when she had got so little out of Christopher.
Ben smiled apologetically. ‘Not entirely. I lost the last bit. It just means nobody pays anybody anything, but Jon had to declare anything he thought likely to fetch a decent figure. A hundred is a fair cut-off.’
‘But who was going to do the independent valuation?’ asked Bonnie.
‘Me,’ said Christopher, reluctantly. ‘Most likely. Eventually.’
Another silence ensued, while this was digested. Simmy took a step or two away from the intense questioning and looked again at the house. There was surely a third cousin, or distant in-law, who would probably put it on the market. The shadowy figure of Kathleen Leeson floated before her mind’s eye. An old woman with nobody she loved enough to name in a properly made will to inherit her house and the things inside it. Or had she simply been too lazy or ignorant or deluded to write down what she wanted to happen? What had the old lady really been like? Had everybody shunned her because of a nasty personality? Had she been mentally unbalanced?
It struck Simmy that this was another unpleasant consequence of childlessness. If you had even one child, that made such matters so much more simple. It seemed that such an oversight put you into a category that society had difficulty in dealing with. It was against nature; against good sense. Everybody should have a child. Or failing that, a very special and beloved niece or nephew. Or a ward, or adoptee, or protégé. A person from a younger generation whose interests you chose to encourage in some way. Like me with Bonnie, she thought, ignoring the fact that Bonnie already had a foster mother who treasured her.
‘What would the old woman have wanted?’ she said aloud.
‘She didn’t want to have to think about it,’ Chris answered swiftly. ‘She didn’t see it as her problem.’
‘She was right,’ said Ben. ‘Irresponsible and lazy, but right. Although she must have known poor old Philip wouldn’t be up to it, either.’
‘Probably just a bit doolally,’ said Bonnie.
‘There’s loads to think about, anyway,’ said Ben with satisfaction. ‘Oh – and where’s the incident room? Didn’t they say there was one set up in town somewhere?’
‘It’ll be in the village hall,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s further along Broadgate from where we just walked. Tucked away on the right. I forgot all about it.’
‘Why didn’t they interview you there on Monday, then, instead of trogging all the way to Penrith?’ asked Ben.
‘Because they didn’t set it up until yesterday.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Bonnie, trying not to sound confrontational.
The reply was short and sharp. ‘Because I’ve made it my business to know.’
‘It’s weird that it’s not Moxon,’ said Simmy, finding herself hankering for the familiar detective.
‘They might ship him in, if they need help,’ said Ben. ‘From what I’ve heard this evening, there aren’t many viable suspects. They’ll be going door-to-door looking for witnesses to unusual activity in the house. As well as exhaustive forensics at the scene,’ he finished with satisfaction. ‘In there – that’s where the main clues are going to be.’ He jittered on the spot. ‘Wish I could be in there with them.’
‘They’re not there now,’ said Bonnie.
Again, they all gazed at the house, from the opposite side of the little street. The people of Grasmere evidently saw no reason to visit the scene of their local crime, leaving the street almost deserted. ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock,’ Simmy announced. ‘We should go. Thanks, Chris, for coming to m
eet us. Are you going to be all right?’
He put his arms round her. ‘Of course I am. I should be flattered that you’re giving me so much attention – all of you. It’s annoying at times, but I do feel … sort of coddled, in a daft way.’
‘Like an egg?’ said Ben. ‘Coddled eggs were a favourite with the Victorians.’
‘Shut up, Ben,’ said Simmy and Bonnie in unison.
The list of suspects still felt thin and short. In the car home Simmy had filled the youngsters in on the apparently innocent bystander who had called the police on Monday. ‘It can’t have been him, can it?’ she said.
‘Seems unlikely,’ Ben agreed. ‘But the police will be keeping an eye on him. Some killers like to play that sort of game – they think they’re far too clever to be caught, so they take risks. The thing they don’t realise is that the police actually aren’t half as stupid as most people think.’
‘No,’ said Simmy, doubtfully. ‘Although they are sometimes.’
‘Anyway,’ Ben went on briskly. ‘What’s with this old bloke in the home? What’s his name again?’
‘Philip. What about him?’
‘He seems to be in the middle of things. You’ve met him, haven’t you?’
‘Back in March, yes. Chris and I went to his house and looked at his Airfix models. He wanted Chris to value them, and some other bits. He was going into the home in a week or two, and his house had to be sold.’
‘No family?’
‘Presumably not. Same as poor old Kathleen.’
‘And were they valuable? His things, I mean.’
‘Sadly no, according to Chris. He was pretty disappointed.’
‘He’s got another lady friend,’ said Bonnie unexpectedly. ‘Corinne knows her.’
‘This is a bit sudden,’ said Ben. ‘When did you remember that? Does Corinne know about Philip and his friendship with the Leeson lady as well?’
‘It just came to me. We were talking about the murder last night. Corinne knows everybody, even in Grasmere. That is – she knows how they connect. She’s never met Philip, but the girlfriend’s a man-mad loud-mouth, to quote Corinne.’