The Grasmere Grudge

by Rebecca Tope

  Simmy was ten yards away, with her back to Nick and his van. Her window was open, and she could hear the grunts and muttered words as the vehicle was forced to accommodate a variety of purchases. The trunk was followed by a hallstand and a rolled-up carpet. Then the men slammed the door shut and stepped back.

  ‘Didn’t go as bad as I thought,’ said the taller one. ‘Wasn’t sure how I’d go down, after all that talk.’

  ‘Hmm, hmm,’ was all the answer he got, along with a sympathetic shake of the head.

  ‘If you ask me, it’s got to be the wife – or something from years back. Or maybe he kicked an old lady’s dog once too often and her son saw red.’

  The small man chuckled.

  ‘Anyhow, as I told them in there’ – he cocked his head towards the saleroom – ‘the bit of trouble I had over tax turns out to be a storm in a teacup. Showed them my cash book and so forth, and they’ve rapped my knuckles and told me to get it right in future. Nothing to raise a sweat over.’

  A woman emerged from the reception area, carrying an awkwardly-shaped purchase, and the helpful porter hurried to her aid. Simmy buzzed up her car window and sighed. It was twenty past four and she was thirsty. Perhaps she should first grab a mug of tea in the little cafe before it closed for the day.

  ‘We don’t close until everybody’s gone,’ the woman told her. ‘That’s nearly six, sometimes.’

  Simmy sat with her tea, wondering how Christopher was getting on. She could go and see for herself, but there didn’t seem much point. His car was parked in its own special bay, which she could see from where she was sitting. He couldn’t go anywhere without her seeing him. But perhaps she ought to text him and tell him where she was.

  She got the phone out and turned it on. There were no messages of any significance waiting for her. Her parents might be wondering why they hadn’t seen her, but they habitually used the landline phones, either in Troutbeck or at the shop. She began to compose her text to Chris, when there was a jingle to announce a phone call.

  It was Christopher. ‘Hey – where are you? I’ve just finished ahead of schedule, and I’ve found a voicemail from Philip’s nursing home. I’ve got to go to Grasmere right away. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m right outside,’ she said, with a little laugh. ‘I drove Ben home and then came back up here. What’s the matter with Philip?’

  ‘He’s dying, and they say he’s asking for me.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  For far too many minutes, Simmy continued to find the situation almost laughably ironic. She knew this was irritating to Christopher, and deeply inappropriate, but it was so wildly unexpected and so ludicrous that she should have to drive straight back to Grasmere yet again, that all she could do was laugh. Chris had come to find her in the cafe, getting himself a much-needed tea and cake, and answering people who came up wanting to talk to him. Finally, she got herself under control.

  ‘Why you?’ she asked him. ‘What time did they send the message? Why didn’t they call the office here and ask them to go and fetch you if it’s as urgent as all that.’

  He was hoarse and stiff from sitting for so long. He merely shook his head and gulped down the tea. ‘Give me a minute,’ he croaked. ‘I need to go and speak to Josephine.’ He was standing beside her little table, dancing from one foot to the other. ‘What if he dies before I get there?’

  ‘Why does he want you?’ she asked again. ‘Hasn’t he got a lady friend? Is the nursing home right in Grasmere, or somewhere miles up in the fells?’

  ‘I told you – there’s hardly anybody else but me who ever visits him. It’s only a mile or two out of town.’

  ‘Poor old chap.’

  ‘I hate to keep him waiting. We’ll take my car – here’s the key. Go and wait in it for me. Are you ready to go in two minutes?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she nodded. ‘Can I leave mine here? Will it get locked in or anything?’

  ‘It will, but I’ve got the key to the gate.’ He gave her a look that said obviously.

  They were on the road just after five, going much too fast for the conditions. ‘Watch out for sheep along here,’ said Simmy. ‘There were some loose when I came up.’ Christopher ignored her. They spoke little, despite there being plenty to say. They both needed a spell of quiet, Simmy realised.

  The nursing home was two miles outside Grasmere in a converted mansion on a north-facing slope. It was approached by a narrow road bordered by stone walls. ‘Should I come in or wait out here for you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Better come in and see what they say.’

  The nursing home still retained its stately home aura, at least in the entrance hall. Carved wooden panelling; hard-wearing marble floor tiles in black, brown and white; a handsome staircase rising in a curve to the upper floors – it all felt very Downton-Abbey-ish. ‘Goodness,’ said Simmy. ‘He must be paying a bit to live here.’

  ‘And the rest,’ nodded Christopher. ‘Take more than a few Jacobean stumpworks to cover even a year. But he got a good price for his house, and there’s some arrangement with the council. They pick up the tab when his own money runs out, apparently.’

  Under the influence of Ben Harkness, Simmy found herself imagining council hitmen making sure that day never came.

  Chris knew the way to Philip’s room and, since there were no staff in evidence, he let Simmy go with him as he headed up the stairs. ‘Must be dinner time,’ he said. ‘They don’t like visitors turning up after five.’

  They found Philip on the first floor, second room on the left. He was sitting in a big armchair by the window, which was wide open. ‘Hey!’ said Christopher. ‘They said you were on your deathbed.’

  ‘I refuse to lie down and go quietly,’ said the old man breathily. ‘I dare say I’m good for a few days yet.’

  Simmy had no direct experience of the process of dying at the end of a long life. Images from films and books suggested a brief period of deep sleep before the breathing gently stopped. Her father often referred admiringly to one of the Brontë sisters, dying in an upright chair, resisting to the last. Or was that Elizabeth I? In any event, Philip seemed remarkably serene.

  ‘Glad you could get here,’ he wheezed. ‘And …’ he looked at Simmy, ‘you brought your lady friend.’

  ‘She’s my fiancée now. I proposed last weekend.’

  ‘Well done, lad. Take my advice and be sure you have some offspring. It gets very miserable otherwise, I can tell you.’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Chris, with a rueful glance at Simmy.

  ‘No time to waste,’ the old man went on. ‘I need to talk about Kathleen’s house – that man who was killed there. The dealer.’ He ran out of breath, and Simmy felt a flash of panic. It seemed all too likely that he would expire right there before her eyes.

  ‘How did you—?’ Chris began to ask, before noticing a local paper on a little table at Philip’s elbow. The front page was full of the story of Jonathan’s murder. Nobody at the nursing home would think to keep the news away from him. Another paper was visible beneath it, where the story of the valuable stumpwork had been the main excitement. The paper appeared on Thursdays, and Simmy had not seen it yet.

  ‘Did they kill him for that bit of sewing?’ Philip said.

  ‘No, no. Why would they?’ Christopher leant over him, speaking urgently. ‘Jonathan sold it in good faith. We had no idea how much money it would make. That can’t have had anything to do with it. It must have been some old grudge.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The old man blinked several times, obviously marshalling his thoughts. ‘Wasn’t it hers, then? She had some good stuff, you know. Showed it to that mate of yours. Seems to me he must have helped himself to it and sold it.’

  ‘No!’ Christopher became even more animated. ‘It was nothing like that.’ He paused, staring at Philip. ‘Where did you get the idea that Jon was the vendor, anyway?’

  Philip shook his head. ‘I don’t know for sure. It just seems to fit the facts. I
could swear I’ve seen that piece of handiwork that’s in the paper. It’s pretty obviously the same one, and he sold it for all that money,’ he moaned. ‘Kathleen can’t have had any idea it was worth anything.’

  ‘Where did she get it?’ Simmy suddenly asked.

  Again, the old man shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. I only saw it after she was dead. Maybe she got it from her mother. It was in a box with other fancywork.’

  Chris put a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘But why does it worry you so much? Why does it matter now?’

  ‘It’s not right. Something’s not right.’ Philip fought for breath. ‘That man being killed in her house. You have to … have to …’

  ‘Don’t worry, old friend. We’ll get it all sorted for you. You’ll be glad to know that Simmy’s got friends who like to play amateur detectives. They’re good at it, too. They’re doing a lot of investigating to find out who killed poor old Jonathan. We’ll be back here in a day or two to explain exactly what happened.’

  ‘Mmm,’ sighed the old man, sagging alarmingly in his chair.

  ‘Chris …’ Simmy said.

  ‘I know. I’ll go and get somebody. You stay here.’ He disappeared and Simmy heard him thumping down the stairs. Barely two minutes later he was back with a woman in a green uniform, which made her look like a hospital theatre nurse.

  ‘I didn’t know he had visitors,’ she said reproachfully.

  ‘We couldn’t find anybody,’ Christopher said.

  ‘You can’t have looked very hard.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Simmy interrupted. ‘He’s passed out, look.’ Privately, she was convinced that Philip had died, and that she and Christopher would probably be blamed for it. She had watched him intently for signs of breathing and had detected no movement while Christopher was fetching help.

  ‘You’ve exhausted him. He ought to be in bed.’ She bent over Philip and laid a finger on his wrist. ‘I think he’s just fallen asleep. He is very frail, you know. We thought we were going to lose him this morning, but he’s hanging on. Did he manage to speak to you?’

  ‘Oh yes. He was very glad to see us.’

  ‘Good. But you should go now. We’re not a hospital, you know.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means we don’t do much more than basic medical care. But Philip’s made a firm request not to be moved unless absolutely necessary. Until very recently, we’d have automatically had him taken to A&E, but we’ve had a change of policy, not before time.’ Her face darkened. ‘There have been some very sad consequences over the past few years.’

  ‘Yes, but why does that mean we have to leave?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well – you’re not family, are you? We do sometimes let close relatives stay overnight, but it’s not the usual practice. There wouldn’t be anywhere to sleep.’

  ‘We’re not proposing to stay overnight,’ said Simmy. ‘Are we?’ she checked with Christopher.

  He shook his head. ‘I guess not. But I hate to just leave him. We never said … I mean … will he …?’

  ‘You might not see him again,’ said the woman frankly. ‘Sorry, but that’s the reality.’

  ‘All right. Yes. I get it.’ He bent over his friend. ‘Bye, then, Philip. We’ll be going now. You’ll be well looked after, I’m sure. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all going to be set right, I promise you that.’ He glanced up at the woman. ‘Maybe he can hear me?’ he said pleadingly.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘He’s very relaxed, anyway. Everything’s just running down. He’s not in any pain, and there’s no suggestion that he’s scared. He’s an example to us all,’ she finished fondly.

  Simmy was wiping away tears. Christopher put his arm around her shoulders. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you with me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you should. I’m glad you did. He’s such a nice old chap. I wish I’d got to know him better. I didn’t realise …’

  ‘How fond I am of him?’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Neither did I, till just now. Poor old Philip. Fancy ending your life worrying about a piece of embroidery.’

  ‘That’s not what was worrying him. It’s the fact of a murder. He wants justice to be done.’ She clenched her fists. ‘And we’ve got to see that you keep your promise to him.’

  They were both hungry and unsure as to what to do next. There was a lot to talk about, events moving too fast for proper discussion, which Simmy found frustrating. It was almost frightening, the way every day brought something unexpected that had to be dealt with. The auction had initially seemed a bit dull, compared to the rest of the week – until she thought back and remembered the people in the cafe and the Pruitts in the row behind her and Ben. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask him what all those notes were about. Christopher didn’t know about Tanya’s accident, and Ben didn’t know about Philip’s revelation. A rerun of their Wednesday evening get-together seemed urgently called-for. She knew she was forgetting something crucial. Did it have to do with Bonnie, she asked herself. Had the girl expected a visit, to check on her welfare after the traumatic exposure to blood?

  ‘Mustn’t forget Valerie Woolley tomorrow,’ said Christopher, whose thoughts must have been running along similar lines. ‘Eleven o’clock. Bloody nuisance.’

  ‘Did she know Philip?’

  ‘What? No, I shouldn’t think so. Why would she?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a small world up here. How long had she and Jonathan been separated?’

  ‘Ages. Five years at least. They lived in Keswick, and then she walked out and found a place in Carlisle. I think he kept hoping they could get back together eventually.’

  ‘Maybe they would have done, the way she’s so concerned to know what happened to him?’

  ‘She’s not a monster. Wouldn’t anybody with normal feelings be the same? It doesn’t mean she wishes they’d stayed together.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Simmy, wondering again how she’d react if Tony had been murdered, down in Worcestershire. ‘What would you do if Sophie was killed?’

  ‘Good question. I shouldn’t think anyone would even tell me. We’ve been divorced for ten years now. Last I heard she was married with three kids.’

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ she asked. ‘All I really want is to slump in front of the telly with some takeaway. Shocking, I know. You must be just as knackered as me. More, if anything.’

  ‘I’ll be okay after a drink and some food.’

  ‘I keep thinking about this time last week. The benefit seems to have worn off much too quickly.’

  ‘It all went wrong on Monday. Nothing’s been simple or straightforward since then.’ He sighed. ‘Even the sale of the stumpwork would have had ramifications, without the Jonathan business.’

  ‘It’s all Jonathan business, though – isn’t it? It all links up, with him in the middle. Ben’s probably got a flowchart that shows exactly that. Or it will when I tell him what Philip just said.’

  ‘Flowchart?’

  ‘That’s right. Sometimes he calls it an algorithm. Poor old Moxon has to pretend to understand what he’s talking about.’

  ‘I still don’t get why a detective inspector should take a schoolboy so seriously. Doesn’t he get stick from his superiors about it?’

  ‘Sometimes, I suppose. But Ben’s much more help than hindrance – mostly. It wasn’t so good when he got into trouble in Hawkshead. We’re all still shaking from that. It’s made Helen a lot more jittery about Ben’s interest in crime.’

  They were in Christopher’s car, but not going anywhere. ‘So why did you dash off halfway through the sale?’ he asked her. ‘I looked up and you’d gone. Left that man from Grasmere staring right at me, without you to hide behind.’

  ‘Pruitt. He’s called Pruitt. Odd chap.’

  ‘It threw me when I recognised him.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed. Anyway. I got a call from Bonnie saying Tanya had cut herself and I should come back and clean up the blood. I didn’t really need to rush off like that
. It turned out that Bonnie wanted Ben to comfort her, and I had to drive him. She’s got a thing about blood and felt all wobbly.’

  ‘Tanya is Ben’s sister, right? Is she okay?’

  Simmy had to remind herself that Christopher lived an hour away from Windermere and all the people there who formed her own social circle. He couldn’t be expected to keep track of them all. In fact, she ought to be pleasantly surprised that he knew how Tanya fitted into the picture. Instead, she felt lonely and slightly scared at the prospect of setting up home with Chris, in the process losing some of the closeness she enjoyed with the others. And yet, it was all going to change anyway when Ben went off to university. ‘Right,’ she nodded. ‘She’s fourteen. One of twins. She’s a really nice girl – clever, like Ben.’

  ‘Was there much blood?’

  ‘Not really. The laptop keyboard got some of it.’

  ‘Yuck! I’m not great with blood, either, you know.’

  ‘I can probably pick it out when it’s dry enough. Funny – I don’t mind it at all. I’ve never been squeamish about that sort of thing.’

  ‘So, is Tanya okay?’ he asked again.

  ‘I think so. It was quite a deep cut, though. She found a Stanley knife and was using it to cut ribbon or string or something. The flowers she was tying up were all over the floor of the shop. I wonder whether the customer came back for them and found the shop locked up.’ Yet another thing to be sorted out, she realised.