by Rebecca Tope
‘You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Or rather, I was thinking how much work it would be if they all came to me. Remember that Hardy funeral, in the spring? It nearly killed me, doing all those wreaths and sprays and whatnot. Maybe George at least will go to someone in Penrith. Although I suppose Christopher—’
She interrupted herself with a slight gasp at the flood of euphoria that accompanied his name. It was entirely involuntary, coming as a physical shock.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Bonnie. ‘You look as if you’re having a heart attack.’
‘I sort of am,’ Simmy grinned. ‘But a nice one.’
Bonnie put both hands over her face, exaggerating her astonishment. ‘Stone the crows,’ she said. ‘Wait till I tell Ben.’
‘I think you’ll find he already knows,’ blushed Simmy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By Monday lunchtime the sense of limbo had become a permanent state. Despite visits from two people linked to the murdered man, there was no suggestion of a resolution. Moxon had apparently not solved the case, or if he had, he wasn’t sharing his triumph with Simmy. After the previous evening’s chat with Christopher, she found herself expecting another call. In fact, so deeply had she fallen for him that hourly calls would have barely sufficed. She checked her phone so many times that Bonnie noticed.
‘Hasn’t he called you?’ she asked, with excessive solicitude. ‘He must be busy.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?’ the girl went on, ignoring any protocols that might have inhibited her. ‘Are you worried about him at all?’
‘Worried? No. I’d phone him if I was. And I’m not just waiting for a call from him. There are plenty of other people who might want to talk to me.’
Bonnie nodded with infuriating understanding.
The repeated slackness of the business gave her too much time to obsess. Her idle mind roamed over a host of awful possibilities. Chris might have been arrested for killing his father; but if so, she would have heard somehow. If he had changed his mind about Them – as she thought of herself and him – he might well stay quiet about it for a while. ‘I could phone him, I suppose.’
‘Of course you could,’ said Bonnie warmly. ‘Why don’t you?’
Because I don’t know what to say, was the inescapable answer. I can’t expect him to traipse down to Troutbeck all the way from Keswick every evening, especially in November. And then get up at some unearthly hour to traipse back again. It was infeasible and unreasonable. And if she wasn’t calling to arrange something like that, then what else would she talk about? Sweet nothings sat badly with the workplace, in both cases. ‘Better not,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it till this evening.’
‘You’re worried he might be a suspect, aren’t you? Just like I was with Ben last week. It’s horrible, isn’t it – having such ideas flying around?’
‘That’s what happens when there’s a murder,’ said Simmy. ‘Although it hasn’t been like this before. I didn’t know any of the people involved until I had to take flowers to them. It’s different when it’s a family you’ve known all your life.’
‘Or think you’ve known,’ said Bonnie acutely. ‘I expect they’ve all changed quite a lot since you last spent any time with them.’
She thought about it. ‘Yes, they have,’ she concluded. ‘Lynn and Hannah especially, because I never saw them past the age of about twelve. But Eddie and George, as well. I wouldn’t have recognised either of them if I’d met them in the street. Funny how different they are now. Eddie’s whole shape has changed. They used to look fairly alike, with Fran’s long face and straight hair. But now you’d never guess they were brothers. George has got much darker, for a start.’ She thought again of the surprising passion for religion that George had revealed, and which she should apparently have noticed all those years ago. ‘I am so unobservant,’ she sighed. ‘I seem to have missed practically everything that was going on, back then.’
‘Eddie’s the one I’m most doubtful about,’ said Bonnie. ‘After he sent me down to Bowness the way he did. I still think that he had a hidden motive.’
‘Chris said he was the one refusing to go to a family meeting last night,’ Simmy remembered. ‘You’d expect it to be George who’d rock the boat, not Eddie.’
‘Ben says he’s sure neither of them’s the killer.’ The girl’s voice carried a dash of disappointment. ‘No motive, that he can see.’
‘When did he say that?’
‘Last night. We were on the phone for an hour. That’s longer than usual,’ she added, as if expecting reproach. ‘Corinne wasn’t very pleased about it, for some reason.’
Simmy guessed that it might be helpful to keep the topic going, now it had been broached. ‘She might have wanted you to talk to her instead. About her mother or something.’
‘Come off it. I was there, wasn’t I? I wanted to go down and see Ben properly, but I stayed at home to be with Con, because she was expecting the hospital to phone. They didn’t, obviously. It’s going to be like that until the old lady dies. Nobody seems to have any idea when that might be.’
‘She might even get better.’
Bonnie shook her head. ‘No. They’re sure that won’t happen. She’s been unconscious since Friday. Everything’s shutting down – that’s what they said.’ Again the small spark of excitement at the reality of death was forcing itself into the open. ‘It’s a very weird business,’ she finished with a sigh.
Simmy agreed. ‘My mother said that she didn’t even recognise her dad when he was dying. She said it could have been any old man, and she never entirely believed they’d got the right one. I remember her coming home all wide-eyed with the shock of it. I was seventeen.’
‘He can’t have been very old, then.’
‘He was seventy-nine, I think. He had a stroke.’
‘Families,’ said Bonnie with a wealth of world-weariness that made Simmy smile.
The two new flower orders were going to make Tuesday almost busy. Certainly by recent standards they produced a welcome change of pace. One delivery was to a street only a few hundred yards away, and the other to Newby Bridge, at the southern tip of Lake Windermere. ‘You can do the local one if you like,’ she told Bonnie. ‘They want it sometime tomorrow.’
‘Can I?’ Bonnie blinked in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Why not?’
‘No reason. It’ll be exciting. I think.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I might feel a bit daft carrying a bunch of flowers up the high street, that’s all.’
‘You’re joking. Have you forgotten you’re working for a florist?’
‘Sorry. Who’s the person?’
‘It’s a couple. Mr and Mrs Hughes are celebrating their silver wedding anniversary. This is from their two children, Brendon and Dymphna. That’s a good name.’
‘Don’t start on names again,’ begged Bonnie. ‘Silver’s twenty-five, isn’t it? That means they should be about fifty, right? Why aren’t they at work during the day?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘I know – they could have been living together for ages, and only got married when they were forty or something, so now they’re old and retired. And their children are middle-aged. Because they were born ages before the mum and dad got married. That happens, you know,’ she ended solemnly.
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Simmy, finding herself unable to think of an example known to her personally. Not for the first time, she was forced to see herself as a sheltered innocent in a world where rules were being broken on a daily basis. Her mother adapted to social change much more readily than she did herself.
Ben surprised them by arriving shortly before two, which was much earlier than usual. ‘The tutor’s sick,’ he explained laconically. ‘Suits me nicely. We’ve got to settle this murder now. No more messing about. We’d have cracked it yesterday if that pesky George hadn’t shown up when he did.’
Simmy sighed and
Bonnie whooped.
‘I thought Moxon was on top of it,’ Simmy said.
‘If he is, then that’s fine. All the better, of course, if we come to the same conclusion as him. I bet we will. He seems to be a bit brighter these days.’
‘And he won’t like it if you get in his way, will he? If he’s got it worked out already, why should we waste time covering the same ground?’
‘Good practice,’ he told her with exaggerated patience. ‘Besides – you don’t look very busy.’
‘Three orders for tomorrow. I should be making them up this afternoon.’
‘Go on, then. You can talk at the same time, can’t you?’
‘If I have to.’
‘Okay. So – first off, we need to think about all the people who were at Mrs Henderson’s funeral. It all starts with that, you see. When she died, everything changed for the family, and somehow an opportunity opened up for whoever it is that hated Mr H enough to kill him. That’s my first premise,’ he explained patronisingly.
‘First premise,’ repeated Bonnie, who looked as if she ought to be taking notes. ‘The funeral.’
‘Right. And you, Simmy, were there. So you can supply the list.’
‘No way. There were hundreds of people there.’ She knew full well that this was a shameless exaggeration.
‘I think not. Probably only about sixty or seventy, from what I heard. Don’t forget I live near most of them. A chap at college’s mother did the catering. She said they ordered food for seventy, and that pretty much everybody there was local. If we count you and your parents, all the Henderson offspring, one or two neighbours—’
‘Are you saying we can discount the neighbours?’ Simmy queried. ‘If so, why?’
‘No, I’m not saying that. Just that we have them listed already. I want you to think of the rest of them, the ones I can’t even guess.’
‘Wait a bit, then. Let me get started on the Staveley flowers. I’ll take them first thing tomorrow.’ She gathered up the assorted blooms and foliage, ribbons and wires, and disappeared into the cool room at the back.
‘Hey! I can’t hear you out there,’ protested Ben.
‘Yes, you can if you try. I’m not coming out, anyway, until this is done.’
‘It only takes her ten minutes,’ said Bonnie. ‘Do you want a muesli bar?’
‘No, thanks. I had the full works in the canteen, for once. They’re making quite a good job these days, for a change.’
‘Canteen!’ she scoffed. ‘School dinners are school dinners. What was it?’
‘Spaghetti bolognese, with a remarkable variety of vegetables. I didn’t even recognise some of them.’
‘Brave,’ she approved.
Simmy heard most of this banter from her back room, aware of Ben’s barely suppressed impatience. ‘Are you making a list?’ she called. ‘Of the funeral guests, I mean.’
‘Good thinking.’ He found a notebook and pencil in his bag and started to write. ‘Family … neighbours … Straws …’ he muttered. ‘Who else?’
‘Fran’s sister Christine, and her husband. A group of women from the WI. She was their secretary, apparently. Another group of younger women. I sat with them. June was the name of one of them, and Cheryl the other. They were with Hannah.’ She was still talking in a raised voice from the other room. ‘I think there was some talk of June being one of Kit’s bits on the side. My mother said that was Fran’s suspicion, anyhow.’
‘Why would she go to the funeral?’ Ben nibbled his pencil. ‘What would she care about the wife being dead?’
‘She might have liked her,’ said Bonnie. ‘It goes like that sometimes. My mother had a boyfriend who was married. She often said she liked the wife better than the man.’ She adopted an expression of wise tolerance for the foibles of humanity.
‘Hm,’ said Ben.
‘I think she just went because she lives so close by,’ said Simmy. ‘Or was that the other one?’ She tapped her head in an effort to shake the memories loose. ‘Yes, that was Cheryl, not June. You probably know them by sight. She said she knew everybody.’
Ben returned his attention to Bonnie, who was waiting for a response to her own remark. Her mother, as Simmy had gradually learnt, was irredeemably deplorable. Everything Simmy had heard about her only added to this conclusion. Only after considerable damage wrought on the child by the succession of boyfriends did the authorities remove her and put her under the infinitely preferable care of Corinne, at the age of nine. The foster mother had made this child a special project ever since.
‘Who else?’ Ben asked Simmy, who was finishing her bouquet with a fake satin ribbon.
‘I can’t think of any names. I said the Wethertons, didn’t I?’
‘No.’
‘Yes I did. The Cheryl woman is married to Malcolm Wetherton, who keeps coming in here. He’s some sort of antique dealer. He was at the auction with Hannah.’
‘And Cheryl?’
‘No. I haven’t seen her since the funeral.’
‘Hm,’ said Ben again.
‘There’s nothing happening, is there?’ Bonnie complained. ‘We’re just carrying on as usual, and nobody bothers with us. There’s absolutely nothing happening.’
‘So we make something happen,’ said Ben calmly. ‘Once we work out who the killer is, we flush them out.’ He closed one eye in profound thought. ‘I think it was most likely a woman,’ he said. ‘One of the daughters. Or that June woman. What’s she like?’
‘I only saw her for a few minutes, and she barely spoke to me. Didn’t seem very friendly. Early forties, big brown eyes, lots of make-up. That’s all I remember.’
‘You think it’s a woman because the murder weapon was a pair of scissors,’ she accused him. ‘From what I heard, it seems terribly violent for a woman to have done it. And Kit was pretty robust. He’d have fought her off.’
‘Enraged women can be just as savage as men.’
‘Scissors?’ murmured Bonnie. ‘Is that what it was?’
Ben sighed and threw an exasperated look at Simmy. ‘I was hoping she didn’t have to hear the details,’ he said.
‘Gosh – sorry. I assumed you’d have talked it through with her minutely by now. Isn’t that what you usually do?’ Then she realised that in one previous case Bonnie had been centrally involved and Ben had not yet quite accepted that her subsequent recovery had been somewhat faster and more complete than his own had been. Not even Corinne seemed entirely sure that Bonnie had not suffered invisible harm from the events in Hawkshead. Everyone had rallied around Ben, perhaps overlooking the needs of his girlfriend.
‘I’m not sure I’m happy with the idea of making something happen,’ Simmy demurred. ‘What if you’ve got the wrong person?’
‘I haven’t got anybody yet. It could be a person we haven’t met or even heard of.’ Again he chewed the pencil. ‘But I don’t think that’s very likely. There’s a strong feeling of claustrophobia about all this. The family are all still close by, still seeing each other all the time. Even Christopher came back after roaming round the world. They’re all interdependent, it seems to me. Not like my family,’ he added with a smile that implied he thought this a much healthier way of being.
‘I never thought of them as being like that,’ said Simmy slowly. ‘But it is a bit unusual these days, I suppose – having them all within reach.’ Insistent images filled her mind of a future spent surrounded by Hendersons, if she and Chris ever got together permanently. Would it be like one long seaside holiday, all the year round, for decades?
‘They’re sucking you in as well,’ said Ben, with an acute look. ‘So – let me ask you this: if it had to be one of them who killed their father, which would you opt for?’
‘I’m not answering that,’ she returned indignantly. ‘It’s unfair and totally unscientific. What happened to forensic rigour and following the facts?’
‘You can prove anything with facts,’ said Bonnie, with a laugh. ‘Isn’t that what people say?’
‘Only stupid people,’ snapped Ben. ‘Without facts, everything collapses.’
‘So don’t ask me daft questions like that,’ said Simmy. But already the answer had come clearly to mind, slightly surprising her. Eddie – that’s the one she would choose. Eddie Henderson, who came and went even less predictably than his brother George. Eddie, the middle son, watchful and self-effacing. Eddie, she felt, was capable of almost anything.
‘You’re thinking it has to be George,’ Ben accused her. ‘I can see it on your face.’
‘Well, you see wrong,’ she flashed back, realising too late that she’d been trapped. ‘George isn’t subtle or clever enough to get away with killing anybody. He’d just stand there with the weapon in his hand until somebody found him. He’d confess the whole thing and fall back on his religion to save him.’
‘Aha! So it’s the other one – what’s his name? Eddie. Not one of the girls, then?’
‘Shut up. You’re not being fair. I don’t want it to be any of them. I’m perfectly sure it wasn’t any of them, in fact.’
‘In fact,’ Bonnie repeated, with a mulish glance at Ben. His sharp response to her contribution had been wounding, but she wasn’t cowed by it. ‘Is she allowed to use the word like that?’
Ben leant towards her and took her hand. ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t think you’re stupid.’
‘Accepted,’ she replied, with a little bow. ‘Now, how are we going to make something happen? I like the idea of that.’ She wrinkled her whole face. ‘But what can we do?’
‘Think it through. Set people against each other. You saw what I did just now with Simmy – making her reveal what she thought, even when she didn’t want to. That’s the sort of thing I have in mind.’
‘Okaaay,’ said Bonnie slowly. ‘I’m sure you can manage that.’ Her loyalty was unalloyed, and Ben preened under it.
‘You’re not going after Eddie, are you?’ Simmy worried. ‘He’s probably perfectly innocent.’