by Rebecca Tope
‘It all sounds a bit unlikely,’ sighed Simmy. ‘None of it’s bad enough to justify murder.’
‘We’ll have to be clever, if we’re to get Moxon the evidence he needs,’ said Ben. ‘It’s no good just talking about it – we need to take some action.’
Simmy had been content to go along with the theory that someone other than any of Kit’s offspring had killed him. More than content – it came as a great relief. But she could not entirely dismiss the anger in Hannah’s eyes, or the volatile behaviour of both George and Eddie.
‘What do you suggest?’ she asked, worriedly.
‘First we find their addresses, or phone numbers. Then … I don’t know … pretend to be writing a piece about exploitative relationships with older men. Invite them to disclose any experiences they might have had.’ He rubbed his nose doubtfully. ‘That sort of thing.’
‘It’d be awfully time-consuming,’ said Bonnie. ‘And surely they’d never fall for it.’
‘The only one of us who could come close to being a journalist or social worker or whatever is me,’ said Simmy. ‘And I flatly refuse to do it.’
‘Okay. I’ll keep thinking.’ Ben looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go now. Two essays to get background material for, and a lot more besides. The truth is, I don’t have much time for this sort of thing at the moment. I’m not going to have, either, until next June.’
‘So let Moxon do it,’ said Simmy. ‘Nobody expects you to solve all his murders for him.’
‘But I want to,’ he wailed childishly.
‘I know you do—’
‘But we can’t always have what we want, can we?’ Bonnie interrupted. ‘Don’t be such a baby. Once you get these exams all passed, you’ll be solving murders every day of the week.’
He grinned and threw an arm around her shoulders.
It was half past three when Angie Straw charged into the shop like a bull. Simmy actually trembled for her china – the nice pots made by Ninian Tripp that sat around the floor with flowers in them.
‘What have you been telling that detective?’ she demanded. ‘He’s been wasting my time for almost an hour with a lot of nonsense about women with names like trees. Rowan! I ask you. What sort of idiot calls their child Rowan? It’s the tree that witches gathered around, or something.’
‘It wards against witches, actually,’ said Bonnie, who was standing as tall as she could against the sudden onslaught. While directed largely at Simmy, it definitely included her as well. ‘I’ve got a stepbrother called Rowan.’
‘Don’t tell me – he was born a girl, and kept the same name.’ Angie was in full spate, randomly offending anybody who crossed her path.
‘No. He was always a boy,’ said Bonnie, mildly enough to cause the irate woman to falter. ‘He’s the son of my father’s second long-term partner. I’ve only met him twice.’
Simmy was merely waiting out the storm. While doing so, she had time to grasp that Moxon had arrived at the identical conclusion as she, Ben and Bonnie had done. The list in the dead man’s hand was a tricksy way of referring to women from his past. Why her mother took such exception to this remained unclear.
Finally, it felt safe to ask, ‘Why did that make you so cross?’
‘Because it makes Fran look so bad, obviously. Not only was she a humiliated wife, putting up with all his peccadilloes, but now they think she arranged his death somehow.’
‘What? Where did that come from?’
Angie shook her head impatiently. ‘That was the clear implication of his questions.’
‘So what did you tell him?’
‘That all I knew was that Fran sometimes had cause to complain about her husband’s flirtations with younger women. It was all in the past – nothing for at least eight or ten years, as far as I knew. It was nonsense to think there was any sort of convoluted conspiracy to kill him after she’d died. In fact, the idea is disgusting.’
‘Are you sure that’s what he was thinking? Wasn’t he just trying to get the facts clear in his mind?’
‘Oh, you would defend him. You’re much too fond of your pet policeman.’
‘Shut up, Mother. He’s married, for a start. And I’ve never—you know I haven’t.’
‘So, who is Rowan?’ asked Bonnie. ‘Somebody’s child?’
Angie looked oddly cornered. ‘Actually, he’s the son of that June woman, whatever her name is.’
‘How do you know that?’ Simmy demanded.
‘Because there was a fuss when he was born. Fran got a letter. It was all very unpleasant for a while.’
Simmy just stared at her mother’s face, projecting her own sudden suspicions and insights onto it, while knowing that there was a mirroring understanding in the older woman’s eyes.
‘Do you know where they live?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly.’
‘You can ask Christopher what the surname is, Sim,’ said Bonnie. ‘Then we can easily find the address.’
‘Even easier, I can let the police do it for themselves. I assume you’ve told them all this already? They’ll have found her by now. We don’t have to do anything.’
‘What about the others – Cheryl and Hazel?’
‘I told him all I knew about them too.’
Simmy remembered Moxon’s account of how the police had interviewed all five Henderson siblings at the same time, using a team of junior officers. A somewhat larger team than she had thought they had access to, in this quiet and law-abiding part of England. They could be doing the same thing again, with the women so helpfully identified by Angie Straw.
But she thought probably not. There could be little point, surely, unless Moxon suspected them of working together, and thus capable of alerting each other to police interest. That could happen, she supposed. She wished Ben hadn’t gone home; his quick-thinking and lateral approaches could be helpful now.
And then she asked herself – why should she care, anyhow? What was it to her? The answer hit her in the midriff, making her feel stupid and strangely treacherous. She had a new lover, and both his parents had just died. His troubles were her troubles, and she had no choice but to do all she could to assuage them.
‘They all came to the funeral,’ she said. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Your detective asked that as well,’ said Angie. ‘I don’t think he found my answer very enlightening.’
‘Why – what did you say?’
‘I said there was such a thing as female solidarity, and they probably all had a degree of respect for Fran. Possibly even sympathy, if they’d come to see Kit as he really was. When my mother was in her thirties and forties, men behaved like Kit did as a matter of course. They had other women. They ran off leaving their wives destitute. They just did as they bloody well liked. And some – like Kit – didn’t catch on to the fact that times had changed. Women in my generation were not going to stand for it. Some of them still think they can get away with it, of course. Some of them always will.’
‘And Kit did get away with it, didn’t he? Fran stuck with him.’
‘He stuck with her, more like. He let them all down – girlfriends and wife. And the kid.’
‘What kid?’
‘The one called Rowan. His mother swore blind he was Kit’s, you see. That was what caused so much trouble.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was all rather banal, Simmy thought frustratedly, as her mother filled in a few more details. A story one heard over and over – the humiliated wife, remorseful husband, confused offspring and sympathetic friends offering a range of conflicting advice.
‘Fran ended up just trying not to think about it, but I don’t believe she ever forgave him,’ Angie concluded.
‘Is any of this enough to explain Kit being murdered?’ Simmy wondered.
Angie merely shrugged. Bonnie, who had been openly listening to the whole conversation, said meekly, ‘People can get themselves very worked up. If they’d been planning it for a long time, they might just, sort
of, pass a point of no return. Don’t you think?’
‘I can’t imagine it at all,’ Simmy admitted.
‘I can, just about,’ said Angie. ‘Rather as Bonnie says – it would be like losing face, not to do it after promising yourself you would.’
‘Are we saying it was June, then?’ Simmy finally asked. ‘How old is this Rowan now?’
‘Oh – must be at least sixteen. It was ages ago now.’
‘And where is he? Does he know the story? Who does he think is his father?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. Fran hadn’t mentioned him for years. He could have gone to Australia, for all I know.’
‘More likely he’s still living with his mother and doing his GCSEs,’ said Bonnie. ‘Somewhere not a hundred miles from here.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Angie nodded.
‘Well – are we going to do something about it?’ Bonnie was jigging on the spot. ‘At least we can call Ben and bring him up to date. He’ll be furious if we don’t.’
‘The Wethertons live in Bowness,’ Simmy said. ‘I remember her saying at the funeral.’
‘So what?’ Angie said.
‘Well, we’re focusing so much on June, we’re forgetting the others, especially Cheryl. And whoever Hazel Jewel might be. I’m sure we’ve got the answer, and that makes me feel so useless hanging around here, when we haven’t even got any customers. The Hendersons were our friends, don’t forget. For all those years – you and Fran telling each other everything, and now there’s me and Christopher …’
‘Ah! Yes. I was meaning to ask you about that. Russell told me how you were making cow eyes at him on Saturday.’
‘I was not making cow eyes, whatever that might mean. He ignored me completely. And I was watching Hannah half the time, anyway.’ She paused. ‘I wonder why she was with Malcolm Wetherton. I never really believed what she told me. And her husband obviously didn’t know about it until I mentioned it this morning.’
Bonnie spoke up again. ‘We’re missing something, aren’t we? We’ve got all the pieces, but we’re not putting them together right. Oh, I really must call Ben.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Simmy ordered. ‘Let’s just concentrate for a bit, first. Mum – this has to be about their marriage – Fran and Kit’s – and something he did that was bad enough to make someone kill him. Moxon thinks Fran sent that list to someone, as an incitement to murder. Which makes her guilty, in a way. And what about that book she left me? Does that have something to do with it?’
‘Please stop talking,’ begged Bonnie. ‘There’s a little voice in my head, trying to tell me something, and you’re drowning it out.’
Mother and daughter stared at her, half offended, half intrigued. After a long silence, Bonnie began to speak. ‘They all had possible reasons for wanting to kill him. He betrayed everybody, didn’t he? Even the men who married those girls later on.’
‘What? Which girls?’ asked Simmy.
‘June. Cherry – the girls he probably seduced and exploited when they were too young to know what to do about it. Then if he dumped them, they were probably scared to start again with men their own age. Not exactly damaged goods like in the olden days, but a bit like that. Ashamed, maybe, or even still in love with him. And maybe when Fran died, years before anybody thought she would, leaving him available, they’d either be afraid he’d start on them again, or furious because he didn’t. Am I making sense?’ she finished humbly. ‘I’m just doing what Ben says we should – putting myself in everybody’s shoes.’
‘Sounds fine to me, so far,’ said Angie, with the same sort of expression that Moxon adopted when facing Ben Harkness.
‘Then there’s his daughters. They’re both adopted – right? So they already feel just a bit funny about him, possibly. I’m not saying that’s a thing, in general, but with these two it might be. If they see him carrying on with women who aren’t terribly much older than them, they’ll be forced to think of him as a man, as well as a father – if you see what I mean. And Simmy says he was always flirting, everywhere he went. That’s embarrassing for daughters – maybe worse than embarrassing. Unsettling. And then they’d see what it did to their mother, and it would all get rather sick and cause all kinds of emotional problems. Don’t you think?’
‘I think you’re being fantastically clever,’ said Simmy. ‘It was like that. I remember now, even though I’d pushed it all out of my mind. You must have it all much clearer in your mind than I have, Mum. I just focused on Christopher and ignored everything else that was going on. But I remember how miserable Fran was sometimes, and how Kit was always trying so hard to be funny, and nobody ever laughing.’
‘Lynn laughed,’ said Angie. ‘She always laughed at his awful jokes. Russell used to say she must be simple, to find such things amusing. Of course, Russell was miffed because she didn’t understand his sort of humour.’
‘Poor old Dad,’ smiled Simmy. ‘With his complicated puns. I don’t think any of the Hendersons ever understood when he was trying to be funny.’
‘So that leaves the three sons,’ went on Bonnie, throwing a cautious look at Simmy. ‘George was always fighting with Hannah, right? What about the others?’
‘What about them?’ asked Simmy.
‘How were they towards their dad?’
‘Eddie hated him and Christopher despised him,’ said Angie, almost without thinking. ‘Fran used to agonise about it, blaming herself.’ She sighed. ‘God, what a can of worms we’ve opened here. All those myths about blissful family holidays by the sea, and really it was all pretty grim. I can’t think why we ever agreed to go along with it.’
‘The triumph of hope over experience,’ said Bonnie. ‘Ben taught me that one. Dr Johnson said it about marriage. It applies to other things as well.’
‘It’s not really true, though. We just got into the habit, and I did like having so much time with Fran,’ said Angie. ‘Plus we thought it would be good for P’simmon to see how big families behaved. We felt guilty at not giving her any brothers or sisters, so that was our way of compensating. And Christopher was always so good with you,’ she addressed her daughter. ‘It seemed unkind to deprive you of that friendship.’
‘Eddie hated him and Christopher despised him,’ Bonnie repeated. ‘What about George?’
‘George just wished he would go away. I sometimes imagined he kept a voodoo doll to represent Kit, and spent all his time sticking pins in it.’ She gave the girl a straight look. ‘Not one of them would harbour such bad feeling for so many years before killing him,’ she said firmly.
‘They might, once their mother was dead,’ said Bonnie, every bit as firmly.
‘Not Christopher,’ said Simmy, rather faintly. ‘Absolutely not him.’
‘It must have been Hannah, if it was any of them. But why should it be? What are we thinking?’
‘The other thing to consider is whether there was more than one person involved,’ went on Bonnie relentlessly. ‘They could have fired each other up, kept each other on the mark. It must be easier then.’
‘Hannah and Lynn?’ said Angie. ‘Could be.’
‘Cherry and June? Cherry, June and Hazel? Isn’t that where we started?’ Simmy shook her head. ‘I can’t even remember all the theories we’ve gone through in the past twenty minutes. We’ve slandered just about everybody we know.’
Another silence saw them all stymied for further action. ‘I have to get the flowers ready for Newby Bridge tomorrow,’ said Simmy. ‘And the other local ones. I’ll be here until six at this rate.’
‘I should go,’ said Angie, with an alarmed look at her watch.
‘Bonnie – you can go if you like. I’ll close up a bit early and crack on with those orders. Let’s leave it all for now, and have a fresh look at it all tomorrow.’
Angie passed a hand over her brow, and Simmy realised how exhausted she was looking. ‘Mum – go home. Put your feet up for a bit before supper. Or get Dad to cook it for a change. You’ve been doing too much.�
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‘I’ll call Ben, and tell him what we’ve been saying,’ said Bonnie.
‘Fine – but do it when you get home. I just want a bit of peace and quiet for an hour.’
‘If you ask me, the police will have everything done and dusted by bedtime,’ said Angie. ‘We’ve just been guessing, while they’re out there in the real world, doing their job.’
‘Probably,’ said Simmy.
At last she was left alone. She locked the door behind them, and then she determinedly fetched the stepladder that she kept folded up in the cool room, and climbed up to see to the croaky doorbell. As suspected, it had a disagreeable collection of cobwebs, dead flies, dust and even a few feathers all wrapped around the pinger that was meant to strike the small metal bell. It took seconds to remove, leaving open space between the two parts. She climbed down, unlocked and opened the door experimentally. The bell chimed loud and clear, a sweet note of optimism and promise.
‘There,’ she muttered. ‘That should bring some customers in.’
Outside it was dark but clear, with street lamps casting warm yellow beams along the main street, turning Windermere into a Dickensian scene of quiet shops and stray passers-by. Simmy wished Christopher could be by her side, looking out on it all.
But before that, she intended to have a gift for him; a gift that might possibly be ready within the next hour or so. At some point in the talking and surmising that had just taken place, she had seen the truth. Or so she hoped. She would walk down to Bowness, and find out for herself if she was right. But first, being of a risk-averse disposition, she sent a text to Ben telling him where she would be. Then she sent another to Christopher, asking him to call her at eight o’clock that evening. After that, she turned her phone off.
The walk down the hill into Bowness took roughly ten minutes. She did not hurry – the time was well spent in preparing what she would say.
But the plan went wrong almost from the start. Just as she was passing the Baddeley clock tower, which marked the line between Windermere and Bowness, she encountered the very person she had set out to find. It was too much of a miraculous coincidence to be credible, especially when the woman said, ‘I was just coming to find you.’