The Ambleside Alibi: 2

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Nurse!’ she called, her voice thin and breathless, as she fumbled blindly for the alarm. People were passing in the corridor outside, but none of them glanced in through the glass panel in the door.

  ‘Maisie?’ came the quavering tones of the old woman on the other side of the room. ‘Is that you?’ She reared up suddenly, her eyes sharply focused on Simmy for the first time.

  ‘No!’ croaked Simmy. ‘For God’s sake.’

  At last she got hold of the button and pushed down with her thumb. As far as she could tell, nothing happened. But two long minutes later, during which she shook so much that the book fell on the floor, a nurse came into the room. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘Something’s wrong with me. Look!’ She held out her quivering hands. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  The nurse approached, and gave her a close appraisal, feeling her brow and clucking like a soothing mother hen. ‘Shock,’ she diagnosed. ‘Delayed shock.’

  ‘What?’ Delayed seemed like a major understatement.

  ‘It does this. Sometimes it’s a week or more after the original injury. We’ve kept you busy with other things, plus the medication. Now it’s catching up with you. We’ll just pop you back into bed and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you sh-sh-sure?’ Her chattering teeth made speech difficult. ‘I feel s-s-sick.’

  ‘We’ll give you a quick once-over to make sure there’s nothing else, but I’m pretty sure, yes.’ She attached the blood pressure monitor, fixing her gaze on the screen behind Simmy’s head for a few moments. ‘Yes, that’s all good. No internal bleeding. It’s your system finally realising something big happened to you. It’ll all be over soon, you’ll see.’

  She summoned assistance to get Simmy back into bed, her sore pelvis and ribs making their presence felt in the process. ‘It’s worse for victims,’ said the second nurse, who was older than most of the others. ‘The sense of vulnerability throws you all out of balance. Changes the way you see the world.’ Her colleague gave her a startled look at this non-medical observation.

  Before she knew it, Simmy was weeping. Warm tears gushed from her eyes and down her cheeks. Her nose was running. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said the younger nurse, more amused than annoyed. She plucked a bunch of tissues from a bedside box and helped mop up the flow.

  ‘Best thing,’ said the philosopher. ‘Very therapeutic.’

  Simmy felt herself adrift on a dark sea of helplessness and humiliation. She was pathetic, useless. What would her mother say if she could see her? She took the tissues and blew her nose. ‘Sorry,’ she said wetly.

  ‘That’s better. You should try to talk to someone about it, before long. Get it into perspective. And not that scruffy detective bloke. He’s only going to make it worse.’

  That wasn’t fair, Simmy thought. He’d had her best interests in mind. He’d been worried about her. He’d sent a minion to guard her, hadn’t he? ‘He’s quite kind, really,’ she protested.

  ‘Everybody’s talking about you,’ said the younger one, recklessly. ‘How you were nearly murdered. There’s no sign of them catching the swine who did it, either.’

  ‘Hush, Maxwell,’ chided her colleague. ‘That’s not going to help, is it?’

  ‘I expect they will,’ said Simmy, noticing that her shaking had abated. ‘They’re trying hard.’

  ‘He certainly comes to see you often enough. Every day, isn’t it?’

  Simmy couldn’t remember. It had not crossed her mind to wonder how the hospital staff regarded her, except to assume she was a nuisance, with her police guard and regular visits from a senior detective. Were they gossiping and speculating about all her visitors? Was there an amateur detective in their midst who was trying to make sense of it all?

  ‘I don’t think it was being attacked that set me off,’ she said slowly, ignoring the immediate question. ‘It was something else.’ She looked around the ward with its crisp lines and clean floor. There were no patterns, no focal points – just a jumble of pastel colours and artificial lights. Her eye fell on the chair she had been sitting in. ‘The chair!’

  The memory returned, complete in every detail. She had waited in just such a chair for Tony to come and collect her after she had delivered the stillborn baby Edith. She had felt its yielding seat as she shifted her sore posterior. Then, as now, there had been padding around a bruised pelvic area, making it difficult to sit comfortably, delicate skin chafed and raw. Tony had promised to be there by five o’clock – ten hours after the baby had been born. He was late, and she waited, numb, hollow, content for him never to appear, if that’s the way it was going to be. Life had seemed arbitrary, pointless and entirely conditional. She had not wanted to live without a baby. A husband was neither here nor there, utterly irrelevant.

  Her brain had seized up then, as now. People had pushed and pulled her, faces had loomed smilingly at her, giving inane reassurances that were patently unreliable.

  ‘It was the chair,’ she said again. ‘It brought back memories.’

  ‘O-o-kay,’ said the older nurse, doubtfully. ‘That can happen. But you’re all right again now, very nearly. If it happens again, you’ll know what it is. You’ll know not to panic.’

  That sounded unduly optimistic to Simmy. If it was as easy as that, there wouldn’t be ex-soldiers cringing in terror every time a car backfired. Her own trauma and loss seemed as bad to her, at that moment, as the experiences of a man on a battlefield must be to him.

  ‘My baby died,’ she said starkly.

  Both women looked at her with wide eyes. Neither said a word, but a glance was exchanged. Something accusing, with a dash of defiance. A Well, you can’t expect us to have known that sort of message passed silently between them. They were not good at death, Simmy understood. Who was, when it came right down to it?

  Somehow the morning struggled on, and the lunch, when it came, was good. Breast of chicken in a bold sauce that did not skimp on the garlic. Sautéed potatoes and cauliflower came with it. Simmy made a clean plate, and tried to persuade herself that she was all right. How could she not be, if she could eat with such healthy appetite? In the bathroom, she manoeuvred unaided on and off the lavatory, and then undressed far enough to inspect her wounds.

  Her bruises had faded even more, to bluish-grey in most places. The flesh was painful when pressed, and the prospect of wearing a bra made her wince, but she could see a possibility of a return to her former shape and colour. Painful breasts, too, were a reminder of the loss of little Edith, she suddenly remembered. Somehow, nobody had thought to give her the pills that dried up breast milk, so she became engorged and hot in that first day or two. It had been one of the most cruel aspects of an unbearable time. She had entertained mad ideas of offering herself to someone else’s baby – even a puppy or kitten might succeed in alleviating the agony. Tony had laughed at this, before informing her that, in earlier times, precisely that had been tried as a remedy for the problem. Tony had a liking for odd facts of history, whether or not they held any relevance for modern times.

  It had been the laughter that sliced through her, making her hate him for a few seconds, before she reminded herself that he had every right to laugh if he felt like it. At least nobody was laughing at her now, she thought, returning to the present. Nobody thought it funny that she’d been thrown into a freezing beck and battered half to death on the rocks a few inches beneath the hostile water.

  And so she began again on the familiar round of questions. There had to be an answer hiding somewhere – some suspicion that if grabbed and articulated would incriminate the killer of Nancy Clark. She, Simmy, must know something without realising she knew it. She must have heard or seen some snippet of evidence, which somebody could not afford to let her pass on. And it could only have to do with Mrs Joseph’s flowers, or the people in the café, or the car on the ice in Troutbeck. And all those instances included one person, and only one: the girl who called herself Candida Hawkins.

  She thought again of
Melanie, who was much the same age as the suspicious individual, and who might have insights into her character. She would be more likely to spot signs of dishonesty and subterfuge, knowing the sort of language to employ and the minutiae of daily experience. Or would she? Melanie had a streetwise manner, but had seldom been beyond the borders of Cumbria. If Candida really did live in Liverpool, she would be far more sophisticated, with a very different set of skills and assumptions. She, Simmy, was probably being deplorably ageist, just to think there might be invisible similarities.

  A nurse came in quickly, distractedly, holding a clipboard. ‘It’s started!’ she announced. ‘Hours before they said it would.’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘The snow. We’ll have to try and contact your people and get them to come for you. We’ve got staff who live up on the fells – they’ll be wanting to go home early.’ She was frowning, doing mental calculations, eyeing the still-empty bed in the ward.

  ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Not really, but we’ve got a system, based on where people live. Quite a few stay in Barrow overnight, instead of going home.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Not much so far. It’s supposed to really get going this evening.’

  ‘Phone them, then. They won’t want to be out in the dark if there’s a blizzard.’

  ‘It won’t be dark for a while yet. And nobody said anything about a blizzard. It’s not windy. But yes, I will. Remind me where they live.’

  ‘Windermere. Forty minutes away, at least.’

  The woman made a mark on her clipboard and went away. Simmy carefully pulled herself into a sitting position, mindful of the anguish this had caused a few days before. Now it was almost easy. She almost felt a fraud. Had her bones knitted together already? Had they ever been actually broken – or just cracked? Her crutches were tucked out of sight somewhere, rendering her helplessly stranded. She would presumably have to get dressed, in order to go out into a sub-zero world, in a car that might end up in a snowdrift. It seemed criminally reckless to eject her from the nice warm hospital. She realised that she really didn’t want to go. Perhaps if she claimed a violent headache, or acute nausea, or a new pain in her ribs or back, they would relent and let her stay.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was half past two when her father came in, jangling his car keys on the monstrous key ring in the shape of Mickey Mouse that he hoped would ensure he could always find them. It didn’t work, because it was uncomfortably large for a pocket, and so got plonked on any convenient surface, which might be hard to locate again.

  ‘Taxi, madam?’ he said. ‘If you’re ready.’

  She was not wearing outdoor clothes, but the fleecy pyjamas her mother had brought in on Monday. They had been too warm for the hospital temperatures, but now they seemed the only option. Her father was holding a large carrier bag, which he opened. ‘Dressing gown,’ he announced. ‘As good as any coat.’

  She tried not to visualise the figure she would cut, struggling across the car park on crutches, wearing a long red garment that would come close to dragging on the ground. The hospital people had produced her boots, that she had been wearing on Sunday, and which had remained on her feet until she was fished from the ghyll. They had been soaked inside, but somebody had dried them out for her. They looked alien and misshapen and she had no wish to pull them on.

  ‘We’ll take you in a wheelchair,’ said one of the nurses, and a young man appeared with the empty chair. ‘You remember what we taught you about getting in and out of a car?’

  She was handed a bag containing her original clothes, which had not been treated as kindly as had her boots. They were damp and dirty. The jeans had been cut apart to get at her damaged body quickly. She missed her bag with a sudden violence. Without it, she was less than human – a bruised body adrift in a snowy world, with nothing to show for her existence.

  Outside, there was a thin white frosting on many surfaces, and the daylight was a threatening grey murk. The long sweep of grassy bank below the hospital was already a uniform white. ‘Shortest day on Monday,’ said her father, looking at the sky. ‘The roads are all right so far. It’s not freezing. We’ll be back before four and can batten down the hatches then.’

  His calm was deceptive, she could tell. He was struggling to accomplish his task without mishap, his head full of instructions.

  ‘Sorry about this, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m more of a handful than the cat, aren’t I?’

  ‘At least I’ve had some practice,’ he quipped. ‘It’ll be all right. You’re well on the mend – I can tell.’

  They got her into the car and he reversed delicately out of the parking space. ‘You could have left it closer,’ she observed. ‘Look – there’s a place over there for picking people up.’

  ‘So there is. I never noticed that.’

  The roads were uncomfortably thronged with traffic, all trying to beat the onset of serious snow. There were large lorries, vans, family cars and the occasional minibus. Russell kept a careful distance from the vehicles ahead, and tried to maintain a confident tone, as he gave his habitual running commentary on the places they were passing. He had a Fleetwood Mac CD playing. It was an album from 1974, which Russell always said had been his favourite year of all years for music. Alan Price, the Scaffold, Eric Clapton, Roberta Flack – they were all household names for the Straws. Stuck in a forty-year time warp, Russell played their music to destruction, and then replaced the worn-out discs with the newest format, his car always loud with nostalgia. As they passed the sign to Bouth, he gave a happy cry. ‘This is where Christine McVie grew up,’ he yodelled. ‘I wanted to live there for years, so I could be close to her in spirit.’

  ‘But Mum wouldn’t let you,’ Simmy recited. She had heard the story many times, and even gone with him on a little pilgrimage, that summer. Bouth was less than ten miles from Windermere. Up to their left the ground rose gently to the Furness Fells. Another small road was signed to Rusland – where Mrs Kitchener had been buried.

  ‘Newby Bridge in a minute,’ said her father. ‘We’ve almost done it.’

  The scenery was magical, an image from a Christmas card. Snow fell in light dancing flakes that had covered the hedges with half an inch of white blanket. Shapes were blurring, landmarks disappearing. ‘I bet it’s bad in Troutbeck,’ said Simmy with a sigh.

  ‘Lucky you’re not up there, then. They say it’ll be three or four inches by morning.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound much.’

  ‘It doesn’t, does it,’ he agreed heartily. ‘The first winter we were here, it was fifteen inches in some places. Kentmere was completely cut off, I remember.’

  ‘I suppose they coped.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I think they rather enjoyed it. Lots of people like snow.’

  ‘I wish I did.’ It was true. What sense was there in moving to the snowy north, otherwise? ‘I think I just sort of forgot about it. I don’t remember much snow when I was little. It always seemed to happen somewhere else.’

  The Straws had lived in Staffordshire for Simmy’s first ten years, then Gloucestershire. She remembered the winters as being almost balmy compared to those of recent years. Something had obviously changed, and she was still trying to keep up with it.

  ‘It’s very character-forming,’ Russell said, not for the first time. ‘Pulls you back to the basics, teaches you the value of things. Besides, Windermere’s going to be all right, whatever happens. The lake keeps things from getting too bad – especially this early in the winter.’

  Simmy felt her character had taken more than enough moulding in the past week, and that snow could hardly effect any further battering. An image appeared of Ninian Tripp working with his clay, making shapes out of random lumps, like God making Adam. Was her character like that – waiting to be formed by a cosmic hand? Was there some inscrutable Plan at work somewhere? She hoped not – that would only increase her sense of victimhood.

  ‘Is anything hurting?’ Russell asked,
hearing her sigh.

  ‘Not really. Just an ache, all around here.’ She indicated her hips and front pelvic bone. ‘It’s not very bad.’

  ‘Fifteen more minutes at most,’ he promised. ‘We’ve made good time.’

  Simmy was taken back to the hurried trip she had made down to Newby Bridge on Friday, before any snow had fallen, before she had been violently attacked, when the world had been a lot more dependable. It was an unremarkable little road, at the less scenic southern end of Lake Windermere. The water was visible, where it was hardly wider than a large river, with the tree-lined slopes on the further side of the lake now a pattern of black and white, light and shade. The surface was dark grey, absorbing the falling snow as if nothing were happening. As always, its presence seemed unreal to Simmy – the great body of water quietly lying there, watching the goings-on of the land creatures on its eastern flank. It was as if some other realm had been superimposed on the fells and ghylls, filling the crevices between them with a whole new element. Simmy was no swimmer and boats made her nervous. She saw very little connection between herself and the lake, other than an aesthetic one. She loved to pause and look at it, marvelling at the reflections and shifting colours. But with every passing week, it was creeping a little further beneath her skin, and now she felt a lift of her spirits at the sight of it. Lake Windermere was home, now; perhaps the only home she would know for the rest of her life.

  The snowfall seemed lighter by the time they reached Bowness, with almost none sticking to the pavements and buildings. Lake Road, with the woods to the west, and the handsome Victorian villas set back from the road, was much as usual. But it was almost dark, and Simmy was tired and relieved to reach sanctuary. Just so long as her father managed to get the car in through the gate and safely parked close to the house, she didn’t care what the weather might do. She would stay indoors for a week and let everything just wash over her.