The Patterdale Plot

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Where is he? This is Detective Sergeant Emily Gibson, by the way. Mrs Brown, daughter of the homeowners,’ he completed the introductions.

  ‘Upstairs. On the landing,’ she told Detective Inspector Nolan Moxon.

  The next thing she knew, it was half past three. She had phoned Christopher with the news that a man had died in Beck View and there was a crowd of police people in the house. The plan to spend the early evening in Patterdale, visiting the bar of the hotel to check, for the fifth time, whether anyone knew of property coming onto the market, was postponed. ‘I don’t know when I’ll get away,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave Mum and Dad until things have settled down. The other guests will be back before long, wanting to know what’s been going on.’

  ‘Sounds like a nightmare,’ her fiancé sympathised. ‘Should I come and help?’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, but I don’t think Mum would welcome yet another person here. They haven’t even removed the body yet.’

  ‘Where is it exactly?’

  ‘On the landing, outside the back bedroom. They’ve got police people stripping the room and none of us is allowed up there. The real worry is what happens when the other guests come in. Nobody seems to know what we’re meant to do with them.’

  Christopher’s mind was evidently working well. ‘Will they be suspects, then, if it’s murder? Is it murder?’

  ‘Who knows? They’re taking it all very seriously, because my dad told them the man said he’d been poisoned, just before he died. So I assume they think it could be, or at least have to give it serious consideration. I don’t know why they don’t rush him to a pathology lab somewhere and do a post-mortem to see what killed him.’

  ‘What about his family?’

  ‘Mum’s got an address for him, so the police will send somebody there and see if there’s a wife or something – I suppose.’ Then there were new voices in the hall, and she finished the call, promising to let Christopher know as soon as she felt able to leave.

  At four o’clock all the Straws were in the kitchen, as well as their dog, drinking tea and listening to the many heavy footsteps above their heads. ‘I think I’m in shock,’ said Angie. ‘I’m going to put two sugars in this tea.’

  ‘You’ve been very calm so far,’ said Simmy. ‘We all have, really. I wonder what they’re thinking about us.’

  ‘Your Moxon man is a godsend. It’s so lucky he knows you. I’ve never met such a nice policeman. I remember in the seventies …’

  ‘Yes, Mum, all right. Don’t get started on police brutality now. He might hear you.’

  Angie drank her sweet tea with uncharacteristic meekness. Russell was restless, shifting in his chair and irritating the dog. ‘We must be suspects,’ he said. ‘At best, they’ll think we fed him rancid sausages.’

  ‘He hasn’t eaten anything from this kitchen since he got here,’ Angie retorted. ‘So that’s not something we need to worry about.’

  ‘It could still easily be suicide,’ said Simmy. ‘In fact, that’s much more likely, it seems to me.’

  ‘We’ve been through all that,’ sighed Angie. ‘They obviously think the worst, or why are they bothering with all this forensic business?’

  ‘Because of what Dad told them he said.’ Simmy couldn’t quite refrain from throwing an accusing look at her father. It would all be so much easier if that detail had never been reported.

  ‘You’d rather a murderer got away with his crime, would you?’ Russell enquired, as if he really wanted to know her response. ‘I can see that might be tempting in the short run. But it won’t do, will it? You know it won’t.’

  Simmy sighed, knowing he was right.

  Two hours passed, during which the body of Mr Grant Childers of Halesowen near Birmingham was taken in a special vehicle to the mortuary at Barrow Hospital. DI Moxon spent twenty minutes explaining procedure to the Straws, showing them the G5 form that had to be filled in for a sudden death. He commiserated briefly and apologised for the disruption. The other guests would be permitted to continue with their existing plans, after being questioned. ‘Just their names and addresses, basically,’ he reassured Angie. ‘Until we know the precise cause of death, we won’t have much idea of what to ask them. As far as you’re aware, they didn’t know Mr Childers, I presume?’

  ‘I’m sure they didn’t,’ said Angie. ‘They were all here before he arrived.’

  ‘It still might have been suicide, don’t you think?’ Simmy asked.

  Moxon scratched his head. ‘The whole picture indicates otherwise, I’m afraid. Whatever he took caused considerable pain, which very few suicides would opt for. Then his cries for help – and even the timing doesn’t fit the usual pattern. He’d have known you were all downstairs enjoying a family Sunday. Only the most extraordinarily self-obsessed person would wilfully blight that by killing himself at that particular point in time.’

  ‘Aren’t all suicides self-obsessed?’ said Angie sourly.

  Nobody argued with her, but nor did they agree. Moxon met Simmy’s gaze, with the slightest eye roll to indicate he knew better than to engage with one of Angie’s many dogmatisms.

  Angie had been questioned more exhaustively than the others, concerning any food she might have carelessly provided the man. ‘Nothing at all,’ she insisted. ‘He arrived quite late on Friday and went straight to bed, as far as I could tell. No breakfast yesterday or today.’

  ‘But he could make a drink in his room?’

  ‘There’s a kettle and tea and coffee. But I give them proper milk in a jug, if they want it – and he didn’t ask for anything. The kettle was exactly as I left it, so I’m pretty sure he never even made a drink. He was out the whole of yesterday.’

  ‘It could have been an accident,’ Simmy went on, still clinging to the hope that this was not another murder. ‘Something he brought with him – berries or mushrooms, perhaps. It is the season for that sort of thing. Or he could easily have picked something up this morning, when he went out.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Moxon agreed, with hardly a hint of scepticism. ‘But if so, he ate every morsel, because there’s no sign of any food or drink in his room.’

  ‘So the same goes for if somebody gave him poison,’ Simmy pointed out. ‘He ate the whole thing, whatever it was, without leaving any evidence. Isn’t that terribly odd?’

  ‘It’s all terribly odd,’ said Moxon darkly. ‘If ever you wanted a mystery, this is it.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘And your young Ben Harkness is going to miss the whole thing.’

  Next morning, in the shop, Simmy had to break the news to Bonnie. ‘A man died at Beck View yesterday and it looks like murder,’ she began, without preamble. ‘And Ben’s not going to have any chance to play detective.’

  The girl stared at her. ‘At Beck View?’ she repeated. ‘How can that be? Who died? How? When?’

  Simmy gave as detailed a description as she could, knowing that anything she left out now would be held against her later. ‘I still think it could easily have been suicide or an accident,’ she concluded.

  ‘No.’ Bonnie shook her head decisively. ‘Not a chance. He’ll have been trying to hide from somebody who was out to get him, but they were too clever for him. Gave him a bottle of something laced with poison, or a doctored bar of chocolate, or …’

  ‘There’s no trace of anything like that in the room.’

  ‘Didn’t he go out at all?’

  ‘Well, yes. He was out all Saturday, as well as yesterday morning. Mum heard him come back while I was out with my dad walking the dog.’

  ‘There you are, then!’ Bonnie waved a triumphant hand. ‘That’s when it happened. He came home with stomach ache, lay down for a bit, then when it got bad he shouted for help. Simple.’

  Simmy had to admit that the hypothesis fitted the known facts with almost embarrassing tidiness. She was going on to enumerate her reasons for nonetheless continuing to doubt these conclusions, but Bonnie interrupted her.

  ‘It’ll be brilliant for you
r mum’s business,’ she enthused. ‘Everyone’s going to want to see the place where a murder happened.’

  Simmy gulped at this. ‘My dad thinks the exact opposite. He thinks it’ll finish them completely.’

  ‘He’s wrong,’ Bonnie assured her. ‘People are going to love it.’ Then she changed tack again. ‘So I’m guessing you didn’t get to Patterdale yesterday?’

  Simmy shook her head. ‘I didn’t leave Beck View till seven. I didn’t see Chris at all over the weekend. Saturday was an auction day and he was logging all the results yesterday. Josephine’s off sick.’

  ‘That’s not good.’ Bonnie’s mouth turned down. ‘But I know the feeling. I won’t see Ben for a month.’

  ‘We’re both abandoned by our menfolk. It was ever thus, as my dad would say.’

  ‘Yeah … well,’ said the girl vaguely. ‘First customer incoming, look.’ She nodded towards the street door, where a man was hovering on the pavement outside. ‘We haven’t got the pots out yet.’

  ‘Too much chatter. Is he anyone we know?’ Simmy was standing at an angle that made the man’s face hard to see.

  ‘Don’t think so.’ But then the door opened, and there was a clear view. Simmy recognised the man her father had addressed the previous day as Tristan.

  Chapter Four

  It could not be a coincidence. Hazy memories of protests over holiday chalets near Patterdale and local politics filled her head, along with her father’s acquaintance with this man. Wilkins was his surname, she remembered. And his first name carried implications of good breeding and horses, for some reason.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Didn’t I see you yesterday?’

  ‘You’re Russell Straw’s daughter, if I’m not mistaken. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I saw some of the commotion outside Beck View yesterday and thought I should check that all’s well. I know poor old Russ has had a few problems lately, so I didn’t like to intrude if there was anything … you know. And I’m not so well acquainted with your mother.’

  ‘Everything’s absolutely fine, thanks,’ she breezed, with unwarranted confidence.

  ‘Oh good. That’s good. So – what happened, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Simmy calculated that the story would be public knowledge before the end of the day, making it futile to try to keep it quiet. ‘Well, I suppose it’s all right to tell you that a man died in the house. One of the guests. It was very sudden.’

  ‘Good Lord! That must have been dreadfully shocking. Were you there at the time?’

  ‘I was, yes. But everything’s settled down now. These things happen, I suppose.’

  Bonnie made a small, sceptical throat-clearing noise behind her, but Simmy ignored it. The man seemed at a loss for more to say and began to look around the shop as if thinking of buying some flowers. Then another thought appeared to strike him and he started rummaging in a sort of satchel on his shoulder. ‘Here – I thought you might have a place I could put these, for your customers to pick up. I’m thinking they’ll mostly be residents, rather than visitors, and might be on our side.’ He produced a bundle of the leaflets he’d been distributing the previous day. ‘Would that be all right?’

  Simmy hesitated. She had been asked for similar favours before, as well as requests to stick posters in her window, and almost always declined on the grounds of limited space. But Patterdale was beginning to feel like home territory, a place that must not be despoiled or excessively invaded. ‘Well …’ she said, ‘I suppose we could stack them next to the till.’ She eyed the small table where all the shop business was conducted. Whatever happened to old-fashioned shop counters, she asked herself, with acres of space for putting things. Even before she had taken it over, when it had been an off-licence, there hadn’t been a full-sized counter.

  ‘What are they about?’ Bonnie enquired, peering at the top leaflet.

  ‘A plan to build a bunch of tourist chalets on the fell above Patterdale,’ said Simmy quickly, not wanting Tristan to embark on a long tirade. ‘My dad and I met him giving out leaflets in Bowness yesterday.’

  Bonnie gave this a moment’s thought. ‘Why in Bowness?’ she wondered. ‘I mean – we’re miles away from Patterdale.’

  ‘My dad and I wondered the same thing,’ said Simmy.

  ‘We explained,’ said Tristan irritably. ‘Bowness is the best spot for maximum publicity. And most visitors don’t stay in one spot. They explore the whole area, with Kirkstone and Ullswater high on their list. They want that whole northern section to be unspoilt. You locals might see it differently, but believe me, we know what we’re doing.’

  ‘Is that why you did it on a Sunday?’ asked Bonnie.

  ‘Right,’ he said shortly. ‘Lots of people about.’

  ‘Still seems pretty weird to me,’ said the girl, with little consideration for politeness. ‘They’ll never let anybody build something like this in Patterdale in a million years.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he told her, with a severe look. ‘They’ve done it in Hartsop, which is barely two miles away.’ Bonnie was eighteen, but looked a good three years younger. Her frizzy fair hair and elfin features gave her a cheeky expression, even when she was trying to be serious. The man continued to lecture her. ‘They’ve been clever about it. Everything’s eco-friendly, low-impact, and so forth. Tucked away out of sight, like in Hartsop.’

  ‘So why’s it such a terrible idea, then?’

  ‘Come along to our meeting on Thursday evening, and we’ll tell you.’

  ‘Why not tell me now?’

  He opened his mouth to reply, but Simmy got there first. ‘Bonnie, we haven’t got time to stand about arguing. Listen, Mr Wilkins, we’ll take a few of your leaflets, but I’m not going to push them at people. Bonnie’s right, in a way. We need to find out more about the plan before we reject it outright. I know my father isn’t sure it would be such a bad thing. I’m hoping to find somewhere to live in Patterdale myself, as it happens, so however this turns out, it might well affect me directly.’ She paused, then added, ‘I don’t suppose you know of anywhere that might be for sale up there, do you?’

  He gave a slow smile that made his broad face considerably more benign than when he was in hectoring mode. ‘You know – I just might. It’s not certain by a long way, but I do know somebody who might be able to help. I’d have to make a few enquiries first.’

  ‘Oh yes! Please do.’ Simmy’s excitement rose out of all proportion to the dubious offer. ‘That would be great.’ She gave him a card. ‘Let me know if anything comes of it – you can phone me, all my numbers are on there.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Bonnie demanded, the moment the man had gone.

  ‘According to my dad, he was a Lib Dem – on the council, I presume. And now he does some kind of environmental work. If I got it right. It didn’t sound as if Dad liked him much, although they did have a bit of a chat yesterday.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Bonnie. ‘Well, he’s certainly obsessing about this Patterdale thing.’ She picked up one of the leaflets. ‘I still think they’re overreacting. These things never get permission. And if it’s so eco-pure, then it might not matter anyway.’

  ‘He seemed quite interested in the man who died,’ Simmy mused.

  ‘Anybody would be. What was his name, by the way? The dead man, I mean.’

  ‘Childers. Grant Childers. From somewhere in the Midlands.’

  ‘What else do you know about him?’

  ‘Practically nothing. He looked about thirty-five, although I can’t say I got much sight of him. Stayed two nights, on his own, and was due to leave on Friday. He had a laptop with him and was out all day Saturday. And now I’ve told you all I know. Some of it twice, probably.’

  Bonnie was clearly frustrated, but the timely arrival of a genuine customer diverted her from any further speculations. Simmy left her assistant to deal with a complicated enquiry, and disappeared into the small room at the back of the shop, where she had tasks waiting. Fresh flowers were due that morning, to replace
the drooping blooms from the previous week. An online order meant she had to create a bouquet and deliver it that afternoon. The next day would see a funeral at the Windermere church, for which she had three wreaths to make, and at the end of the week there was a wedding in a hotel, requiring substantial floral decoration.

  Her thoughts revolved around poison and all the toxic plants she had learnt about on her floristry course. Many were not lethal, but would cause illness to some degree. If you excluded fungi, and those plants that required complex processes to extract the poison, it mostly came down to rare and exotic species, with hardly any berries and seeds that might be found in ordinary gardens. She recalled one of her fellow students drawing attention to the phrase ‘and might even cause death’, which came at the end of numerous descriptions of toxic plants. ‘What does that really mean?’ the girl had asked. The tutor had been forced to check actual statistics, eventually coming back with the clarification that actual known deaths caused by the great majority of the listed plants amounted to a very small handful, most of them young children. ‘So we don’t really need to worry that we’re selling anybody something they might use to kill their husbands,’ laughed the student.

  Why was she thinking of this now, Simmy asked herself. Was she afraid that her role as a florist might find itself implicated in Mr Childers’ death? Moxon had given no hint of that, and neither had Bonnie when she heard the story. Besides, poison came in many guises, most of them chemical. That was to say, in substances used in industries far removed from her innocent flowers. Acids, medicines, rat poison, fluids associated with cleaning and bleaching … her imagination quickly ran dry, and she forced her attention back onto her work.

  When she emerged, Bonnie was alone in the shop, looking much more sombre than usual. ‘What’s the matter?’ Simmy asked.

  ‘I can’t tell Ben about this murder, can I? He’s still trying to settle down and understand his course syllabus and everything. Helen made me promise not to distract him until at least November. That’s more than two weeks away.’