The Troutbeck Testimony

by Rebecca Tope

  Simmy turned to her parents, who were simply standing there, shoulder-to-shoulder a yard or two away. ‘Dad, does his voice sound familiar to you?’ She waved at Eccles.

  ‘It’s not one I heard on Monday, if that’s what you mean. This gentleman has an accent I believe hails from some way east of here. I’d guess North Yorkshire, perhaps.’

  ‘Lived in Ripon till I was thirty,’ smiled Eccles. ‘Well done, mate.’

  ‘Do you know anyone called Zippy Newsome?’ Simmy asked him.

  ‘I know who he is. Blind chap. Met him a couple of times, years ago now.’

  ‘And Vic Corless?’

  ‘Never heard of ’im.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Hold on, love. This is getting heavy now. What’s it about, then?’

  ‘Sorry. Honestly, I really am sorry, but it’s important. I’m not trying to get you into any trouble. Just straightening something out.’

  A wariness was developing in his manner and expression. ‘You’re not after me on account of those dogs, are you? Has Corinne been blabbing about that? She knows I’m past all that now. No harm’s been done. We gave him back, anyhow.’

  ‘Roddy. The yellow retriever. The trouble is, Mr Eccles, quite a lot of harm has been done, as you probably know. I’m guessing that’s why you went to the funeral yesterday. You wanted to make some sort of amends. You never thought Valerie would recognise you, I suppose.’

  ‘She wouldn’t ’ave, if I hadn’t started coughing. Damn lungs have been playing up ever since I did time. Those cells did for me. That’s why I’m not about to go back there. Not for anything.’

  ‘But she’d seen you before?’

  He sighed. ‘It was dark. I gave her the dog back, one evening, kept my face away from ’er. How’d she know it was me?’

  ‘She must have got a better look than you realised. Were you coughing then, as well?’

  ‘Might ’ave been.’

  ‘And she knows you’ve got a son, I expect.’

  ‘It was more likely the dog,’ he said. ‘It came up to me in the church and started wagging its tail. I was good to ’im, you know. We made friends together, in the week I had ’im with me.’

  ‘A week? He was lost for a week?’

  ‘Right. Then they paid the cash and got ’im back. No harm done.’ He stubbornly repeated the words, clinging to them as his one justification.

  ‘I forgot to tell you that part.’ Angie’s voice reminded Simmy that there was an audience to the cross-examination. ‘At the funeral. The dog trotted down the aisle and stood wagging at this man. Valerie was watching it all. She was talking about dogs at the time, you see. Roddy was supposed to be at her side, not wandering off.’

  ‘And I gave the money back,’ persisted Eccles, more loudly. ‘Corinne says there’s no way it’ll go to the police now. Specially after all this time, with the woman dead, an’ all.’

  ‘The woman was ill when you took her dog. The shock and worry of his disappearance made her a lot worse. It probably shortened her life, and even if it didn’t, it added to the suffering. Hers and her friend’s. It was a dreadful thing to do.’

  Simmy wished she had spoken these words, but it was her father who confronted the man with the consequences of his actions.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Eccles demanded defiantly.

  ‘I think it has a lot to do with me,’ said Russell slowly. ‘I think you’ve done a great deal more damage than you realise.’ He looked at Simmy. ‘And my daughter knows precisely what I mean. I fancy she worked it out some time ago now.’

  ‘I’m not taking any more of this. Come on, Ray. Time we were off.’

  The boy, with his big ears and bony shoulders, stood where he was. ‘You took their dog, Dad? After you’d promised us you’d stay clean? What’s Linda going to say about that?’

  ‘Linda’s not going to know, is she? We’re out of here next week, and that’s an end of it. One little mistake’s not going to wreck it all now.’

  Raymond looked doubtful, but Simmy could also see hope and relief in his eyes. It was Raymond who elicited the next thing she said. ‘I meant what I said at the start. There’s no reason for you to get into trouble. I just hope you’ve had enough of a fright to convince you to live a decent life from now on.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘You haven’t met Linda. She’s taken me up as a project. Lovely woman,’ he added dreamily. ‘So long as this young man keeps his mouth shut, we’ll be right.’ He gave his son a probing look.

  ‘Linda’s okay,’ he confirmed. ‘Even my mum thinks so.’

  Another complicated mixed-up family, Simmy assumed. ‘You have no idea how lucky you are,’ she told Eccles. ‘But I think you’ll be finding out in the next few days.’

  ‘What?’ he said, but she had turned away from him and his boy, back to her parents.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ she said. ‘The full story.’

  Angie gave an angry laugh. ‘Maybe you and your dad think so, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s still a complete mystery.’

  ‘So come with me to see DI Moxon, and it’ll all become clear,’ said Simmy. ‘And by now I expect Ben’s worked it out, as well.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘It’s all wrong, though,’ said Russell for the third time. ‘That poor woman! You can’t just let that man go. It was all his fault.’

  ‘It’s not up to us,’ said Simmy. ‘The police can decide about that. And he knows what he’s done. I don’t think he’ll rest easy for a long time to come. Isn’t that enough of a punishment?’

  They were almost at the Baddeley Tower where Ben and Bonnie could be seen waiting for them. All five would troop down to the police station, where the public could no longer just walk in and expect a friendly welcome from an officer on the front desk. They would knock or ring or do whatever it took to gain access, and hope to find Detective Inspector Moxon ready and waiting for them. Simmy had tried to phone him, ten minutes earlier, and only got his voicemail. ‘We’re coming to tell you something,’ she told the machine. ‘We’ll be at the police station in a few minutes.’

  ‘It’s not fair to blame him too harshly,’ Angie said. ‘After all, he was nice to the dog. You could tell it liked him, the way it behaved yesterday.’

  Simmy gave a short laugh. ‘In a way, the dog got its revenge, as well. If it hadn’t been for him, we might never have worked it out.’ Then a cold hand clamped itself on her heart. ‘But, of course, now …’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say,’ put in Russell. ‘What’s going to become of him now?’

  ‘Why? What do you mean?’ asked Angie. ‘He’s got Valerie, hasn’t he?’

  She looked from one silent face to the other. ‘Hasn’t he?’

  Simmy closed her eyes against the tangled morality. Whichever way she looked, there was pain and injustice and the uncompromising results of doing a wrong thing. ‘I don’t think he has,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s all wrong,’ said Russell for a fourth time. ‘I know I can’t stop you, Simmy, but really, I wish you’d just think it through first.’

  ‘I have, Dad. A thousand times in the past couple of hours. And there’s no way around it. We’ve been forgetting Travis McNaughton, and his son. His friends and family didn’t deserve what happened to him. We can at least put that right. We have to. You know we do. There’s nothing so dreadful as an innocent victim. And you know what? The final clincher is that even if she’d got the right man, he wouldn’t have deserved it either.’

  Angie put a hand on each of them. ‘Wait,’ she begged. ‘The right man? The wrong man was killed? Somebody meant to kill the Eccles man, instead of Travis McNaughton? You mean … Valerie? She did it?’ Her face went white. ‘Oh God, yes. I see it now. Why have I been so slow, when it’s all been right there in front of me? Valerie Rossiter.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Oh, well. Everybody always said there was something dark about her. Even her dog doesn’t really like her much. Corinne told
me that months ago.’

  Simmy met her father’s eyes, which were twinkling with helpless amusement. ‘Trust you, Ange, to put everything into perspective,’ he said.

  But Simmy was remembering a grief-stricken woman in a graveyard and felt immeasurably sad.

  Bonnie and Ben had plainly wasted no time in reconciling facts, drawing deductions, resolving moral ambiguities and planning the golden future they envisaged for themselves – probably in roughly that order. ‘We won’t come with you,’ said Ben. ‘We get the whole thing, now. Bonnie’s been explaining it all to me. She worked it out hours ago, you know. Can you just imagine the team we’re going to make?’ He clumsily put his arm around the girl’s shoulder, and she leant her head on him.

  ‘Hours ago?’ Simmy repeated. ‘Like before about half past eleven this morning?’

  ‘Well, maybe not the whole thing,’ she admitted. ‘But when you asked about the dognapping, and whatever, everything sort of landed right side up. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘So you’re okay with me going to explain it all to the cops?’

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ said Bonnie graciously. ‘It’ll keep you in that detective’s good books, if nothing else.’

  ‘Come on, Bon,’ urged Ben. ‘Our work here is done.’

  She giggled and they walked off towards Helm Road, where Ben lived with his family.

  ‘Ben and Bon,’ murmured Russell after them. ‘Lord help us.’

  The police station was barely two minutes’ walk down the gentle hill towards Bowness. They reached it just before a car drew up at the kerb close by. A woman emerged, paid the driver and stood rigidly on the pavement.

  ‘It’s her!’ said Angie. ‘In a taxi!’

  Valerie Rossiter ignored the threesome who were all blatantly staring at her. ‘Sshh,’ Simmy warned her mother. ‘We can’t say anything to her now.’

  But Russell thought differently. ‘Miss Rossiter?’ he said. ‘You don’t know me, but I think I understand why you’re here. Can I be of any assistance, do you think?’

  She blinked unseeingly in his direction. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Russell Straw. This is my daughter. And my wife. We’ve just been speaking to a Mr Eccles. He used to kidnap dogs, apparently.’

  ‘And he’s lucky to be alive,’ breathed Valerie. ‘Does he realise that?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘He soon will.’ Valerie squared her shoulders. ‘I’ve come to report myself as a murderer.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine how much courage that takes,’ said Russell thickly. ‘Let me come in with you. I have a feeling my testimony will help the police to make sense of what you have to tell them.’ He turned to Simmy and Angie. ‘We’ll be fine now,’ he said. ‘You two go home and have some lunch.’

  Angie lurched forward, as if to protest, but Simmy pulled her back. ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Like Ben put it – our work is done.’

  Some hours later, they were sitting in the Beck View kitchen, with Bertie on Russell’s lap, receiving a much more thorough fondling than he was accustomed to.

  There were gaps in the story that only Russell could fill. How did Valerie come to mistake her victim? How did she get away after the deed was done? And what was going to happen to her?

  ‘It was premeditated murder,’ said Russell unhappily. ‘She’ll be in prison for years. There’s no convincing mitigation. She took the knife with her, with the deliberate intention of cutting a man’s throat.’ He groaned. ‘And that woman Corinne’s far more involved than we realised. Valerie got all her information from the woman. She insists Corinne had no idea what she meant to do, but I’m doubtful.’

  Simmy thought back. ‘I think it’s true,’ she said slowly. ‘Corinne was always more bothered about the snares set by Vic Corless. She never showed any sign of worrying about Travis McNaughton’s death. I don’t think she came close to making that connection.’

  ‘Maybe so. The biggest question was – how did Valerie know her victim was going to be in Troutbeck that afternoon?’

  ‘Except he wasn’t,’ Simmy pointed out. ‘Somebody else was, who looked like him.’

  ‘Right. She was looking for a man in a red car, with a teenage boy, who was quite possibly still kidnapping dogs. I’m afraid you’re part of this bit, love.’ He sighed again. ‘Valerie explained the whole thing. Remember Melanie brought Bonnie into the shop on Tuesday morning, and you talked about that dead dog we saw on Monday? And then you must have talked about two men and a boy in a red car, all mixed up with suspicions about dognapping. And then you must have said something about me going to the police about it. Well, Bonnie added all that up, and multiplied by ten before she passed it on to Corinne, who went straight to Valerie, saying it sounded as if the evil Mr Eccles was up to his tricks around Troutbeck. So Valerie went up there with her knife, saw the red car, and followed the man into that farmyard. Watched while he went for a pee behind a barn, and then walked up to him and attacked him, probably before he had any idea what was happening. I saw it. A weird old-fashioned thing, with a blade like a razor. She actually demonstrated how sharp it was on her own hand. It was incredible. She just pressed it lightly on the skin and it cut instantly. They took it off her pretty sharpish, I can tell you.’

  Simmy shuddered. ‘I hate knives.’

  ‘They certainly make a good murder weapon,’ said Angie, swallowing hard. ‘Silent and quick. But what kind of a person can do that?’ She put a hand to her own throat. ‘It makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Moxon walked back here with me,’ said Russell. ‘He thought I might pass out again, I suppose. They’d kept me waiting a bit while Valerie was taken away to be interviewed, and he felt a bit bad about that, I suspect. Anyway, he filled in a bit of background. Her father was a master butcher in Poland, apparently. She knew how to cut a throat. It’s not as easy as most people think. You need to get the jugular, you see.’

  ‘Okay, Dad. We don’t need the details.’

  ‘You want me to bury it all and never speak of it again? Do you have any idea what that might do to my emotional well-being? Do you want me to be like those World War One soldiers coming back and never mentioning the trenches?’ His mock indignation made them both smile. ‘That’s not going to happen,’ he assured them. ‘I don’t see why I should be the only one having bad dreams for the next six months.’

  ‘Such dreadful luck for poor Travis McNaughton,’ moaned Angie. ‘Everything worked against him from the start.’ Then she had a thought. ‘But were they going to do something illegal? What was all that about a lookout and an old man being out on Tuesdays?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure, but Moxon thinks it might have something to do with elderberries. There’s a specially good field of them, apparently, with no public access. The owner’s not the most welcoming of chaps, so anybody wanting to do a bit of scrumping needs to be careful. The woman who found the body said something about it, but she was going on so much about the darn berries that nobody really listened to the details. Only now are they connecting up that particular set of dots.’

  ‘I don’t think I said anything about the old man and Tuesdays,’ said Simmy uncertainly. ‘When I told Bonnie and Melanie about it, I mean. So Valerie must have just gone to Troutbeck on the off chance of running into them. For all she knew, they were in Kirkstone or Grasmere – or absolutely anywhere.’

  Russell and Simmy both pondered this for a while. ‘Sheer bad luck,’ said Simmy at last. ‘There can’t be any more to it than that. And Troutbeck’s a small enough place, if you’re looking for someone.’

  ‘She said she felt Barbara’s spirit was guiding her,’ said Russell reluctantly. ‘It was all for Barbara that she did it, after all. She made Valerie promise to get revenge on the man who stole the dog. That’s why she didn’t report it to the police. She thought they’d just laugh it off as a victimless crime. Moxon feels bad about that.’

  ‘Ben said she looked as if she’d seen a ghost in the church,’
Simmy recalled. ‘Maybe she did. Maybe Barbara was standing behind Eccles, pointing a glowing finger at him, as if to say This is the man you were supposed to kill.’

  ‘Which means she got it badly wrong the first time, thinking Barbara was directing her,’ said Angie dourly. ‘Just shows how careful you have to be where ghosts are concerned.’

  ‘I think she just waited near the pub in Troutbeck until she saw a red car and followed it,’ said Russell. ‘When she saw it stop at Town End and the man get out, she couldn’t believe her luck.’

  ‘Even though she didn’t recognise him, and he didn’t have his boy with him. Wouldn’t a person need to be far more sure than that before cutting someone’s throat?’ Angie was still plainly unconvinced.

  ‘Moxon said Travis left his boy at the pub, that afternoon. Travis was doing some work there, and Tim was going for a walk with a friend of his, before being put on a bus back to Scotland. When Travis never showed up at three o’clock as planned, he phoned his mobile and got the police. So Valerie could have seen him, and thought it more than enough to confirm his identity.’

  ‘Well I blame that Corinne,’ said Angie flatly. ‘It’s only credible if she filled in a whole lot more details for Valerie.’

  Simmy remembered something. ‘She had a phone call on Tuesday, just as she was leaving the shop. I bet that was Corinne, telling her what Bonnie had passed on.’

  ‘The case of the Chinese Whispers,’ said Russell. ‘Bonnie exaggerated Simmy’s account of my little testimony, and Corinne magnified it even further. Given what a state Valerie was already in, the whole thing falls into place. With the wretched Travis doing everything he could to make it easy for her, if only he’d known.’

  Angie still seemed unsatisfied, rubbing her face as if presented with an impossible puzzle. Then she lifted her head. ‘The man and his boy, behind me in the church,’ she said. ‘They were talking, before it all got started. Somebody sitting next to them was joining in, and said something about the murder in Troutbeck. I knew I’d heard more about it – and couldn’t think where it was. Now it’s all come back to me. This woman – and I have no idea who she was – was talking in that loud sort of whisper you really want to hear, because it’s obviously something interesting. She said Travis McNaughton had been doing well with finding work, gardening in Troutbeck, and what a shame it was he’d died just as it was going so nicely. The man – Eccles – said he’d been finding the same thing. Hotels and guesthouses were all desperate to keep their gardens looking nice, and this time of year was great for odd-job men who knew a bit about plants and hedges and all that. So that would be another clue for Valerie, do you see?’