The Ullswater Undertaking

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Right?’ he prompted her, after several silent seconds.

  ‘Absolutely.’ After all, he was the one eager to sign the contract, make the vows, label himself as a husband. ‘Aren’t I lucky!’ she sighed. It was not difficult to banish the wicked little notion that the reason men often seemed to favour marriage was that it gave them a kind of ownership. As Robin’s married father he gained a lot more rights than he might otherwise claim. And the ring on Simmy’s finger would count for something, too.

  She finished the tea and rolled out of bed. Robin was in his cot, waving his arms and squeaking. ‘New nappy?’ Christopher asked.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Simmy cheerfully.

  The procedure completed, he picked up the baby and took him to the window. ‘So what’re we doing today?’

  ‘It looks sunny out there. Maybe we should go to Workington.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘To find Richmond. Ben will have to come as well. The police won’t want you again, will they?’

  ‘I doubt it. But why don’t I just tell Fabian where his uncle is and let him get on with it? Isn’t that what we said last night?’

  ‘Oh.’ She pulled on her clothes and watched her menfolk thoughtfully. ‘That would be the sensible thing, I suppose.’ She felt a ridiculous stab of disappointment at the idea. ‘Ben won’t like it, though. He wants to be involved, right in the middle of everything.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a very good idea. I can’t imagine what we’d say to the man, for a start. And I think I really ought to check in with Oliver and see what we’re going to do from tomorrow. We can’t stay closed after today if we want to hold the sale as usual next week. It doesn’t feel right just to stay at home, or even to go waltzing off to the coast on a wild goose chase. Obviously we’ll all go to Josephine’s funeral, whenever that is, but in the meantime we need to keep functioning. Thursday and Friday are the days for people to deliver stuff for sale. The girls will need supervising, so we should assume I’ll be going in tomorrow.’

  ‘Poor Josephine,’ Simmy sighed. ‘I feel as if I hardly knew her, which was bad of me. I should have tried harder to be her friend. Did she have any friends? Who’s going to be most shattered at losing her?’

  ‘Good question. I don’t think any of us knew her really well. She was just one of those people who are always there, keeping everything running smoothly, dedicated to the job, part of the furniture. All those clichés. Oliver was always very fond of her, in a jokey sort of way. He also took her for granted and paid her quite badly. If you feel bad about her, how do you think I feel? I was a pig to her at times.’

  ‘Even though you knew she adored you?’

  ‘That was more or less of a joke as well. Embarrassing, to be honest. But she kept it under control pretty well – and it’s really just another cliché anyway. She was very schoolgirlish, in some ways.’ He was speaking jerkily, ideas tumbling over each other. ‘It was Oliver before me, you know. She was a serial adorer. One crush after another. For all I know, Fabian was on the list as well.’

  ‘How sad. Why couldn’t she just find a suitable man and marry him? She seemed quite motherly to me. Cuddly, with that nice wide bosom.’

  ‘More like grandmotherly. I can’t imagine what she must have been like as a schoolgirl.’

  ‘I can,’ said Simmy. ‘Frizzy hair, good at hockey, friendly. Something must have gone wrong somewhere.’

  ‘Oliver, probably,’ said Christopher carelessly. ‘She must have had designs on him for decades, living in perpetual hope. Then when I showed up, she transferred her affections. We did have some fun at first, chatting about antiques and computers. She taught me an awful lot.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Simmy sighed again. ‘You’ve all exploited her, in one way or another.’ She gathered up the bag of dirty nappies and started to leave the bedroom. Then a thought struck her. ‘Maybe she did know something the family wanted to keep secret,’ she said suddenly.

  Christopher stood frozen on the spot, staring at his baby son as if it had been he who’d spoken. ‘What? Where did that come from?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s all smoke and whispers, but don’t you get a sense that Aunt Hilda is very much at the heart of it all? Ben always says we should ask “Why now?” and the answer to that is very likely to be Aunt Hilda dying.’ To her own ears she was speaking entirely lucidly, impressively so, in fact.

  ‘That’s possible – but so are lots of other things.’ He put the baby down on the bed and started to get dressed. ‘And I would very, very much like it if we could talk about something else.’

  ‘So would I, but I doubt if we’ll get far. This is such a huge thing – and every time we try to escape from it, Fabian pops up and sends us right back again.’

  ‘We won’t let him do that. I can’t see that he’s got any reason to, either. If we’ve got any sense we’ll just sit back and leave it all to the police.’

  Simmy groaned. ‘Do you know something? Every time there’s been a murder, since I’ve been living here, somebody has said exactly that. Usually me. And it never happens. Either Ben or Bonnie or someone keeps it rammed against our faces so we can’t focus on anything else. My face, I should say. I’ve learnt not to fight it. And this one is so close to home, we’ve got no choice. We have to see it through to the end, like it or not. Do you see?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said helplessly. ‘This is all going too fast for my poor brain. I still don’t follow what you said about Hilda.’

  She tutted impatiently. ‘It’s not so very complicated. Ben would get it.’

  To his great credit, Christopher did not rise to this. ‘I never pretended to be as clever as Ben,’ he said mildly. ‘It just strikes me you’ve made a few too many leaps. Nobody says there’s a deep, dark secret to be found. And even if there was, don’t they say that a dead person’s private business always comes spilling out? Papers come to the surface, connections get made at the funeral, the bank discloses confidential details.’

  Simmy was easily diverted. ‘Did Josephine go to Hilda’s funeral, I wonder?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ His grown-up calm began to crack slightly. ‘But I’m sure young Mr Harkness could find out.’

  Robin, perhaps detecting an incipient atmosphere, began to make his presence felt more loudly. Simmy took him from his father and carried him downstairs to the kitchen. ‘Just sit there while I have breakfast,’ she told him, strapping him into his little chair. ‘You can watch me,’ she added generously.

  Nothing had been definitely decided concerning the day’s movements. Simmy felt guilty at having compared Christopher to Ben, and to make amends she directed their attention back to the matter of getting married. ‘Can we even call it a wedding?’ she wondered. ‘If it’s just a register office and a pub?’

  ‘Technically, yes, I suppose so. And whatever we say, my sisters will turn it all into a big event. Nobody in the family has got married for ages.’

  ‘We should have done it before now,’ she worried, thinking perhaps it was her fault they hadn’t. ‘Why didn’t we?’

  ‘We were too busy. And it was winter. And things kept happening.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And they still do. So we’re not going to Workington to look for Uncle Richmond, then?’

  ‘I already said, I can’t see any sense in doing that. I can just give Fabian the address and leave it to him. I’ve had enough of his whining about having no money, or car, or anywhere to live. Even if it is my fault, he’s had time to get his life back on track by now, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Stop! We’re talking about getting married, remember.’

  And they did. They speculated about the chances of a little honeymoon, and whether they should veto any suggestion of presents. They told cautionary stories about weddings they had seen and hated. They worried about how Angie might behave and whether Bonnie would go overboard with the flowers.

  ‘It’s really going to happen, then?’ Simmy smiled, meeting his gaze. ‘I’ll
really be Mrs Henderson.’

  ‘Not necessarily – you could revert to Straw. But I’d quite like you not to be Brown any more.’

  ‘If I’m married to you, I want to have your name. It might be old-fashioned, but to me that seems axiomatic.’

  ‘As Ben would say,’ he supplied with a grin.

  ‘As Ben would say,’ she agreed.

  Still no decision had been made as to what to do with the day, and Christopher was becoming restless by coffee time, clearly worrying that he was wasting time. He was moving around the kitchen, collecting plates and dumping them in the sink. Simmy watched him, thinking he was changing into a different man in ways she found entirely satisfactory. There was something deeply relaxed about him, despite his present behaviour, as if contentment had filled him to his very bones. None of the usual stress of new parenthood appeared to be afflicting him. The balance between home and work felt manageable and secure. He paid attention to her and the baby, and was still eager for them to get married. He even co-operated in talk about mysterious murders, although that made him anxious. As far as Simmy could tell, the anxiety was mostly superficial and nothing to do with the essential facts of her and Robin and the new house.

  He spent a few more minutes playing with the baby, then wandered around the outside space that was destined eventually to become a garden, moving stones about and pulling up a few plants that he believed to be weeds and marking out the increasingly postponed potato patch. When Simmy inspected his work, she protested at what he’d done. ‘Those are foxgloves,’ she cried. ‘Why did you pull them up?’

  ‘They’re weeds, surely? Everything here’s a weed – by definition. Nobody’s ever tried to turn this patch into a garden. Besides, haven’t I heard somewhere that foxgloves are poisonous?’

  ‘Not according to my father. He insists that hardly any wild plants are poisonous. Or not enough to worry about, anyway.’ She was kneeling at the foot of the stone wall that marked their boundary, trying to replant one of the ill-used foxgloves with her bare hands. ‘You’ve torn off most of the roots. It can’t possibly survive.’

  ‘I’m sure there are lots of things you have to avoid when you’ve got a small child,’ he persisted. ‘Deadly nightshade. Hemlock. Aconite. I mean, Sim, it’s only a few months since that bloke was killed with a poisonous plant.’

  ‘Which no child would be fool enough to eat,’ she snapped. ‘They’ve got instincts to protect them.’

  ‘Hm,’ was all he said to that. Then he looked up. ‘Why don’t we all go up to Keswick? It’s a lovely day for a drive, and I could go and find Oliver and see what he thinks we ought to do tomorrow. Pub lunch by one of the lakes, and home for tea.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘But can’t you just phone Oliver? What are Robin and I supposed to do while you chat to him?’

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s too awkward with the buggy and everything.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Oh, Chris – I don’t want to be a drag. A day out would be lovely. I’m happy just to sit somewhere sunny and watch the world go by. You can park me and Robin by the river somewhere and go off to talk to Oliver. Just don’t take too long over it.’

  ‘Better idea,’ he announced. ‘We all go to lunch somewhere together. He’d be fine with that. He’s always saying he’d like to get to know you better, and he’s sure to want to see Robin.’

  ‘Really?’ Oliver was a bachelor in his late sixties, plumply debonair in his dress and universally affable in a detached sort of way. ‘Has he ever actually met a baby?’

  Christopher just laughed.

  It was all readily arranged, and soon after eleven the little family set off northwards to Keswick. ‘I wish we had a dog to complete the picture,’ said Christopher, as he did every day or so. It was a campaign that Simmy knew she was going to be unable to resist for much longer. The putative animal was gradually gaining ground in her imagination, despite her best efforts.

  In the car, they yet again began to talk about the murder.

  ‘With everybody knowing each other, we ought to find out more background – the wider family, and who knew Josephine best,’ said Christopher. ‘I feel at a disadvantage, only having been here a few years. This all goes back decades. Maybe we should ask Oliver – he’s very much part of the social network round here. Everybody knows him, after all.’

  ‘Do you think he knows Fabian and Hilda and all the rest of them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Well, we can assume that Josephine did know the whole family. And I agree with you we ought to see if we can find out a bit more. We could start with Uncle Ambrose.’

  ‘He’s an old man.’

  ‘And that’s another thing. Ben found out that Richmond is only about seventy. That makes him miles younger than the rest of them. His sons must be a lot younger than Fabian.’ She tried to order her thoughts. ‘Did you say they all grew up together – Fabian and his cousins and Josephine?’ This struck her as potentially rather important.

  ‘That’s right. Fabian told me what she was like then. Top of the class in history, as well as brilliant at maths. And then when they were in the sixth form the four of them started a little business together – backed by Aunt Hilda, who always took a shine to Josephine. It was a family full of boys, and she became a sort of honorary niece, apparently. Fabian never took his A-levels but dropped out after a year. He didn’t say what happened after that.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Simmy. ‘That does sound significant. I wonder if he’ll explain all that to the police.’

  ‘I wonder whether they’ll ask him for that sort of stuff.’

  He looked at her with a grin. ‘That’s where your Ben turns up trumps – especially now he’s got this passion for history. Not that it always works out that way. I mean – not every crime stems from something in the distant past.’

  ‘But you think this one might?’ She wracked her brains for any evidence to suggest this. ‘That would rule out a panic-stricken burglar, then?’

  Christopher shrugged. ‘I guess so. I can’t say I find that a very likely theory. But it must appeal to the cops – makes it nice and simple.’

  ‘They’ve had two days already and haven’t questioned Fabian yet. Seems a bit remiss.’

  Christopher pointed out the turning into Threlkeld, which offered an alternative route to his workplace. ‘I usually go this way now,’ he said. ‘It actually goes past Josephine’s house if you carry on into Keswick.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Simmy. ‘I’m still very hazy about the geography up here. I always stick to the way I know.’

  ‘Well now’s your chance to learn,’ he said.

  She had no recollection of ever going into the village of Threlkeld and was surprised at its size and relative normality. Very few obvious signs of tourism, but the trappings of an ordinary settlement in the shape of school, church, pubs and food shops. ‘I had no idea it was so nice,’ she said.

  ‘Too late now.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You’re going to say we should have come here to live, instead of Hartsop.’

  ‘Am I? It’s very close to the busy road.’

  ‘It stretches quite a way back, so you’d probably barely even hear the traffic. The school’s the other end of the village, and there are lots of nice, sensible family houses.’

  ‘Are you trying to sell it to me?’

  ‘Just teasing,’ he laughed. But the more she looked, the more she liked it. There was even a modest war memorial decorated with flowers. She counted four women pushing baby buggies. And for good measure there was a perfectly self-respecting fell rising up to the north. ‘Blencathra,’ said Christopher. ‘One of the very best, in many people’s eyes.’

  ‘A long way from Windermere.’

  ‘A good road, though. Except for having to go right through the middle of Ambleside.’

  ‘I bet it snows dreadfully. It’s high up here.’

  ‘The road’s
kept clear right through the winter.’

  ‘Prone to flooding.’

  ‘Like everywhere else in the area.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a beautiful house already. Or will have, when Humphrey finishes.’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ said Christopher.

  Chapter Ten

  The auction house was much less deserted than expected. The big double gate stood open and there were several vehicles in the yard. ‘I thought you were closed today,’ said Simmy.

  ‘So did I. That’s Jack’s car, and Pattie’s. I guess they just couldn’t keep away.’

  ‘What about Fiona?’

  ‘Wait here and I’ll go and see what’s what. Nobody’s meant to deliver stuff until tomorrow, so there’s not a lot to do. I can’t think why anybody’s shown up.’

  ‘Same reason you have, I expect,’ she said.

  Christopher got out of the car and headed for the main entrance. Simmy watched him go with a pang of resentment. Women everywhere had to share their menfolk with workmates, she supposed. And vice versa, although that never seemed to be quite the same. The fact of Josephine’s naked devotion had been only a part of the whole sense of Christopher living a separate life at the heart of a group of people that were very like a family. Considerably more than his actual family, in fact. His two brothers seldom put in an appearance, and his sisters were superficially attentive but certainly not a part of his daily life. Now here were ‘Jack and Pattie’ showing up beyond the call of duty, united, no doubt, in the trauma of losing their manager. And Christopher had trotted eagerly into their midst to share the grief.

  But then two people came out and made for the car with broad smiles and Simmy managed to open her window, after turning the ignition on. One was a ginger-haired young woman in her twenties, who Simmy thought was Pattie. Despite her many visits to the business, she was still hazy as to exactly who was who. This particular person had been barely glimpsed in the background, generally with a clipboard in her hand. The other was Oliver, whose beaming expression felt oddly inappropriate. ‘Can we see the baby?’ asked the girl, already peering through the back window next to Robin’s seat. ‘Is he awake? Can we take him out?’