The Ullswater Undertaking

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Not possible,’ said Simmy. ‘Except that now I’ve got you and Robin to bury me, I suppose.’

  ‘Josie knew a lot of people, but I don’t recall a single relative. Her father died ten years ago, and I don’t remember any mention of a mother.’

  ‘Oliver will know. Maybe he’ll have to do it himself.’

  ‘Serve him right if he does.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. After that lunch on Wednesday I’ve seen a different side of him. He didn’t come near the place yesterday, you know. Got some consultancy thing down south, apparently. That’s pretty much all he does these days.’

  ‘Consultancy on what?’

  ‘I told you that. He’s an expert at assessing the authenticity of old objects. He’s got a pretty big reputation by now.’

  ‘Lucrative as well, do you think?’

  ‘Only some of the time. People running museums and archives never seem to have much cash. He’s not short of a penny, anyway. Nobody who knows as much as he does about antiques could fail to be nicely off.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Simmy sleepily. ‘That’ll be you, then, in a few years’ time.’

  ‘We can always dream. Anyway, the point is, I won’t be late home. Most likely I’ll be back soon after you, depending on how long you take at the clinic. Then we can have a lovely, lazy weekend. The forecast is almost too good to be true. Blue skies, no wind. Perfect for a stroll round a lake with a baby. All we need to make it perfect is a dog.’

  ‘Go away,’ said Simmy.

  There had been a note left on the kitchen table from Humphrey saying: See you on Monday. Starting on the back bedroom. Will need to turn electrics off at some point, if Elliott shows up. Simmy had rapidly learnt that there was no such thing as an all-purpose builder any more. You had to have separate specialists for plumbing, wiring, plastering, roofing. Humphrey did carpentry, stonework, floors and walls and would paint his woodwork if requested. He attached skirting boards and created windows. Elliott had installed essential wiring before Simmy and Christopher had moved in, but there were many more details to be finished off. Sockets for televisions and computers, a smoke alarm and numerous complexities that were apparently necessary for modern living. ‘Even if you don’t use them, the house should have them,’ Humphrey had insisted. ‘There are all kinds of regulations. You’d never be able to sell the place if you weren’t compliant.’ In vain did Simmy assure him she was never going to want to sell it. He merely raised an eyebrow as such unwarranted certainty.

  For the moment, however, she had the house to herself. No need to get dressed all morning, if she didn’t feel like it. Except – what had happened to that sense of being uncomfortably busy? Were there not a dozen things she was supposed to be doing? People to talk to, questions to ask, mysteries to solve. Ben would be expecting her to phone, as would Bonnie, and probably her parents. There was nothing to actually do in the house, other than stuff a number of little outfits into the washing machine and then hang them out to dry. Christopher had left the kitchen impressively clean and tidy. Except the squirrel! She had forgotten it yet again. Christopher had said it was alive, and therefore she had a duty to attend to it. The box it was in was no good as a permanent home. It should perhaps have a little enclosure in the small garden shed. The website she had consulted had been stern about the keeping of wild animals as pets, so she ought to give it freedom as soon as it was safe to do so. With the wonky leg it might never cope, though.

  She went for a look. The little thing was actually sitting up in a corner of its box looking a lot brighter than the day before. The water level in the little glass pot had gone down and there were scraps of chewed apple strewn about. ‘Well done!’ she applauded. ‘What a clever boy!’

  She supplied dried raisins and a small nut from the muesli box for its breakfast and promised fresh quarters before long. The shed – which had been originally used as a small shelter for distressed sheep – was cobwebby and cluttered. The task of finding a habitable corner felt too much just at the moment.

  She realised she had been foolish to tell Ben there wouldn’t be time to take him to see Aunt Hilda’s house. The suggestion of cycling to Troutbeck and being collected from there would have been entirely feasible, after all. And still was, of course. She had until half past one entirely free, and anything to distract her from the terrors of the baby clinic would be welcome. The thought of it had been so dominant that she had somehow assumed the whole day would be taken up with it – which she now realised was ridiculous. She had imagined herself getting Robin immaculately presentable for the nurse person, fed and clean and smiling. She would make a few notes about their routine and how he was at night and then ask a few bland questions about his spots. But none of that seemed rational now. It would probably cause tension between herself and the baby, which she was learning could be disastrous. She should carry on as normal all morning, doing what she wanted to do, letting Robin fit into her activities as best he could. That was the healthy way, she told herself. Like a mother cat or dog, she would be there to keep him warm and safe and fed, while she attended to her own requirements as well.

  So, feeling gratifyingly grown-up and sensible, she texted Ben to say she could spare him some time after all if he still wanted to come and see the Ullswater house. He replied ninety seconds later to say of course he did and would be at Troutbeck by ten, waiting outside the Mortal Man. Okay, Simmy texted back.

  Then she phoned Bonnie to check that all was well at the shop. ‘I’ll try to come in tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Will Tanya be there?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie fervently. ‘She’d better be. I need a break from Verity. Although she hasn’t arrived yet – it’s not like her to be late.’ The temporary stand-in would only undertake to work Monday to Friday, with Ben’s sister taking her place on Saturdays. The relief this brought the stoical Bonnie was palpable.

  Simmy laughed. ‘It’s only quarter past nine. She probably thinks you can manage for a bit without her.’

  ‘She probably guesses I prefer it this way.’

  ‘You’re a hero,’ Simmy said. ‘Will you be able to bear it for a few more months?’

  ‘How many months?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know exactly. But I’m sure it’ll get better. It’s only been a few weeks after all. You’re still getting to know each other.’

  ‘The more I know, the worse it gets,’ said Bonnie darkly. ‘I actually liked her at first. But luckily there are plenty of orders, so she’s out half the time.’

  ‘Well, hang in there. If business keeps up, you might even get a rise.’

  ‘And if Ben doesn’t go back to uni this term, I’ll have him as compensation,’ said the girl cheerfully.

  Simmy said nothing about the morning she was about to spend with Bonnie’s beloved. She didn’t have time to describe the events of the previous evening, and she was diverted by the thought of Ben losing an entire term of study. That felt ominously risky, despite his youthful confidence that it would all work out somehow. The prospect of starting again in the autumn, with three more undergraduate years ahead of him, did not appear to worry him.

  ‘I’ll call you again this evening, maybe,’ she said. ‘You’ll want to catch up with everything. I can’t stop now.’

  ‘Nor can I. There’s a customer,’ said Bonnie.

  On the road down to Troutbeck she was quickly aware that the tourist season was really getting into its stride. Not just cars and caravans, but cyclists and even a coach full of pensioners all competed for space on the small winding highway. Kirkstone Pass, as always, gave Simmy a little shiver. She had seen it in all seasons now, and still could not bring herself to like it. The bare, windswept fells on every side made her feel small and vulnerable. There was a weight of history pressing down on the place, with tales of frozen bodies missing for weeks until the snows thawed. Mostly sheep, admittedly, but enough humans to cast a blight. There was no rest for the eye, no hopeful point to aim for, where warmth and f
ood might be available. Except for the pub, of course, which called itself an inn and which had a handy car park. It attracted tourists effortlessly, but Simmy had never been inside.

  She would have to come this away again to get to the clinic at Ambleside, but instead of carrying on down the relatively civilised A592 to Troutbeck, she would turn right and plunge down the steep road known as ‘The Struggle’. Going down was worse than coming up, she had decided. There was no reason to doubt the efficacy of her brakes, but you could never be sure of other vehicles. Big old vans or trucks losing control and crashing into her from behind was one of her persistent imaginings. The road was not especially narrow, but it had sturdy stone walls on either side, and there would be no escape. With a helpless baby on the back seat, the whole thing readily became nightmarish.

  The landscape was not as nature intended. There was a big slate quarry, for one thing. And there was a growing conviction that there ought to be trees covering the fells right to the top. Once this idea took hold, the very bareness of the slopes looked wrong. Simmy was mildly inclined to support calls to remove all sheep from at least some areas, and then stand back to see what happened.

  It was only a few miles to her rendezvous with Ben. When she found him, he said he would leave his bike at the Mortal Man and walk back from Hartsop for it later. They had both realised it would not fit in the car as well as Robin’s buggy. ‘I’m coming back this way anyway, later on,’ Simmy told him. ‘So you don’t need to do such a long walk. At least I can drop you at the turnoff to Ambleside, if you want the exercise. It’s not far from there.’

  ‘We’re going up to Ullswater now, are we?’ he asked.

  ‘Might as well.’ She inspected her baby. ‘He seems okay for a bit.’

  Ben gave the infant a cursory examination. ‘He looks bigger,’ he said.

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He looks exactly the same as he did yesterday. You just think that’s something I want to hear. People keep doing that.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Ben easily.

  He, unlike Simmy, remembered the precise location of Aunt Hilda’s house, and directed her to its door. It was at least a mile further north than she had visualised, on the left-hand side of the A592, overlooking the placid expanse of Ullswater, with a patch of woodland rising behind it. ‘Gosh, we’re almost at the Dockray road,’ said Simmy. ‘Lucky I didn’t try to walk here. I’d never have made it from Hartsop.’

  ‘It is quite a way,’ Ben agreed. ‘You can park here, at a squeeze.’

  Parking was such a perpetual challenge, an issue that never went away and was never fully resolved, that Simmy did not demur at the proposal that she drive onto a patch of ground that was obviously private. ‘Does it belong to Hilda’s house, do you think?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘The next one, I guess. The one we want has its gate round the side, look.’ He pointed out a small track with a gate opening onto it. The gateway was just wide enough to admit a car. ‘Where did she park, I wonder? What if she had visitors?’

  ‘Maybe somewhere further along the track,’ Simmy suggested. ‘But this will have to do for now.’

  It was mid morning on a Friday in springtime. Visitors were thronging the whole area, wedging their cars into any available cranny and getting told off as a result. But it was mild with a hazy sunshine and for the moment nobody wanted to stop to admire this particular stretch of lake. The famous Aira Force was half a mile further along the same road, with its own expensive car park and a spectacular waterfall. Wordsworth’s daffodils were there too. ‘We’ll be fine here,’ said Ben, getting out of the car.

  The house was large and handsome but not unduly special. Made of the usual dark grey stone, it had double gables, with a front door symmetrically central. Ben pushed through the closed gate and headed along the path. The only non-symmetrical quirk was the fact that the path had to turn at ninety degrees to bring you from gate to door.

  ‘Has it been cleared of furniture?’ Ben asked. ‘There are still curtains at the window. I wonder what Josephine intended to do with it.’

  Simmy was dithering as to whether or not to leave Robin in the car, instinctively weighing up relative risks. A large lorry could smash into the car, which was not completely off the road. Getting the buggy out of the boot and fitting the baby seat to it would be awkward but not dangerous. Having him to consider would make exploring the house more difficult. Then she shook herself. ‘We won’t be able to get in, will we?’ She realised she had imagined them just walking through the front door and making free with the uninhabited building.

  ‘Not unless we break a window,’ quipped Ben. ‘Maybe at the back …’

  ‘We’re trespassing, aren’t we? What if someone next door sees us?’

  ‘If we look purposeful they’ll think we’re here with permission. That one’s sure to be a holiday house, anyway.’

  ‘It is interesting to see it, I admit.’ She was still standing beside the car, trying to assess the danger of passing traffic to her baby. Finally she decided he was fine where he was for a few minutes. There didn’t seem to be many large lorries on the road that morning anyway and the car was visible for at least a hundred yards.

  ‘Come on then.’ He headed for a stone path that led to the back of the house, on the side further from next door. ‘I can see a shed.’

  It turned out that there was a good-sized garden behind the house, with a wide gate opening onto the track, which dwindled to nothing only a few yards on. The shed proved to be a garage. ‘Why don’t I drive up here?’ Simmy said. ‘That would be safer for Robin.’

  ‘Feel free. You’ll have to reverse out again, though. This gate’s chained shut, so you’ll never manage to turn round.’

  ‘I can do reversing,’ she assured him, and fetched the car.

  Ben was at the further end of the garden when she joined him again, looking up at the house. ‘No curtains this side,’ he noted. ‘And I can’t see any pictures on the walls. I think someone’s taken everything out. It’s just an empty shell now. Did Josephine cram it all into her house in Keswick – or sell it at the auction house?’

  ‘I keep wondering who gets it now? We still have to consider it as a possible motive for killing her.’

  ‘I did have a quick look online last night, but trying to identify a person’s relatives isn’t at all straightforward, if you’ve nothing to go on. You don’t know where to start.’

  ‘I suppose we’d know by now if she’d left it to Christopher,’ Simmy said with a laugh. ‘She was awfully fond of him.’

  ‘Dream on. The chances are she didn’t leave it to anybody. Not many people make wills at her age – especially if there’s no immediate family.’ He was staring up at the house. ‘Don’t you think it has a relaxed kind of atmosphere? There’s no hint that anybody’s fighting over it.’

  ‘It’s neglected and sad,’ Simmy judged. ‘And that could be because there don’t seem to be any women in the picture any more. It’s been owned by one woman after another, and now they’ve gone, it’s lost its soul. Nobody to keep it nice and put its best face on. They won’t get its proper value, looking like this.’ She waved at the straggly garden and the blank walls of the house. ‘Josephine can’t have had time to do anything with it.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the garage,’ Ben suggested. When he tried the small door in the side wall, it opened easily. ‘Hey!’ he gasped. ‘Didn’t expect that.’

  Simmy followed him in and waited for her eyes to adapt to the gloom. There was no window. A small stack of cardboard trays, the sort used by market traders to carry vegetables and other goods, was against the back wall. A scatter of dusty old magazines was in the top one. She flipped through them, watchful for spiders. Then a sticky label on the edge of the box caught her eye. ‘Oh, it came from Christopher’s saleroom, look. That’s a lot number sticker. It’s got the date on.’

  Ben bent over it. ‘Two years ago. What would have been in it, then? Not these boring magazines, surely?’

&nbs
p; ‘Have a look at the one underneath.’

  The second box had the same lot number written on it with a marker pen and contained nothing more than a few sheets of newspaper. ‘Not interesting,’ said Ben. ‘But you know what – Josephine probably left these here.’ He tapped the sticker thoughtfully. ‘There’ll be a record of what this lot was and who it came from – won’t there? It’ll be in an archive on the work computer.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Unless they delete them after a year, which is unlikely. We need to ask Christopher to have a look. He might not want to tell us who the vendor was, but I expect you can persuade him.’ He took a picture of the sticker and another of the boxes. ‘This is really quite exciting,’ he enthused.

  Simmy was standing by the door, where she could see her car. Suddenly it felt irresponsible and risky to leave Robin all by himself out there. Somebody might steal him. Or he could get himself all twisted and choke somehow. ‘I’m not sure I see why it’s anything to get excited about,’ she said. ‘Josephine probably used them to carry stuff, and then just left them here. Now I’ve got to get back to the baby,’ she added. ‘He might be crying.’

  ‘No problem. I’ve got all I need. And we are trespassing, technically. Better not to get caught.’ He sounded almost giddy with good cheer at the apparent success of their mission. ‘This is brilliant,’ he said, just to ensure that Simmy knew how happy he was. ‘I can’t explain why, but it feels as if things just got connected up at last.’

  ‘You just like snooping round old sheds,’ she accused him.

  ‘Can we go to Keswick now?’ he asked next. ‘If we don’t do it today, we’ll have to wait till Monday. There’s no sale this weekend, is there? There’s still plenty of time, and who knows when there’ll be another chance?’