by Rebecca Tope
Simmy just smiled, then remembered to say, ‘My father knows Petrock. Says he’d never be capable of killing anyone.’
He shifted the baby so he was lying along his father’s forearm, and then gently rocked him as the conversation went on. ‘Really? I’d have said of all the Armitages, he’s probably the most likely.’
She sighed. ‘We’re still just guessing. So why were you all so boot-faced after that meeting today? I’ve never seen such a glum lot. Was it just about Josephine, or what?’
‘Mostly that, but Fiona said something that annoyed Oliver, and when Jack stuck up for her, he got a bollocking as well. Pattie said the atmosphere was so horrible she was considering looking for another job, and I got caught in the crossfire.’
‘What did Fiona say?’
‘I didn’t catch all of it, but she seemed to be suggesting that Josephine had brought it on herself somehow. I think she said something like, “You’d think getting that house would have been enough for her.” Oliver went very red and told her she ought to know better. Then she started accusing him of cowardice in sending her to Josie’s house instead of going himself. Oliver said that had been me, not him, but I wasn’t standing for that. He’d told us what to do, over the phone. There was almost a suggestion in Fiona’s mind, apparently, that he knew what she would find.’
‘I suppose that isn’t too surprising. I mean – not that Josie had been murdered, but that there was something wrong.’
‘It was all pretty toxic for a few minutes. I felt much the same as Pattie about it.’
She switched subjects yet again. ‘Why do you think Petrock’s the chief suspect?’
‘How about this: if Hilda had a big secret – as we know she did – then him writing her life story is going to unearth it, right? And probably make a big deal of it. Maybe somebody’s very worried about that and wants to stop him. And knowing that, he takes pre-emptive action and silences that person – who might very well have been Josephine. Do you follow?’
‘Gosh!’ she sat back, full of admiration for his lucidity. ‘Put like that, it all seems to slot into a perfectly credible picture. I expect Ben’s got there already and has it all mapped out on a flowchart. Even so – I’m impressed.’ Christopher smirked, and Simmy went on, ‘But why would Josephine be worried about the secret?’
‘Good question. Something to do with Richmond, maybe? He might have a whole lot of seething resentment that she could have helped him deal with. She might even have been helping him get some kind of revenge.’
She was struck by a thought. ‘Something Ben said a day or two ago – whether it’s the opposite of what we’re all assuming. Maybe Josephine was making threats to someone, not just by knowing a secret, but by actively making it dangerous for them in some way. She might have been seen as a real risk to their well-being – reputation, finances, whatever. What if she knew Petrock was going to deliberately lie in his book and told him she’d expose the truth? That would fit.’
It was exhilarating, she discovered, airing bold theories like this to a partner who knew the characters involved and was fully engaged with the whole story. ‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘I’d forgotten what fun this can be.’
‘Fun?’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Wasn’t it you I heard telling Ben and Bonnie that it really wasn’t a game – I think when my father was killed.’
‘I expect it was. And I do feel awful about poor Josephine, but not awful enough to crush the excitement of working out what happened. The two aren’t incompatible, after all.’
They were interrupted at this point by Robin’s demands, which both parents devoted all their energy to satisfying. ‘I have to say I’m enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would,’ said Christopher, as he lifted his little son out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel. ‘I mean – I knew I wanted children, but I expected to have to wait a year or two before they … I don’t know … became real to me, I suppose.’
‘He is very real, isn’t he,’ Simmy agreed. ‘A proper little person.’ Which little Edith had never been, she sadly admitted to herself. A stillborn baby had no chance of overcoming the fantasies and dreams of its parents, never asserting its own personality.
An hour later, just as Simmy was rehearsing what she would say in an overdue phone call to Moxon, she saw a figure passing the kitchen window. ‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘Not again. That looks horribly like Fabian.’
Chapter Nineteen
And it was. ‘Quick – don’t let him in,’ Simmy hissed, already knowing that such a move was impossible. ‘At least tell him to go away. Doesn’t that damned scooter ever run out of battery? He must be breaking all records, the way he’s up and down the road all the time.’
But Christopher was incapable of telling anyone to go away. ‘Thank goodness it’s only him this time,’ he muttered, before opening the door. ‘Fabian,’ he said flatly. ‘Fancy seeing you again.’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ The man came in, left shoulder first, appearing to have shrunk and somehow twisted since they’d last seen him. Simmy was put in mind of Derek Jacobi in the part of Claudius on the TV series she had watched on video with her father in her teens.
‘Are you ill?’ she asked him with a frown.
‘No more than usual. Stress doesn’t help. You’ve got to do something.’ He looked from face to face, mutating from Claudius into Uriah Heap. ‘It’s all wrong. And – sorry to say it – but it’s all your fault. Yes, it is, very much so. I can’t stand another day like this.’ His twitch added to the figure of pathos that he presented.
‘Explain,’ said Christopher, waving him in and closing the door behind him. ‘What on earth do you think we can do?’
‘Find out who killed Josie, of course. You and that boy in Bowness. The police are practically camping on my doorstep, watching everything I do. And it’s the same for the others – Petrock and Keith anyway. It’s not right. We never touched her. We all loved her.’
Simmy forced herself to relax, refusing to accept the burden that Fabian was trying to unload. This was what he did, she thought. He used other people, made them give assurances and undertakings that they never wanted to. ‘I suppose they’re just following the evidence,’ she said calmly.
‘What evidence?’ Fabian shot back. ‘There can’t be any evidence. It’s all wrong, I tell you.’
‘Don’t get upset,’ said Christopher. ‘Have a drink and then go back home. You’ve probably been overreacting.’
‘Home!’ said the man bitterly. ‘A mean little room that costs more than you’d believe. I’m at the end of my rope, I can tell you. I’d be better off in gaol, and that’s the truth. Maybe I’ll go out and stab someone, just so’s I can get a free bed.’
Neither of his listeners responded to that. Not our problem, Simmy repeated silently. She had learnt some time ago that you couldn’t rescue people from their own bad choices or character defects. Fabian apparently thought otherwise. He had said it was their fault, and in a small annoying way he was probably right. Christopher had given Fabian’s name to the police, as well as failing in his mission to go and see Aunt Hilda. It was not entirely unreasonable to feel affronted by both those details, she supposed.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Fabian whined on. ‘How can any of us carry on as normal with all this suspicion hanging over us? You’ve got everything upside down, making things hard for us without any grounds for it. No evidence as you call it. And you won’t listen when we tell you to look somewhere else for her killer.’
‘If you know who it was, why don’t you just tell us? Or the police? Why are we having all these games?’
‘You think they’d believe us? We hoped you two and your little friends would get to the truth and make sure we were off the hook. Instead, you’ve done the opposite. We’re all feeling the stress, wondering if one of us might be next.’
This was a whole new idea, and Simmy stared at him. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she decided. ‘You’re just being dramatic for the sake of it.’
&
nbsp; ‘And you’re not?’ he flashed back, suddenly savage. ‘All you had to do was listen, and instead you go charging around with that boy, upsetting everything.’
‘Listen to what? If you’ve been dropping subtle hints, I’m afraid we’ve missed them. You’ll have to be a lot more plain-spoken. Let me say it again – if you know who killed Josephine, just tell us. Simple as that. No messing about. No more games.’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve a very good idea.’ He twitched for a full fifteen seconds, and then said, ‘We’re not stupid enough to just give you a name. Anybody knows that’s the quickest way to disaster.’
None of them had moved to sit down, but stood uncomfortably in the big main room. Simmy was moving around the room, talking and thinking and feeling a rising anger. ‘So let’s cut through some of this nonsense,’ she said, looking at Christopher, who appeared to be following some very absorbing chain of thought. ‘Ben thought Richmond might have been Hilda’s child, given away because of his arm. Is that true?’ She knew she was crossing a line, but all her patience had evaporated. She could see no reason to hold back, having got this far.
‘That’s no secret,’ said Fabian, astonishingly. ‘They told him the full story when he was eighteen, but he never wanted to have anything to do with her. They both agreed that things should stay as they were, once he’d been told the truth.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s got nothing to do with anything now.’
‘Yes, but—’ Simmy wrestled her thoughts into some kind of order. ‘You all call him “Uncle”. He’s got your surname.’
‘So what? All that was long before my time,’ he said irritably. ‘And I’m telling you – it’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about.’
‘Of course it has,’ interrupted Christopher, who had finally gone to sit on the sofa, leaving Simmy to handle the conversation. ‘It’s the whole reason for everything.’
Fabian almost choked and Simmy belatedly pointed him to the armchair by the sofa. ‘What?’ he gasped.
‘Who was his father? Isn’t that where all this leads?’
Simmy closed her eyes, rerunning all the talk she’d had with Ben and Christopher and the Armitage family. She could not recall her fiancé paying much attention to Ben’s findings about Hilda’s child. When she opened her eyes again, both men were looking at her.
Fabian gave a croaking sort of laugh. ‘You need to ask Petrock about that, as well as your boss, bloody Oliver West, who’s meant to be such an expert on everything. Giving poor old Josie the runaround, making life hell for Richmond, always looking for the main chance. That girl – Fiona – she’ll tell you.’
Again, there was astonishment. But neither Simmy nor Christopher could face listening to yet more of Fabian’s utterances. ‘I guess that’s for another day,’ said Christopher stiffly. ‘Now, could you please leave? And don’t come here again. We’ve had a long day, and there’s nothing more to be gained now. Remember – you came to us in the first place, and every time since. We’ve been very patient, but enough’s enough. As I see it, you’re nothing more than a mischief-maker with too much time on your hands. And none of it is our problem.’
Fabian’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Simmy struggled against a surge of pity for him. ‘Go home,’ she said quietly. ‘And we’ll see you at Josephine’s funeral.’
‘Point taken,’ said Fabian nastily. ‘Sorry to waste your time.’
‘Just go, will you?’ said Christopher. ‘You’ve had your say, and we admit we haven’t been very helpful where the police are concerned. But if it’s true that none of you Armitages have anything to feel guilty about, then it’ll be over soon enough. It’s always like this when they’re investigating a murder. People feel insecure, anxious, even offended. Their lives are picked apart and nasty stuff gets exposed to the light of day. Believe me, I know what it’s like. I dare say it’ll only be a few more days now.’
Fabian went meekly and with very few more words. Simmy noted that his expression was very thoughtful as he turned to go. Some new idea appeared to be preoccupying him – as it was her. Faint flutterings began in her stomach. There were inescapable connections to be made, if only she could stay awake to make them. But she was hopelessly tired, it was dark outside, and she and Christopher had a long list of things to talk about. So did she and Ben. And she and Moxon. Fabian had told them something crucial and all they’d done was send him home without properly listening.
‘Errghh,’ she groaned, when Fabian had finally gone. ‘This is too much. I don’t want to do it any more. I’m so tired I don’t even care who killed who or why.’
Her fiancé wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ‘Leave it till the morning. Nothing’s going to happen tonight. Fabian’s a real case, isn’t he. I thought he’d totally lost the plot when he started on poor old Oliver. Why drag him into it?’
Simmy only yawned.
Saturday morning dawned as usual with Robin wanting his early feed to coincide with the rising of the sun. The two events really did coincide this time, as the feed was nearly an hour later than usual and the sunrise was getting slightly earlier every day. Simmy sat watching it and thinking about the previous day. From the moment she and Ben had found the boxes in Hilda’s garage, there had been clues falling like ripe peaches into her lap. Odd remarks, sudden connections, database revelations – she knew that the whole picture was concealed amongst them somehow – probably not even very hard to find, if she just applied herself.
Her first duty was to call Moxon and claim his approval for going to see Mrs Harriman as requested. Whether or not she would have anything fresh to tell him remained to be seen. It was entirely likely that the police already knew at least as much as Simmy and Ben did. More, in fact. They could have identified other areas of Josephine’s life that caused her to be a murder victim. Or they could have established beyond doubt that she had been killed by a manic burglar, panicked by her unexpected presence as he stuffed her collection of china and porcelain into his bag.
As usual, she went back to bed after the feed, with Robin cuddled close, drifting in and out of sleep until past eight o’clock. ‘Are you sure it’s all right to do that?’ Christopher asked her, when he brought the morning tea. ‘I get the impression it’s virtually illegal.’
‘Are you going to report me?’
‘Only if you don’t let me have a turn sometimes. It looks blissful.’
‘It is. And unless you weigh twenty stone or are dead drunk, there’s absolutely no danger whatsoever. At least, there’s probably the same danger as dropping him out of a window or falling downstairs carrying him. Things happen, but that’s no reason to live like the Murdstones.’
‘Well said.’ At the age of fourteen, Simmy and Christopher had simultaneously read David Copperfield and quoted it to each other for years afterwards. They had delightedly gone back to doing so now, when they discovered they could still recall the whole story. ‘Although I worry a bit that Agnes wouldn’t have had her babies in bed with her.’
‘Oh, she did. She wouldn’t be at all risk-averse.’
‘And she’d never get drunk.’
‘Definitely not.’
‘In fact, you can probably tell the quality of a person’s character by just that – how much cuddle they give their babies. And, of course, it would explain a lot about how the babies themselves turned out.’
Christopher smiled, but let the banter drop at that point. ‘By the way, your squirrel is demanding to speak to his solicitor about unfair imprisonment. I think we need to let him go, and pretend we never met him.’
‘Another law we’d be breaking.’
‘I don’t suppose I’m the first to observe that the law can very often be an ass.’
‘You’re not. Mr Bumble said it – though I think the exact words are “the law is a ass”.’
‘So – what are we going to do today, then?’ he asked. Because he only had alternate Saturdays at home, they acquired added value. ‘It’s not rainin
g.’
‘I’ve got to phone Moxon and Ben, for a start. And I need to be available if Bonnie wants me at the shop. I think we also said we’d try to get together tomorrow.’
‘You won’t go down there, will you? Not after yesterday?’ Simmy had told him of her emergency deliveries, driving down to Newby Bridge in the van without Robin. He had been careful not to criticise, but she could see he hadn’t liked it.
‘Not if I can help it. My time is yours, Bonnie permitting. I doubt if she’ll summon me today, anyway. I don’t think any of us can say for sure what could happen tomorrow.’
‘And that’s the nearest I’ll get to a promise, is it?’
‘I promise I won’t go anywhere today without you,’ she prevaricated. ‘We might have to go places together. You won’t mind that, will you?’
He laughed. ‘Why would I? The fact is, you’ve got me well and truly sucked into this murder malarky. I keep thinking of poor Josephine and how harmless she was. And the effect it’s had on everybody at work is tragic. The place is in meltdown, and I’m furious with whoever made that happen.’ He hesitated. ‘Did you get the impression that Fabian virtually told us, last night? Or was I imagining it?’
‘The only impression I ever get from Fabian is that he’s auditioning for the part of Uriah Heep. I don’t think his mind works well enough for anything he says to be credible.’
‘All the same—’
‘What?’
‘I’m finding myself worryingly keen to get to the bottom of it. I seem to have caught the sleuthing bug from you and Ben, because I can hardly think about anything else.’
‘Good,’ said Simmy.
Moxon was evidently delighted to get her call and even more delighted to hear what she had to say. ‘You really did it?’ he repeated. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’
‘It was quite a lot to ask,’ she reminded him. ‘But it turned out to be all very easy. Christopher knows her, as it happens. Did she tell you about Josephine doing some sort of research? Have the police taken her computer – because it must all be on there.’