by Rebecca Tope
‘Poor chap. That must have been upsetting.’
Simmy paused. For the first time, she considered how it must have been for him to go back into the house, and – what? Handle a dummy that was standing in for the murder victim? Did it reawaken the original trauma? Or was he too busy trying to remember his exact movements for any emotion to intrude? ‘I don’t think it was, actually,’ she said. ‘He’s been rather odd, one way and another. And he has told me rather a lot of fibs. I’ve got a terrible lot to think about.’
Angie took this a lot more seriously than expected. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered. They were in the big room set aside for guests to use on rainy days. It contained games, spare clothes for children, books, old towels and much more. The chairs were saggy and soft and indestructible. ‘You’re not thinking Christopher has something to do with the crime, are you?’ demanded Simmy’s mother. ‘Is that why you look so ravaged? Now listen to me. You’re going to marry the man. That means you have to know you can trust him completely. There’s obviously an issue there, thanks to Tony going off the rails as he did—’
‘That’s nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing,’ Simmy interrupted.
‘All right. Good. So, what’s the matter, then? You’ve known Christopher literally all your life. If anything, you know each other too well. There’s very little mystery between you. So, what’s going on here?’
‘You’re overreacting,’ Simmy protested. ‘What sparked this off?’
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ came her father’s voice from the doorway. ‘We think it’s most unfortunate that there’s been this business in Grasmere, just at the very moment you’ve decided to marry. The two things are going to get entangled, in a bad way. And the way you’ve kept us in the dark has been a worry, as well.’
‘I was just terribly busy. There were no secrets or anything like that.’
‘So why hasn’t he come here with you now? Why isn’t he eating with us? You realise we haven’t seen him since you got engaged? Is this the way it’s going to be from now on – sidelining your parents?’ It was Angie speaking. ‘We’ve been rather hurt, I can tell you.’
Simmy recalled her father’s phone message, referring to himself as ‘Your peevish old dad’. Its significance had passed her by at the time. Now it hinted at self-pity, reproach, wounded feelings.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s your busy time. But I’m here now, and it has only been a week.’
‘Here on your own,’ said Angie again. ‘Why is that?’
‘No special reason. We just … went our separate ways. I think he needed to get back to work, or phone them, at least. He spent most of the day helping the police.’
‘So where will he eat?’
‘I don’t know. A pub, I suppose.’
‘Not good enough,’ said Russell. ‘Anyone would think you don’t care.’
‘I just …’ She tailed off helplessly, unable to explain herself. She hadn’t been aware of a need to get away from her fiancé until now. And he had made it easy for her, slipping off to his car with hardly a word. They had phones; they could make arrangements at a moment’s notice. Either he would spend another night with her in Troutbeck, or he would go home to Keswick, keeping her informed of his movements. His movements had slipped quite a way down her list of urgent preoccupations. ‘I’m supposed to go to see Helen Harkness after I leave here,’ she said. ‘So, I’ll just stay an hour or so.’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’ demanded Angie. Then she softened. ‘Look, love, I can see that it’s all been a bit too much. I heard that young Tanya hurt herself on Saturday. But the main thing is how you and Christopher get through all this. And I can tell you, as someone who’s been like a second mother to him at times, he is much too normal to be a murderer. It might sound daft, but it simply isn’t in him. He hasn’t got the imagination, or even the courage. He’d never be able to hide it afterwards, either. He’s just a pleasant, affectionate, uncomplicated soul, with little in the way of hidden depths. What you choose to see as suspicious behaviour is nothing more than bewilderment, and probably sheer terror at being so close to such a terrible event. Don’t forget his own father was killed not long ago. That must have shaken his world more than you realise. Now this as well – he doesn’t know where he can go to be safe. That’s your job. Don’t push him away because that boy Ben thinks he fits the profile of a murderer. Trust works both ways, you know. How does he know he can trust you, if you behave like that?’
It was a remarkably long speech for Angie Straw, and even more remarkable in its subject matter – even if she’d jumped to a few inaccurate conclusions. Angie tended to the brisk and the practical. She was seldom given to insightful analyses of human behaviour. The deviation from usual only gave it more impact. Simmy bowed her head and wept.
An hour or so later, she was restored to something more like normality, and had spoken to Christopher on the phone. ‘My mother says I’m neglecting you,’ she said, with a watery laugh.
‘She’s right. But I forgive you. What are we going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let’s start again tomorrow. I’ve had a sandwich and a pint in the Elleray and now I’m going home. Is that okay?’
‘That’s fine. I love you, Chris. I absolutely do, you know. But I wish you’d told me everything about Jonathan from the start.’
‘I know, and I’ll always be sorry about it. But I can’t see that I had much choice. You’d have splurged it all to Ben – you know you would.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said, and ended the call feeling considerably better.
Then she drove down to the Harkness house, with a fresh feeling of apprehension. Was Helen going to chastise her for neglecting her suffering daughter? Or would she try to blame Simmy for Ben’s latest obsession with violent crime? It was, after all, Simmy who had brought it to his attention, and given him a way into part of the investigation. She could, with some effort, have excluded him completely.
As she walked up the little path to the front door, she met a man coming out. A man she had definitely not expected to see. ‘Good Lord, what are you doing here?’ she gasped.
‘I’m sure you don’t really need to ask that question,’ said Detective Inspector Moxon. ‘Do you?’
‘Is it done, then? Have you arrested somebody? Has Ben come up with the answer?’
‘Go in and ask him,’ smiled the detective. ‘It’s rather a long story, and I have places I need to be.’
Ben, Bonnie, Natalie and Helen were all in the front room when Simmy went in. Moxon had held the door open for her, so she had no need to knock. Natalie, Tanya’s twin sister, looked tear-stained. Bonnie, if Simmy remembered rightly, was not supposed to be there. Helen stood up as Simmy entered the room.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, with a friendly smile. ‘Not that I can hope to get a word in until Ben’s brought you up to date. I’ll give him half an hour, and then you can come and have a coffee with me in the kitchen. Not a minute longer, okay?’ She addressed her son, with her usual mixture of admiration and exasperation. ‘He’s been very clever, I must admit,’ she added, as she left the room.
‘So? What’s happened?’
‘It was a conspiracy,’ said Bonnie. ‘They were all in on it.’
‘Even Christopher,’ Ben said cautiously. ‘Which is why Jonathan phoned him that Sunday. Christopher was the only person he could trust.’
Simmy heard her mother’s voice again, prompted by the word trust. ‘Explain,’ she begged. ‘You don’t mean four or five people all attacked Jonathan and killed him, surely?’
‘No. Only one. But they all had reasons to want him dead. They all had grudges against him.’
‘But they won’t all be arrested for murder,’ said Bonnie. ‘Not Flo, or Beverley, or Daphne or Valerie.’
‘They’re all women,’ Simmy noticed. ‘Probably not strong enough to throttle a fully grown man.’
�
�Moxon’s wildly impressed, you know,’ said Ben boastfully. ‘They’d never have worked it out without me. Us.’ He threw a loving look at Bonnie. ‘And Christopher helped a bit as well.’
‘Please explain,’ Simmy begged. ‘Start at the beginning and I promise not to interrupt.’
‘The charity. It starts with the charity, okay? They were the victims of their own success, tapping into a rich vein of sentimental old ladies who saw them as deserving recipients of all their accumulated junk. From Carlisle to Lancaster, and all the way over to places like Durham, they advertised as being willing and able – and terribly grateful – depositories of house contents. I found their website, it’s sheer genius. They paint a picture of these houses full of a lifetime’s collection of stuff. And their owner can’t cope with it all, has no idea what to do with it. Wants every single item to go to a good home, but however can you manage that? So, they promise to take it, sort it, and sell it to people who’ll take good care of it, and the proceeds will all go to rescuing and rehoming unhappy dogs. Simple. Straightforward and a huge relief. The old people don’t really want money for their things – they just want the house to stop being so cluttered. They might want to sell it and move to a bungalow or residential home. They think they’ll never be able to move if the place is packed full of possessions.’
‘Okay. She gets it,’ said Bonnie. ‘Let’s get to the chase.’
‘Cut to the chase,’ Ben corrected her. ‘So – CaniCare end up with a warehouse full of all these donations. They deliver it by the vanful to all their shops, which all do remarkably well, because they pile it high and sell it cheap. Everybody pitches in, including Florence Penrose, when she has a moment.’
Simmy’s head went up at this. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Moxon told us just now.’
‘Does he know where she is? Is she all right?’
‘She didn’t go far last night. Stopped at a B&B in Kendal, and then came back here and presented herself at the police station. That’s all part of the story, but it might take too long to tell it now. Moxon said to tell you she’s sorry she got you worried and she’ll phone you tomorrow.’
‘So – Jonathan swindled the charity. Have we established that?’
‘Not quite. It goes further than that. The charity swindled itself, in effect. Or rather, it swindled the trusting old ladies who gave them all their valuables. The dogs didn’t do nearly so well out of it as they ought to have done.’
‘So?’ Simmy’s patience was rapidly running out.
‘So, Jonathan became a threat to them. He saw what was going on. He probably made use of the stumpwork as a good way of exposing what was going on. He put it on the market to see what happened. It was his way of alerting people to what was going on.’
‘And who killed him?’ Simmy almost shouted.
‘Who do you think?’ Ben teased her. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Hasn’t it been obvious since Saturday?’
‘Stop it, Ben,’ Bonnie chastised him. ‘Don’t be such a beast.’
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘You were right. We were all right. It was Scott Penrose. He’s had a grudge against Jonathan for a year or more, fuming about needing his expertise, but not trusting him to be honest. He’s the area manager – the buck stops with him. But it was all slipping out of his control. Half the volunteers were ripping him – or his charity – off and he was scared everything would unravel. His wife was just as bad. She never liked dogs and hated to see lovely things being sold for a tenth of their value just so some old mutt could have another few months of life. And it was taking Scott away from her when she needed him at home with the baby.’
‘She’s an artist,’ Simmy remembered. ‘She’d know the value of a lot of the things.’
‘Precisely. But she never connected Scott with the murder – until yesterday.’
‘I still think it was very odd for Scott to turn up here the way he did and demand to see me.’
‘He wanted to prevent you from getting together with Flo. It worked, didn’t it. Now he’ll be off somewhere, with twenty-four hours’ start on the police. But they’ll catch him easily enough.’
‘And how much of all this did Christopher know?’ Simmy asked the question in a shaky voice, not really wanting to hear the answer.
‘All he really did was turn a blind eye to the chain of provenance for some of the things he sold. Jonathan was the main dealer involved, but not the only one. That Rosenthal, for example – it came from an old lady in Kirkby Steven, originally. She gave it to CaniCare, in all innocence, and our friend Nick bagged it. Nick’s as bad as Jonathan was – worse, if anything. But they both played by the rules, such as they are. Hardly any of it was actually illegal.’
‘But what about the charity? The scandal – the outrage. The loss of reputation.’ Simmy’s head filled with some of these same emotions. ‘Such a terrible betrayal of trust. When people find out, Scott Penrose is going to be lynched.’
‘Precisely,’ said Ben. ‘So, when he thought Jonathan was going to be the cause of all that happening, it’s not so surprising that he killed him. He had to keep him quiet. There’s nothing so guaranteed to incense old ladies than a charity that doesn’t do what it claims.’
‘Five minutes,’ Bonnie suddenly announced. ‘You’ve got five minutes before Helen wants Simmy.’
‘That’s it then, is it?’ Simmy said. ‘Scott Penrose drove into the cul-de-sac in a van, pretending to collect jumble. He knew – but how? – that Jonathan would be at the house, went in and strangled him, drove out and left Christopher to find him. But Mr Pruitt? Why was he there as well? I still don’t get all of it.’
‘Scott simply made an arrangement with Jonathan to meet him at the house. But he didn’t expect Jon to call Christopher and ask him to be there as well. And Pruitt – well, he’s a nosy parker, possibly suspicious that his wife was up to something with Jonathan and wanting to keep track of what was happening to the Leeson house.’
‘Did Moxon tell you all this?’
‘Not at all. I told him most of it. It’s all a matter of following all the evidence and making a coherent picture out of it. Moxon’s job is to check all the facts and assemble a case.’
‘Hmm,’ said Simmy. ‘I suppose it will all come clear if I sit down and think about it.’
‘It will,’ said Ben with a confident grin.
Helen was sitting at the kitchen table with two mugs of coffee in front her. She pushed one at Simmy. ‘All done?’ she asked.
‘I think so. My head’s in an awful jumble, but it seems as if the police can take it from here. Ben’s remarkably clever, you know.’ She sighed. ‘He makes me feel hopelessly thick, most of the time.’
‘Join the club. Now – Tanya. I just wanted to assure you that I’m not blaming you at all for what happened. She was a fool to cut herself in the first place, and David and I were irresponsible to leave her last night. I’m still shaking at what almost happened. This sepsis business is terrifying – and there’s so much of it happening at the moment. She’ll be all right, though. The hospital people were fantastic. And when she comes home, she wants to do more work for you. I really just wanted to say, I won’t try to stop her. It’d be a nice Saturday job for her, and I’m hoping she’ll have learnt how to handle sharp things, from now on.’
‘Thanks,’ said Simmy, taking a large swig of coffee. Something about the taste made her wince. ‘Ugh,’ she said, automatically.
‘What? Is it too strong?’
‘I don’t know. It just seems sickly. Really odd.’
‘Uh-oh,’ said Helen, at the same moment as Simmy recalled that same weird sensation, a few years ago when married to Tony Brown. ‘Is it what I think it is?’
‘It might be,’ said Simmy.
When she got home she was delightedly surprised to find the lights on and Christopher’s car was outside. She ran in, abandoning all thought of questions or debriefings. She found him in the sitting room with a glass of cheap red wine in his hand. ‘
I couldn’t just go back to Keswick without seeing you,’ he said.
‘You’ll have to drink the whole bottle yourself,’ she told him. ‘I won’t be touching alcohol for quite a while.’
‘Just as I thought,’ he laughed knowingly. ‘I think I keep better track of your cycles than you do yourself. So, I bought you this, as a congratulations present.’ He bent down and brought a poorly wrapped parcel from beside the sofa.
She tore off the bubble wrap, to reveal the beautiful, delicate piece of antique Rosenthal porcelain.
‘It was Ben’s idea,’ said Christopher.
‘It would be,’ said Simmy, wiping away a happy tear.
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About the Author
REBECCA TOPE is the author of three bestselling crime series, set in the stunning Cotswolds, Lake District and West Country. She lives on a smallholding in rural Herefordshire, where she enjoys the silence and plants a lot of trees, but also manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later.
rebeccatope.com
By Rebecca Tope
THE LAKE DISTRICT MYSTERIES
The Windermere Witness • The Ambleside Alibi
The Coniston Case • The Troutbeck Testimony
