The Ambleside Alibi: 2

by Rebecca Tope

  Melanie blinked in confusion. ‘I couldn’t follow that – what you just said. It was gibberish, in fact.’

  ‘Never mind. We’re never going to know, are we? And I saw Mr Kitchener. Remember him? He’s terribly sad, poor man.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We did his mother’s funeral flowers, four or five weeks ago. That little church – Grizedale, was it?’

  ‘Rusland, to be exact. It’s in the Grizedale Forest. I remember you said how lovely it was. Didn’t you go there for a look, specially, after the funeral?’

  ‘I did. It was an excuse to do a bit of exploring. It really is amazingly beautiful. You should go and have a look sometime.’

  Melanie huffed a syllable of scorn. ‘Not my thing,’ she protested. ‘You want Ben for that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Arthur Ransome is buried there,’ Simmy went on, unable to stop herself. More than once, Melanie had accused her of being a teacher in disguise, her true vocation somehow missed.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she cried.

  ‘Even though you did remember its name,’ Simmy teased. ‘You know better than I do how much interesting history there is all around here. Stop pretending to be so cool.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Melanie muttered. ‘So can I go now? It’s gone twelve.’

  ‘Did you say snowdrops? It’s far too early for them, anyway.’

  ‘That’s what I told her. Some people are awful fools. Can I go?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Be off with you. I’ll see you tomorrow. The Christmas rush might be getting going by then.’

  ‘Not in Windermere. They all go to Keswick or buy everything online.’

  Simmy nodded absently. She still had a mental picture of Mrs Kitchener’s hilltop grave in the serene setting between the two lakes, close to a large forest. It was a fairy-tale position in which to spend eternity. She thought she might go there again before too long, and perhaps take a few photos.

  Wednesday afternoons tended not to be very busy, and this one was no exception. Still two weeks before Christmas, with the schools not yet broken up, there was very little festive atmosphere in evidence. Her parents were closing their B&B for ten days over the holiday, opening again on New Year’s Eve. As Angie said, anyone who was driven to stay at such an establishment during Christmas had to be too depressing to contemplate. Simmy thought that very unfair and said so. ‘There might be all kinds of interesting single women – writers, for example. They might just have terrible families they need to escape from.’

  ‘More likely sad divorced men who never get a turn with the kids when they’re at their most enjoyable. And widows with no idea what to do with themselves.’ The outrageous stereotypes flew to and fro until Simmy’s father pleaded for reason.

  ‘We just like a bit of a rest and time to ourselves,’ he summarised. ‘It can get pretty exhausting, changing all those beds and being pleasant at breakfast time.’

  The shop window had been transformed the previous month with a model of a local landmark made largely by Ben Harkness. It had been his own idea, inspired by a visit to some botanical gardens in New York. It represented the Baddeley clock tower that stood on a junction slightly to the south of Windermere’s centre, and had been made of lengths of twig, embellished with beech mast, dry leaves, acorns and other natural materials gathered in the local woods. The project had taken a month or more to construct, Ben impatiently gathering as many small twigs and dry leaves as he could find in mid-November with more than one total collapse necessitating starting again from scratch. But Ben and Simmy had persevered, until the whole thing was finished. The tower itself was miniature – perhaps ten or twelve feet tall. The model was barely two feet high, which fitted perfectly into Simmy’s shop window. Countless people had been in and expressed admiration for it, and Melanie said it was fantastically good for business. She freely acknowledged Ben’s abilities in constructing it, despite a lingering reluctance to accept him as a friend. Ben’s brother Wilf had gone out with Melanie earlier that year, and there were awkwardnesses to navigate.

  Half an hour after her assistant had left, a man came into the shop. He had hair tied in a ponytail and wore a baggy sweatshirt that was far from clean. His eyes were blue and he was at least six feet tall. ‘Mrs Brown?’ he asked. It was hard to discern from two small words, but she thought his accent was northern, but not local.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I came in earlier today, and your colleague said you’d be back soon. My name is Ninian Tripp. I’m a potter. I do vases, among other things, and thought we might come to some arrangement.’

  ‘You want me to sell your pots?’

  ‘It makes sense. You can’t lose anything by it.’ His tone was in no way supplicatory, nor did he have the irritating brashness of many salesmen. He was confident and friendly, with a subtle expectation that other people would be the same.

  ‘Space. Paperwork. Liability if they get broken.’ She sounded pusillanimous in her own ear.

  He waved each word away. ‘No need to get formal about it. I’m used to breakages, but they’re a lot less common than you might think. You can stand them right here, look.’ He sketched with his foot an area on the floor that was already full of other things. ‘You put your flowers in them, you see. That way you don’t need any more space. I promise you, the vases will make the flowers more appealing, so we’ll both gain.’

  ‘You make it sound ludicrously easy.’

  ‘It is. I had the idea last week, when I was walking past. I only just started making vases the past few weeks, and it’s working out well. They’re a great combination of decorative and functional – do you see? Nobody has to have displays of flowers in their house, but when they do, it makes a massive difference.’

  Simmy felt she was being outmanoeuvred in some way. The man was using lines that rightfully belonged to her. ‘Of course I know that,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you do.’ He smiled easily, as if a joke had been made by one of them. ‘So that’s agreed then, is it?’

  ‘What are they like – your pots?’

  ‘Big. Bold. Expensive. I’ll bring you a few to see, shall I?’

  ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘So long as they’re not so big they take the place over.’

  He gave a mock salute, meeting her eyes with a long blue scrutiny that she couldn’t ignore. Only the arrival of one of her regular customers forced her to break the connection. In another moment he was gone.

  Mrs Weaver had developed the habit of calling in shortly before closing time on a Saturday and haggling over the price of flowers on the verge of drooping. ‘You’ll only throw them away,’ she insisted. ‘Let me have them half price, and we’re both happy.’ Simmy accepted that she had little grounds on which to argue, while at the same time feeling mild resentment. The woman did appear to be far from affluent, and the custom went back two centuries or more, she supposed – waiting for the stale and broken loaves, the meat on the edge of turning rancid, the overripe fruit and wilting vegetables, and then buying them for a pittance. But with flowers it felt different. If Mrs Weaver’s friends saw the tired blooms and knew they’d come from her shop, it would reflect badly on her. Either that, or they’d all be queuing for Saturday afternoon bargains when they should be buying them fresh and full-priced earlier in the week.

  But all she said was, ‘You’re early this week, aren’t you? It’s only Wednesday.’

  The woman was in her late fifties, with well-dyed fair hair and a deeply grooved frown line between her eyes. ‘I came to say I’d be in as usual at the weekend, and would really love a few over-the-top gerberas, if you’ve got any. I can take them off your hands for you.’

  ‘You know it doesn’t work like that,’ Simmy said crossly. ‘If you want gerberas, you should buy them now, at the proper price.’ It pained her to speak harshly to anybody, feeling quite fluttery as she did it.

  ‘Oh, no – I can’t have them now. I’m not going home yet – I can’t carry flowers around with me, can I? I’m go
ing up to Ambleside in a minute,’ she said, slightly breathlessly. ‘Something’s happened. They’ve found an old lady, apparently. Haven’t you heard? It was on the local radio just now. She might be somebody I know.’

  Simmy shook her head. After almost a year in Windermere, she still had to come to terms with the bush telegraph system for passing on news. The permanent residents of the little towns numbered sufficiently few for there to be a web of family connections and old schoolfellows who contacted each other constantly. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure, but it sounds as if somebody’s died – in suspicious circumstances.’ She hissed the last words like an excited child.

  Simmy’s reaction came as a surprise. A tight hand squeezed her guts. ‘Do you know which road it’s in?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Compston Road, I think. The one near the church, opposite that row of shops. Don’t look so worried, love. After all, a funeral’s good for florists, you know.’ She laughed unfeelingly, and Simmy’s fragile liking for her took a final terminal knock. The phrase ‘ambulance-chaser’ came to mind, tainted with disagreeable associations. But the main thing was that the road mentioned was nowhere near that of Mrs Joseph, which brought considerable relief.

  ‘Mmnng,’ she said vaguely, hoping to convey distaste and disinterest, while she analysed her own undue sensitivity to any mention of violent death. It had been barely two months since she and Ben had been much too closely involved in a double murder, and any suggestion of a repeat experience made her shudder. The extremity of ill-doing had shaken her world view almost off its foundations. Her own moral compass needle had swung erratically off course at times. A major element in her settling down again afterwards had been the certainty that nothing so vile could ever happen to her again.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on firmly, ‘I’ve decided not to let anything go at a discount again, even at the weekend. It’s not good for business.’

  ‘O-o-oh,’ sang Mrs Weaver sarcastically. ‘Like that, is it? Just you be careful, Miss. It doesn’t go down well in these parts to get all snotty. Keep on the right side of people, is my advice. You never know when you’ll need them.’

  That was probably true, thought Simmy disconsolately. When the winter weather descended and the fells were deep in snow, it would be a big reassurance to know that everyone was prepared to help you out. The road down from Troutbeck that she had to traverse every day would be lethal if it iced over. The network of gossip would surely turn into something more benign and constructive when people had to huddle together in a blizzard. Simmy’s mother only laughed when she voiced these concerns. ‘It’s never as bad as you’re imagining,’ she said. ‘It’s not Iceland, you know. Here on the west coast we can sometimes get through a whole winter with no snow at all.’ But she’d been forced to admit that the past five or six winters had in fact seen weeks of disruption thanks to the weather.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. Then a new customer came to the rescue and Mrs Weaver went off to investigate the death of an old lady in Ambleside.

  The remaining hour or so of Wednesday afternoon drifted past without further event. Simmy sold three bowls of hyacinths, a week away from flowering; two Christmas wreaths that she had made herself; and a single, long-stemmed lily to a small boy who wanted something for his teacher. There were also two new Interflora orders on the computer, for the coming week.

  Outside, the final flourish of December sunshine before twilight took over had long passed. It was almost dark by half past three. The shortest day was a little over a week away. There were no tourists in Windermere or Bowness this weekend, and would be very few for the next three months. Simmy’s shop felt like a fragrant little cave where she could pass the short days in peace, assessing the year gone by and making resolutions for the one to come. Her divorce from Tony was at last absolute, after a lengthy hiatus in which he had made a succession of tedious objections, or simply failed to sign the paperwork. Tony had become an unpredictable stranger whose motives and values suddenly made no sense to her. The final months of their marriage still carried a haze of bewilderment with them, a host of unanswered questions as to exactly what had been going on. Nothing so banal as adultery, nor so stark as domestic violence – although he had once hit her when she’d badgered him to justify himself. The easy explanation, given to friends and family, was that they had failed to coordinate their grief over their lost baby, and somehow that failure had eaten away at the seams of their couplehood, so they simply came apart. It had felt as if they were floating in space, the connecting umbilicus accidentally severed so they could no longer communicate. Tony had blamed her for little Edith’s death, wordlessly, almost secretly, but nonetheless implacably. He had wanted the baby so fiercely that the disappointment had changed him into a man Simmy no longer recognised. His eyes had filmed over with accusation and a terrifying rage. He tried passing the blame onto the hospital staff, in the traditional manner, but logic was against him. Edith had died before labour even started, the placenta failing to sustain her, for no good reason. All the tests had shown normality, until that thirty-ninth week when it suddenly went wrong. ‘It just happens sometimes,’ said the doctor helplessly. ‘There were no indications that it was going to.’ When Tony tried to insist that the small size of the baby should have warned them, he was shown charts to prove that Edith had been well within the parameters of normality.

  Simmy did at first understand the male frustration of having to entrust the safety of the child to a capricious female body. But it was a core fact of nature, and to kick against it was foolish. She herself, holding the little blue body, seeing her own father’s features on the inert clay-like face, wanted something to blame, as well. She wanted reason and logic to hold onto. As the days and weeks crawled by, she realised that Tony, her husband, had become irrelevant. They ought to be rapidly working on creating a new baby, forging hopefully onwards, but they lacked the courage because they no longer trusted each other.

  None of which quite explained why Tony had been so hesitant about the divorce. In Simmy’s case, the very word came redolent of failure and humiliation. Nobody in her family had been divorced – not that there were many people in her family, anyway. Tony’s sister, Cat, had been appalled at his behaviour. Simmy’s parents, proprietors of a bed and breakfast establishment in Lake Road, had held their breath and left her to work through it with relatively detached support. When she announced an intention to start a new life close to them in the Lake District, they had been uncertain as to the wisdom of that move.

  So far it was working out nicely. Always treated with fondness by her father and a somewhat careless approval by her mother, she was finally getting to know them as individuals in their own right. Angie’s insistence on following her own principles in everything she did was both inspiring and embarrassing. It also served to highlight the prevalence of brainless rules across every aspect of life, which Simmy might otherwise have overlooked, despite the discomfort they could give rise to. Her mother would not let anything pass. She had no personal objections to tobacco, muddy dogs, junk food or minor household dangers, and could see no reason why petty officials should try to force her to change. These officials all regarded such things with horror, especially those who took it upon themselves to regulate B&B establishments. ‘I don’t expect we can get away with it for ever,’ admitted her father, ‘but it’s going pretty well up to now.’ Indeed, there was a growing crowd of enthusiasts for the home-from-home atmosphere of Beck View in Windermere.

  The matter of Simmy’s divorce was seldom discussed. It had been assumed that it would come through eventually, and since neither party wished to remarry, there was no suggestion of urgency. Her father pointed out that there were unresolved financial details that might work against Simmy’s interests, if her business began to make appreciable profits. She shrugged it off. ‘Tony’s not interested in money,’ she said. But now, at last, the whole thing was settled.

  She closed the shop ten minutes ear
ly, convinced there would be no more customers on this dark afternoon. As she carried the display rack in from the pavement, she thought again of Ninian Tripp, the potter. It would make a nice change, she supposed, to have some attractive vases carefully placed around the shop door, enticing people in. They would have to be stable, and relatively chunky – well weighted to prevent them from falling over. Nothing slender or too small. She stepped away to get a better impression of how they might look.

  ‘Careful!’ came a female voice behind her. It was Julie, one of the few people in Windermere she regarded as a genuine friend. Not because the general population was stand-offish, but because she was still new and busy with the business and had not quite grasped the social systems of the place.

  ‘Hi!’ she said, with a smile. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Have you heard what’s happened in Ambleside?’ Julie seemed breathless, her eyes flashing with a sense of drama.

  ‘Not really.’ She had swept the story aside the moment she’d heard it from Mrs Weaver, anxious not to know anything about it. It had nothing whatever to do with her, and she lacked any wish to behave like a ghoul.

  ‘What does that mean? Either you have or you haven’t.’

  ‘Simply that a customer said something, but I took no notice.’

  ‘An old lady was done to death in her own house, in broad daylight. Everybody’s talking about it. It’ll be on the news. It’s a terrible thing to happen, Sim. You can’t just ignore it.’

  ‘No,’ said Simmy slowly. ‘I don’t expect I can. But I’m not going to dwell on it, either. It has nothing to do with me,’ she said loudly.

  ‘No man is an island,’ Julie reproached her. ‘It has to do with all of us – especially women living on their own in isolated little villages,’ she added. ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’