The Ambleside Alibi: 2

by Rebecca Tope

  It was no way to discuss delicate issues around murder and suspicion and the apprehensions that came with them. ‘He’ll have to get in the car,’ said Simmy. ‘And you can drive us down to Lake Road, where it’s quieter.’

  ‘It’s quiet enough here,’ argued Melanie, only to be contradicted by two large delivery vans trying to pass in the small street, with a smart red BMW almost sandwiched between them. Horns began to sound, and a man shouted.

  Melanie’s car only had two doors. With poor grace she stepped aside and waved Mr Kitchener onto the back seat. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she muttered. ‘It’s my brother’s stuff mostly.’

  ‘It’s good to see you up and about,’ he told Simmy, his eyes moist. ‘I was distraught when I heard what’d happened. Where’s all this madness going to end?’

  ‘You may well ask,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Nancy Clark,’ he said, having taken a deep breath. ‘It’s all because of that woman. My mother could tell you some stories about her. I know we ought not to speak ill of the dead, but in her case … well, she probably had it coming.’

  ‘Careful!’ Melanie warned him. ‘For God’s sake don’t make a confession to us. We won’t know what to do if that happens.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her. I have no idea who did. I’m just saying there’s a long list of candidates. People she worked with, mostly, seeing as how she never had any friends.’

  ‘But that was years ago. Why bump her off now?’ Melanie was still doing all the talking. Simmy found it impossible to twist round to address him, or meet his eye, until she found he was staring at her in the car’s rear-view mirror.

  ‘My mother always said she was a blackmailer. Sometimes that sort of thing takes a long time to catch up with a person. People just reach the end of their tether and decide it has to stop.’

  ‘Blimey!’ said Melanie. ‘Blackmail!’

  ‘She worked in a clinic,’ said Simmy slowly. ‘And was having an affair with a consultant for a long time. When did she retire? And what sort of clinic was it?’

  ‘She retired at sixty-five, twelve years ago. There was a big party – they must have been delighted to see the back of her. It was in the local paper. It’s a private clinic, quite exclusive. I always imagined it did abortions mainly, for rich women.’

  ‘Great scope for blackmail,’ whooped Melanie. ‘But surely the police will have checked into all that by now?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Simmy. ‘All they have to do is go through the records and see if anybody has been near Nancy Clark recently.’ Already she could hear the naivety in her own words. ‘Although … I suppose that might not be very easy.’

  ‘They could start with people who’ve come to their notice lately,’ insisted Melanie.

  ‘I’m not sure—’ Simmy began.

  ‘You’re talking rubbish,’ Mr Kitchener told them both. ‘That’s not the way it’ll work. The records won’t be given up without a fight, for one thing. Probably they destroy them after seven years or thereabouts. Or use false names. People pay to go there, not like the NHS. They’re paying for discretion and anonymity.’

  Simmy thought back to the few times she had met this man. They had been overlaid with other people’s comments on him and his continuing role as possible murderer, when all along she had liked him and felt sorry for him. ‘Do you remember that girl in the café?’ she asked, before she’d known she was going to speak. ‘You accidentally kicked her chair, and she looked at you.’

  He and Melanie both went silent with surprise. ‘Girl?’ he said, eventually. Something in his voice told Simmy that he did remember at least a shred or two.

  ‘She was at a table by herself, looking thoughtful. You kicked her chair,’ she repeated.

  ‘Ah. She reminded me of somebody. Her eyes. Gave me a bit of a shock. Who was she, then?’

  ‘You honestly don’t know?’

  He gave a kind of growl. ‘Is nobody ever going to believe a word I say, ever again? Why the hell should I lie about it?’

  ‘You might have been in cahoots with her,’ said Melanie, catching on. ‘The kick might have been a signal.’

  ‘Cahoots,’ he echoed scornfully. ‘Just you be thankful my mother can’t hear you. What sort of a word is that?’

  Or my father, thought Simmy, with a faint smile. ‘You know what it means,’ snapped Melanie. ‘Who did the girl remind you of?’

  ‘It took me a minute to work that out. Then it came to me – Matt Joseph. I worked for him at one time, thanks to my mother. At the printworks. It was the best job I ever had,’ he said wistfully. ‘They all knew each other, back in those days.’

  Melanie smacked a hand lightly on the dashboard. ‘You don’t need to tell us about it,’ she said. ‘We had all that from my gran, last weekend.’

  Simmy’s insides were surging with excitement. The puzzle was coming together like magic, pieces simply slotting into place by themselves. ‘Matt Joseph’s eyes? Matt Joseph who was married to Mrs Mary Joseph, with the two daughters? What about his eyes?’

  ‘They were unusual. Dark grey, close together, full of character. Mesmeric, some people said.’

  Matt Joseph had been every girl’s heart-throb, according to Mrs Ellis. ‘Charismatic,’ Simmy added. She visualised Candida Hawkins, with her smooth young skin and energetic hair. Her eyes were much as Mr Kitchener had just described.

  ‘That too,’ sighed the man. ‘Matt was lovely, right up to the day he died.’ The emotion was undisguised. Every boy’s heart-throb, too, thought Simmy.

  ‘So – that does make the girl Mrs Joseph’s granddaughter,’ Melanie summarised. ‘If she looks like Mr Joseph, that clinches it. We need to find her and get the cops to do a DNA test on her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t prove anything,’ Mr Kitchener pointed out. ‘Even if she is the granddaughter, that doesn’t make her a murderer.’

  ‘They’re looking for her, don’t worry,’ said Simmy, thinking Melanie’s lack of logic felt more persuasive than Ben’s insistence on rational processes. ‘She was here at the Elleray half an hour ago, but when we got here, she’d gone. But Nicola and Gwen were here. They probably saw her.’ The puzzle came apart again. ‘And that’s weird, isn’t it? I mean – do they know her at all?’

  ‘What do you mean, she was here? Who says? Nobody else even knows what she looks like.’

  ‘Except me,’ Mr Kitchener reminded them. ‘But I still don’t know who she is, or why she matters. Because I am not in “cahoots” with her.’

  ‘Moxon got a call from someone saying there was a girl in the pub who they thought might be her. They’ve had dozens of police people searching for her all week, apparently. We were in Troutbeck, looking for the men who helped her push her car back onto the road. Except we never got started, because the phone call came.’

  ‘Dozens of police people?’ Mr Kitchener seemed awestruck. ‘All for horrible Nancy Clark who got what she deserved?’

  ‘Nobody deserves to be murdered,’ said Simmy angrily. The matter had become inescapably personal for her.

  ‘Some people do,’ he persisted. ‘And I’ve met a few of them in my time.’

  ‘She could be Matt Joseph’s daughter,’ Melanie interjected, with a note of triumph. ‘That would be more likely, if she looks so like him. I know – she’s the result of incest. He made one of his girls pregnant, and it was all hushed up, but Nancy Clark found out about it, and now somebody wants it kept quiet. The girl herself, most likely. I mean – you wouldn’t want people to know that about you, would you?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Simmy begged her. ‘That’s horrible. And it can’t be right, because the police have double-treble checked, and there are definitely no secret babies. You can’t just hide the fact that you’ve had a baby, these days. Nicola’s a virgin, anyway. She signed a legal thing to say she was.’

  Mr Kitchener gave an embarrassed cough.

  Melanie gave a sceptical sniff. ‘She might have been lying. And I think you can hide a baby if you try hard enough. Besides, if
Candida has come back to confront them, they didn’t do a very good job of it, did they? She’s tracked them down.’

  ‘To kill them,’ said Simmy dramatically.

  ‘No – she sent the old lady flowers, remember?’

  ‘And it’s bloody old Nancy that got killed,’ said Mr Kitchener.

  ‘And nearly you,’ added Melanie. ‘But we’re getting closer. This is brainstorming,’ she informed them. ‘That’s what we’re doing. It’s a very useful tool.’

  ‘And now we can stop. Please. I need to get home. Back to my parents’, I mean.’ Simmy thought of her abandoned little house with a painful stab of guilt. ‘They’ll be wondering whether I want lunch or not.’

  ‘Thank you for talking to me,’ said Mr Kitchener, a shade too humbly. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘Do you need a lift anywhere?’ Melanie offered. ‘I’m at your disposal once I’ve taken Simmy home.’

  ‘No, no, thanks. I’ve got to get back to Ambleside. The bus goes any time now.’

  ‘Bus?’ Simmy queried. Surely he had a car of his own? ‘Where’s your car?’

  He coughed, with renewed embarrassment. ‘Lost my licence,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ She had no idea why he might have been banned from driving, but it made him even more of a loser than she’d first realised. She sighed.

  Melanie and Mr Kitchener both got out, while Simmy waited impatiently to get moving. She needed the loo and was cold from sitting in an unheated car for half an hour.

  ‘Did that get anybody anywhere?’ she asked Melanie, when they finally got started. ‘Or have we just gone round in another circle?’

  ‘We need to think. And where did Moxo dash off to, anyway? Is something going on?’

  ‘He’s very self-important today. With his dozens of officers prowling around Windermere and Ambleside. Why Windermere, anyway?’ she wondered for the first time. ‘Nobody’s suggested anything bad’s going to happen down here.’

  ‘You’re here now, that’s why,’ said Melanie with heavy emphasis. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘No – that’s not it. He’s not worried about me. He’s looking for that girl. He must think she’s the killer.’

  ‘You saw her in Troutbeck, remember. She could be anywhere.’

  They were outside Beck View in under three minutes. ‘Thanks, Mel. At least you’re all up to date now with everything that’s been going on. You can’t say you’ve been left out this time, can you?’

  ‘Is that your dad’s car?’ Melanie was frowning at a black Volvo parked just ahead of them.

  ‘No, of course not. His is in the drive, look.’

  ‘Hmm. Well maybe you’ve got a visitor, then.’

  ‘Or maybe somebody just bagged a handy space.’

  But when she got herself inside the house, calling ‘I’m back!’ down the passage from the front door, she discovered that Melanie had been absolutely right.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘At last!’ Her mother appeared from the living room, with a harassed expression. ‘We wondered where on earth you’d got to. There’s somebody here to see you.’

  Her first thought, rather to her own surprise, was that it was Ninian Tripp. Or Julie. But her mother’s tone implied somebody more unexpected than that. A childish notion flittered through her mind that it was Santa Claus, or a long-lost fairy godmother.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the loo,’ she said urgently. ‘If that’s okay.’

  ‘Hurry up, then. We don’t know what to say to her.’

  The silky skirt was blessedly easy to manoeuvre, and she was quickly back in the living room doorway. The woman standing by the empty fireplace was familiar, but it took a few moments for Simmy to identify her. When she did, she wasn’t sure how to address her. She could hardly say ‘Davy!’, as if to a friend, but she could not recall hearing a surname. ‘Hello,’ she managed. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘We’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Angie, with a show of briskness. Russell was already disappearing towards the kitchen. ‘Just give me a call if you want anything.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Simmy, wondering whether the visitor had been sitting down at any stage, or remained stiffly standing as she waited. ‘Well – here I am,’ she added superfluously.

  ‘I needed to see you,’ said Mrs Joseph’s elder daughter. ‘I hope it’s not a nuisance.’ She didn’t look as if this was any real concern to her.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ It was a foolish question, but the feeling that she was fair game for a succession of people, wanted or not, was an unpleasant one.

  ‘I asked around,’ was the unsatisfactory reply. ‘It didn’t take long.’

  ‘I saw your sister this morning.’ That too was a silly thing to say, she supposed. It was probably axiomatic that you did not volunteer information during a murder enquiry. The complications of who knew what were all part of it. It was unwise to make any assumptions. But Simmy had lost patience with this sort of behaviour at some point in recent days. She could not begin to imagine why this woman should want to see her.

  Davy seemed uninterested in her sister. ‘I wanted to see you because of what happened to you at the weekend,’ she said, speaking haltingly. ‘I gather it happened close to my mother’s house, and the police were informed that you were there in the hope of seeing her. They came to see us yesterday, with a whole lot of questions that I felt were entirely beside the point. I wanted to clarify in my own mind and more importantly yours that there is absolutely no connection between my family and your … mishap. I don’t know the details, of course, but it’s clear that the police have got hold of the idea that we as a family are involved. The assumption on all sides is that there’s a link between the murder of the old lady in Ambleside and the attack on you a few days later. That’s as maybe, but it appals me that some people have implicated my relatives in the business.’ She stood there, one hand on the back of Angie’s best sofa, her shoulders square and her jaw tight. ‘I have no idea why such a link might be made,’ she went on, ‘because the only possible common factor must be you. And all you did was to deliver flowers from some troublemaker, on the day the old woman was murdered. Unless you can tell me differently.’

  Simmy had been transfixed by this speech, still barely inside the room. Now she finally managed to sit down and draw breath. ‘No, I can’t tell you differently,’ she said. ‘I agree with you, more or less. At least I would have done a few days ago. Now it all seems very much more complicated than either of us would wish. I mean – there does seem to be a connection somewhere, but I don’t really understand what it is. For a start, most of the people involved do actually know each other. Your father was at school with Nancy Clark and Mrs Kitchener. Mr Kitchener worked for him – your father.’

  ‘Wait!’ Davy ordered. ‘Who are these Kitcheners? I don’t know them.’

  ‘He’s called Malcolm. He was suspected of the murder, until I gave him an alibi. His mother died a month or so ago, and I did the flowers for the funeral. I’ve just been talking to him. And he’s been to see Mrs Ellis – who knows absolutely everybody. Although your mother seems to have been on the outside. Nobody really knows her very well, as far as I can gather.’

  ‘She minds her own business, that’s why.’

  ‘Anyway, it all keeps coming back to this girl – the one who sent the flowers. She’s the key to it all, but nobody knows her, nobody’s seen her – except me. Somehow she really does seem to be a relative of yours. Mr Kitchener says she looks like your father.’

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Fury turned her nose and cheeks deep pink. ‘How many times do we have to tell you she is nothing whatever to do with us?’

  Simmy sighed, refusing to be intimidated. ‘I know. But why is she here? What’s the point, if she’s really not connected? Do you think she’s just some madwoman who latched onto your family at random? That’s not very plausible, is it?’

  Davy backtracked. ‘You gave the Kitchener
man an alibi – is that what you said?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him in the Giggling Goose, at the time of the murder. And the girl was there as well.’ She conveyed this final fact with some reluctance. It still bothered her that the two people most likely to be killers were in the same place at the same time. The notion of a conspiracy refused to go away.

  ‘I don’t care. I just want all this to stop, and let my mother get back to normal. She keeps on about it. And Gwen’s getting difficult again.’

  Simmy did a double take. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. She’s fine, really. But she’s always been a bit … volatile. She’s had a hard life, before she met Nicola. They’ve been very good for each other, on the whole. Nicola was always unsettled and dissatisfied, before Gwen came along. Now they’ve been together for ages and it’s come as a big relief.’

  ‘So what’s her problem now? She seems all right to me. She gave me some bedsocks.’

  Davy loosened slightly at this. ‘Did she? There you are then,’ as if a point had been proved.

  ‘She’s nice. I saw them – Gwen and Nicola – this morning.’ Perhaps this would register better a second time.

  ‘Did you? Where?’

  ‘In the Elleray.’

  ‘Good Lord! What were you doing there? What time was it?’

  Discretion asserted itself. ‘Oh, I was just tagging along with someone.’

  Davy tipped her head like a disappointed teacher. ‘Come on – your mother already told me you’d gone off with the policeman … detective, whatever he is. He’s not stalking my sister now, is he?’

  The emphasis in this remark suggested that Moxon had been stalking one relative after another, which seemed unlikely. Unless she had inadvertently included Candida Hawkins as a relative – contradicting everything she’d been saying.

  Simmy did not reply, and the conversation sank into a short silence. ‘Well, I’d better go. I know none of this is your fault. You had a terrible experience, of course. I don’t want you to think any of us wish you ill, in any way. My mother likes you, despite everything.’