The Ambleside Alibi: 2

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘But who did it? Was it deliberate?’

  ‘It was all Nicola Joseph. She killed Nancy Clark and tried to kill me last weekend. And again just now, along with Candida and Jane. It was all her,’ she repeated.

  ‘But why?’ came the familiar cry. And then, ‘Who’s Nicola Joseph, anyway?’

  Simmy did her best to provide a coherent narrative, much of it gleaned from Nicola’s distraught confession. There were gaps and confusions. Some of it seemed purely incredible.

  ‘The poor woman,’ said Angie, more than once. ‘You know – I considered that egg donation thing, years ago. When it first started. But the whole procedure is terribly invasive and I got put off more or less from the outset. It’s not a simple business at all.’

  Russell looked at her in total blankness. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t expect I told you. It was just an idea, really. Here I was, with a fine specimen of a child, and no intention of having any more. It seemed a waste, somehow.’

  ‘Candida seems to be a reasonable specimen as well,’ said Simmy. ‘So it worked out well for the Hawkinses. Even so, it makes you wonder whether it’s a good idea, don’t you think?’

  ‘Going against nature always has its risks,’ said Russell. ‘But I still don’t understand …’ he tailed off helplessly. ‘Most of it, actually. Why would the other woman – what’s her name? – care one way or the other?’

  ‘Gwen. We can’t be sure that she would – but Nicola must have been certain there’d be a catastrophe if she did find out. Apparently Gwen said she’d leave if it turned out that Nicola had lied about having a baby. It sounded as if she’s threatened to leave a few times over the years. And Nicola does seem very dependent.’

  ‘Even so,’ Angie protested. ‘Murder.’

  ‘I know. Not just once, either. And not on the spur of the moment. She had to get hold of a big syringe, and a sharp needle, and learn how to find a blood vessel. For all we know, she practised for weeks beforehand.’ Then she paused. ‘And I think she deliberately tried to implicate Malcolm Kitchener, somehow.’

  Both parents were fixing her with blank stares, and she realised that there were even more holes in the story she’d told them than she first thought. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk about it any more this evening.’

  ‘So that’s an end to it, is it?’ asked Angie. ‘The police have got her, and there’s nothing more to worry about?’

  ‘It ought to be,’ Simmy agreed. ‘But somehow that isn’t how it feels. There must be something else somewhere. But I won’t think about it until tomorrow.’ She yawned, but was careful not to stretch, mindful of her bruised and battered ribs. ‘I think I might need a bit of help getting to bed, if that’s okay.’

  Saturday dawned mild and dry, without wind or rain or snow. Simmy’s emotional state was much the same. She knew in theory that she should contact Ben and Melanie and bring them up to date with events. She should feel desperate sadness for Mrs Joseph, as well as Davy, her innocent daughter. The shame descending on their family would be annihilating, once the details were aired publicly. But instead, all Simmy knew was a powerful desire to remain very quietly in the cosy nest that was her mother’s old camp bed. Her body ached persistently, but her mind had closed down. When her mother hesitantly knocked on the door and came in with a mug of tea, Simmy told her she would not be available to visitors.

  ‘What about the district nurse? They’re sure to send someone to see you, after what happened.’

  ‘A nurse would be all right,’ Simmy mumbled. ‘Especially if she gives me something to send me back to sleep.’

  ‘What about that police detective?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to see him. He doesn’t need me. He never did. I’ve been nothing more than a pawn from the start.’

  ‘Pawns can be useful.’ Her father’s voice came from behind Angie’s shoulder.

  ‘Not this one. He won’t come, anyway.’ As she spoke, she knew she was right about this. Moxon would understand how she was feeling and have the good sense to stay away. ‘He’ll probably phone you to see how I am, that’s all.’

  ‘Ben? Melanie?’

  ‘Tell them they can come this afternoon, if they must. I might be ready for them then. For now, I just want to lie quietly and not have to think.’

  By half past eleven, her parents having conscientiously obeyed her wishes, she was starting to emerge from her hibernation. The house was silent and she began to wonder what they were doing. She had heard one phone call, but no ringing doorbell. She had twisted over enough times for the duvet to be a rumpled, lumpy nuisance. She needed the loo and was hungry. It all reminded her of far-off student days when she had come home for the vacations and stayed in bed till lunchtime, simply because that was what students did. After a few hours it had seemed foolishly wasteful, the bedclothes too heavy and hot for daytime. Even the dog, which habitually burrowed down by her legs to keep her company, would get bored with it after a while.

  And then the doorbell did ring and there were voices coming closer and Angie tapped at the door before opening it and saying, ‘The nurse person’s here. Apparently they’re not called district nurses any more.’ This irrelevance had evidently elicited deep irritation. ‘But it’s probably the same general idea,’ she added with a melodramatic sigh.

  The nurse was in her fifties and appeared harassed. But she behaved with brisk efficiency, examining every one of Simmy’s injuries and telling her how lucky she was. She also mentioned, in a whisper, that they really were still known as district nurses, but were trying to change it to community nurses, which was more accurate, surely anybody would agree.

  ‘Take no notice of my mother,’ said Simmy.

  Afterwards she felt much better, with a professional new dressing on her head and an assurance that she had suffered no lasting ill effects from getting wet the previous day. ‘I’ll get up for lunch,’ she said. ‘If you can find me something to wear.’ The long skirt had been bundled into the washing basket by Angie, worrying that it would have to be dry-cleaned.

  ‘What about your crutches?’ Angie asked. ‘Can’t you get them back?’

  ‘We should have asked that nurse,’ Simmy groaned. ‘She might have had some in her car. How stupid of us.’

  It had been unbelievably stupid, she reproached herself. ‘We could phone the police and ask if they’ve got them,’ Russell suggested. Both her parents were in the doorway of her temporary bedroom, the phone a few feet away in the hall.

  Simmy sighed. ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ she said.

  Russell dithered about which phone number to use, and who he should ask to speak to, but did eventually manage a conversation with someone who sounded reasonably cooperative. ‘If we go down there, they’ll let us have them,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that a surprise!’

  It was, Simmy agreed, waiting for her father to offer to go right away. ‘You could walk,’ she said. ‘It’s barely five minutes from here.’

  When he made no reply, she looked at him more closely. ‘Dad? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m perfectly all right.’ Which confirmed that he very much wasn’t.

  Even Angie took notice. ‘Russ? You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘Not ill,’ he said. ‘Just a bit … off. Tired. Emotional.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Simmy. ‘I know what this is. He’s in shock, just like I was a few days ago. Look at him – he’s shaking.’

  ‘You could have been killed – again,’ he blurted, tears in his eyes. ‘I can’t bear it, Sim. How …? Why? It’s all wrong.’

  ‘Get him warm,’ Simmy ordered her mother. ‘Put him in the kitchen with a hot, sweet drink. He’ll be all right in a few minutes.’

  With no very good grace, Angie did as she was told. Simmy then demanded the wheelchair be brought to her and she hoisted herself into it with no help from her mother. Manoeuvring it through the doorway was difficult, and she scraped her knuckles on the
doorpost, but she needed to be mobile. She positioned herself by the phone and made a call to a number she had taken the trouble to memorise the day before.

  ‘Mel? Listen – are you busy? … Good. Can you pop down to the police station and get my crutches? I got separated from them last night. It’s a long story. Come over here and I’ll tell you everything. Bring Ben, if you want.’

  Half an hour later, the youngsters were on the doorstep. Simmy was inordinately pleased to see them; however much she tried to explain things to her parents, they never fully grasped the finer points.

  The crutches felt like old friends. Simmy celebrated their return with a swift journey all the way through the house and back again to the living room. Angie brought mugs of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. She had a distant look in her eyes, and a tightness around her mouth. ‘What’s with your ma?’ whispered Ben, when she’d left them alone again.

  ‘She’s being a martyr,’ said Simmy. ‘She does that sometimes when things get out of control. My dad’s having a panic attack, which hasn’t helped.’

  ‘Sounds like my house,’ said Mel. ‘But they do have good reason to freak, in your case.’

  ‘Did something happen?’ asked Ben, with unusual delicacy.

  ‘Surely it’s been on the news?’ Simmy asked, thinking she should have stirred herself to at least listen to the radio before this.

  ‘An arrest has been made – that’s all they said. And something about a car driving into the lake, which has some mysterious connection to the case.’

  ‘I was in it.’ She waited for the reaction with interest.

  ‘Told you,’ said Melanie to Ben. She turned to Simmy. ‘The bloke who gave me the crutches hinted that was it. I know him a bit, but he wouldn’t say anything for definite.’

  ‘You were in it?’ Ben echoed. ‘Really? You escaped drowning twice, then? You must have been born with a caul.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know. The membrane thingy. Sometimes it’s still on a baby’s head when it’s born. It’s lucky. Sailors used to buy them as charms against drowning.’

  ‘Oh. Well, we were never likely to drown – but it was dark and cold and extremely horrible.’

  ‘We?’ repeated Melanie.

  ‘Me, Candida and Candida’s mother.’

  ‘Explain,’ Melanie ordered, which Simmy duly did. It took more than twenty minutes.

  ‘So it’s all over?’ Ben summarised at the end.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Simmy agreed. ‘But it doesn’t exactly feel like that.’

  ‘Too right,’ he agreed glumly. ‘It feels more like a virtual case, where there’s nothing real to experience.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Simmy at first could not identify the hot surge of emotion that seized her. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Ben, you idiot,’ Melanie said. ‘Simmy’s experienced more than enough, don’t you think?’

  The word rage came to her. Such rage that she couldn’t speak for a full minute. Not so much against Ben, but against her attacker and everything in that woman’s life which had brought her to do what she did. And then a déjà vu moment gripped her, and she paused. She’d been here before, placing the blame on a complex system of accidents and mistakes and human imperfections. This time it was different. She was enraged directly at Nicola Joseph. She wished she’d managed to strike her or curse her the previous evening. Creative curses now came to her, along with sincere hopes that they would still operate. ‘I hope she never knows another moment of peace,’ she snarled. ‘I hope she loses everything she loves and lives into a long and miserable old age.’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ Melanie applauded.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Sim,’ grovelled Ben. ‘You’re not going to curse me as well, are you?’ His worry seemed genuine, and Simmy relaxed into a reassuring laugh.

  ‘Not if you promise to mind what you say in future.’

  Melanie took them back to the main point. ‘Nicola Joseph really did confess, then? Just like that?’

  Simmy did her best to fill in the gaps calmly. ‘Sort of. She was explaining it to Gwen. And Candida, in a way. Isn’t that weird, though? Your biological child that you didn’t carry for nine months or deliver or ever see or hold.’ As she spoke, she relived the minutes she had had with her stillborn daughter and almost counted herself fortunate. ‘It must feel so strange.’

  ‘Did they ever tell her there was a child?’ Melanie wondered.

  ‘They must have done, or she’d have had no reason to kill Nancy Clark. I suppose Nancy herself told her, actually. Then blackmailed her, because she’d found out how Gwen would react.’ She thought for a minute. ‘You can sort of see how that could have gone, can’t you? Nicola probably blurted it all out from the start. Something like, “Oh, God! If Gwen ever finds out, she’ll leave me” kind of thing. Gave Nancy her chance, there and then.’

  ‘Candida kept saying Nicola must be mad. She said, “I’m the daughter of a madwoman.” Not just mad, though. She could easily have killed five people – no, four. I’m counting myself twice.’ She laughed. ‘But what an awful business. Candida’s own mother seems really nice. Sensible, affluent, open-minded.’

  ‘The sort of woman who’d tell the kid the whole story from the start, you think?’ asked Ben.

  Simmy thought for a moment. ‘No, Candida said she wasn’t told until quite recently. How would you explain it, anyway? You’d have to wait until the child understood the mechanics of reproduction.’

  ‘That’d be when it was about four,’ said Melanie, ‘if my sisters are anything to go by.’

  Ben returned to the central issue of motive. ‘But she said she did it to stop Gwen finding out? And that meant killing everyone who knew about it – including the girl herself and her mother? That’s worse than mad, surely? That’s totally ludicrous.’

  ‘I’m not totally sure she seriously meant to kill us last night. She just wanted to stop the story spreading. She wanted the Hawkins women to go back home and never speak to her again. It was a sort of extreme warning.’

  ‘But she did want you dead, because she pushed you off that bridge. It was her, wasn’t it?’ The boy narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. ‘Is that for definite?’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’ Simmy shivered at the idea of a second would-be killer. ‘Of course it was her. When you think about it, it’s exactly what a woman like her would do. No blood, no getting her hands dirty. She could just walk away as if nothing had happened.’ The rage threatened to return. ‘What a foul person she must be. Look what she’s done to me.’

  ‘You’ll be fine in a few more days,’ Melanie assured her. ‘You’ll be bored stiff and wanting to get back to work.’

  Simmy looked around the room and felt the walls closing in on her. The stack of DVDs by the telly looked painfully small. She wasn’t sure she could lose herself in a book for more than a couple of hours each day. ‘You could be right,’ she said.

  In the calm that followed, she wondered about her father and his panic attack. ‘I ought to find out if Dad’s all right,’ she said. ‘He lost it a bit this morning.’

  ‘It must have been awful for them,’ Melanie sympathised. ‘You being their only one. All those what ifs must have got through to them by now. That’s what my gran said, when she heard. Says it would have been like killing three people, not one.’

  ‘At least nobody seems to be missing Nancy Clark much,’ said Ben, obviously striving to show appropriate feeling.

  He got no reply, because the doorbell rang for the third time that morning.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Where is she? I must speak to her,’ came a strangled desperate voice from the front doorstep. When Simmy’s mother tried to prevaricate, having no idea who this new visitor might be, he simply swept her aside and limped into the living room. His face was twisted, his hair spiky, his shoulders jerking with tension. When he saw Simmy, he rushed at her. She cringed back in terror, but instead of striking her he flung his arms round
her. It took some moments to understand that his intentions were anything but malign.

  ‘Hey!’ Ben protested. ‘Put her down. She’s hurt.’

  Simmy pushed him away, more or less gently. ‘What’s all this?’ she asked, feeling weirdly maternal towards him.

  ‘I owe everything to you,’ wept Malcolm Kitchener. ‘I can never thank you enough.’

  For the fiftieth time, Simmy wanted to argue this point, to repeat yet again But I didn’t do anything. ‘Sit down and tell us what you mean,’ she ordered.

  He was kneeling on the floor, all dignity abandoned. Not that he’d ever had much dignity, Simmy reflected. Poor man – he had been every bit as passive and victimised as she had herself, from the very start. ‘Here – sit here,’ Melanie suggested, shifting along the sofa to make space for him. With a scramble, he did as invited. ‘Now – talk,’ said Melanie.

  ‘It’s Brenda,’ he began. ‘My sister. She wants to see you as well, when the police have finished with her.’

  Astonishment rendered Simmy, Ben and Melanie speechless. Mr Kitchener went on, ‘She had an email from the police, last week, and flew over right away. She’s been here since Wednesday.’

  ‘So it wasn’t her who pushed Simmy in the beck,’ said Ben. Everybody looked at him.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mr Kitchener. He was slowly getting himself together, speaking more clearly, although it was plainly an effort.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us she was here when we saw you yesterday?’ Melanie demanded. ‘We had all that talk in the car and you never said a word.’

  ‘She asked me not to. She wanted to do a bit of detective work of her own. She had an idea there was something about Nicola Joseph, you see. Some secret that only the two of them knew. It goes back to the time when she emigrated. She went all of a sudden, just vanished overnight, very nearly. My mother was terribly upset.’

  ‘Did they ever meet again?’ asked Melanie.