The Coniston Case

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘You’ve never mentioned her before.’ Melanie’s social circle was an ongoing mystery to Simmy. The people she described as friends mainly appeared to be little more than acquaintances, with no single name recurring often enough to suggest a genuine intimate.

  ‘I bet I have. She was on my course, but didn’t finish. Her sister got her a place with a big hotel chain, doing the website or database or something. She’s already got all the qualifications for that stuff, so didn’t see any point in carrying on with management. She’s from Dumfries originally.’

  It rang no bells with Simmy, but she was more or less willing to let this Mary Ann deputise for her if it saved a long drive up to Cockermouth. ‘Okay, then,’ she agreed. ‘If she wouldn’t mind.’

  But before anything could be done about it, there was a knocking at the street door, which was still locked. Simmy looked at her watch. ‘Still only five to nine,’ she said. ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘Someone forgot to send a Valentine,’ said Melanie. ‘And wants to pretend it’s all our fault.’

  But when Simmy went to the door she recognised the long mane of hair belonging to Joanna Colhoun. Beside her was a young man Simmy had not seen before. She turned the sign to Open and unbolted the door.

  ‘Sorry!’ Joanna panted breathlessly. ‘We thought you’d be open by now. This is Baz.’

  Simmy gave him a brief look. He was dark-haired, with blue eyes and a long sharp nose. He looked too old to be a student, but rather young to be a tutor. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘Your mother …’ addressing the girl.

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s why we came. She’s all right, you see. Panic over. She sent a message to my dad. She’s really sorry to have messed you about so much. You must be really pissed about it. The thing is, apparently, she managed to get her car started again before the RAC man turned up, and just drove to the nearest main road, in case it conked out again. But the really mad part is …’ here she laughed merrily, ‘she ran over her phone. Don’t ask me how, but she did. Smashed it to bits. But she didn’t think it was a problem until she realised she couldn’t remember anybody’s number. Not even mine. She says she was starving hungry by then, so headed up towards Keswick, with the car flashing all sorts of warning lights at her, thinking she’d find a pub and a garage and a phone all at the same time.’

  ‘Your dad phoned and told you all this, did he? He actually spoke to Kathy?’

  Joanna looked questioningly at Baz. ‘He did, didn’t he?’

  Her beloved put an arm around her and squeezed. ‘That’s right, sweetie. And your dad’s been trying to get hold of you, but there wasn’t a signal.’

  ‘So how did all these messages get passed around?’ Simmy asked.

  ‘Um … I think Dad called our guest house in Coniston, and the woman gave him Baz’s mobile number. Something like that.’

  ‘As it happens,’ Simmy disclosed, ‘Kathy called me last night, from somewhere in Cockermouth.’

  ‘What? She can’t have done. I mean – why didn’t you contact me and tell me she was okay? I was really worried all night.’

  ‘I assumed she had,’ said Simmy, not quite truthfully. She had not in fact considered Joanna’s anxiety at all, much to her shame.

  Again, the girl turned great spaniel eyes onto Baz. ‘What does it mean?’ she whimpered.

  ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘When you meet up with her, it’ll all be explained.’

  ‘Yes. But where is she now?’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Baz blandly. ‘She’s getting her car sorted and buying a new phone. And she knows you’re still busy, doesn’t she? After what you said to her yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ Joanna shuddered. ‘I was so horrible to her.’ She gave him a gentle prod. ‘That was your fault, you know. You told me nobody should know … oh! Sorry.’ She went pink and clamped her mouth shut.

  ‘Well, she was definitely in Cockermouth yesterday,’ said Simmy, determined to stay well out of any romantic implications. ‘Even though she didn’t say where she was. It took the police computer to find out that it was a pub in the main street there.’

  Baz pushed forward. ‘Police?’ he rasped.

  ‘Yes. You probably haven’t heard that there was a murder this week in Coniston, and I’ve been marginally involved. I know Joanna said it wasn’t worth worrying them about your mother, but I didn’t agree.’ She straightened her spine and lifted her chin, as if to say And I’m the responsible adult around here, after all.

  The young man backed down, with a little nod. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘No problem. We can just call them and say it’s all sorted now.’

  Joanna gave him a surprised look. ‘But you said—’

  He gave her a quelling glance. ‘No probs, Jo. We’ll be off tomorrow anyway, so we don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Did you finish your project, then?’ asked Simmy.

  ‘More or less. It’s not really something that can ever be “finished” as such. It’s permanently ongoing. We’ve got some decent data to play with, anyhow. Makes a change from all those bloody computer models.’

  Simmy was lost and glanced at Melanie to see if she was equally bemused. The girl was straightening some irises in a bucket, pretending to ignore the conversation. ‘Right,’ said Simmy vaguely.

  ‘So, that’s it, then.’ Baz clapped his hands together. ‘All settled, nothing else to worry about. Can’t think why Jo’s old lady had to come up here in the first place, to be honest. All she’s done is cause a lot of bother for nothing.’

  ‘I think she was worried about Jo,’ said Simmy, still feeling decidedly cool towards this insensitive young man. Her irritation extended to Joanna as well. The whole exercise felt irresponsible and dangerous, made worse by its secretive nature. ‘Perhaps if you’d explained more clearly what you were doing, none of this confusion would have happened.’

  ‘There’s no mystery about it,’ flashed Baz. ‘We’re measuring rainfall, temperature, hours of sunlight, CO2 levels and wind speed, over a period of a year in an identical spot to the one where an amateur scientist made the same measurements in 1887. It will provide a very useful comparison. There are other student groups involved, so we can spread the work through the year. But somebody’s blabbed about it on Facebook and now the whole thing’s got blown all out of proportion.’

  ‘Gosh! That sounds complicated,’ said Simmy.

  ‘There’s no substitute for real data, you see,’ said Joanna earnestly. ‘It has to be taken into account. If we get cracking first thing on Monday, setting the record straight, they’ll soon be thanking us.’

  ‘Good,’ Simmy agreed. ‘Although—’

  ‘Oh, we realise it’s just a snapshot, a tiny detail in the whole picture. But it’s a lot better than most of what’s been used up to now. A whole year of statistics, then and now, from the same place. It’s got to be useful.’

  Simmy was entirely unqualified to comment. ‘Well, it sounds very worthwhile,’ she said feebly.

  Baz smiled tolerantly and ushered his friend back towards the door. ‘We need to go now,’ he said. ‘See you sometime. Jo and I have a lot to do.’ The girl giggled revealingly.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Simmy, with a sudden pang of concern.

  ‘No worries,’ Baz laughed and they were gone.

  Melanie said nothing for a whole minute. Then, ‘So we can forget about Kathy, can we?’ she remarked. ‘Which is good, because I think this Jury person is a lot more interesting.’

  ‘Drury. I’m not sure she is, really. And I don’t think we can forget about Kathy for a moment. That story was rubbish. Nobody ever runs over their own phone, for a start. She’d never have gone aimlessly driving round like that, either. I don’t like that Baz one little bit.’

  ‘So I noticed. But he’s very nice-looking. Sort of Johnny Deppish, when he was young.’

  ‘I wish I could just forget everything and go back to bed, to be honest. I got through Valentine’s all right. What more can anybody want from me?’

&nb
sp; ‘Don’t ask me.’ Melanie sounded cross, causing Simmy to suppress a sigh. The girl burst out, ‘I give up. I don’t know who half these people are, so why should I waste my time bothering with them? You and Ben always charge ahead without keeping me in the loop. I’d be better off forgetting all about murders and stuff and just minding my own business. And I suppose we don’t need Mary Ann now, after all.’

  ‘Think yourself lucky,’ Simmy said. ‘I wish I could forget it all myself.’ Then she had a thought. ‘But you’ll have to speak to Moxon or someone anyway. They want a description of the person who ordered the flowers for Selena Drury.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You took the order, sometime last week. You were talking about it on Wednesday. That man who dashed in and said he was rushing for a train. Remember? He was wearing a long coat. I hardly saw him.’

  ‘Oh, yes. That seems ages ago. How do you spell the name?’

  ‘D-R-U-R-Y. The house is called Primrose Paddock in Newby Bridge. A dozen red roses, to be delivered during the 14th February. Paid in cash.’

  Melanie closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with a thumb. ‘Primrose Paddock? It was ages ago. What does Moxon want to know about it?’

  ‘Anything you can tell him, I guess. For a start, it would help to be sure what day that was.’ Simmy riffled through a stack of paper. ‘I should have looked for it yesterday. I suppose it must have been Monday afternoon. Or possibly last Saturday. Ah – here it is. February 8th. Saturday.’

  ‘We were busy. I was juggling all those online orders and we caught that kid trying to nick a card. Wasn’t that Saturday?’

  It was disconcertingly difficult to cast her mind back a week. A boy of about nine had made a pathetically poor job of stealing a greetings card from a stand, and had wept when apprehended. It was his mother’s birthday and he couldn’t afford the hefty £2.50 that a card would cost. Simmy had made him put it back, but taken the matter no further. ‘Draw her one yourself,’ she advised him. ‘That’ll mean just as much.’

  Unconvinced, he had trailed out of the shop, leaving Melanie and Simmy to comment on how unusual it was to see a child that age out on his own these days.

  ‘Must have been,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s not very helpful, is it?’

  Melanie closed her eyes in painful thought. ‘A long coat, did you say? Did he have a hat as well?’

  ‘I barely even glimpsed him, but I’m fairly sure there was no hat. The coat was brown, I think. Might have been a mac. Not terribly long, really, but he was tall, so it made a solid patch of colour. I can visualise him standing right here, bending down to give you the details. I didn’t see his face.’

  ‘Just about everything has gone out of my head,’ said Melanie worriedly. ‘I must be getting old.’

  Simmy laughed. ‘It comes to us all,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Melanie shrugged. ‘I don’t expect it matters.’

  ‘Ben thinks there’s some sort of group with a big secret. According to his theory, Mr Braithwaite must have been in it and did something to annoy them, so one of them killed him. Then these people getting flowers were either being warned off, or somehow informed of what was happening, through the messages attached to them. Something like that, anyway,’ she finished weakly. ‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just another of his elaborate theories.’

  ‘Mrs Crabtree, Maggie Aston and Whatshername Drury are all in some mysterious group? Like what?’ Melanie’s scepticism was palpable. ‘And what kind of back-to-front way would it be to contact them – sending flowers?’

  ‘He thinks it would escape notice from any surveillance system, I suppose. Emails, phone calls, texts and all that are monitored, aren’t they?’

  Melanie gave a scornful laugh. ‘Only if they’re members of some suspicious mosque or neo-fascist political party. Nobody reads every email that’s sent, do they?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ It was a familiar subject, often sparked by Simmy’s mother’s attitude towards state intervention in ordinary lives. She would very likely approve of any message-sending method that slipped under the radar. ‘But maybe this group, if it exists, is already known to the authorities, so they have to be extra careful.’

  ‘There’s no such group,’ said Melanie with utter certainty. ‘The idea’s insane.’

  ‘Oh, well. We’ll just leave it all to the police, then. That suits me very nicely. And it’s a relief that nobody needs to check out Cockermouth pubs in search of Kathy, either. Normal life can resume, with any luck.’

  ‘That’s pretty weird about Kathy, though. Driving all over the county in a car that might conk out at any moment, for no good reason – what’s that all about?’

  ‘She can tell us when she shows up. If she shows up. She’s probably feeling pretty silly.’

  ‘Worse than silly, the way she’s messed you about.’

  ‘I’m hoping she’ll spend this afternoon with me and we can have a good old natter. She’ll be going home again tomorrow, presumably, so she can get back to work on Monday.’

  It was still only half past nine, with three hours more to get through before the shop could be closed for the remainder of the weekend. Simmy felt unusually vulnerable, there in the main street of Windermere where anybody could find her. Solomon Samalar had turned out to be readily mollified, but there was a real possibility that the person who killed Mr Braithwaite might get the idea that Simmy presented a threat to his safety and decide to silence her. It had, after all, happened before – or something like it. Melanie too had been accosted by a violently angry man at the centre of a murder. Nothing was really safe, when it came right down to it. After all, she admitted to herself for the five thousandth time, if her perfect baby girl could die for want of a properly functioning placenta, then anything could happen.

  ‘They’ve all accosted me, one way or another,’ she realised suddenly.

  ‘Pardon?’ Melanie blinked her perplexity. ‘All who?’

  ‘Well, all except Mr Hayter and Mr Braithwaite,’ she amended. ‘But the others have. Mrs Crabtree came in person to tell me off for giving her name to the police. The woman who sent the flowers to Mrs Aston flagged me down in the middle of Coniston. And Selena Drury’s boyfriend tracked me down yesterday. They all seem determined to demonstrate that I’m in the middle of the whole stupid business. I know now how the maypole must feel when all those children are dancing in a circle, wrapping streamers tightly round it. They’re weaving a pattern I can’t see, using me as the central post somehow.’

  ‘Fanciful,’ Melanie judged. ‘Very fanciful. Do you think one of those three might be the murderer, then?’

  ‘Not Mrs Crabtree, surely. Although – she did seem to have a steely sort of character, under the old-lady image. And the cleaning person seemed much too ditzy to kill anybody. Don’t you have to be strong to shove a knife into a grown man’s heart?’

  ‘Depends on whether you know what you’re doing, I imagine.’

  ‘And Mr Samalar is too … dignified. I can’t see him killing anybody, either.’

  ‘Dignified!’ Melanie hooted scornfully. ‘What difference would that make?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I just didn’t think …’

  ‘Anybody can commit murder, Sim. You of all people ought to know that by now.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she begged, seeing again the cold waxen features of the dead Mr Braithwaite. ‘I don’t think it’s true, anyway. At least, not with a knife. You’d have to be completely desperate or crazy to do something like that.’

  ‘It’s the eternal question, isn’t it?’ said Melanie with a heavy emphasis. ‘Joe talks about it sometimes, when he’s managing to be interesting for a change.’

  Simmy shook herself. ‘We’re meant to be working,’ she said. ‘I haven’t even checked for new orders yet.’

  ‘There won’t be anything. It’s going to be dead all next week, just you see.’

  ‘People still have birthdays and anniversaries.’ She went to the c
omputer and switched it on. ‘Can you make us some coffee?’ she asked the girl, as she got comfortable on the small chair. There were times when standing for long still brought about a deep ache in bones that were not yet fully healed. She still regarded herself as slightly fragile, moving more slowly and carefully than before the injury.

  Melanie was in the back room when the screen presented a list of emails. ‘Oh!’

  Simmy’s squeal was loud enough to bring her assistant to her side. ‘What?’

  ‘Look! It’s from Kathy.’ Simmy clicked to read the message. ‘Listen to this. “Ignore all previous phone calls, etc. I was under duress. Hope I’ve got your email right. Can you come and meet me at the Yewdale Hotel today 12.30pm? If I’m not there, wait for me. Wear walking boots.” For heaven’s sake!’ Simmy smacked a fist on the table in frustration. ‘What the hell is this all about? She wants to take me fell walking in February! It’s freezing out there. She must have gone completely mad.’

  ‘You’re right about the cold, anyway,’ Melanie confirmed. ‘And getting colder, they say. The Yewdale Hotel in Coniston, is it? I went there not long ago, for an assignment. They’re good.’

  ‘Right. It’s where Moxon made us go on Thursday, when I had to look at the dead body. I suppose Kathy’s trying to tell me that this has something to do with the murder. “Under duress” she says. So how come she can send an email?’

  ‘You can’t be sure it’s from her, of course. Anybody can pretend to be her.’

  ‘It’s her address, look. That’s the one she always uses. And mine’s easy to remember, after all. If it’s not her, it’s somebody who has access to her account and knows her password. It’s a game, Mel. She’s playing some stupid game.’

  ‘Has she done anything like this before?’

  Simmy slumped. ‘No, of course not. She’s a civil servant. She’s very sensible as a rule. But the bossy tone is her all right. She’s in no doubt that I’ll do as she says. She’s always been like that. But this time I’m not going to cooperate. If she can get to the Yewdale, she can jolly well get here, and explain herself to me in a civilised fashion.’