The Coniston Case

by Rebecca Tope

  When she failed to fall asleep, she was disappointed with herself. After all, sleep was by far the best way to pass the time. But hands tied behind one’s back made it impossible to find a comfortable position. Her shoulders ached and her wrists were chafed and sore. She tried to pretend that she was holding them there deliberately, like a Victorian gentleman out for a stroll. Her hands were crossed over, elbows bent, so the binding rested somewhere between her kidneys. After many passive hours, it occurred to her that she might just be able to work her bottom through the space between her elbows and bring her hands to a far more comfortable and useful position over her stomach. She wasn’t fat or unfit. But she wasn’t thin and athletic either. At eighteen she could have done it easily. At forty-five it was a very different matter.

  She wriggled and stretched until all the muscles from neck to elbow screamed in protest. She would dislocate her shoulders if she carried on like that. Her buttocks were still firmly refusing to fit between her arms, whichever position she adopted. She was sure there must be a trick to it, known to acrobats and contortionists but obscure to everybody else.

  She gave up, panting and hurting. The whole attempt had been counterproductive on every level. She now felt she was a stupid old failure. For the sake of a bit of extra comfort, she had wrenched a whole lot of ligaments and given herself a stiff neck. It wasn’t as if her life depended on it, she told herself. She would be released in the morning anyway.

  Hours rolled sluggishly by until finally she heard the very faint rhythms of human voices far above her. That was when she tried to shout, only to discover that her throat had dried up and all she could manage was a feeble croak.

  Never mind, she told herself. She was going to be let out very soon now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ben and Melanie sat in the back, chattering incessantly as Simmy drove them all the way to Coniston, Daisy in the passenger seat beside her. It was still cold and windy, the water of the lake riffling in wild patterns as the turbulence hit it. Birds were giving themselves up to the tossing like teenagers at a funfair, rising and dropping for the sheer exhilaration of it.

  Ben was still wrestling with the question of why someone should kill Tim Braithwaite. He ran through all the motives he could think of, which amounted to somewhere close to twenty. Only five or six of them were remotely sensible. Melanie and Simmy both reproached him for flippancy when he suggested the man might have said something rude about Donald Campbell and been ritually executed by the outraged burghers of Coniston. Daisy remained quiet, to begin with, having reassured Simmy that the chatter wasn’t upsetting her. ‘It’s nice, in a way, that they care so much,’ she said.

  Ben seemed to forget she was there after a few minutes, asking her no questions and making no apology for his lack of sensitivity.

  ‘Well, but it’s possible,’ the boy protested when chastised. ‘Local heroes are not to be mocked.’

  ‘There’s not a shadow of a hint that he did mock him, is there?’ said Simmy.

  ‘The trouble is, we know almost nothing about him,’ Melanie complained. ‘Not even whether he was gay or straight.’

  ‘He was straight,’ said Daisy, coldly. ‘Honestly, I do think you’re starting to take it all a bit too far now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Melanie. ‘Of course, you’d know about that. And other things. You knew him pretty well.’

  ‘There’s a lot I don’t understand,’ the girl admitted. ‘The main thing is whether Tim knew about Dad being dead. I mean – was he killed before they found Dad’s body? Nobody can answer that, and it’s obviously important.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Simmy.

  ‘It is to me. For everything to just end like that – it’s horrible.’

  ‘I know,’ said Simmy sadly.

  ‘He was a scientist, right?’ Ben said. ‘Mr Braithwaite, I mean. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘Not much. When I was with Jasper, they both tried to explain it to me. Jasper would argue with his father all the time, saying his unproven theories were influencing the government, and DEFRA and making people’s lives difficult.’

  ‘DEFRA?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘The ministry that deals with agriculture and animals. Don’t ask me what it stands for.’

  ‘Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,’ said Ben automatically. ‘So Jasper is on the side of the orthodoxy where climate change is concerned?’

  ‘I don’t know what he thinks now. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

  ‘You’ll see him at his father’s funeral,’ said Simmy. An unworthy thought about flowers entered her head. A big funeral of a prominent local man should bring in some welcome business.

  ‘That’s another thing,’ said Daisy miserably. ‘Both the funerals are bound to clash with my honeymoon. We were going to be away for three weeks. It looks as if we’ll have to change all the plans now.’ Simmy was intrigued by the girl at her side. With the looks of a bimbo, engaged three times, daughter of a failure of a father and a brainless-sounding mother, she was evidently both bright and ambitious. Her choice of husband seemed hard-headed rather than emotional. Her grief for her father was real, but well under control. Whatever feelings she might have had for Tim Braithwaite were hard to detect. ‘I suppose it might be a bit awkward, seeing Jasper again,’ she guessed.

  ‘Not really. He’s moved on since we were together. He won’t be too upset about his dad, either. They were always fighting, as I said.’

  Simmy remembered Moxon’s little speech on that subject. ‘You can’t be sure about that,’ she said gently. ‘It’s often people in those sorts of relationships that feel it the worst. Fighting might just be their way of being together – a sort of substitute for real closeness.’

  ‘Hey, Simmy – you’ve gone all psychological,’ Melanie teased. ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Simmy. ‘I was probably thinking of Kathy and her mother. They used to fight all the time, but when the mother died, Kathy was distraught. Took everybody by surprise.’

  ‘Talking of Kathy, I hope she’s there by now,’ said Ben. ‘I’m starving. We can all have lunch, can’t we? You might have to lend me some cash, though. I forgot to bring any.’

  They had passed through Ambleside and were heading west towards Skelwith Bridge on the A593. ‘At least I don’t have to go to Hawkshead again,’ said Simmy. ‘This is more direct.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ Melanie sounded puzzled. ‘Why would you?’

  ‘Only that I did last time, taking flowers to Mrs Crabtree. That road’s very spooky, somehow. I don’t think I like it.’

  ‘I do,’ argued Ben. ‘It’s so timeless. You can imagine Wordsworth wandering about in the country lanes.’

  ‘Not to mention the sainted Beatrix Potter,’ sighed Melanie. ‘I tell you what – if the Braithwaite man was rude about her, he might get himself killed.’

  ‘My father says Fletcher Christian’s brother went to school in Hawkshead,’ Simmy recollected. ‘He’s always interested in that sort of lesser celebrity. He’s got quite a list of them in his head. He tells the guests about them at breakfast, poor things.’

  ‘Being somebody’s brother doesn’t make you a celebrity,’ said Ben.

  ‘We’re going to be really late,’ said Melanie. ‘Can you go a bit quicker?’

  Simmy had been slowing down to admire the views from a road she had not often used. Winter woodlands, grey fells, glimpses of lakes and river – Ben was right about the timelessness of it all. She knew very few of the names for the howes and woods and garths and thwaites, finding the old Norse derivations abidingly foreign to her ear. The deceptively English ‘Hawkshead’, for example, was actually something alien originating from a Norseman’s name. Nothing to do with hawks or heads, anyway. The landmarks, down to the smallest clump of trees, were all likely to have been named a thousand years ago by invaders of one sort or another. It sometimes felt like borrowed land, used by the English only on suffera
nce. The Norse invaders had grown deep roots and taken firm possession of a region the softer natives had found too inhospitable for serious settlement.

  ‘I keep wondering about Pamela Johnson,’ said Melanie. ‘There’s something about her that feels wrong to me.’

  ‘Oh? Like what?’ Ben was evidently intrigued.

  ‘It’s as if she’s been deliberately seeking Simmy out to tell her things that aren’t really at all important. I can’t work out what she’s playing at.’

  ‘You think she’s laying a false trail,’ said Ben with a solemn nod. ‘That could well be.’

  ‘No, no. She’s just a village gossip,’ Simmy disagreed. ‘The world’s full of them. She wants to feel she’s at the heart of things.’

  ‘Maybe she is absolutely at the heart of things. Maybe she’s actually the killer,’ said Ben.

  ‘I know her,’ said Daisy. ‘She’s a pain in the bum, but that’s all. Dad quite liked her.’

  ‘You know something?’ said Melanie. ‘We never actually checked with Mrs Aston to see if she did speak to Pamela about those flowers. For all we know, the whole thing was made up. That would leave the real sender still a mystery.’

  Simmy moaned. ‘Forget Mrs Aston. We can assume the police have spoken to her, anyway.’

  ‘Never assume, Sim. That’s a first principle.’ Ben’s solemnity was deepening. He held up a finger and wagged it so that Simmy could see it in the rear-view mirror.

  Simmy was lost for a reply. The Old Man of Coniston would be visible soon, beyond Yewdale, with the suggestions of endless wilderness in which you could lose yourself. People shrank to little dots out there, their lives rendered trivial and fleeting in contrast to the implacable landscape.

  ‘Ten minutes and we’ll be there,’ said Melanie. ‘This is going to be exciting.’

  Simmy remembered that on previous adventures, Melanie had managed to get left out for various reasons, so she shouldn’t blame her for feeling as she did. Even so, it jarred. ‘I hope it won’t be,’ she said. ‘I’m too old for excitement.’

  ‘It’s more likely to be just a boring lunch,’ sighed Ben. ‘You’ll talk about the weather or holidays or cars or something.’

  ‘I doubt it. After all, Kathy has been missing. She must have something interesting to tell us.’

  ‘Besides that, you talk about holidays as well,’ Melanie accused him. ‘All those exotic travels your family goes in for.’

  Ben snorted. ‘I do not. I haven’t talked about that for months. Although …’ he allowed himself to be diverted, ‘my dad has just booked a self-catering fortnight in Denmark. Wilf’s not going, but the rest of us are.’

  ‘All right for some,’ muttered Melanie. ‘What’s that costing, then?’

  ‘Thousands,’ said Ben airily. ‘Most of it earned by my mother. She’s had two good commissions this year already.’

  ‘I thought Denmark was all bacon factories and featureless landscape,’ Simmy said.

  ‘You thought wrong, then.’

  ‘Nearly there,’ Melanie announced. ‘Are we dreadfully late?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Simmy, without even looking at her watch. In the circumstances, lateness didn’t strike her as very significant. Coniston came into view, with its pubs and hotels looking dormant, the car park almost empty and the church dark and chilly. Unsure of whether the Yewdale offered its own parking area, she turned into the town park, which was close by. ‘What’re you doing?’ Melanie demanded. ‘You’ll have to pay if you park here. Use theirs, where it’s free.’

  It made sense to Simmy and she reversed in an arc to face the exit. As she did so, her wing mirror, inadequately bound on Thursday evening with sticky tape, fell apart with a clatter. ‘Damn! I meant to get my dad to fix that, but there hasn’t been time.’ She switched off the engine and got out, once again collecting fragments for reassembly. ‘You three go on in, and I’ll follow when I’ve found somewhere to park.’

  They obediently got out and went off, while Simmy put the pieces on the passenger seat and then followed them in the car. She was only two minutes behind them, but that was enough for her to suddenly start worrying about keeping Kathy waiting. The wording of her email had been going round her head for much of the drive, increasing her bewilderment with every mile. Under duress, she had said. And wear walking boots. How was she supposed to do that, anyway, when her boots were in a cupboard up in Troutbeck? The whole message sounded silly at best, and thoroughly sinister at worst. And yet there was an insistent normality surrounding everything that had happened. Even the delivery of no fewer than four provocative bouquets through the week had an underlying ordinariness to it. Flowers couldn’t kill. An assortment of people had used Simmy as a messenger. That was all. Even if Kathy’s brief disappearance was inexplicable it was apparently not life-threatening.

  But this was all rather beside the point, she admitted to herself, because a perfectly nice man had been murdered. That was not ordinary or normal or explicable at all.

  Then she saw a familiar car parked behind the hotel, next to the space she had chosen to use. A blue Subaru with the double ‘1’ that showed its year of manufacture, looking clean and undamaged, did much to reassure her that at least something was going to be all right.

  The reception area was deserted, so she went through into a long empty lounge containing leather sofas and a big window, looking for her people. Voices were coming from an area around a corner to the left and she followed them. The three youngsters were standing together, all of them looking agitated.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  Before anyone could reply, a man spoke from behind Simmy. ‘I’ll take you to your friend. Come with me.’

  ‘Baz?’ Simmy looked at him. ‘You know where Kathy is?’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘Come on. I’ll show you where she is.’

  He eyed Melanie and Ben irritably. ‘You two as well, I suppose. I never expected such a crowd.’ Then he examined their feet. ‘Not what I’d call walking boots,’ he observed.

  Daisy took a breath. ‘And me. Can I come as well?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ll have to, I guess.’

  He looked around, assessing the degree of attention they were attracting. A man on the reception desk looked as if he was about to ask some questions. Simmy knew she ought to do something, but she had gone completely blank. The presence of Joanna Colhoun’s group leader suddenly transformed into a possible kidnapper made such an utter lack of sense that her brain had frozen. She looked hopefully to Ben, who might be keeping up rather better than she was herself.

  At least he could speak. ‘Why isn’t Kathy here? Is she hurt or something?’

  ‘She’s fine. We just needed her out of the way for a bit, while we finished off the work. Now you can go and collect her, and no harm done. She’s not going to make any trouble, with Jo so fond of me, is she?’

  ‘Joanna’s in hospital, did you know?’ Melanie put in, obviously expecting a dramatic reaction.

  She was disappointed. ‘Yeah, but she’s okay,’ said Baz. ‘Just her allergy thing again. She called me an hour ago.’

  ‘An allergy to latex,’ accused Melanie. ‘Which we assume came from you. You let her go out into the street, almost dying of the reaction to your condoms.’

  Baz blew out his cheeks disbelievingly. ‘Nah! That wasn’t it. She’s allergic to chestnuts as well, apparently. There must have been some in the weird breakfast we got this morning. Some sort of home-made granola, it was. They think that must have been it.’ He widened his eyes, challenging Melanie to retract her accusations.

  She thought for a moment, and riposted, ‘That can’t be it. She’d have reacted much sooner if it was.’

  ‘Okay. Well she must have bought a snack bar or something. They haven’t got to the bottom of it yet. The point is, it wasn’t a condom – right?’

  Melanie shrugged, aware that the matter was of little significance.

  Baz jigged impatiently. ‘Look – let’s get going.�
� He looked again at their feet. ‘Nobody got proper boots?’

  ‘They’re in the car,’ said Simmy, thinking quickly. ‘I can’t drive in them, can I?’

  Melanie frowned at her. ‘When …?’ But Simmy quelled her with a look. A faint idea was stirring. If she could get some time alone in the car park, she could phone Moxon and tell him what was going on. While Baz was behaving with superficial reasonableness, there was a look in his eyes that she found alarming. Whatever the truth of it, by his own admission he had forcibly prevented Kathy from returning to Troutbeck the previous evening, and that made him potentially dangerous.

  ‘We’ll all go, then,’ said Baz. ‘Stay together. Go on.’ He ushered them out like a shepherd with a nervous flock. Simmy glanced back at the man on reception, hoping he would have finally detected something unusual. But he seemed to regard them as just another walking group.

  They all moved out into the car park, and Simmy realised her stratagem was never going to work. Even so, she approached her car, with Melanie and Ben close behind her. Baz hung back with Daisy.

  ‘Can you distract him while I make a phone call?’ she whispered to Ben.

  ‘I doubt it. He’s sure to see you.’

  ‘Not if I’m half inside the boot of the car, rummaging for my boots.’ Even in the drama of the moment, she heard her father’s ghostly chuckle at the two meanings of the word.

  ‘Okay – I’ll try. Mel – you’ll have to help me. Go and say something to him.’