The Staveley Suspect

by Rebecca Tope

  I have no way of knowing whether or not any of this has already been conveyed to you. The trial is to be in April. Tony is very much reduced, and it is a source of great sadness to the whole family. He has never even begun to recover from the loss of the baby, and his defence will focus very much on that. I cannot say for sure whether you will be asked to give testimony to the effect that his very sanity was disturbed by it.

  I hope that you are well and happy in your new life. I remember you fondly, and am very much the poorer for the cessation of our relationship – the reasons for which I shall never fully understand.

  In friendship,

  Pamela Brown

  ‘Can I see it?’ asked Bonnie, having jigged impatiently throughout Simmy’s perusal of the letter.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Simmy handed the paper over. Before the girl could finish, the shop doorbell pinged and the woman they had nicknamed Mrs Hyacinth came in, brisk as ever.

  ‘Are those freesias in?’ she asked, less than a second after the door closed behind her. ‘And the jasmine you were going to get for me?’

  ‘All ready and waiting,’ said Simmy. ‘As well as some very nice winter honeysuckle. I thought we could get some forsythia next week, and possibly mahonia.’

  ‘No, not mahonia. I hate their smell. I’ve got one in the garden, and every year I remember how vile it is.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Simmy, thinking the woman must have a defective nose, if that was what she thought. ‘Well, the choice is going to get wider from here on, of course.’

  ‘I can’t wait for sweetpeas,’ said the customer, with wide-eyed enthusiasm. ‘I’m growing my own, but I’m still hoping you can get me some special ones as well.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Simmy was watching Bonnie as she put Pamela’s letter down on the table beside the computer. ‘Let me get this week’s offerings.’

  She wrapped the flowers that had been sitting in the cool back room, and took the woman’s money with a smile. ‘Have a good weekend,’ she said. ‘See you next week?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I must say you’ve improved our lives tremendously. The house is always so full of wonderful scents now. And freesias are so marvellous, aren’t they? Whatever you find for me next week, I still want plenty of freesias.’

  ‘Right,’ said Simmy.

  ‘Wow!’ said Bonnie, almost before the door had closed. ‘Your ex is quite a case, from the sound of it. Did you know anything about all this – him being a stalker or whatever?’

  ‘Not a hint. I haven’t heard from him for a year or more. Once the divorce came through, I assumed that was the end of it. We’d got no reason to bother with each other ever again. I do miss Pamela sometimes, though. She was always quite nice to me.’

  ‘Was she very upset about the baby?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Isn’t that awful? She’s got five grandchildren already, so I suppose it wasn’t a huge loss for her. She was sorry for us, of course, but kept saying we could try again and these things happen. She’s very old-fashioned.’

  ‘Yeah. That letter – it sounds like something Wordsworth could have written.’

  Simmy laughed. ‘She must be eighty-five by now, and she was a civil servant much of her life. I think she was old-fashioned even as a girl.’

  ‘She was pretty old when she had Tony, then?’

  ‘Not a lot older than I am now,’ said Simmy, with a pang. ‘He was an after-thought, as they called it then. He’s got two older brothers – much older. She’d been back at work for ages when she got pregnant again with Tony. She got a nanny for him and went right back to the Department of Trade, or whatever it was called.’

  ‘How old is he, then?’

  ‘Forty-four, I suppose, or thereabouts. Old enough to know better than to go stalking some wretched nurse.’ She picked up the letter. ‘It’s a strange sort of story, don’t you think? I had no idea he’d been in hospital. Why would anybody tell me, anyway? They won’t want me to be a witness at the trial, surely?’

  ‘We can ask Ben. I expect he’ll know. You might be able to send them something in writing, or get old Moxon to ask you some questions and send the answers. It’s miles to Birmingham.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll be in Birmingham. That’s just where his mother lives. He still lives in Worcester, so it’s most likely to be there.’ The strangeness of the whole business was increasing, the more she thought about it. The Tony she knew had been as sane as the next man, albeit undemonstrative and unreflective. The shock of the stillborn child had rendered him silent for weeks, dividing him from his wife to the point of no return. She suspected that it was the first time anything had gone wrong for him, and his lack of preparedness had been catastrophic. He had also refused to hold or even really look at the dead baby, while Simmy had cradled her for twenty minutes of acute but cathartic agony.

  She could barely remember a midwife. Women had come and gone. Some had held her hand, some had looked away. They had known from before the labour began that the baby had died, which gave the whole experience an unearthly sort of futility. Afterwards, countless people had queried the lack of intervention. ‘Couldn’t they have saved her with a Caesarian?’ they all asked.

  The reply was never entirely satisfactory. ‘By the time I got to the hospital, it was too late. There was no trace of a heartbeat. She probably died a day or two before I went into labour.’ The truth was that Simmy could not reliably recall the series of events, the people who spoke to her, coloured as they were by the grey of Tony’s face, and the endless waves of pain and panic that accompanied her contractions.

  With an effort she did remember a woman leading Tony into another room. A large buxom nurse or midwife, who put an arm around his shoulders and said something about a cup of tea. Could he have somehow insanely fallen for her, as a kind of rescuing angel? There had been another encounter with her later in the day, as Simmy was waiting to go home. Papers had to be filled in, reports made, counselling offered. Somewhere on the ward Tony had also waited, sitting beside this woman who apparently had nothing else to do for a while but console the shattered father.

  It all felt long ago and far away. She was a new person now – a florist, with a house and a boyfriend and increasingly dependent parents. She didn’t have time for Tony any more. And if he had provoked that kind professional woman into attacking him with a knife, he probably didn’t deserve any assistance she might be able to provide. Not that she could see the slightest chance of doing that. ‘Yes, there was a kind midwife,’ was the most she could say. That was the sum total of any testimony she could produce.

  ‘That’s a clever idea,’ she told Bonnie. ‘Using Moxon as a go-between might be all it needs.’

  There ensued a Friday flurry of customers, including a pair of teenagers wanting to place advance orders for Mother’s Day. Simmy sighed at the prospect of the busiest day in the florist’s year, which had distressing personal associations, and which she passionately wished did not exist.

  ‘Three new orders on the computer,’ Bonnie reported at half past one.

  ‘Great,’ said Simmy, with more sincerity than it sounded. ‘How’s your cold now?’

  ‘I’ll survive. Time for another Lemsip. It’s been four hours now.’

  ‘You don’t sound quite so bunged up. Has Ben got it as well?’ It had been three days since Ben had visited the shop, thanks to his packed schedule. Course work, revision, additional subjects to those provided by the school, and his own personal pursuits – it all kept him fully occupied. Simmy sometimes wondered when he managed to give Bonnie any attention.

  ‘No, he’s okay so far. He said he’d come in today, after he’s finished the biochemistry test.’

  ‘Biochemistry? Surely that’s not one of his A-levels, is it?’

  ‘Biology is. He’s applied for an aptitude test, to see if he can fit biochem into his first year at uni.’

  Simmy shook her head. The complexities of the boy’s studies were impossible to keep track of. His central ambition was to bec
ome a forensic archaeologist, which apparently called for Latin, geology, criminology and half a dozen other subjects. The local comprehensive was doing its best to fuel his needs, but inevitably left him to a certain amount of private study of subjects they didn’t cover. In particular, he was teaching himself Latin, as well as instructing Bonnie in the basics.

  ‘I’m hoping to close a bit early, so I can get to Staveley in good time,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve been busy, haven’t we?’ said Bonnie. ‘New orders, plenty of customers. You must be pleased.’

  ‘No deliveries today, though. That’s unusual.’

  ‘They’ll be saving themselves for Mother’s Day.’ Bonnie was almost as hostile to the whole idea as Simmy was, for very different reasons. Her own mother had been damagingly deficient in her relations with her daughter, with Bonnie taken into care at the age of nine. Quickly scooped up by a foster mother named Corinne, she had endured many rocky years of dysfunction before attaining something resembling normality. The idea of sending cards or flowers to the woman who gave birth to her made her tense and rancorous.

  Simmy had been raised to sneer at the blatant commercial cynicism of the whole business. Her mother refused any observance of the day intended to celebrate her unselfishness in producing a child and keeping it alive. ‘The whole thing stinks,’ said Angie reliably every year.

  Now, not only could Simmy not ignore it, but a large portion of her annual income was derived from that single day, all on its own. Advance planning meant filling the storeroom with ribbons and cellophane, cards and wires, before the actual flowers could be acquired. It was exhausting, but undeniably exhilarating as well. This would be her second year of it, and she was determined to increase turnover, range and reputation, ignoring the emotional fallout.

  ‘Here he is,’ called Bonnie, ten seconds before her beloved came through the door. The repeat dose of Lemsip had already begun to take effect, her colour improved and nose less stuffed.

  Ben actually looked rather worse than his girlfriend. Dark rings under his eyes, lank hair and chewed lips betrayed the weight of work he was carrying. Three more months of this, worried Simmy, would surely see him crumble under the strain. At eighteen, it seemed very hard to be devoting so much time and effort to his studies. ‘Couldn’t you spread it over an extra year?’ she’d asked him. ‘Instead of doing everything at once.’

  The answer hadn’t been entirely clear, but it seemed the idea was ludicrous.

  Bonnie brought mugs of tea and a bucketful of tender female sympathy. ‘Simmy’s got to go to Staveley,’ she told him. ‘So we’re closing up a bit early. I’ll come back with you for a bit. I can carry some of the books.’

  In fact, the bag of books was of modest proportions, since much of his study material existed in cyberspace and weighed nothing at all. ‘Is your cold better?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Bonnie lied.

  ‘Good. There was something about Staveley last night.’ He thumbed his phone-cum-computer and nodded. ‘That’s right. Man found dead, possible foul play. That was this morning. Nothing else since then, that I can see.’

  His careless words struck alarm through Simmy’s upper body. If somebody was unaccountably dead in Staveley, she very much didn’t want to go there, for any reason, until the matter was safely resolved. Past experience had taught her that apparently irrelevant murders had a very nasty habit of turning out to be all too unpleasantly close to her and those she loved.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Not another one.’

  Chapter Three

  The delivery of a bouquet to a large house in Crook was a mild adventure in itself. The village comprised little more than a pub and a church, and was approached along an undulating road that carried as many tractors as other vehicles – at least on this particular afternoon. Overtaking was compromised not only by frequent blind bends, but dips and rises that concealed oncoming traffic. Simmy opted to wait patiently, enjoying the ancient fields on either side, with granite outcrops and moorland heathers here and there. One sheep she noticed had a lamb already. Spring must definitely be on its way, she thought gladly.

  The road was wide enough for two vehicles, but there was no pavement, and the grass verge looked muddy in places. A pedestrian was barely visible in the fading light and Simmy had to swerve around her at the last moment. An oncoming car was going much too fast. It was all successfully negotiated, but Simmy’s heart rate took a while to return to normal.

  The flowers were for a pleasant woman with a small brown dog, living in a handsome property standing well back from the road. Simmy had some trouble finding its entrance, overshooting it and having to turn around in a gateway and go back. But it was all well within a normal day’s work, and she forgot most of it as she carried on to Staveley, emerging almost like magic at the precise spot where Gillian Townsend had arranged to meet her.

  Two women were awaiting her, standing in clear view on the pavement. One was unusually tall and the other noticeably short. There had to be ten or eleven inches difference in height, and the tableau they presented made Simmy smile. She drew up beside them, leaving the engine running. The shorter one twirled a hand to indicate that she should turn it off, which she did. Simmy opened the car door and the woman leant in.

  ‘Hello. I’m Gillian. This is Anita. We thought I could drive ahead and you and Anita could follow on foot. You can leave your car here. Is that all right?’

  Simmy could see no grounds for objection, despite the slightly peculiar arrangement. ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘It sounds worse than it is,’ said the taller woman. ‘It’s only two minutes away. Gillian doesn’t walk if she can help it, that’s all.’ She had a musical voice and the immobile face that had become familiar on women in late middle age.

  Botox, thought Simmy as she hesitated, looking from one face to the other. ‘No problem,’ she smiled. They set off as arranged, and after a few moments Simmy asked Anita whether she lived in Staveley.

  ‘Just a little way over there,’ she said, waving back towards the main road. A large area of green was ringed by substantial houses, and Simmy assumed one of those was the woman’s home.

  ‘Nice,’ she said.

  ‘Staveley’s an oasis of normality, all the better for its lack of fame amongst visitors.’ Anita took them only a very short way along the unassuming main street with a scattering of very ordinary shops, before turning right into the residential part of the village. Two more turns, and Simmy had no idea where they were when they stopped in front of a large stone house with a splendid garden between itself and the road. The light had almost gone during the past few minutes, and Simmy had to peer at the carpet of scilla and miniature cyclamen that replaced the usual lawn. A large mahonia reminded her of Mrs Hyacinth and her perverse dislike of it. She paused for a sniff of its yellow flowers that were just starting to fade and fall. The scent was perhaps a trifle sickly, she conceded.

  ‘Taking a professional interest?’ laughed Gillian Townsend, who was waiting for them by the front door.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Well, you’ll get plenty more chances, if this works out as we hope. Now come in and meet my mother. She’s expecting us.’

  They trooped up the path and through the front door, which Gillian opened with a loud ‘Hello! We’re here!’ She led them across a good-sized hallway and into a front room where an elderly woman was standing beside an oak settle.

  ‘You’re very prompt,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got the kettle on yet.’

  Simmy was already envisaging swags of honeysuckle slung between the pictures, and large displays of spiky delphiniums on either side of the window. ‘What a fabulous room!’ she sighed.

  Anita made a sound that suggested agreement, while her face carried a rueful expression.

  Gillian made the introduction. ‘Mrs Brown, this is my mother, Barbara Percival. Mum, this is the lady who runs Persimmon Petals in Windermere.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know,’ smiled their h
ostess. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ She held out a hand for Simmy to shake. Her grip was firm and muscular. All that gardening, Simmy thought. ‘I’m so glad you like the house. It is rather splendid, I must admit.’ She looked up into Simmy’s face with a mixture of admiration and friendliness. ‘I really am very glad to meet you,’ she said again.

  ‘Have you always lived here?’ Simmy asked, unsure as to how to respond to such obvious liking.

  ‘Oh, no. Not at all. It came to my husband from his older brother, through a series of very sad events. That was sixteen years ago now. Then poor Stuart died only a year later, and here I am, rattling around in it all on my own.’

  Simmy was still gazing around in rapture. ‘But you’ve made it so lovely.’

  ‘Thank you, dear. I felt I owed it to the place to keep it nice. And I turned out to be surprisingly good at it.’ She laughed. ‘Silly to waste one’s time on a house, I suppose, but there it is.’

  ‘It’s perfect for a party,’ Simmy went on with enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes. Well, let’s have some tea, shall we?’ said Gillian briskly. ‘I know it’s officially cocktail time, but …’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Gill,’ said Anita. ‘Can we get on with it?’

  It wasn’t until they were seated around the room with cups of tea that there was any chance of assessing at least the basics of the three new characters before her. Gillian was cheerfully breathless, a natural organiser and problem-solver. But there was something amiss with her, Simmy realised. Poor skin, restricted movement, and the difficulty with breathing all pointed to some kind of chronic physical malaise. But it evidently did not impede her competence. She produced a notepad from her bag, as well as a phone that she consulted at frequent intervals. As they started to discuss specific flowers, she would bring up an image, which she showed to the rather silent Anita.

  Mrs Percival bustled about, equally focused as her daughter, but more gracious, as if aware of her status as senior person as well as owner of the party venue. She repeatedly smiled warmly at Simmy, treating her as the most important person present. She also inserted routine remarks concerning the safety of her porcelain and carpets. ‘It won’t be that sort of party,’ said Gillian.