The Staveley Suspect

by Rebecca Tope

  Simmy laughed. ‘As far as I can see, pretty well everybody’s related to Melanie. So do you know Anita Olsen or Gillian Townsend as well? They’re solicitors in Kendal, and Gillian’s mother lives in Staveley. So does Anita.’

  ‘Oh yes. Gillian’s my dad’s cousin,’ came the astonishing reply. ‘Gillian Percival, she was, before she married. The old lady was a Gordon originally. I’m Emily Gordon. And my gran’s Catherine Gordon. You won’t get far around here without bumping into one of the Gordons – in spite of it sounding Scots.’

  ‘Your great-granddad came over the border, then?’

  ‘Something like that,’ nodded Emily. She then devoted five minutes to a careful selection of flowers for the bouquet. Finally, having paid, and chatted about lilies and tulips and scentless roses, she headed for the door, throwing over her shoulder, ‘You don’t want to believe anything that Olsen woman tells you. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  Simmy’s attempt to follow this up was impeded by astonishment, and the young woman’s hasty departure.

  Moxon was welcoming when she turned up at the police station, which was only a short walk from her parents’ house. But he was also gently impatient, ushering her into a small room, offering her a drink, setting up his equipment for recording her testimony.

  ‘So, in your own words, could you tell us what took place on Saturday morning, from the point where Mrs Townsend came to the shop and asked you to accompany her.’

  ‘Um … all right. Well, we drove through Bowness towards Crook, and turned off the road up a track to a farm.’

  ‘Please name the farm for us,’ said Moxon. The us referred to himself and a young male constable, sitting at the end of the table, who did not appear to have anything to do. And perhaps it extended to the entire Cumbrian police force, Simmy thought.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know its name,’ she said. ‘I could probably find it on a map. The farmer’s called Jonah. He lives there with his sister Dorcas.’

  ‘Okay. Please go on.’

  ‘He was obviously expecting us, and he knew Gillian. He took us to a sort of shed or small barn down a track away from the farmyard. It had a stone wall separating it from the fields, and there were a lot of tyre marks around the entrance. There was a white van inside it.’

  ‘Registration number?’

  ‘No idea.’

  He chewed his lip as if this was a frustration to him. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Gillian asked him some questions, without naming the owner of the van. It had scratches and dents at the front, and I could see that it might easily have been involved in an accident. One of the mirrors was broken.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No blood, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Did the farmer offer to testify against the owner of the van?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not directly. He said he wasn’t entirely sure of which day it had been last used. He doesn’t take very much notice of its movements. There’s a spare key to it hanging on a nail.’

  ‘Surely he’d notice the owner’s car there, instead of the van?’ She merely looked at him, unable to answer. ‘Sorry. That’s not an appropriate question, is it. The car could have been left some distance away, I suppose.’ He gave the constable a look, but made no attempt to stop the recorder or rewind it. ‘Never mind. What else can you tell us?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Gillian took me back to the shop, and that was it.’

  ‘So when did it become clear to you that the van was owned by Matthew Olsen?’

  ‘That was when Anita came to talk to me, later on in the day. But Bonnie already knew, because Debbie must have told her … No, no. Wait a minute. Bonnie didn’t know anything about the van having dents or anything. And it was Matthew himself who mentioned it, I think. We all got together later on, and pooled everything we knew. The van was the most important factor by then.’

  ‘When did Bonnie see Debbie?’

  ‘When she and Ben went to Troutbeck on Saturday. Debbie took them to Matthew’s house. They wanted to update them about Gillian wanting me as a witness, and acting as if she’d found evidence to prove Anita was innocent.’

  ‘Slow down, please. This is important. Your young friends went to the home of Matthew Olsen on Saturday? Were they aware at that point that evidence was pointing at him?’

  ‘No, not at all. I didn’t know myself. I told you – Gillian didn’t give me a name. I didn’t know until Anita came and told me in the afternoon.’

  He stirred his own hair in a fever of impatience and puzzlement. ‘We have to take this step by step. Bonnie and Ben somehow learnt that there was a white van on a farm in Crook belonging to Mr Olsen, but they didn’t know the van was implicated in the death of Declan Kennedy. So why was it mentioned at all?’

  ‘I have no idea. You’ll have to ask them.’

  ‘I will. And you knew there was a suspicious van, but not who it belonged to until informed by Mrs Olsen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the only person who was in possession of the complete picture was Gillian Townsend, at least up to Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘And Anita, probably. That is, she said she had a text from Gillian telling her the vehicle had been found and she was off the hook.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Presumably soon after Gillian took me back to the shop. Sometime in the afternoon.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. She didn’t show it to me. But it was enough to reassure her, and send her straight to Windermere to thank me for helping them.’

  He left a heavy silence, looking hard at her, but evidently thinking fast. ‘You’ve believed all along that Anita Olsen was innocent, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she said boldly. ‘The idea that she killed Declan is ludicrous. You only have to look at Gillian to see that. She’s incandescent with outrage and horror at the very idea. She’s dropped everything to find evidence that will clear her friend. And everyone’s on her side.’

  ‘And yet Debbie Kennedy is perfectly credible as well. Shocked, grief-stricken, paralysed – yes. But her mind still works well enough, and she’s extremely lucid and consistent in her accusation against her mother. She supplied motive, as well, up to a point.’

  ‘There can’t be a motive strong enough for such a terrible act. Nobody could hate their own daughter as passionately as that.’

  He took a long breath. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there,’ he said. ‘Not that I’ve ever seen it personally, but I’ve heard a number of stories that would turn your hair white.’ He eyed Simmy’s healthy brown tresses with a little smile.

  ‘So what about Matthew? Isn’t he a more credible suspect?’

  Moxon blew out his cheeks. ‘Why would he want to wreak such suffering on his sister? They’ve been close all their lives, watching out for each other, like babes in the wood. It makes no better sense to put him in the frame.’

  A treacherous idea darted into Simmy’s mind. If Anita really did hate her children, she might have found a perfect way to punish them both, if Matthew was convicted of Declan’s murder. She shook her head vigorously. ‘What if Matthew found out something that Declan had done or was planning to do, that would hurt Debbie? What if he was trying to save her from years of trouble and deceit?’

  ‘Possible,’ Moxon agreed judiciously. ‘He certainly doesn’t seem to have gone to any great lengths to cover his tracks.’

  ‘I don’t agree. The van wasn’t damaged badly enough to attract attention. Wing mirrors get broken all the time. He might well have intended to fix up most of the broken bits himself. He could explain it away to anybody who asked. His mistake was to underestimate Gillian. Without her, I think he might well have got away with it. The police weren’t planning to search every farm or business for suspicious vehicles, were they?’

  ‘Thanks to the constraints of time and manpower, that was never going to happen, I admit. But an even more crucial issue is th
e timing. We questioned Mr Olsen a short time ago, and he tells us he was in Keswick on the evening in question.’

  Simmy’s heart thumped. Surely her Christopher was not going to be called upon for an alibi for a suspected murderer? ‘In the van?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘No. In his car. He says he was in a pub up there from six to nine, with some mates, but he doesn’t know their full names or addresses, and thinks it unlikely the pub staff will remember them.’

  ‘Well, that’s not very convincing, is it?’ Another treacherous thought cropped up: Christopher might know the ‘mates’ and be able to supply contact details, since it was probable that they were connected to his auction house in some way. But why did she keep having ideas that supported the wrong side of the argument?

  ‘We can try to check it out.’

  ‘You’re going to have to talk to Ben, aren’t you? I thought he was going to be too busy to pay any attention to this business, but I should have known better. He’s only spent an hour or so here and there on it, and already it looks as if he’s got a whole lot of crucial information.’ She felt a grudging satisfaction at the brilliance of her friend, even while regretting the interruption to his studies.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. He knows nothing about the timing, and all his involvement, as far as I can see, has been at second-hand, well after the event. The best he can do is to produce one of his dossiers or flow charts or whatever.’

  ‘And you should be able to come up with all that yourselves,’ she said, rather sharply.

  ‘We should and we will. That’s the job. It’s what we do.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she agreed, silently thinking that the cumbersome police machinery made a poor second to Ben’s lightning processes.

  The next stop was Beck View, where her parents were preparing for a mass invasion of eight people, including a toddler, filling every corner of the house. ‘Eight?’ Simmy gasped. ‘How is that possible?’ There were only three guestrooms, one of them intended as a single.

  Angie explained. ‘Two of them are going in the green room. It’s a four-foot bed, so two can fit. The baby goes in a cot, and there’s a teenager who can have the emergency fold-out bed in with his parents. They seem happy enough.’

  ‘Are they all one party?’

  ‘Luckily, yes. They’re coming for a big birthday do for their old grandmother. She’ll be a hundred tomorrow, would you believe? I got the whole story last month, when they booked.’

  ‘She must be somebody’s great-grandmother, surely?’

  ‘Great-great, to the toddler. There’s about eighty other relatives, staying all around Windermere and Bowness. They’re having the party at the Belsfield. Must be costing them thousands.’

  ‘Why haven’t I heard about it before?’ wondered Simmy, thinking she might have been able to offer to do some flowers if she’d known about the event.

  Angie shrugged, and pointed to a large stack of ironing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ben and Bonnie had admitted Tanya into their deliberations with minimal resistance. Approaching the end of Year Nine, she had mutated overnight into a noteworthy individual, separating from her twin by a violent act of will. Natalie had become sucked into the world of Instagram and Facebook, with clothes, boys and music her priorities. Tanya, after years of resistance, had succumbed to the magic of maths and the glory of geography. She loved maps and geometry, in particular. She loved her mother’s set squares and rulers, used for the architectural drawing that she spent hours on in the attic room that was her place of work. Her sister Zoe, balanced between two brothers and the twins, blessed with an average IQ and pretty features, was the first to voice the obvious. ‘Tanya’s turning out to be another Ben.’ Not quite, corrected the others, but certainly she was developing in surprising ways.

  It was six-thirty on Monday evening. Ben was taking one of his breaks from studying, insisting he had not a minute more than an hour to spare. Tanya arranged the various flow charts, and Bonnie produced some notes of her own. ‘Just things I’ve noticed,’ she said modestly.

  ‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘I suggest we work through two different hypotheses. Firstly, assuming Anita Olsen is the killer, and then again with Matthew. Means, motive and opportunity, evidence, witnesses – the usual stuff.’

  With impressive enthusiasm, both girls threw themselves into the project, scribbling down ideas, connections, clues, characters and generally brainstorming with gusto. After twenty minutes, Ben called a halt. ‘It’s Gillian Townsend who’s at the heart of it all,’ he announced. ‘Everything hinges on her, look.’ He displayed the diagram he’d constructed, with arrows and lines and different-coloured ink. ‘Compared to her, Debbie’s not doing a thing.’

  ‘She’s online a lot,’ Bonnie reminded him.

  ‘Which is a poor substitute for real action. The Townsend lady got out there and found the actual vehicle that killed the man. At least, we presume she got the right one. The police must know by now if it is. The thing is, she knows everybody from Troutbeck to Kendal, and probably beyond that. There’s nothing like local knowledge.’

  All three smiled complacently – they had local knowledge themselves. The Harknesses had been born in Bowness, and Bonnie lived with Corinne who possessed a legendary grasp of every layer of Windermere society.

  ‘Matthew didn’t do it,’ said Bonnie. ‘That’s obvious from the way he was on Saturday. People must have known he kept the van on that farm. Anyone could have taken it for half an hour, and put it back again.’

  ‘How would they get into it?’ asked Tanya. ‘Did he leave it unlocked, with the key in the ignition?’

  ‘Excellent question,’ beamed Ben. ‘My guess is that he wouldn’t bother to lock it, given where it was. Could be the farmer needed to move it now and then, for one thing. I bet you the keys were kept in it, or beside it on a hook. Something like that.’

  ‘Okay.’ His sister was thoroughly fired up. ‘But would people know that? If someone else went and borrowed the van, they’d have to have every detail worked out first. And how would they get there? Where would they leave their own car or bike or whatever?’

  ‘We don’t know Crook all that well, do we?’ said Ben. ‘All I can remember is that church tower in a field by itself, and a scattering of houses near the pub. Not many places to hide a car.’

  ‘Except another farmyard,’ Bonnie suggested. ‘There’s a few farms along that road. Simmy took flowers to a place at pretty much the same time as Declan was killed.’

  Ben blinked. ‘Did she? Nobody told me that. You’re saying she could easily have witnessed the whole thing? That’s bizarre.’

  ‘Except obviously she didn’t. She didn’t see anything at all.’

  Ben tapped his teeth with a pen. ‘Did Anita Olsen know Simmy was going to Crook?’

  Bonnie had to think. ‘She might have heard her say so when she was on the phone to Gillian. That was the start of the whole thing. Gillian called about the party, and Simmy went round to Staveley after taking the flowers to Crook. It was a nice simple round trip. Except she went home after that.’

  ‘It’s bad, the way we’ve been in different camps. Nobody knows what the others know. That hasn’t happened before. It’s inefficient.’

  ‘We couldn’t help it,’ Bonnie assured him. ‘Simmy wasn’t going to listen to all that stuff against Anita.’

  ‘But she’s never even met Matthew. If she had, she’d see he couldn’t have killed anybody, either.’

  ‘Ben – that’s not like you. You have to assume he could, the same as anybody else could. Even Debbie,’ she added softly.

  ‘What? Is that what you think?’

  ‘I think it’s no worse than believing Debbie’s mother did it. Statistically, wives must kill husbands more often than mothers-in-law do.’

  Tanya giggled. ‘That sounds funny. Sorry.’ She ducked her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

  Ben became businesslike. ‘Have we got all the relevant people here? Gillian’s mother,
Declan’s father, the man on the farm in Crook … it’s not a very long list.’

  ‘Can’t think of anyone else,’ said Bonnie. ‘But there could be a dozen more who had reason to hate Declan and want him dead.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Whoever did it was super-clever, knew about Declan’s movements, and is capable of keeping an amazingly clear head. That all points straight at Anita Olsen.’

  ‘But it might also describe someone else entirely,’ said Tanya, with a frown. ‘If you look at it objectively, it could be either of them.’

  Bonnie and Ben both started to speak, and then both fell silent. They gazed at Ben’s diagram, made one or two comments, added one or two question marks, and then sat back. ‘She’s right,’ said Ben. ‘We haven’t actually got anywhere, have we? And Gillian Townsend still holds all the cards.’

  ‘And you’ve got to get back to your revision,’ said Bonnie.

  ‘Yes, I have.’ He packed up the sheets of paper and coloured pens, then turned to his laptop with a sigh. ‘Sorry, girls. Time to throw you both out. Go and make yourself some tea, Bon, and tell my mum I’m back on schedule.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Bonnie, and after giving him a friendly kiss, she ushered Tanya ahead of her and down the stairs.

  At the same time, Simmy was doing her best not to think about anybody in Staveley or Kendal or Crook. She worked steadily through the pile of ironing, and then changed several duvet covers, bottom sheets and pillow cases. She replaced towels and toilet rolls. She poured breakfast cereals into Tupperware containers, and found two clean tablecloths to replace ones showing stains from that morning. It was, in effect, hotel work, with the relentless pursuit of perfect cleanliness that customers demanded. There was an essential wastefulness to it that she knew her mother deplored. Washing things that were really not dirty was probably the single most destructive thing that Western mankind was inflicting on the wretched planet. Hot water, soap powder, electric dryers – the whole notion was absurd, and there was an irony to the way Angie Straw had become so immersed in it. Her guests might have to use the same sheets and towels for two or even three days, but still at the end of it, the stuff wasn’t really dirty.