The Patterdale Plot

by Rebecca Tope

  Moxon was saying, ‘Possible, admittedly. But there haven’t been any reports of similar cases, and it’s very unlikely that he’d have been the only victim, if it was a matter of mixed-up seeds. You can’t buy anything really toxic in a health food shop.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked round in embarrassment.

  ‘So you’ve never stocked them here in the shop? The thorn apple plant, I mean.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. I was asked for one, a year or so ago, and I looked it up. When I realised how toxic it is, I refused to supply it.’

  ‘Very sensible.’

  She detected a hint of relief in his tone, and read his thoughts with little difficulty. Turning away and speaking more softly, she said, ‘So you can rest assured that my mother didn’t get any kind of lethal plant from me and use the seeds to kill her guest. If that was what you were thinking.’

  ‘Not me personally. But there is a certain logic to it that I couldn’t help but follow up.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘There are some places in the world where poisoning is still a popular method of disposing of somebody.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, aware of pitfalls. ‘And I expect there’s plenty about it online.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.’

  ‘Thanks. Eating lunch in the Patterdale pub, as it happens.’

  ‘Very nice.’ He gave an avuncular little laugh and must have handed the phone back to Bonnie, who came back with a query as to how much longer Simmy was going to be.

  ‘It’ll be around half past two, I should think. Are you going to be all right till then?’

  ‘No problem. But there’s three new orders on the computer. One is for five o’clock this afternoon. I said we could do it.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s somebody local, near the station.’

  ‘And the others are when?’

  ‘For Friday’s funeral, as we expected.’

  ‘Right. Good. Thanks.’

  The girl started to say something about poisonous plants, when Simmy cut her short. ‘I’m trying to have lunch,’ she said. ‘You can say all that when I get back.’ And she finished the call. Conversation started again at neighbouring tables, and Christopher rolled his eyes at her.

  Christopher drove her down to Troutbeck, where she transferred to her own car and he went home to Keswick, nearly twenty miles to the north. ‘Will you go in to work?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not unless they shout for me. I might stay late tomorrow if it’s busy, but there probably won’t be a lot to do. People will be bringing things in for the next sale, and all I do is drift about looking at what’s likely to make a good price, and get in their way. They ask my advice sometimes, but most people just drop the stuff and go. All there is to do is set it all out and compile the catalogue. Josephine cross-references them all on the computer. It’s sheer genius. Janet can do it if she has to, but she’s not nearly so competent. I’m hoping Josephine’s back by Monday, so she can make sure it’s all done properly.’

  ‘Sounds like rather a lot of work to me. It must be exciting to see what turns up,’ she said, as she always did. The romance of the auction, with the overlooked treasure and the general unpredictability, was showing no signs of wearing off. Added to that was admiration for Josephine’s skill with the databases. She could trace vendors and hammer prices back through several years, and marry them up with a whole host of other statistics.

  ‘Interesting, at least,’ he said.

  So they parted on a promise to make the most of the coming weekend, with Christopher driving down by coffee time and staying overnight. ‘Next week will be fairly quiet,’ he promised her. ‘We can really focus on the house-hunting.’

  Simmy found herself struggling to be optimistic about the search for a new home. It was the same emotion she felt concerning the baby – wanting something so much that it felt dangerous to entertain any real hope that all would be well. Because now, suddenly, she knew she really really did want to live in Patterdale. Sadly, the chances were they’d have to spend their early married life in a rented property – which didn’t have to be such a bad thing, as her mother would remind her.

  She was at the shop shortly before half past two, to find Bonnie deep in conversation with an elderly couple who seemed inclined to buy a large plant pot that Ninian Tripp had made over a year before. The girl’s patience was admirable as the customers bickered and dithered over the decision. ‘We only came for a bunch of freesias,’ said the man. ‘What do we want another vase for? Haven’t we got at least a dozen already?’

  ‘Not as lovely as this,’ argued his wife.

  ‘But it’s far too big. Where are we going to put it?’

  And so forth. Simmy went through to the room at the back, to check what blooms she had for the urgent new order. There would be a new delivery next morning, so it made sense to use up everything she could. When the people had gone, she’d ask Bonnie whether a specific colour scheme had been requested. While there, she made two mugs of tea and opened a packet of biscuits, assuming Bonnie would not have thought to have anything while there on her own. Bonnie’s relationship with food was a lot better than it had been five years earlier, but it still wasn’t very normal. Simmy did her best not to worry about it, but she never missed a chance to get some nourishment into her elfin employee.

  At last the shop was empty, and the mugs were being drained. ‘Thanks,’ said Bonnie. ‘Though you put too much milk in it again.’

  ‘It’s good for you,’ said Simmy automatically. Then she asked about the order for flowers and any other business that had cropped up during the morning.

  ‘Very dull, except for when Moxo came in. Detective Inspector Moxon, I mean. Must remember not to call him Mr.’ She rapped herself on the forehead.

  ‘I suppose you heard what he said.’

  ‘Poisoned by seeds from a plant called datura. Devil’s something.’

  ‘Trumpet. The flowers look a bit like little trumpets.’

  ‘He was actually a bit embarrassed.’ Bonnie laughed. ‘Especially when he thought you might have some of it here. He was so glad when I said I’d never heard of it, and was sure we’d never sold any. He had to check with you, though.’

  ‘He’s a good man,’ said Simmy absently. Something had wriggled inside her, and she forgot what she’d been going to say. ‘I felt it – the baby,’ she said.

  ‘Hey! Is that the first time?’

  ‘Oh no. But it was stronger. The scan must have upset the poor thing. My mother says scans are probably nowhere near as harmless as they like you to think.’

  ‘Well, people seem to survive them. Babies, I mean. When did they first start doing them? Those babies must be practically middle-aged by now.’

  ‘My guess would be back in the eighties, but I don’t really know. Long enough for anything serious to show up, anyway. Of course, my mother never had one with me. I’m not sure she ever had any real antenatal care at all.’

  ‘She’s great, your mother,’ Bonnie enthused, as always. ‘She really thinks for herself, doesn’t she?’

  ‘You could say that. But she’s not at all her usual self at the moment. She’s having ghastly dreams, and thinks she might have to take some sort of pill to make them stop.’

  ‘Well, at least Moxon doesn’t think you and she poisoned that man between you.’

  That sentiment seemed to sum up the week so far, when Simmy stopped to think about it.

  Chapter Ten

  Simmy took the flowers to the house near the station and was suitably thanked, the composition of the bouquet admired and goodwill generally expressed. She then went home to Troutbeck, without first calling in on her parents. This was liable to be perceived as unkind under the circumstances, but she was too emotionally drained to be of any use to them. She would phone later on with the reassuring news that all was well with the baby.

  Somewhere just below the surface was the notion that everybody wa
s worrying about her. They thought it dangerous that she had witnessed the death of a man in her condition. They wanted her to remain serene. Already the difficulties over finding a house were causing anxiety, on top of running the shop and helping her mother. She had become aware, during the day, that Christopher, Moxon and Bonnie were all treating her like one of the auction house’s rare porcelain lots. If she turned up at Beck View, Angie and Russell would no doubt behave in the same manner.

  Cumulatively, it had the effect of making her worry about herself. She did have too much to think about, too many feelings to confront and process. The tears in the car were easy enough to understand, she supposed, but she owed it to this new baby to push Edith into the background. She thought she had successfully done just that, several months ago, but these things came back without warning – probably for the rest of one’s life. The concern for her parents’ well-being and that of their business was another insistent element that was not going to go away. The drift away from traditional bed and breakfast establishments towards Airbnb was ominous. Angie’s comments that fewer people wanted the full morning meal were an indication of changing times. And it was impossible to ignore the implications. The timing was poor, but Simmy didn’t think she was the only one to entertain the idea of pooling resources and setting up home together.

  Thinking along these lines hurt her head even more. It introduced thorny questions about money, and worries about whether Christopher and Angie would end up hating each other if they lived in the same house.

  And sitting in its own murky puddle of anxiety was the fact that a poisonous plant had been used to kill Grant Childers. This was horribly close to Simmy’s line of work, as the police had instantly realised. This knowledge chafed inside her, as she thought of the likely reaction of local people when they heard about it. It might arouse hostility and suspicion, which would be bad for business. It made the whole thing feel even more personal than it did already. And that meant she was impelled, like it or not, to do whatever she could to identify the person responsible.

  She made her call to Beck View, feeling dutiful and very slightly martyred. Angie sounded tired but resigned to whatever might come next. ‘The police came round again this afternoon,’ she said. ‘A woman sergeant, I think she was, with a young constable. Said they needed to do a more thorough search of our kitchen.’

  ‘Left that a bit late, didn’t they?’

  ‘That’s what your father said. But to be honest, I expected them to be a lot more brainless about it than they turned out to be. You know, I suppose, that it was something called datura that killed him? Most likely in the form of a drink, so there must have been quite elaborate preparations made in advance. That meant the police quite sensibly ignored practically everything I’ve got in the larder. Rice and flour and sugar and pasta. But they took the gravy granules! And all the dried fruit, for some reason. They left the tins and unopened packets, but I can say goodbye to three jars of home-made chutney. It was rather fun watching them, actually. I think they knew the whole exercise was futile, which made the atmosphere surreal – especially with your father making his usual comments. You can probably guess the sort of thing. “That’s right, check the pumpkin pickle for toxic seeds. It was made by that sinister Mrs Bundy in Oak Road. I dare say she’s poisoned some husbands in her time.” He really did say that.’

  ‘They should have cautioned him about the laws of slander.’

  ‘I know. But they just smiled about it. The boy was only about fifteen, by the look of him.’

  ‘So they don’t believe you when you told them you hadn’t given the Childers man anything to eat or drink?’

  ‘They have to be sceptical, I suppose. I mean, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But I wouldn’t be daft enough to give him a cheese and pickle sandwich with poison in the pickle, and then leave the jar on the shelf – would I?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Simmy, feeling better by the minute. ‘So what happens next?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Incidentally, we had a phone call from that Tristan Wilkins man just now. He wanted to make sure one or both of us were going to be at that meeting tomorrow about the Patterdale plan to build those chalets. Your father still thinks there’s something peculiar about it, so he’s decided to go along. You should go with him.’

  ‘I might, I suppose, if he wants company. Christopher and I asked the pub lady if she’d heard about it, and she said she hadn’t. That’s odd, when you think about it.’

  ‘It’s not so much that he wants company, as the fact that it’s Patterdale. If you’re going to live there, you’ll want to have as much information as you can get. You really don’t want even more tourist traffic on those little roads.’

  ‘I’m happy to go to the meeting, Mum, even though I can’t see us ever actually finding somewhere to live there. There does seem to be a bit of a mystery to it all, whether or not we end up living in the middle of whatever it is.’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t like to hear you say that.’

  ‘I know. I just think we’re wasting our time even trying. We could have got something all sorted out in Keswick by now.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Angie, and went on to demand a full account of her daughter’s day, starting with the scan. Simmy obliged, taking twenty minutes over it. When the conversation was finished, she felt much more relaxed than before. Her father had not lost his sense of humour, and her mother was almost enjoying being at the centre of a murder enquiry. That being so, Simmy was scarcely justified in agonising over them.

  Thursday dawned crisp and clear, and Simmy’s thoughts turned to funeral flowers. Bonnie had said nothing more about Miss Entwhistle. The short notice was unusual, especially on a Friday, but a burial in a churchyard was quite a different business from a cremation; if Miss E had been the organist or secretary to the vicar, she would receive preferential treatment. The undertaker would have to call in his reserve team of bearers and co-operate with whatever was required. Simmy might know the dead woman, at least by sight, given that the funeral was to be at her local church. There would be cars parked all along the sides of the road up to Kirkstone, and the whole village would feel the effects. And Simmy’s flowers would be on very public display, so she would have to make a good job of them.

  Ever since the mawkish little cremation of her own baby daughter, Simmy had given the matter of funerals quite a lot of thought. Edith’s death had been so shocking that Simmy had not managed to pull herself together sufficiently to do the funeral properly. Nor had Russell or Angie. They went through the motions with undisguised reluctance and absolute ignorance as to what would be the most therapeutic way to do it. They had all learnt a lot about how not to do it in the process.

  Which, she realised as she drove down to Windermere, was not a very wholesome line of thought, in the light of the new baby she was carrying. This one would not need a funeral, she assured herself fiercely. The next dead person she would have any personal involvement in would be her father, fifteen years into the future. Nobody she loved was going to die for a long, long time.

  Nor would Simmy have to worry about Grant Childers’ funeral, because his relatives were sure to take him back to the Midlands and deal with him there. Given the manner of his death, that was liable to be some weeks away yet. New theories could prompt new tests on the body, as the investigation was led down fresh avenues of enquiry.

  Meanwhile, Miss Entwhistle would get a lovely send-off with a good display of beautiful flowers.

  Bonnie looked wan, her smile of welcome very forced when Simmy got to the shop. ‘Tanya phoned last night,’ she said. ‘She’s coming in again after school today, if that’s all right.’

  ‘I’ve got to do all those funeral flowers. I won’t have time to talk to her.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘She understands that. But I think Helen’s worrying that Tanya’s going to try to turn into another Ben, with this murder so close to home. She’s told her to stay right out of it.’

  ‘You can’t blame her. Tan
ya’s awfully young.’

  ‘It’s so horrible without him,’ Bonnie burst out. ‘It’s almost as if he’s dead, the way I keep wanting to talk to him and ask him things, and just hang out with him. It’s like slamming into a wall, every time. Or falling into a deep hole. Everything seems so grey and empty. When we do FaceTime I can’t say what I want to, because I daren’t tell him about it. And that feels like telling him lies.’

  ‘I know. I miss him as well. And there’s no denying he’d love the whole poison thing. It’s so unusual these days, I’m still not entirely sure I believe that’s what happened. I mean, would anybody really find the right plant, and then make some sort of infusion from it, and get him to drink it without noticing, and hope they did actually kill him? Wouldn’t there be some sort of nasty taste? There seems to be such a lot that could go wrong. What if he didn’t drink the tea, or whatever it was – or gave it to somebody else? What if it only made him sick? And why?’ It always seemed to come back to the Why? question for Simmy. The reasons that people gave for committing murder never seemed quite enough, to her mind. The ultimate crime − the ultimate sin as well − surely must have a powerfully convincing motive behind it. And yet it so often felt as if it was little more than wounded pride or simple greed at the heart of the killing. People apparently valued their own public image so highly that they would take a life in order to protect it. Over the past year or two, Simmy had given this a great deal of thought, and finally been forced to accept the reality, however hard it was to understand.