The Patterdale Plot

by Rebecca Tope

  There followed three lengthy speeches, two of which had Russell’s hoped-for PowerPoint presentations. Maps, photographs of existing tourist parks, copies of the current planning laws came and went, most of them striking Simmy as only peripherally relevant. There was no detail at all about the actual proposal for Patterdale. Then the third man stood up, and talked in a soft voice about squirrels, water voles, newts, hawks and other shy upland creatures that would be hugely disadvantaged by the arrival of even one more galumphing tourist. Furthermore, there were rare plants to be protected from those same tramping feet. Or so Simmy summarised it to herself. He was a poor speaker, and without any pictures he was not making a good showing. But he seemed sincere, to the point of tears at one stage. He had begun by explaining that he was standing in for Grant Childers, who had tragically died only a few days earlier. He admitted he was a very inadequate substitute, and hoped the audience would bear with him. It seemed his line of work was in wildlife conservation, both flora and fauna, on National Trust property in the region.

  At the end, Tristan stood up and drew everything to a heartfelt climax. ‘So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. You might be saying to yourselves that this is a very modest proposal, for a development that would go almost unnoticed. You might cite the tourist park at Troutbeck as a comparison, for example. It is several times larger than the one under consideration this evening. But does anybody seriously want a similar eyesore, however small, so close to the lovely slopes of Glenamara? Of course not. And so I beg you to sign the form you’ll have found on your seat. Take spare ones home for your family and friends. We must all do whatever we can to conserve and protect this glorious part of rural England.’

  ‘Eyesore?’ murmured Simmy. She lived almost in sight of the said tourist park, and no longer even noticed it. It was, however, rather large and sometimes noisy. From the top of Wansfell it could fairly be described as intrusive, if not an actual eyesore.

  Before Tristan could sit down, Bonnie Lawson’s hand shot up. ‘Can I ask a question?’ she said in a ringing voice.

  ‘What? Oh – absolutely you can. Of course. I meant to invite questions from the audience. Of course I did.’

  ‘Liar,’ muttered Russell.

  ‘Why haven’t you displayed the actual plans that have been put forward? Why haven’t you told us who the application was made by? Why are you holding this meeting so far from Patterdale?’

  Tristan Wilkins put up a hand, with a broad smile. ‘I think you’ll find that’s three questions,’ he said with a chuckle. When nobody in the room appeared to share his patronising humour, his smile quickly faded. ‘Well, the answers are all quite simple. The fact is, we were made aware that this application was to be submitted shortly, and we – wisely, I think – decided to pre-empt the whole process by canvassing public opinion in advance. We all know how these projects can be slipped quietly through before the general public has even noticed. This time, we want to be prepared, with plenty of ammunition, gained from meetings like this. Does that answer your questions?’

  ‘Who’s the applicant?’ called Russell, much to Simmy’s surprise.

  Wilkins took a deep breath. ‘It would be invidious to name names at this stage, as I’m sure you can understand. We can agree to our response in principle without bringing individuals into the matter.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Russell loudly, but nobody spoke in his support. There were general mutterings and a degree of obvious confusion.

  Simmy patted his arm reassuringly. ‘Good question, Dad,’ she whispered.

  Tristan, however, evidently did not share this opinion. He was scanning the room with an expression that contained an odd element of defiance, beneath a determined attempt at sincerity and open-mindedness. ‘Well, I think we’ve kept you all from your homes for long enough,’ he said. ‘I hereby declare this meeting concluded. Please take the leaflets away with you, unless you feel able to sign them here and now. I repeat – we only want to give you all the chance to express your views in general, at this stage.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Russell again, but went unheard. People were getting up, putting coats on and talking among themselves.

  Bonnie was waiting in the hotel foyer for Simmy and Russell to emerge. Corinne was chatting to a woman Simmy didn’t recognise. ‘Are public meetings always like that?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve hardly ever been to one until now,’ said Simmy.

  ‘That was not a meeting, by any normal definition of the word,’ said Russell, giving Bonnie a look of warm approval. ‘Your questions were spot on.’

  ‘I got them from Helen, actually. She didn’t think she ought to come without knowing more details. She said there’d be reference numbers, and copies of the planning application and stuff like that. When they showed us those maps, I thought that must be it, but then I worked out they were just the ordinary ones that the walkers use. And those photos didn’t really tell us anything, did they?’

  Simmy looked round, with a vague sense that it might be better to go unheard by other people. ‘Come outside,’ she said. ‘We can sit in the garden for a bit.’

  Bonnie giggled. ‘So the microphones and cameras can’t pick up what we say? Do you think the hotel’s bugged?’

  ‘Just want the chance for a proper chat,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be too busy tomorrow in the shop.’

  ‘Do you need me?’ Russell asked. ‘Or can I go home?’

  Simmy gave him a hug. ‘Oh, Dad. I don’t know where we’d be without you. But yes, you can go home. I’ll head straight back to Troutbeck when I’ve talked to Bonnie. See you at the weekend, I expect. Go and tell Mum what a star you were. You and Bonnie.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said to Bonnie, as soon as they were seated on a bench overlooking the lake. ‘Grant Childers must have been killed to stop him from speaking at this meeting. I thought so before it even started, and now it’s even more obvious. Something very weird is going on, don’t you think?’

  Bonnie rubbed her neck, thinking hard. ‘Yeah – sort of. But we have to remember how he was killed. That whole poison thing is so complicated. It could easily have gone wrong. Somebody must have planned it days or weeks in advance. They must have known him pretty well, if they were able to give him something to eat or drink and be sure he’d really take it. I was thinking about that earlier on, and it’s still bothering me. If there’s somebody with so much to lose that they have to murder a man who was going to give a speech about planning regulations at a half-baked so-called meeting, wouldn’t it be an easy matter for the police to work out who that was?’

  ‘Moxon should have been at the meeting,’ Simmy said.

  ‘There were two people I think might have been part of his team,’ said Bonnie. ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  Simmy shook her head. ‘It never occurred to me until now that the police might be there.’

  ‘That’s why I asked who was making the application. Because it seems to me that has to be the main suspect.’ She paused. ‘But after talking to Helen, and getting the brush-off from old Tristan, I wonder if we might be looking at the whole thing in entirely the wrong way.’

  They were both too tired and confused to say any more. Simmy still had to walk back up to Windermere and find her car, while she presumed that Bonnie would go home to Corinne and her small foster brother. They were the last two of a long succession of children taken in by Corinne, for long and short stays, patched up and moved on to more permanent homes. Bonnie had clung on, enjoying the same home for several years, a perfect fit with a woman who treated her as half-daughter, half-sister, gentling the girl through her turbulent teens and offering a secure base for as long as Bonnie wished, even after she reached eighteen.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Simmy drove back to Troutbeck with her head full of devious local politics and cynical manipulation of local opinion. Even Helen Harkness’s reluctance to show her face at a poorly defined meeting seemed significant. What was she afraid of? Presumably s
he saw risk in being identified with the wrong side of a controversy. But as Russell had pointed out, so far this controversy appeared to have only one side. And that side’s arguments felt considerably weaker after the meeting than they had before. Which surely meant the whole thing had failed in its purpose? On her way out, Simmy had glimpsed Candy Proctor, standing by herself, frowning in apparent confusion. The man who had spoken about wildlife looked equally unsure of himself. She had not noticed anybody filling in the protest form and handing it to Tristan.

  So what had the plain-clothes detectives made of it, assuming that Bonnie had rightly identified them? There had been no hint of dislike of Grant Childers, unless the lukewarm expressions of grief over his loss had a subtext. Perhaps nobody had much liked him, and barely missed him now he was gone. There was very probably a file on his laptop with the text of his undelivered speech. If so, the police would find it and draw their own conclusions.

  Bonnie had speculated rather wildly about a widespread conspiracy to undermine any would-be property developments, not just in Patterdale but throughout the whole area. Simmy had had to bring her back to the central issue of Grant Childers’ death. ‘Why poison him?’ she asked, more than once.

  The girl hesitated. ‘We need to find out more about him,’ she agreed. ‘We should ask your mother what the family told her. There could be lots of clues we don’t know about.’

  While Simmy had concurred in principle, she was reluctant to confront her mother with a string of questions, given the current state of things. ‘Maybe at the weekend,’ she suggested.

  The weekend ahead was going to be entirely devoted to Christopher. She was quite determined about that. The past week had been fairly typical, in that she had only seen him once. The paucity of face-to-face contact was a constant frustration, with neither of them able to do anything decisive to change it. He could drive down to Troutbeck after work every evening, and then dash back to Keswick early each morning – they had actually tried that for a fortnight in September, only to find it created a whole new set of frustrations. There were the quiet days at the auction house, when he only had to show up for a few hours, which invariably coincided with busy times in Simmy’s shop. She would leave him lying in her far-too-narrow-for-comfort bed, swallowing her frustration at the imbalance in their working lives – and usually feeling sick as well. The bed itself was a problem. She had offered to buy a new one, but never got round to doing so. The room would be swamped by a full-size double bed – which was what they definitely wanted when they finally had their own house to accommodate it. Christopher was restless in Troutbeck without all his things around him, and little to do in the evenings but go to the local pub, or stay in with Simmy. Neither of them was a great talker, and Simmy was an unenthusiastic board game player. ‘This is awful,’ she said once. ‘We’re not even married yet and we’re bored with each other.’

  ‘We’ll factor in a whole lot of hi-tech entertainment, once we’ve got the house,’ he promised. ‘And make friends, and invite them round, and get a dog and redecorate the whole place. Then we’ll have a noisy, demanding baby and we’ll never be bored again.’

  ‘I’m really not sure I want a dog,’ said Simmy, fearing that she sounded marginally less definite every time she made this assertion.

  ‘Cat, then?’

  ‘I’ve never seen the point of cats. And they kill all the garden birds.’

  ‘Funny – it’s usually the other way round. The wife wants a houseful of pets and the husband flatly vetoes everything. In my experience, anyway,’ he added.

  ‘I like to keep things simple.’

  ‘Simple Simmy,’ he quipped, until silenced by the look she gave him.

  Within five minutes of getting back to her cottage, she phoned him. It was half past nine, and she visualised him in his bleak little Keswick flat, probably drinking beer and watching something mindless on Netflix. She was wrong. ‘Robin’s here,’ he said, moments after taking the call.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know – Robin. The estate agent. He phoned me at work this afternoon and said he’s heard about a place in Glenridding we might fancy. He brought the particulars round for me to see, and we got chatting.’

  ‘What’s it like? The place in Glenridding?’

  ‘Small. Hardly any garden. Views. South-facing.’

  ‘You don’t sound too keen.’

  ‘We’ll have to see it before I commit myself. I’m being cautious, because I can see there might be some snags.’

  ‘Did you ask him if he knows about those tourist chalets? I’ve just been to a very weird public meeting about them.’

  ‘What? Oh no, I forgot all about that. Hang on, and I’ll ask him now.’

  She heard him talking to his friend, the words muffled. It was quite a short exchange, before he came back and said, ‘He thinks it’s all complete fantasy. There’s no way such a development would ever get permission. Somebody’s having a laugh. Did you say a public meeting?’

  ‘Right. Forty or fifty people showed up, at the Belsfield.’

  ‘That is weird. I’ll tell Robin about it and see if he can come up with an explanation. He’ll know some of the characters involved, probably.’

  ‘Bonnie thinks it’s a conspiracy.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. Anyway, what about you? What else is going on?’

  There followed a five-minute exchange of trivia, wrapped in an easy affection that was typical of their phone calls. It strengthened Simmy’s confidence that she was right to be marrying this man. She had known him intimately as a child. They shared roots and history and formative experiences. However much of a cliché it might be, to go back to the start and marry your first sweetheart, there was something warm and familiar and right about it.

  Before ending the call, she said, ‘But Robin won’t know people down in Bowness, surely? They’re not councillors or anything, just ordinary business people.’

  ‘I’ll ask him anyway. I’ve always had the impression that my friend Robin knows everybody.’

  She went to bed in a calm frame of mind that rather surprised her. She attributed it to being pregnant, the resulting hormones ensuring a level of serenity that scarcely fitted with the swirling events on all sides. None of them seemed to matter, just at that moment. Her primary duty was to get a decent night’s sleep, and clear her mind of anything unpleasant. She was rewarded by a gentle twitching of her little passenger, as if to reassure her that everything was essentially all right.

  The same could not be said of Angie and Russell Straw on that Thursday evening. He had got back to Beck View at about eight-forty-five, to find Detective Inspector Moxon talking seriously to his wife. They turned to greet him with a restraint that made him feel like an intruder in his own kitchen.

  ‘Mr Straw,’ said the policeman. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you. Just been to a most stimulating meeting. I asked a question,’ he added proudly.

  ‘You can tell us about that later,’ said Angie. ‘DI Moxon has been explaining more details to me about poor Mr Childers. The poison that killed him, to be exact. And things they found on his computer.’

  ‘Oh? Am I permitted to hear it as well? Could you go over it again, do you think?’

  ‘Briefly,’ Moxon conceded. ‘You’ll remember that we quite quickly identified the toxin as being plant-based, probably datura. It would appear that it was either that or something very closely related. You have to ingest quite a lot of it to kill you – which is the case with Mr Childers. His bloodstream shows a significant quantity of it.’

  ‘So why are you here again, telling us the same thing again?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m sure you understand. I’m afraid I have to ask you one more time to confirm that you did not provide him with any food or drink at any point.’

  ‘If Angie says she didn’t, that should be good enough for you,’ said Russell stiffly. ‘I certainly didn’t feed him
anything.’

  ‘Thank you. Then he must have got it somewhere else. I won’t repeat all our thinking about that. His computer suggests that he was intending to give a speech while here—’

  ‘Yes,’ Russell said. ‘At the meeting I’ve just been to.’

  Moxon talked over the interruption. ‘It’s actually very well written. Quite powerfully expressed, too. You say you were there?’

  ‘Yes. They told us that Childers had been scheduled to speak, but had unfortunately died. Nobody seemed especially sorry about it. They found some sap to replace him. Awful speaker. Not even very relevant.’ He grew thoughtful. ‘Although it’s hard to say exactly what would have been relevant. It was a very peculiar exercise.’

  ‘In what way peculiar?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t at all keen to hear the views of the audience, for one thing. Little Bonnie Lawson was the first to put her hand up, and then I chipped in. Nobody else said a word. Bonnie thinks two of your colleagues were there at the back, which would have been a wise move, if she’s right.’

  Moxon said nothing to this, merely raising his eyebrows. Then he consulted a notebook. ‘The meeting was in protest against a proposal for a number of new tourist chalets in Patterdale – am I right?’

  ‘Apparently, yes. There were three speakers, going on about planning regulations, and wildlife, and density of construction. It was all fairly interesting in a vague sort of way, but by the end nobody seemed too sure how genuine the threat is anyhow.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It would appear that no actual plans have been submitted. The whole thing could just be a silly rumour. Somebody getting the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘You know that Persimmon and Christopher want to find somewhere to live up there, don’t you?’ Angie interrupted. ‘So there’s a personal element to all this.’ She looked pale and drawn. ‘Although not as personal as the effects of a man dying in my arms have been.’