by Rebecca Tope
The glamour of the whole business mixed intriguingly with the grubby reality of house clearances and unwashed dealers. The past two days had been spent receiving items for sale at the next weekend’s auction, the tasks of sorting, listing, valuing, photographing and presenting it all more than enough to keep the whole team busy for the coming week. ‘But at least we’ve all got the weekend free,’ said Christopher. ‘And I won’t have to go in until after lunch on Monday.’
‘I still don’t like leaving Bonnie and Tanya to cope on Saturday mornings,’ she worried. ‘Not since Tanya cut herself that time.’
‘It taught her to be more careful. We learn by experience.’
‘I know,’ she sighed, ‘and I don’t expect it’ll be very busy. Ben’s coming home on Sunday – did I tell you?’
They went on to discuss the boy wonder, with his prodigious intelligence and dedicated studies. Christopher could never entirely bring himself to approve of Ben, despite all Simmy’s efforts to proclaim his virtues. ‘His mother doesn’t want us to mention the murder,’ she said. ‘Bonnie isn’t sure she can manage that. She thinks he’ll be furious when he eventually gets to hear about it.’
Christopher was deeply uneasy about references to deliberate killing. His association with Simmy had been rekindled over the murder of his own father, much to his dismay. Her role in identifying the perpetrator had left Christopher speechlessly wrestling with a host of conflicting emotions. Then again, a friend of his had died in Grasmere, dragging Chris into far too close an encounter with police investigations and suspicions about his auction house. The fact that it had happened a third time was even more unsettling. Aware of this, Simmy had done her best to avoid talking about it. She had pushed it onto her parents, maintaining that it was largely their problem, and all she had to do was offer soothing words every day or two.
Ben Harkness, however, had shown no hesitation in involving Christopher in the Grasmere incident. His questions were direct and his theorising tenacious. It was evident to Simmy that her fiancé was never going to really like or trust the young man again after that.
The evening drifted on, imbued with the relaxed knowledge that there would be two further evenings to come, where they could eat and chat and cuddle and watch a movie or play a game and let the world outside do its worst. The urgency of finding a new home would not go away, and there was every chance they would be back in Patterdale at some point over the weekend, but their evenings would be sacrosanct. ‘We’ll have to go to Beck View on Sunday, though,’ she warned him. ‘You haven’t seen my parents for weeks.’
‘No problem,’ he agreed languidly. ‘Do you think your mum might manage one of her wonderful roast pork lunches, if we ask her nicely?’
‘She might,’ said Simmy. ‘If I remember to ask her tomorrow.’
By arrangement with some kindly guardian angel, neither of their phones rang even once the entire evening. Nobody came to the door demanding attention and action. Darkness fell quickly while they were still eating, and few vehicles passed outside. The baby stirred gently inside Simmy, apparently grateful for the long overdue meal, or perhaps enjoying the forbidden alcohol.
But a spirit of perversity was lurking somewhere, overcoming the good offices of the angel. ‘I hope Robin isn’t too disappointed,’ said Simmy, entirely against her better judgement. ‘Or you, come to that.’
He hesitated to speak, still leaning back on the sofa cushions, one arm round Simmy’s shoulders. ‘I can see it isn’t going to be easy,’ he finally agreed. ‘But I don’t want to make many compromises, either. Chances are, we’ll stay for thirty years or more, once we find the perfect place.’
‘So you wouldn’t really have accepted that house, if I hadn’t objected to it?’
‘I might, but I’m sure I would have regretted it pretty soon. It seemed fine to me until you pointed out all its defects. And you were absolutely right to do so. I’m obviously too unimaginative to make a sensible decision. We should probably have a look at the building plot in Hartsop, after all. It was foolish of us not to when we had the chance.’
‘I want to live in Crookabeck,’ she said childishly.
‘I looked at a map today – a really large-scale one. It’s an easy walk from Hartsop to Crookabeck, along a quiet path. It goes through a farmyard, and follows the little river. They’re practically the same place, in a way.’
‘That sign we saw said it was two miles from one to the other. That’s a long walk, there and back.’
‘My point is, it’s all really quiet and unspoilt in both places. No roads or shops or pubs. Just sheep and walkers.’
‘I know. That’s what I’ve been saying. Although my imagination isn’t much better than yours. What would it be like in the snow, or when that river floods, or even when it’s really hot? Would there be midges? Are there loads of horse riders? How are we supposed to decide, when there’s so much we can’t predict?’
‘We use blind faith. As long as we’re together, and Junior is fit and well, the rest doesn’t really matter. Though I might insist on a dog. Something slow and dim, that doesn’t chase sheep.’
‘It obviously has to be a Patterdale terrier,’ she said lightly. ‘And I’d force it to live outside.’
‘Terriers chase sheep. And they’re nothing much to look at. It would have to be a Labrador, or a golden retriever. And I would want it on the bed every night to keep my feet warm.’
‘Over my dead body,’ she said, rather too sharply. Having been witness to the mess that people’s dogs could make on a bed, thanks to her mother’s lax rules at Beck View, she knew she could never contemplate a dog in a bedroom; even the thought of it on the sofa made her feel itchy. ‘They leave hair and fleas everywhere, not to mention the mud.’
‘Sim, we shouldn’t stop each other from doing what we want. And don’t say everybody has to compromise, because it’s not really a compromise, is it, if I want something and you veto it? I grew up desperately wanting a dog and my parents would never allow it. Then I was travelling for years and it was completely out of the question. Now I’m in a flat and the poor thing would never get any exercise. But if I’ve got a wife and a baby and a garden and a million acres of fells outside the back door, then I think I should have a dog to complete the picture. What would you do if I just came home with a puppy one evening?’
‘I’d say you were a selfish pig, I expect.’
‘But would you slam the door in our faces? Mine and Fido’s?’
‘I might.’ She pulled a helpless face, indicating her confused feelings. ‘I don’t want to stop you doing what you want. That would be horrible.’
‘Hm. I can see this marriage thing isn’t going to be plain sailing. How do other people manage? How do they stay happy, when sharing one’s life with someone else seems so terribly fraught?’
‘They come to some sort of truce, I suppose. I must admit, I quite like golden retrievers.’
‘Hm,’ he said again. ‘You didn’t used to be like this, you know. You were wonderfully soft and sweet and shy when I knew you before. Now you’ve got all decisive and opinionated.’
‘I was sixteen. You were awkward and irritable and rude to your parents.’
‘You’re saying I’ve improved, but you’ve changed for the worse.’
‘I’m saying we’ve both grown up. But bizarrely, I still love you. And I’m having your baby. As the song says, that’s one way of saying I love you. We’re stuck with each other now, whether you like it or not. I’m definitely not going to do this on my own.’
‘Then stop picking fights with me, you daft thing. The world’s doing its best to get between us as it is. Let’s just try and stay on the same side, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she said, leaning over to kiss him.
Chapter Seventeen
At Beck View, Angie and Russell were having a less peaceful evening. Simmy’s abrupt departure, after a bare twenty minutes’ stay, left them both with a sense of being short-changed. The absence of any guests was
almost unprecedented, leaving them with nothing urgent to do but worry about money and what the future might hold.
‘She’s never going to find anywhere in Patterdale,’ said Russell, for the twentieth time. ‘The place is just too small. And most of the properties are too big. Some of them were built as guesthouses, with seven or eight bedrooms.’
‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?’
‘There could be, actually. If we sold this, and went in with them, we could afford to buy one of the big places jointly, and there’d be enough space for us to keep out of each other’s way.’
Angie shook her head vigorously. ‘That would be fatal. There’d be rows every morning in the kitchen, and she’d expect me to turn childminder while she went back to work. Besides, what makes you think anyone’s selling a seven-bedroom house there? I thought they’d only managed to come up with a building plot until now. I suppose there’s some hope that the one they’re seeing this evening will turn out to be ideal.’
Her husband sighed. ‘Well, we’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit here for the next umpteen weeks or months, until everybody forgets we had a murder here.’
‘You mean we should turn into detectives and somehow solve the mystery? You think we’ve been missing some clues?’
‘We should have paid more attention to the bloke. I barely even looked at him.’
‘Neither did I until he was thrashing about on the landing. If only he hadn’t said he’d been poisoned, there might never have been a suspicion that it was foul play at all.’
‘I expect there would. There’d have to be a post-mortem, and they’d have found whatever it was then.’
‘Yes, but they could have put it down to suicide. That would be far less damaging to our reputation.’
‘We should have thought of that before telling the cops what he said, then. We were much too honest for our own good.’
‘Persimmon would have said something. You know how matey she is with that detective.’
Russell gave himself a mock slap. ‘And there was me thinking we’d brought her up right, telling her she should never utter a lie and always be helpful to the police.’
‘I never told her that,’ said Angie. ‘I’ve never had very much time for the police, as you very well know.’
‘She’s just naturally honest, then. We can’t take any of the credit – or blame. And I dare say the Childers family would have argued with a verdict of suicide. Families generally do, after all. It makes them feel guilty if a relative kills himself. As if they’ve failed him somehow.’
‘Which in this case, I dare say they have. He sounded to be quite a lonely person – coming up here every few months all by himself.’
‘Well, I blame Candy Proctor when it comes right down to it. She should have made space for him, instead of foisting him off on us.’
Angie got up from her chair, too restless to keep still any longer. ‘I think she’s a bit jealous of us for having all this attention over Childers, funnily enough. Even though she must know how awful it is for business. She’s a funny woman.’
‘I think she might have a thing for old Tristan, you know. She was gazing at him raptly through most of that meeting last night. She was in the front row and he was at the top table, chairing it all. I still don’t know what he thought he was doing. It was all rather a shambles, really.’
‘Grant Childers dying like that must have come as a tremendous shock to him and his fellow organisers. Scrambling for a replacement speaker and so forth.’
‘Who turned out to be a right wally. Which reminds me – we should have a look at the speech Childers was intending to give. Moxon will have sent it by now.’ He opened up his laptop, which was often left undisturbed for days on end, and started carefully tapping the keys. ‘An attachment,’ he said. ‘Now … let’s see …’
Angie leant over his shoulder, unsure how much interest she really felt. When Russell successfully brought the text up on the screen, she could barely read it. ‘Can you make it bigger?’ she asked.
This too was accomplished, and for a minute or two they read in silence. Then Angie repeated the first lines aloud. ‘“As a regular visitor to Cumbria, I would like to begin by appealing to everyone’s finer human feelings. I would like to remind you of the sheer spiritual uplift that can be created by the simple expedient of standing on a fellside and letting nature envelop you. The birds, the running water and the unadulterated light all speak directly to the visitor’s soul.” Blimey! The man was a poet.’
‘Not only that. He’s quoting precedent, where tourism has blighted communities, look. Then he’s got a whole lot of factual stuff about traffic, flood plains, even wind farms. He must have spent weeks on it. Anyone hearing this would be in no doubt about letting that proposal go ahead. They’d have marched to Patterdale there and then.’
‘Yes,’ said Angie slowly. ‘I think you’re right. He would have been the star of that meeting. Tristan must have been absolutely sick when he realised he wasn’t going to be able to use this stuff.’
They read to the end and then closed down the computer. ‘Well,’ sighed Russell. ‘The police must have found that a prime piece of evidence. It gives them a motive, as well.’
‘All they need to do is identify whoever it is who wants to build the tourist park,’ said Angie. ‘Sounds simple.’
‘I have a feeling there’s a bit more to it than we understand. We should have told Simmy to have a look at the site where these new chalets are supposed to go. It was marked on the map on that leaflet they gave us, though not down to the nearest yard, admittedly.’
Angie had another thought. ‘I wonder how they’ll manage this sort of thing without Dorothea Entwhistle. She’d have been a prominent supporter of the cause.’
‘Tristan’s certainly going to miss the old girl. I always thought she did most of his thinking for him. Not so much about local politics, but she did help him with his roses.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Don’t you remember his greenhouse blowing down in that storm a few years ago? She let him put the delicate things in hers, up in Troutbeck, and they’ve been pals ever since.’
Angie shrugged, as if she had no interest in such matters. Instead she went into the larder and opened the big fridge. ‘I’ll have to freeze all this bacon – and it never really tastes right when it’s been defrosted. The dog will probably end up eating it.’
‘He’ll get fat,’ said Russell, patting the faithful Lakeland terrier sitting beside him. ‘There’s a good boy. Simmy should get a dog, you know. I can’t think what she’s got against them. This little fellow has never done anything to annoy her.’
Angie’s restlessness was increasing. The prospect of the coming weekend with no guests, no plans to go out, no way of knowing what might happen next, all added up to a highly disagreeable set of emotions. ‘Did she say whether they were coming here on Sunday?’ she asked Russell.
‘I think they are. Do you want me to phone her and ask?’
‘In the morning. Christopher likes pork, doesn’t he? Maybe he’d settle for bacon and sausages instead.’
‘In your dreams,’ said Russell.
Nothing more was said for several minutes. Russell found himself wishing he smoked a pipe, if only to give himself something to do with at least one hand. Sitting by the Rayburn, legs stretched out, he felt shamefully lazy. It was nearly twenty years since he and Angie had moved north and set themselves up in the hospitality industry – which he refused to call it. The time had hurtled by. He had thrown himself into the role of jovial host, as well as exploring every corner of the region. He swotted up on local history, advised on the best walks and the lesser-known attractions, and predicted the weather with uncanny accuracy. His previous career had never been remotely as satisfying and absorbing as this new life turned out to be. With Angie firmly in charge, all he had to do was make people welcome and keep Beck View’s approval rating high. The money they earned wa
s plenty for their modest needs. Angie seldom went out, other than to call in on Simmy in the shop or have coffee with her handful of friends. Once in a long while there would be meetings with other B&B proprietors, where they exchanged ideas about soap and duvet covers and black pudding. There seemed little need for a busy social life when there was such a constant stream of people coming through their front door and lingering over long conversational breakfasts.
And now, all of a sudden, everything had changed. It started with Simmy getting pregnant again and needing to find a new place to live, because the existing house was not big enough. Or so the youngsters insisted. To Russell’s mind, the cottage in Troutbeck was perfectly adequate for a small family. And the much-deplored commute from Troutbeck to Keswick was nothing compared to what countless thousands of people managed right across the country. The idea of them living in Patterdale was distasteful to Russell, who did not like driving on narrow roads with hundreds of tourists who did not appreciate the hazards. If necessary, he could walk to Troutbeck, even if it took all morning, No way could he walk the thirteen miles to Patterdale, although admittedly there was quite a good bus service, which he was determined to make full use of.
And all that faded into the shadows in the face of this confounded murder. This was going to force much more urgent change onto him and Angie, if the current spate of cancellations was anything to go by. The news had spread like a galloping horse through Facebook and Twitter and Lord knew what else. The local TV station had filmed in the street outside, making Beck View all too recognisable. ‘All publicity is good publicity,’ Russell had said optimistically a few days ago, but it turned out he was wrong about that.
