The Patterdale Plot

by Rebecca Tope

She sat back and let him take charge, despite a suspicion that his itinerary was clumsy if not downright inefficient. The food would have to sit in the car while they had lunch, after all – which was not something she felt should worry them. ‘Okay,’ she said, with a small shake of her head. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing.’

  To her surprise, he bridled. ‘Why? Have I got it wrong?’

  ‘No, no. Forget I spoke. It’s lovely to have such a nice, relaxed day with you. Everything so ordinary and domestic – it makes a very pleasant change.’

  ‘Except it doesn’t, does it? Not really. You’re thinking about poison and where on earth we’re going to be living this time next year, and I’m wondering whether Josephine is going to be back at work next week and how much the reserve should be on a pair of Japanese vases. Neither of us can focus for long on roast pork or maternity trousers.’

  ‘It won’t hurt us to try,’ she persisted. ‘And it’s all part of the same picture, really. Except the poison,’ she added sadly. ‘That doesn’t fit at all. That’s the thing about murder, isn’t it? The way it chops through normal life, and overturns everything you were taking for granted. That poor man, who nobody seemed to be very bothered about when he was alive, just a very quiet, normal chap, with his routines and his hobbies. Why in the world would anybody go to such lengths to kill him? It’s frightening because it seems so senseless.’ She paused. ‘Oh dear – that wasn’t supposed to come out today, was it? Sorry about that.’

  Christopher laughed. ‘We’re almost at the pub. Let’s see if we can at least concentrate on something that’s about us. Like finding a house, or choosing baby names. Just for a little while?’

  ‘We can try,’ she said.

  It came as a relief to find that there was nobody they knew in The Traveller’s Rest. Grasmere had initially been their favoured location to live, being neatly situated between their places of work, but they quickly discovered that it was not only a dauntingly popular spot for tourists, rendering daily life for anybody not involved in ‘hospitality’ somewhat peculiar, it was also expensive. The handful of properties not already modified for the use of visitors were quickly snatched up the moment they became available. Simmy and Christopher had almost immediately dismissed it as unviable. The fact that he had also found himself much too close to a murder there clinched the decision.

  The pub was not in the village itself, but on the main road. It had obviously been a coaching inn, offering a change of horses and a much-needed rest for anyone travelling long distances on bumpy roads, two or three centuries ago. There were fields behind it, scattered with shaggy Herdwick ewes. Simmy remembered stopping here several years ago with her father, when she had still lived in Worcester and had come for a visit.

  Making a game of it, she and Christopher carefully chose their food and drink, discussing calorific values and optimum balance of protein and vitamins. ‘The real joke,’ said Chris, ‘is that neither of us actually cares very much about food.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we should,’ she said primly. ‘After all, everybody else in the country seems to.’

  ‘It’s decadent,’ he stated flatly. ‘When you’ve seen people living on the same narrow range of choices, most of it stuff they’ve grown themselves, with meat a rare luxury, you feel a bit sick in a supermarket. I’m not pretending I feel like that all the time, but it comes over me now and then. And nobody would willingly opt to exist on the incredibly dreary diet they’ve got in places like Rajasthan, but I definitely think you and I have got it right. Eat to live, not live to eat.’

  ‘I always get that one confused,’ she laughed. ‘But I know what you mean.’

  The mood lasted a delicious fifteen minutes, before Simmy’s treacherous mind began to draw connections between the lavish salad she had ordered, containing avocados, prawns, nuts, rocket and pulses and the toxic plant material that the wretched Grant Childers had unwittingly swallowed. She looked down at her plate, focusing on the scattering of seeds covering everything. She ran through one more time the way everyone had been so instantly certain that his death had really been murder. It had been that single word Why? that had clinched it. As Angie had said, nobody who was intent on self-destruction would utter that particular word. However much they might all wish it had been an allergy or an accident, neither theory could be made to work.

  Christopher was watching her face. ‘You’re thinking about poison again, aren’t you?’ he accused.

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘I was thinking maybe it had been an allergic reaction all along. But I can see that won’t work. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. We did our best to ignore it, and we’ve failed miserably. But I can’t see how we can do anything about it, however much we might want to. You can tell Moxon about seeing those funeral flowers. That might be a brilliant clue – but you can’t follow it up, can you? That’s down to him.’

  She grimaced. ‘I doubt if Ben would agree with you.’

  ‘So what do you think he would do about it?’

  She gave it some thought. ‘Good question. He’d probably try to get a list of all the people who sent flowers for Miss Entwhistle. Except the undertaker wouldn’t tell him. The police would have to do that.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He’d go back to the start and find out all he could about Grant Childers. Not just who knew him and what his family think about him being murdered, but what sort of person he was.’

  ‘How would he manage that?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he would.’ She sighed. ‘Thanks. You’re being very patient with me.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m only now starting to understand why this matters so much.’

  ‘Oh?’ She ate a large, succulent prawn, followed by two leaves of rocket that she picked up in her fingers. ‘Isn’t that obvious? I was there when the man died. So was my mother.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I mean, in general. All those other murders, most of them tangled up with your flowers in one way or another. You take it personally. And that Moxon man exploits you because of it. Even without Ben, you’re useful to him. And with the police showing such dreadful success levels, they need all the help they can get.’

  ‘We’re not doing as badly as all that,’ came a female voice from behind Simmy.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was a woman sitting alone at a table in the window. She was in her early thirties and had straight light-brown hair tied back from her face, which was long and narrow. Her eyes were a shade of blue-grey that matched the baggy jumper she was wearing. Simmy knew she had seen her before, and concluded from her words that she was a police officer. Probably a detective. ‘I know!’ she crowed, after fifteen seconds. ‘You came to Beck View last Sunday. I only spoke to you for a minute, didn’t I? I can’t remember your name.’

  ‘Emily Gibson. Detective Sergeant. I’m impressed you remember me at all.’

  Simmy nodded. ‘I don’t expect I’ll forget that day for quite a while. This is Christopher, my fiancé. He lives in Keswick.’

  DS Gibson acknowledged the introduction with a brief flicker. ‘I’m sorry I listened to what you were saying. It wasn’t until I heard the name “Moxon” that I really took any notice. You had your back to me – I didn’t realise who you were until then.’

  Simmy waved away the apology with a smile. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ she said, in all sincerity. Even the soft snort from Christopher did nothing to change how she felt. ‘I left a message for Inspector Moxon just now.’

  ‘So I gather. Was it something important?’

  Simmy looked around at the other customers. Nobody seemed to be listening, but she was hesitant about discussing a police investigation in public. Why didn’t this Gibson person feel the same? ‘Come and sit with us,’ she said.

  Christopher snorted again, more loudly. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’ Simmy asked him. ‘Just for a few minutes?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ he said, with a flap of his hand. ‘I’ll just finish my delicious
steak and let you two talk about poison.’

  With a sinking heart, Simmy recognised the man of earlier times, resistant to her involvement with the forces of the law and the unpredictable violence of those who committed murder. Had his apparent interest all been an act, then? Was he merely humouring her? She saw Gibson observing them both with those blue-grey eyes. They were her best feature by a long way. Her nose was too thin and her chin too prominent for anything approaching beauty – but her eyes were lovely. Full of intelligence and good temper, they would earn anybody’s trust.

  The change of seat was smoothly accomplished, and the conversation resumed. ‘Well, the thing is,’ Simmy began, ‘I remembered seeing a rather odd home-made wreath for Miss Entwhistle’s funeral yesterday, made from datura flowers. At least, I’m reasonably sure that’s what they were. I was delivering tributes at the undertaker’s, and had a look at all the others. Professional curiosity, if you like. There was this home-made one that caught my eye. The flowers must have been grown under glass, I think. There were six or eight of them on a bed of moss. It was nicely done, but obviously not by any florist.’

  ‘Who were they from?’

  ‘That’s where I get stuck. It was a nickname that I’d never come across before. And I can’t remember what it was. Must have been a close friend, I suppose. Datura is poisonous, you know,’ she finished, superfluously.

  ‘Yes, I know. And the toxin that killed Mr Childers was definitely from the datura family. Most probably from that exact plant, but not in its natural form. No trace of seeds or leaves or flowers in his system. They’ve got to have steeped it and extracted the toxin that way. Easily done if you know the technicalities. Makes the pathology a lot more difficult to identify.’

  ‘I expect it’s just a coincidence. After all, it would be very foolhardy to publicly reveal that you had access to a highly toxic plant, just when there was an investigation going on into a deliberate poisoning.’

  ‘It’s entirely possible that there’s no connection. You could argue that it’s purely innocent, and that the person sending those particular flowers must be a long way down the list of suspects, or off it altogether.’

  Simmy sat back to have a think. This woman was Moxon’s new sidekick, presumably. She would have quickly learnt how special he was, how undamaged by his work he remained and how contented he and his wife were together. Simmy found herself experiencing a rare stab of jealousy. ‘How do you get along with the inspector?’ she asked.

  ‘What? You mean DI Moxon? He’s all right. A bit slow sometimes. A bit soft. But he’s brilliant at all the local knowledge. Knows everybody and how they all connect. If you could just remember that nickname, he’s sure to know who it is.’

  ‘I tried to find those flowers again, after the funeral, but they’d nearly all been taken off to nursing homes. That’s really why I phoned him. I thought he could check with the undertaker, and see if he can track them down.’

  ‘Probably worth a try. Thanks. But as I say, it’s more likely to be completely innocent.’

  They both looked at Christopher, who had been giving his full attention to his food. He glanced up, aware of their scrutiny, and shrugged defensively. ‘What?’ he said.

  Neither woman answered. Simmy was aware of the most subtle of power struggles going on. He had tried to dominate her with his snorting and his sniffy remark. And she had done as she wished, despite him. He had lost nothing by it, while making his feelings plain. This was all good, she told herself. They all knew where they stood.

  ‘I wish I could remember that name,’ she said. ‘I expect it’ll come to me. I keep thinking “Jazz”, but it wasn’t that.’

  ‘That suggests he’s called James,’ said Christopher diffidently. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Possibly – except it wasn’t Jazz. It was a bit like it, that’s all. I know I’m being dim. It’s hormones, probably.’

  For the first time, DS Gibson glanced at Simmy’s middle. ‘Oh! I didn’t notice. You’re not very far on, are you?’

  ‘Twenty-two weeks. More than halfway. It seems to be going rather slowly at the moment.’

  ‘Is it your first?’

  Simmy took a deep breath. She had known this question would arise, but apart from the hospital people, nobody had yet asked it. She unfairly blamed Moxon for not warning his colleague in advance. Why should he? demanded the voice of reason. He would probably feel he was guilty of an outrageous intrusion on her privacy if he mentioned it to anyone.

  ‘I lost my first one, before I came to live here,’ she said. ‘She was stillborn.’

  ‘Oh Lord. How terrible! You must be feeling pretty nervous about this one, then?’

  Simmy relaxed. ‘You could say that. They’ll be keeping a close eye on me, of course. But it’s not a very rational business. You lose trust in the whole process.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Simmy believed her and was grateful. She looked to Christopher, trying to include him, aware that he could not be comfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. He gave her a bracing smile, which said, I’m here for you, and which she found quite irritating. This wasn’t going to be easy, she realised, over the coming months. Pitfalls were appearing on all sides. Characteristically she blamed herself for her fiancé’s discomfort, and took refuge in the presence of the police detective. Solving a murder was an excellent method of distracting oneself from personal issues, after all.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘So – you haven’t got very far with the investigation, then?’

  Gibson leant back slightly. ‘Whoa!’ she warned. ‘That’s a bit strong. We’re following up on a whole lot of leads, asking for witnesses who might have seen Mr Childers in the hours before he died. The usual stuff.’ She narrowed her pretty eyes. ‘How much does DI Moxon generally share with you, then?’

  Simmy smiled. ‘That depends. You can’t really generalise. A few times I’ve been a key witness and he’s told me quite a lot. Other times I’ve been out on the edge and it’s been Ben or Bonnie that’s most involved.’

  ‘Or me,’ said Christopher. ‘A couple of times, anyway.’

  ‘I see.’ She regarded him with a steady look. ‘What’s your line of work, Mr …?’

  ‘Henderson. I’m a partner at the Keswick auction house. Been there a couple of years now. Finally found my vocation, you might say.’

  ‘Nice,’ she said vaguely. ‘Antiques and flowers, then. Both liable to arouse strong feelings, when you think about it. I mean – some of those collectors can get tremendously protective and competitive, can’t they? And so can gardeners, cherishing their precious dahlias or whatever.’

  ‘It’s not so much that,’ said Simmy, ‘as people’s reaction when receiving flowers on special occasions. That can spark off all sorts of deep emotion. I never understood before how flowers can be used maliciously. As a reminder of something awful, or sent by a stalker, or even a subtle kind of sarcasm. The possibilities are endless. And all I do is fulfil people’s orders, asking no questions.’ She remembered the woman in the pub in Patterdale, who she had first met in a farmyard, her carefully made bouquet flying over her head, hurled by the enraged recipient. ‘They can be a catalyst, bringing things to a head in a bad marriage. It’s scary to think of what I might walk into without any sort of warning.’

  ‘But no flowers involved where Mr Childers was concerned?’

  ‘Well …’ Simmy began to doubt the quality of this young woman’s intelligence, ‘haven’t we just been saying he must have consumed some, which killed him?’

  ‘Oh!’ Gibson put a hand to her mouth. ‘So we have. But nothing to do with you, of course. That’s all I meant.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Simmy. ‘Except that I was there when he died.’

  That effectively finished the conversation. Christopher’s steak was all gone, and time was passing. He wiped his mouth with a flourish and plonked the napkin down beside his plate. Simmy got the message.

  ‘We’d better be going
,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to unload the shopping before it starts to go off.’

  ‘It was nice to talk to you,’ said the detective. ‘And thanks for the hint about the funeral flowers. We’ll get back to you if there are any questions. And if you remember that name …’

  ‘It’ll come to me,’ she said confidently. ‘Although I don’t suppose it’ll be much help when it does. And you know the undertaker removes all the cards before taking the flowers to nursing homes. They give them back to the family. Except Miss Entwhistle didn’t really have any family, as far as I know.’ She heard herself prattling. ‘Well, you’ll know better than me about that sort of thing. I never even met the woman.’

  ‘You did, though,’ said Christopher, to her amazement. ‘She was that old girl we used to see in The Mortal Man sometimes. The one with the Patterdale terrier. I thought you knew that.’

  She stared at him. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘She buys stuff at the sales sometimes. Used to, I should say. Garden things, mostly. And she often did the car boot sales, selling her surplus plants.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought you knew all that.’

  She blinked at him. ‘I never made the connection. How could I, when I never even knew her name?’

  ‘She lived about two hundred yards from you, you idiot. People are probably wondering why you weren’t at her funeral.’

  Simmy had nothing to say to that. So the somewhat unkempt woman with the little black dog who would sometimes have a brief chat with her and Christopher in the pub was the one who’d died, apparently to universal sorrow. The fact that she had never known the woman’s name struck her now as a great omission. And yet she hardly knew the names of anyone in Troutbeck. People didn’t go around introducing themselves, or if they did, it was mostly just a first name they provided. Simmy had not joined any local societies, did not go to church, had done no door-to-door canvassing. How was she supposed to know who everybody was?

  Yet her fiancé evidently did. ‘Who else do you know, then?’ she asked foolishly. ‘Do you think you could tell me everyone’s name in future?’