by Rebecca Tope
‘So she definitely didn’t keep the baby? If there was one? Are we sure about that?’
‘No, not entirely, although the papers reported the story as if there certainly was a child. They insisted she had it fostered out, but nobody knew where. The investigative journalists tried to track down any adoption records but came up with nothing. Only one – at the Daily Herald – kept trying to get to the bottom of the story. They were the Labour Party’s mouthpiece, essentially, and the man Hilda was trying to damage was a Tory. Hilda had gone to them originally. But she wouldn’t provide any real evidence and, in the end, it looks as if they concluded she was inventing the whole thing.’
‘So what do we know for certain?’
‘Almost nothing. Reading between the lines, I think there must have been a real child. My hunch is that the famous politician paid her off – because she was suddenly in a position to buy a decent house and set herself up in business. It’s very unclear where the money for that came from.’
‘You told me about that on Tuesday,’ she nodded. ‘Supplying good quality food to airlines.’
‘No – that was much later. Through the sixties and much of the seventies, she was in the hotel business. Not running them, exactly, but offering a sort of time and motion service. Efficiencies of scale, innovations in the kitchens, promotions and publicity. She put herself about as a consultant, and apparently offered them a payment system dependent on results. Clever stuff. I found a little website all about it. She really was a pioneer.’
‘Sounds as if there’s plenty of material for Petrock’s book. She must have been an absolute dynamo.’
‘What we really need is some sort of link to Josephine Trubshaw, if we’re thinking this is all relevant to her murder.’
‘And you haven’t found one?’
‘Only the vaguest hints. Hilda liked collecting things and so did Josephine. These people all knew each other, and most of them are related. The timing seems too close to be coincidental – Fabian showing up the day before the murder. What’s his agenda, anyway? What does he really want?’
‘He said yesterday that they all want justice for Josephine, because she was a good friend and they are appalled that someone would kill her.’
‘But no sign of Uncle Richmond?’
‘No. Did I tell you that Oliver told us that Richmond wanted to marry Josephine? For a minute that seemed to explain the whole story. He’d gone mad with frustration and rage at being rejected, and gone round to her house and stabbed her.’
‘If that’s what killed her. We still don’t know for sure.’
‘I think it must have been. Oliver said there was a lot of blood.’
Ben shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really matter. Tell me more about Richmond.’
‘They said he’d accepted that Josephine was never going to marry him, years ago, and it was very old news.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Fabian and his cousins. They’re Richmond’s sons.’
‘Yes, I’ve got all that. What did they tell you that was new?’ He tore the diagram page off his notepad and started a fresh sheet.
Simmy complied as best she could but couldn’t dredge up any helpful details. ‘It was a real invasion – outrageous when you think about it, turning up in force like that. But Uncle Ambrose was sweet,’ she added with a smile.
‘Yes, you said. He’s probably the killer, then.’
‘No, he’s far too insubstantial. I really can’t think why they dragged him along.’
‘Did he appear to go willingly?’
‘Oh yes, I suppose so. He was Hilda’s brother, after all. She was a lot older than her siblings, wasn’t she? Did you get all their dates of birth when you were doing your googling or whatever it was?’
‘Oh yes. They’re very widely spaced. Ambrose comes next after her. He’s mid eighties. Then I think Richmond is a good ten years younger again. And Fabian’s mother fits in between somewhere. I can’t find where I wrote it all down now. Is it important?’
‘Probably not. Did they all have the same parents?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ben shook his head irritably, and Robin chose that moment to emit a plaintive cry, as if something had severely disappointed him. Simmy peered into his face and asked him what the problem was. Ben waited patiently. ‘He’s been very peculiar the last day or so,’ Simmy said.
‘Ask my mum for advice. She knows all there is to know about babies.’
Simmy’s instant reaction was to resist asking anyone for help, including Ben’s mother. Helen Harkness had admittedly produced five healthy babies, while maintaining her place in the competitive world of architecture. Simmy had unconsciously assumed that she’d had nannies and home helps and done a minimal amount of the dirty work herself. Although she had shown gratifying enthusiasm for Robin on Tuesday, she had not made any of the usual enquiries that one mother made to another. Sleepless nights, nappy rash, sore nipples. It was as if none of that side of baby care was relevant.
‘We need to know why now,’ said Ben, taking up the thread again, in a new place. ‘That’s always relevant. Why did Fabian show up when he did? The obvious answer has to be Hilda’s death. And something about Josephine inheriting the house. Houses are always relevant, aren’t they?’
‘We thought the one in Grasmere was,’ Simmy agreed. ‘Old ladies and houses obviously go together.’
‘This one’s a lot more than just a house though. Family. History. Money. All good motives for murder.’
‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,’ Simmy complained. ‘At first I was blaming Christopher for making that promise ten years ago, but since Josephine was killed, that doesn’t seem so relevant. We’d have been involved anyway.’
‘Would you, though? You’d have the excuse of the baby, and you hardly knew the woman. It was only because of Fabian that you felt a connection. It’s quite flimsy, when you think about it.’
‘I should never have gone to Keswick yesterday. That made it worse – I mean, that pulled me in even further. I got to know some of the auction people and can see how they’re all knocked sideways. Oliver’s trying to keep calm about it, but it’s sure to have interrupted his retirement plans.’
‘Is it? How?’
‘Well – I suppose he thinks he’ll have to train up her replacement and be there more than he really wants. He was there yesterday when I got the impression he wouldn’t have been normally.’
‘He’ll be worried about their reputation,’ said Ben, tapping his teeth with his pen. ‘Although a bit of scandal’s often good for business.’
‘It’s a murder, not a scandal. Not like the thing with Hilda and her baby.’
‘I’m not sure they’re so different.’ He tapped faster. ‘There is a connection somewhere, I know there is.’
‘It’s such a long time ago, Ben. How can a baby born seventy-odd years ago have anything to do with Josephine being killed? It would make a lot more sense if Hilda had been the victim, but she just died of old age.’
‘Did she? Are we sure?’
‘Come on! Don’t start that. From what Fabian says, nobody’s benefited from Josephine’s death. If anything, it’s caused extra trouble for them all.’
‘Can we go and look at Hilda’s house? We can assume there’s nobody living in it. Don’t ask me what we’d be looking for, but it can’t hurt to have a look.’ He tapped his screen and came up with an address in seconds. Then he tapped again and got Google Earth to show the handsome building overlooking Ullswater. ‘Very nice,’ he sighed. ‘Very nice indeed. That’s got to be causing untold ructions, if they can’t decide who gets it now. There could be a clause somewhere that says it reverts to the Armitages in the event of Josephine’s death.’
Simmy gave him a look. ‘Really? That sounds highly unlikely to me. And wouldn’t it incriminate them totally when Josie was murdered?’
Robin had fallen asleep, milky dribble running down his chin, his head flopped back. There was a new rash of pink spots across h
is nose, which Simmy told herself was entirely normal. Some gobbledygook about the bloodstream flushing out unwanted substances floated around her head. The mysteries of neonatal biochemistry were well beyond her knowledge or interest. Half of it sounded too unlikely to take seriously, anyway.
‘We need to go and look at it,’ Ben remarked carelessly. ‘We could go now, I suppose.’
‘No, Ben. I want to go to Beck View for lunch and pop in to have a chat with Bonnie.’
‘You did all that two days ago.’ His tone was too close to a whine to be taken seriously. ‘We’re stuck until we make something happen somehow. The police are going to be miles ahead of us at this rate.’
‘I didn’t know it was a competition,’ she said. ‘We ought to be pleased if that happens.’
‘Oh, well – I don’t actually expect it will. Have they even interviewed all those Armitages yet?’
‘I assume that happened yesterday – Fabian, anyway. Why would they want to question Uncle Ambrose? Nobody’s said anything about him knowing Josephine.’
‘Ah – but do they know about Uncle Richmond and Josephine? Who apart from Christopher would have told them the man even exists? Which way are they taking the investigation, I wonder?’
‘Good question.’
‘Where’s Helen?’ Simmy asked suddenly. The silence in the house made her think they were the only two in it. ‘Is she out?’
‘What? Oh, yeah. She had to go to Kendal or somewhere to look at an RSJ. Whether it’s big enough to hold up a whole second storey or something. Happens all the time. I keep telling her they could send a picture on Skype and she needn’t go out. It hurts her knee to drive now.’ He grimaced, having finally come to understand how Helen’s incapacity would affect the whole family. ‘She’s going to be in and out of hospital for years at this rate.’
‘No, she won’t. People are running around in no time, after these operations. It’s miraculous.’
‘Sometimes it is, and sometimes it goes wrong,’ he said darkly.
‘Well, I can’t stay much longer. I suppose I should volunteer to drive up to Aunt Hilda’s house when I go home, and just get an idea of what might be happening. Though I doubt it would be any use, and I don’t actually want to. Even if I took you with me up there, we’re not likely to find anything just by looking at it, are we?’ She nibbled her lip and then grinned. ‘I would like to know which one it is, though. Can you explain it to me exactly? It wasn’t clear on the computer screen how far along the lakeside it is.’
He sighed and pulled an Ordnance Survey map off a shelf and opened it up. ‘This must be it, look.’ He put his finger on a tiny outlined rectangle. ‘Opposite that pathway that goes down to the lake. As we saw on Google.’ His exaggerated patience made it very clear that he thought she should have worked that out for herself. ‘It’s big enough to get its own place on the map. Much too big for one old lady to live in by herself.’
‘We don’t know that she did – do we?’
Ben blinked at her. ‘But … surely? Fabian would have said if there was somebody still living there.’
‘You’d think so, yes. But he’s not a reliable informant. I really do think there’s something wrong with him. Much of what he says is either hot air or hard to believe.’
‘Unless that’s all part of the act,’ said Ben.
Nothing more was deemed relevant after that, and Simmy bundled up her infant ready to be carried back to the car. She had brought no equipment with her to the house. No nappies or wet wipes or plastic bags. All her life she had listened to her mother condemning the way women with babies took vast quantities of paraphernalia everywhere they went, as if one small child was a whole army of helpless creatures. ‘I only ever took a spare nappy and some water,’ Angie would boast repeatedly. Simmy had unthinkingly absorbed this doctrine and was automatically living by its tenets. So far, it had worked well enough. And she really did hate the infuriating all-purpose seat that the child was supposed to spend most of his day in.
‘What about going to Ullswater now?’ Ben persisted. ‘I really do think it might help.’
‘Do we have to? It’s at least three miles past Hartsop, and there’s never anywhere to park on that stretch. I know I’m being a wimp, but I don’t want to do more driving than I have to. Robin doesn’t like it.’
‘I thought all babies loved cars. Aren’t you meant to drive them round to get them to sleep?’
‘Not in this case. Maybe when he’s a bit older.’
‘And you’ve got the clinic tomorrow,’ he remembered.
‘So I have. Thanks for reminding me.’ The sarcasm was muted, because she really had forgotten all about it. ‘That makes it even more impossible for you to get to see the house, unless we go now.’
‘If we did that, you’d have to bring me all the way home again, which I agree is too much to ask. I could probably get myself there on the bike, today or tomorrow.’
Simmy understood without asking that to cycle from Bowness to Hartsop, over the Kirkstone Pass, was not a trip to be undertaken lightly. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If you can get as far as Troutbeck tomorrow morning, I’ll collect you from there. It’ll have to be before the clinic.’ Ten minutes in the car was not a lot to ask, she conceded.
Ben gave it some thought. ‘Maybe it’s a daft idea anyway. I can’t actually see how the house would fit the story, at least as far as we’ve got with it. But I like looking at houses. Must be my mother’s influence.’
‘We should have gone up there on Saturday with my father. I could have inspected the house then, if I’d known about it.’
‘Can’t be helped.’ There was resignation in his tone as well as his words. ‘We’re stuck, let’s face it. You might well have overlooked something that Fabian or a cousin said, which would set things moving again, but I don’t expect you to repeat every word. I have a feeling I’ve let that family get in the way of following up more on the victim. I hardly know anything about her, which is ridiculous. I can’t even remember what she looks like – assuming I saw her at the auction house that time.’ He and Simmy had gone to watch Christopher in action, sometime previously.
‘She was at the reception desk when we first arrived, I think. Plump, with frizzy fair hair. Fairly obviously in charge of everything.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Nope – not ringing any bells. It’s far too long ago now.’
‘You’re right that we still don’t know very much about her. She doesn’t seem to have done anything in her life. Just worked at the same place, learning all about antiques and computers, and adoring whichever man was in charge. First Oliver, then Christopher. All a bit immature, but harmless surely?’
‘I think there has to be more to it than that. It raises a whole lot of possible issues. Office politics. Female rivalry. What if one of the pretty young workers there made a mockery of Josephine? Undercurrents of real hatred and spitefulness. You know what women are like,’ he finished with a grin.
‘Wouldn’t that make Josie the killer, not the victim?’
‘Could be that was the intention,’ he said obscurely.
‘Well, I think she was just a natural assistant – she’d have made some important politician a wonderful secretary. Clever, but self-effacing. Never speaking out of turn, but more than capable of keeping the lesser minions on their toes. She did keep a close eye on everything during an auction.’
‘Bit of a stereotype, then,’ said Ben absently.
‘I’m afraid so. Except that she was linked to the Armitage family, to the extent that one of them wanted to marry her and another one left her a very valuable house. Along with four filing cabinets full of papers. I did tell you about that, didn’t I?’
Ben was spluttering. ‘I think this is what they call l’esprit d’escalier,’ he said. ‘We are literally standing on the doorstep – admittedly not a staircase, but the meaning’s the same.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘What you just said – a vital detail that you
almost forgot to mention. How can we find out what was in them? The filing cabinets, I mean.’ He shook his head in a mixture of excitement and frustration.
‘We can’t,’ Simmy said firmly. ‘And we’re not even going to try.’
Chapter Fourteen
Lunch at Beck View was brief to the point of rudeness. Angie was knee-deep in crumpled sheets and Russell had been given the task of replacing all the cloths on the dining-room tables. The dog was lurking in his basket by the Rayburn.
‘There isn’t any lunch per se,’ said Russell. ‘You can dig around for some cheese and there might be a tin of soup somewhere. We had a bit of trouble with a tricky family this morning. It’s put us all at odds with the world and each other.’
‘Bread? There’s got to be bread,’ said Simmy. ‘I need nourishment. You said yourself that I’m eating for two.’
‘Of course there’s bread,’ Angie shouted down from the top of the stairs. ‘There’s all sorts of stuff in the pantry. Help yourself. How’s the baby?’
Simmy went out into the hallway, where she could at least see her mother. ‘He’s fine. Fast asleep. I really hate that seat thing, though. It’s ridiculously heavy and awkward.’
‘Not much choice about that, as I understand it.’ Angie was breathless, her hair disarrayed and her cheeks flushed. ‘Honestly, those people! They didn’t go until after eleven, and all they did was complain. Said the road was too noisy and they couldn’t sleep. I ask you! We hardly get any night-time traffic past here.’
‘Where do they live? Somewhere deadly quiet, I suppose.’
‘That’s what’s so silly. They’re from Swindon, of all places. But apparently it’s a cul-de-sac on a big estate and never gets passing traffic.’
Russell drifted out of the kitchen, holding a somnolent Robin against his chest. ‘I got him out of that seat thing,’ he said proudly. ‘But you’d need a degree in engineering to put him back again. Don’t ever leave me in charge of doing that, will you?’
