The Windermere Witness (13 page)

‘Oh, Pablo! You always say the wrong things, don’t you?’ Bridget chided him lightly, almost flirtatiously. Simmy could almost hear the added phrase
He’s
from
Barcelona
, clamping her lips together against the smile that threatened. She savoured the word ‘beatify’ without being quite sure of its meaning. The deepening sense of being accidentally admitted into a long-established club made her uncomfortable. This was banter, welling up from a reserve of history and familiarity between the four men, that held only a limited place for women, and even less for girls. It appeared that Markie’s death was bad, but not quite bad enough to flatten them. Again, Simmy wondered what Bridget thought she was doing, and whether she was actually in genuine danger. Despite the words and the solemn faces, she was beginning to detect a deficiency of genuine grief over Markie’s death. Only Bridget seemed to understand what had been lost, and even she was distracted
by her role as a new bride and her sandwiched situation, between Glenn and Peter. Eleanor was somehow fading from view, having delivered Simmy to the lions’ den, her task was essentially done. She was sorry about Markie, shocked about George, but she still had her daughters and the mysterious poetical father of the younger one. Eleanor, in fact, had lost nothing.

Simmy had to ask twice before Eleanor pulled herself away from the peculiar interview. Glenn came to her assistance. ‘I’ll come out with you,’ he said. ‘My head needs clearing.’

He led the way, holding the door open for the women and looking back at the huddle on the sofa. ‘Poor old Peter,’ he said softly, when they were in the lobby. ‘This has hit him terribly.’

‘And Bridget,’ said Simmy. ‘What an impossible loss for her. She’s going to need so much support.’ She examined him, with his brutal haircut and impassive features. ‘Which it looks as if she’s getting,’ she added. ‘You’re all being very solicitous.’ The girl’s own mother was showing nothing like the same concern, she realised. She hadn’t kissed Bridget, either on arriving or leaving.

‘We’ll look after her,’ said Glenn confidently.

‘You are good, Glenn,’ said Eleanor, formally. ‘Where would we all be without you?’

He rolled his eyes amiably, and put a hand on her arm. ‘Thanks, Nell. We’ll get through it, if we all stick together. They’ll catch the swine who did this, sooner or later. All those forensic people gathering invisible clues – they’re sure to work it out.’

Outside, Simmy inevitably found herself looking towards
the lake, with the police tape and the trampled grass. ‘Where, exactly, was he?’ she asked.

Glenn scanned the muddy bank beyond the landing stage, and waved an imprecise arm. ‘Just over there.’

‘And who found him first?’

‘George, wasn’t it?’ Glenn looked to Eleanor for confirmation. ‘I’m afraid I was almost last on the scene. I stayed in the hotel with young Lucy when people started shouting.’

‘It was George and one of the hotel people,’ said Eleanor. ‘George went to pieces, ranting and raving. He wasn’t making any sense.’

‘He was throwing wild accusations about,’ agreed Glenn ruefully. ‘Not surprising, when you think that Markie was his only son. Anybody would be knocked sideways by a thing like that.’

Simmy remembered Melanie reporting a similar scene. George Baxter had made a great spectacle of himself, evidently. ‘Who precisely did he accuse?’

‘Everybody, I think. Peter, me, Pablo, the head waiter – the lot.’

‘Not the head waiter, actually,’ Eleanor corrected him. ‘But I think he did include Peter’s mother, poor old girl.’

Scrappy ideas flittered through Simmy’s head at this elaboration of what had happened. Was it not reasonable to think that one of George’s accusations had hit the mark, thereby sealing his own fate?

Eleanor took her back to her parents, and drove away without a backward glance.

It was almost five o’clock and the hunger pangs of an hour before turned into a sort of sour nausea.

‘Well?’ said Angie, with a rare direct look, ‘What happened?’ She had been making scones and there was flour on her hands as well as down her front. She produced mugs of tea for them both, as an automatic response to Simmy’s appearance.

‘Nothing much. They weren’t really very interested in me. They talked to each other, mostly.’

‘Who are “they”, exactly?’

‘Peter Harrison-West, and his new wife. The best man, Glenn something, and two other men, who were ushers. Pablo and Felix. Felix is in a wheelchair. He fell off a mountain and broke his back. I think they’ve all been friends for decades. Went to some boarding school together.’

‘I know Felix Mainwaring. Or I did. Before the accident, he worked for the council. Something to do with tourism. He was at a couple of meetings we went to. Of course it was in the papers – all very dramatic at the time.’

‘Melanie told me about that,’ she remembered. ‘Surely the council didn’t sack him?’

‘Presumably not. But I don’t think he’s working at all now. I expect he’s writing a book or something.’

‘They were quite peculiar. It felt as if they were giving a performance, somehow.’

‘Sounds as if they wanted you to witness them, in some way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well – you’re the main police witness, if I’ve understood it right. That must be how they think of you. They know they’re all regarded as suspects, so they wanted to give you a demonstration of their innocence.’

It chimed uncannily with Simmy’s own suspicions, and she raised her eyebrows encouragingly. ‘I know it’s a bit late,’ Angie went on, ‘but I wish you hadn’t got involved in it all. I wish I’d stopped you going off with that woman last night. I was distracted, otherwise I would have done.’

‘I wanted to go.’

‘Did you? What in the world for?’

‘It was Lucy, I think. Eleanor seemed so careless with her. I wanted to make sure she’d be all right.’

Angie sighed. ‘Oh P’simmon, you’ll have to let all that go. You can’t go through life rescuing every little girl you meet.’

There were buttons that only a mother knew how to press. The tears flowed hot and prickly. Angie took her into
a warm floury hug. ‘What you need is to get out there and find a new boyfriend,’ she murmured.

Getting out there
was an adjuration Simmy heard regularly. She wasn’t sure she knew where was meant or how she should go about doing it. As she had tried to persuade Melanie, she was not conscious of any desire to figure it out. But her mother was doing her best and deserved a response.

‘The policeman likes me,’ she said, with a choked little laugh.

‘Policeman?’

‘He’s called Moxon. He’s CID.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘He’s all right, except for his hair. It’s too short and too greasy.’

‘Well, he sounds highly unsuitable. Think of somebody else.’

‘He said I’d make a good police officer, and I said you’d kill me if I did that.’

‘He’s right.’

‘Anyway, I’d hate it. I like to think the best of people, and I don’t suppose you can if you’re in the police.’

‘Precisely.’ They pulled away from each other, and Angie returned to her scones. Simmy put the kettle on for a second mug of tea. ‘So what happens now?’ asked Angie.

‘No idea. I hope they won’t want anything else from me. I’m sick of it. Literally. I do feel quite sick.’

‘That’s because you missed your lunch. You need something hearty. I’ll do a fry-up in a little while. Sausages, mushrooms, eggs, bread.’

‘And cheese. Can we have fried cheese?’

‘You’re such a baby,’ sighed her mother theatrically. ‘And me with all those people due to show up at any moment.’

‘And me with a shop to run,’ Simmy flashed back, recovering from the weak moments. There was a strict limit on her mother’s maternal resources, and it had evidently been reached. ‘I’ll go now, if you’d rather.’

‘No, no. You have to eat. Your father’s going to expect something. He’s been in the shed all afternoon.’

Simmy laughed briefly.
The shed
was in fact a handsome summer house with elaborate fittings, positioned on the very edge of the beck. Russell would take magazines and newspapers out there, and listen to Radio Three. Once in a while he would smoke a pipe. He had a sketch pad and pencils, and sometimes brought a drawing of birds to show his wife. He entered them in the Windermere Summer Show from time to time, and had won a red rosette for a picture of a coal tit, a year before.

‘He’ll be getting a laptop to keep out there, before you know it – and then you’ll have to worry.’

‘Why? Do you think he’d get hooked on pornography?’

‘Melanie says they all do, sooner or later.’

‘Oh well,’ shrugged Angie. ‘Better later than sooner, I guess. Not so likely to corrupt him at his age. I must admit I don’t like what it does to boys.’

‘Right.’ The association took her straight back to the dead Markie, who had been a boy and might have indulged in computer sex, for all she knew. And from Markie she moved to George Baxter and his daughter.

‘I’m going out to talk to him,’ she said.

Russell was sitting in a saggy armchair, close to the open doorway, a book upside down in his lap. His eyes were
shut. Simmy felt a stab of sheer terror. ‘Dad!’ she shrilled, far too loud.

He shuddered awake, shock clear on his face. ‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to. You looked … for a minute, I thought …’

‘You thought I was dead?’ His eyes widened. ‘I was dreaming about an eagle, flying low over a river. I was on its back. It could have been the angel of death in disguise, I suppose.’

‘I doubt it. I’m just being hysterical.’

‘The Baxter man,’ he nodded. ‘You did say he was shot, didn’t you? Seems hard to believe.’

Simmy nodded. ‘I saw the hole in his head.’

‘You don’t expect gunslingers in Windermere, do you? What’s the world coming to?’

‘I suppose lots of people shoot pheasants and foxes and things around here. All the gentry must have guns.’

‘As I understand it, they’re meant to keep them registered and locked away in special cabinets. I’d be surprised if there were rogue guns this side of Manchester.’

‘Or Glasgow.’

‘Indeed. But that must be very naive of us. Where there’s a will there’s a way, as they say.’ He watched the trickling beck for a moment. ‘Only one hole in his head?’

‘I think so.’

‘Not a shotgun, then. If I remember rightly, they deliver a lot of little missiles. I remember we used to find it in the hares my old dad used to bring home. Little lead balls. It was a bit like finding the things in Christmas pudding. Must have been a pistol, then. Easier to hide, of course.’
‘Oh, Dad.’ She knelt beside him and nuzzled into his chest. ‘It makes me so sad. And scared. Dying shouldn’t be so easy. What if somebody shot
you
?’

‘That isn’t going to happen, is it? Don’t be a child, Sim. You have to take the world as it is.’

‘That can’t be right. What would Mother say to that? She’s spent her life trying to change it all.’

‘And see where it’s got her. Moronic guests suing her because one child pushes another. We’re all helpless in the face of that sort of thing.’

Simmy had forgotten about the pushed child. She groaned and slowly detached from his chest. Two parental hugs within ten minutes of each other might actually be too much of a good thing. ‘We’re having a fry-up. Those people will probably turn up in the middle of it, but never mind. Funny day to arrive – a Sunday.’

‘Sundays are no different from other days now.’

‘They are for me,’ she said stoutly. ‘I like the idea of a Sabbath.’

‘And you with such a pagan upbringing,’ he teased. ‘Just goes to show.’

It was a much needed interlude, with her reliable father keeping her anchored. Other people’s families might be so dysfunctional as to permit two brutal murders in one weekend, but hers was nowhere near such disintegration. For them, it was nothing worse than a dead baby and moronic B&B guests.

‘So what happens now?’ asked Angie again, after the early supper and glasses of home-made wine. The guests had arrived, dumped their luggage and gone out again to find
food. No matter how importunate they might be, Angie steadfastly refused to provide evening meals. ‘That way madness lies,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of pubs out there.’

‘I go home, make a list of this week’s orders, watch mindless telly and go to bed,’ said Simmy. ‘Same as usual.’

‘You think they’ll leave you alone now – those Baxters?’

‘They’ve no reason not to. I’ve told them all I can, which is hardly anything. They weren’t even interested, when it came to it.’

‘And the police detective chap? What about him?’

Simmy hesitated. ‘If they find the killer, I might have to be a witness at his trial. But that won’t be for ages, if ever.’

‘You think they might not catch him?’ said her father. The concern on his face startled her. ‘A madman out there with a gun, knowing you’re a chief witness. I don’t like the thought of that, Sim. That’s going to keep me awake. Tell that detective he has to do his job. I insist on it.’

‘I think he’ll do his best, Dad. He seems quite conscientious.’

‘And you didn’t see anything, anyway, did you?’ added Angie. ‘So you’re no threat to him, whoever he is.’

‘That’s right,’ said Simmy with an emphasis that concealed a new line of thought. Almost all the talk had been about Markie, when she had been taken to see the people at Storrs. Nobody had asked her a thing about Baxter. And yet she had been much closer to the action the second time. With Markie, she had witnessed nothing but his apparent state of anxiety; with George she had seen him fall. She had been the reason he was there on the pavement in the first place. Why hadn’t they been more curious to know how he died?

Because, she concluded, nobody but Bridget cared about him. Peter had lost a father-in-law, a man he had known for most of his life, even if he might not have particularly warm feelings for him. The others, presumably, were even less attached. Markie was their friend, even their mascot. The youngster who liked to hang out with the older men, admiring their maturity and worldly wisdom. And they had failed to keep him safe. One of them might even have been his killer.

And if that was true, was it not reasonable to think the same person killed George Baxter?

She went home just as it was getting dark. Her father’s uncharacteristic worries about her safety had to be resisted and she kept them firmly under control. It would be only too easy to believe in a lurking gunman, his weapon trained on her bedroom window or front door. Her nearest neighbour was within easy shouting distance, and any stranger seen hanging about would be challenged to explain himself. Unless he was a clever actor, passing himself off as a tourist or rambler, a would-be murderer was unlikely to succeed in concealing himself for long. Even if he knew where Simmy lived, he couldn’t possibly know when she would arrive home. She repeated such reassurances to herself as she parked as close as she could to the house, and ensured she had the door key ready to open the door in seconds.

It was with a rueful feeling that she had been foolish that she gained the sanctuary of her living room. Everything was exactly as she had left it, and there were no messages on her phone. Lights were coming on in the houses strung along the village street, lending a sense of
comradeship and security when she looked out of her front window. It was a timeless scene, the little beacons of good cheer flickering from inside the cosy homes of friendly neighbours. She had loved it from the first night she moved in, conjuring stories of strangers being made welcome and meals being shared. Mrs Pepper, from a few houses away, had brought a tin of little cakes to mark her arrival and stayed to give a brief account of four or five local families who would all be glad to accept her into their midst.

One by one, they had made themselves known to her, eager to hear the details of her business and her plans for the future. Barely half of them had roots in the area, telling instead stories of how they had relocated from other parts of the country. They worked in towns, sometimes forty miles away and more, or they ran their own little enterprises, reliant on visitors as Simmy’s parents were. ‘Flowers?’ they said thoughtfully, when she explained her own venture. ‘That’s nice.’

Flowers, it seemed, held no threat to anybody. The worst you could say was that they were frivolous. ‘We’ll come to you next time there’s a funeral,’ more than one person promised. ‘We still have a custom of sending lots of flowers for a funeral – not like those nasty cremations they have down south, with hardly a flower to be seen.’

She concentrated on these friendly memories as she made coffee and idly watched a costume drama on TV. Winter was coming, in all its unpredictability. There could be snow, gales, floods, treacherous ice or all-pervading mud. It was essential to prepare for them all, ensuring the roof was sound and the log pile well stacked. Special tyres would
be fitted to the cars, and thicker curtains hung across the windows. All the talk would be of previous years and how magnificently everyone had coped. Sheep would be kept alive, against all the odds, and only one or two dim-witted climbers would come to grief on snow-clad fells.

The fact of her parents offering a safety net down in the softer town environment where snow and ice were quickly despatched, had taken some adjustment. To return to even an arm’s length daughterhood had felt like weakness, even failure, at first. The decision had been made during the anguish of loss, an instinct that brooked no argument. Angie and Russell had both held back, doubtful as to the wisdom of the move. ‘Of course, it would be lovely to have you so close, but …’ had been the message. The routine in which they saw each other barely once a week had been deliberately created to avoid any suggestion of undue dependence. This weekend had been an aberration not entirely caused by the Baxter murders.