The Windermere Witness (8 page)

Sunday was damp again, but on nothing like the scale of the day before. Simmy had dreamt about a funeral, the coffin piled high with ostentatious wreaths that were deep purple in colour, except for one that glowed a ghastly neon orange, clashing grotesquely.
So much for wondering whether we dream in colour
, she thought, as she remembered it. The horrible combination remained clear in her mind as she dressed and went downstairs. One of the worst aspects of being christened Persimmon was an active dislike of all shades of orange. Or apricot, come to that. Her preferred colour was a rich blood red, that made her hair and skin look darker. Somewhere in the past there had been Celtic ancestry, to which Simmy’s colouring was testament. Russell sometimes hinted that his wife might have a drop of something even darker in the mix. A shipwrecked Spaniard, perhaps – a possibly mythical source of swarthy colouring all along the western coasts of the British Isles.

Russell himself was an unremarkable mongrel assortment of Saxon and Scots with a dash of French. His sister Jeanne had researched it all in the hope of unearthing some surprises. The most startling revelation was that their great-grandmother had been born in Paris, and had deep black eyes that people noticed. She married a blue-eyed Londoner and gave birth to a batch of colourless shopkeepers and clerks. There had, though, been a daughter, Norma, who retained the dark eyes and full lips of her mother. Norma had died under the wheels of a coal truck, when she was eighteen.

Aunt Jeanne was dead now, as well. She had been sixty-six and there was still a sense that she had never enjoyed her natural span. There had been worlds yet to explore and she was in the full swing of her explorations when an aneurysm felled her, a week after Simmy’s dead baby had been delivered. For months, the survivors held their breath, waiting for the third calamity to befall them.

A grey Cumbrian Sunday created an irresistible backdrop for gloomy musings about death. Nothing to look forward to but darker days and weather-related frustrations for several months to come. The stoical take-it-or-leave-it character of the local people reflected the climate and the landscape. There could be snow to interrupt Christmas plans, and ice to send people and their vehicles slithering down the steep winding lanes when they were forced to venture out. Business would go into hibernation, with nobody sending flowers until the insanity of St Valentine’s Day reawakened them all. The irritating poinsettias and holly wreaths that symbolised Christmas were pretty much all that would sell between now and then, except for a
wedding in the New Year – a far less flamboyant one than that of Bridget and Peter. In the quieter spell, she would take the opportunity to experiment with new designs, using ideas from Jane Packer and others.

Inevitably her thoughts veered back to Storrs and the truncated wedding party. Those who had stayed overnight would be taking their leave. Even the new couple would be packing up for their honeymoon – assuming DI Moxon permitted them to leave. What a terrible shadow had been cast over them, to taint every anniversary of their wedding day, for the rest of their lives. How would they manage the strain of it?

The silence in the house did not disturb her. She had quickly grown to treasure the complete darkness and the absolute quiet of nights in Troutbeck. Her bedroom looked over the slopes of Wansfell, which stood between her and the lake, with no human habitation in sight. The rarity of such an undisturbed existence made her value it all the more. Planes might pass overhead, and traffic from the A592 might divert through the village for a look, but not in the small hours of the night. She had come rushing north to get away from all associations with Tony, blindly following her parents, and had never regretted it. She often found herself envying those who had been born there and spent their whole lives amongst the stunning lakes and fells.

The business would grow and develop into a solid foundation for a full life. She understood that she was only in the first toe-deep shallows of the ocean of learning ahead. Flowers contained unlimited potential, in every aspect of life. She had scarcely begun to approach restaurants, for example, with a view to establishing regular contracts for
table decoration. There were issues around available time – the Storrs wedding had kept her busy for weeks, with the final few days exclusively devoted to it. The resulting payment would cover rent on the shop for months. Weddings were the cash cow, no doubt about it. But a big funeral, coming without warning, could boost the coffers quite handsomely too, at times.

Her mobile broke into her quiet disjointed musings, just after nine o’clock. She answered it carelessly, while spreading marmalade on her morning toast. It would be her mother, she supposed.

‘Miss … Mrs … Brown? I’m sorry to trouble you again, but I’d like to see you today. I’m afraid I lost the thread last night. There were things I wanted to ask you. Could we try again, do you think?’

‘Mr Baxter,’ she identified, after the first few words. ‘I hope you managed to get some sleep?’

‘Never mind that. Will you see me? And Peter. He wants to come along, as well.’

‘Peter? The bridegroom, you mean?’

Baxter snorted at the word. ‘If that’s the way you view him, then yes. Harrison-West, new husband of my daughter. My son-in-law, come to that. He’s three years younger than me.’

There was no actual disdain or criticism in his words, but the sentiment alone was enough to suggest something less than positive. An impatient breath reached her ear, and she tried to stick to the question. ‘Well, I suppose I could. I’ve got things to do first, though. What time do you want me?’

‘Could you be at the Old England for lunch?’

‘The …?’

‘Old England pub – hotel, whatever they call it. It’s in Bowness, Fallbarrow Road. You’ll find it, if you don’t know it already.’

‘I expect I will. What time?’

‘Let’s say midday.’

‘Could we make it half past?’

‘If you say so.’

She bit back a
thank you
, unsure of whether it was apt. He made it feel as though she was the one doing the favour, which she supposed she was, when it came down to it. The prospect of meeting the new son-in-law was intriguing, pushing out insistent questions about why the family were being so attentive to her. What was it they wanted to extract from her? Something about her brief exchange with Markie, she assumed. A need she could just about understand: to revisit his last known words, the last expression on his face.

There were tasks to be done before she could consign the day to questions of murder, however pressing that might be. The week’s accounts were refusing to balance, for one thing. She had brought all the till receipts home with her, all the card transactions and cash takings. Knowing that figures were her weakest point, she had allocated a strict Sunday morning session to keeping abreast of the finances, every week. She had learnt how to do spreadsheets on the course she had taken before buying the shop, but never felt comfortable with doing the work on a computer. It made far more sense to her to write it by hand in a big ledger, where nothing could get lost, and she could easily track it all, step by step. Melanie had been appalled when this failing
came to light and had insisted on entering everything on a computer they kept at the shop, in addition to whatever method Simmy chose to employ. Orders were mostly done online, she pointed out. It took only a few more seconds to log the transaction on the database at the same time. Simmy struggled to cooperate, fully aware that she would never make a success of the business if she routinely messed up the accounts. One day, she promised herself, she would have a full-time employee dedicated to that whole side of things.

Meanwhile, she carefully inspected every scrap of paper, clipping each day’s together and labelling it; listing the most popular items sold, for future analysis; keying all the totals into a calculator and writing down the results. VAT, business tax, and the vast welter of paperwork associated with employing somebody, all threatened to engulf her, when she only wanted to enjoy the flowers and develop some of her own ideas regarding design and new lines to sell.

She phoned Melanie to suggest they both go quickly to Storrs and retrieve the ribbons and wires and other reusable material from the swags in the room used for the wedding. The hotel would not see it as their task to take decorations down, even if they were happy to keep other displays for a few more days. Time would be tight, but with two of them, it should take under an hour. ‘I’ll get my car from Lake Road, and have a quick coffee. Then I’ll pick you up at home at eleven or just after.’

‘Okay,’ Melanie agreed flatly. ‘But you’ll have to run.’

‘I know.’

By nine-forty-five she had come as close to completion
of her paperwork as she was likely to. She packed it all away in the capacious filing cabinet in the room that was intended for dining, and went upstairs to change into an outfit suitable for lunch with a millionaire whose son had been killed.

Sunday morning coffee with her parents was a sporadic commitment that they understood they could not depend on. To return to Beck View only a day after a previous visit was highly unusual, but after the events of the previous day, she expected they would want to talk over the implications of all that had happened. The disastrous guests would have to be discussed, in conjunction with the visitation from the Baxters. The fact of the lunch engagement would certainly interest them.

It was not raining, and the walk was all downhill. Despite a temptation to phone and ask her father to bring the van up to Troutbeck, she resolved to go on foot. It was good for her, and there was just time to get everything done if she hurried, before arriving in Bowness for the lunch appointment. She followed the Trout Beck, through Thickholme and down to the Bridge, from where it was pavement into town. Walking was an activity she had promised herself when she made the move, and she had trained herself to use her feet as a regular form of transport between the numerous settlements along the lakeside. It was the best way to discover the ancient byways in the area, and the profusion of wild flowers along the trackways gave the walks a pleasing association with her professional life. Now, as the leaves were starting to turn, and red berries appear on holly and hawthorn, it was a real pleasure. Her
mind went blank as she simply absorbed the beauty of the day, her legs swinging energetically, and worries over accounts faded away completely.

Angie opened the door with a dramatic flourish, as soon as she saw Simmy approaching down the street. It was as if she had been watching for her from the window of the guests’ dining room – which struck Simmy as unlikely. ‘God, what a weekend!’ were the first words she uttered.

‘Why? What’s happened now?’ She edged past her mother into the house and pushed the door shut behind her.

‘Those people with the kid – they’re not going quietly. Your Lucy’s going to be up for GBH, if they get their way.’

Your Lucy
sounded rather sweet to Simmy’s ears. Enough to make her bristle in defence of the child whose company she had enjoyed so much. ‘Rubbish!’ she said. ‘She’s five years old.’

‘She’s at least six,’ Angie corrected. ‘Trust you to be so vague about it.’

‘So what have they said, exactly?’

‘The husband phoned and said they’d had a terrible night in a hotel they can’t afford, the kid awake and crying for hours, the baby not feeding properly with all the upset, dah-di-dah-di-dah. All sorts of nonsense. You do wonder, don’t you, why God lets some people ever have children.’

Angie used ‘God’ as an umbrella term for fate, society, biology, luck. She meant it as a sort of witticism. Simmy supposed she should be glad that the topic of children was not taboo between them.

‘So what are they going to do?’

‘Oh, probably nothing when it comes to it. If they stop
to think for a minute, they’ll see how ridiculous they’re being. But Daddy says there’s so much litigation around these days they might find a lawyer who’ll try and get something out of us.’

‘Is he worried?’

‘Cross.’

‘Oh, well. I’ve got to have lunch with the Baxter man and Peter Harrison-West, after collecting all the bits and pieces from Storrs. I’ll have to go in a minute. I’m collecting Melanie – we’ll get it done quicker with her to help.’

‘Lunch? Where?’

‘That Old England hotel – in Fallbarrow Road. You know?’

Angie’s face expressed an array of reactions: surprise, amusement, curiosity. ‘Fancy that! They’ve had some terrible comments on TripAdvisor in the past. The rooms are too hot, apparently.’

‘Every hotel gets bad comments. It doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘I hope you’re right, because we’ll be getting one ourselves any minute now. That was one of the first things yesterday’s man said to me. He’s going to tell the world how dangerous and heartless we are.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Simmy again, thinking there were much more important matters to be focusing on. Somewhere she was nervous about meeting George Baxter again, and she wanted to examine precisely why. ‘He talked to me for quite a long time last night, and then he got upset and Eleanor drove me home.’ Her mother ought to have enquired, she felt, instead of moaning about her disgruntled guests. ‘It hit him, all of a sudden, that his boy is dead.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure what else there is to say, actually. I guess he
didn’t let me say much about seeing Markie on Saturday. And he says he wants Peter to hear it.’

‘What’ll you tell him?’ Angie was finally paying attention. They were in the kitchen, the room they automatically gravitated to, even with its semi-industrial atmosphere. ‘Haven’t you got time for coffee?’

Simmy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what I can safely say.’ This, she realised, was at least part of the reason for her nerves. ‘Markie seemed scared about seeing his father. They were all standing out there in the rain, waiting for him. He said something about his father needing moral support before he could face all the wedding people. That seems a bit funny now. I mean, Eleanor and he get along perfectly well, so who else would he be worried about seeing?’