The Ambleside Alibi: 2

The towns and villages featured in this story are all real. However, the actual homes and shops, as well as the characters, are all products of my imagination.

The flowers fell short of Simmy’s usual standards by some distance. ‘I can only afford the cheapest,’ said the husky-voiced young woman who ordered them. ‘It’s the message that matters.’

The message said
Happy Birthday from a granddaughter you never knew you had.

The recipient of the flowers lived in a little row of dwellings that was approached through the low-roofed ‘ginnel’ that led up to the steep Peggy Hill on the northern fringe of Ambleside. It was an unusual little passageway, white-painted and crooked, more a tunnel than an alley. Knowing there was unlikely to be anywhere to park, Simmy had left her van some distance away. When she arrived panting and self-conscious at the small but perfectly maintained cottage, she saw that she’d been right. There were cars everywhere, including a small red one close to the cottage in question and a big black Range Rover at
an angle a few yards further along. She rang the bell and waited. The door was a long time opening and when it did, it came outwards towards Simmy, accompanied by an odd warbling chuckle that sounded scarcely human.

An elderly woman came into view, smiling apologetically. The door, Simmy realised, was a perennial cause of embarrassment. If a visitor stood too close, it would hit them when it opened.

She tightened her grip on the flowers, waiting for the woman to realise what she was there for. It was a moment she generally enjoyed – the surprised delight on the faces, the automatic questing for scent. But this time there was a long moment of sheer bewilderment. ‘Flowers? Surely not for me?’

‘Mrs Joseph?’ Simmy read confidently from the label. ‘I believe that’s you?’

‘Yes, that’s right. But who are they from?’

‘See for yourself. It’s on the card.’ The intriguing message ensured that Simmy hovered longer than usual, telling herself that the likely shock on reading it could result in the need for a steadying arm at the very least.

There was a false start, when the woman read, ‘Persimmon Petals? Is that you, dear? What a lovely name!’

‘Yes, it’s me. But look at the other side.’

Simmy need not have worried: the unwitting grandmother turned out to be made of sterner stuff than she’d feared. ‘Oh!’ she said on an intake of breath that contained less excitement than a sort of fury. Her eyes glittered and she clutched the flowers to her chest as if violently hugging the granddaughter herself. ‘I always knew this might happen,’ she explained. ‘I told Davy it would one day. And on my birthday, too!’

‘Davy?’

‘My daughter. Davida. This must be her baby; the one she gave up for adoption all those years ago.’

Simmy tried to calculate the chronology. Mrs Joseph looked about eighty. Her daughter was therefore likely to be over fifty and the rejected baby at least in her twenties and probably more. Or not. It was impossible to guess, when a woman could become a mother at any point from fourteen to forty-eight. ‘But …’ she began. ‘It says she’s a granddaughter you never knew you had. And you
do
know about the adoption. Do you have a son? Isn’t it more likely that this is a child of his?’

The old woman eyed her as if only then aware of her as an independent being capable of unwelcome thoughts. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No son. Just the two daughters, Davy and Nicola. They’re taking me for lunch today, so I mustn’t dilly-dally. Now, thank you for bringing the flowers. I don’t expect I owe you anything, do I?’

It was a sharp dismissal from a woman who didn’t look capable of sharpness. ‘No, nothing to pay,’ Simmy said, before heading down the hill again. She had been forced to leave her van some distance away, since the car park she preferred was out of commission on a Wednesday. There had been a plan to wish Mrs Joseph a happy birthday, but Simmy quickly lost the urge to do so. Had she been intrusive, she wondered? Had she asked too many questions? She very much feared that she had.

It was a quiet day and she was in no hurry to get back to her shop in Windermere. The van was good for a while yet, with traffic wardens hardly bothering to check when the allotted hour had expired at this time of year. There would
be little activity back at the shop. In the winter months, custom dropped off to a trickle. Melanie would be there until lunchtime, and could easily manage any passing trade. A cup of strong coffee would warm Simmy, both physically and emotionally, after the abruptness of her customer, and give her time to pause and reflect.

There were few establishments to choose from, but one offered itself irresistibly. The Giggling Goose café was in a former mill, with the great wheel still standing on the edge of the beck. It had a fine reputation locally and Simmy had intended to try it for some months. It occupied a position on a sort of ledge above the beck, with an open air area that was closed off in winter. The approach to it was through a small arcade, past one or two other businesses designed to appeal to tourists. Simmy found her way quite easily, and once inside, the café was warm and full of enticing smells. A cheerful woman was waiting for orders. ‘Find a seat and I’ll bring it to you,’ she told Simmy.

‘It’s a shame we can’t sit outside,’ she said.

‘It’s much too chilly for that.’

‘I suppose it is,’ she agreed regretfully, looking out onto the attractive setting. ‘But it does look lovely out there.’

‘Sit by the window. It’s almost as good.’

She followed the advice, and stared ruminatively at the rushing water. Patchy cloud covered the sky, leaving encouraging stretches of blue here and there.

There was another person at the next table, doing the same thing. She half recognised him, but spent only a few seconds trying to remember where she’d seen him before. Then she went back to idle musings about nothing very much. The beck was called Stock Ghyll, she recalled, and
it flowed over the famous Stock Force, a short distance out of town. It cried out for painters, poets, photographers to capture its elemental qualities, the hypnotic pace of its flow. The buildings scattered around it had all adapted to it in different ways – employing the power of the water, positioning their windows for the best possible views of it, and erecting bridges and walls to keep it in place. Making the most of these quiet moments, Simmy congratulated herself on coming here to live, where such beauty was so readily available.

It was nearly a year since she had moved to the Lake District, following her parents after her marriage broke down. The florist business had become a passion, much to her own surprise. She had never anticipated the scope it offered, the sidelines and specialities that presented themselves. She had impulsively bought a cottage in Troutbeck as a mark of her commitment to the area, and was doing her best to put down firm roots. The time had passed in a whirl of paperwork, flowers, business worries and learning from mistakes. She promised herself to get a better balance in the year to come, with a spring and summer of extensive explorations of the surrounding fells and forests, walking them all in turn and becoming an expert on every path and tucked-away settlement. ‘That’s all very well,’ said Melanie, ‘but you need to get to know more people first.’

Her house had been chosen quickly, in a scramble to beat off competing buyers. The allure of the landscape, with a great fell taking up the whole of the view from her front windows, dwarfed every other consideration. Only later did she pause to absorb the implications of
the steep, narrow lanes in a bad winter. Reassurances abounded: everyone pulled together, they told her. The farmers, many of them living right there in Troutbeck, would forge a trail through the snow, or go for provisions and distribute them to anyone too timid to risk a slippery ice track. Besides, in a land where walking remained a means of transport as valid as any other, there was always going to be a way out to the civilised benefits of Ambleside and Windermere. Simmy had never seen so many walkers. They mainly operated in pairs, and they swarmed in all directions, with their backpacks and sticks and stout leather boots. They were like a distinct species of human, and she found them cheerful and appealing and rather enviable.

The local people were mainly friendly, but she had yet to establish any real intimacies. There was Julie, a hairdresser much her own age, who had caught her up in the first weeks and made a concerted effort to draw her into the Windermere social life. There were regular customers who asked after her health and her parents and her plans for the weekends. But by Melanie’s standards, there really weren’t any people in her life. Melanie believed in couplehood and romance and living life to the full. In her eyes, Simmy was a persistent failure.

The man sharing the waterside view with her was about her own age – a little short of forty, she judged. He was probably a fellow shopkeeper, glimpsed in one of the sporadic meetings called by the Chamber of Commerce. He had mid-brown hair and heavy-framed spectacles. He looked as if he had a great deal on his mind. When Simmy’s coffee was delivered, along with a wedge of home-made
ginger cake, he glanced up as if only then aware of another person. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘It’s the Persimmon Petals lady, isn’t it? You probably don’t remember me.’

‘I know your face,’ she prevaricated. ‘Aren’t you from one of the Windermere shops as well?’

‘Actually, no. I came to you for the flowers for my mother’s funeral, a month ago now. You were very kind.’

‘Oh, yes. I should have known. Mr … don’t tell me … Mr Kitchener! It was a burial in that lovely little churchyard the other side of the lake. I drove up there the next day, and saw all the flowers on the grave.’

‘You did a great job,’ he assured her. ‘And I’m amazed you remember my name.’

She smiled self-deprecatingly. The name had stuck no more firmly than many others. The necessity of avoiding any mistakes when it came to funerals made sure the customers were all firmly logged in her mind.

The man went on, ‘It’s been very hard, you know – coming to terms with it all. I can’t seem to convince myself that she really has gone for good. I used to tell her everything, you see. She was such a good listener, always keeping up with my work and all the family’s doings. And it was all so terribly sudden …’ He trailed away, his gaze once again on the waters of Stock Ghyll.

‘I can imagine,’ said Simmy, not entirely honestly. The prospect of losing her own mother had not yet occurred to her as imminent, or even credible. Angie Straw was clearly set fair for at least another twenty years.

‘Well, I mustn’t bother you. You’ve probably come for a bit of peace.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll stay a while longer, but I won’t interrupt your thoughts.’

‘That’s all right,’ she laughed. ‘My thoughts can very easily bear interruption.’

But he stuck to his word and turned away from her, saying nothing more. He sighed heavily at one point, but was clearly in no mood for further conversation. It wasn’t Simmy’s thoughts he had any concern for, she realised, but his own. He probably resented her coming to sit near to him in the first place. The more she tried to ignore him, the more acutely she became aware of his presence. She drank her coffee quickly, and demolished the cake in three bites. Then she noticed a small scratch on her left thumb, caused by a staple she had used in a bouquet she’d made up that morning. The bouquet for the old lady in Ambleside, in fact. The staple that had attached the message card to the outer wrapping had not fully closed, and had snatched at her thumb when she gathered up the sheaf. She had not properly looked at it until now.

Her train of thought led quickly back to the message itself, from the unknown granddaughter. Again she went through the woman’s reaction, and her insistence that it was a baby she had known about all along. And again she found it nigglingly unconvincing. The husky voice on the telephone had suggested otherwise, the significance of the approach so great as to render her almost speechless. Or was that Simmy’s own unwarranted interpretation? She had personal reasons for overreacting to stories concerning lost babies, which were likely to cast doubt on her judgement.

Peals of girlish laughter diverted her attention. A group of three young women had arrived and were seating themselves at a table in the middle of the café, where
she could not possibly ignore them. They all had long hair and inadequate clothing for December. Students, probably, she assumed, thinking they were slightly too old to be sixth-formers. Her acquaintance with people of this age group had become close in recent months, with Melanie who helped her in the shop, and Ben who had simply attached himself to her because he liked her. Since their involvement with a murder investigation, they had become firm friends.

The girls could easily be at the same college as Melanie. Term would be finishing in a few days’ time, and the imminence of Christmas was a likely source of their exuberance. Parties, free time – all the usual excitement would explain the flushed faces and high voices. They made Simmy feel middle-aged and jaded, with more in common with the depressed man at the next table than with giggling youngsters.

She tried to ignore them, only to find herself face to face with another girl, very much the same age as the others, but at a table on her own. She must have been there when Simmy first came in, quietly occupying a shadowy corner. Simmy wondered about it, in an idle sort of way. She was dark-haired and had a habit of fingering her mouth that suggested a desire to smoke. She had no book or magazine to distract her, but simply sat there, apparently in deep thought – very much like Mr Kitchener, in fact. Was this a place where people came to think, then? Wasn’t Simmy doing it herself? Was there some sort of magical aura that facilitated a relaxed introspection? If so, the group of three hadn’t noticed it – their chatter filling the whole place, their laughter irritating. The solitary girl had barely
glanced at Simmy, or at anybody else. Something internal was absorbing all her attention.

It was time to go. Business called, as always, even if it was a quiet time of year. Christmas had little impact on flower shops, other than sporadic sales of poinsettias and wreaths, neither of which were especially popular in this area of the country. Even so, there was always work to do, and Melanie would not be there that afternoon.