The Ambleside Alibi: 2 (11 page)

‘Quite right, Mrs Ellis,’ said Ben heartily. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to use you as a guinea pig, if that’s okay. I need to see what sort of questions to ask, to help you remember things from your past. It’s just practice, you see. Nothing important’s going to come of it. But I just thought that seeing as how you’ve lived here all your life and know so many people, it would be a very interesting experiment.’ He took a large bite of cake and beamed his approval.

Simmy blinked. If Melanie’s gran understood a word of that, she was doing a lot better than Simmy. As far as she could tell, it was pure gobbledygook. For the first time, she
wondered what in the world DI Moxon would make of it, if he knew what they were doing.

It seemed that Mrs Ellis was no fool. ‘Doing the police’s job for them, is that it?’ she asked with a wink.

Simmy frowned. ‘Well, actually, the police aren’t at all involved with the Joseph side of things. It’s only Melanie and Ben who keep thinking up wild theories about a connection.

‘Well, I’ve no argument with that. The police are always six steps behind when it comes to understanding local business. Just look at that boyfriend of Mel’s, Joe Wheeler, who might not be too happy for her to go ferreting out people’s secrets, maybe, but he’s no detective, now is he?’ She laughed, not quite kindly. Ben joined in, ducking his head conspiratorially.

There followed an hour and a half of total recall. Photos were produced and used to spark anecdotes that dated back to the 1950s and beyond. But the big surprise came early on, with a picture of two girls aged about ten, standing arm in arm, with tidy hair and wide smiles. ‘That’s me with Lilian Smart. She was my best friend for years. We met when we first started school, and stayed together till we were fifteen. We both failed the eleven-plus,’ Mrs Ellis laughed. ‘Best thing that could happen to us. Gave us all the time we needed for having fun. Never had much in the way of homework or exams. We used to feel so sorry for those girls at the grammar, with their round shoulders and glasses. We both got jobs the minute we left. By the time we were all twenty, we were like people from different planets. Take those Clark sisters – never stopped trying to make something of themselves and where did it get them?’ She
was plainly lost in the 1950s world of home perms and handmade frocks, Friday evening dances and the pursuit of a likely lad.

Melanie leant forward. ‘Gran – slow down a bit, okay? Where’s Lilian Smart now? And I thought you said Nancy Clark was never much good at school. It was her sister Penny who got all the qualifications.’

‘Dead. She’s dead. Just a few weeks ago.’ The old lady shook her head sadly. ‘Lovely funeral, though. Saw your flowers, of course.’ She looked at Simmy. ‘Melly told me to look out for them.’

Simmy quickly went through all the funerals she’d done flowers for recently. ‘Was her name still Smart?’

‘Oh, no. Kitchener. She was Lilian Kitchener.’

‘Oh!’ said Simmy faintly. ‘Yes, I remember. What a coincidence.’ She seemed to be saying that quite a lot these days.

‘Coincidence? Why?’

‘Well – I met her son last week.’ She had no intention of explaining the connection, and why Malcolm Kitchener had been such a presence over the past four or five days. She threw a warning glance at Ben and Melanie, who both gave tiny nods of compliance. ‘He’s taking it hard, missing her badly.’

‘What was she like, Gran?’ Melanie asked.

Mrs Ellis had a deep voice, and now it got even deeper. The words seemed to come from far back in her throat. ‘She had a difficult life,’ she said. ‘Her husband was a swine. The boy had an awful time when he was growing up. There was a girl, as well. Brenda. She got out early. Emigrated to Australia. Never even came back for the funeral.’

‘Her father’s funeral?’ asked Melanie.

‘Neither of them.’

‘She sent flowers,’ said Simmy. ‘It was an Interflora order.’

Lilian Kitchener had become a martyr, it seemed, while her brutish husband was alive. A man who began as a suave charmer, sweeping the girl off her feet at the age of seventeen, and turned nasty before the first bed sheets had been changed, as Mrs Ellis quaintly put it. ‘Lucky for her, he died before he reached fifty. Fell in front of a train, the damn fool. Drunk, of course. Made a terrible mess.’

Ben snorted, trying to suppress a laugh. Melanie’s gran smiled at him. ‘Feel free, lad. It was the best thing that could happen. Gave her thirty years as a merry widow. She’d earned it, bless her.’

Another snort came from the horizontal reclining chair. ‘Don’t get ideas, my girl,’ said old Mr Ellis. ‘I’m good for a few years yet.’

‘You’re no bother,’ his wife told him flatly. ‘Never out of that bloody chair, are you? Can’t even sit up straight when there’s visitors.’ Simmy had inwardly noted the rudeness implied in this, from the outset.

‘You know why that is,’ he defended himself. ‘It’ll break if I keep doing it.’

Everyone laughed at this. It was true he was a heavy man, but the chair looked quite capable of managing a good number of transformations yet. ‘It’s what it’s
made
for, you fool,’ said his wife. ‘You’ve only had it three months.’

Ben lifted his chin, waiting for a chance to speak, picking up another photo from the array spread across the coffee table. ‘Is this Nancy Clark, did you say? Could you tell us
what you remember of her?’ he invited. ‘She never married, did she? Wasn’t that rather unusual?’

‘Career girl. It was
Penny
that I knew, not Nancy.’ She pointed a finger at Melanie. ‘You got it wrong, girl. Wrong way round. Nancy was the clever one. She did some sort of special exam and got top marks so they sent her off to the grammar. Never saw much of her after that.’ She got up from her place on a three-seater sofa and tipped more coal onto the fire. Her husband sighed his contentment.

Melanie was frowning. ‘Did I get it wrong?’ she asked Simmy.

‘Not the first time. Last week, when you told me about it, you said Nancy was the successful one. Penny married a farmer and had umpteen kids.’

‘Five,’ said Mrs Ellis. ‘She and Nancy were twins, and she had a pair of her own. It goes like that in some families,’ she said knowingly. ‘Three boys and then twin girls. Lovely they are. I saw one of them at the harvest, back in October. Got their own kiddies now, of course. Most of them, anyway. The girls are good with poor Penny, now she’s got that Parkinson’s thing.’

‘Not the one who’s in prison,’ said Simmy, looking round smugly at having held onto that snippet of information.

‘That was a travesty,’ old Sam Ellis spat, to everyone’s surprise. ‘Could have happened to anyone. Poor girl, ruined her life it has.’

Ben was looking immensely interested. ‘What?’ he demanded.

Nobody spoke, until Simmy said, ‘Moxon told me. She got three years for dangerous driving. Killed a child. That’s all I know.’

‘Well, it has nothing to do with anything,’ said Mrs Ellis, with a placatory glance at her husband. He settled down again, after a few angry sniffs.

Ben spoke carefully but persistently. ‘So they all still live in the area, then? Penny’s children, I mean?’

Barbara Ellis read his mind, and swiftly headed him off. ‘Don’t you go suspecting any of them of killing their old auntie,’ she cautioned him. ‘Not one of them would have the gumption, nor any reason to do such a thing. Maybe they had precious little love for her, but that’s a very long way from murder, as even a scrap of a boy like you would understand.’

Ben took this put-down very well, but Melanie protested. ‘Hey, Gran – he’s not to be sneered at, you know. I told you about all those awards he’s got, and how everyone thinks he’s going to be a star one day.’

‘I’m sorry, lad. But it won’t do to start imagining things, will it?’

‘Not at all,’ the boy shook his head. ‘So can we go back to Nancy and find out a bit more about her? She didn’t work as a dentist, did she?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Pardon? Who – Nancy? No, she was at some fancy private clinic. There for years. Chief nurse, or something of the sort. Hobnobbed with the doctors and rich philanthropists, or whatever they call themselves. Never a sign of getting married. Story was she was mistress to one of the top consultant blokes. Wouldn’t have surprised me.’

‘Did Penny tell you that?’ Melanie asked.

‘Might have done. Could have been Lilian, even. Come to think of it, most likely that’s who it was. Lilian was always a great gossip. Nobody’s secrets were safe with her,
and she’d have enjoyed putting down the poison about Nancy. Never did like each other, those two. Of course, we’re talking thirty years since. Not sure I can recall just who said what, after all that time.’

Simmy could see Ben having the same idea as her own sudden suspicion. ‘How did she die, exactly? Lilian, I mean?’

‘Heart. Out like a light on the kitchen floor. Never knew what hit her, poor old love. People say that’s a good way to go, but it would never suit me. I’m hoping for a bit of warning first.’

Ben gave a little shrug, before pressing on. ‘What about the Joseph man? Melanie says he was in your class as well. Married a girl called Mary.’

Mrs Ellis looked blank, interrupted in the expression of her wishes as to how she might die. Then her face became more animated. ‘Matthew? Oh yes, a beautiful boy. Dark, curly hair, fabulous eyelashes.’ She rummaged amongst the photos, in vain. ‘Never did like having his picture taken, though. There
was
one of the whole class, but he was blurred at the back. Can’t find it now. Anyway, everybody was in love with Matthew Joseph. He went off to Leeds, and worked his way up in the printing trade. Did very well. Mary she was called – the girl he married. A bit older than him, they said. They came back here later on, with the two young girls. Matthew set up his own works in Keswick. But he died too young. I never saw much of him; just heard his name now and then. Saw her out and about a few times, over the years. Got a daughter with a daft name.’

‘Davy,’ nodded Simmy. ‘It’s short for Davida.’

‘Anyway – why do you want to know about Matthew?’

‘Simmy’s had some business with his wife, that’s all. Another coincidence, sort of.’

‘Listen, lad,’ said Mrs Ellis firmly. ‘All these so-called coincidences, they’re nothing of the sort. Think about it, why don’t you. Anyone who’s lived here – Windermere, Ambleside, Bowness – since they were born, they’re bound to know each other. It’s just plain fact. The incomers, well, that’s different. They struggle to understand who everyone is.’ She threw a kindly look at Simmy. ‘But there’s still enough of us in the place to make a kind of …
foundation
. Do you see? The farmers, butchers, schoolteachers, doctors, shopkeepers – most of them have always lived here, and they stay after they retire. This place is all they know. They’ve got
roots
. And they all know each other. Most of them have married each other. Look at Melly’s mother. She’s got eighteen cousins, and a good many of them live less than ten miles from here.’ She reflected for a moment. ‘And one of them married Matthew Joseph’s sister,’ she finished in triumph. ‘She’s called Beulah, of all things. She was younger than us. Cross-eyed, poor girl. Sam’s young brother married her. Never had any kids, though.’

‘That’s Mum’s uncle, not her cousin,’ said Melanie, irritably. ‘And they live down south. I never even
saw
them. I can’t remember who all those cousins, are. There are too many of them.’

‘How many have
you
got, then?’ It was evident that Mrs Ellis already knew the answer to that.

‘Six.’ The sense of a contest lost was clearly in the air. ‘So far.’

‘You still think that useless Robin’s going to settle down and start a family? He must be forty-five if he’s a day.’

Again, Ben took charge. ‘They had two girls – the Josephs,’ he prompted. ‘Did they ever have anything to do with the Clark twins?’

‘How d’you mean? Sam – give us a hand here, will you? Penny Clark’s eldest. What’s his name … Edward, is it? Didn’t he have a bit of a thing for that Nicola Joseph, years back?’

‘Broke his heart,’ confirmed the old man with a minimal nod. His chin was already pressed into his neck, from the angle of his chair, which somehow arranged for his face to be pointed towards the television while much of his body was horizontal. ‘She never would have truck with him.’

Simmy bit back the explanation for this, unsure of the Ellis couple’s reaction to lesbianism. She could see Ben mentally filing away this flimsy connection, for further analysis later. She also found herself entertaining a rogue theory about a brief experimental encounter resulting in a child that got itself hurriedly adopted, in total secrecy. Despite the emphatic denials from Nicola, the possibility remained. What the implications might be for the murdered Nancy Clark remained stubbornly obscure.

Ben tried one more time to get more of a grasp of Nancy Clark’s life and character. ‘So she worked at a clinic,’ he summarised. ‘A private place, you mean?’

‘As far as I can recall, yes.’

‘And she had an affair with the top consultant there?’

‘That’s what they said.’ Barbara Ellis drew a deep breath. ‘The main thing about Nancy, you see, was that she was a very nasty person. Had been from a small girl. Never worked out why. Always sly and unkind, she was. Selfish,
too. Scowled the whole time and was a devil for pinching. I never did like a girl who pinched.’

‘Did she pinch you?’ asked Melanie.

‘She certainly did. More than once. It was a relief when she got sent up to the grammar and we didn’t have to bother with her any more.’

Another forty minutes passed, in which more names were thrown out, forcing Ben to extract a notepad and ballpoint from the small rucksack he’d brought with him, and start writing down some of the blizzard of information. His questions were becoming more sporadic, his face flushed from the warm room and the futile efforts to draw anything resembling a logical thread from Mrs Ellis’s recollections. At last, Melanie called a halt. ‘Gran, we’ll have to go,’ she said. ‘It’s dark already, and there’s been snow up at Troutbeck. Simmy’s scared of the drive home. I’ll wash those mugs for you, shall I, before we go?’