The Ambleside Alibi: 2 (25 page)

Gwen appeared to pause, to assess the nature of the task. But before she could take action, another woman splashed up to the car, sobbingly distraught. ‘Gwen!’ she howled. ‘Don’t! Oh, Gwen! Why are you here?’

There was the sound of a sharp slap, and a high-pitched shriek. ‘I’ll speak to you when this is dealt with,’ said Gwen. Her voice was at least as icy as the waters of Lake Windermere.

The commotion at last attracted attention from capable passers-by, and men materialised who levered the car valiantly back to a more normal angle, and then wrenched open the driver’s door and hauled Candida out from the back with little ceremony. Jane’s imprisoning seat belt was laboriously severed, once Simmy had been transported to dry ground. All three of them were escorted or carried up the tortuous winding path through the grounds to the Belsfield, as the closest building with heating and light still operating. Nobody, it seemed, had thought to call an ambulance.

With Gwen and Nicola, also in need of drying out, they made a group of five tear-stained, shivering, bewildered women. Wide-eyed hotel staff whispered in huddles, unsure
of what might be expected of them. They had been put into a small room that looked as if it was normally used for discreet private lunches. A man who might have been the manager said the police had been informed, and were on their way.

Candida was the first to recover enough to speak. ‘You tried to kill us,’ she accused Nicola. ‘Are you mad or what?’

Nicola was blindly clinging to Gwen, ignoring everyone else. She was still sobbing loudly, and appeared not to hear the accusation. But Gwen heard it. She gripped her partner by the upper arms and forced her away. ‘What were you thinking of?’ she shouted. ‘Stop crying and tell me.’

‘Oh, Gwen! I did it for you. For
us
.’ The words were slurred, but quite audible. ‘You said … I promised you … we promised there were no children.’

Gwen glanced at the others, then back at Nicola, who received a violent shake, like a dog in need of punishment. ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

Nicola wailed out a garbled explanation that took no heed of the arrival of DI Moxon and two other detectives. Simmy caught his eye and waved at him not to interrupt.

‘Gwen – you remember, when we first met. You made me swear I’d never been with a man, never had a child. You said that was the absolute most important thing for you. Remember?’ Gwen nodded cautiously. ‘Well, it was
true
. I never did. I did swear, and I do, still. I can’t
bear
men. You
know
that. But I didn’t understand that you never wanted there to be children for other reasons.’ She wiped her face with her hand, and gave a bubbling sniff like a heartbroken child. ‘It wasn’t just jealousy about the … sex side of things, was it? You needed there to be
no claims, nobody who might want something. I didn’t see that until a few days ago. When those flowers came, you said that if you discovered I’d lied to you, it would all be over between us.’ For the first time, Nicola looked at the others, fixing her gaze on Candida. ‘Those flowers were what did it, finally. When I discovered you’d sent those flowers, I knew you must have been speaking to Nancy. She must have told you the whole story, despite all her promises. How else would you have known it was my mother’s birthday? I couldn’t let her get away with it, could I? What might she do to me next, otherwise? I flew straight down to her house, without even thinking what I was doing. I was so completely furious with her.’ She wailed afresh, and pushed her head against Gwen’s resisting shoulder. Then she kept on talking, mainly to Candida, who was cringing shivering on a handsome Victorian dining chair, and shaking her head hopelessly at the accusations.

‘You did get it all from Nancy, didn’t you? After all the trouble I went to to make sure there were no records, it was still all inside her head. And she was
such
a horrible woman. No kindness in her.’ She turned her attention to Jane. ‘Was she kind to you?’

‘Not very,’ said Jane tightly. ‘But she told us everything we needed to know.’

‘Not the birthday, though,’ muttered Candida. ‘I got that from the birth certificate.’ She raised her head slightly. ‘I got all the birth certificates, you see.’

‘And Nancy did it all for money,’ spat Nicola, unstoppable. ‘She
sold
me to you, just as she did nineteen years ago.’

Assorted frowns and blinks greeted this. ‘Sold?’ said
Gwen, dazedly. ‘Did
you
kill Nancy Clark? Nic? Is that what you’re saying?’

Nicola raised her head and gave a grotesquely proud smile. ‘Davy told me how. It’s quite easy really. And painless if you do it properly.’

Again, the room jolted at this new revelation. ‘Davy
helped
you?’

‘Oh, no. She had no idea. She was just rambling one day about the easiest way to kill someone. They do it with animals, apparently. You need a big syringe, full of air. Sometimes you have to do it twice. It must go directly into a blood vessel, of course. I’d got it in a little bag in my car, all ready, after the last time she threatened me. But I never really imagined I’d use it on her.’ She moaned gently. ‘It worked, though. I didn’t think it would, when it came to the point.’

‘Nicola, you must shut up. You’re saying too much. You’re hysterical.’

But the hysteria that had hovered five minutes earlier had subsided and Nicola was sounding all too horribly rational. Simmy’s fuddled brain had grasped one or two significant elements in the outpouring, and was slowly making deductions. ‘Did you throw me into the ghyll?’ she asked.

‘Sorry,’ said the woman.

‘She’s mad,’ said Candida. ‘She’s my biological mother and she’s mad.’

‘
Why?
’ shouted Simmy, making her ribs hurt in the process.

‘You brought those damned flowers and spoilt my mother’s birthday. That’s why I was at her house. I heard
you ask her about grandchildren, and in just a few words sow the seeds of suspicion. She told you far too much. You were sure to work it out, especially as you could contact her whenever you liked. You’d got this girl’s name and address from the order for the flowers. I thought you were nosy enough to follow it up.’

The irony made Simmy feel even weaker than before. ‘Your mother didn’t tell me anything. I had no wish to pry into your business. It was everybody else who kept it all going, not me.’

‘I
had
to stop you,’ Nicola insisted doggedly. ‘You were a danger. I wish I’d had the syringe with me when I saw you, but instead I had to shove you over the bridge. Sorry,’ she repeated.

‘You’re not sorry at all. You’ve just tried to kill me all over again.’

‘And me. And Candy,’ said Jane Hawkins. ‘Who else did you think should be stopped?’

Nicola said nothing. Candida stood up and went to within an inch of her, bending down and looking her in the face. ‘You’re mad,’ she said again. ‘How would driving us into three feet of water kill us? We
saw
you do it. We already knew you were my mother. Whatever did you think you could do to hide that now?’

‘I thought it was deeper. It made sense at the time,’ Nicola mumbled. ‘Nobody else knows but you three. Nobody at all.’

Simmy had been watching DI Moxon, standing quietly by the door with his two minions. How unusual it must be for them to hang back like this, with none of the noise and bustle and frightening shouts that one saw
on documentaries. What would Ben have said about it? Shouldn’t they issue the convoluted police caution, without which they couldn’t quote anything they were hearing Nicola say?

‘But
how
?’ Gwen croaked, her face grey. ‘How did you sell a baby, when everyone says there was no way you managed a secret pregnancy?’

‘I sold an egg.
Five
eggs, to be exact. It was the first clinic to do egg donation. Only one of them worked, thank God.’

‘And they
paid
you? Was that legal?’ Everyone automatically looked at the police officers for an answer, but none came.

‘They called it expenses. It was Brenda’s idea, in the first place.’

‘Who the bloody hell is Brenda?’

‘Brenda Kitchener. She went to Australia, without me. She said she wanted a baby, but her ovaries didn’t work, and we decided she could have one of mine. But then she changed her mind, while I was in the clinic.’ Nicola’s sobs returned louder than ever. ‘She
betrayed
me.’

‘Her loss must have been my gain,’ said Jane Hawkins. ‘They phoned me late at night and said if my cycle was at the right point, they could offer me an egg at short notice. My husband and I drove ninety miles at midnight to get there in time.’ She smiled at Candida. ‘It was like a miracle. I was forty-two. It was absolutely the last chance.’

Candida had retreated a short way from Nicola. ‘This is really all my fault,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t satisfied with what they told me. I wanted the whole truth, the whole story. I ferreted out all the certificates and worked out who
everybody was, and then I wanted to
meet
them all. I never had a grandmother. I liked the idea of Granny Joseph, so I sent her some flowers.’

Moxon finally stepped forward. He stood stiffly in front of Nicola and told her she would be taken in for questioning with regard to the unlawful killing of Miss Nancy Clark. Then he recited the caution. His colleagues escorted her out of the room. She made no resistance. Gwen watched her go with a ghastly grimace, lips pulled back to show her teeth, eyes bulging.

Then Moxon turned to Simmy. ‘You need a doctor to check you over,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to one.’

‘I’m all right, I think. Except for my ribs. I hurt them when I tried to push the door open.’

‘Your crutches are still in the car, I suppose?’

‘I suppose they are. Will they go rusty?’

He was tired, drained, overloaded. The scene he had permitted to unfold without interruption, probably against all regular procedure, had been gruellingly emotional. Which perhaps explained why he laughed so outrageously at her innocent question.

Russell was outside the hotel with a small group of people Simmy didn’t recognise. Across the road there was a vehicle with a flashing yellow light, and men issuing loud orders to each other. The car, she realised, was being extracted from the lake. She was in a wheelchair, somehow provided by the hotel upon request. It had never occurred to her before that hotels might stock such things, but she was glad of it. She had been quietly worrying about her crutches for several minutes before Moxon mentioned them, and wondering how she was going to get home without them. The soaking skirt had been pulled off, and a large white towel wrapped around her lower half, giving rise to further embarrassment and worry.

‘I presume she is mad,’ she said to Moxon, who was personally pushing her chair. ‘She didn’t seem at all repentant.’

‘Not for me to say.’

‘Why didn’t you interrupt? It was so weird, the way you just stood there listening.’ 

‘I couldn’t see any reason to. Her partner needed to hear it and understand as much as possible. After this, there might not be another chance. And I thought
you
might be feeling the same need.’

‘Good God! Don’t tell me you were doing it for me.’ She smiled up at her father, who was listening attentively but uncomprehendingly to this exchange. ‘Dad – this man is a real Sir Galahad.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Russell, his face a picture of doubt.

‘I was going to take her to a doctor,’ Moxon told him. ‘But she might be better off just going home and to bed. It’s up to you.’

Decisions did not come easily to Russell Straw. ‘What d’you think, Sim?’ he asked.

‘Home,’ she said. ‘I don’t need a doctor. They can send someone tomorrow to look at my wounds and put some new dressings on.’

‘Have they come off, then?’

‘I’m afraid so, but don’t worry. I don’t think any harm’s been done.’ She shivered. ‘Well, not physically, anyway.’

‘Get her warm,’ urged Moxon. ‘I’m needed somewhere.’ He leant over Simmy. ‘Somehow I feel I have you to thank for quite a lot of what’s happened.’

She shook her head. ‘No you haven’t. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything at all, right from the start. I was just
there
like a dummy.’ When she tried to think of somebody who
had
done something, the only name she could find was that of Nicola Joseph. And a quote from somewhere about evil prevailing when good people do nothing.

Russell and Angie got her into the house with some difficulty, the wheelchair’s mechanisms a mystery to all three of them. At last they were all in the warm kitchen, the heating turned recklessly high and mugs of hot, thick chocolate grasped in all three pairs of hands. ‘I need this as much as you do,’ said Angie. ‘After all that hassle getting you from the car.’

‘Sorry,’ said Simmy.

‘Tell us what happened,’ ordered Angie. ‘Every detail.’

‘No, I can’t.’ Images of the dark car filling with water turned the whole world into a terrifying trap that she couldn’t bear to confront. ‘It was too horrible. I’ll have nightmares for years over it, I expect.’

‘But who
did
it? Was it deliberate?’

‘It was all Nicola Joseph. She killed Nancy Clark and tried to kill me last weekend. And again just now, along with Candida and Jane. It was all her,’ she repeated.

‘But
why
?’ came the familiar cry. And then, ‘Who’s Nicola Joseph, anyway?’

Simmy did her best to provide a coherent narrative, much of it gleaned from Nicola’s distraught confession. There were gaps and confusions. Some of it seemed purely incredible.

‘The poor woman,’ said Angie, more than once. ‘You know – I considered that egg donation thing, years ago. When it first started. But the whole procedure is terribly invasive and I got put off more or less from the outset. It’s not a simple business at all.’

Russell looked at her in total blankness. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said.

‘I don’t expect I told you. It was just an idea, really. Here
I was, with a fine specimen of a child, and no intention of having any more. It seemed a waste, somehow.’

‘Candida seems to be a reasonable specimen as well,’ said Simmy. ‘So it worked out well for the Hawkinses. Even so, it makes you wonder whether it’s a good idea, don’t you think?’

‘Going against nature always has its risks,’ said Russell. ‘But I still don’t understand …’ he tailed off helplessly. ‘Most of it, actually. Why would the other woman – what’s her name? – care one way or the other?’

‘Gwen. We can’t be sure that she would – but Nicola must have been certain there’d be a catastrophe if she did find out. Apparently Gwen said she’d leave if it turned out that Nicola had lied about having a baby. It sounded as if she’s threatened to leave a few times over the years. And Nicola does seem very dependent.’

‘Even so,’ Angie protested. ‘
Murder
.’

‘I know. Not just once, either. And not on the spur of the moment. She had to get hold of a big syringe, and a sharp needle, and learn how to find a blood vessel. For all we know, she practised for weeks beforehand.’ Then she paused. ‘And I think she deliberately tried to implicate Malcolm Kitchener, somehow.’

Both parents were fixing her with blank stares, and she realised that there were even more holes in the story she’d told them than she first thought. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk about it any more this evening.’

‘So that’s an end to it, is it?’ asked Angie. ‘The police have got her, and there’s nothing more to worry about?’

‘It ought to be,’ Simmy agreed. ‘But somehow that isn’t how it feels. There must be something else somewhere.
But I won’t think about it until tomorrow.’ She yawned, but was careful not to stretch, mindful of her bruised and battered ribs. ‘I think I might need a bit of help getting to bed, if that’s okay.’

Saturday dawned mild and dry, without wind or rain or snow. Simmy’s emotional state was much the same. She knew in theory that she should contact Ben and Melanie and bring them up to date with events. She should feel desperate sadness for Mrs Joseph, as well as Davy, her innocent daughter. The shame descending on their family would be annihilating, once the details were aired publicly. But instead, all Simmy knew was a powerful desire to remain very quietly in the cosy nest that was her mother’s old camp bed. Her body ached persistently, but her mind had closed down. When her mother hesitantly knocked on the door and came in with a mug of tea, Simmy told her she would not be available to visitors.

‘What about the district nurse? They’re sure to send someone to see you, after what happened.’

‘A nurse would be all right,’ Simmy mumbled. ‘Especially if she gives me something to send me back to sleep.’

‘What about that police detective?’

‘No, I don’t want to see him. He doesn’t need me. He never did. I’ve been nothing more than a pawn from the start.’

‘Pawns can be useful.’ Her father’s voice came from behind Angie’s shoulder.

‘Not this one. He won’t come, anyway.’ As she spoke, she knew she was right about this. Moxon would understand how she was feeling and have the good sense
to stay away. ‘He’ll probably phone you to see how I am, that’s all.’

‘Ben? Melanie?’

‘Tell them they can come this afternoon, if they must. I might be ready for them then. For now, I just want to lie quietly and not have to think.’

By half past eleven, her parents having conscientiously obeyed her wishes, she was starting to emerge from her hibernation. The house was silent and she began to wonder what they were doing. She had heard one phone call, but no ringing doorbell. She had twisted over enough times for the duvet to be a rumpled, lumpy nuisance. She needed the loo and was hungry. It all reminded her of far-off student days when she had come home for the vacations and stayed in bed till lunchtime, simply because that was what students did. After a few hours it had seemed foolishly wasteful, the bedclothes too heavy and hot for daytime. Even the dog, which habitually burrowed down by her legs to keep her company, would get bored with it after a while.

And then the doorbell did ring and there were voices coming closer and Angie tapped at the door before opening it and saying, ‘The nurse person’s here. Apparently they’re not called district nurses any more.’ This irrelevance had evidently elicited deep irritation. ‘But it’s probably the same general idea,’ she added with a melodramatic sigh.

The nurse was in her fifties and appeared harassed. But she behaved with brisk efficiency, examining every one of Simmy’s injuries and telling her how lucky she was. She also mentioned, in a whisper, that they really were still known as
district nurses, but were trying to change it to
community
nurses, which was more accurate, surely anybody would agree.

‘Take no notice of my mother,’ said Simmy.

Afterwards she felt much better, with a professional new dressing on her head and an assurance that she had suffered no lasting ill effects from getting wet the previous day. ‘I’ll get up for lunch,’ she said. ‘If you can find me something to wear.’ The long skirt had been bundled into the washing basket by Angie, worrying that it would have to be dry-cleaned.

‘What about your crutches?’ Angie asked. ‘Can’t you get them back?’

‘We should have asked that nurse,’ Simmy groaned. ‘She might have had some in her car. How stupid of us.’

It had been unbelievably stupid, she reproached herself. ‘We could phone the police and ask if they’ve got them,’ Russell suggested. Both her parents were in the doorway of her temporary bedroom, the phone a few feet away in the hall.

Simmy sighed. ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ she said.

Russell dithered about which phone number to use, and who he should ask to speak to, but did eventually manage a conversation with someone who sounded reasonably cooperative. ‘If we go down there, they’ll let us have them,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that a surprise!’

It was, Simmy agreed, waiting for her father to offer to go right away. ‘You could walk,’ she said. ‘It’s barely five minutes from here.’

When he made no reply, she looked at him more closely. ‘Dad? What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m perfectly all right.’ Which confirmed that he very much wasn’t.

Even Angie took notice. ‘Russ? You’re not ill, are you?’

‘Not
ill
,’ he said. ‘Just a bit … off. Tired. Emotional.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Simmy. ‘I know what this is. He’s in shock, just like I was a few days ago. Look at him – he’s shaking.’

‘You could have been killed –
again
,’ he blurted, tears in his eyes. ‘I can’t bear it, Sim. How …?
Why?
It’s all wrong.’

‘Get him warm,’ Simmy ordered her mother. ‘Put him in the kitchen with a hot, sweet drink. He’ll be all right in a few minutes.’

With no very good grace, Angie did as she was told. Simmy then demanded the wheelchair be brought to her and she hoisted herself into it with no help from her mother. Manoeuvring it through the doorway was difficult, and she scraped her knuckles on the doorpost, but she needed to be mobile. She positioned herself by the phone and made a call to a number she had taken the trouble to memorise the day before.

‘Mel? Listen – are you busy? … Good. Can you pop down to the police station and get my crutches? I got separated from them last night. It’s a long story. Come over here and I’ll tell you everything. Bring Ben, if you want.’

Half an hour later, the youngsters were on the doorstep. Simmy was inordinately pleased to see them; however much she tried to explain things to her parents, they never fully grasped the finer points.

The crutches felt like old friends. Simmy celebrated their return with a swift journey all the way through
the house and back again to the living room. Angie brought mugs of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. She had a distant look in her eyes, and a tightness around her mouth. ‘What’s with your ma?’ whispered Ben, when she’d left them alone again.

‘She’s being a martyr,’ said Simmy. ‘She does that sometimes when things get out of control. My dad’s having a panic attack, which hasn’t helped.’

‘Sounds like my house,’ said Mel. ‘But they do have good reason to freak, in your case.’

‘Did something happen?’ asked Ben, with unusual delicacy.

‘Surely it’s been on the news?’ Simmy asked, thinking she should have stirred herself to at least listen to the radio before this.

‘An arrest has been made – that’s all they said. And something about a car driving into the lake, which has some mysterious connection to the case.’

‘I was in it.’ She waited for the reaction with interest.

‘Told you,’ said Melanie to Ben. She turned to Simmy. ‘The bloke who gave me the crutches hinted that was it. I know him a bit, but he wouldn’t say anything for definite.’

‘You were
in
it?’ Ben echoed. ‘Really? You escaped drowning twice, then? You must have been born with a caul.’

‘What?’

‘You know. The membrane thingy. Sometimes it’s still on a baby’s head when it’s born. It’s lucky. Sailors used to buy them as charms against drowning.’

‘Oh. Well, we were never likely to drown – but it was dark and cold and extremely horrible.’

‘We?’ repeated Melanie.

‘Me, Candida and Candida’s mother.’

‘Explain,’ Melanie ordered, which Simmy duly did. It took more than twenty minutes.

‘So it’s all over?’ Ben summarised at the end.

‘I suppose it is,’ Simmy agreed. ‘But it doesn’t exactly feel like that.’

‘Too right,’ he agreed glumly. ‘It feels more like a virtual case, where there’s nothing real to experience.’

‘Excuse me!’ Simmy at first could not identify the hot surge of emotion that seized her. ‘
What
did you just say?’

‘Ben, you idiot,’ Melanie said. ‘Simmy’s experienced more than enough, don’t you think?’

The word
rage
came to her. Such rage that she couldn’t speak for a full minute. Not so much against Ben, but against her attacker and everything in that woman’s life which had brought her to do what she did. And then a déjà vu moment gripped her, and she paused. She’d been here before, placing the blame on a complex system of accidents and mistakes and human imperfections. This time it was different. She was enraged directly at Nicola Joseph. She wished she’d managed to strike her or curse her the previous evening. Creative curses now came to her, along with sincere hopes that they would still operate. ‘I hope she never knows another moment of peace,’ she snarled. ‘I hope she loses everything she loves and lives into a long and miserable old age.’