The Windermere Witness (18 page)

The alarm woke her after a miserable three hours of sleep. The wind had abated, but there was still a light rain falling. The becks would be full at this rate, muddy water tumbling over the stones, and people pausing to watch with the eternal fascination that water always elicited.

Somewhere in the brief sleep, an idea had been born. More than an idea – a determination. She would take the initiative, telephoning Eleanor on some pretext, and after that Bridget. Both women had, after all, sought her out and used her for their own purposes. She would list every detail she could remember that might concern the family and help to construct an explanation of why two of them had been murdered. She would do her best to fathom the truth of Bridget and Peter’s relationship. That, in particular, felt odd, almost to the point of wrongness. She recalled Lucy wailing that she had wanted to marry Markie when she grew up, just as Bridget had married Peter.

But Bridget seemed to have married
four
men, not just one. Did none of the others have wives or girlfriends, or did they exist solely to ensure that Peter’s bride came up to expectations? Were they always in perfect harmony? Had any of them been involved when Felix fell off the mountain? The questions burgeoned like Japanese knotweed, new offshoots materialising effortlessly as she concentrated on everything she had learnt so far. Even the strong suspicion that DI Moxon and his enormous team of detectives would have been asking the same questions, and delving into every aspect of the Baxters and Harrison-Wests, did not deter her. Nobody would imagine that she and two teenagers were conducting their own surreptitious enquiries. The killer himself would be certain to dismiss them as being no threat, even if initially worried that Simmy or Ben might have seen something incriminating.

Melanie was scheduled to appear at two that afternoon, to sort the midweek delivery. She was very adamant about using flowers in rotation, reining Simmy in when she wanted to use a new arrival in a display or recent order. ‘You won’t waste so much my way,’ Mel insisted. ‘It’s common sense.’

Simmy had to admit this was right. Melanie might be unmoved by flowers themselves, but she was miraculously useful when it came to systems and routines. Her very lack of creativity came to seem like a virtue.

The morning passed slowly. Two customers came in for birthday bouquets, and an Interflora order came through on the computer, which would involve driving to Kentmere. She would have to go the moment Melanie arrived, to meet the promised delivery time. Such commitments regularly
proved difficult, especially on Melanie-free days – then she had to close the shop, with a notice saying when she’d be back. She had spent hours of her life weighing up the various options for resolving this difficulty, to no avail. A full-time assistant would be underoccupied, and cost too much. Cancelling her membership of the Interflora network would be commercial suicide. Once, when a bouquet had to be taken to a remote homestead in Grizedale, she had prevailed upon her mother to hold the fort for a couple of hours. Angie had been reluctant, and got into such a muddle with the minimal takings that they had both concluded it could not happen again. ‘Ask your father next time,’ said Angie. But Russell had flatly refused to cooperate, for reasons that remained opaque. ‘Too much responsibility,’ was all he would say.

Funeral flowers had threatened to be an even bigger problem until she realised that the local undertakers were fabulously well organised, and would supply names, times, special instructions, the day before the funeral. Simmy would make up the tributes at the end of the day, for delivery early next morning. There were purpose-built racks, close to the parking area for the hearse and limousines, with the names of the deceased pinned onto them for flowers to be left. Unless they were scheduled for late in the afternoon, or the weather was very hot, the flowers could be taken to the undertaker before the shop opened at 9.30am.

But today’s order meant she would not get a chance to talk to Melanie until three or later. This felt like an unacceptably long time away. She wanted to get going on her plan before that. She could google Baxter and Harrison-West for herself, instead of leaving it to Melanie
and Ben, but doubted whether she would find an actual address for the house that she felt it increasingly urgent to visit. She was conjuring visions of Bridget imprisoned in a luxurious room fit for a princess, whilst four men waited on her. She imagined herself rescuing the young bride from this cloying incarceration and restoring her to something closer to a normal life. It had felt very much as if Bridget were asking for help, the previous day. If she, Simmy Brown, simply turned up on the doorstep, as a casual visitor, would she be admitted? The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to give it a try.

Melanie was early, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling. ‘It’s cold out there,’ she gasped. ‘And there’s a fallen tree across the Birthwaite road. They’ve only just moved it. It was
huge
.’

‘Why were you over there?’

‘Long story. All to do with my car. You don’t want to know.’

‘Okay.’ Simmy explained about the Kentmere order. ‘I’ll be back by three, at the latest. You can trim the new delivery. Usual thing. I want to talk to you about Bridget Baxter – Harrison-West, I mean. Ben phoned me last night. Made me think.’

‘Kentmere should be exciting after all that rain.’

‘Oh?’

‘You’ll see what I mean. Have you ever been there before?’

‘Once, in the summer. Fabulous scenery.’

‘More so after a downpour. Now off you go, and I’ll see you later.’

Simmy carefully gathered up the sheaf of flowers she had assembled during the morning, and put it in the back of the van. ‘I hope I can find the place,’ she said, before setting off. ‘It’s right in the middle of the village, so it should be easy enough.’

Melanie made no attempt to give advice. Simmy was nearly twenty years her senior, and therefore by definition more competent. She set off along the main road leading east, knowing she had to turn left at Staveley and follow the river, past Kentmere Tarn and on to the village. It was a long narrow valley, with impressive fells on both sides, and, as Melanie had hinted, frothy tumbling becks brought the recent rainwater from the hillsides down into the river Kent. There were puddles in the road in some places, the general impression of water on all sides very reminiscent of the Saturday wedding at Storrs, with the rain washing across the lake. You had to choose, she had come to understand, between making the water your enemy or your friend. You lived constantly with the risk of inundation, where your chairs might float and your home be uninsurable. You built of stone and waited for your house to shake itself dry again. You kept your books and photographs upstairs and made sure the drains were clear.

The recipient of the flowers lived in a prominent house with its name blessedly legible on the gate. Delight was expressed, and the familiar warm emotions once more reinforced Simmy’s faith in her profession. She was on her way south again within twenty-five minutes of leaving the shop.

If there had been a roadway across the fell past Garburn and Sour Howes she would have taken it, for the views and
the chance to learn a new route, but there was nothing that would take a car on a muddy October day. All she could do was retrace the same journey back to Windermere. She was, after all, she reminded herself, eager to talk to Melanie.

But still she was glad to be out. Anybody would be, now the rain had stopped. The stretch from Kentmere to Staveley was beautiful by any standards, in any weather. But from there on, with the big soulless main road and the disappearance of the fells, it all changed. As far as she could tell, the whole of the English countryside was like this now. Pockets of glorious timeless landscape were encircled by man-made desecration of one sort or another, which had the effect of reducing one’s pleasure considerably. You knew, if you drove just one more mile down a tiny meandering rural lane, you’d come to a major road or a railway or housing estate that would cloud your pleasure. Scotland and Wales made a better job of it, on the whole, although the alien giants that were wind farms went a fair way towards ruining a lot of their beauty spots.

But she couldn’t dawdle. There would be plenty of opportunities for sightseeing ahead. Melanie would be expecting her, and she should behave responsibly.

She parked in the street a few yards past Persimmon Petals, noting how quiet Windermere town centre was that afternoon. The season was definitely drawing to a close, the visitors dwindling and the days shortening. There would be more time for socialising, if that was what people wanted to do. Simmy thought she might buy a pair of decent walking boots and watch the onset of autumn from the slopes of some of the bigger fells.

There was movement inside the shop, which she could
see through the door. Something about it made her heart do a double thump. She pushed quickly inside and tried to make sense of the scene halfway down the main part of the shop. Melanie was pressed back against a rack of evergreens, a man, an inch or two shorter than her, standing aggressively close and waving a clenched fist.

‘Hey!’ shouted Simmy. ‘What’s happening?’

Melanie lurched towards her in a panic. ‘He’s only just come in. He was shouting before the door had shut. Wants to know what we’ve done with Bridget, or something.’ She had seized Simmy’s arm, and was trying to put her boss between herself and the angry man.

‘Peter Harrison-West,’ Simmy said loudly. ‘This is a disgrace. What do you think you’re doing?’

The man was obviously close to a complete loss of control, and Simmy had to swallow down a real fear. Was this what had happened to Markie – an enraged bridegroom thumping a fist down on him and then drowning him in the lake, out of a fit of sheer fury? Was Peter mentally ill?

‘Melanie – go into the back room, will you? I’ll be all right.’

Melanie made no move to obey. ‘I’m not leaving you with him,’ she said.

Peter’s raised fist had already dropped to his side, and he was inhaling painfully deep breaths. ‘It’s all right,’ he grated. ‘I won’t hurt either of you. Of course I won’t.’

‘I should hope not.’ Since she was sixteen, Simmy had been taller than a great many people. She had grown accustomed to the automatic respect it brought her. Now she met this man’s eyes from a slightly superior height, and despite knowing he possessed much greater strength,
she made full use of the advantage it gave her. ‘What’s this about Bridget, anyway?’

‘She’s gone – again,’ he said bitterly. ‘Same as yesterday. Pablo thought she might have come back here for some reason. She seems to want to talk to you.’

Simmy forced herself not to over-react. ‘And she didn’t say where she was going? Didn’t take her phone?’

He was shaking with the after-effects of his violent rage, scarcely able to speak. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with her. She’s a different girl. Glenn says … never mind. So she’s not here?’ He looked around as if he might have failed to notice his runaway bride.

‘I have no idea where she is. Have you tried her mother?’

‘What? Eleanor? She wouldn’t go there.’

‘She might. Listen – you and I don’t know each other at all. It’s by sheer accident that I ever even met you. But I have seen Bridget a few times, as well as her mother. And not only is her brother dead, but her father is too. Can’t you understand what that must be like for her? Don’t you think she might need her mother, with things as they are?’

‘She’s got
me
. I should be enough for her.’

‘Well,’ she said rashly, ‘it seems otherwise, doesn’t it?’

He hovered visibly between a revival of his rage and an acceptance of this unarguable truth. ‘But Glenn says—’ he started again.

‘Is this anything to do with Glenn?’

‘He’s my best friend. He knew Bridget before I did. We’ve always been a gang, with Pablo and Felix too, of course.’

‘And Markie,’ said Simmy, thinking of the group of them standing in the rain on Saturday morning.

‘Sometimes,’ he conceded. Something of the reality of his situation seemed to get through to him. ‘It’s all spoilt now. We had such brilliant times, every summer since the kids were twelve. All of us together for weeks at a time. We went camping and sailing and all that. Of course, we knew each other for years before those trips. It all goes back to when Briddy was about eight.’

Just like
Swallows and Amazons
, thought Simmy, wondering at the extraordinary privilege his words conveyed. Not just having the time and space for such summers, but the freedom from convention. Peter would have been in his mid-thirties when Bridget was twelve, and lucky to have more than a few weeks to spare from demands of work. A single man, from a wealthy family, he could do whatever he liked. And it would appear that he had earmarked the little girl as his, from an unsuitably early age.

But then he had not abused her or frightened her; he had not despoiled her and cast her aside. Peter Harrison-West had waited patiently for her to grow up, and had then married her. And, as far as Simmy could see, Bridget had been more than happy to cooperate. If there had been exploitation or manipulation, it had been subtle, and the Baxter parents had willingly colluded with it. At this point, her thoughts slipped into a familiar track, and she gave a deep sigh.

She looked intently into the man’s face. Whilst far from being a chinless wonder, there was a flickering weakness to be detected. He only met her eyes for a second at a time, before sliding away. His lips were full and loose. Bewilderment was lying close to the surface, as well as
frustration. Events had not gone as he had expected, and he was nowhere near mature enough to deal with the blow he’d been dealt.

‘Go and see Eleanor,’ she advised him firmly. ‘Bridget will come back when she’s ready. You’ve got to let her go where she wants.’ She had been burning to utter these words, ever since the episode of the previous day. They came out with some force.