The Windermere Witness (9 page)

‘Who knows? Daft old aunts? Impoverished cousins? Families are riddled with tension, aren’t they? Old arguments, unpaid debts, people thinking things are unfair. Ask your father – he’s got at least two relatives he’d fly to Australia to avoid. And you know how he hates flying.’

The only surviving Straw relatives were Russell’s two brothers, three nephews and one niece, and a very ancient aunt. Angie, like Simmy, was a single child. Relatives, in fact, were in painfully short supply. ‘You exaggerate,’ she accused her mother. ‘You mean Cousin Harry, I suppose.’

‘And Auntie Pauline. That woman’s a monster.’

‘Whatever – you’re probably right about the wedding people. The police are going to have to unravel all that, I assume. If Mr Baxter was on bad terms with somebody, they’ll probably think that person might have killed Markie, to get at his father.’

Angie shivered. ‘That would be a
filthy
thing to do.’

‘Monstrous,’ Simmy agreed, deliberately echoing the careless epithet Angie had used about poor old Auntie Pauline, who had definitely never murdered anybody at all.

Melanie was waiting and they hastened in the van down the lakeside road to Storrs. Simmy conscientiously reported her visit to Eleanor Baxter’s lavish mansion above Ambleside. ‘It’s a beautiful house,’ she repeated. ‘With all kinds of lovely furniture. I can’t imagine growing up in a place like that.’

‘You were privileged,’ said Melanie tartly. ‘Nobody gets invited up there.’

‘Really? I got the feeling it was open house to a whole lot of people.’

‘Just the inner circle. I bet it’s got a ten-foot fence all round it.’

‘You bet wrong. She hardly even bothers to lock the door. No burglar alarms or anything. What’s the matter with you?’ It had taken five minutes or more to grasp that her assistant was not in the cheeriest of moods.

‘Nothing you can do anything about.’

‘Try me.’

‘There isn’t time. We’re there, look.’

Storrs Hall was waiting for them on its natural lakeside rostrum. The water lapped gently a few yards from the western wing. Simmy caught sight of blue police tape attached to posts, keeping everyone away from the place where Markie Baxter had been found. ‘Spoils the view,’ she murmured. ‘It’s going to have rotten connotations for years to come, after all this.’

‘Nah,’ Melanie argued. ‘They’ll make a virtue of it. It’ll give them something to boast about.’

‘Cynic,’ said Simmy. The image of the boy’s fresh rain-splashed face, in the last hour or two of his life, sent a sharp grief through her chest. The exact mechanics of how he had been killed were secondary to the simple fact that he was dead, sixty years before his time. No wonder his father could not avoid revisiting her encounter with Markie. Any parent would be obsessed with every little detail of that morning.

They were admitted to the handsome space where weddings were conducted, and quickly set about pulling down the carefully constructed swags of foliage. ‘I don’t suppose half the guests even noticed them,’ Simmy sighed. ‘People don’t really look up much, do they?’

Melanie merely shrugged.

‘Come on,’ Simmy urged. ‘Tell me what’s bugging you.’

‘It’s my eye,’ came the unexpected reply. ‘They’ve decided to give me a different one. I’ve got to go and have it fitted next week.’

‘So? Don’t you want it? They can’t make you, can they?’

The girl sighed in exasperation. ‘You don’t understand.’

It was true. Simmy could not imagine having a sightless eye, which had slowly clouded over throughout Melanie’s childhood, until being removed when she was eleven and replaced with a prosthesis that was a fair match for the good one. But it was fixed immovably, and never had quite the same pupil size as its partner. On their first meeting, it had taken Simmy three minutes to work out what was odd about the girl’s face. Within ten minutes, she had asked for the story of what had happened.

‘I guess it’s rather unpleasant, having people mess with you like that,’ she ventured.

‘It’s not that. It’s being
reminded
,’ Melanie blurted. ‘I can go weeks without even thinking about it, and then it all comes back, and I have to face it all over again. I have to admit I’m a freak.’

Simmy lowered her chin and gave the girl an old-fashioned look. ‘Don’t give me that,’ she said. ‘Because I’m not playing along with it. If every person with a little piece of themselves missing was a freak, then there’d be hardly any normal people, would there? I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you at all.’

Melanie pouted, and tugged hard at a string of glossy chestnut-brown leaves. ‘It is, more or less. I don’t like people being sorry for me, asking me how I feel all the time. How do I
know
how I feel? I can’t even remember having two eyes. I don’t get why we all have to pretend it’s no big deal.’

‘So it
is
a big deal?’

‘Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not. And even I can’t always tell the difference.’

Simmy laughed, and Melanie gave a tentative grin. ‘So who killed Markie Baxter?’ she asked, loud in the echoing empty room. ‘That’s the
really
big deal.’

Simmy experienced a very inappropriate relief. ‘His father thinks it must have been one of the groom’s “cronies”. That’s what he calls them. The best man and the ushers. He seems to favour the Spanish one – Pablo something. Probably because he’s foreign.’

‘But not the groom, then?’

‘I guess not. I’m meant to be seeing him at lunchtime, as well as Bridget’s dad. All a bit heavy, to be honest.’ She had been doubtful about telling Melanie of her lunch
appointment, feeling faintly that she might be seen as fraternising with gentry and thereby removing herself from such as her assistant. Now she understood that this was entirely in her own head, and that it said a lot about her attitude towards social class. All Melanie cared about was the murder investigation.

‘But you saw him last night? What more does he want?’

‘Search me. He seemed to have a thing about insurance.’ Simmy chewed her lips for a minute. ‘Would somebody do a murder to get hold of the insurance money, do you think?’

‘Course they would,’ said Melanie.

Bowness was much quieter than it had been the previous day. Clear, dry days would become rarer as winter approached, and visitors were probably taking the opportunity to get into the fells while they still could. Only those wanting to cruise the lake still milled about waiting for the boat to collect them. Not all the shops had opened, as they did throughout the summer on a Sunday. Simmy had heard muttered complaints about this break with Christian teachings, in the few meetings she attended with other business people. For herself, she had decided from the start that Persimmon Petals would remain firmly closed on Sundays, come what may. ‘It’s all right for you,’ the souvenir shop people said. ‘We can’t afford such a luxury.’

Melanie had questioned the decision, pointing out that the streets of Windermere were far from empty on a summer Sunday. ‘I don’t care,’ Simmy had insisted. ‘It wouldn’t be worth the wear and tear on my temper. And
when would I do the accounts if I had to be in the shop on Sunday mornings?’

‘Saturday night – seeing as how you never go out,’ said Melanie with a disgusted look. Simmy’s lack of a social life caused Melanie much annoyance. It was as if she was letting the side down in some way. She still made sure she invited her employer to the riotous evenings she and her friends engaged in at weekends, despite knowing she would never be accepted.

‘I’m too old for all that,’ Simmy always said. They both knew it was true.

She delivered the girl back to her house, and then managed to get to the Old England Hotel with four minutes to spare. She parked in the small street at right angles to Fallbarrow Road, where there were plenty of empty spaces, and remained in the van for a moment, gathering her thoughts. She was not eager to meet the bereaved father again, after his collapse of the previous evening. His son had been dead for little more than twenty-four hours, and she understood his desire to extract every detail of her encounter with him, in the final moments of his life. But why, she wondered, didn’t he ask one of those men who had been standing in the rain with Markie? They knew the boy and would have been much better at judging his mood.

The answer was obvious, of course. There was every chance that one of those men had committed the murder, and would therefore tell lies at worst, or evade questions at best. Suspicion would cloud the conversation, in any case. How had she got herself embroiled in the business in the first place? She had been singled out, that was the truth of it. Markie had deliberately detached himself from his
friends and spoken to her with an intimacy that had been entirely unjustified. Since then, his family had pursued the same determined connection. It wasn’t fair of them, she whined to herself. Why didn’t they stick to their own kind, their long-standing friends and relations?

The answer came back as before. Nobody in their own circle could be trusted. There was a pressing need for an outsider, who would be more likely to offer uncomplicated information and unclouded assistance. She ought to be flattered, she supposed, and in some ways she was. But the result of her brief inner musings was to increase a sensation of anxiety. Her insides were misbehaving in a clear indication of reluctance to get any more deeply involved.

She had her back to the hotel and the lake behind it. A man was standing to her left, a little way up the gentle slope towards the town centre. It was not George Baxter or Peter Harrison-West, and therefore not interesting. She looked at her watch – two minutes before the agreed meeting time. He had not said whether or not she should go inside and wait for them there. This was a further cause for anxiety – would they look for her in the bar, or dining room, or terrace, if she went in before them? The only option, then, was to remain outside until they came.

Being two of them, they would most likely separate and cover both inside and out, making it easy for her. A gentleman would be automatically aware that such situations could be awkward for a woman, regardless of equality. And George Baxter had struck her as quite a gentleman at heart. His son might have hinted at a tendency to bully, or judge, or enforce undue discipline, but Simmy had liked him. And
she felt very sorry for him. But she was still not eager to talk to him again.

She rummaged in her bag for a hairbrush, wishing she had washed her hair that morning. It hung inelegantly around her face, still suffering from the effects of the previous day’s rain. On a good day it could gleam with natural chestnut highlights, springing energetically from her crown to add height and character. Tony had much admired her hair when they first met, and once even went with her to have it cut, which startled the hairdresser and made Simmy feel both cherished and patronised.

Using the van’s wing mirror, which she tilted inwards, she did what she could to create a respectable image. When she nudged it back again, to something like its former position, she realised that she was looking directly at the hotel’s entrance, framed squarely in the mirror. The distinctive white globe lights flanking the door caught her eye, and she wondered what effect they might have at night. A young woman wheeling a suitcase went in, and then a familiar man came into view. He paused and looked around, then glanced at his watch. It was Baxter, and Simmy took hold of her door handle, meaning to get out quickly and call to him. She was perhaps thirty yards from him and the street was quiet. He would hear her easily.

The
crack!
when it came was not especially alarming. If she thought about it at all, it was to assume the hinge mechanism of her van door had made the sound. They did that sometimes. She pushed the door further and swung herself out of the seat, taking a breath to call out.

But something had happened to George Baxter. His head had lurched sideways, and as she watched, he toppled
horribly into the window to the left of the hotel’s front door. The glass withstood the impact, and he sank to his knees, his arms inert, his head flopping ever more grotesquely. She thought nothing at all. A powerless spectator, she simply stood passively, frozen in place. Even when the man lay crumpled on the pavement, and nobody came to see to him, and somewhere deep in her brain something hinted that he must have been shot, she stayed where she was. No fear or pity or rage took hold of her. There was no narrative to explain things, no sense to be made, in those initial seconds.

Then a young man, a youth of sixteen or so, came up the street from the right, and headed straight for the prostrate man. Perhaps it was his tender age that galvanised Simmy; perhaps he reminded her of Markie, and she feared for his safety. Whatever the facts of it, she called out, ‘Be careful!’

Just why she chose those words was deeply obscure. She had no mental image of a frenzied killer intent on slaughtering everyone in Bowness. Rather, it had something to do with Baxter himself, who surely needed the most expert of attentions. A callow lad with uncooordinated limbs and unpredictable assumptions was not likely to be a good first responder. She moved, somehow, closer to the scene. A woman appeared in the doorway of the hotel, apparently simply intending to go for a walk. She failed to observe the crumpled man on the pavement for some seconds. ‘Look!’ croaked Simmy, her voice obstructed by the rising wave of comprehension and bewildered panic. ‘Look at him.’

The woman looked. ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘What happened?’

‘Shot. See,’ said the boy, pointing a shaky finger at
the side of Baxter’s head. There was a bloodless hole in his temple, as if created by a sharp spike driven carefully through the bone. ‘I heard it.’

‘What?’ Simmy stared stupidly at the youth. ‘How?’

‘Gun. Obviously.’

The woman from the hotel began to scream, a thin high sound not unlike the cry of a gull. Words began to form. ‘Dead! He’s
dead
. My God.’ She clutched at her heart and all colour left her cheeks. She turned and stumbled back into the safety of the Old England.

‘She’ll phone the cops, then,’ said the boy, already fingering his own mobile phone. ‘Or d’you think I could do it?’

‘You might as well,’ said Simmy, finding a pool of calm within herself, prompted by the useless hotel guest. ‘They’ll want you to be a witness. First on the scene and all that.’

‘Wow!’ He paled. ‘They won’t think
I
did it, will they?’

Simmy laughed; an inappropriate laugh that quickly threatened to become hysterical. ‘I’ll vouch for you. I practically saw it happen.’ She paused, trying to recapture the scene of a few minutes before. ‘I heard the shot. I saw him fall. Did you?’

He nodded. ‘Sort of. I was just there.’ He pointed at a spot on the street that sloped down to the waterside. ‘I was watching a squirrel,’ he added inconsequentially.

‘Funny there was only us in sight,’ she said. Looking round, she realised that four or five other people were slowly approaching, from various directions. They could see the man on the ground, eyeing him warily, loathe to interfere if this was an embarrassing epileptic attack, or a drunk liable to vomit or curse. Where, Simmy wondered
confusedly, was Peter Harrison-West? Why was he not here at her side, handling the murder of his new father-in-law?

And then, as if impossibly accelerated, events took on a rush and bustle that involved shouted instructions, a hotel blanket, and a dramatically enlarged crowd of onlookers. Simmy retreated to her vehicle, unable to speak coherently to the officious hotel manager and a smart woman who claimed to be a doctor. Her fellow witness went with her, and got into the passenger seat without asking permission. ‘We’d better wait for the police,’ she said.

‘My name’s Ben,’ he said, not holding out a hand for her to shake.

‘I’m Simmy. Do you live locally?’

He nodded. ‘My mum’s doing a roast. I should go.’

‘Phone her.’

He nodded again, but made no move. ‘It’s my birthday,’ he added miserably. ‘It’s my birthday lunch.’

‘Oh? Happy birthday. How old are you?’

‘Seventeen. He
was
dead, wasn’t he?’

‘’Fraid so. They’ve covered him up with that blanket. I don’t think you’re meant to do that, before the police get here. It messes up the evidence.’

‘Yeah. I thought that.’

‘You can’t tell people, can you? Not unless you’re a professional. They get arsy about it.’

Ben grinned, and she realised she was speaking lines more suited to him. He seemed a nice boy, she thought vaguely. Would this experience damage him for life? ‘I know him. He was supposed to be meeting me here. We were going to have lunch.’

‘Wow. Who is he, then?’

‘Baxter. He’s some sort of businessman. Rich. His son was killed yesterday.’

‘You’re joking!’ The boy’s head swivelled nervously, scanning the turmoil outside the hotel. ‘I heard about that. At the wedding – right? Down at Storrs? So – somebody’s bumping off the whole family, one by one? And you—’ He gave her a careful look. ‘Why’s he seeing you, then? Have you been carrying on with him?’

‘
Carrying on?
’ she echoed sarcastically.

He flushed. ‘That’s what my mum calls it. You know what I mean.’

‘Sorry. No, I haven’t. I only met him yesterday.’

Ben nibbled the edge of a thumbnail. ‘You were at the wedding, then?’

‘Sort of. I did the flowers.’

‘Right. My brother works at Storrs – in the kitchen. He wants to be a chef.’

‘Was he there yesterday?’ The host of shadowy personnel working invisibly in a hotel nudged at her thoughts. In theory, any of them might have murdered poor Markie. Ben and his brother would now feature in the police investigation, the fact of their relationship flagged as potentially significant – or so she supposed. A sense of menace descended on her, with this second death.

‘No,’ said Ben, shattering her assumptions. ‘He’s got glandular fever. Signed off for three weeks. His throat is awesome – covered in pus. He spits it up. Disgusting!’

‘They’re here,’ she said, seeing a police car draw up opposite the hotel. ‘At last.’

‘Quick, really,’ he argued. ‘Ten minutes, give or take.’

‘Is that all?’

‘What do we do, then?’ He looked at her pleadingly, almost plucking at her sleeve in his anxiety. ‘You’ll tell them, won’t you – that I was just … you know.’

‘I’m sure you can trust them to understand. I have a feeling you’ll need somebody with you before they ask any questions. A parent, probably.’

‘Fuck that!’ he flashed. ‘I don’t need a nursemaid.’

She recoiled instinctively at the language, before reproaching herself. She even used it herself at moments of high stress.

‘Sorry,’ he said, noting her reaction.

‘I might have got it wrong, anyway. I don’t know anything about how the police operate. I saw a detective chap yesterday who seemed more or less human. It’ll be him again, most likely.’ Until that moment she had forgotten DI Moxon and his gentle questions. The prospect of seeing him again warmed her briefly, before an inner voice impishly mooted the possibility of this new motive for murder. A variation on stalking – murdering members of a family one by one simply to gain access to an attractive detective.

‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get it over. I want my dinner.’