The Coniston Case

As with other titles in this series, the story here is set in real villages in Cumbria. But all the homes and businesses have been invented. The points of interest on the slopes of the Old Man of Coniston are also more imaginary than real.

‘I won’t care if I never see another red rose,’ Simmy muttered to herself, while carefully arranging a bouquet comprising ten of the things. It was her eleventh Valentine’s tribute of the day, and the sense of being swamped was becoming unbearable. ‘And still another day and a half to go,’ she sighed.

‘Talking to yourself?’ Melanie asked, coming through from the back room, holding another armful of blooms.

‘Why are people so
unimaginative
?’ Simmy wailed. ‘Why not send a bunch of freesias for a change?’

‘Symbolism,’ said Melanie briefly, making it plain she knew full well that her boss already understood the way her romantic customers were thinking. ‘At least they’ve placed their orders in good time. Imagine trying to do all this on the actual day!’

‘It would kill me. As it is, I’ll be out for hours delivering them all.’

‘I’ll do you a map,’ said Melanie helpfully. ‘You’ve got to go to Newby, Coniston, Troutbeck and Bowness. Coniston’s going to be the snag. You might think of getting the ferry. Otherwise I suggest starting at Troutbeck and working south.’

‘I don’t like the ferry. I can go down to Newby and then up to Coniston after that. I expect the road’ll be nice and icy. It’s a long way, Mel.’ She shivered exaggeratedly and looked out at the streets of Windermere where a scattering of shoppers were passing, bundled inside woolly scarves and hats. ‘At this time of year, it feels like going halfway to the North Pole.’

‘By rights you ought not to be doing Coniston deliveries, anyway, especially when you’ve only just started driving again.’

‘I was there on Monday, remember. But the weather was better then and I wasn’t in a hurry,’ she conceded.

‘Yes,’ said Melanie patiently. ‘But the fact remains that Coniston isn’t really on our patch. There’s a perfectly good florist there already. Watch out if she sees you!’

‘If she’s as busy as I am, she won’t mind at all. I’d have cheerfully passed the order on to her, but the customer never gave us their name so there wasn’t much choice.’ It had been a peculiar business transaction that might have led to more discussion if it hadn’t been for the hectic Valentine’s workload. ‘I expect there’s the same thing happening the other way around. I see her van hereabouts from time to time.’

‘It’s not the same,’ Melanie argued. ‘She can do some shopping when she comes here. Nobody wants to shop in Coniston, do they? Making a delivery over there really is
a waste of time and petrol. And you’re not supposed to do too much driving, remember.’ Melanie’s protectiveness had become a habit since Simmy had suffered an injury, shortly before Christmas, and been forbidden to drive until early in February. She had used crutches throughout most of January. Damage to her head had necessitated a shaven area, which prompted her to have a very short all-over haircut that still felt strange.

‘Well it’s too late now. I just hope it doesn’t go mad tomorrow or I’ll be turning orders away. You know you’ll be doing all the local ones, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, yeah. My feet’ll be worn away to nothing by the time I’ve done them all.’ There had been a degree of discord about how Melanie might best make the deliveries of flowers in the streets of Windermere and Bowness. Her battered car was deemed by Simmy to be bad for the image of the business, but she had compromised slightly, and agreed that it could be left full of flowers in the Bowness car park, and again at the northern end of Windermere, for increased efficiency. She had also, as a major concession, permitted Melanie to use the van while she herself had been unable to drive. As a resident of an area renowned for walking, the girl was almost a freak in her reluctance to use her own legs as a means of transport.

‘If you work it out as cleverly as you’ve done my route, you should be fine,’ Simmy said, not for the first time.

‘It’s crazy, all the same. Everyone’s going to be out at work, for a start. At least with Mother’s Day, it’ll be at a weekend.’

‘Don’t!’ begged Simmy. Mother’s Day was only a month off and she was already worrying about the logistics. ‘Let
me get on with these first.’ And she went to create more bouquets of red roses.

The middle of February in Cumbria was still a long way from springlike. There had been two nights of sub-zero temperatures and icy patches persisted all day where the ground was in shade. The roads were narrow and steep and Simmy had a morbid fear of skidding. She was secretly glad that driving had been impossible so far that winter, and had been in no hurry to get back behind the steering wheel.

February 14th was a Friday, which meant a relentless succession of orders had been flooding in all week. Wholesale delivery vans had arrived regularly with boxfuls of red roses. The back room of the shop contained almost nothing else. Brisk business, Simmy kept reminding herself, was a good thing – an essential thing. There had been entire weeks during January when barely one customer a day came in. There were hardly any passing shoppers and there had not been a wedding for a month. Funerals had been the mainstay, with a flurry of them at the end of January.

‘The post’s not been opened yet,’ Melanie observed, flicking through a handful of envelopes and sheets of paper. ‘Flyers, water bill, a couple of real things. D’you want me to open them?’ Without waiting for an answer, she did so. ‘Hey – this is an order, Sim,’ she called. ‘Come and look.’

Simmy came impatiently out of the back room. ‘What?’

‘See – they want a mixed bunch of spring flowers to go to a Mrs Crabtree in Hawkshead. Twenty-five pounds in cash, and no name or address. The message on the card is wishing her good luck in her new home. What’s going on? That’s the third one like this we’ve had in a week. Have we
missed something about banks going bust, that nobody’s using cheques or cards any more?’

‘Third?’

‘Yeah. The one for the bloke in Coniston on Monday and there’s a Valentine one for Friday in Newby Bridge. That was hand delivered. Some man dashed in yesterday and just thrust the letter at me and rushed off again. I hardly even saw him. Said something about catching a train and hoping there was enough money to cover it.’

‘I saw him, I think. The one in the long brown coat? I just caught a glimpse of him, the same as you. So they’re not all from one person.’

‘Course they’re not. If they were, they’d all be in the same letter, wouldn’t they?’

‘But they’re all anonymous? That’s a bit odd, don’t you think?’

‘It’s Valentine’s, Sim. The whole point is to keep the person guessing. That part’s not odd at all. It’s the way they pay that I’m talking about. I wonder if Mrs Crabtree’s going to know who sent her flowers.’

‘Hmm,’ said Simmy, vaguely, not entirely following what Melanie was trying to say. ‘What’s that leaflet about?’

‘Solar panels. “Go green with Goss” it says. They’re going mad for them at the moment, for some reason. My dad says they’re just a flash in the pan and everybody with them’s going to feel a right fool in ten years’ time.’

‘I don’t know about that. My cottage might suit them rather well. It doesn’t have to be sunny all the time for them to work, apparently.’

‘Too many big boys getting in on the act, according to Dad. The whole thing’s got very messy, with all those
government subsidies up for grabs. Never works, he says.’

‘He might be right,’ Simmy nodded, not really caring either way.

‘So I’ll chuck it away, then? With the one about the pizzas and the one about the sale at the garden centre?’

‘So much wasted paper,’ Simmy sighed, and went back to her work.

As she fashioned yet another bouquet, very nearly on autopilot, the bell above the door signalled a customer and she peered through the shop to see who it was. Melanie was carrying a large box of oasis, leaving Simmy to greet the newcomer. A woman in her forties stood looking around, as people routinely did. Not someone likely to be sending red roses, Simmy thought hopefully. Something different would be such a relief. She produced a beaming smile of welcome. ‘Morning,’ she said, cocking her head enquiringly.

‘Have you got any tulips?’ the woman asked. ‘Is it too early for them?’

Simmy pointed to a well-packed stoneware vase on the floor, boasting two dozen tulips of different colours.

‘Oh!’ The customer stared. ‘What a gorgeous vase!’

‘A local potter makes them. They are nice, aren’t they?’

‘Is it for sale?’

‘Well – yes, I suppose so. He takes orders usually, but I can let you have it if you really want it.’

‘How much?’

Simmy paused. Her agreement with Ninian had been vague from the start; little more than a system where she displayed his wares and told people where they could find him. Prices had not been established. ‘I really have no idea. We’ve never got around to discussing that – which
sounds daft, I know.’ She had no intention of explaining how hesitant and complicated things had been between her and Ninian since Christmas. ‘I ought to call him and ask, I guess.’

‘It’s worth quite a lot,’ said the woman. ‘Hand thrown, probably a one-off. And it’s
big
.’

‘Everything he makes is lovely,’ said Simmy, absently fingering the tulips. ‘How many flowers did you want?’

‘A dozen, please. Assorted colours. If I leave my number, could you get back to me about the vase? I haven’t got much time just now.’

Nor me
, thought Simmy, with a quick smile. ‘That’s fine,’ she said. She sold the tulips and went back to the roses. She would phone Ninian after the end of the working day, if she remembered. The woman’s number was on the back of a business card Simmy had found on her untidy little table next to the till.
Persimmon Petals
, it read on the front.
Proprietor: Persimmon Brown. Flowers for all occasions
. One of the few times she had been almost glad of her unusual first name was when it came to choosing a title for her new business.

The little room at the back was crammed with finished bouquets, as well as the wherewithal for additional ones. Melanie was trying to create order, laying out flowers, ribbons, cellophane and small cards in a sequence that would speed Simmy’s nimble fingers for the rest of that day and into the next.

‘Remind me to call Ninian and ask about prices for his pots,’ said Simmy. ‘I could have sold that big brown one just now if I’d known what to charge.’

Melanie blinked at her. ‘Why didn’t you make something
up? He’d be happy just to sell it. You’ll never get the person back.’

‘Well – how much? Twenty-five? Fifty? He never gave me a clue.’

‘You’re both hopeless,’ said Melanie. ‘It should have been the first thing you agreed. Do you get a commission?’

‘Probably. We were about to get the whole thing settled when I ended up in hospital, remember? Then it was Christmas, and it all got forgotten.’

‘Six or seven weeks ago, Sim. You’ve been back at work for most of that time.’

‘At least I managed to get him to bring some to display. Even that was a hassle.’

‘Hopeless,’ said Melanie again.

Ninian was a self-employed potter with a poor head for business. He lived in a fellside cottage with no landline and a little-used mobile telephone, did not possess a car, and often went missing for days at a time. He and Simmy had established a fragile friendship, to the extent of her agreeing to do what she could to sell some of his vases. After a distressing series of events in late December, he had joined her and her parents for Christmas lunch – and then disappeared for two weeks, causing Simmy to worry that he was lost in a snowdrift.

‘I’ll try and phone him anyway,’ Simmy resolved. ‘Or maybe a text would work better. I think he quite likes texts.’

Melanie, at the ripe old age of twenty, was above responding to such a crass remark.

The morning flew by, immersed in the scentless foreign flowers ordered by self-satisfied swains for their expectant
girlfriends. Husbands too were congratulating themselves for remembering the great day in good time to ensure a fitting tribute. Other customers had mutated from being welcome variations on the theme to irritating distractions at this point, wanting a pot plant for their new conservatory or something unusual as a birthday present for someone unwise enough to get born on or near February 14th. When the doorbell pinged at midday, Simmy heaved an impatient sigh and pulled off her rubber gloves. Modern roses might not have thorns any longer, but the stems were tough and bare fingers quickly became sore.

Standing in the shop, only a few inches inside the door, was a man she had first met five months before. Detective Inspector Moxon was dark-haired, broad-shouldered and rumpled. He knew more about Simmy than she found comfortable, especially as his knowledge apparently led to an affection and concern that made her feel young and vulnerable.

‘Busy?’ he asked.

‘That isn’t the word for it. Don’t tell me you’ve come for red roses, or I might have to hit you.’

His smile was just sad enough to make her feel remorseful. She had gradually worked out that he lived on his own after some sort of marital collapse. Within minutes of meeting him she had disclosed her own history – the dead baby daughter and subsequent separation from its father – and got nothing from him in return. He had met her parents, too. Angie and Russell Straw ran a well-known B&B in Windermere, and did their very best to avoid any encounters with the police. Angie could rant for several minutes about the idiocy of people pretending to want bobbies on the beat. ‘The further away from us they are, the better,’ she maintained.

Simmy agreed with her, but for different reasons. Her dealings with DI Moxon had been connected with a number of highly disagreeable crimes which had been upsetting at best and personally dangerous at worst. Floristry, she had discovered, put a person in the way of seriously heightened emotions, including rage, revenge and hatred. Despite the general goodwill associated with the sending of flowers, the major life stages that were marked in that way could easily be connected to darker feelings.

‘I would have thought fresh business would be welcome,’ he said.

‘There’s such a thing as too much business. There are only two of us, after all. I had no idea the world could be so romantic.’