The Coniston Case (19 page)

It really was a very cold day, with a nasty wind blowing. He pulled the hood over his ears and wished he’d brought some gloves. His feet were cold, as well, in somewhat inadequate trainers. Why didn’t men wear fur-lined boots like women did, he wondered? The many follies of fashion had always been an annoyance to him. As a small boy he had loved dressing in frilly nylon frocks that the nursery kept in the dressing-up box. He still thought women had a far better deal when it came to clothes.

It was shortly after ten o’clock when he got to Persimmon Petals. There were three women in the shop – Simmy, Melanie
and Simmy’s mother. Ben felt a leap of anticipation at the sight of Angie. He liked her, from what he had seen and heard of her, especially at Christmas. The fact that Simmy had a mother not totally unlike his own gave him an additional sense of fellowship with her. Angie was straight-talking, sure of herself and dependable in a crisis. His own mother was not entirely reliable on this last count. Her work mattered enormously to her, and there had been several times when she gave it priority over her family. Her attitude tended to be that where there were five children, they could surely watch out for each other, without troubling her too much.

‘Morning, Mr Harkness,’ Angie said now, with a friendly smile. ‘Cold for the time of year.’

‘Certainly is,’ he agreed. ‘My toes are frozen.’

It wasn’t very warm in the shop, either. Flowers objected to excessive heat and while the back room was kept deliberately cool, the shop was never very much better.

‘Well, I’m not staying. Don’t get into any mischief, will you – you three. There was quite enough of that at Christmas. Maybe see you tomorrow, P’simmon. Come for tea, if you can. I’ve got a great big fruit cake that one of my returners brought.’

‘Sounds tempting,’ said Simmy. ‘But I keep telling you not to count on me. I’m even more determined to stay in bed all day tomorrow, after this excessively energetic week.’

Angie nodded carelessly, and went out. They watched as she turned up her collar and ducked her head as the wind bit at her on the pavement. ‘Think what it must be like on the fells,’ she called back, before the door closed behind her.

‘Returners?’ queried Melanie.

‘People who keep coming back for the B&B. She’s got lots of them. They think of themselves as sort of family and bring presents. I have no idea who most of them are, although I’ve gleaned a few names.’

‘Guess who I’ve just seen, going into the cop shop,’ Ben burst out. Then, before giving them a chance to speak, he went on, ‘That Solomon chap, and a woman. Seems he had an appointment to talk to old Moxo. Didn’t look too bothered about it.’

Simmy and Melanie looked at him with very different expressions. Melanie’s eyes widened with excitement, plainly happy to be getting straight to something interesting. Simmy’s eyes actually closed for a few seconds and her head shook gently from side to side. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she sighed. ‘Do we have to?’

‘Was it the Drury woman?’ Melanie asked. ‘Middle height, dyed hair, kind of copper colour? Mid thirties sort of age.’

‘Nope,’ said Ben with certainty. ‘This one was about twenty-six, five foot one and curly fair hair.’

‘Wow! Who on earth could that have been, then?’

‘It looked as if he didn’t know her too well. Friendly, but no more than that. He left her to introduce herself.’

‘You were in there as well?’ Simmy demanded. ‘Why?’

‘I followed them,’ he said brazenly.

‘And then what?’

‘I came out again. I don’t think anybody noticed me.’

Simmy tutted and Ben smirked at her.

‘There’s been a development this morning,’ said Melanie importantly. ‘Sim’s friend Kathy’s up at Coniston somewhere and wants her to meet there at 12.30.’

‘So she’s not missing any more, then?’ To his shame he had completely forgotten about Kathy. Grown women getting lost didn’t really fit with his flow chart, and he had never entertained the idea that Kathy might be involved in the Coniston murder. All the same, now he thought about it, there was a very odd coincidence going on. ‘Why’s she in Coniston?’ Then he remembered. ‘Oh – her daughter’s working there, isn’t she? That must be it.’

‘Actually, no, not really. Joanna came in early today, with the chap who’s in charge of their project – whatever it is – and told me a totally different story.’

‘Different from what?’

Simmy rubbed her forehead. ‘I can’t remember how much you know from yesterday,’ she admitted. ‘It was all such a whirl, with you, Ninian, Moxon and that man from Newby Bridge all coming and going. Not to mention Joanna Colhoun and Mrs Crabtree. I know you weren’t here for them.’ She had a thought. ‘Could the girl you saw just now be Joanna, I wonder? Long fair hair, kinky rather than curly. Maybe it was … although I don’t see why she would be with Mr Samalar.’

‘This was definitely curly hair. And Joanna’s younger than twenty-five, isn’t she? This one looks a bit like Scarlett Johansson.’

Melanie snorted. ‘Gorgeous, then.’

‘If you like,’ shrugged Ben, still carrying thoughts of Catullus and men engaging in sex with boys.

Simmy was still running through everything that had taken place since she last saw Ben. ‘Yesterday seems
ages
ago now. The past twenty-four hours would fill a whole book, with all the things that happened and people I’ve
seen. Even my mother’s been in twice during that time. I can’t think why.’

‘She’s worried about you,’ said Melanie. ‘After last time.’

Outside, the wind had virtually cleared the streets of shoppers. The prospect of any customers was receding rapidly. ‘You don’t really need to be here,’ Simmy told Melanie. ‘It’s going to be a very slow morning.’

‘I’m staying,’ said Melanie firmly. ‘If it’s as quiet as all that, you can go up to Coniston now and see if you can find Kathy. Except,’ she added, ‘I want to go with you.’

‘So do I,’ said Ben.

‘I’m not closing up yet. It’s not even half past ten. We’ll have to stick it out until twelve at the earliest, which still gives us just enough time to do what Kathy wants.’

Melanie and Ben exchanged astonished looks. ‘You’ll let us both come, then?’ said the boy. ‘Gosh!’

‘Last I heard, you were refusing to go at all,’ said Melanie.

‘You persuaded me. And you can both come with me on condition you, Ben, tell your parents where you’re going. And you, Mel – will they be wondering where you are?’ Melanie was assumed to be an independent adult by her parents, but her family relied on her so heavily that her movements were often quite constrained.

‘No problem,’ she said. ‘They’ll be glad to have me out of the way.’

‘Me too,’ echoed Ben. ‘And I did half my homework before breakfast.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Melanie.

‘Okay – it was
after
breakfast – which I had before eight o’clock, actually.’

‘But I’m not sure I want you hanging about here all morning,’ Simmy added. ‘Especially not if you’re going to go on about murder all the time.’

He puffed out his cheeks in protest. ‘So where do you want me to go? It’s freezing out there.’

She hesitated, but before she could answer, the door flew open and her mother rushed back in. ‘P’simmon! You’d better come. Something’s going on out here that probably concerns you.’

Quelling her instinct to panic, Simmy followed her mother outside, expecting to see crumpled cars in the road, or perhaps people fighting. Instead, there was a white-faced girl leaning against the wall of a shop a few yards along the street. ‘She says she knows you,’ Angie panted. ‘I found her just about to faint, down by the lights. We were walking up here, but she can’t seem to get any further than this. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, but at least you can take her in and give her somewhere to sit. And a drink. We might have to call an ambulance if she doesn’t get any better.’

It was Joanna. ‘Where’s Baz?’ Simmy asked.

The girl merely shook her head and whimpered. Her lips were blue. ‘Come on, then,’ said Simmy. ‘If we take a side each, we can walk you to the shop. It’s only a few yards away.’

Angie and Simmy almost carried Joanna to the shop,
and dropped her into the upright chair at the back, where people would sometimes sit and chat with Simmy. It had no arms, and the girl had difficulty staying upright. ‘What on earth happened to her?’ Simmy wanted to know.

‘Pity you can’t call her mother,’ said Melanie.

‘What? You
do
know her, then?’ Angie said. ‘She was mumbling your name when I found her, so I assumed she was trying to reach you.’

‘She’s Kathy’s daughter. You know – my friend Kathy from Worcester. She’s staying up here for the weekend because Joanna’s doing some college work at Coniston. It’s all got a bit complicated,’ she finished weakly. ‘Jo! What happened to you? What’s the matter?’ She put her face close to the girl’s and spoke loudly.

‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Angie. ‘If her mother’s here, she can take over.’ She looked around the shop. ‘So where is she?’

Joanna showed no sign of hearing anything that was said, letting her head droop forward like an unwatered flower. Her long hair fell over her face.

‘Has she got a weak heart?’ Angie wanted to know. ‘I don’t like those blue lips.’

‘Melanie, can you call an ambulance?’ Simmy asked her assistant. ‘She’s practically unconscious.’

Ben was standing well back, aware of his limitations when it came to medical matters. He might be taking A-level biology, but he had no idea what to do in a case like this.

‘Listen – I need to be somewhere,’ said Angie. ‘You can manage from here, can’t you?’

Simmy merely flapped a hand at her mother and kept
her eyes on Joanna’s face. Did young girls have heart attacks? Or heart
failure
? Was it just a drastic case of shock? Or some sort of allergic reaction to something? The last seemed the most probable. ‘Maybe there’s a card in her bag saying she’s got some sort of condition,’ she muttered. ‘Has she
got
a bag?’

‘What?’ Only Ben had heard her. ‘No – doesn’t look like it. Try her pockets.’

‘But I
know
her,’ Simmy insisted to herself. ‘I’d know if she was diabetic or hyper-allergic. Kathy would have told me.’ All the same, she pushed probing fingers into the pockets of the girl’s coat, finding nothing but a tissue and a phone.

‘Give that to me,’ said Ben. ‘She might have an app to do with allergies or whatever, that would give us a clue.’

Simmy’s knowledge of apps was sketchy at best, despite Melanie’s efforts to educate her on the subject. She handed the phone to Ben.

Melanie was speaking with impressive composure to an operator. ‘Ambulance. It’s a girl, early twenties, almost unconscious. We have no idea what happened to her. She was outside in the street and more or less fainted, as far as we can tell. She hasn’t said anything.’ And then a series of yes/no replies, during which she checked with Simmy for some further information. ‘Is her skin clammy? … Are her eyes open? … Is she breathing regularly?’

Apparently the answers were sufficiently alarming for a swift response. ‘No, there’s no reason to think she was attacked … although there was a man with her, and he seems to have disappeared.’

Until then, Simmy hadn’t given Baz a single thought.
Could this have something to do with him? It was impossible to see how.

‘They’ll be five or six minutes,’ Melanie reported. ‘Probably there’ll be police as well.’

‘For heaven’s sake, why?’

‘Incident in the street,’ Ben supplied. ‘That’s their responsibility. And they’ll want to know exactly what happened.’

‘I don’t see why,’ Simmy grumbled again. ‘It’s obvious that no laws have been broken.’

‘Unless she’s been poisoned,’ said the irrepressible boy.

‘The most likely thing is a diabetic coma,’ said Melanie. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘If it is diabetes, she’s only recently developed it. Isn’t she terribly young for that?’

Melanie shrugged. ‘Little kids have it sometimes.’

‘She’d have a card, and an emergency bar of chocolate,’ said Simmy. ‘Wouldn’t she? What about a thing for the insulin?’ She was angry with herself for her own ignorance, and gave Joanna a little shake. ‘Jo! Can you hear me? Are you diabetic? Can you nod or shake your head?’

Joanna roused slightly, but her eyes were unfocused and her breathing laboured. She shook her head minimally, but said nothing.

‘Was that a no?’ Simmy consulted the others.

‘Looked like it. I don’t think you go cold and clammy like that with diabetes,’ said Ben dubiously. ‘I read that somewhere.’

Without any warning siren, there was suddenly an ambulance parked right outside the shop. A man and a woman walked in briskly, their yellow jackets brash and
artificial amongst the softer colours of the flowers. The woman literally pushed Simmy out of the way to get to Joanna.

‘Anaphylactic,’ muttered the man. ‘Severe.’

The woman opened a box she carried with her, and took something out. ‘Epinephrine,’ she said, and pulled up one of Joanna’s sleeves. ‘Hey! Look at this.’

Everyone leant forward and Simmy caught sight of a tattoo, which she could not decipher. ‘The symbol for allergy and latex,’ the medic announced. ‘That’s it, then.’

She administered an injection and dabbed at the spot. ‘Vitals?’ she asked the man.

He was doing something with a portable electronic gadget, from which he read several numbers. ‘Okay, we’re off,’ said the woman. ‘I’ll get the chair.’

Joanna was transferred into a wheelchair and onto a lift at the back of the ambulance. As far as Simmy could see, her condition was not much improved. She automatically followed, assuming she would be needed in some capacity. The male medic produced another electronic gadget. ‘What’s her name? Next of kin? Address?’ Simmy supplied all three answers, though minus the Colhoun family’s postcode. ‘She’s been staying up here for a week or so. Her mother’s here as well. I’ll find her and tell her to contact you. Where are you taking her?’

‘Kendal or Barrow. We’ll get instructions when we phone it in.’

Simmy closed her eyes for a moment against a rush of recent memories. ‘Okay,’ she said.

‘We’ll need your number, as a contact.’

She gave him landlines for home and work, plus mobile
for good measure. ‘I hope you can get her right,’ she said fatuously. ‘Thank you.’

They sped off without a friendly word, and she struggled to think charitably of them. The initial push had been quite unnecessary, and quite hard to forgive.

‘What’s all this then?’ came a familiar voice from behind her.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ she said, before she’d even turned round. ‘She’s allergic to latex, apparently.’

‘Simmy,’ he said softly, with a very human reproach in his voice. She waited, but nothing more was said. When she looked at him, it was with the tiniest worm of distaste for his long head and lank hair. His eyes were slightly magnified by his spectacles and looked moist. He wore a thick jacket that could do with a clean.

‘They needn’t have sent you,’ she said, trying to be kind. ‘You must have better things to do.’

Then Ben came out of the shop at a trot, grinning at the detective and obviously eager to speak. ‘Hey!’ he began. ‘Who was that girl with the African bloke? I saw them this morning.’

Moxon’s nostrils tightened as he wrenched his gaze from Simmy’s face. ‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘
You
know. They must have gone to tell you something about the murder. That’s obvious. So who
was
she?’

‘Truly, son, it doesn’t concern you. You can’t just demand to know details of an investigation like this. It’s about as out of order as you can get.’

Ben was unimpressed. ‘Yes, I know. But this is me. And Simmy. After all, you’ve shown up here – again. Doesn’t that mean we’re involved? What harm can it do to tell us?’

Moxon sighed. ‘Not much, probably. All right – it was
Miss Daisy Hayter, soon to be Mrs James Goss.’

‘Daughter of the man who killed himself!’ flashed Ben. ‘So how does she know the Solomon character?’

The second sigh was much deeper. ‘Her fiancé used to be in a relationship with Selena Drury, who is now with Mr Samalar. They came to explain to me that the Valentine flowers sent to Miss Drury were from Mr Goss, who was having a kind of pre-wedding panic, and wanted to be absolutely sure he was doing the right thing.’

‘Duh!’ scoffed Ben. ‘What a plonker!’

‘That’s not for me to say. The only relevant point is that the mystery is now resolved, and has nothing at all to do with the murder.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ Ben frowned. ‘Don’t you think the fact that Daisy’s so closely linked with it might mean something? After all, she is the daughter of the housemate of the murder victim.’

‘Hang on,’ said Melanie. ‘This is very interesting. If the girl’s father’s dead, does that mean they’ll postpone the wedding? And might the bridegroom be having serious second thoughts about it? Sounds to me as if they’ve swopped partners. Solomon and Daisy, Goss and Selena,’ she summarised with a chuckle.

Moxon gave her a frown of some severity. ‘What would any of that have to do with Mr Braithwaite?’

‘I have no idea. Probably nothing. But I don’t see how you can just scrub them off your list of suspects.’

‘Maybe the prospect of losing his daughter to the man called Goss drove Mr Hayter to suicide,’ said Ben. ‘But I don’t agree with the inspector – it does seem to me to connect to the murder.’

‘Let’s hope not,’ said Simmy. ‘After all, the flowers for Selena were sent
after
both men died, so they can’t have been directly linked, can they?’

‘Precisely,’ said Moxon emphatically.

‘And they were ordered well before the deaths,’ Melanie pointed out.

‘You’re right. I was thinking what a rotten thing to do,’ Simmy said slowly. ‘I mean – when your fiancée’s suddenly lost her father and needs all the love and support you can give, to send Valentine flowers to a former girlfriend at her present partner’s address would be terrible. It’s fairly sick, anyway, but not as awful as it could have been, if we’re really right about the timing. She probably doesn’t want to marry him now, even so. I know I wouldn’t.’ She thought of the way her husband had let her down in comparable circumstances. ‘He’s never going to be there when she needs him.’

‘I think I’ve remembered him at last,’ said Melanie, with some excitement. ‘It was the long coat that put me off. Has he got a very high forehead? And a squeaky laugh?’

‘I haven’t met him, so I don’t know,’ said Moxon. ‘But I agree he sounds rather dubious husband material. He runs his own business supplying solar panels.’

Ben made a scornful sound and Moxon turned to him. ‘Most likely the bloke who tried to swindle my mother. Doing well, is he?’

‘As far as I know, he is. We get a lot more sun up here than people realise.’

Ben opened his mouth to argue the point, but Melanie tapped his arm and shook her head. ‘Leave it,’ she said. Ben, to Simmy’s surprise, obeyed her.

Moxon pressed his hands together, as if drawing things to a sort of conclusion. ‘Anyway, as I say, none of that has any bearing on the investigation.’

Melanie and Ben both kept their counsel, exchanging a glance that made Simmy think of intrigue in the playground. She and Moxon were inescapably the adults in the room, holding the bounds of good sense and due focus.

‘And what about
Kathy
?’ Simmy groaned. ‘It’s even more important to find her, now Joanna’s poorly.’

Moxon gave her his full attention. ‘I’m sorry. Is she still missing? I rather assumed, when I didn’t hear from you early today, that that particular problem had resolved itself.’

Simmy felt a painful inner conflict. On the one hand, her instinct was to tell him the whole story about the email and the visit from Baz and Jo that morning. On the other, she wanted to save him extra work, as well as belatedly obeying Kathy’s injunction to keep the police out of it. She compromised with a brief summary. ‘She emailed me, making a lunchtime appointment,’ she said. ‘So I think we can assume she’s okay. I’ve still got no idea where she’s been or what was going on.’

‘But it’s all under control now?’ said Moxon.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ said Melanie slowly. ‘We never talk about poor Mr Braithwaite, do we? He should be the
only
one we really care about and yet we haven’t even said his name so far.’ She gave Moxon a wide-eyed look of enquiry. ‘That’s not right, is it?’

The detective smiled at her. ‘Very creditable, I’m sure, but you needn’t worry. There’s a great deal of police work going on behind the scenes. You don’t see it, over on this
side of the lake, but Coniston is buzzing, I can assure you.’

‘I bet that Pamela Johnson’s having a fine old time, then.’

‘Who’s Pamela Johnson?’

Simmy answered for Melanie. ‘The woman I told you about in Coniston. The one who sent the flowers to Maggie Aston. She says the police questioned her.’ She wanted to add
Do keep up
, but bit it back. There was bound to be a whole team of police detectives working on the case, with nobody apprised of every detail.

‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘I didn’t speak to her personally.’

‘She came here early today, saying much the same sort of thing as Mrs Crabtree. Neither of them enjoyed their police questioning.’ She smiled. ‘I must say, you made it all quite easy the first time it happened to me.’