The Ullswater Undertaking by Rebecca Tope (read dune .TXT) 📕

‘You’ve been saying that for weeks. Get on with it if you’ve got the energy.’ She spoke affectionately, even playfully, challenging him as she had done thirty years earlier. ‘But you won’t leave supper too much longer, will you? And I am desperate to know what you’ve been doing with Fabian this afternoon.’

He yawned. ‘You know what? I’m too knackered for digging. It’s been quite a day. Quite a week, come to that.’

‘And it’s not half done yet.’

‘Indeed. So now I’m going to do a big pan of scrambled eggs, with bacon and black pudding and sautéed potatoes. It’ll take precisely twenty-five minutes. You go off somewhere cosy and feed the young master, and then we’ll eat. All sorted.’

She looked at him in a sort of wonder. Here was the Christopher she had almost forgotten. She was transported to an evening on a beach in North Wales, bathed in westering sunshine, Christopher was cooking sausages on an open fire he’d made himself. He must have been barely seventeen. His father was sceptical – the sausages would taste of smoke and be raw inside, he insisted. The younger Hendersons were running in and out of the waves, squealing and pushing each other. The three Straws were passively observing the much larger family. It was perhaps the last day of the annual seaside holiday that they’d all shared every summer for years. And it was, as it turned out, the last of such holidays. Christopher and Simmy had discovered each other as sexual beings, instead of semi-siblings, and the parents were alarmed.

The sausages turned out beautifully. So did the baked beans that he had gently warmed at the edge of the fire. For good measure he had toasted slices of white bread as well. ‘Enough for everyone,’ he announced proudly – which was in itself a miracle. Ten people ate the little barbecue meal with relish, and muted astonishment at this sudden show of competence by the eldest Henderson son.

‘You’re a marvel,’ she told him now. ‘An absolute marvel.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said again. ‘Now go away while I cook – and then I’ll tell you all about my very weird afternoon with Fabian Crick. And after that I’ll fill you in on everything the police asked me this morning.’

It all happened more or less as he’d planned, apart from Simmy having to eat with one hand because Robin was slumped over her shoulder. He had accepted the feed with reasonably good grace, burped gratifyingly and then remained wakeful. She could feel him turning his head, just under her ear. ‘He’s listening to what I say,’ she laughed.

‘Of course he is. But he’s going to find what I say a lot more interesting.’

‘Go on, then,’ she invited.

Christopher plunged into a lengthy account of his afternoon. ‘Fabian began by explaining in much more detail about the family situation ten years ago. It’s rather more than he said on Sunday, which makes it even more embarrassing for me. Apparently at that time Aunt Hilda had recently had an operation for cancer, and everyone was worried about her. Fabian had been very attentive, and they’d got very close. He did talk about her quite a lot on the trip, which is how we worked out the Cumbria connection. Then when he was delirious and dying, he made a massive production of how he’d never said goodbye to her when he left for Africa. They’d had a bit of a tiff, apparently. Honestly – it was all so melodramatic, I think I simply dismissed it as the ravings of a disordered mind, or whatever they say. But now he insists it ruined his chances of inheriting the house, because she never got the message I was meant to deliver. By the time he’d recovered from his sleeping sickness, she’d found a new friend in the shape of Josephine.’

‘And she survived her cancer.’

‘Right. And then this cousin decided he was going to write her biography, and they immersed themselves in old diaries and so forth, before she finally died this year. She was very keen on the whole project, according to Fabian. And he was totally sidelined.’

‘Sounds to me as if he’s got an awfully good reason to be furious with Josephine.’

‘I know. And now the whole family’s under police scrutiny, which isn’t going down at all well with any of them.’ He sighed. ‘It is rather a mess. He’s living in a dark little room at the back of one of those ugly little houses behind the grassy bit in Glenridding. The bit where nobody ever goes. And he’s got no money. Just state benefits. You’ve got to feel sorry for him.’

‘Oh dear. I don’t think I can manage that. He’s just too creepy.’

‘He’s not so bad as that. He came all down here again today on that scooter, you know. It takes some nerve, on that road.’

‘And back again, presumably. Why did you go there anyway?’

‘In the end I managed to ram it into the car, with all the seats folded down and the boot flap hanging open. It weighs a ton. Lucky I didn’t damage my back. Getting it out again was just as bad.’

‘You idiot. Answer the question. Why go there at all?’

‘Mainly I think he wanted me to see how wretched he is – to make me feel even worse about letting him down. But he’s got a stack of old photo albums – and some not so old. I remember he was mad keen on taking pictures on the trip. But then, everyone was. It took him years to get them all printed out and put into albums. Being Fabian, he had no intention of storing them all on a computer. Anyway, he’s got pictures going back to the late sixties – all the family were there. Aunt Hilda was a striking woman, all right. In fact, she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Everyone else is there, except Uncle Richmond. Apparently he never lets anybody take