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

‘Hang on a minute. Can we try and think through what would have been different if you had delivered the message? She would have assumed Fabian was dead – right? So she’d have changed her will then, if he’d been her main beneficiary.’

‘Well, no, because she’d have made enquiries, and discovered that he hadn’t died after all. We’re talking about ten years ago, not a hundred. She could have contacted people in Botswana and been told there was no record of his death.’

‘Okay. And then she’d have wondered why he didn’t get in touch and tell her he was alive and still loved her.’

‘Not necessarily, because I would already have told her that. I’d have said he was terribly ill, probably dying, and his last thoughts had all been of her. So she’d have rested on that for quite a while.’

‘How long? Surely she’d have expected him to surface eventually and make up the lost time?’

‘He says he did send a few postcards but didn’t say much. It was three years at least before his brain got working again. It sounds as if he more or less forgot about her. And without my assurances, the cards must have seemed very cold and distant.’

‘So – because you never visited her, she didn’t know about the illness and just thought he was swanning around the world ignoring her completely, apart from a few rubbish postcards.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I see,’ she said, just as Ben had said to her a little while earlier.

The early evening became bedtime, with further sporadic discussions about the Armitage family, interspersed with domestic and parental matters which they shared amicably. Simmy found herself treading carefully, aware that her fiancé’s feelings were fragile. The shock of Josephine’s death had come on top of the remorse over letting Fabian down, and then been compounded by the stress of his police interview. And, she reminded herself, being a new parent was every bit as destabilising for the father as it was for the mother. There was a risk that Robin would lose his place at the centre of all their attention by the ill-timed murder. She tried to voice this worry.

‘We mustn’t let it swamp everything else,’ she said. ‘Robin’s got to come first.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. He knows exactly how to make sure he gets his rightful due. Look at him!’ The baby was lying on the sofa, propped against a cushion, alertly watching the world that consisted entirely of two people. Both those people were squatting a few feet away, like slaves before a pharaoh.

Then he slowly sank into a deep sleep and the parents were left to talk about other things. ‘I forgot to say that Ben’s found Uncle Richmond. It took him about two minutes, by the sound of it. He’s got the address of his farm in Workington.’

Christopher groaned. ‘I should really hate that boy.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he makes me look old and slow and brainless.’

‘No, he doesn’t. You haven’t had time for finding disaffected uncles, and he has. Besides, you’ve been unearthing plenty of stuff yourself, as well as heaving Fabian’s blasted scooter in and out of the car.’ That, she found, was quite a sore point.

‘But now the whole Richmond thing is fairly pointless anyway. The police will want to talk to him, presumably.’

‘Will they, though? We don’t know that he ever had anything to do with Josephine or Aunt Hilda’s house, or any of it.’

‘True. In fact, I get the impression he’s never been included in family stuff. Although his sons are. One of them is writing the biography. So he’s got to be at least vaguely relevant. Otherwise, why would Fabian bring him up in the first place?’

‘Probably because he’s a nasty little man who thinks he can make you do what he wants. He’s a leech. He’ll be after you for money next.’

‘I won’t give him any, I promise. And he is upset about Josephine. And he definitely can’t have killed her. Pity, in a way,’ he snorted. ‘He’d be better off in prison.’

Simmy laughed. ‘Maybe he ought to make a confession, then. When they find out it’s all lies, they might lock him up for wasting police time.’

Robin stayed wide awake through the final stages of supper, and then found himself being put to bed at the new time of eight o’clock. ‘We’ll have to try and keep him awake more in the afternoons, so he gets tired earlier,’ said Simmy. ‘We won’t have any evenings to ourselves if he goes on like this.’

‘I expect it’ll settle down,’ said Christopher unhelpfully.

They were still talking about Fabian when they went to bed. ‘I liked the sound of Uncle Ambrose,’ said Christopher. ‘Did I mention him?’

Simmy was losing interest. ‘I don’t think so. What about him?’

‘He’s an archivist. Probably knows Oliver, actually. Or did. He’s a bit doolally now, apparently. Had a head injury a while ago.’

‘Did somebody bash him?’

‘What?’

‘You said he had a head injury.’

‘Oh – no – he fell off a motorbike that he’d just bought. Something much too big and powerful for a man in his sixties. A typical story. It took Fabian a good twenty minutes to tell that part.’

‘Ambrose is a wonderful name,’ Simmy said ruefully. She found herself wondering if that would have been a better choice for her baby.

‘That’s what I thought. It must be due for a revival any day now.’ He had obviously read her mind. ‘But we don’t want our child to be that sort of pioneer, do we? Names can damage a person’s whole life.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she argued. ‘Speaking as somebody called Persimmon. It makes you memorable and it probably builds character.’

Christopher just laughed, and went on, ‘Anyway, Ambrose spends all his time reading old books and collecting Edwardian postcards. Fabian hasn’t much time for him. The cousins both live in Keswick, so they must have known Josephine as well.’

Simmy yawned. ‘This is all going round in my head until I’ve got confused. Can we talk about something