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

‘Sorry. But seriously – you haven’t just been at home all day washing nappies, have you? You told me you’d gone to Keswick.’

‘Nobody washes nappies any more. At least, I don’t. We did go to Keswick, as it happens and had lunch with Oliver, and saw one or two people who work at the auction house, and when we got home we had a deputation led by Fabian to try to persuade us that none of them killed Josephine.’

There was a short silence, then, ‘Right. Okay. I see. Busy day.’

‘Yes.’

‘So – did any of them kill Josephine?’

‘Hard to say. Right at the end, Fabian said, “Well, we can’t vouch for Uncle Richmond, of course, but it does seem extremely unlikely that he could be the one.” He was trying to sound all casual and offhand as he said it, but it was very obvious that they wish we’d find a way to meet him.’

‘So who came? Go back to the beginning.’

She did her best to identify and describe the four men who had barged into her unfinished home. She found herself remembering disappointingly few significant details. ‘Petrock’s by far the most substantial one. He’s writing a book about Hilda. He even read us a bit from it. I didn’t think it was bad, but Chris says it’s a mess. Keith was the quietest, didn’t seem at all sure why he was there in the first place. And Uncle Ambrose is sweet. A right old pet. He’s an archivist and says Petrock uses too many adjectives. You’d like him.’

‘This isn’t useful,’ Ben told her sternly. ‘I need to see you really to put a better picture together. And what happened in Keswick? Don’t forget that’s where the murder actually happened. It could easily be the most important area to investigate.’

‘It all connects,’ she said urgently. ‘Uncle Richmond wanted to marry Josephine. If we take Fabian and his cousins at face value, they might well have been trying to tell us they thought it was him, but didn’t dare say so outright. They said they came to persuade us that it wasn’t any of them, and that they thought Aunt Hilda was the main person to focus on.’

‘Where do the police come in? Had they all been interviewed? Where is there the slightest morsel of evidence?’

‘I don’t know. Not one of them even mentioned the police. That’s odd, isn’t it?’

‘They sound worried. Do they know about me and Bonnie and all the other murders we’ve been connected with? Do they know about you and Detective Moxon? Was the whole business just one big smokescreen? What did Christopher think?’

Christopher was at that moment giving Robin his bedtime bath, expecting Simmy to join them for the final stages, which went much more easily with a second pair of hands. ‘He’s a lot more engaged than usual,’ Simmy said in a low voice. ‘It’s probably because he knew Josephine and cares about what happened to her. But he’s also feeling guilty about that promise he made to Fabian, the idiot. The man has some hold over him that seems unreasonable to me.’

‘Might there be more to it than he’s told you?’

‘It’s possible, but I don’t think so. If there is, he’s forgotten what it is. Fabian’s incapable of saying anything directly, which doesn’t help. He comes at everything sideways and changes the subject until you don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m not sure he’s quite right in the head.’

‘Which we’re doing now,’ said Ben. ‘We’re missing a whole lot out. We’ve been here before, charging along without any idea of where the police investigation has got to. Isn’t that where Chris could be useful? What happened yesterday when he was interviewed?’

Simmy hesitated, trying to think. ‘Just the obvious questions. He gave them Fabian’s name, as someone who knew Josephine, as well as the rest of the family.’

‘Did he? Would that be a normal thing to do? Why would the police ask him to list all her acquaintances? That should be Oliver or the people next door, surely?’

‘He probably thought it would be helpful to make them realise that she’d grown up locally and knew a lot of people from the distant past. He was probably thinking that’s the sort of thing you’d approve of.’

‘Me? Why would he care what I thought?’

‘Or perhaps it was just that Fabian’s sudden appearance coincided so totally with the murder, that it would feel wrong not to say something. That’s probably it. I mean – it was odd, the way it happened. And then, at the same time, we could give Fabian a pretty good alibi for Sunday night.’

‘And there lies the crux of it,’ said Ben heavily. ‘You might well have been set up for that very reason. Which Christopher might have figured out and concluded that he ought to name Fabian, as a sort of self-protection. Anyway,’ he burst out, ‘why can’t you just go and ask him? Get all this cleared up, before we go any further.’

‘We’ve got to put the baby to bed first. Look – can you get here tomorrow? We can talk it all through then.’

‘Not easily. You need to come here. Again. There’s a whole lot I have to show you about Hilda. She really was quite a woman. The papers were full of her at one time.’

‘You definitely won’t be going back to Newcastle this week, then?’

Ben groaned. ‘Don’t let’s get into that. It’s all a real mess just now. We can’t guarantee that I’ll be here beyond this weekend. As things stand, I’m in disgrace with just about everybody.’

‘So a nice complicated murder is just what you need to distract you.’

‘Precisely,’ he said.

They left it that Simmy would drive down to Bowness at some point the next day. ‘Make it early, if you can,’ he urged. ‘There’s a lot we need to catch up with.’

After Robin had been left snugly in his cot, Christopher and Simmy slumped together on their small sofa