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

political dynasty, if you like. Her story was that over a decade earlier, when she was only twenty she had given birth to a child that was fathered by this person during an important conference at Chequers. You know what Chequers is, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Of course. What was she doing there?’

‘Working as a secretary. Anyway, the whole thing seems to have been politically motivated, trying to wreck careers and so forth.’

‘What happened to the baby? Who was the man? Stop being so mysterious.’

‘Don’t know for sure, but the strong hint is that it was most likely Randolph Churchill. He was quite a womaniser and was out of parliament because he lost his seat in 1945. I could go on. I read up on him – he was handsome and keen on drink, and constantly in trouble.’

‘Was he married?’

‘He was between wives. He married for the second time at the end of that year, but it sounds as if he was perfectly capable of seducing a secretary and fathering her child in the meantime.’

Simmy didn’t know what to make of this discovery. ‘Petrock mentioned some newspaper scandal,’ she remembered. ‘He said it was spurious.’

‘So it might well have been. But all that came ages later, in the 1960s. The odd thing is that Hilda deliberately set it going. She went to the papers and claimed to want the whole thing exposed to view.’

‘Did she want money? What happened to the child?’ Simmy burst out.

‘You already asked me that. I couldn’t find any answer. Adopted, presumably.’

‘But how much of a scandal would that really have been?’ Simmy wondered.

‘You need to understand how hypocritical they were in those days. Being born out of wedlock was a hugely shameful thing. People didn’t tell their kids they were adopted. The chances of the man who brought you up being your biological father were surprisingly small. I mean – not small, but probably only about seventy per cent. Before DNA, there was much less chance of being found out. All I could discover was a potential scandal that was quickly hushed up, with no harm done. Hilda said there were letters that could prove her story, but they were never produced. And they wouldn’t have been hard proof anyway.’

‘So she definitely didn’t keep the baby? If there was one? Are we sure about that?’

‘No, not entirely, although the papers reported the story as if there certainly was a child. They insisted she had it fostered out, but nobody knew where. The investigative journalists tried to track down any adoption records but came up with nothing. Only one – at the Daily Herald – kept trying to get to the bottom of the story. They were the Labour Party’s mouthpiece, essentially, and the man Hilda was trying to damage was a Tory. Hilda had gone to them originally. But she wouldn’t provide any real evidence and, in the end, it looks as if they concluded she was inventing the whole thing.’

‘So what do we know for certain?’

‘Almost nothing. Reading between the lines, I think there must have been a real child. My hunch is that the famous politician paid her off – because she was suddenly in a position to buy a decent house and set herself up in business. It’s very unclear where the money for that came from.’

‘You told me about that on Tuesday,’ she nodded. ‘Supplying good quality food to airlines.’

‘No – that was much later. Through the sixties and much of the seventies, she was in the hotel business. Not running them, exactly, but offering a sort of time and motion service. Efficiencies of scale, innovations in the kitchens, promotions and publicity. She put herself about as a consultant, and apparently offered them a payment system dependent on results. Clever stuff. I found a little website all about it. She really was a pioneer.’

‘Sounds as if there’s plenty of material for Petrock’s book. She must have been an absolute dynamo.’

‘What we really need is some sort of link to Josephine Trubshaw, if we’re thinking this is all relevant to her murder.’

‘And you haven’t found one?’

‘Only the vaguest hints. Hilda liked collecting things and so did Josephine. These people all knew each other, and most of them are related. The timing seems too close to be coincidental – Fabian showing up the day before the murder. What’s his agenda, anyway? What does he really want?’

‘He said yesterday that they all want justice for Josephine, because she was a good friend and they are appalled that someone would kill her.’

‘But no sign of Uncle Richmond?’

‘No. Did I tell you that Oliver told us that Richmond wanted to marry Josephine? For a minute that seemed to explain the whole story. He’d gone mad with frustration and rage at being rejected, and gone round to her house and stabbed her.’

‘If that’s what killed her. We still don’t know for sure.’

‘I think it must have been. Oliver said there was a lot of blood.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really matter. Tell me more about Richmond.’

‘They said he’d accepted that Josephine was never going to marry him, years ago, and it was very old news.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Fabian and his cousins. They’re Richmond’s sons.’

‘Yes, I’ve got all that. What did they tell you that was new?’ He tore the diagram page off his notepad and started a fresh sheet.

Simmy complied as best she could but couldn’t dredge up any helpful details. ‘It was a real invasion – outrageous when you think about it, turning up in force like that. But Uncle Ambrose was sweet,’ she added with a smile.

‘Yes, you said. He’s probably the killer, then.’

‘No, he’s far too insubstantial. I really can’t think why they dragged him along.’

‘Did he appear to go willingly?’

‘Oh yes, I suppose so. He was Hilda’s brother, after all. She was a lot older than her siblings, wasn’t she? Did you get all their dates of birth when you were doing your googling or whatever it was?’

‘Oh yes. They’re very widely spaced. Ambrose comes