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

family. ‘She’s going to be in and out of hospital for years at this rate.’

‘No, she won’t. People are running around in no time, after these operations. It’s miraculous.’

‘Sometimes it is, and sometimes it goes wrong,’ he said darkly.

‘Well, I can’t stay much longer. I suppose I should volunteer to drive up to Aunt Hilda’s house when I go home, and just get an idea of what might be happening. Though I doubt it would be any use, and I don’t actually want to. Even if I took you with me up there, we’re not likely to find anything just by looking at it, are we?’ She nibbled her lip and then grinned. ‘I would like to know which one it is, though. Can you explain it to me exactly? It wasn’t clear on the computer screen how far along the lakeside it is.’

He sighed and pulled an Ordnance Survey map off a shelf and opened it up. ‘This must be it, look.’ He put his finger on a tiny outlined rectangle. ‘Opposite that pathway that goes down to the lake. As we saw on Google.’ His exaggerated patience made it very clear that he thought she should have worked that out for herself. ‘It’s big enough to get its own place on the map. Much too big for one old lady to live in by herself.’

‘We don’t know that she did – do we?’

Ben blinked at her. ‘But … surely? Fabian would have said if there was somebody still living there.’

‘You’d think so, yes. But he’s not a reliable informant. I really do think there’s something wrong with him. Much of what he says is either hot air or hard to believe.’

‘Unless that’s all part of the act,’ said Ben.

Nothing more was deemed relevant after that, and Simmy bundled up her infant ready to be carried back to the car. She had brought no equipment with her to the house. No nappies or wet wipes or plastic bags. All her life she had listened to her mother condemning the way women with babies took vast quantities of paraphernalia everywhere they went, as if one small child was a whole army of helpless creatures. ‘I only ever took a spare nappy and some water,’ Angie would boast repeatedly. Simmy had unthinkingly absorbed this doctrine and was automatically living by its tenets. So far, it had worked well enough. And she really did hate the infuriating all-purpose seat that the child was supposed to spend most of his day in.

‘What about going to Ullswater now?’ Ben persisted. ‘I really do think it might help.’

‘Do we have to? It’s at least three miles past Hartsop, and there’s never anywhere to park on that stretch. I know I’m being a wimp, but I don’t want to do more driving than I have to. Robin doesn’t like it.’

‘I thought all babies loved cars. Aren’t you meant to drive them round to get them to sleep?’

‘Not in this case. Maybe when he’s a bit older.’

‘And you’ve got the clinic tomorrow,’ he remembered.

‘So I have. Thanks for reminding me.’ The sarcasm was muted, because she really had forgotten all about it. ‘That makes it even more impossible for you to get to see the house, unless we go now.’

‘If we did that, you’d have to bring me all the way home again, which I agree is too much to ask. I could probably get myself there on the bike, today or tomorrow.’

Simmy understood without asking that to cycle from Bowness to Hartsop, over the Kirkstone Pass, was not a trip to be undertaken lightly. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If you can get as far as Troutbeck tomorrow morning, I’ll collect you from there. It’ll have to be before the clinic.’ Ten minutes in the car was not a lot to ask, she conceded.

Ben gave it some thought. ‘Maybe it’s a daft idea anyway. I can’t actually see how the house would fit the story, at least as far as we’ve got with it. But I like looking at houses. Must be my mother’s influence.’

‘We should have gone up there on Saturday with my father. I could have inspected the house then, if I’d known about it.’

‘Can’t be helped.’ There was resignation in his tone as well as his words. ‘We’re stuck, let’s face it. You might well have overlooked something that Fabian or a cousin said, which would set things moving again, but I don’t expect you to repeat every word. I have a feeling I’ve let that family get in the way of following up more on the victim. I hardly know anything about her, which is ridiculous. I can’t even remember what she looks like – assuming I saw her at the auction house that time.’ He and Simmy had gone to watch Christopher in action, sometime previously.

‘She was at the reception desk when we first arrived, I think. Plump, with frizzy fair hair. Fairly obviously in charge of everything.’

Ben shook his head. ‘Nope – not ringing any bells. It’s far too long ago now.’

‘You’re right that we still don’t know very much about her. She doesn’t seem to have done anything in her life. Just worked at the same place, learning all about antiques and computers, and adoring whichever man was in charge. First Oliver, then Christopher. All a bit immature, but harmless surely?’

‘I think there has to be more to it than that. It raises a whole lot of possible issues. Office politics. Female rivalry. What if one of the pretty young workers there made a mockery of Josephine? Undercurrents of real hatred and spitefulness. You know what women are like,’ he finished with a grin.

‘Wouldn’t that make Josie the killer, not the victim?’

‘Could be that was the intention,’ he said obscurely.

‘Well, I think she was just a natural assistant – she’d have made some important politician a wonderful secretary. Clever, but self-effacing. Never speaking out of turn, but more than capable of keeping the lesser minions on their toes. She did keep