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

Simmy mind clogged up. ‘What? Why you? He’s never even met you.’

‘Says I’m the only independent party he can think of. He thinks you and Christopher might have vested interests. And I guess he doesn’t know your exact address.’

‘What a cheek!’

‘He says it’s all in Josephine’s filing cabinets – unless the murderer took it. Which is possible. But he’s sent copies. It was Randolph Churchill all along.’

‘Hang on.’ Her brain was still barely functioning. ‘Isn’t he dead by now?’

‘Letters, Sim. Five highly incriminating letters from him, saying he took no responsibility for her child and no attempt to blackmail him would have a hope of succeeding. Richmond made copies of them. He was helping Josephine. It’s all here – but I still haven’t had a chance to read it properly.’

‘We’ll have to come down,’ she realised. ‘None of it makes sense over the phone. Do you want me to tell Moxon? Should he be there as well?’

‘Not yet. Help me figure out the implications first.’

‘Right.’ She looked at Christopher, who was listening to her end of the conversation with eyebrows firmly raised. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’

The eyebrows dropped and a long breath was exhaled. Simmy thought she detected an encouraging level of excitement along with the more obvious signs of resignation.

Chapter Twenty

Simmy bundled her unprotesting infant into his car seat, and waited impatiently for Christopher to lock the house and join her in the passenger seat. ‘Why are you driving?’ he said.

‘Because I know the road better than you.’

He started to question her about the phone call, but she said, ‘Don’t talk. We need to keep open minds until we see these letters. Richmond thinks we’re biased.’

‘Against who?’

‘Whom,’ she said, in honour of her father. ‘I don’t know. Possibly in favour of somebody.’

‘Can I talk a bit? I keep remembering more to tell you.’

‘If you must.’

‘For a start, when I checked the computer yesterday I finally remembered a bit more about that sale where I had to deputise for Oliver. I remember Oliver arguing with Josephine about it, and not having any idea what was going on. All I could glean was that there was potential trouble over the description of the lot.’

‘Yes, you told me that already,’ said Simmy.

‘I didn’t tell you all of it,’ he persisted. ‘You know there’s a disclaimer, and we make it clear we can’t confirm what the vendor claims about provenance and authenticity and all that. But we’re still expected to get it right as far as we possibly can. It was a few months later, when some more papers came in from the Bolt person. Oliver was quite excited and insisted the stuff was genuine, and put a high reserve on it. I remember him saying “We don’t want a repeat of last time, when Henderson let it go for peanuts.” I was a bit wounded by that, I remember.’

‘What did Josephine say?’

‘I’m not sure, but she wasn’t happy about it. But Oliver was the boss, and I assume they did as he wanted.’

‘How much did it sell for, then?’

‘Nine hundred pounds. For one letter. Hilda Armitage bought it. She had plenty of money, it seems.’

‘That’s a lot. But not exactly enough to justify a murder, surely?’ She realised that Christopher was working on a different level from her and Ben. Obsessing about one small detail, when they were trying to get a hold of a far bigger picture. She wasn’t even certain she was following his logic.

‘I think it must have been one of a string of similar transactions. I didn’t get a chance to go through the whole file – it’s enormous, and I never was much good at finding things on a computer. I was rather hoping that Ben might have managed to hack it, after all.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘That would get me off the hook.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Pity.’

‘So …?’ she prompted, not quite believing that he was on the verge of taking control of the whole matter. On other occasions she had either left him out completely or chivvied him into taking an interest when he clearly hadn’t wanted to.

‘So I’m not saying any more, because we agreed last night not to make guesses that could influence each other. And you need to concentrate on this ridiculous road.’

Which she did, ignoring with great difficulty the squawks from the back seat as Robin registered the outrageous fact that his mid-morning feed was imminently due and here he was in a pesky car again.

Helen Harkness opened the door to them with an expression that clearly said, ‘Here we go again.’ Somehow it often seemed that the final stages of understanding a crime were conducted in her dining room. Simmy was impressed by her tolerance and nervous of taking it for granted.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This must seem a bit awful to you.’

‘No worse than usual. Although I would have preferred it if Ben had gone back to Newcastle two days ago, as planned.’

That was another unresolved issue, Simmy realised, hoping that Helen didn’t hold her responsible for it. ‘Let’s hope it won’t take long, then,’ she said. ‘It must feel a bit like an invasion.’

‘He’s in the dining room,’ said Helen, with a shrug that said it all.

Ben had papers spread out across the table and a pad of A4 paper in front of him. ‘I think I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Come and see.’

‘Let’s park Robin somewhere first,’ said Simmy. ‘I hardly dare mention it, but he’s going to be hungry any minute now.’

Ben waved this away as irrelevant, and hastened to show them the five letters, signed in a scrawl that only gradually came into focus as R. Churchill. Simmy and Christopher each took one and forgot everything else as they deciphered the handwriting. They were stiff in tone, and repetitive. Their dates covered a period of three weeks in September 1962. There was no letterhead or address – just a date. ‘Richmond’s letter explains nearly everything,’ said Ben. ‘Do you want me to summarise?’

Christopher