The Ambleside Alibi: 2 (3 page)

Simmy did at first understand the male frustration of having to entrust the safety of the child to a capricious female body. But it was a core fact of nature, and to kick against it was foolish. She herself, holding the little blue body, seeing her own father’s features on the inert clay-like face, wanted something to blame, as well. She wanted reason and logic to hold onto. As the days and weeks crawled by, she realised that Tony, her husband, had become irrelevant. They ought to be rapidly working on creating a new baby, forging hopefully onwards, but they lacked the courage because they no longer trusted each other.

None of which quite explained why Tony had been so hesitant about the divorce. In Simmy’s case, the very word came redolent of failure and humiliation. Nobody in her family had been divorced – not that there
were
many people in her family, anyway. Tony’s sister, Cat, had been
appalled at his behaviour. Simmy’s parents, proprietors of a bed and breakfast establishment in Lake Road, had held their breath and left her to work through it with relatively detached support. When she announced an intention to start a new life close to them in the Lake District, they had been uncertain as to the wisdom of that move.

So far it was working out nicely. Always treated with fondness by her father and a somewhat careless approval by her mother, she was finally getting to know them as individuals in their own right. Angie’s insistence on following her own principles in everything she did was both inspiring and embarrassing. It also served to highlight the prevalence of brainless rules across every aspect of life, which Simmy might otherwise have overlooked, despite the discomfort they could give rise to. Her mother would not let anything pass. She had no personal objections to tobacco, muddy dogs, junk food or minor household dangers, and could see no reason why petty officials should try to force her to change. These officials all regarded such things with horror, especially those who took it upon themselves to regulate B&B establishments. ‘I don’t expect we can get away with it for ever,’ admitted her father, ‘but it’s going pretty well up to now.’ Indeed, there was a growing crowd of enthusiasts for the home-from-home atmosphere of Beck View in Windermere.

The matter of Simmy’s divorce was seldom discussed. It had been assumed that it would come through eventually, and since neither party wished to remarry, there was no suggestion of urgency. Her father pointed out that there were unresolved financial details that might work against Simmy’s interests, if her business began to make appreciable
profits. She shrugged it off. ‘Tony’s not interested in money,’ she said. But now, at last, the whole thing was settled.

She closed the shop ten minutes early, convinced there would be no more customers on this dark afternoon. As she carried the display rack in from the pavement, she thought again of Ninian Tripp, the potter. It would make a nice change, she supposed, to have some attractive vases carefully placed around the shop door, enticing people in. They would have to be stable, and relatively chunky – well weighted to prevent them from falling over. Nothing slender or too small. She stepped away to get a better impression of how they might look.

‘Careful!’ came a female voice behind her. It was Julie, one of the few people in Windermere she regarded as a genuine friend. Not because the general population was stand-offish, but because she was still new and busy with the business and had not quite grasped the social systems of the place.

‘Hi!’ she said, with a smile. ‘How’s things?’

‘Have you heard what’s happened in Ambleside?’ Julie seemed breathless, her eyes flashing with a sense of drama.

‘Not really.’ She had swept the story aside the moment she’d heard it from Mrs Weaver, anxious not to know anything about it. It had nothing whatever to do with her, and she lacked any wish to behave like a ghoul.

‘What does
that
mean? Either you have or you haven’t.’

‘Simply that a customer said something, but I took no notice.’

‘An old lady was done to death in her own house, in broad daylight. Everybody’s talking about it. It’ll be on the news. It’s a terrible thing to happen, Sim. You can’t just ignore it.’

‘No,’ said Simmy slowly. ‘I don’t expect I can. But I’m not going to dwell on it, either. It has nothing to do with me,’ she said loudly.

‘No man is an island,’ Julie reproached her. ‘It has to do with all of us – especially women living on their own in isolated little villages,’ she added. ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’

‘Only if people like you do their best to spread panic. And Troutbeck isn’t an “isolated little village”. It’s really quite big and I’m right in the middle of it, with houses on all sides.’

‘People like me?’ Julie frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Sorry.’ She could hear her mother inside her head, groaning at yet another taboo phrase that was sure to give offence. Julie subscribed wholeheartedly to such thinking, while at the same time laughing in genuine amusement and admiration at many of Simmy’s turns of phrase. It was as if she would have liked to share her attitude, but was afraid to. It made their friendship lopsided at times, but such was Simmy’s gratitude for Julie’s generosity with her time and attention that it was never seriously in jeopardy.

‘Anyway, I didn’t mean we ought to care because it scares us. I meant – nobody should have a thing like that happen to them. You agree with that, don’t you? It’s so
wrong
. It’s uncivilised.’

‘It’s barbaric,’ Simmy confirmed. ‘Utterly awful. I hope they catch him quickly, Whoever he is that did it.’

‘Yes. So do I. Although it might be a her, of course. Girls do wicked things these days, as well as boys. They break into houses carrying crowbars and baseball bats and think nothing of bashing people. On drugs usually.’
Julie shuddered. Simmy suppressed a smile at the world weariness of a divorced forty-year-old hairdresser. No doubt she heard some gruesome stories as she snipped and styled her customers.

‘I can’t really stop,’ she apologised. ‘I need to get on with the Christmas cards.’

‘Blimey! I don’t do mine for
ages
yet. I don’t even want to think about it – I send them to all my regulars, you know.’

‘How do you know their addresses?’ Simmy couldn’t recall ever giving such information to a hairdresser. ‘There must be hundreds of them.’

‘I’m very organised,’ boasted Julie. ‘I send them reminders about their appointments and special offers and so forth. I’m doing depilation from next year as well – and nails. I’ll be needing another girl.’

‘Great,’ Simmy approved absently. ‘Well …’

‘Yes, all right. Go and do your cards. And mind you lock your door properly. I’m serious. You just can’t trust people these days.’

Simmy’s urge to argue was weak enough to resist quite easily. Trusting people remained her default position despite Tony’s lapses and the shocking double murder a couple of months earlier. ‘Oh – one thing I wanted to ask you. Do you know a man called Ninian Tripp? He’s a potter.’

Julie’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve met him once or twice. He lives in a tumbledown cottage up on Brantfell. Doesn’t he make tiles mostly?’

‘I don’t know. He wants me to sell vases for him.’

‘He’s from Yorkshire or somewhere. Had a breakdown or something. He’s very good-looking.’ She gave Simmy a searching look – like Melanie, she was always on the
lookout for a new love interest for her friend, having vowed she was herself sworn off men for ever.

‘Breakdown? Poor man.’ She supposed she’d come close to a breakdown of her own, when Edith had died, and a flash of fellow feeling went through her. ‘He seems okay now, though.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That I’d look at his stuff if he brings me some. I suppose it’s worth a go, if they’re any good.’

‘His tiles are gorgeous, apparently. Terribly expensive.’

‘Hmm,’ said Simmy. ‘Thanks for the information. I’m off now.’ She checked her bag for keys and headed for her car, parked in a nearby side street, while Julie disappeared in the other direction.

‘Mrs Brown?’ A man’s voice was calling to her from somewhere across the street. ‘Just a moment.’

She looked around in confusion, over the roofs of passing cars. An arm was waving at her, she realised. Then the man attached to it trotted over to her, through a gap in the traffic. ‘Hello, again,’ he said, before grimacing. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the police station to answer a few questions.’

It was Detective Inspector Moxon, who had been centrally involved in the investigations into the local murders Simmy had witnessed two months earlier. His face was startlingly familiar to her, as if it had only been a few days ago that they had sat facing each other across a small table in a Windermere hotel. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Is it something to do with Bridget?’ – the young woman who had been at the heart of the previous trouble she had shared with Moxon.

His blank expression was almost comical. ‘No, she’s called Nancy. Miss Nancy Clark.’

‘Who is? What are you talking about?’

He threw a careful glance up and down the pavement. ‘Not here,’ he said, like a guilty lover. ‘We can’t talk here.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she protested. ‘What am I supposed to have done? Are you arresting me?’

‘No, of course not. Don’t be silly. I should have sent a constable for you, by rights, but I thought … after last
time … When your name came up again, I just thought it should be me. We could talk in the car, if you’d rather, but I do need it to be official, you see.’

‘I’m not being silly,’ she corrected him. ‘I can’t imagine what you want. I don’t even know where the police station
is
.’ This was true – all her previous encounters with him had taken place in hotels or houses or her shop.

‘You must do,’ he said incredulously. ‘On Lake Road, going down into Bowness. You can’t miss it.’

‘It’s not the kind of thing I notice,’ she apologised.

‘So, will you come? It’s important.’

‘Taken in for questioning,’ she mused. ‘Is that what’s happening? I wish I knew what I’d done.’ Her mother’s broad rebellious streak had a habit of surfacing at such times, creating a lack of deference that DI Moxon had already commented on. Apparently most people went weak at the knees when addressed by a senior detective, and did everything they could to placate him. Simmy had been brought up to regard the police as public servants, deplorably inclined to exceed their powers at every opportunity. Somehow she failed to be afraid of them, despite an awareness that almost everybody else was.

‘You haven’t done anything,’ he snapped irritably. ‘You’ve been named as a witness by somebody we have reason to suspect of committing a crime. He claims you can vouch for him being in a certain place at a certain time.’

‘Me?’ she said daftly. ‘So who is he? Why can’t you just ask me now and get it over with?’

‘Because it has to be properly recorded, your statement signed, his identity established. Paperwork. I can’t just ask you here in the street and use that as evidence.’

‘Can’t you?’ Not for the first time, she wished she watched more police dramas on TV, or read more whodunnits. She had no idea what was usual procedure, or what some of the jargon actually meant. It seemed to her quite reasonable that a simple question could be posed and answered almost anywhere, with perfect validity.

‘No.’ He folded his arms and stared her down. He was two inches taller than her and about five years older. He had behaved politely with her every time she had met him, eliciting disclosure of the loss of baby Edith during their first interview. He had even suggested, in a light moment, that she consider joining the police force herself. When she laughed in his face, he had been dignified. He had no discernible personal vanity: his hair always needed a wash and his shirts were badly ironed. He did not strike her as especially intelligent or angry or frustrated. A man doing a job of work that often made him tired, and which engaged the whole of his attention, was her instinctive summary.

‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘You don’t change, do you?’

‘Should I?’

‘Some of my colleagues might think so. They might find you a bit … insolent.’

‘And some of my relatives might find you rather irritating. I thought this – whatever it is – was urgent? We’ve wasted a good five minutes already.’

He made an ushering motion with his right arm, and she walked ahead of him to a plain black car parked down the street. A young man was in the driving seat, and Moxon followed her into the back. ‘Right, Preston – let’s
get going,’ he barked, in a tone quite different from that used with Simmy.

She waited in vain for any further elucidation as to what was required of her. Curiosity vied with impatience and a mild amusement as they drove the half mile to the police station in Lake Road. ‘Oh, now I recognise it,’ she exclaimed. ‘How silly of me. I never made the connection, somehow.’ It even had the traditional blue lamp outside, she noticed, for the first time. She could just hear Ben Harkness mocking her for her outrageous lack of observation.

He took her into a small room with a bright light and summoned Preston to join them. Then he asked her if she had been in Ambleside that morning.

‘Yes – I delivered some flowers. Why?’ Only then, again to her dismay at her dim-wittedness, did she connect his sudden appearance to the killing of an old lady somewhere in Ambleside. ‘Mrs Joseph isn’t hurt, is she?’

He glanced down at a page of notes on the table. ‘Joseph? Not that I know of. No – the person in question is a Mr Malcolm Kitchener. He says you saw him; that you spoke to him.’

‘Mr Kitchener? Yes – he was in that café above Stock Ghyll. The Giggling Goose.’ Her brain was slowly turning over the implications of the question. ‘We didn’t say much. His mother died.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Oh – eleven-ish. A bit before, possibly.’

‘How long did you stay?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ she hazarded. ‘Or half an hour. How long does it take to drink a cup of coffee? I wasn’t in a rush. Melanie was in the shop.’

‘How well do you know him?’

‘Not at all, really. Just to put a face and a name to. He recognised me and said hello. He was feeling sorry for himself. His mother died,’ she repeated.

‘You feel that’s important, do you?’

‘It’s how I know him. I did the flowers for her funeral. It was up at Grizedale.’ She spoke wonderingly, still bewildered at why the police should care about Mr Kitchener’s movements.

DI Moxon nodded thoughtfully. ‘We need to be sure we’re talking about the same man. He’s here, undergoing questioning. I’m going to go and open the door of the room, and I want you to walk past and make sure it’s him. All right?’

Simmy was repeating the word
undergoing
to herself. It made the process sound painful and distressing for the poor man. ‘Won’t he see me? Haven’t you got one of those clever mirrors that are really windows?’ At least she’d managed to glean that much from her minimal interest in TV crime dramas.

‘He won’t be surprised to see you. He gave us your name as an alibi.’

‘Alibi!’ It sounded sinisterly technical and important. ‘For what? I mean, what is it he’s supposed to have done, then, to need an alibi?’ She gave him a worried look, already on the verge of understanding what might come next. ‘He’s just a sad little man, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. You’ve obviously got something very wrong.’

‘I can’t disclose any details. Once you’ve had a look at him, you can go. Preston can drive you to your car, if you like.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll walk. Let’s get on with it, then,’ she repeated.

The identification was performed with some awkwardness. Mr Kitchener was sitting at a table, facing the door of the interview room, and when Simmy stood looking at him, he gave her a weak little smile and a nod.

‘Yes, that’s him,’ she said, loudly. ‘That’s the man I spoke to this morning in Ambleside.’

‘Thank you,’ mouthed Mr Kitchener, with no visible sign of relief.

DI Moxon led her down the corridor to the reception area. He sighed and said the same words as his suspect, adding, ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ she told him. ‘Do you want me to sign anything?’

‘Not at the moment. If there are any developments, we know where to find you. But it looks as if this line of enquiry has reached a conclusion.’

‘A dead end, you mean.’

‘You could say that,’ he agreed.

She hesitated, meeting his eyes with reluctance, knowing she would regret her next question, because she thought she already knew the answer. ‘So what did you think he’d done?’

He held her gaze, and she forgot that he was a policeman. He was allowing her to see well beyond his role, through to the person underneath. She understood, faintly, that this was unusual. ‘An old lady was killed this morning in Ambleside. We had reason to connect her with Mr Kitchener.’

‘You moved quickly,’ she observed. Notions about
fingerprints and DNA flittered across her mind, and the huge sinister surveillance machinery at the disposal of the police came to mind. How many CCTV cameras were there in Ambleside, she wondered? If she’d understood Julie correctly, the victim lived in a busy street in the heart of the town. ‘You’ll let him go now, will you?’

He nodded.

‘And apologise to him?’

He scratched an eyebrow irritably. ‘Don’t push it,’ he warned.

She could see that he was recalling the last time they had met, where her ambivalence about the obligations of the public to cooperate with the police had become apparent. ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘Sorry.’

‘It was a deliberate attack. The lady was in her seventies. She was in her own home, with people walking past on the pavement a few feet away. She must have let him in, which suggests she trusted him. Perhaps he never planned to hurt her, and something went wrong. Whatever his intentions, we don’t want a person like that to escape punishment – wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Of course. Did he rob her? Is that why he did it?’ She remembered Julie’s idea that the killer might have been female. Seemingly the police had no such suspicion.

He smiled tightly and shook his head. ‘No more questions. Get off home now – and be careful.’

She was disappointed. The warning was banal and useless. What did it mean in practice? It was already dark outside, the night set to last for well over twelve hours. A monstrous and determined killer could have his pick of thousands of defenceless women, if that was his wish. No
amount of carefulness would stop him. Windows could be smashed and entrance gained to almost any house, if the will was strong enough. ‘Right,’ she said, and left without a backward look.

It was Wednesday, she reminded herself. Just over two weeks until Christmas. She would indeed write her cards that evening, glad that the old-fashioned habit still persisted, in the face of emails and tweets and other transient means of sending festive cheer to friends. She wanted to enclose letters for five or six old friends, telling them about her new business and giving her impressions of her new home. The Lake District had yet to fully get under her skin, with its multitude of changing views and undiscovered byways. The fells had mutated in the past weeks into mysterious grey shapes looming over the little towns. Out there, she felt, anything could happen. Unwary walkers could disappear for ever, swallowed up by the frothing becks or the bronze clumps of bracken that might somehow encase them like mummies. The near-black stone of the houses seemed to darken in the wintry light, making them look comfortless and unfriendly in the undulating streets. Further north and west, where the hills rose higher and the shelter of trees dwindled away, it seemed to her like a land from a northern fairy tale, where no right-thinking human would venture. Thirlmere, Ullswater, Haweswater – they were all within a day or two’s walk of her home, and yet felt impossibly distant. She could drive to them in under an hour, but seeing them from a car was barely to see them at all. She felt an increasing duty to explore the whole region, aware
that she was privileged to live in a place that the whole world regarded as being of spectacular beauty.

Her father had expressed a vague intention to go with her on some of these walks. He had acquired his own eccentric store of knowledge about the history of the area. He focused on characters that others ignored: Baddeley, Bolton, Christopher North. He could expatiate at length on these and many others, and did so over breakfast served to unresisting guests at the B&B. He sought out little-known corners of lake and forest and showed them to Simmy on the map. But in reality, the weather was never quite right, or he had too much to do in the garden. ‘In the spring,’ he promised. ‘We’ll go and explore Elterwater and Grizedale in the spring.’

‘I’d never heard of either of them until now,’ she admitted. Only a few days later, the funeral of Mrs Kitchener had prompted her to go to Grizedale for a look. She reported back to her father that it was mainly a large forest full of trails for cyclists and a lot of very strange wooden statues. ‘But the church at Rusland is gorgeous,’ she added.

She was, however, increasingly familiar with Ambleside, virtual neighbour of Windermere. Her Troutbeck home was situated between the two, and she welcomed opportunities to walk the smaller lanes in either direction. She had watched the onset of winter on the slopes of Wansfell and considered herself to be well into the early stages of addiction to the landscape surrounding her.

‘Hello again, Helen,’ she wrote to her friend from college. ‘How are things with you? I’ve had a very eventful year, leaving Worcester and starting again in the Lakes. My Windermere shop is up and running, and my little house in
Troutbeck is solid enough to cope with whatever the winter brings – I hope! I’ve made a few new friends here, and got myself involved in a ghastly murder investigation, a couple of months ago. And now there’s been another one – murder, I mean. I’ve just come from the police station, actually. The local detective inspector is an intriguing chap, I must say. I always seem to be arguing with him, which probably isn’t a very good idea. But don’t worry – I’m not planning to see him again. My parents are fit and well, and their B&B is legendary, thanks to my mother’s unusual approach. She lets people bring their dogs and smoke, and tries to stop them watching television – not always successfully of course. Some people are incorrigible addicts. Everybody loves it, and they all keep rebooking, so she must be doing something right. Christmas will be quiet, I expect – just me and Mum and Dad, pulling crackers together. Let me know what’s happening with you.’