The Ambleside Alibi: 2 Page 5

  ‘Anthill?’ Simmy echoed.

  ‘She’s called Mrs Anthony, officially, but she’s got a long nose like an anteater, so that’s what we call her.’

  ‘But you said “anthill”, not “anteater”,’ Simmy argued.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said patiently. ‘Makes it less obvious, see? And quicker to say. She’s okay, as a teacher. Eccentric and political – and an atheist. Makes the head nervous, which can’t be bad. Keeps stopping us to make us discuss the play, as if it was English, not drama.’

  ‘When’s it on?’

  ‘End of next week. Friday and Saturday. Dress rehearsal Thursday.’

  ‘Great! I’d love to come,’ said Simmy bravely, wondering how she would feel walking into a big strange school amongst people she’d never met, and sitting on her own in the hall. She hadn’t been inside a school for twenty years or more. ‘What about you, Mel? Will you come with me?’

  Melanie puffed out her cheeks in unambiguous scorn. ‘No thanks! I’ve had enough of that place. I wouldn’t even go if one of our kids was in it.’ She was one of a large, disorganised family, two of her siblings still working their way haphazardly through the education system. Melanie stood out as a major success, compared to the rest of them.

  ‘Wilf’s going,’ said Ben, looking at the ceiling with exaggerated unconcern.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Just saying.’

  Simmy watched in amusement. Melanie had dated Wilf, who was Ben’s older brother, for a short time earlier in the year. Since then she had taken up with Joe Wheeler, a police constable. As far as Simmy could tell, there were ambivalences in the girl’s heart which might yet work to Wilf’s advantage.

  Ben was offered a mug of tea, and while he drank it, he suddenly jerked his head. ‘Oh! I nearly forgot. I saw you last night, coming out of the cop shop. I was in the car with my mum. You looked a bit … dazed.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell him,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I was going to,’ snapped Simmy. And then she did, starting with meeting Mr Kitchener in the café, and finishing with questions about evidence and forensics and police databases.

  Chapter Five

  Ben stayed for over an hour, making Simmy late closing the shop. Melanie stayed too, afraid of missing something. Ben had heard nothing about the murder of the old lady, and was initially slow to take an interest. The incident in which Mr Kitchener had made a disturbance at Nancy Clark’s house and come to the attention of the police finally drew him in. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have taken his prints just for that,’ he asserted. ‘He must have been on file for something else. Something more serious.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Simmy queried. ‘My mother says they’ll grab any excuse to take people’s DNA and so forth. They want everybody in their computers.’

  ‘They definitely wouldn’t have taken his DNA. Besides, there wouldn’t have been time to do a comparison and get the results back, if the murder only happened yesterday morning. If they can be so precise about the time of death, that must mean somebody saw her alive shortly before it happened, and then the body was found pretty quickly afterwards. Leaves a short window, see? That’s why your alibi worked.’

  ‘Yes,’ Simmy agreed thoughtfully. ‘That does make sense.’

  ‘And he wasn’t to know you’d show up so conveniently, was he? I mean, he didn’t engineer it in any way. He was in the café before you – right?’

  ‘Right,’ she confirmed. ‘What are you suggesting? It sounds to me as if the poor man is completely innocent, and it’s lucky for him that I was there. Anything else would be incredibly devious.’

  ‘Premeditated murder is devious,’ Melanie said. ‘And it would include appearing innocent, wouldn’t it? Maybe he got somebody to say they saw Nancy Clark when they didn’t.’

  ‘That would involve an accomplice, which is never a good idea. Was she robbed?’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me very much. Just warned me to be careful, which I took to imply that it was a professional burglar who’d planned the whole thing in advance, targeting women living on their own. I don’t imagine he meant to kill Miss Clark. She must have disturbed him or screamed or something.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like a burglary,’ Melanie said, getting carried away. ‘More like a psychopathic killer, doing it for kicks.’

  ‘Phooey!’ spat Ben in a rare display of contempt. ‘No such creature.’

  ‘What? Of course there is.’

  ‘Okay, then. One person in a hundred million. That makes it vanishingly rare.’ He looked to Simmy for support. ‘Think about it. The risks would be enormous, and for hardly any reward. Even the maddest mad person would have more sense than that.’

  ‘Okay – I didn’t mean it like that exactly. I guess a mad person would just stab people in the street. I was thinking more of someone who would operate to a careful pattern to make the whole thing more fun,’ Melanie amended. She had taken to reading stories about serial killers in recent months.

  ‘That’s a bit closer to reality,’ Ben conceded. ‘Either way, there’s not much point in telling people to be careful. What does that really mean?’

  ‘My conclusion exactly,’ sighed Simmy. ‘It just makes everybody scared for no good reason.’

  ‘Why were you in Ambleside anyway? Delivering flowers, did you say?’

  Simmy nodded. ‘A Mrs Joseph who’s got a long-lost granddaughter, apparently. It was her birthday, and the message said “From a granddaughter you never knew you had”. She said she did know – it was her daughter’s baby, who got adopted at birth. Presumably the girl thought the whole thing was a secret.’

  Ben frowned attentively. ‘How interesting,’ he said. ‘What a mystery! Wasn’t she excited?’

  ‘Seemed a bit cross about it, if anything. I suppose that’s understandable. At that age, you don’t really want strange grandchildren turning up and rocking the boat, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Ben looked blank. ‘I’d have thought it would be thrilling, however old you were. Like finding the missing piece of jigsaw.’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with the murder, anyway. The only imaginable link is you.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ Melanie interposed. ‘Ambleside is a small place. And I happen to know there’s a connection between the Joseph family and the Clarks.’ She gave a complacent smile. ‘Like me to explain?’

  ‘Go on then,’ Simmy encouraged.

  ‘Of course, it might not be the same people at all, but it goes back to sometime after the war, when my gran was about twelve. I was going through her old photos with her on Sunday afternoon, and she was reminiscing about her schooldays. She made me write names and little notes on the backs of the pictures. We didn’t come close to finishing, so I’m going back there this Sunday. It was fun, actually. There was one of her class at school, in Ambleside. Only fifteen kids in the whole class, and she told me about all of them. There was a girl called Penny Clark, and a boy called Matthew Joseph. She remembered him because he was half Jewish, but because it was his father’s side, he wasn’t technically a Jew. He married a girl three years older than himself, which was unusual in those days. That might be your Mrs Joseph. She’d be the right age. Matthew died in an accident when he was sixty or so.’

  ‘I’m amazed you can remember all that,’ Simmy said. ‘But if it’s the same people, why is the Clark girl called Penny and not Nancy?’

  ‘Aha! That’s why I remember it so well. They were twins – Penny and Nancy. But Nancy was very clever and got packed off to a better school after a couple of years with the others. Caused a lot of ill feeling, Gran said. She did some sort of fancy nursing when she left school, which sounds a bit of a disappointment, when she should have been a surgeon or astrophysicist or something. Penny gave up trying to compete and just sat at the back in all the lessons chewing gum and looking out of the window. She married a farmer up in Carlisle and had loads of children.’

  ‘We can find out whether it’s your Mrs Joseph easily enough,’ said
Ben, practically. ‘With that much to go on, we can find out just about anything.’

  Simmy felt oddly fluttery. The central fact of a link between the two elderly women was unnerving. She tried to rationalise it. ‘In a place so small, you could find links between almost anybody,’ she insisted. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘And it isn’t exactly a link, anyway,’ Ben pointed out. ‘In the same class at school sometime in the 1950s hardly constitutes a proper connection, does it?’

  ‘I bet it’s more than the police would ever have worked out, all the same,’ flashed Melanie.

  ‘They wouldn’t be looking, would they? They’re not going to be interested in Mrs Joseph, just because Simmy took her some flowers.’ Ben’s reasonable tone verged on the patronising.

  When annoyed, Melanie’s artificial eye became more noticeable, although the new one – that she had had fitted only six weeks previously – was remarkably convincing. Nonetheless, it could not match its mate for piercing scrutiny of an opponent. Ben put up his hands and apologised. ‘That came out wrong,’ he claimed. ‘Don’t get cross.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she denied.

  ‘That’s enough for now, anyway,’ decreed Simmy, like a mother announcing bedtime. ‘Get off home, will you.’ She often felt as if the youngsters were her surrogate offspring, even though they treated her very much as an equal. Their earlier experience had been traumatic for Ben in particular, but he had recovered within days, boosted by universal praise for the way he had conducted himself.

  ‘Wait,’ Ben resisted. ‘We should check this business about the unknown granddaughter. Do you have any more details? Names of Mrs Joseph’s children?’

  Simmy ransacked her memory. ‘Davida and Nicola,’ she announced with some pride. ‘Mrs Joseph’s daughters. Davida gave up a baby for adoption and Nicola … didn’t, I suppose. You can’t find records for an adoption, can you? Surely that wouldn’t be allowed?’

  Ben gave her a pitying look. ‘There are ways,’ he said mysteriously.

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ Melanie challenged. ‘I think Simmy’s right. They wouldn’t just give out the details to anybody who asked.’

  Ben was on Simmy’s computer before she could stop him. She watched as he brought up the government website pages about adoption and the form to be filled in by a person requesting information. ‘You have to state that you’re the person who was adopted,’ he said. ‘But there’s no identity check, look. You just sign it at the bottom. Anybody could do that, and then say they got it wrong, if there was any bother. After all, everybody thinks they were adopted, don’t they, at some stage. Usually when they’re about fifteen,’ he added loftily.

  ‘Maybe so – but you have to know names and dates and places before you can start to fill in the form. And it’s none of our business,’ Simmy finished forcefully. She elbowed him aside and closed down the computer. ‘Now go home, both of you,’ she repeated. ‘Ben, you must have lines to learn.’

  ‘I know them already,’ he boasted, nonetheless gathering up his school bag and drifting towards the door. ‘See you sometime. You will come to the play, won’t you?’

  Simmy locked up and paused to admire the Christmas lights strung across the dark street and the various imaginative decorations in the shop windows. There was a timeless feel to it all, with the snowflakes and robins and grinning Santas all at their best now daylight had gone. At thirty-eight, she was already noticing how the years flew by, with Christmas coming round far too quickly – and yet every time it felt fresh and genuine, with everyone willing to throw themselves into it. Although Ben’s drama teacher seemed to have badly failed to capture the spirit, if his brief description of the school play was anything to go by. Perhaps it had a redeeming message at the end, with a nod to brotherly love or the turning seasons of the year. She would ask her father, who she faintly recalled had a soft spot for George Bernard Shaw.

  ‘Hello again,’ came a gentle male voice behind her. She spun round, alarmed. In that fraction of a second, she had time to assure herself that there were still a few people on the pavements, that she was in no danger from whoever it was, that she could scream if she had to.

  When she recognised the potter, Ninian Tripp, she felt ashamed of her stupid fear. ‘Oh – hello,’ she smiled.

  ‘Did I startle you?’ The very softness of his voice was what had done it, she realised. Almost a whisper, it carried hints of secrecy and unsettling undercurrents. If he had boomed out his welcome, she would have found him much less unnerving.

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘I was thinking about Christmas.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said, with a sad expression. ‘Lots of family to go to, I suppose?’

  ‘Just my parents. How about you?’

  ‘They exist, but I won’t be seeing them. It took a long time, but we finally came to the position where we all know we’re best off apart.’

  She sifted this convoluted statement with a little frown. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a total failure on all sides. After years of therapy, we still can’t abide each other. The best we can manage is to agree that it’s really nobody’s fault.’

  Simmy belatedly remembered Julie’s remark about a breakdown. The man appeared to be more than confirming the truth of this now. She imagined a schizophrenic outburst at the age of nineteen, where he ran at his mother with a knife or bashed his father with a hammer. His current gentleness was probably the result of medication. She guessed him to be about forty, probably never properly employed, in and out of mental hospitals or inadequately supervised in the community. Then, looking at him again, she discarded all these automatic stereotypes and experienced a sudden wish to know the real story.

  ‘So, what do you do – on Christmas Day, I mean?’

  He lifted one shoulder in a boyish show of unconcern. ‘Nothing much. Just carry on as usual, if I can. There’s always something to be fired, or glazed, or a new pattern to play with. I do tiles mainly – did I mention that?’

  ‘No, but I heard about it on the grapevine. What sort of tiles? I mean, for bathrooms or kitchens, or what?’

  He laughed. ‘Anywhere you like. In Portugal they put them on the outside of their houses. They’re mad about tiles over there. And there’s always floors, of course.’

  Simmy had never taken much interest in home decorating, although as a florist she knew she ought to think about it rather more than she did. Flowers were part of the whole business, after all. She found herself picturing a kitchen floor covered with ceramic tiles on which were painted roses and tulips. It really wouldn’t work, she decided.

  ‘And you do pots,’ she reminded him. ‘Vases.’

  ‘A new line,’ he nodded. ‘Can I bring you some in? How about tomorrow? You did say I could.’

  She couldn’t remember exactly how she had left it with him the day before, but it all seemed to be moving rather rapidly. They’d been interrupted by Mrs Weaver, and then Julie had turned up, quickly followed by DI Moxon, and the vases had been forgotten. ‘Did I?’ she said.

  He pouted reproachfully. ‘Have you forgotten?’

  ‘Not entirely. Yes, bring me some nice big ones. Maybe someone will get one for a Christmas present. You never know.’

  ‘Thanks! I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And he walked away, with an uncoordinated gait that reminded her oddly of Mr Kitchener.

  Chapter Six

  Friday morning was generally not one of Melanie’s days at the shop. Her college course in hotel management included a busy timetable of lectures and tutorials on that day. The end of term also fell on this particular Friday, with none of the whirl of excitement and relaxation of schedules that Simmy remembered. ‘There’s a lecture in the morning, and a meeting with one of the lecturers after lunch. He’s going to give us the project for next term,’ she told Simmy. ‘And talk over our progress so far.’

  ‘You’ve got good marks, haven’t you?’ Simmy had occasionally helped with a piece of coursework, noticing with some
concern the girl’s shaky grasp of spelling and punctuation. At the same time, Melanie showed real determination to do well, regarding the eventual qualification as a reliable route out of the limited world inhabited by her family.

  ‘Pretty good,’ had been the modest response.

  So Simmy juggled unaided with two new orders, five customers, decisions about the wholesale delivery and a fresh display in the window for the weekend. Every time the shop doorbell rang, she expected to see the detective inspector, or Mr Kitchener, or someone accusing her of getting something wrong. She felt jumpy and defensive, but unable at first to account for these feelings. She couldn’t readily identify any cause for guilt, other than the very vaguest sense that she had overstepped a mark with Mrs Joseph on Wednesday by asking too many questions. This led to a slow realisation that she had stepped across it even further by telling Melanie and Ben about the unknown granddaughter. She had betrayed a confidence, and at the time never even noticed. The fact that an old lady had been murdered in the same small town had somehow lifted the prohibition against talking about customers’ personal business – and that was senseless. No wonder she felt so uneasy, she told herself, having finally niggled out the reason for it. If Mrs Joseph had heard the three of them, the previous afternoon, she would inevitably have been upset. Simmy had carelessly broken her own moral code, and deserved to suffer for it.

  She was still reproaching herself at half past ten, when the fifth customer came in. It was Wilf Harkness, brother to Ben and one-time boyfriend of Melanie. Simmy had barely met him, and had to think for a moment before she could remember who he was. ‘Hi,’ she said cautiously, thinking it might be better to pretend ignorance, at least to start with.

  He looked past her to the back of the shop. ‘Is Melanie here?’ he asked.

  ‘Not on a Friday. She’s got lectures.’