The Grasmere Grudge Read online

  She had not told Bonnie about the proposal, she realised. Nor had she told her parents the news when she phoned them. Did that mean she had yet to believe it was real? Or was she apprehensive as to the reactions she would get? Her mother had been friendly with Chris’s mother, both women claiming to want their offspring to form a couple. Yet when this had almost happened, over twenty years before, the parents had panicked and taken action to separate them. They were too young and inexperienced. They didn’t know their own minds. And neither of the fathers had seemed to approve of the prospect very much at all.

  Everything would be better in the morning, she assured herself. A quick check of the weather forecast revealed light cloud but no rain. She would share with Bonnie almost everything that had happened since she got back from the holiday and pay a belated visit to her parents at Beck View. She would commiserate with Ben over his unprecedented encounter with failure.

  And she might even ask him to help her understand just what had been going on in Grasmere and Keswick, between men who bought and sold valuable antiques, and harboured serious grudges against each other.

  Chapter Six

  Then, on Tuesday, somehow all her resolutions fell to dust. A hotel called and asked for a number of floral displays at short notice. A bride in a hurry wanted a hall decorated for her wedding reception. Two funeral tributes and a golden wedding anniversary added to Simmy’s tasks, and completely filled the day. She spent nearly all of it in her small back room, constructing the sprays, making notes for the hotel job and listing all the fresh blooms she would need to order for the rest of the week. Bonnie handled customers and phone calls, and they barely had a moment to speak to each other.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see my parents,’ said Simmy, at four o’clock. ‘I can’t leave them any longer. We’ll be closing on the dot of five today, whatever happens. How’s Ben?’ she added as an after-thought.

  ‘He was going to come in today, but I texted to say we were too busy. It’s not been like this for ages, has it? That hotel’s pushing it, wanting everything so quickly.’

  ‘They are, but it’s better than not wanting anything at all. If I get it right, it might be a regular order, all through the summer. Like the one last year in Hawkshead, and a lot closer.’

  ‘Should be easier tomorrow,’ said Bonnie, ever optimistic. ‘I’ll tell Ben he can drop in after lunch to see you.’

  ‘There was a murder yesterday in Grasmere,’ said Simmy. ‘I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it. Chris found the body. It’s a friend of his.’

  But before she could say any more, a customer came in, hoping for a lavish bouquet, made on the spot. ‘Give me twenty minutes,’ said Simmy, returning to her airless workroom with an armful of lilies, tulips and rosebuds. She could hear Bonnie making idle conversation while the man waited.

  Finally, they were alone again and Bonnie exploded with pent-up curiosity. ‘Who got killed? Do they know who did it? Is Moxon investigating? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

  ‘It’s all very confusing. I was right there, delivering those baby flowers. Except, I still don’t understand the timing properly. The woman with the baby was in such a state, I stayed with her for nearly two hours. It’s an awful baby – cries all the time. Except, when I held her, she was fine. The poor woman was dreadfully stressed out.’

  ‘Isn’t there a father?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s busy with work. I got the feeling he can’t stand the atmosphere.’

  ‘Selfish pig. It’ll be his fault there is an atmosphere in the first place.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Simmy, impressed for the thousandth time by Bonnie’s insight. ‘Anyway, Chris sent a text and I didn’t see it until it was too late. The police took him to Penrith, leaving his car in Grasmere.’

  ‘That was stupid.’

  ‘I know. His sister Hannah took him back for it, when he couldn’t reach me.’

  ‘But who was he? The murdered man?’

  Simmy looked at the time display on her computer. ‘I can’t tell you all of it now. After I’ve been to Beck View, I’ll phone Chris and see if he can explain it any better. And then tomorrow I can fill you in.’

  Bonnie sighed happily. ‘Ben’s going to be so thrilled. Let’s hope it’s seriously complicated.’

  Angie and Russell were on better form than Simmy had feared. She found her father laying tables for the next morning, humming a tune and wearing a colourful summer shirt. The front door had been unlocked, which was a great improvement over the past several months. ‘Hi, Dad,’ Simmy called from the doorway. ‘Busy, I see.’

  ‘Standing room only,’ he returned. ‘Your mother’s been muttering about making people book a time for their breakfast. Apparently, they’re all doing that now.’

  ‘Seems a shame.’

  ‘That’s what I said. Liberty Hall – that’s us. They can lie in bed as long as they want to, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘What about the ones who want to see the sun rise from the top of Wansfell?’

  ‘They don’t get their sausages. We give them a packed lunch instead. You know that,’ he reproached her.

  ‘I thought you might have changed it.’ The truth was that she was rather unsubtly testing him. His mental competence waxed and waned unpredictably, with spells where he scarcely seemed to understand that there were any guests in the house at all.

  ‘No, you didn’t. You wanted to check my marbles.’ He laughed at her. ‘I can see right through you, Simmy Straw.’

  ‘Brown,’ she corrected – and then giggled self-consciously. ‘Soon to be Henderson, as it happens.’

  ‘Good God!’ he stared at her. ‘The man’s going to marry you, is he?’

  ‘He proposed at the weekend.’

  ‘As the sun was rising over the romantic volcanic coast, with Africa just beyond the horizon,’ he sighed. ‘I can see the whole thing.’

  ‘Actually, he waited until we’d got home again. It was on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Troutbeck.’

  ‘Disgusting!’ he asserted. ‘That boy never did have any sense of timing. Always late, or in the wrong place. Are you sure you want to spend a lifetime with a man like that?’

  ‘I am, Dad,’ she said softly.

  ‘Oh, well. Nobody’s perfect,’ said Russell with a shrug. ‘Your mother’s in for a surprise. She thought it would never happen.’

  ‘It’s a pity about Frances. She and Mum would have competed for the credit.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Russell. Frances was Christopher’s mother, who had died the previous year, in her early sixties. ‘I think you might be somewhat out of date on that topic.’

  ‘Oh? What does that mean?’

  ‘Not for me to say.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting she isn’t going to like it, are you? She thinks Christopher’s great, surely? She’s never said a word against him to me.’

  He put a finger to his lips. ‘Hush, girl! Let her speak for herself. Ange!’ He raised his voice. ‘Where are you, woman?’

  Girl? Woman? This was a new idiom since she had last seen him. ‘She won’t like being called “woman”,’ she warned him.

  ‘She doesn’t mind. It’s meant fondly.’

  Simmy’s mother was heard coming down the short passageway to the dining room. ‘Here I am, my lord,’ she said. ‘Oh, P’simmon! How long have you been here?’

  ‘Ten minutes or so.’

  ‘She brings tidings,’ said Russell.

  Angie looked at her daughter. ‘Had a good holiday, then?’ she said. ‘There was some story about a rare old embroidery fetching a huge amount of money at the Keswick auction, while you were away. Christopher must have heard about it by now. Or was he following it from his phone, on the beach?’

  ‘We left our phones at home.’

  ‘How very sensible. So that’s not the news, then. The commission must be substantial. He’ll be excited when he hears.’

  ‘That’s not the news,’ said Russell impatiently.

  ‘He’
s asked me to marry him,’ said Simmy quickly. ‘And I said yes.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Can’t pretend it’s a surprise. That means you’ll be moving house, then? What about the shop?’

  ‘All that comes after you offer congratulations and good wishes for my happiness.’

  ‘You’ll be happy enough without my wishing it. And the practice of offering congratulations has always struck me as a trifle tactless. Even mildly offensive, when you think about it. Like applauding an angler for landing a big fat fish.’

  ‘So, you don’t object?’

  ‘You’re nearly forty, for heaven’s sake! What difference would my objections make? But no – I think it’s quite nice news, actually. Excellent timing, for once. When’s the wedding?’

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ Russell suddenly asked, his face galvanised with excitement. ‘Is that the real news?’

  Simmy flushed. ‘I doubt it,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘But you want to be!’ he triumphed. ‘Hallelujah!’

  ‘We haven’t set a date or anything,’ Simmy told her mother. ‘The idea is to live somewhere halfway between here and Keswick and carry on with work as it is now.’

  ‘The only place that fits that requirement is Grasmere,’ said Russell. ‘Or some tiny fellside settlement like Rosthwaite, and that’s much closer to Keswick.’ His knowledge of the Lake District was prodigious, as hundreds of B&B guests had discovered. ‘Grasmere’s not bad,’ he said grudgingly. ‘If you like that sort of thing. They’ve gone overboard on the Great Man, of course, and you never saw so many tea rooms in your life.’

  ‘I was there last night – or very close by,’ said Simmy. ‘Delivering flowers.’

  ‘Rather outside your usual patch, surely?’

  ‘I know. I think it was a bit of an accident. The person sending them must have just found me at random, on the Internet.’

  ‘It’s been frantic here,’ said Angie, with a martyred sigh.

  ‘No worse than usual,’ her husband argued. ‘And I’ve been helping, haven’t I?’

  Simmy headed off the predictable rant that this sort of remark always provoked. Helping was a buzzword with Angie, implying as it did that she was the one with all the responsibility. She would range from sarcastic (‘And there was me thinking we were partners’) to the outright furious.

  ‘Well, I’m here now. I bet there’s a lot of ironing waiting for me,’ said Simmy quickly.

  ‘I did it,’ said Russell smugly.

  ‘There’s not much to do at the moment,’ Angie admitted. ‘They’ve all been here a night or two already, so no need for new sheets and towels.’ She took her daughter’s hand in a startling display of affection. ‘It’s lovely about you and Christopher. I’m happy for you. I just hope it’s not going to be a proper wedding. I can’t bear to go through all that again. Every time I try to imagine myself as the bride’s mother, I think of Charlotte Rampling in Melancholia.’

  ‘That’s you, all right,’ said Russell, with feeling. Angie had been even more of a curmudgeon than usual at Simmy’s wedding to Tony, drinking too much and making critical remarks about the Brown relatives.

  She stayed an hour at Beck View, finding a few small tasks such as tidying the downstairs room that was full of games and old saggy furniture and spare clothing, designed for guests to use on days when even the most intrepid would not venture outside. She played with her father’s long-suffering Lakeland terrier, taking him into the modest garden and throwing a ball a few times. It was a calming interlude, where emotions were in abeyance and she had nothing urgent to think about. Her mother’s grudging words had been taken without umbrage, and her father’s good humour and clarity had come as a relief. As far as this little part of the world was concerned, everything seemed quite all right.

  Chapter Seven

  Once again in Troutbeck, things felt rather different. She had given Christopher all too little thought throughout the day, and now these thoughts seemed to be banked up, pushing against a flimsy wall that was about to give way. Something very strange had taken place the previous day and he had not given her as much information as he might have. And he had not treated her as his closest and most beloved other. This must be rectified. So she phoned him.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, in response. ‘I was just going to call you. I had the phone in my hand already.’

  She pushed away the tiny voice that asked itself whether this was true. ‘How are you? I mean – what’s been happening about Jonathan? The suspense is killing me.’

  His laugh contained something like disbelief. ‘Why should you worry about it? You never even met him. Anyway, nothing else has happened about that today. It’s been bedlam at work. Nobody’s done half what they should have, while I was away. We’ve got a sale on Saturday, and the catalogue’s never going to be ready in time. The press are here as well, getting in the way.’

  ‘Because of the murder?’

  ‘What? No, of course not, you idiot. Because of that stumpwork thing that sold so well last week. I missed the actual sale, if you remember, on account of being at Manchester airport with you. It was all anyone could talk about yesterday morning when I got to work. It went for fourteen thousand quid. Made a big splash. It’s been on the news. They’re all nagging us to tell them who the vendor was, and how he got hold of the thing. There’s been a few rumours, which caught their attention.’

  ‘What is stumpwork?’

  ‘Jacobean embroidery, in a kind of 3D effect – usually biblical subject matter. Highly sought-after. This one’s been kept wrapped up, so the colours are fabulous.’

  ‘So, who was the vendor?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to say, but it’s sure to get out eventually. And then the shit will hit the fan, to coin a phrase.’ He paused, while Simmy said nothing. ‘The truth is, it was Jonathan. He picked it up for peanuts somewhere – never did tell us where. Must have been some house clearance job, I reckon, or maybe a car boot sale.’

  Simmy’s heart started thumping. ‘My God, Chris! Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? What if Jonathan got it illegally? Don’t you have to check for legal ownership before you sell something? Do the police know he was the vendor? Isn’t that the obvious reason why he was killed? Somebody wanting the thing back – or—’

  ‘Or what? How does that work? What would be the point?’

  Her mind was working fast. ‘The money! They’d be after the money.’

  ‘Which he hadn’t been paid yet. He would have got it at the end of this week. That had nothing to do with him being killed. There’s no way the thing could have made anybody want to kill him. Even if somebody begrudged him the profit, that’s not grounds for killing him, is it?’ He sounded almost frantic in his effort to convince her.

  ‘It might be,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Look, Chris, Ben’s at a loose end now. Bonnie’s going to tell him about Jonathan, and he’ll be checking it all out online as we speak. He’s going to want to ask you all about it. He was already keen to come to one of your auctions and see how it all works behind the scenes. If he thinks there’s anything that links the murder to your work, he’ll be all over you. I won’t be able to stop him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Christopher slowly. ‘So why did you tell Bonnie about it, then? They’d never have known there’d even been a murder if you’d kept quiet – would they?’ He sounded angry. Cold and hard and angry.

  ‘It never occurred to me not to,’ she said frankly. ‘I’m not good at keeping secrets. It will have been on the news, anyway, and Ben would spot it right away. What are you so cross about? I thought you’d be glad to let them get involved.’

  ‘How could you think that? Didn’t I make it plain last night that I very much dislike being under the scrutiny of the police, for any reason? It’s bad for the business and is extremely unpleasant for me personally. Jonathan was never exactly a close mate of mine, to tell you the truth. I don’t know why the bloody fool came to me for help in the first place. I was an idiot to listen to him. He must have thought I co
uld sort Nick out for him. Now Nick’s going to be gunning for me, because I had to mention his name to the cops.’

  Simmy gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the obvious change of emphasis, along with a sense that the story had somehow changed. ‘Ben can help with that, if you explain it to him.’

  ‘How? How can he? Tell me that.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the way this is going. Two days ago, you asked me to marry you – remember? That presupposes that we’re on the same side in everything that matters. It implies things like love and sharing and commitment, and all those big words. It requires us to be in a relationship that comes before everything else. For the past five minutes, you haven’t sounded as if that means very much to you at all.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, with panic in his voice. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s the phone – nothing comes across properly. I’m in a flap, to be honest. And you seem so far away,’ he finished pathetically. ‘I really wish I hadn’t missed you last night.’

  ‘That was partly my fault,’ she conceded, feeling slightly better. ‘And I know the situation isn’t ideal. Things are busy for me, as well. There was a flood of orders today, which are going to keep me at it all week. It looks as if we’re both fully occupied until Sunday. I was hoping to be at your auction on Saturday, remember? I’m not sure how I’ll make it, now.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘But we can’t go on like this, can we? If we lived together in Grasmere or somewhere, we’d come together every evening. See each other every morning. There’d be all the time we need to talk and share and all that stuff.’

  ‘I know. We should do it now. Quick as we can. If you want to.’

  ‘I want to – but it could take six months for you to sell that house. You might lose on it, only being there a few years. You realise I’m practically a pauper, don’t you? Nothing to sell. No savings. A battered old Volvo is all I’ve got to my name.’