The Askham Accusation, page 15
‘Good.’
‘Now, then. I wonder where we should start …’ He tapped his keyboard again using the protruding tips of his left-hand fingers more deftly than Simmy would have believed, chewing his lip and shaking his head. ‘Pity she hasn’t been dead long enough to warrant an obituary.’ He looked up. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but I really think this is one of those times when we’d be much better off going to the village and talking to real people. We could start in the shop, if you don’t like the pub.’
‘Oh dear – are you sure?’ She wondered what time it was. ‘How long is that going to take? There are still some things I haven’t told you. It’s been terribly scrappy up to now. I can’t remember who said what to who. I keep thinking there must be more that Lindsay said on Saturday that I can’t remember. Clues.’
Ben said nothing for about four minutes during which he went on rattling the keyboard and made notes on a pad beside him. He then sat back with a grin. ‘Pauline Parsons had five children, three sons and two daughters. Husband died twenty-five years ago. One son was killed in a farm accident at the age of twenty or thereabouts. A granddaughter called Scarlett currently has some kind of heart trouble and there’s talk of a transplant. And there’s a fund collecting money for her. Three adult grandsons, two brothers, Luke and Kieran, and their cousin Eldon Franklin. I might have missed a few.’
‘Eldon! Did you say Eldon?’
He nodded.
‘There was a man in the pub called Eldon. He was the one most hostile to me and Christopher. He never said he was related to Pauline.’
‘He’s the son of Pauline’s daughter Adela. That’s a nice name.’ He repeated it slowly. ‘It’s always interesting to know what makes people choose certain names, don’t you think?’
Simmy waved this away as irrelevant. ‘And a man called Franklin,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s Eldon’s father.’
‘Obviously. Eldon Franklin works at Askham Hall, by the way. He’s some kind of groundsman, apparently.’
‘I don’t know how you do it all so quickly,’ she marvelled. ‘It’s like magic.’
‘Facebook goes a long way,’ he told her. ‘The electoral register, of course. And one or two local newspaper reports. Instagram often comes up with pictures of the people concerned. It’s all there for the taking. Everybody uploads their entire personal history for the world to see.’
‘I suppose that’s rather sweet, in a way. Innocent. Trusting. And it must be good for raising money for the kid with a bad heart, poor little thing.’
‘She’s not so little. Sixteen, I think. Something like that.’ He consulted his notes. ‘I didn’t write that down.’ Then he shivered. ‘Imagine having a heart transplant! Yuk!’ He put a protective hand over his own heart.
‘Better than dying,’ said Simmy.
‘I guess so. And she’s old enough to decide for herself, anyway.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Simmy reminded herself that to someone of nineteen, sixteen was relatively grown up. ‘It’s really awfully young, for something as massive as that.’ Then she said, ‘We have to follow up on Eldon. If we go to Askham, we should see if we can find him. You might have to defend me, though.’
Ben gave her an amused smile. ‘Why? Because he looked like a murderer?’
‘He did, actually. But he wouldn’t kill his granny, would he? If he lives in the same village, he must have grown up knowing her well. And if he was some sort of criminal already, wouldn’t he be a prime suspect?’
‘Too many unknowns,’ said Ben with a wise look. ‘Eldon doesn’t do Facebook or WhatsApp, but he’s listed by some of the others. Looks as if he’s single and has some sort of small business – maybe he hires himself out to other places, not just the Hall.’
Simmy had a sudden thought. ‘Can you check a man called Howard Isaacs as well? He’s a builder, who knew Humphrey. I can’t help feeling he’s connected somehow. He turned up out of the blue on Monday and gave me some spiel about keeping Humphrey’s business going and wanting photos of what he’d done to our conversion.’
Ben renewed his tapping, which did not look to be very productive. ‘All I can see is an entry on a list of local businesses that says “Isaacs Enterprises”, which could mean anything. Doesn’t appear to be very active.’
‘Some people rely on word of mouth, I suppose. But he struck me as fairly upmarket. Something rather slick about him. I told him he didn’t look like a builder, and I don’t think he liked that very much. But it was true. I told Bonnie about him,’ she added.
‘Could be they advertise under someone else’s name. If he’s the big cheese behind it all, he might well have various smaller outfits under his umbrella, so to speak. They might all have their own listings, which wouldn’t be obviously his. I mean, they’d use their own names and look as if they were independent.’
‘Oh.’ She was even more impressed than before. ‘How do you know all that sort of stuff?’
‘Actually, I got quite a lot from Christopher. I do this sort of thing for him sometimes. Don’t tell him I told you. It’s not always entirely legit. Industrial espionage, you might say.’
Simmy laughed. ‘I definitely don’t want to know, if that’s the case.’
‘It’s great, you know – working for him. No two days are the same.’
‘He says it’s a shame you’re missing the … something Brothers. He says you’ll be sorry about that.’
‘Martin Brothers. I am a bit sad about it, but I can see the things tomorrow. I’m definitely going to be fine by then – if he can drive me. I’ll try and make it easy for him. It’s going to be a real nuisance if it goes on for a month.’
‘He’ll cope,’ said Simmy.
‘So – are we going to Askham, then? It’s eleven o’clock already. We could see if the pub’s open. Isn’t there another one besides the Punchbowl? We could try there if you’re worried about being recognised again.’
‘We should have a proper plan. I don’t want to just stroll aimlessly round the village hoping something jumps out at us. That’s silly. So is going to either of the pubs, really. Why do we have to be there? You’ve got loads of information off the Internet. Isn’t there a better use we can make of the time?’
‘How much time do we have?’
‘Two hours or so. Three at a pinch. I told my mother I’d be back after lunch, which they’ll probably have early, so that means one o’clock or thereabouts. She’s not going to be happy if it goes past two. Robin’s not in a very good mood. They’ll probably be totally frazzled already.’ She sighed, feeling as if she’d behaved unfairly. Other mothers left their offspring with people pretty much all the time, but it still felt wrong to her.
‘It might be useful to speak to Moxon,’ Ben mused. ‘Do we know where he is?’
‘No idea. There’s something going on with him, and he’s obviously not happy about it. I think he’d love to talk to us, if he thought it was off the record. I feel sure he’s got all sorts of things he wants to say and isn’t allowed to.’
‘That’s very peculiar.’
‘Actually, I think you might be right that we’re all being used like pawns in some horrible big game that we don’t understand, including him. Isn’t that what you meant just now? I can’t decide whether I think Lindsay Wilson is in the same boat and somebody’s forcing her to do what she’s doing, or if she’s one of the prime movers. And what about Sophie?’ She moaned helplessly.
‘Why would you be worrying about her?’
‘Christopher thinks she could be at the centre of everything.’
‘Well, I don’t agree. I can’t see that she has anything whatever to do with it.’
Simmy hesitated, not knowing which to believe. ‘I keep seeing her face, and how like Bonnie she is. She must be so sad.’
‘Hm,’ was all Ben said to that.
Simmy kept on with her list of worries. ‘And you mustn’t forget that Bonnie’s going to want you to be there for her.’
He waved this away. ‘Don’t fret about Bonnie. She says she’s got Saturday off. Does that mean you’ll be down at the shop?’
‘I guess so. Me and Tanya.’
‘Which means Christopher will have Robin. And that means nobody will be around to drive me anywhere.’
‘If you can be ready early enough, I could take you with me,’ she offered. Saturday still felt quite a distance away. ‘I could collect you from here at about half past eight.’
‘Great!’ he said, alerting Simmy to the strength of emotion he had been concealing when it came to the needs of his girlfriend. ‘So now we just have to decide what we do next.’
Chapter Fourteen
Ben lived in one room in a house occupied by a couple in their sixties. ‘It’s called “digs”,’ he announced in wonder. ‘Like something from the nineteen-thirties.’
The couple had invited him to share their breakfast but not their other meals. ‘We go out a lot,’ said Mrs Lewis. ‘We like to be spontaneous. There’s two takeaways and a Tesco Express within easy reach. But please don’t eat food in your room. Even the most careful person spills things now and then. You can use our dining area any time you like.’ Ben had declined the offer of breakfast and survived mainly on the lunches he ate at work, since using the designated area was awkward and embarrassing. The lunches came from a mobile catering van, which did hot dogs, sandwiches, sausage rolls and soup. It toured the industrial estate which was home to the auction house. For an evening meal, he mostly cycled to a small supermarket and ate his purchases in the very pleasant park in the centre of Keswick when weather permitted. When it was raining, he hurriedly consumed the food as Mrs Lewis had instructed. Nobody believed that he was eating a healthy diet, but nor could anyone suggest viable methods of improving it, other than including quantities of apples and oranges.
The Lewises did not in fact go out much, but sat in their living room with the television on, or played interminable games of Scrabble, which explained why sitting at their dining table was not to Ben’s liking. It was all part of the same room and he felt like an intruder. Another reason for seldom joining them was the discovery of their taste for soap operas and rom-com films. It was no hardship for someone of his age to spend evenings in his room with his laptop and phone, augmenting his unsatisfactory diet with illicit Mars bars and packets of crisps.
Visitors were expected to call ahead, so that Ben could meet them at the street door. So when someone knocked at five past eleven on a Thursday morning, he assumed it was a parcel delivery for his landlady, and of no significance to him.
‘They’re out, aren’t they?’ said Simmy. ‘Shouldn’t you go and answer it?’
He made no move to do as she suggested, sitting resolutely at the little table that functioned as his desk. ‘They can leave it next door or something.’
‘Ben! That’s awful. Listen – they’re knocking again. I’m going to see who it is.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Ben.
It was Corinne, looking breathless and bad-tempered. ‘Thank Christ,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d come all this way for nothing.’
‘You’re lucky,’ said Simmy. ‘We were just going out. What’s the matter? Have you brought Bonnie with you?’ She peered round the woman for a look.
‘No, of course not. She’s working in your shop, obviously. I told you. Didn’t you get my text? Bonnie’s in a real state, and needs somebody more than just me. All I can do is make soothing noises, which isn’t helping. When I got no response from you, I thought I should try Ben.’
‘Come in and let’s do this properly. Bonnie can’t be as bad as all that if she can work. Ben thinks she’s perfectly all right.’
Corinne gave her a withering stare. ‘I don’t believe you said that. Don’t you understand anything?’
Simmy flushed and led the way upstairs to Ben’s room. She’d known Corinne could be outspoken, with considerable experience of life’s darker corners, but up to that point the two of them had always amicably agreed about almost everything. Bonnie could not have wished for a better foster mother, and it seemed odd that she was apparently panicking now.
‘It’s Corinne,’ she said, pushing Ben’s door open.
‘Hey!’ he said, still not getting up from the table. ‘What brings you here?’
‘What do you think?’ She sat down on the bed.
‘You think Bonnie’s not okay, right?’ He sighed. ‘She said you were overreacting. Listen – she’s not blaming you, if that’s what you think. Not much, anyway. We assume you did know about the Craigs and Bonnie’s dad and everything, but chose not to say anything. Maybe the social people told you not to. I can see it would be hard to find the right moment. And you never had any reason to go to Askham or think about the people there. It’s all right, anyway. She’s basically quite happy about it – so far. The worst bit is wondering about her dad. Is he even still alive? Does anybody know? She wants me to try and find him, but that needs a bit of thought. You hear stories of people rejecting their children all over again – especially men. It doesn’t mean much to some of them whether they’ve got any kids or not. Besides, he might have a dozen others scattered around. I’m inclined to think it might be best just to leave him out. That’s what Bonnie’s wrestling with now. She’s got to do it by herself. She can do that.’ He gave her a kind smile. ‘No need to panic.’
Corinne sniffed. ‘I’m not panicking, as you call it. I just want to explain that I didn’t know it was the Craig man doing Simmy’s conversion. If I’d known that I would have said something. He was always the best person in the whole miserable business. He used to take Bonnie out for the day when she was very small. She remembers him a bit. She called him Uncle Humpie. You think you know better than me how she’s doing, but I can tell you she’s really upset that he’s dead and she never got a chance to know him again. It’s tragic.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Simmy interposed. ‘His death is tragic for everyone. We all feel it.’
‘Bonnie wishes she’d gone to the funeral. She had every right to be there, after all.’
‘That’s true. But it wouldn’t have been a very suitable moment to get to know her cousins, would it? You have to rewrite a lot of history, with any number of “what ifs” and “might have beens” and “if onlys” to make any of it work out. It’s futile. What’s done is done, and you’ve got to take it from here.’ She stopped talking, realising she was parroting her own painful discoveries, following the death of her baby daughter. ‘You know that as well as I do,’ she finished.
Corinne’s head drooped. ‘It was such a shock,’ she muttered. ‘After I’d seen her through a dozen years and more, keeping her going through all that eating business, and never knowing if her bloody mother would show up out of the blue, and getting her to relax with dogs and other kids – the whole package – and now this. She was the hardest of them all, you know. I thought at one point she’d go and die on me. This has brought it all back. I dare say I’m making too much of it.’
‘She’s eighteen now,’ Simmy reminded Corinne. ‘And she’s got Ben. And me. And a job. And you’re still watching out for her. What would she think if she knew you were here, saying all this?’
Corinne gave a weak smile. ‘Good question.’
‘She’d think you weren’t keeping up,’ said Ben. ‘You’re scared she’s going to slide back into how she was at twelve. But she won’t. She’s a different person now.’
‘There’s always going to be setbacks. Tragedies and disappointments, and horrible feelings,’ said Simmy. ‘That’s pretty much the same for everybody, after all.’
‘Yeah,’ sighed Corinne. ‘And there was me thinking my life was going to be all song and dance and smelling the roses from here on.’
Ben and Simmy both laughed. It was only slightly forced.
Corinne stayed almost an hour, making any sort of trip with Ben impossible unless Angie and Russell could be persuaded to keep Robin all afternoon. Simmy made some fairly disgusting instant coffee with powdered milk, thanks to the electric kettle Ben kept in his room. It seemed he was at least allowed to make drinks for himself. ‘Can you do this with your arm in plaster?’ Corinne wondered. ‘How do you get dressed? Or use the computer?’
He waggled the fingers of the affected arm, saying, ‘They work quite well, luckily. I can just manage to oppose finger and thumb, look.’ He demonstrated. ‘As long as I don’t do anything strenuous, it’s okay. The keyboard’s not much of a problem.’ Again he demonstrated. ‘But they’re still quite swollen, so it is a bit awkward.’
‘It just shows,’ said Corinne vaguely. ‘You never know what’s round the corner.’
‘Careful! You sound like Verity,’ said Simmy. ‘Anyway, listen – Bonnie’s having Saturday off. I might take Ben down to yours when I go to the shop. He can stay in Windermere all weekend – his parents might be glad to see him. Then by Monday he’ll probably be able to do a lot more, and we can take it from there.’
‘What about the murder?’ asked Ben. ‘I still want to go to Askham. I want to talk to Moxon and see what the matter with him is.’ He looked at Simmy. ‘Did we say it all – about him, I mean? Have we missed anything?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was having difficulty getting her thoughts away from Bonnie. ‘He won’t talk to me properly. He’s gone all different. I don’t know where I am with him. I expect he’ll explain it all eventually.’
‘Do you get the impression he wants us to stay out of it? That it’s something too nasty and dangerous for us this time?’
‘Possibly.’ She thought about it. ‘I don’t know, really. He doesn’t seem to be a free agent, but I get the feeling he doesn’t dare argue with whoever’s ordering him about.’
Corinne was looking more and more alarmed. ‘You two!’ she scolded. ‘You’ll get yourselves into terrible trouble if you go on like this.’
‘What – worse than having a broken pelvis and being kidnapped?’ said Simmy, referring to two previous occasions where trouble had resulted from getting too close to violent criminals. ‘We know how horrible people can be, believe me.’ She smiled. ‘But you know what? I think the worst moment was when that woman threw the flowers I’d just delivered right across a farmyard. It had nothing to do with anything I’d done, and she lives in Patterdale now. I see her once in a while and she’s nice. But it was a real shock at the time.’
