The Borrowdale Body, page 18
He had forgotten for the moment how infrequently Bonnie had been to the northern reaches of the region, leaving her unsure of how everything worked – so many people she hadn’t met, conversations she had missed out on. Given their detailed explorations of areas around Hawkshead and Grasmere, this was difficult for him to fully appreciate. He cocked his head at her, wondering what she was thinking. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But what can we do about it?’
She stared at the floor for a few seconds, groping for an honest answer. ‘Nothing, I suppose. It’s okay most of the time – until I stop to really think about it. All the interesting things are happening up here these days and I’m always going to be left out.’
He put a hand on her arm. ‘No, you’re not. You’re here now, aren’t you? Besides, I can never keep up with things in Hartsop or Troutbeck, either, especially in the summer when the roads are so slow. And, basically, everywhere around here is a long way from everywhere else.’
‘Yes, well, I’m here now,’ she agreed with a brave smile. ‘And we’ve got until about nine o’clock this evening to get everything sorted.’
‘Why nine o’clock?’
‘That’s when you’ve got to take me back to Windermere. I’m not staying another night in your horrible digs.’
‘Oh,’ said Ben.
Detective Superintendent Price was true to his word and texted Ben at half past three. ‘Identity confirmed. Please come back.’
‘Like an old-fashioned telegram,’ said Ben happily. ‘Come on, then.’
The next three hours were busy, confused, frustrating and finally exhilarating. A man’s body was almost miraculously discovered wedged between two large rocks some distance from the River Derwent merged into the lake of the same name.
Chapter Eighteen
In Threlkeld, Mr and Mrs Straw were harmoniously discussing recent events. Angie had done her best to stay clear of it all, but her will had wilted in the face of her husband’s eager report of the morning.
‘Poor Christopher!’ they kept sighing, turn and turn about.
‘We can’t just ignore it all and leave it to sort itself out,’ said Russell.
‘Which you have not in any way been doing,’ she reminded him. ‘First you go in a huddle with Persimmon in the kitchen for ages and then you actually go with them to the very scene of the crime. How much more involved do you want to be?’
‘I know. But nothing became the slightest bit clearer as a result. It was a complete waste of time, in fact. The only good thing is that I think I do have all the facts now. Although there are so many of them, I might be missing something. There’s a new person shown up a day or so ago that I’m not sure about. But it strikes me that we ought to be much more focused on the woman who was unambiguously murdered, and not the mysterious dead man who died before her.’
‘Because she must have killed him?’
Russell blinked. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It would make her extraordinarily devious, given how she was with Christopher on Wednesday.’
‘Women are devious. You know that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So talk it through, a step at a time. I’ll sit here and listen. Should I make notes?’
‘Wouldn’t hurt.’
They started in good earnest, with Jennifer Reade’s last words and what they might imply. This diverted into the new information gleaned at High Gates about the two men who witnessed these words.
‘They came all the way down from the Slate Museum just to gawp at the house,’ he sighed. ‘Some people!’
‘Returning to the scene of the crime, do you think?’
‘Probably not. I’m never convinced that people really do that. And they weren’t the witnesses themselves, just people who knew them. I think.’ He shook his head. ‘Now I’ve got it in a muddle. It was difficult to follow everything with the baby and the dog, and the five of us. People talking over each other and Christopher having the vapours.’
‘Lucky I didn’t go, then.’
‘You didn’t miss anything, really. The house is handsome but depressing. Nothing like as appealing as Borrowdale Gates – if you remember that?’
‘I don’t. But I did read The Herries Chronicles in my teens, and have quite a vivid impression of it all. Nobody seems to remember poor old Hugh Walpole now.’
‘And yet he lived right there. He almost certainly visited that very house. Sir John’s old dad was probably his chum. It’s tempting to try and fit him into the story somehow.’
‘How about there was a priceless original manuscript of one of his books and Jennifer Reade found it?’
Russell pushed out his lips, considering the question. ‘For one thing, I doubt poor old Hugh’s manuscripts would be worth much now. But it’s a thought. Especially with that missing printer in the mix. That could imply something about manuscripts, I suppose. And Ben burbled a whole lot about incunabula on the bus from Keswick. He thought he’d found a kind of link or clue, but he wasn’t very clear.’
‘Incunabula? Aren’t they zombies or something?’
‘My dear woman – where have you been? How can you be so ignorant?’
‘I do apologise. Please enlighten me.’
He proceeded to do so at some length and with great enjoyment. ‘They sold some in one of the auctions earlier this year. They’re very collectable, but not massively valuable. I wouldn’t imagine they were grounds for murder. And how in the world could we make it fit the facts?’
‘I’m writing it down, all the same,’ said Angie. ‘I like the sound of it.’
‘It is rather romantic,’ he agreed with a smile.
‘Is all this just a repeat of what you and Simmy were saying yesterday?’
‘No. Not at all. That was mostly about the body and how it was probably a vagrant, and how the person who killed Jennifer Reade had perhaps come back for some reason and she interrupted them. Plus, we talked about how the woman refused to have a phone or anything else electronic.’
‘Really?’ Angie’s eyes shone. ‘How old did you say she was?’
‘Thirties, I think. Yes, really. Simmy thinks she could still be alive if she’d been able to phone for help when she was attacked.’
‘Pooh!’ said Angie, not very convincingly. ‘It would take forever for an ambulance to get there. She did the best thing she could, crawling out into the road as she did. Do we know the nature of her injuries?’
‘Not exactly. Cudgelled rather than shot or stabbed, I believe.’
‘It has to be important, though, don’t you think? It shows what sort of a person she was. Strong-minded. Independent.’
‘Eccentric.’
‘Resourceful.’
‘Or just plain crazy,’ Russell finished with a sigh. ‘How did she manage her money? Or train tickets? Or …’
‘People do, you know. They use cheques and landlines and maps and do their tax returns on paper. A dwindling minority, admittedly, but none the worse for that. It could yet happen that they’ll turn out to be the clever ones, if somebody manages to nobble the Internet. I have to say I rather look forward to that.’
‘It’s never going to happen, but it’s nice to dream. We’d probably be sorry if it ever did come true. We’d be back to the Dark Ages, only worse.’
‘The people of Borrowdale would survive, I’m sure. It’s all there in Walpole’s books. The living up there’s never been easy.’
Russell mused for a few moments. ‘Do you think we should find out more about Sir John Hickory? This is very likely to be all about him, after all. Secrets. Discoveries. Connections. All that sort of stuff. Maybe the Reade woman knew more about him than she admitted, right from the start.’
‘Maybe she even killed him,’ said Angie again.
‘You’ve really got it in for that poor girl, haven’t you?’
‘Not at all. I just wish she hadn’t managed to stop poor Christopher’s sale. We mustn’t forget what a blow that’s been. He doesn’t know where he is, and it obviously matters enormously. All those priceless things hanging in limbo. They could get stolen or destroyed in a fire – or anything.’
‘They’ll be insured,’ said Russell vaguely.
‘I doubt it – nobody knows who they rightfully belong to, do they?’
‘Good point. Even the house sale might not have been finalised, without Ms Reade to sign all the papers.’
‘How funny if it ends up in the hands of the National Trust.’ Angie was no great fan of that organisation, ever since she got chastised for proceeding around a stately home in the other direction from that indicated by the large authoritative arrows.
‘That’s not going to happen. There’s this man from India poised to take it all over. Simmy met him yesterday. The solicitors will be getting the paperwork in order as we speak. We all think he’s the prime suspect, except he didn’t land in this country until after Jennifer Reade was killed.’
‘So he paid somebody to do it for him.’
Russell nodded. ‘Maybe he did. But who? Paid assassins are notoriously difficult to catch.’
Angie looked at him from over her glasses. ‘Is that really true? Did anyone tell you that?’
He bowed his head. ‘No – but it’s in all the books. Seems reasonable, though, don’t you think?’
‘Should I write it down? “Man from India paid the killer, so he could have the whole estate”?’
‘With a question mark beside it,’ he nodded.
‘We’ve got a whole lot of ideas and connections now. It’s really coming along,’ she boasted. ‘Do you think we’ve come up with anything new? What should we do with it when we’ve finished?’
‘I expect we should go over to Hartsop with it. After supper, maybe. They’ll be doing the same sort of thing, I shouldn’t wonder, and we can all pool our findings again like we did yesterday, and Ben can make one of his dossiers and then show it to the Moxon man, and between us we might make some headway. Except,’ he paused and drooped a little, ‘we won’t have a smidgeon of evidence for any of it, will we?’
‘I seem to remember it’s acceptable to first form a hypothesis and then seek out supporting evidence. In a case like this, what other option is there?’
He gave her an admiring look. ‘I thought you wanted to stay out of it this time, and now see how engaged you are. It’s a joy to see.’
‘Never mind that.’ Angie was brisk again. ‘We’re not done yet. Now – let’s get into details. Did Jennifer Reade know about this person from India? If she didn’t use a phone, she could hardly have been told anything while she was in Borrowdale. The house won’t have a landline and I bet there isn’t a working phone box for miles.’
‘Unless a person came to tell her face to face.’
‘Right! A person who then killed her.’
‘Because?’
‘Well, because there was going to be a tremendous fight for Sir John’s estate, of course. Do we know what the law of inheritance would have said about it?’
‘I assume that if they were both in the same generation, going back to old Grandpa Hickory or even further back than him, they’d have to share it fifty-fifty. That’d leave them both millionaires, pretty well, so not much cause for complaint.’
‘Do they both go back to Grandpa, though? How?’
‘No idea,’ Russell admitted. ‘But Ben has it all at his fingertips. So does Christopher, I presume.’
‘Anyway, that’s all easily discovered, and probably counts as evidence. It would explain why the sale had to be stopped, as well.’
‘Hmm. I’ve been thinking that there must have been one specific item amongst the lots that hadn’t been properly valued, because nobody in the saleroom recognised it for what it was. Which brings us back to incunabula – or would, but Ben doesn’t think there’s anything that could possibly come under that heading.’
‘I thought they’d shipped in experts, to avoid anything like that?’
‘They did. And it’s pretty hard to imagine any single object worth so much that a person would kill over it.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? It involves reputations and obsessions and rivalries.’ She nibbled her pencil. ‘Collectors get absolutely insane over this sort of thing. If there was an object that filled a gap, made their collection complete, they might be tempted to kill to get it.’
‘We’re drifting away from details again,’ he pointed out. ‘Not to mention our quest for evidence.’
‘There’s no harm in coming up with theories,’ she insisted. ‘Haven’t we already decided that?’
‘Simmy calls it brainstorming. And you’re right, of course. I’m just finding it all a bit exhausting. If you’d shown an interest from the start, I wouldn’t have to fill you in with all these details now.’
‘Stick at it,’ she urged. ‘What else did Ben say about these incunabulas?’
‘That’s not a word. It’s already plural. The singular is incunabulum.’
‘Russell …’ she said warningly.
‘Sorry. He said they sold some to a person in Wiltshire, some months back, and Jennifer Reade lived in Swindon, which is Wiltshire, and he thought there could well be a connection.’
She wrote it down. ‘And is he following that up? Has he told the police?’
‘I have no idea, but I imagine he’s going to, if he hasn’t already.’
‘You’re right that we all have to get together and make sure we’re not duplicating efforts, and all hitting the same brick wall. With any luck, we’ll have come up with a lot of different ideas, which make a logical picture when they’re all combined. Are Ben and Bonnie in Hartsop now?’
‘Who knows? They stayed in Grange when we all came back to Keswick. They could still be there – although that seems unlikely. Whatever they’re doing, it won’t occur to them to tell us about it.’
‘Don’t be bitter. We’ve never been part of their amateur detection gang, have we?’
‘Well … I was pretty much involved in Askham,’ he demurred. ‘I was right there with Simmy, when we talked to that man.’ He drifted into a momentary reverie, recalling the brief time when he and Simmy were a team. ‘But I suppose you’re right, when it comes down to it.’
‘What time is it?’ she asked suddenly. Their living room did not contain a clock, since they decided that retirement should be sufficiently relaxed that there was never a need to know the precise time. In reality, this led to frequent frustration.
‘Must be time for some tea,’ he said. ‘My guess is that it’s well past five by now.’ He got up and went into the kitchen where there were two clocks. ‘Five twenty-five,’ he called back, pleased with his accurate guess.
‘I’m putting the news on, then. Local radio might have something about Borrowdale at half past. You never know.’
Russell brewed tea and was back in time to listen to the headlines.
‘There is breaking news of renewed police activity in Grange-in-Borrowdale, believed to be in association with the recent murder of an heiress to the Hickory Estate,’ lumbered the newsreader. ‘No formal statement has been made, but a witness has informed us that it seems as if in the last few minutes preparations are being made for the dragging of the River Derwent. Many questions remain to be answered.’
‘You can say that again,’ Russell remarked. ‘I detect the hand of young Ben Harkness, if I’m not very much mistaken.’
Angie laughed. ‘You mean he and Bonnie found the dead man from the cellar? In the river? Amazing!’
‘Well, it sounds as if they found something. Enough to get the police sufficiently interested to send the divers in. I doubt if there’s need for actual dragging. That’s a major operation. I’ll phone them and see.’
‘Who exactly?’
Russell paused. ‘Simmy, I suppose. She’ll know what’s been going on.’
But Simmy had no idea. She was completely bemused. ‘We haven’t had the telly or radio on,’ she said. ‘We’ve been far too busy. It’s all happening over here. Too much to explain.’
‘Well. It’s all happening even more up at Borrowdale. It’s in the news.’
He tried to summarise what he had heard, but Simmy cut him off.
‘I can’t cope with any more now,’ she pleaded. ‘I know it’s bad of me, and I will want to know everything when I’ve got a bit of space. It does sound important, but so is what went on here this afternoon.’
‘We need to pool our findings,’ said Russell ponderously.
‘Yes, Dad, I know. And we need Ben and Bonnie as well.’
‘Can we come over, then? We need to hear it all from each other. And where are Ben and Bonnie now?’
His daughter made a moaning noise, as if about to drown. She ignored the last question and focused on the first. ‘I suppose you can come. There’s never any escape, is there? Wait until we’ve got Robin to bed, okay? I’ll take him a bit early. Should be free by about seven o’clock – and don’t expect any food.’
‘It’s a date,’ said Russell. ‘What about Ben and Bonnie?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. I have absolutely no idea.’
Angie surprised him by saying, ‘Don’t include me in all this,’ when he’d ended the call. ‘I’ve done my part. I do want to know how it turns out, obviously, and it was fun getting it all down on paper, but I don’t fancy sitting around half the night with all you amateur detectives talking at once. It’d give me a headache. Besides I want to watch my antiques programme this evening. There might be something relevant to Christopher’s sale.’
‘I don’t see how,’ frowned Russell.
‘I’ve got the catalogue here. There are all sorts of things I don’t know anything about. I feel ignorant.’
‘Surely not. After all those years glued to the Antiques Roadshow and the rest?’
‘Just go without me,’ she said.
Chapter Nineteen
Sunday afternoon for the Hendersons had indeed been quite eventful. The drive home was bad enough in itself, with Robin wailing and Christopher still shaky. Simmy was driving, and before they even got to Keswick, she pulled into a layby and ordered her husband to sit in the back and pacify their son. ‘Cornelia can come in the front. She’s the only one who isn’t causing trouble.’
