The Borrowdale Body, page 24
‘Having lunch? It’s half past twelve.’
‘And not a single phone call.’
‘There’ll be masses of emails instead,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll just go and have a quick look.’
‘I’ll see you at the sandwich van, then. And don’t tell me if there’s anything nasty.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Simmy spent a lot of Monday morning on the phone. Bonnie, Russell, Lily and Moxon all called her between nine and eleven. Bonnie had more to say about the shop than the events in Borrowdale. Verity had broken a tooth, and needed to go to the dentist that afternoon, leaving Bonnie to cope on her own.
‘I’m not worried,’ she said bravely. ‘But I thought you should know.’
Broken teeth always seemed to choose the worst possible moment to happen. Simmy was reminded of her mother who had the same problem on Simmy’s wedding day.
‘I expect I could come and help you, if necessary,’ she told Bonnie, with some reluctance. ‘There doesn’t seem to be very much happening here so far. But I’m not keen on driving over Kirkstone with my brakes not working properly.’
‘Better not, then. Ben thinks it’s coming to a climax today. He thinks we’ve got all the facts – they just have to be assembled logically.’
‘He’s such an optimist,’ said Simmy. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it drags on for weeks and weeks yet. I can’t see how they’ll ever work out who killed Jennifer.’
‘They will. Have faith,’ her young assistant adjured her.
‘I’ll try,’ said Simmy.
Russell was also optimistic. ‘I have every confidence that’ll it’ll be sorted soon,’ he said. ‘I had a dream last night involving that Steve individual. I bet he knows more than he was letting on. Someone should try to find him.’
‘He’ll have gone home by now. They were only here for a week. We don’t even have a surname. Besides, I think he’d have said if he had any useful information. He was very keen to talk.’
‘Ah! But he won’t have known what was useful, will he? Some detail that he never thought to divulge.’
‘Too late, Dad. There’d be more sense in tracking down the Baxter man. He’s more or less admitted to killing Mr Deeping, or at least helping to dispose of his body. He is rather awful, the way he treats the whole thing like a game. Actually, now you mention it, I think I had a dream about him. He had face paint on and a funny hat.’
‘The Joker!’
‘No, not really. Although I suppose that might have been lurking in my unconscious. I never did see those films.’
‘Nor me, but they’re in the culture now. It’s such a strong image.’
‘Yes, well … I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see whether Christopher and Ben get anywhere. They’re more in the middle of things than we are. You, me and Bonnie have been pushed to the sidelines.’
‘Speak for yourself. I can get to Keswick in five minutes, remember. And I will, if I think I can be of any use.’
Simmy made agreeable noises, having no intention of either encouraging or discouraging her energised parent. It was good to have him so involved and functioning so well, after a spell when everyone feared his mind and body were both irreversibly slowing down.
‘Well, keep me posted,’ she ended by saying.
Lily phoned from a distance of a hundred yards, saying she was too busy to come in person. ‘We’re going on holiday tomorrow,’ she said, not sounding too happy about it. ‘Dad got some last-minute deal to Sardinia, of all places, and we’re leaving here at six in the morning. So I can’t walk Cornelia for you. I can’t do her today, either, because I’ve got to make three new bags before five o’clock.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Simmy sincerely. ‘Don’t worry about the dog. I should be here most of the time. How long are you away for?’
‘A week. So what happened about that man?’
Simmy made no pretence of not understanding. ‘He came here, and we talked. He’s nothing to worry about, and he won’t be coming back.’
‘I wasn’t worried. I thought he might turn out to be quite nice – it’s just that people don’t usually talk about bodies, do they? That threw me a bit. My mum thinks it’s suspicious – especially with all that in Borrowdale. There’s got to be a connection, she says.’
‘Well, she’s right. But he’s gone now, and it’s for the police to worry about.’
‘Did you tell them about me?’
Simmy hesitated. ‘You know – I honestly can’t remember. Christopher might have done. But the man came here, so all you did was direct him.’
‘Like a signpost,’ the girl giggled.
‘Exactly. And have a lovely time in Sardinia. All that wonderful sea and sun. I’m jealous.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lily with a sigh.
Moxon’s call, shortly before eleven, was brief and friendly. ‘I’m going to have a chat with your husband in Keswick,’ he told her. ‘And Ben, if he’s there.’
‘He will be.’
‘There’s a new detective sergeant, just started. He’s spent the weekend with the Borrowdale files, so I’m hoping he might have some insight to contribute. A fresh eye is always a good thing.’
‘Mm,’ said Simmy.
‘How did it go last night? Did they all show up?’
‘Oh yes. It was quite good, really. Lots of mad ideas and people’s names flying about. They’ll fill you in when you see them. I don’t think we arrived at a single convincing theory – just a lot of possibles. My dad had a dream about Mr and Mrs Steve – they’re hikers you won’t have heard about. And I dreamt that Julian Baxter was the Joker.’
‘I seldom find that dreams are very helpful,’ said Moxon.
Simmy laughed.
The rest of the morning was uneventful but busy with mundane tasks that were refreshingly mindless. Too much thinking about murder could not be healthy, after all. Let the men sort it out. The only woman in the case was a murder victim, she realised – unless you counted Mrs Steve. Simmy’s own mother had remained detached from the start, which had probably been very wise. Even Lily was off to a sunny island.
With the nagging worry that some annoying person was planning to bring the whole thing to her door again, she decided to take the child and dog for a good long walk after lunch, leaving her phone firmly at home. Bonnie would have called again if she needed her, and everyone else could wait. At least her mother would approve, even if some others might consider her irresponsible. After all, hadn’t Jennifer Reade eschewed all such devices? But then, she had got herself murdered, so she might not be a very good role model.
They were out for over an hour, Robin getting some walking practice in a field close to the river where there were sheep and rocks and brambles, but also a few flat patches. Cornelia found herself tied to a blackthorn bush, which she judged to be most unfair and annoying.
‘I can’t trust you with the sheep,’ Simmy explained. ‘And I can’t run after you if you get into trouble, because of Robin.’
‘Huh!’ sniffed the disgruntled dog.
When they got back, quite a lot had changed.
For a start, the house was full of men. Christopher, Ben, Moxon and a strange detective were gathered in the living room. Ben and Moxon were both on their phones. Christopher was distributing mugs of coffee. Everybody looked at the returning woman with her young charges and said nothing for several long seconds.
‘Gosh, it’s an invasion,’ she said with a smile.
‘Sorry,’ said Moxon. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
‘They want to talk to Lily,’ said Christopher.
‘Better hurry, then. She’s off on holiday tomorrow and has a very busy day today because of it. That accounts for all of you except Ben, I suppose.’
‘Ben wants to do a bit of quiet googling. I told him he could do it here. He’s got an idea, apparently.’
‘That’s right,’ the boy confirmed. ‘It came to me while I was eating my sandwich. But it probably isn’t important.’ He took his laptop into the kitchen without another word. Moxon and Smith took themselves off to find Lily, leaving a relatively peaceful scene.
‘Dad phoned,’ said Simmy. ‘And Bonnie. We’ve been for a nice walk by the river.’
‘Ben and I decided we didn’t need to stay and answer the phone, when most people are contacting us via email. They know we’ll tell them as soon as we’ve got a date to resume the sale, anyway. Mrs Deeping came to see me. She had something important to say.’ And he reported the salient elements of the conversation. ‘It seems a long time ago now. The day’s going very slowly.’
‘That about Mr Deeping should have moved things along. It confirms a lot of what we were already thinking.’ She paused. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? It’s all starting to connect up much better than before.’
‘The Smith chap was wondering whether Sir John’s death was suspicious as well. I think that’s what Ben’s trying to find out on his computer. Nearly everything is now pointing at the cousin as far as motive is concerned. But there’s still a few missing links.’
‘Not to mention his very solid alibi.’
‘He’s got to have paid someone else to do it. Unless he’s got a partner with equally urgent reasons for eliminating Jennifer Reade.’
‘Surely the police will know if he has by now?’
Christopher snorted. ‘They look to me to be all over the place. Nobody’s got the full picture. Two deaths in the same house on different days is too much for the poor things. No witnesses, not much forensic evidence. There’s a third thing they need – oh yes, confession.’
‘Well, they’ve nearly got that. Julian Baxter came pretty close to admitting he’d helped to kill Mr Deeping.’
‘Which I expect counts as hearsay and is not therefore admissible. But Ben’s hoping there’s some footage from his photographer friend, which would be extremely helpful, if so.’
‘Oh,’ said Simmy. ‘Do I get some coffee? Robin’s going to want a nap. It wasn’t easy to stop him dropping off in the buggy. He’s done some excellent walking.’
‘Good lad!’ Christopher applauded. ‘You take him up and I’ll do the coffee.’
But when he joined Ben in the kitchen, some thought association arrested him. ‘I forgot to pay Hughie!’ he gasped. ‘I never went for the cash, did I?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘You know I didn’t – when would I have had a chance? He’s probably there now, waiting for me. I don’t remember what he said, exactly. But I think he was coming back for it after lunch.’
‘Surely he’d phone you?’
‘Why would he have my number? I don’t give it out to temps.’
‘Oh, right.’ Ben was fingering his keyboard and scanning pages on the screen. ‘I’ve got absolutely nowhere,’ he complained. ‘Nothing we didn’t know already.’
‘Look, I’ll have to go back to Keswick. I would anyway, to take you home, but a bit sooner than planned. I feel awful – poor Hughie. I owe him about five hundred quid.’
‘Serves him right for demanding it in cash.’
‘He gave me a good reason. Something about not having a bank account because of all the travelling he’d been doing. Sounded sensible to me. Reminded me of myself twenty years ago.’
Ben looked up. ‘How could he actually do any travelling without a bank account?’
‘Post offices, and those places that transfer money. Western Union. He’s probably got a rich daddy who sent it out to him once a week.’
‘Hm,’ said Ben sceptically. ‘We don’t know anything about him, do we? Working for us for two weeks or more and he’s never said where he’s from or what family he’s got. Just rabbited on about that precious motorbike.’
‘Typical Brit, then. He did the work and I have to pay him for it.’
‘It’ll be after three by the time you get there. Is he going to wait all this time?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘We locked the gate. He’ll have to sit outside doing nothing.’
‘I know and it’s all my fault. Come on. I’m going in one minute.’
Ben closed his laptop and stood up. ‘Ready,’ he said, gently slapping his pocket to ensure that his phone was in its rightful place.
Giving Simmy a brief explanation as he rushed through the living room followed by Ben, Christopher was driving up to Patterdale and Dockray in no time.
‘This road goes on forever,’ he grumbled as they headed north to the A66.
‘Why did we come back to Hartsop anyway?’ Ben wondered. ‘It was a bit silly, really.’
‘Moxon,’ said Christopher shortly.
‘Who’s going to wonder where we’ve gone. He was a long time talking to Lily, wasn’t he?’
‘They’ve probably gone back to Penrith by now. I didn’t expect them to come back to us – did you?’
‘I didn’t think about it. Lucky old Lily, off on holiday. Bonnie and I aren’t going to get away at all this summer.’
‘You live in one of the top holiday destinations in the world, so don’t complain.’ Christopher had often said this and Ben was never very impressed.
‘Why did Jennifer want the sale stopped? Why did she kill Deeping? How far back does all this counterfeiting business go? Who knows who?’ Ben was obsessively ticking off the recurring questions. ‘Don’t you think it feels like one great sprawling network, where they all knew each other? Deeping did the fakes, sent them off to Asia, as well as Wiltshire, where Warwick Bennett and Maurice Phillippson disposed of them at a good profit. Bennett being more or less related to Jennifer implies that she was involved. Plus Julian Baxter, of course.’
‘Who’s the only one any of us has actually met,’ Christopher pointed out. ‘Except Simmy has seen the Bennett man. And we’ve all listened to the infernal Steve and his missus.’
‘Right. Not that I can see how that matters much. Maybe Deeping was double-crossing Jennifer and Julian somehow. That would explain why they killed him. And,’ he held up an excited finger, ‘what if old Sir John was in on it? He might have had some originals in the house, for Deeping to copy. They might have been using his cellar to do it in for ages.’
‘Doesn’t work,’ said Christopher. ‘You’re implying that Jennifer already knew about her wealthy old fourth cousin before he died. She didn’t. She was thunderstruck when they found her and told her.’
‘Or so she pretended,’ said Ben in a melodramatic voice. ‘The whole thing might have been staged. In which case they probably did bump the old man off.’
‘Lord help us,’ Christopher groaned. ‘And all this began as such a splendid opportunity. Remember that – how excited we were? Seems ages ago now.’
‘It leaves a lot of unanswered questions.’
‘Yes – you listed them just now.’
‘That was only the half of them.’
They were finally on the main road, rushing westwards to Keswick as fast as the holiday dawdlers would allow.
‘What if he isn’t there?’ Ben asked.
‘He will be,’ said Christopher.
‘Funny how he fits in as well,’ Ben mused. ‘Not having a bank account, wanting everything in cash. Like Jennifer Reade. How unusual is that?’
‘Not very. You’ve seen how many people pay for their purchases in cash after the auction.’
‘Okay, but that’s mostly to dodge tax and paper trails.’ He did a double take. ‘Hey! What if that’s what was driving Jennifer Reade as well? What if she was living a perfectly normal life most of the time, but just kept all the counterfeiting business off the grid?’
‘Stop it, Ben,’ said his boss wearily. ‘You’re hurting my head – again.’
But Ben couldn’t stop. ‘Could be she was the one doing the double-crossing – cheating the Bennett man out of his rightful inheritance? Once she’d got the proceeds from the sale of the house and contents, there wouldn’t have been much he could do about it – probably. She’d make sure the contracts and everything were watertight. I bet she intended to turn the whole lot into cash and hide it somewhere. Like the Wild West when they kept burying hoards of gold. It’d work, I should think, with a bit of judicious money laundering. I must write all this down before I forget. There’s so much to keep in mind.’
‘We’ll be there in a minute. Please stop talking.’
‘You were right, look. There’s Hughie.’
The unpaid worker was indeed sitting on the ground beside his motorcycle, just outside the saleroom gates.
‘Looks as if he’s been there a while. Lucky it’s not raining,’ said Christopher.
‘You still haven’t got any cash for him,’ Ben pointed out.
‘Oh, God! Well, there’s a machine a couple of minutes away. He can come to it with me.’
‘It won’t give you five hundred quid. You’ll have to go into a bank – if you can find one. There’s a Barclays that’s closest.’
‘No, it has to be Lloyds. This is ridiculous,’ Christopher exploded. ‘I’ll have to put it through the books properly, and get him to sign for it. Look – you go in with him and wait for me. Keep him happy, okay?’
Hughie’s expression manifested reproach, martyrdom and impatience in equal measure. Christopher gave a brief and limp explanation and drove off to the centre of Keswick after handing Ben the keys to the saleroom.
‘We won’t need to go in,’ said Ben to Hughie. ‘Will we?’
The young man shrugged. ‘Up to you,’ he said.
‘You can’t really blame Christopher. The police were here this morning, after you’d all gone. We had to take them all the way back to Hartsop – and then we remembered about you. We came dashing back when we realised you didn’t have Christopher’s mobile number. And we didn’t have yours, obviously.’
‘I never give it to anyone anyway.’
‘At least you’ve got one. Not like some people.’
‘Why did you need to take the police to Hartsop?’
‘Good question. I don’t think we did, really. It just seemed good to be helpful and Chris wanted to get home for a bit. He’s still pretty wobbly after Friday’s fiasco. He doesn’t know where things stand with the auction, and people keep clamouring at him. Then all that with Mrs Deeping first thing today. He doesn’t know where it’s all going to end.’
