The Coniston Case (4 page)

A woman apparently in her sixties opened the door wide after a lengthy delay and stared at Simmy. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

‘Mrs Crabtree? Flowers for you.’

‘I
beg
your pardon?’

Simmy silently proffered the bouquet. Slowly, the woman took them.

‘Who’re they from, then?’

‘There’s a card.’ Simmy took a step back. ‘You’ve just moved in, then, have you?’

‘“Good luck in your new home”,’ read Mrs Crabtree. ‘But this isn’t a new home. I’ve been here for twenty years. You must have made a mistake.’

‘I don’t think so. When were these houses built?’ The question was irrelevant, she knew, but she felt she ought to say something neutral.

‘Sixty years ago. Why do you ask?’

Simmy shrugged. ‘They look more recent that that. Are you planning to move, perhaps?’

To her alarm, the woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘My children tell me I should but I don’t want to. This must be a horrible way of telling me to sell up.’ She shook herself. ‘But I won’t. Why should I?’ She blinked at Simmy. ‘Who sent them? You must know.’

Simmy shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Someone posted the order and payment, without giving any details. The letter came yesterday.’ It was a small but genuine relief to be able to explain truthfully, without hiding behind such notions as ‘customer confidentiality’, which always felt mean-spirited and obstructive.

‘My children live in Barrow and Kirkby Lonsdale, and I can’t imagine either of them using something as old-fashioned as a letter. You take orders online, I presume?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Well, that’s the way they’d do it. Or by telephone as a last resort. This sounds like somebody deliberately wanting to upset me.’

‘Although your children
do
think you ought to move,’ Simmy insisted gently.

‘They do, but neither one of them would ever use such a roundabout way of telling me. Besides, I already know what they think. No – I did them an injustice just now, thinking it was even possible. There’s malice at the heart of this, and that’s obviously not my Helen or Brian. They’re nothing like that. It’s probably all a stupid mistake. These flowers aren’t meant for me at all.’

It was tempting to simply admit that this was probably true. Simmy had very little pride as a rule. She could
live with someone believing her to be capable of getting something wrong. But she remembered Mr Hayter and the police detective and the fact that somebody was surely up to something sinister, and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid they are for you, but I think perhaps we ought to tell the police about it. You’re not the only person this week, you see, to receive something like this. It’s probably just someone’s idea of fun, but we don’t know that for sure.’

‘Police?’ She looked aghast, and Simmy was reminded of her mother’s repeated assertions that nobody wanted to be drawn to the attention of the police, however innocent and blameless their lives might be.

‘Please don’t worry. It’s only that they might come along to ask a question or two. After all, if this person is sending flowers to random people with upsetting messages, they should be stopped, don’t you think?’

‘Oh … I suppose so.’

‘I must get on now. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’

‘I’m really not moving house,’ Mrs Crabtree repeated firmly, and closed the door. Simmy had a vision of the flowers being thrust head down into a pedal bin, and felt sad again.

She drove over Hawkshead Hill to Coniston, her van making much of the steepness. The views were mainly hidden by the persistent mist, but suddenly Lake Coniston was a few feet away on her left, shortly after passing the turning down to Brantwood. Her father’s growing passion for John Ruskin had ensured that she’d paid an early visit to the house soon after coming to live in the area. She still remembered the romantic drawing by George Richmond, showing a delicately handsome young man who might
break a hundred hearts. Combined with the story of poor Rose La Touche, whose heart had evidently suffered terribly through her relationship with Ruskin, the picture had given Simmy a lot to dream about.

The farm she had to find was somewhere past the village on the road to Torver. She had learnt not to trust a satnav for the finer detail of Lakeland navigation, and instead relied on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map. Now it served her well, and she found a gateway proclaiming her destination and a blessedly short track up to the house.

This order, she told herself, probably had nothing to do with DI Moxon’s investigation. Besides, it was convenient that it came so close to the Hawkshead address, enabling her to deliver both bouquets in one trip.

The farm was to all appearances entirely traditional, with several barns and other buildings surrounding the house. Sheep were scattered across fields on all sides. The yard was relatively clean when she stepped out of the van and went around to the back. There was a smell of warm animal emanating from a nearby barn, along with sporadic bleating. She felt like an alien intruder, entirely out of place.

There were no human voices to be heard. The house stood behind a stone wall, at an angle to the main yard. A black and white dog with a sharp nose came around a corner and began barking, while at the same time wagging its tail.
Mixed message
, thought Simmy, standing her ground.

She walked firmly up to the house door, through a small gate and up a short path. She rapped the heavy knocker, and the dog barked more loudly. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ came a female voice. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Hello!’ called Simmy.

At last the door opened and a woman a few years younger than Simmy materialised, with a toddler at her side. ‘What?’ she demanded.

‘Flowers for you.’

‘Me? What name did they tell you?’

‘Mrs Aston.’

‘There are two Mrs Astons. Me and my mother-in-law. Which one are they for?’

‘Mrs M. Aston,’ Simmy read from the card.

‘That’s me, then. I’m Maggie. The other one’s Susan.’

‘Here, then.’ The morning was running away with her and there was still an awful lot to do back at the shop. For a whole hour she had managed to forget about red-rose valentines, but she knew that couldn’t last.

Maggie Aston read the message and went a nasty grey colour. She swallowed gulpingly, and Simmy braced herself for a second bout of tears that morning. People did cry on florists, more than might be expected, but this was becoming excessive.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked. The child had disappeared inside the house, and was making contented animal noises. Simmy hoped that Mrs Aston would make every effort to control herself before rejoining her little one.

‘No, I’m not.’ The woman raised her arms over her head like a champion netball player and threw the flowers across the small front garden with the sort of strength that could only have come from hurling large bales of hay around, or bringing young beef animals down. The bouquet made it all the way over the wall and into the yard beyond. ‘I think I’m probably going to be sick,’ she went on.

‘Oh dear.’ Simmy did her best not to take this personally. Her flowers had not deserved such treatment; it was rude to reject them so wholeheartedly while their creator was still on the doorstep. ‘I’d better go.’

There was no response to this, other than the door closing in her face.
Such drama
, Simmy thought crossly, as she went back to her van, trying not to look at the poor flowers on the cold concrete. The mist had cleared minimally, and the Old Man of Coniston was patchily visible, looming over the proceedings with utter indifference. He had seen millions of petty human exchanges in his time, like an exasperated god watching his subjects. Simmy ducked her chin at him, in a silent thanks for helping her to regain perspective.

Even so, there was little romance in her thoughts as she drove back to Windermere as quickly as she could. Hawkshead Hill was easier in this direction, but still it was impossible to hurry. However light the traffic might seem, there were always delivery vans and farm vehicles highly likely to be around the next bend. There had been no road widening efforts on this side of Windermere, the narrow lanes rightly deemed to be part of the attraction for tourists. There were people who deliberately came in winter, seeking out the eerie sensation that all was not entirely safe, even if you kept to the roads and never left your car. There was ice, and inadequate signposting and sudden blanketing mist to contend with, even in this softer southern section of the Lake District.

It was ten-forty when she got back to the shop and Melanie gave her a reproachful look. All Melanie’s looks – and she had a wide range of them – were enhanced by the fact of her artificial eye. There was always a hint of challenge
lurking somewhere. The prosthesis was a good one, but it could never move in complete unison with its partner. The girl had learnt to capitalise on it in a variety of ways, but she was never going to be considered demure or compliant. Since her goal was a career in the hotel business, Simmy sometimes worried that she would find it impossible to abase herself before unreasonable guests or tolerate the many idiots she was doomed to encounter.

‘A whole lot of stuff’s been happening,’ she said. ‘Two more valentines, and that woman came back wanting Ninian’s vase. I sold it to her for thirty quid.’

Simmy bit back a protest. It was her own fault, she supposed, for not phoning Ninian and asking him for a price. The place where the vase had been standing was now occupied by a lily in a pot, its buds just starting to swell. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘We’re keeping fifteen per cent commission,’ Melanie went on. ‘Peanuts, but it’s easy money, I suppose.’

‘Is that what we agreed?’

‘We didn’t agree
anything
, Sim. That’s the problem.’

‘I liked that pot,’ she said wistfully, realising this had been a strong element in her failure to sell it. The shop felt bereft without it.

‘How did it go in Hawkshead? What did the woman say?’

‘She cried. It was something horrible – intended to frighten or upset her. I ought to tell Moxon about it. He’ll have to take all these weird orders more seriously now. I’m sure it’s the same sender as Mr Hayter’s, and the person’s a menace, whoever he or she might be. They need to be stopped.’

‘Wow! You sound really stressed about it. You were gone a long time. Did you have to console her?’

‘Not really. And it didn’t get any better after that. Remember I had to go to a farm near Coniston? That was really awful. The woman threw the flowers across the yard.’

‘What?’

Simmy explained.

‘Can’t be a coincidence,’ Melanie mused. ‘That’s three unwanted bouquets this week. Something
must
be going on.’

‘I’ll call Moxon,’ she decided. ‘Then we can get on in peace, with any luck.’

‘Don’t rely on it.’

In spite of herself, Simmy couldn’t stop thinking about the innocent-seeming messages embodied in her flowers. The flowers themselves had been entirely innocuous, of course. It was all in the cards that were attached to them. The words were the problem. ‘Isn’t it beastly,’ she said, ‘to associate something so nice with an upsetting or threatening message? What sort of mentality is it that can do such a thing?’

‘The farm one wasn’t nasty,’ Melanie pointed out. ‘It was an abject apology. Usually that works pretty well, in my experience.’

‘Does it?’

Melanie flushed. Her various relationships supplied ongoing interest to Simmy and Ben, not least because Ben’s brother Wilf had briefly gone out with Melanie and harboured hopes that he could do so again. Meanwhile she had taken up with a police constable who was plainly her inferior in matters of wit and general desirability. No one
seemed entirely sure where things currently stood. Joe sent frequent texts and Wilf was said by Ben to be hovering eagerly on the sidelines, awaiting an opportunity to resume his place in her affection. To Simmy’s knowledge, neither of her beaux had ever sent Melanie apologetic flowers. ‘My Dad does it sometimes,’ the girl mumbled.

Simmy phoned DI Moxon again, thinking wistfully that she could expect no reward for her public spirit. He answered quickly. ‘Mrs Brown,’ he said, to demonstrate that his phone once again knew who she was.

‘Yes. I suppose I should tell you what happened in Hawkshead this morning when I delivered the flowers.’

‘You’ve been already? You told me you were going at lunchtime.’

For the first time since getting up, Simmy remembered Kathy and the reason for her change of plan. ‘I changed the plan,’ she said.

‘So what happened?’

‘Remember the message was good wishes for a new home? Well, she’s not moving house and she was very upset at the suggestion that she was. She thought at first it was one of her children making a point, but then she decided they would never be so malicious. Somebody really must have been trying to upset her, on purpose.’

‘I’ll have to go and see her,’ he said with a sigh.

‘Have you got any more news of Mr Hayter yet?’

He hesitated, leaving an annoying silence of the sort that was always so much worse down a telephone line. ‘Yes and no,’ he said, eventually.

‘That’s all right. You don’t have to tell me. I’d rather you didn’t, actually.’

‘Don’t be sniffy.’

‘I’m not. I really don’t want to know. I don’t want to be involved.’

‘You’ve said that before.’

‘And meant it.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to find a new line of business then. It’s been plain for a while now that flowers and crime go together all too nicely.’

A truth that she had been struggling to avoid finally pinned her down. ‘It’s horribly like last time, isn’t it?’ she said bleakly, and rang off without letting him reply.

Melanie was enraged by the ‘yes and no’ response to Simmy’s question. ‘The least he could have done was explain,’ she said furiously.

‘I didn’t really let him,’ Simmy defended. ‘And listen, I forgot to tell you an old friend of mine is dropping in at lunchtime. She’s called Kathy. She might help make up some of the Valentine things. I told her how busy we are.’

‘Right,’ said Melanie absently. ‘What does “yes and no” mean, then? Yes, they found him, but no, they haven’t managed to speak to him? Or what?’

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘I guess I can find out from Joe, eventually.’

‘Don’t you dare! You’ll get him into real trouble one of these days. It’s not fair on him.’

‘He likes it. It makes him feel important.’

‘Have you sent him a valentine?’

Melanie shrugged. ‘Just a card. It’s pointless, really, isn’t it? I’m a bit sick of the whole thing, to be honest.’

‘Join the club,’ said Simmy.

The hour from eleven to twelve saw intensive activity, creating the fresh orders out of yet more red roses. Space in the back room became hopelessly scarce and Melanie was banished to the shop. All the bouquets were carefully labelled, with instructions pinned onto their wrapping, and a special trough of water used to keep them in good condition. The aim was for their recipients to believe the flowers had only just been picked and magically transported to their homes by fairies. It was a point of pride with Simmy that no two offerings were exactly the same. She added misty sprays of gypsophila to some and feathery greenery to others. The stalk lengths were varied to create different shapes to the overall bouquet. Despite her claim of the day before that she never wanted to see another red rose, she could not help admiring them. Singly, they were gorgeous. The exact moment between the first opening of the bud and the full-blown blossoming of the flower was a small piece of perfection, achieved by extreme manipulation at the point of cutting them and impressive technology employed during their transportation from Africa. It was all wrong, looked at one way, but amazingly effective in the results.

‘Somebody for you,’ sang out Melanie, at twelve o’clock. Assuming it was Kathy, Simmy paused to run her fingers through her hair and pull off the gloves she wore. She didn’t want to look tired and scruffy, even if it was her one-time best friend.

It was not Kathy. DI Moxon stood just inside the door,
as was his habit, waiting patiently for her to appear. His feet were well spread, and while he did not quite bounce on them, there was a subliminal suggestion that he would start doing so in another minute.

‘That was quick!’ said Simmy. ‘Have you been to talk to Mrs Crabtree already?’

He shook his head. ‘Never got the chance. Something else cropped up.’

‘Oh?’ She experienced a sinking feeling of resignation, spiced with a thread of apprehension. ‘And how does it concern me this time?’

‘We found Mr Hayter.’

‘Good.’

‘Not good, I’m afraid. Not good at all. He’s dead.’

‘Murdered?’ yelped Melanie. ‘Oh my God!’

Moxon turned on her with the speed of a cobra. ‘Be quiet!’ he snapped. ‘There has never once been any suggestion of violence in this case. You and Ben Harkness are far too quick to assume things. You for one should know better.’

‘Sorry,’ drawled Melanie, mulishly. ‘So what, then?’

‘He took his own life.’

‘And that’s not violence?’ Simmy interrupted. She was shaking, she discovered. The detective had also noticed and was laying a supportive hand on her arm, directing her towards a plastic chair she kept beside the till. ‘I’m all right,’ she insisted. ‘I’m being silly.’ But she and he both knew there was every good reason why she should go into shock at the news. The two of them had a history of confronting sudden death at close quarters, joined together as witness and investigator. Moxon had been privy to her points of
vulnerability, proving to be much more understanding than could have been expected.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘And listen. I came to tell you because you’re sure to hear about it anyway and I fondly hoped to be able to soften the blow a bit. You can be assured that there really is no suggestion that he was killed by anybody. It was an unambiguously self-inflicted overdose. He went off into the fells at night to do it, so the cold will have hastened the process. We found him yesterday evening.’

‘Poor man.’

‘Yes.’ Something in his voice caught her attention. A familiar catch that took her back to her former husband’s tone when speaking of their lost child.

‘You knew him,’ she remembered. ‘A friend of a friend. It’s personal for you, isn’t it?’

His eyes glittered with something like gratitude. ‘He was a good man. Nobody dreamt he was liable to do anything like this.’

‘And his daughter’s getting married. What a mess.’

Moxon’s eyes held hers, his glasses magnifying them slightly, which made her feel strangely sorry for him. In all her dealings with him he had been gentle, even sensitive at times. He had a few of the classic traits of a police detective in his unwashed hair and rumpled clothes. He gave little sign of understanding human nature in its complex variety, manifesting real surprise on a number of occasions. Simmy suspected he found her confusing, Melanie unpredictable and Ben entirely beyond comprehension. None of them behaved towards him as he had surely expected. But he did try to be flexible. He did his best to avoid platitudes about risk and right behaviour, faintly aware that there were people in the
world who did not see danger behind every bush; people who seldom even considered the matter at all in their daily doings. People like Simmy’s mother, who broke fresh rules every day and never considered the consequences.

‘But the flowers,’ said Melanie. ‘Was it something to do with the flowers?’

Moxon sighed and gave himself a little shake. ‘I suppose it’s best to get that part over with. The fact is, we don’t know.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Simmy about Mr Hayter when she phoned you this morning?’

‘She didn’t give me a chance. I was telling her I’d be dropping in when I realised she’d hung up on me.’ He gave Simmy a schoolmasterly look from under his brows. ‘Not something I’m used to, actually.’

‘So now we have three nasty messages and a suicide,’ Melanie summed up. ‘All in or near Coniston.’

Moxon ignored her, standing protectively over Simmy, who was doing her best to pull herself together. After all, she thought crossly, nothing that was happening presented any threat to her. She was just the invisible conveyor of sinister floral tributes. ‘Mel’s right,’ she said. ‘The farm delivery didn’t go down well at all.’

‘Farm?’ said Moxon.

Simmy told the whole story, finishing with, ‘But the message was different. I mean, it seemed really genuine. I suppose it’s a two-timing boyfriend, and she’s not yet ready to forgive him. I mean
husband
. She’s Mrs Aston, with a mother-in-law and a small child.’

‘A two-timing husband, sending flowers with a message of apology,’ summarised Moxon. ‘Quite possible, of course. And she threw them away.’

‘It was quite a throw. They went halfway across the yard, poor things.’

Moxon wrote something down.

‘But it can’t be anything to do with the others,’ Simmy said, with no real conviction. ‘Can it?’

‘Three orders for flowers, paid in cash, with no name or address for the sender. All causing upset to the people receiving them. How likely is it that they’re from different people?’

‘But it’s not a
crime
, is it? Just mischief.’ She grimaced. ‘Malice, even. But it’s not as if …’ she tailed off, unable to voice the thought.

‘Malice of such a degree that one person was driven to kill himself,’ Moxon said severely.

Simmy went cold. ‘You really think the flowers did it? That something in the message was so horrible he couldn’t live with it? If I thought that, I’d never be able to deliver any flowers again.’

‘Steady on, Sim,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s going a bit far. Okay, you’re being used, and that’s sick. But none of it’s your fault. You can’t refuse to take an order just in case it might upset somebody.’

‘I can insist on a name and address from the sender,’ Simmy said tightly. ‘I should have known better than to accept any of these three.’

Before the girl could answer, the doorbell pinged, and a familiar figure came into the shop. ‘Kathy!’ Simmy cried. ‘I forgot about you.’

‘Charming,’ said the newcomer with a smile. She was tall, with a lot of frizzy brown hair. She looked from one face to another, eyebrows raised. ‘Customers?’ she asked.

‘This is Melanie. She works here. And this is …’ It was strangely difficult to admit to a visitation from a senior police detective. The prospect of Kathy asking endless questions, getting excited, shocked, intrigued, was unappealing.

‘I’m nobody important,’ said Moxon. ‘And I’m just going. I’d better look into the farm woman,’ he said, addressing Melanie more than Simmy. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ And he went.

‘Why are you being visited by a policeman?’ Kathy asked, seconds later.

‘What makes you think that’s what he is?’

‘Shoes. Hair. Notebook. What he said, and the way he said it. It was obvious.’

Simmy gave her friend a belated hug. ‘It’s so good to see you. You haven’t changed a single hair. Did you drive up? Are you hungry? We usually pop out for a sandwich and work right through.’

‘Carry on, then. Don’t mind me. If you want me out of the way, I can walk down to the lake or something. It’s very atmospheric out there.’ They all looked out onto the damp street, and Simmy thought of her misty morning drive. It was true that the view across the lake from Bowness would be lovely, because it always was.

‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘We’re over the worst now, so long as we don’t get a lot of last-minute orders.’

Kathy’s blank look quickly cleared. ‘Valentine’s!’ she realised. ‘Of course! What a fool. I never made the connection.’

‘Plus some other stuff,’ Melanie said. ‘We’ve had a few very unromantic messages this week.’

‘Hence the policeman,’ said Kathy astutely.

‘Blimey!’ said Simmy. ‘Ben’s going to have to watch out, with you here. He’s been the unchallenged Top Brain up to now.’

‘Ben?’

‘Oh – just a boy we know,’ said Melanie. ‘You probably won’t even meet him.’

Five minutes later, her words were proved wrong when Ben swung into the shop, with his usual air of coming to a place where he knew he’d be welcome. ‘Uh-oh,’ said Melanie.

Kathy was in the middle of a quick tour of inspection of the shop, during which she had greatly admired Ninian’s remaining pots and expressed an intention of buying one. She looked up at the pinging doorbell, and glanced at Simmy.

‘Ben,’ said Simmy. ‘He has a habit of turning up in the lunch hour. He’s in the sixth form. This is my friend Kathy,’ she told the boy.

‘Greetings, Kathy,’ he said carelessly.

‘She’s clever,’ Melanie warned him. ‘You’d better watch out.’

Ben gave the newcomer a closer look. ‘I like clever people,’ he said. ‘You don’t live round here, do you?’

‘Worcester. I knew Simmy before she moved here.’

He nodded vaguely, as if Simmy’s life before Windermere was entirely irrelevant. ‘What news of the phantom flower-sender?’ he asked.

‘Mr Hayter topped himself,’ Melanie burst out eagerly. ‘Moxo was just here, to tell us.’

‘Driven to it by a cruel joke,’ he said, with a careful look at Simmy. ‘Bummer.’

‘We don’t know that at all. It probably had nothing at all to do with the flowers. Don’t put this onto me.’

‘No, but – why else would Moxo keep coming here about it? And what happened with the Hawkshead person? Did you take those flowers?’ He unslung the rucksack from his shoulder and extracted a plastic box containing his lunch. ‘I’ll eat while you tell me.’ He eyed Kathy in a clear question as to whether she was staying.

‘I was going to take myself down to the lake, but this sounds too fascinating to miss. You three are a real gang of amateur sleuths, aren’t you? I did know there was something horrible at Christmas when Simmy got hurt, but she never told me any details.’

Simmy was still trying to adjust to the sudden appearance of her old friend in a new context. The Kathy she remembered had been a good listener, always ready with a witty joke, more or less contented with her life, despite a tendency to boss people about. She held similar views to those of Simmy’s mother when it came to taking charge of events and refusing to accept foolish rules and regulations. ‘We make our own destiny,’ she would often say. When Simmy’s baby died and her husband let her down, Kathy faltered slightly in this view, aware that it would come across as heartless. She had floundered uncomfortably, unable to offer anything beyond a helpless sympathy. ‘What a
bloody
thing to happen,’ she repeated every time they met.

Her own relationships apparently ran smoothly. A husband ten years her senior; parents who made minimal claims on her time; two ambitious daughters who had obviously chosen academic success over underage sex. ‘They hardly seem to have noticed boys,’ Kathy had said,
a couple of years ago. ‘Joanna’s in love with the science lecturer and Claudia appears to be more interested in girls.’ Neither passion had ever caused Kathy any lost sleep.

But now there was a mystery swirling somewhere close by. Why was Kathy in Cumbria all on her own? What did she have to do over the weekend? What was this new veneer of brittleness that had been plain from the moment she came into the shop? She could not keep still, her eyes darting from face to face, then to Ninian’s vases and the street outside.

‘So?’ prompted Ben. ‘Hawkshead.’

‘Elderly lady, quite upset. The message wished her well in her new home, but she’s not moving. She thought at first one of her offspring was trying to persuade her, not very subtly. But it doesn’t look as if it was either of them. More likely it’s the same person as the one who ordered flowers for Mr Hayter.’

‘But where’s the crime?’ Ben wondered. ‘I still don’t get why Moxo’s so bothered about it. There must be a whole lot he hasn’t told you.’