The Windermere Witness by Rebecca Tope Page B

that Eleanor was less carefree than she might have seemed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated, driving too fast down the winding lane. ‘We were going to have a proper talk with you about this morning, weren’t we? I should have realised it would be too much for George. He’s never had anything like this happen before.’
    ‘No,’ said Simmy. ‘Not many people have.’
    ‘Of course not. Listen to me! What a stupid thing to say. I meant, hardly anything has ever gone wrong for him. Money just sticks to him, women chase after him, he’s never been ill.’
    ‘He thinks Peter’s friend, Pablo, killed Mark. Something to do with insurance.’
    Eleanor gave a little cry, half horrified laugh, half protest. ‘No! Does he? Oh dear.’
    ‘He told the inspector, apparently.’
    ‘Poor Pablo. Peter’s very fond of him. They’ve known each other for ever. They were at Repton together.’
    Simmy guessed this must be a school, but had never heard of it. ‘He was outside with Markie and Peter and that best man chap. They were waiting for Mr Baxter.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘I thought that was what you wanted to talk to me about?’ She felt some faint obligation to unburden herself, as if that might be a way to shake free of these people. In those final minutes in the house, she had understood that she had no wish to involve herself with them any further.
    ‘Yes, it was. Sort of. I hoped you might be able to reassure George somehow. Tell him that Markie was in good spirits, looking forward to seeing him again, happy about the wedding. They parted under a cloud you see, last time they met.’
    ‘Oh. How long ago was that?’
    ‘A month or so. Markie and Bridget had been reminiscing about their childhood, and laughing about the freedom they’d had, and George heard it as critical of him, for some reason. They were pure
Swallows and Amazons
, for years, growing up here.’
    ‘So I gather. You were rather famous in the area, apparently. My assistant has told me about it. You sounded like a cross between the Bloomsbury Group and
Dynasty
. All that money!’
    ‘Never as much as people think, of course. But we were peculiar for the times, I admit. There’s nowhere as good asthe Lakes for being peculiar. It’s easy to transport yourself back to the thirties, or even further. William Morris, Ruskin, that Bolton man at Storrs, all leaving their traces behind. You can just
feel
their ghosts, especially at this time of year. Another month, and it’ll be day-long mists, with everything dripping wet, and sheep looming at you without warning. I can’t tell you how much I love it,’ she finished with a contented sigh. ‘And now there’s Lucy to start it all over again. I have to say I’m amazingly lucky. I know I am.’
    It was a very odd speech for the member of a family violently bereaved that very day.
    ‘But—’ Simmy started, wanting to suggest that if Markie could be murdered, then was there not cause for concern about Lucy, or Bridget?
    ‘You’ll have to navigate me from here,’ Eleanor interrupted. ‘Which end of Troutbeck are you?’
    The potential awkwardness in the fact that she was now inhabiting the house in which Baxter’s other woman and child once lived made her deliberately vague. ‘The other end. Between the hotel and the pub. You can drop me outside the hotel, if you like.’
    ‘Right. Sorry, again. We must seem outrageous to you, dumping Lucy on you, and then spiriting you away for no good reason. I don’t expect we’ve been very rational, at least in the eyes of a normal person.’
    ‘No problem,’ Simmy assured her, heartily. Did anybody relish being called ‘normal’, she wondered. The word came packed with patronage and a disingenuous hint that the speaker really quite valued being abnormal herself. ‘Thank you for the lift.’
    Eleanor gave a brief chirp of farewell, and turned the cararound with a flourish. Simmy walked the few yards to her little house, and let herself in. Her car, she