Free The Windermere Witness by Rebecca Tope

ought to say. ‘Oh – sherry, thanks.’
    ‘Dry, sweet or Amontillado?’ he asked automatically.
    ‘Amontillado, please, if that’s all right.’
    He extracted a bottle and opened the other door to find glasses. Everything was accomplished deftly, as if for the thousandth time. He poured himself an inch of neat whisky and carried the drinks across the room to where Simmy was perched on a chair that she was fairly sure must be a Chippendale. She considered a host of possible conversation openers:
    Did it take you long to get here this morning?
    Have you other children?
    Eleanor seems to have interesting ideas about home decorating.
    I understand that Bridget and Peter have known each other a long time.
    I hope Lucy isn’t going to be too badly upset by all this.
    And more along similar lines; all of them, except perhaps the first, impossible to utter, for fear of where they might lead. It was equally unacceptable to refer to Markie’s death and
not
to refer to it. She knew, vaguely, where Baxter lived. There had been a prominent magazine feature about thehouse he and his present wife had created somewhere in Lancashire. Melanie had shown it to her, when the approach about the wedding flowers first happened. The new wife had evidently remained aloof from the wedding, or perhaps not been invited. The only thing Simmy could recall about her was that she was a landscape gardener and had wrought something miraculous on the exposed coast somewhere north of Fleetwood. Perhaps this would be a safe opener.
    But before she could find the breath to speak, George himself was cracking the conversational ice and turning it to steam. ‘One of those cronies of the Harrison-Wests did this,’ he exploded, eyes bulging, fists clenched. ‘The lad was in too deep. I
told
him, years ago, to stay clear of them. But no – he had to follow Bridget wherever she went, whatever cesspit he might fall into because of her.’
    Simmy’s insides fluttered at the crazy violence of his words. She thought of the fresh-faced Bridget, so blithe and carefree.
Cesspit?
she queried silently. Then ‘Cronies?’ she said aloud.
    ‘That Spaniard, for one. And Harrison-West himself, come to that. The golden boy with his easy money. Not so smug after that accident on the mountain, was he? Nearly finished him, that did. If it hadn’t been for Glenn Adams and Bridget, he’d have landed up in the funny farm. And Markie – my Markie – worrying himself to a shadow over it all. “Not your business, boy,” I told him. But he wouldn’t listen. Just kept saying Peter and Bridget needed him.’
    He wasn’t really talking to her, she realised, but more to some invisible controller of destiny, who might just possibly help him to make sense of the calamity that had befallen him.
    She could make little of his remarks, other than gleaning a hazy picture of five men – if Markie were included – and one girl, friends for years, with their own secrets and passions impenetrable to an outsider. None of the men was married, as far as she was aware. Had Peter spoilt some sort of pattern by entering into matrimony? Had Markie made trouble somehow? Felix was also planning to marry, according to Melanie. The old bonds would loosen and change, inevitably. Baxter seemed so sure that one of the ‘cronies’ killed the boy, but the thought was deeply repugnant.
    ‘Surely,’ she protested, ‘none of them would do such a terrible thing to Bridget? Markie was her
brother
.’
    Baxter took a breath and stared at a point above her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t know any of us, do you? You can’t begin to understand. I’m not sure I do myself. I just keep remembering an incident, when Markie was about fifteen. He fell off a horse. We all blamed Harrison-West for it. Just like when Mainwaring fell off the mountain.’
    ‘What happened?’ Simmy prompted.
    He spoke in fragments. ‘It was the summer. They wanted to go camping near Ennerdale. It’s wild