Free The Windermere Witness by Rebecca Tope Page A

country up there. Nell said Bridget could go, but Markie’s mother put her foot down. He went anyway. Ran off and joined them.’
    ‘And fell off a horse while they were there?’
    ‘Trekking,’ he nodded. ‘Broke his arm.’
    ‘And they all went? Pablo, Glenn – all of them?’
    Baxter nodded. ‘Penny was furious. Almost scratched his eyes out.’
    ‘Whose eyes?’
    ‘Harrison-West’s. He paid for it all. It was always down to him, when they did those trips. Buying popularity, as I saw it.’
    ‘You let Bridget go, though. You trusted them?’
    ‘Safety in numbers,’ he shrugged. ‘Nell said it would be all right. They went off every summer, playing
Swallows
and Amazons
. But Markie was the interloper. He never fitted in. Never had friends of his own age.’ He trailed off, with a deep sigh.
    Simmy couldn’t let it end there. ‘But you
trusted
them? With your young daughter?’ she repeated, unable to get to grips with the story she was hearing. ‘All those men so much older than her.’
    He smiled grimly. ‘Never too sure about the Spanish bloke,’ he admitted. ‘He’s in insurance, for God’s sake.’
    Simmy wanted to ask whether that was better or worse than being a financial advisor or a fund manager. And whether any of them automatically qualified a person for homicide.
    She wanted to enquire into the background of everyone at the wedding, for the satisfaction of her own curiosity. Who was Glenn Adams, the shaven-headed best man, for example? And how did Bridget’s parents really feel about their girl marrying a man scarcely younger than themselves? She realised that her image of Peter Harrison-West was of an over-ripe bachelor, too long living alone to readily adapt to the married state. Would his young bride have to fall in with his foibles and routines? Or did she know them already, from earliest childhood? Was the marriage really something very sweet and wholesome, as most people seemed to think?
    ‘Have you known him long?’ she ventured.
    ‘Who – the Spaniard? No, I don’t know him at all. I never even spoke to him until last week when we had that stupid pre-wedding party. That was a fiasco, I can tell you. Waste of money on a grand scale.’
    Simmy had some acquaintance with the habit of very rich people to watch closely over their pennies. ‘Well, of course,’ Melanie had said when Simmy remarked on the frugality of a funeral of a man known to be well heeled. ‘That’s how they get to be rich in the first place.’
    It made sense, but Simmy suspected there was more to it than that. They wanted to escape opprobrium from people less well favoured than themselves. And they wanted to avoid the sheer bad taste of excessively flashy demonstrations. Celebrities, made rich overnight, might indulge in the scattering of their wealth – easy come, easy go – but if you really worked for it, then you didn’t throw it around.
    ‘Fiasco?’ she echoed.
    ‘Peter was in a foul mood, for some reason. Nerves, probably. Or somebody said something to him. I don’t know. Bridget was upset, which put a damper on everything. That girl is
never
upset. She’s like some sainted angel, the way she breezes through life, always smiling and thinking of others. Even when her mother and I … well, even then, she sailed through without taking sides or complaining. She gets on with Wanda; she’s besotted with Lucy. And Markie was her best friend,’ he concluded wretchedly.
    ‘Wanda?’
    ‘My wife.’
    ‘Of course.’
Of course
. She knew that.
Keep up, Sim
, sheordered herself. So why wasn’t Wanda at the wedding, at her husband’s side, supporting him in his loss?
    He answered the silent question. ‘She was meaning to be there, obviously. She thinks the world of Bridget. But she’s ill. Something she ate. Can’t keep anything down. Doctors think it must be e-Coli, which would make it a serious business. She’s thin enough as it is.’
    ‘Worrying,’ she sympathised.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That