The Windermere Witness Read Online Free Page A

repeated, dazedly. ‘The policeman, you mean?’
    ‘
Yes
. He’s my boyfriend, in case you’ve forgotten.’
    ‘He shouldn’t have told you about it, should he? Is he allowed to do that?’
    ‘He knew we did the flowers. We’re
involved
, Sim. This is a
huge
thing to happen. The Baxters and the Harrison-Wests, for God’s sake.’
    Simmy began to imagine the headlines and the gossip, and felt icy rivulets flowing through her body. But still she was far from grasping the central import of Melanie’s news. Standing there on her mother’s doorstep, her jaw working erratically as she attempted to speak coherently,she wanted nothing more than to close the door in her assistant’s innocent face.
    But she could not do that. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and tell my mother. Give me half a minute.’
    ‘Bring a coat,’ said Melanie, with a maternal touch that would never have occurred to Angie. ‘It’s turning colder.’
     
    The van was still parked behind the shop, so they walked briskly back to collect it. ‘Why didn’t you drive here?’ Simmy grumbled. ‘If there’s such a great hurry?’
    ‘I told you, I haven’t got the motor today. I came on the bike. And you won’t let me drive the van, remember?’ This was a sore point with Melanie, who was unmoved by arguments involving the price of insurance.
    The convolutions of Melanie’s transport arrangements had never properly registered with Simmy. She shared an elderly Fiesta with an older brother, a liability in Simmy’s view, which regularly refused to start. For backup, Melanie used an expensive bicycle that she resisted as much as possible. Melanie was not really built for cycling. ‘Did you?’ Simmy puffed. ‘In all that rain?’
    ‘I did. It was horrible.’
    ‘Must have been. Gosh, you never realise how steep this hill is until you try to walk up it quickly, do you?’
    ‘Nearly there,’ Melanie panted.
    The van, with its cheery floral logo, seemed an incongruous vehicle in which to arrive at a police investigation, but there was no choice. They were through Bowness and on the final stretch down to Storrs within a few minutes. The whole scene was completely transformed from that of a few hours earlier. None of the festivemerriment of a wedding was to be seen. The lapping waters of the lake struck Simmy as almost voracious, gobbling up poor young Markie for no reason at all. What in the world could have happened to him, she wondered, when he had been so happy and relaxed, apparently moments before meeting his death? Except, she corrected herself, he
hadn’t
been all that relaxed. He’d been worried about meeting his father, impatiently waiting out in the rain.
    The last of the rain clouds had slipped away to the east, leaving a pale-blue haze overhead. Simmy glanced at her watch, in an attempt to calculate how much time had elapsed since she was last there. It was a quarter to two – four and a bit hours, in which the lives of a dozen people or more must have been permanently changed. The memory of the little bridesmaid twiddling her fingers on the sofa came unbidden to her mind. Was she a cousin, perhaps, or somebody’s stepdaughter? Had she known and loved the charismatic Markie? Would anyone manage to explain to her that she was never going to see him again?
    They had to park on the roadside and walk down the hotel’s drive, having explained themselves to a policeman at the main gate. There were people everywhere, some with obvious TV cameras, and vehicles almost blocking the road that continued down to Newby Bridge. The hotel’s lawn was suffering badly from the heavy traffic across it, so soon after the rain.
    Inside the hotel, the staff were plainly pulling out all the stops to maintain a calm front, while cooperating fully with the police. The magnificence of the rooms made their task a lot easier. The building seemed to be saying it had seen every sort of upset before, many a time, andthis latest episode was not going to