‘Until someone thumped him with a torch and chucked him in the lake,’ Les said.
‘He told his landlady he’d just come over from France, but a couple of receipts in his bag indicate he spent time in Wales before he moved back to the Lakes. He liked spending money, doesn’t seem to have been too hot at keeping hold of it. He was clueless, a fantasist. If he did kill Emma Bestwick, it’s a miracle he ever got away with it.’
Les’s cold had gone to his chest and he burst into a fit of coughing. When he’d recovered enough to speak, he said in a throaty wheeze, ‘But why would he want to kill her?’
‘He has no record of violence, all his crimes were about making money.’
‘Suppose someone paid him to murder Emma.’ Hannah said.
‘You’re assuming it was murder,’ Les objected. ‘If the guy was that much of a fuckwit, maybe her death was an accident.’
‘Then why arrange to meet in the middle of nowhere?’
‘We can’t answer that until we find something that links him with Emma.’
They turned to Bob, who shook his head. ‘Before Inchmore Hall burned down, Alex Clough was asked if Koenig had worked at the museum — as a volunteer guide, maybe — but she denied it. Of course, the records will now be ashes, so even if she was lying, we can’t prove it. But she’s in the clear for his murder. Her late father, too.’
‘Their alibis stack up?’ Hannah asked.
‘Alban fulfilled a speaking engagement in Grasmere on the night of Koenig’s death, addressing the Rotary Club on the topic of barghests and bogies of the Lakes. As for Alex, she went out for dinner with an old school chum and her husband at a swish restaurant in Cartmel. Plenty of witnesses, no chance that they could be mistaken.’
Hannah groaned. The Cloughs had been good suspects. They had money and either father or daughter could have afforded to provide Emma Bestwick with the funds she needed to set up on her own as a reflexologist. Not that Hannah had any idea why they might wish to do so. Unless Emma had somehow discovered the truth behind William Inchmore’s death and needed to be kept quiet.
While Bob departed to photocopy Edith’s journal, Hannah picked Les’s brain on next steps. They decided she should speak again to Alex about Edith’s journal, though even if Alex knew the truth about William’s murder, there was no chance of her admitting it.
‘You think Alban will have confided in her?’
Les shook his head. ‘He sounds like a man who enjoyed keeping secrets. He’d have taken this one to his grave if Edith’s confession hadn’t come to light.’
‘Maggie’s arranged for me to call on Jeremy and Karen later this afternoon. What do you reckon to their alibis for the night of Koenig’s murder?’
A derisive snort. ‘Not much.’
Jeremy had told Maggie that he’d been upstairs in his study, marking student essays, while Karen watched TV and their children did their homework in their rooms. Monk Coniston was within walking distance of their house and, in any case, the mere fact that no vehicle had been seen in the car park didn’t mean that the murderer couldn’t have parked somewhere close by. Either husband or wife could have slipped out, committed the murder and then hurried back under cover of darkness. If a car had been used, it might have been accomplished inside thirty minutes. A return journey on foot would have taken a good hour. Jeremy or Karen might even have killed Koenig without the other realising what they had done. But what was the motive?
Same question for Francis and Vanessa Goddard. They lived even closer to where Koenig had been killed and Fern’s team hadn’t yet established whether they could provide credible alibis. Hannah couldn’t forget that Francis had once been her personal prime suspect. But even if he had had an affair with Emma, would he — or Vanessa, for that matter — first have bought her off and then resorted to hiring Koenig to kill her?
When she asked Les for his opinion, he pinched his nose and said, ‘Best take a closer look at Emma. What sort of woman was she? Might she have blackmailed someone? It would explain how she came into so much money.’
‘Alex was her lover. She’ll have understood her, if anyone did.’
‘Maybe.’ His expression was bleak and faraway and Hannah was sure he wasn’t thinking about Alex. ‘But sometimes it doesn’t help to be close to someone. You become blind to what’s going on inside their head. You think you understand them, when the fact is, you really don’t have a bloody clue.’
Alex Clough had taken refuge in a postcard-pretty cottage on the outskirts of Newby Bridge. It belonged to a fiercely protective friend called Mina, a spiky-haired woman in a Greenpeace T-shirt and mud-stained jeans whose hallway bookcase overflowed with magazines and guides to self-sufficiency. Mina made it clear that, if it was up to her, the police wouldn’t be allowed near Alex until she’d had time to mourn in peace. But Alex, though pale and thinner than ever, was no longer the weeping wreck of the night before and she insisted that she was willing to talk to Hannah.
Even in grief she remained immaculate: black velvet jacket, white blouse and clingy dark trousers. Silently she listened as Hannah explained how her father and grandmother had conspired to cover up the truth about the murder of William Inchmore. When she denied all knowledge of the family’s secret, Hannah believed her. And if she was lying, it could never be proved. Nobody was left alive to prosecute. A mystery had been solved by Daniel’s discovery, that was all.
Alex pushed her hands deep into her pockets and strolled to the rain-flecked window that looked out over Mina’s large working garden, with its damp vegetable patch, hen coop and fruit trees. She pointed to a white bee hive in the distance, near the fence separating Mina’s land from a ploughed field.
‘If my father were here, he’d say that we should have told the bees everything that’s happened. Did you ever hear him recount the legend of Jenkins Syke? It was one of his favourite tales.’
Hannah shook her head, said nothing.
‘The Syke is a narrow beck not far from St Andrew’s Church. In olden days, folk said that if someone died, the bees must be told. The custom in these parts was to hang a black ribbon on the hives. The bees formed part of the community, and needed to be treated with respect. Failing to do so brought bad luck. The story goes that the coffin bearing the body of a man called Jenkins slipped from the sled on which it was being carried along the old Coniston corpse road and fell into the stream. My father’s theory was that his family only had themselves to blame. They must have neglected to tell the bees of his passing.’ Her voice broke. ‘Perhaps I’d better go outside and put them in the picture.’
Hannah said softly, ‘What will you do next?’
Alex cleared her throat. ‘Time for a fresh start. The hall was only insured for a fraction of its value, the premiums were crippling. But something nice may be happening between Mina and me. Years ago, long before Emma came on the scene, Mina and I were close, but she and my father never hit it off. Now, well, who knows? We’ll take it one day at a time.’
‘I wanted to talk to you about Emma. Did she ever mention a man called Guy Koenig?’
Alex frowned. ‘Isn’t he …?’
‘You may have heard on the news, his body was found in the lake. He’d been hit on the head.’
‘And there’s a connection with Emma?’
‘We think so.’
Alex’s bewilderment surely couldn’t have been feigned. ‘His name meant nothing to me. If Emma knew him, she never told me.’