The Ambleside Alibi: 2 by Rebecca Tope Page A

touch again, anyway. The flowers might have just been a sort of advance warning.’
    All three women pulled sceptical faces. Gwen gave a faint snort. ‘She’s
not
genuine,’ said Davy. ‘We’re certain of that. At best, it’s mistaken identity. You know how easy it is to get the wrong person these days, on those ancestry websites. It’s all so horribly public – you can apply for birth certificates and adoption information for absolutely anybody. This poor girl might have been given false facts at the outset. The central point is, she is not my mother’s grandchild, and she’s caused a lot of distress by claiming that she is.’
    It was a long and forceful speech, which Simmy listened to carefully. Somewhere deep down, she was still grappling for a link between Mrs Joseph and Nancy Clark that would bring the two apparently distinct stories together. Melanie and Ben had both seized on this, almost automatically. And yet there didn’t seem any real logic to it. The two women only peripherally knew each other. The only present-day connection was Simmy, who had seen the former shortly before meeting the man suspected of killing the latter. That was ridiculously flimsy as a link – except that the mystery of the self-professed granddaughter carried so many sinister implications that it felt important.
    She became aware of Melanie rustling something behindher. The girl had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the conversation, but there was no doubt that she had heard it all, and would have plenty to say at some stage. When a new customer came in, Mel quickly moved forward to greet him. It was a man in his fifties, wanting a poinsettia, uninterested in any discussion about it. He edged past the group of women in the middle of the shop, and paid with cash. He left with his head down, as if embarrassed at having entered a florist shop at all. It was a far from unusual pattern. Men and flowers were an abidingly uneasy mixture, which Simmy mainly found amusing, but sometimes regarded with exasperation.
    She returned her attention to Davy. ‘It is quite public,’ she agreed, picking up on the detail that seemed most likely to let her off the hook. ‘We’ll have to hope she’s gone back to her searches and realised her mistake.’
    Again, a triple expression of scepticism greeted her, but she stood her ground. ‘I’m afraid I really can’t help you any further,’ she said.
    ‘It’s much as I expected,’ said Nicola. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ she addressed her sister. ‘At least we tried.’
    ‘Poor old Mum,’ Davy sighed. ‘Thank goodness there’s Christmas to take her mind off it. We’ll have to make a special effort this year.’
    ‘Of course, if we went to the police, they could force you to reveal the person’s identity,’ said Gwen.
    ‘Oh, no!’ Nicola protested, with a look at Simmy that was almost pleading. ‘We don’t want to start making threats like that, do we? Can’t we keep it all civilised?’
    ‘And without some very good grounds for suspicion, they wouldn’t do that anyway,’ said Simmy tightly. ‘Simplysending flowers to somebody isn’t a crime. The message carries no hint of a threat. I wouldn’t have agreed to deliver it, if it had.’
    ‘We’re not
accusing
you of anything,’ Davy snapped, losing patience. ‘We’d just really like to know what this whole fiasco is about. It’s a big thing, after all, being told you’ve got a close relative you knew nothing about.’
    ‘We’re not getting anywhere, Davy,’ Nicola said. ‘We’ve done all we can. Let’s leave it now, shall we?’
    ‘It’s all right for you, isn’t it? Nobody seriously imagines that
you
had a secret child. All attention’s on me, because everybody thinks if I could do it once, I could do it again. I can see Mum thinking exactly that. Bernie and Stephen are going to start acting all suspicious, if they get to hear about it. I can deny it until I’m black in the face, and they’ll never