The Coniston Case by Rebecca Tope

shop. All the bouquets were carefully labelled, with instructions pinned onto their wrapping, and a special trough of water used to keep them in good condition. The aim was for their recipients to believe the flowers had only just been picked and magically transported to their homes by fairies. It was a point of pride with Simmy that no two offerings were exactly the same. She added misty sprays of gypsophila to some and feathery greenery to others. The stalk lengths were varied to create different shapes to the overall bouquet. Despite her claim of the day before that she never wanted to see another red rose, she could not help admiring them. Singly, they were gorgeous. The exact moment between the first opening of the bud and the full-blown blossoming of the flower was a small piece of perfection, achieved by extreme manipulation at the point of cutting them and impressive technology employed during their transportation from Africa. It was all wrong, looked at one way, but amazingly effective in the results.
    ‘Somebody for you,’ sang out Melanie, at twelve o’clock. Assuming it was Kathy, Simmy paused to run her fingers through her hair and pull off the gloves she wore. She didn’t want to look tired and scruffy, even if it was her one-time best friend.
    It was not Kathy. DI Moxon stood just inside the door,as was his habit, waiting patiently for her to appear. His feet were well spread, and while he did not quite bounce on them, there was a subliminal suggestion that he would start doing so in another minute.
    ‘That was quick!’ said Simmy. ‘Have you been to talk to Mrs Crabtree already?’
    He shook his head. ‘Never got the chance. Something else cropped up.’
    ‘Oh?’ She experienced a sinking feeling of resignation, spiced with a thread of apprehension. ‘And how does it concern me this time?’
    ‘We found Mr Hayter.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Not good, I’m afraid. Not good at all. He’s dead.’
    ‘Murdered?’ yelped Melanie. ‘Oh my God!’
    Moxon turned on her with the speed of a cobra. ‘Be quiet!’ he snapped. ‘There has never once been any suggestion of violence in this case. You and Ben Harkness are far too quick to assume things. You for one should know better.’
    ‘Sorry,’ drawled Melanie, mulishly. ‘So what, then?’
    ‘He took his own life.’
    ‘And that’s not violence?’ Simmy interrupted. She was shaking, she discovered. The detective had also noticed and was laying a supportive hand on her arm, directing her towards a plastic chair she kept beside the till. ‘I’m all right,’ she insisted. ‘I’m being silly.’ But she and he both knew there was every good reason why she should go into shock at the news. The two of them had a history of confronting sudden death at close quarters, joined together as witness and investigator. Moxon had been privy to her points ofvulnerability, proving to be much more understanding than could have been expected.
    ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘And listen. I came to tell you because you’re sure to hear about it anyway and I fondly hoped to be able to soften the blow a bit. You can be assured that there really is no suggestion that he was killed by anybody. It was an unambiguously self-inflicted overdose. He went off into the fells at night to do it, so the cold will have hastened the process. We found him yesterday evening.’
    ‘Poor man.’
    ‘Yes.’ Something in his voice caught her attention. A familiar catch that took her back to her former husband’s tone when speaking of their lost child.
    ‘You knew him,’ she remembered. ‘A friend of a friend. It’s personal for you, isn’t it?’
    His eyes glittered with something like gratitude. ‘He was a good man. Nobody dreamt he was liable to do anything like this.’
    ‘And his daughter’s getting married. What a mess.’
    Moxon’s eyes held hers, his glasses magnifying them slightly, which made her feel strangely sorry for him. In all her dealings with him he had been