‘They ring the last blood from the stone, stupid risk.’ Northcote looked pained. ‘Oliver Hurrell was a smoker, the chap whose home she decorated. Those butts were probably his.’
They both hated it when the victim was a young woman, whatever her occupation. Northcote performed hundreds of autopsies every week, he was one of the fastest which was why the police liked him on the job. Fearless, he dodged bombs, crossing and recrossing London, cutting open the dead killed by raids, blackout accidents, natural causes and murder.
‘Perhaps.’ Cotton knew Northcote and his wife had problems. The doctor had once said that, with their son at boarding school, Julia Northcote got lonely and gin was her preferred medicine. Cotton’s wife Agnes had said it wasn’t good for patients to know that a doctor’s wife got ill. Not even if his patients were dead to start with? Cotton had joked.
‘How else did she afford that mink? It’s worth at least ten guineas. I bought one for Julia. To cheer her up,’ Northcote said.
‘Perhaps her sweetheart promised riches then backed out. She’s upset and he kills her.’ Cotton was thinking aloud; he would never convince Northcote to change his mind about women who sold their bodies for sex.
‘Porter will post over my report. My guess is fabric, a tie perhaps, pulled tight from behind. Stockings would work, but she was still wearing them. Man catches her unawares, she twists and claws like a cat, and protecting himself, he quietens her. For good.’ Eyes narrowed at the sky, Dr Northcote took a drag of his cigarette. ‘Odd he didn’t try to hide her body. There’s a burnt-out house a couple of doors down. That’s why the house we found her in was declared unsafe. Christ, the Blitz is open house for murderers and looters.’
‘I’m betting he was disturbed.’
‘Didn’t you say the all-clear was sounding when neighbours heard the scream? He would have got the hell out.’ Northcote crushed his cigarette on the ground. Alberta Porter was out of the Daimler and ready with the door open.
‘I’ll check with the PC who got there first,’ Cotton said. ‘You said Maple was still warm when you arrived. Last night’s temperature was below zero. Like you said, she’d been dead minutes.’
‘Don’t get too exercised, George. We both know that as long as girls like these take advantage of the blackout these murders will increase.’ Northcote climbed into the car and nodded to Porter to do the same. One foot on the running board he gave a wry smile. ‘Maple’s man will be an inebriated soldier called back to base without a care in the world. We both know that.’
‘You got there damned smartish.’ Cotton could always rely on Northcote. ‘I thought we had a chance with you on the scene so quickly.’
‘It was damn near on my doorstep.’ Northcote sounded offended by this. He shut the door and, winding down the window, started the car. ‘Just as well I did or she could have lain there for weeks. If I remember, poor old Hurrell had no relatives. A bit of a recluse.’
‘That would have made your job harder,’ Cotton agreed.
‘You forget the hyoid bone.’ Northcote was smooth in his correction.
‘Of course.’ Cotton touched the knot on his tie. Northcote had given them a sketch of the murderer. Blood group AB negative, greying hair, the downward pressure on Maple’s throat suggested he was tall. If the cigarettes Cotton had found in the grate were chucked there by the killer, he smoked Chesterfields. It seemed Hurrell, the house owner, had not kept cigarettes at home. There had been a full packet of Player’s in Maple’s handbag so he’d given her one of his. The likelihood that he’d strangled her with his tie might say the killing was unplanned.
Northcote reached up out of the car window and shook Cotton’s hand. They enjoyed batting about ideas. Cotton was always grateful to have Northcote doing the PM rather than his younger colleague, Dr Bradman, a spiv who had an inflated belief in his talent coupled with a tendency to underestimate Northcote’s.
Settling into the police-issue Wolseley, Cotton asked PC Shepherd to drive back to the house by the river where Maple Greenhill’s strangled body was found.
Chapter Nine
December 2019
Stella
Within the ancient walls of the grounds, insipid lamplight projected hazy shadows across the headstones, the writing worn to impenetrable hieroglyphics by centuries. The tower rose up and beyond, curdling clouds threatened more rain. Every now and then, as indeterminate as a passing thought, a bat flicked across the mauve-black between the yew trees.
The suspended silence was shattered by a scream. Across the dappled cemetery came crude skeletons, red-toothed werewolves and ghouls, luminous faces grinning. Teenagers were enacting a party-shop horror show. They ran close to Stella, standing by the south wall, without seeing her in the gloom. Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they were gone.
As Stella skirted the abbey, she saw a light in an upper window of Cloisters House. She had passed by the large detached house many times without noticing it. Now she knew it was where Professor Northcote had been murdered in 1963. Stella did in fact know about the murder. As part of what she called due diligence, she had read up on Tewkesbury. One website called Northcote’s death a classic murder story; Wikipedia said the news got little press attention because of Kennedy’s assassination on the same day. Spotting a reference to a biography of the pathologist, Stella realized it was in her dad’s collection of true-crime books that she’d found in his attic. On impulse, she had dropped it into her suitcase. She hadn’t unpacked it. She decided to begin it when she got back to the flat.
Outside the abbey, Stella peered through the bars of a tall iron gate to the back garden of Cloisters House. She made out wigwam frames and a line of raised beds made from railway sleepers. The gate was secured with a padlock and chain. Unlike Jack, she would not dream of trespassing.
When March said he’d received anonymous texts and a dead bird had been left on the bonnet of his jeep, losing patience, Felicity had made him leave. Had Stella, instead of Felicity, gone outside with March and given directions to Cheltenham police station, she could have escaped. Although having to hear more on his take on the Northcote Murder Mystery might have been no escape at all. Recalling March’s phone call in the abbey yesterday, it was better his jealous partner accompanied him to the police station
Stella wandered across the abbey grounds unconsciously, and, as Jack avoided cracks in paving for bad luck, she stepped only on lozenges of light cutting through the splaying branches of a vast oak tree. Disappointed though she was that March’s podcast wasn’t about cadaver tombs, she might give it a listen.
Andrea had told them that no way would March go near the police, men like him handled the world alone. Felicity had made a feeble attempt to get them back on track, but no one seemed keen to discuss modes of body disposal or coffin choices so she wound the Café to a close and everyone left. Stella had stayed to clear up, but as she had the previous evening, Felicity, doubtless dejected at the failed Death Café, said she’d prefer to do it alone.
Stella had gone to the Death Café to face the subject of death and put grief for her dad finally to rest. Instead she was back in familiar territory. Murder.
A strip of light slanted over the flagstones. The south door to the abbey was ajar and from within came the deep strains of the organ. Joy must have gone straight to the abbey after the Death Café. Stella didn’t blame her; it must be Joy’s version of deep cleaning. Drawn by the grand tones, she crept inside.
On Stella’s first day in Tewksbury two months ago, she had discovered that the abbey allowed dogs. It had been raining so, Stanley in her arms, she’d dashed inside. She’d hoped that Stanley, who barked his head off at the drop of a hat, would stay quiet. Evensong had been beginning – Stella now knew Joy was on the organ – and seeing Stanley lulled to sleep by the prayers – like baby Jesus, an elderly woman had whispered – Stella had stayed.
After that Stella was a regular at evensong. Reliant on facts and evidence, she was sceptical about God, but she liked the
music.
Now, keen to avoid Joy and guessing it would be mutual, Stella chose a chair behind one of the giant pillars nearest the north ambulatory. She let her gaze rest on the screen with, she’d read somewhere, its delicate foliated tracery. Not a classical music fan – that was Jack – yet Stella had no trouble recognizing Chopin’s Funeral March. Was Joy practising for a service or had she been influenced by the Death Café?
The triforium walk high up near the ceiling was not lit but, craning up, Stella could still distinguish the bosses carved above the piers, ill-tempered faces leering down at her. It was said they had been carved by a monk, who took out the teasing and insults he received from fellow craftsmen on his work. Was he the starved monk? Generally, the grotesque creatures amused her; tonight their expressions appeared terrible. She felt afraid.
Stella liked being alone and over the weeks the abbey had become another home, but now she knew Joy, Stella had forfeited anonymity, she felt hunted, like a rabbit on one of Joy’s colourful garments.
Stella caught a movement. In the gleam of a lamp a shadow was etched on the wall. Someone was on the other side of the column.
The music from the north transept ceased. Whoever it was would shortly leave. Joy must appear at any moment. Stella was about to inch along the row of chairs and cross the nave, away from the Grove organ, when she stopped.
Three figures lurked in the gloom of the south ambulatory. Stella shrank back into her seat, pointlessly – they must have been watching her for some minutes. Clustered outside the door to the vestry, they waited patiently. Although he would have been no help, Stella wished she had Stanley. Heart thudding against her chest, she told herself she was not afraid.
As she stared, the trio resolved into life-size effigies of the Three Kings. It was beyond paranoid to suspect the kings had been placed there to frighten her. It hadn’t worked, she would not be afraid.
The shadow of the person beyond the column had gone.
He or she had left silently, as if they didn’t want to be seen. So what? Stella would have done the same herself. She got up and, stepping into the north ambulatory, walked around the column. No one was there. All the chairs were unoccupied. Had there ever been anyone there? She looked at the wall. The low-angled lamps highlighted indentations in the stone, but nothing resembled the profile of a human face. Her mind was playing tricks. She had imagined the shadow.
A shoe scraped. Joy. In trying to avoid an imaginary person, Stella had forgotten Joy whose nature, if she found Stella there, would be far from joyful.
The organ struck up again and Stella let herself relax. Not music this time, but a series of jarring chords that did nothing for Stella’s jangled state. She moved to the north aisle; she wanted to regain a semblance of calm before she left. The abbey always improved her mood. There was something on one of the chairs, a prayer book or a Bible. It wasn’t a book. A peaked cap lay on the chair where she had imagined the shadow. She had not imagined it.
Stepping out into the darkness, talking in a low voice to Felicity who was obviously trying to stop him going on and on. Stella’s last sight of Roddy March had been of him cramming this peaked cap on his head.
Andrea had got March right: he hadn’t gone to the police, he had come to the abbey. That he had been listening to Joy on the organ faintly warmed Stella to him. She hadn’t associated his brash, thrusting personality with enjoying church music. After he’d gone, Joy maintained March was exploiting the fiction that Giles Northcote was innocent of killing his father in order to drum up interest in his podcast. Thinking this, Stella felt obscurely cheated. She’d have a word with him for ruining Felicity’s Death Café. He’d ruined it for her too.
Discordant notes reverberated around the abbey as Stella made her way past silent kings, towards the choir. Passing the vestry, she trod carefully past the presbytery on her left. In the apse she was closer to the north ambulatory and the Grove organ. Closer to Joy. Passing sepulchral monuments of various abbots, the lattice fretwork as fine lace, she stepped around the grating covering the Clarence Vault. Stella entered the Wakeman Cenotaph and she took refuge by the tomb of the starved monk.
Stella sniffed musty air, centuries-old dirt that no cleaner could attack. Aside from the Vulpex liquid soap she’d used to wash the floor of the chapel there was another smell. Citrus. Gifted with hyper-olfactory powers, Stella recognized cologne. She’d cleaned enough people’s bathrooms to have encountered Versace’s Dylan Blue. The scent was cut with another. A coppery odour, like old pennies.
The monk looked unchanged. Vaguely, Stella expected more of his emaciated body to have rotted and the creatures crawling over his ribcage to have nibbled away more of his flesh.
The body lay face up, blood pooled through the combat jacket to the stone floor, where a saturated lock of hair glistened. His arm was outstretched, his forefinger pointed at Stella. His face was twisted in a terrible grimace not unlike the carved bosses in the nave.
The podcaster’s assertion that someone wanted to murder him had not been a publicity stunt. Someone had murdered him.
Roddy March’s finger twitched. He was alive.
‘Roddy, oh, Roddy, talk to me. What happened?’ Stella knelt down, oblivious to the blood soaking into her trousers and put her face close to his. She touched the bloodied patch on his chest. Hardly a nick, how was he bleeding so profusely? It was an exit wound. She dare not turn him over – even if she could, Roddy was heavily built. Stella dabbed clumsily at her phone, fingers, slick with blood, sliding on the screen – 989… 96… 999.
‘Ambulance, police. Please be quick. Please.’ Stella described the situation. Good in a crisis she answered the operator’s questions decisively. He was breathing faintly, his airwaves were open. She dare not try to get him on his side. ‘I think he’s been stabbed in the back.
‘His lips are moving.’ Stella stopped being calm. ‘What? Roddy, tell me. Who did this?’ Dimly, she noted she might ask Roddy for a message to his loved ones instead of who had stabbed him in the back. Stella pulled off her jacket and shirt and feeling it pointless, pressed the bundle on the exit wound in Roddy’s chest.
‘…Cah… ca… wo… my…’ His eyes were fixed on Stella, wild, his pupils enlarged. He looked terrified.
‘Car? Wo my.’ Stella felt stupid, it couldn’t be that hard.
‘C-c-chh…’
‘Cawomy.’ Stella imitated Roddy’s first attempt. Jack would say don’t overthink. ‘Chamomile’. The tea Joy had given Roddy at the Death Café. ‘Was your drink poisoned?’ Crazy, no poison would cause Roddy to bleed out.
‘Chhh.’
Stella pressed on the wound; blood was coming through the jacket.
‘Is this a message for… for…?’ Stella remembered the person who had followed him into the abbey yesterday morning. ‘Someone who loves you?’
Stella leaned down to make out the expression in his eyes, but a gossamer film had turned them milky, opaque. Roddy was dead.
Chapter Ten
December 1940
The river had filled and submerged the causeway to the eyot beneath grey-greenish water. A cry pierced the silence and a V-shaped squadron of geese passed over the eyot where, the osier trade long gone, reeds grew dense and tall. The formation broke up as each bird vanished into the smoky mist.
George Cotton leant on a rail opposite the eyot. Last night the east of London had got a basinful; even from Chiswick a pall of smoke was visible. He transferred his gaze to the immediate below, but the Thames offered no comfort. The tide delivered the debris of smashed buildings and – a doll’s head drifted by – of smashed lives. Detective to the core, Cotton kept an eye out for a corpse. In winter the Thames tended to keep hold of her dead, but this was no usual December; since the Blitz nothing was the same. No season could be relied upon. He followed the eddying progress of a length of window sash, the cord trailing, and imagined that someone had once flung up the sash on a summer morning to greet a better day. Agnes called him fanciful.
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Cotton had paused to take stock before returning to the house where Maple’s body had been found.
The plash of oars. From a pontoon off a garden that belonged to one of the grand houses behind emerged the bowed figure of a man seated in a rowing boat. Cotton watched as the man rowed skilfully through the channel between the eyot and the river bank. As he cleared it, he glanced across at Cotton. His BBC Home Service voice cut the chill air.
‘Lovely morning, ain’t it.’
Cotton tipped his hat in reply.
‘Nothing ruddy lovely about it.’ Shepherd was at Cotton’s elbow. ‘Not when you haven’t slept a wink.’
‘He’s alive. That’s what matters, lad.’ Cotton pushed off the rail. ‘With a young woman waiting for us to catch her murderer, our beds are a way off yet.’
Jalalpur Villa was on the corner of a terrace of three Edwardian houses, each named after towns in British India. Cotton reckoned the villa called Amritsar, where, twenty years ago, the British Army committed a massacre, could have done with a new name. Looking at Jalalpur Villa, black door shabby with the dirt that coated everything these days, Cotton felt a moment of despair.
‘This will always be a house where a young woman was murdered,’ he said.
‘I expect in, say, fifty years, no one will care,’ Shepherd said. ‘What if we don’t find him, sir?’
‘What have I said? Sunny side up, Constable.’ Cotton wasn’t confident. Since September 1939, there had been eight murders in his division. Only three solved. Two of those were women. One pushed off Hammersmith Bridge by a drunken serviceman of the ilk Aleck believed murdered Maple. He was let off and shipped out to France where he’d been hit by friendly fire – justice of a sort. The eighteen-year-old burglar who beat a pensioner to death for a pathetic amount of savings was judged insane and went to Broadmoor. Bert Whitaker, a fifty-year-old coal lorry driver and fire-watcher got manslaughter for strangling his wife for ‘carping on and on’. Cotton had got scant satisfaction seeing Whitaker on Aleck’s table when, perhaps unable to live without being carped at, he’d hanged himself with his belt. The killer of a middle-aged secretary working late at an employment agency off the Broadway who was beaten to death with her typewriter carriage was never caught. What chance, when CID was two men and a dog? Forget the dog.
The Distant Dead Page 7