The Distant Dead

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Anything in that prostitute case?’ The door behind Cotton burst open and Bob Hackett strode across the thick carpet, planting himself on his air-cushioned chair with a fleeting grimace.

  ‘Maple Greenhill wasn’t a prostitute. She had a sweetheart,’ Cotton snapped.

  ‘Decent women don’t end up in empty houses with their knickers down.’ Pain made Hackett crude.

  ‘Her brother claims she was engaged.’ Cotton had brought his notebook but he didn’t need it, the facts were at his fingertips.

  ‘Not according to this.’ Hackett flourished some papers and Cotton recognized the carbon of Northcote’s pathology report which he’d sent by internal mail the previous evening. ‘Girl hoodwinks a chap with her sexual advances then extorts more cash.’

  ‘Northcote doesn’t say that.’ Had Northcote talked to Hackett? Get your chap off my back, he’s questioning my results.

  ‘No need.’ Chin on elbows, Hackett winced. ‘George, don’t go making her one of your lame ducks. Banks won’t thank us for inflating a common or garden murder when there’s decent Londoners dying for their country.’

  Wolsey Banks, the west London coroner, adjourned and reopened his inquests as often as it took to locate witnesses, suicide notes, wills, shopping lists, everything that might determine cause of death. Frustrating when a guilty man walked away scot-free because a scribbled note cast the slightest doubt on the crime, but today Cotton was counting on Banks’s diligence. Tither and Cameron, the coroner’s officers, would back him up.

  ‘Actually, sir, I’m about to make an arrest. I know who killed Maple.’

  Home Sweet Home. Cotton cranked the sharpener handle.

  ‘I will have to charge Dr Aleck Northcote. With murder.’

  A shower of shavings trapped in the housing fluttered to the carpet. Outside on the street, neither man registered the clop of horses’ hooves as a coal merchant trundled by.

  Shifting on his rubber cushion, Hackett barked, ‘For heaven’s sake, George, stop doing that.’

  ‘Mrs Northcote said her husband was working the night Maple was murdered.’ Cotton had lain awake all night rehearsing the words. ‘His secretary confirmed, however, that, at Northcote’s request, she had made a retrospective entry in his work diary for when he was called to the hou—’

  ‘Stop.’ Hackett had gone white. ‘George, this bombing is getting to us all. Invasion any minute, we’re all under strain. Agnes told the missus you were at your parents’ grave the other day.’

  ‘The cemetery is opposite where Maple Greenhill lived. I didn’t go in.’ Cotton knew Hackett’s MO was to pull you down a peg or two if he didn’t like what you said.

  He listed the evidence starting with the scratches on Northcote’s arms. Yes, the lighter on its own could be explained. It was untypical of Northcote to leave a personal item at a murder scene, but we all make mistakes. Trickier was the tailor’s ticket in Maple Greenhill’s coat. Then the coat collected from the tailor by Northcote himself and which, Bright believed, belonged to Julia Northcote, the pathologist’s wife.

  ‘She admitted as much, sir.’

  ‘I’d call you shellshocked if you’d ever fired a gun for your country,’ Hackett said.

  ‘…two cigarette butts in the grate, a fingerprint on the radiogram and on a paperweight on the mantelpiece which Northcote had no reason to touch. Cherrill from the Yard had confirmed they belonged to the pathologist. He’d assumed Aleck had picked it up to confirm if it was the murder weapon.’

  ‘How do you know they’re his?’ Hackett growled.

  ‘They’re on the Yard’s files.’

  ‘Why the dickens is he on their system?’ Hackett was as surprised as Shepherd had been.

  ‘They’ve got you and me too, sir. That time he gave us a tour? It’s useful for elimination when we’re at a scene.’

  ‘You can ruddy well eliminate Northcote.’ Hackett banged his desk. ‘Kindly explain how, if Dr Northcote killed this girl, that his PM report says its murder? Don’t you think he’d have called it an accident? No one would have questioned it.’

  ‘Any half-decent pathologist would have seen the broken hyoid bone. If he’d omitted that and there’d been a second autopsy, someone like Bradman would have enjoyed destroying his rival’s reputation. This way he puts us off the scent.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Hackett dabbed the back of his neck with a hankie. ‘George, do you realize what you’re suggesting?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, sir,’ Cotton said. ‘I am saying I have more than enough evidence to charge Aleck, Dr Northcote, with the murder of Maple Greenhill.’

  Bob Hackett made his way around the desk; instinctively Cotton tensed, but Hackett was going to the washroom. He called out over his shoulder, ‘Detective Inspector Cotton, you are to take no action until I’ve informed Wolsey Banks of this very queer turn-up. It will be in his hands.’

  ‘Sir.’ The meeting had gone to plan. Cotton knew that lily-livered Bob Hackett hadn’t legged the greasy pole only to slide down with his pension in his sights. But Wolsey Banks was made of sterner stuff. He would not let a man, whoever he was, get away with murder.

  Chapter Twenty

  2019

  Stella

  When Stella returned to the flat, she was relieved to find Lucie in her cockpit transcribing the episode of Roddy’s podcast. Seeing Stella, she adopted a noble expression of self-sacrifice which meant she had kept her promise not to go to the police briefing. In case she let slip she’d been with Janet in the teashop that morning, Stella took Stanley for a walk.

  Stella crossed the bridge over the Severn and went along the lane to Lower Lode. When she reached the river, she followed the bank past the boathouse, through churned-up mud at the start of the footpath to the meadow beyond.

  Stanley badgered her for a ball but then, diverted by a myriad of smells, he abandoned it. Stella strolled to the lightning-struck tree. Stripped of leaves and smaller branches, the scorched oak emerged through the mizzle, angular branches stark against the white-grey sky.

  Out of habit – Jack said never assume you are alone – Stella checked for anyone up ahead or behind her then clambered through a break in the undergrowth to a spot where she had spent many hours since coming to Tewkesbury. Although it faced the river and the opposite bank, the little clearing was screened by bushes from the path. It offered Stella the space she craved. Leaning against the trunk of a horse chestnut, she concentrated on leaves and twigs drifting by on the water and tried to relax. Stanley settled on her lap.

  Her fragile calm was shattered as, barking, Stanley launched off her lap and tore back through the gap. Hearing a voice – annoyed tones – Stella scrambled up and returned to the path.

  Stanley was dancing around a person standing by the lightning-struck tree. From his exuberance Stella imagined it was Jack, but then saw it was a woman.

  ‘You should watch your dog, cattle graze here.’ It was Andrea the abbey gardener.

  ‘There aren’t any today.’ Stella recalled how rude Andrea was at the Death Café. The solution was to demonstrate being nice. ‘How are you, after the…’

  ‘After the murder, is that what you’re pussy-footing with?’ Andrea said.

  ‘Yes. I mean it was pretty shocking for all of us.’

  ‘Not for me. I didn’t know him.’ Andrea nudged Stanley away with her foot. This only encouraged him to fuss around her more so Stella grabbed him and clipped on his lead.

  ‘Nor did I, but just the fact of a man dying,’ Stella said. ‘But don’t you live at the same lodging house, the one run by Gladys Wren? You didn’t see him there?’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Andrea looked distinctly unhappy. Stella couldn’t believe she’d asked the question; she’d hate someone asking her about her living arrangements.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe Roddy.’ Janet had told her, but she could hardly say she was as good as hand in glove with the police. Stella felt bad using Roddy. Lucie would applaud her quick thin
king since, being dead, he wouldn’t deny it.

  ‘Roddy had no right to go blabbing to you,’ Andrea said.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it blabbing…’ Stella wished she herself had not blabbed.

  Andrea appeared to be about to say something else, but abruptly with a noise of exasperation she stalked off toward the boathouse without saying goodbye.

  All hope of calm having gone, Stella returned to her secret haven by the horse chestnut tree – not secret now – and collected her seating mat and rucksack. She gave the river one last look.

  She hadn’t noticed the light begin to fail. The path in both directions was in shadow. She couldn’t see Andrea. The grey of the day was merging with approaching dusk.

  From across the meadows, the abbey bell struck three thirty. Evensong was in half an hour. With what she’d been through in the last forty-eight hours, Stella absolutely didn’t want to miss it.

  *

  She reached the abbey at exactly four and hurried up the yew path. As she went through the great north door, Stella wondered if Janet would be there scanning the congregation for anyone suspicious. Janet would be suspicious of Stella, for a start. Stella hadn’t told her she’d taken to attending evensong. With Stanley on her shoulder, Stella slipped inside.

  Organ notes ricocheted around the walls. The choir was singing the Magnificat. No Janet, no police tape or crime scene markers, the abbey was restored. Stella took a seat beyond the entrance where she could see, but was less likely to be seen. Craning up at the stained-glass window of Christ’s Journey she gave herself up to the atmosphere. Stanley was already dozing on her lap.

  Perhaps Roddy’s murder had put off worshippers: there were only three. One woman with a Labrador at her feet and two elderly men huddled near the choir. Stella recognized the men from other evensongs. She wondered if it was Joy on the organ, or if she, like Stella since Roddy’s murder, had been stood down. Absently, Stella took up a prayer book and finding the Corinthians, followed the reading of the second lesson with a finger.

  …He hath put down the mighty from their seats: and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…

  After a bit, her gaze wandered. Beyond the font, there was a shadow.

  Murderers returned to the scene of the crime. As the congregation rose for the Apostle’s Creed, Stella, paralysed by damp terror, stared at the shadow.

  … he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

  Stanley struggled and she had hold him tight to stop him escaping. Dogs might be welcome in the abbey, but not ones who cantered about. The shadow had gone. Stanley began to mew.

  Someone had sat behind her.

  With the whole abbey why choose there? Filled with rage, Stella reminded herself she could shout for help. But she was like stone, she could not move.

  …the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting.

  Amen.

  Stella shut the prayer book and turned to confront him.

  It was Jack.

  *

  ‘Please come home.’ Jack came and sat next to Stella and submitted to Stanley’s excited slathering and head-butts.

  Evensong was over. The chords of Handel’s Voluntary had died away. The straggle of worshippers and the priest had left.

  ‘I am home.’ Stanley only mewed when he recognized someone he loved. She contemplated the area where workmen were restoring the floor at the base of the pillar – the barriers seemed somehow brighter in the dim light from above.

  ‘You live in Hammersmith, not here. Everyone misses you.’ Jack addressed the choir ceiling. ‘I miss you.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m no use to anyone right now, not fit for human consumption, as Mum would say. I need space on my own. To sort stuff out.’ Stanley was curled up on Jack’s lap asleep. He was home.

  ‘You are use to me,’ Jack said. ‘And you’re not on your own, Lucie’s with you. Don’t tell me she gives you space.’

  ‘Actually, she does.’ Stella felt the truth of this. Lucie chatted on about her terrible editor, her unwritten book as if she’d finished it, she read out gruesome stories from the Gloucestershire Echo, stopping to heckle, ‘Garbage, this kid can’t write. Where was the editor?’

  Within Lucie’s noise and caper, as if in the eye of a storm, Stella had found peace. Until Roddy was murdered her chief fear had been that, nearly recovered, Lucie would soon return to London and leave Stella behind.

  ‘Jackie and Bev send their love. Your mum said she’d love to hear from you.’

  ‘I only wrote to her yesterday.’ From his face, Stella saw Jack didn’t know she was in touch with her mum. That meant he’d made it up. Had Jackie and Bev sent love?

  ‘What about Clean Slate? You need a job. Jackie said you’ve stopped drawing salary.’

  ‘I can’t take money for doing nothing.’ Stella contemplated the sleeping Stanley. ‘I have a job. Cleaning.’

  ‘Where?’ Jack looked shocked.

  ‘Here.’ Her turn to lie. She had found whatever space it was she had wanted by dusting off tombs and the bosses, angels with their instruments, a rebec, tabor, zither, one had a pipe, hurdy-gurdies. That was all over. Misery overwhelmed Stella. ‘I’m in a team.’

  ‘You were already in a team. Us.’ Jack frowned up at the gigantic piers supporting the roof. ‘Justin and Milly miss you.’ He jolted as if with an electric shock and Stella knew this bit was true.

  ‘They have you and Bella. Anyway, the children email me, didn’t Bella say?’

  ‘What? They are too young,’ Jack said.

  ‘Well, not literally, Bella scans their pictures and emails them.’

  ‘No, she didn’t say.’ Jack was fiddling with Stanley’s ears as if trying to tie them together.

  ‘She sent a story Justin and Milly made up.’ She and Jack had vowed never to have secrets or lie to each other. Even when they’d been an item neither had kept that promise.

  ‘What about? Us?’

  ‘No. Stanley was in it.’ Stella would not say that in their story the twins’ daddy found a big house for Stella where Daddy and you have a huge wedding. If she told Jack he’d be in floods. And so would she.

  ‘Even my children can’t put you and me back together again.’ Jack looked disappointed and Stella wondered if he’d been hinting about their marrying to his kids. No, they were independent little beings, they’d see for themselves their daddy was sad.

  ‘Lucie said you have a case,’ Jack said after a bit. ‘She said you found a dead body here. Is that why you came to the service? Are you OK?’

  ‘Lucie shouldn’t have told you and Roddy wasn’t dead he was dying.’ She was horrified – who else had Lucie told? What if Janet found out?

  ‘Roddy.’ Jack repeated the name. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. Although we had met before…’ Despite the likelihood Lucie had told Jack, she didn’t want to talk about the Death Café.

  ‘I heard March’s podcast. I think the case he was investigating, the murder of that pathologist in the sixties, must be connected to his own murder.’

  ‘Professor Northcote was murdered nearly sixty years ago. More likely it’s someone with mental health issues, or Roddy was mugged. He was robbed.’ That morning she’d disagreed with Janet saying something like that, but now Jack’s certainty about the murder had Stella arguing against herself. Jack had chewed it over with Lucie.

  ‘Lucie says you’re helping Janet, your dad’s old colleague. Fancy her being here, what a coincidence.’

  ‘You don’t believe in coincidences,’ Stella reminded him.

  ‘No, well.’ He stroked Stanley. ‘Lucie says Northcote was a Home Office pathologist who used to live near Ravenscourt Square Park. That not far from me in Kew. We could check it out.’ Jack sounded tentative.

  ‘It’s a matter for the police,’ Stella said stiffly. Lucie would have declared them a team. Like the old days, darrrling. Stella wanted nothing to do with murders from the past or in the very present
.

  ‘You know as well as I do the police miss stuff. Look, Stell, I get you want space, that we’re on a break or… but let’s do this, be a team just once more.’

  Someone was coming up the north ambulatory. It wasn’t… it was.

  ‘Hello, Joy.’ Instinctively, Stella shifted up to Jack.

  ‘Good evening.’ Joy stopped. ‘Stella, was it?’

  ‘Yes, I liked your… organ playing. It was lovely.’ Stella cringed at the lame comment.

  ‘Ah, you attended our evensong.’ Joy gave a confirmatory nod.

  ‘Jack Harmon.’ Jack reached for Joy’s hand and shook it. Stella expected this to displease Joy but to her astonishment Joy smiled. Jack said, ‘I’m Stella’s… friend, I am so sorry about the tragic event here. How upsetting for you all.’ Lucie used to say Jack could charm birds out of the trees. He was working wonders with Joy.

  ‘Yes, it has shocked us all.’ Still smiling, Joy tipped her head up at the stained-glass window that depicted the life of Jesus, the image barely discernible now as it was dark outside. ‘Stabbed. Stone dead.’

  Taken aback, Stella remembered Joy hated euphemisms for death. She was telling it as it was.

  ‘Not stone dead, Stella was with him as he died,’ Jack said. ‘She heard his last words.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The smile had gone. ‘It was you who came upon our Mr March?’ Joy was glaring at Stella. ‘I didn’t take to him, no, not one bit. I told that policewoman, March used our Death Café to flog his wares.’

  Stella tried to change the subject: ‘Joy is the abbey organist.’

  ‘I adore the organ.’ Jack was gazing at the stained glass. ‘Especially ones with four keyboards! How do you guys do it?’

  Guys. Joy would hate that. She obviously hadn’t heard because she said to Stella, ‘March was still alive when you found him?’ Joy feigned disinterest, but Stella was sure that, like anyone, she was keen to know.

  ‘Something about chamomile.’ Jolting in horror, Stella gave the chair in front a kick. She should not have told Joy. She should not have told Lucie. ‘He was in a lot of pain before he passed, I mean died.’