‘We could go to the flat.’ Hugging Stanley to keep him dry and her warm, Stella had had enough of the tearooms.
‘We shall grab a window table and wait for Lady Manure to clock off. We shall tail her home then pay her a leetle visit.’
‘She’s on a bike, we’ll never…’ Stella tailed off as she got it.
‘Cause and effect, mon cheri.’ Lucie’s soprano tones sang out. ‘Cause equals puncture. Effect equals Andrea the pretend gardener has to walk home.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
2019
Jack
Maple’s Motors (Est. 1944) was squeezed between the arched entrance to flats above and what in Jack’s boyhood had been a sweetshop but was now a flooring company.
‘Rare to find a showroom on a high street, the lease costs must be huge,’ Jack said to Beverly as they pushed on a glass door and went inside.
‘We’ve owned the building for nearly a century. Low overheads mean we can offer genuine bargains.’
Maple Greenhill. Although Jack believed in ghosts, he didn’t expect to see one under strip lighting amongst polished Minis and BMWs.
‘Cleo Greenhill, can I help you guys?’ The likeness was so strong the woman could only be Maple’s descendent.
‘We’ve come to buy a car.’ Beverly was keeping to Jackie’s instructions.
‘I like customers who know what they want, it saves everyone time.’ Cleo shook Bev’s hand. ‘Do you fancy a wander or would you like me to point you in the right direction?’
‘Yes.’ Face to face with Cleo, brimming with life, Jack felt the measure of Maple’s loss more profoundly than from reading newspaper articles.
‘Which?’ Cleo raised one eyebrow.
‘That one.’ Bev pointed at a racing green Mini.
As Bev got behind the wheel and purred over the leather seats, Jack quelled impatience – they were meant to cut to the chase and head for Tewkesbury. Bev was taking the role-playing too seriously.
At the rear of the showroom he found a drinks machine and the toilet. As Jack usually did, he took the ‘Private’ sign on a door as invitation and stepped inside.
At the top of a staircase, he entered the door with ‘Office’ on the opaque glass in gold letters.
Boxes towered on top of filing cabinets. On top of the cabinet nearest to him was a huge Remington typewriter that was once the latest in office equipment. As had been the cumbersome computers, one with a floating Windows 98 logo on the screen. Jack tracked fumes to an opened bottle of whisky on the furthest of two desks.
A whiteboard on the wall behind it suggested that, despite the bargain prices, sales were little better than at Clean Slate. Cliff had had no sales for the whole of November and nothing in December so far. Cleo had sold two BMWs in the first week of November, but the rest of the month was blank.
Jack guessed that, as he saw at Clean Slate, the pile of stamped envelopes on the nearest desk contained last notice invoices. His eye travelled to pictures on the dirty white pebbledash walls. Car adverts dating back to the seventies – You don’t need a big one to be happy – for a tiny Mini, unlike the sleek model over which he’d left Bev pretending to salivate. One Triumph leads to another showed four bikini-clad women draped on a TR6. Jack switched his gaze to five photographs, portraits of stiff-looking men, the last in colour. John Hamblin, Billy Turton Hamblin, Vernon Greenhill. The last one showed Cliff Greenhill’s ruddy cheeks. In one picture, Jack recognized Cleo, but it was oddly in sepia, like the early pictures. Jack’s heart crashed against his chest: the photograph wasn’t of Cleo. It was Maple.
‘Who the devil are you?’ An elderly man, grizzled grey hair darkened with grease, his chin unshaven, staggered through a door which, hung with coats, Jack hadn’t noticed.
‘I was waiting for Cleo.’ Often caught somewhere uninvited, Jack was smooth.
‘Cars… downstairs.’ The man grabbed the whisky, took a swig and wiped his mouth.
‘You must be Cliff.’ Jack nodded at the picture beside Maple’s.
‘Must I?’ Cliff’s cheeks were ruddier still in real life.
‘You took over from Vernon.’ To gain trust Jack often pretended acquaintance with absent people. Vernon having died before Jack was born, he was skating on thin ice.
‘What’s that to you?’
‘It’s lovely when a business is passed down through the family.’
‘Is it.’ Cliff Greenhill opened a drawer in his desk meant for hanging files and took out another bottle of whisky. Seeming not to notice it was empty he raised it to Maple’s photograph. ‘Thanks to her.’
‘How is that?’ Jack was briefed, he knew exactly why it was thanks to Maple.
‘She gets murdered. We’re still paying for it.’ He swallowed a belch. ‘RIP and all that.’
‘You shouldn’t be up here.’ Cleo Greenhill stood in the doorway.
‘No, sorry, I was looking for…’ Jack saw from Cleo’s face no lame excuse would do. ‘Cliff was telling me about Maple. Your great-aunt.’
‘Never met her.’ Cliff tossed the empty bottle in the bin.
‘I wondered if I could drive it away today.’ Bev appeared behind Cleo.
‘I’d love you to, but it must go through our workshop before we roll it out. Come back in two days, make it three.’ Cleo gave a tight smile.
‘We can have it ready for you tonight.’ Cliff Greenhill found his inner salesman.
‘Dad.’ Cleo eyed her father.
‘Get the lad on it, he’s only twiddling his thumbs.’ Cliff waved a hand.
‘We’ll see what we can do.’ Cleo’s pantomime that Maple Motors had more much business than they could process was painful to watch.
Back in the showroom, Beverly ignored Jack’s prods and hisses that her charade should stop. He couldn’t bear Cleo to believe she’d got a win.
‘I’ll have the Countryman ready tonight,’ Cleo told Bev.
‘We haven’t quite made up our mi—’ Jack started.
‘That’s the best news, thank you.’ Beverly looked so pleased she almost convinced Jack.
‘If you’re sure.’ Cleo handed Beverly a pack and it dawned on Jack that Cleo had made her first December sale.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Beverly asked.
‘That’s not why you’re here.’ Hands on her hips, Cleo confronted Jack. ‘Mr Man here was asking about Maple, my great-aunt. What are you, journalists?’
‘We’re trying to find out who killed Maple.’ Jack sat down at Cleo’s sales desk. It was do or die. He launched into the whole story. How they had come to connect Maple’s murder with the murder of Sir Aleck Northcote in 1963 and with two murders in the last week in Tewkesbury.
‘The podcast man.’ Cleo got them drinks. ‘That’s why he looked familiar. He was here pretending to buy a car a few weeks back. He asked for Dad, which was a mistake because Dad sent him packing as soon as he mentioned Maple. I only saw him as he was leaving.’
‘March believed he knew the real killer of Aleck Northcote. He probably wanted to know if Cliff’s father and grandparents had ever harboured suspicions about who killed her,’ Beverly said.
‘As you saw, Dad won’t talk about Maple, he blames her for him being a car salesman and he hasn’t forgiven Maple’s son William, my dad’s cousin, for escaping. My grandfather Vernon put pressure on Dad to keep the showroom going.’ Cleo let out a sigh. ‘Like Maple would care.’
‘You seem to care,’ Jack said.
‘I do. Selling cars is the dream job. If only my dad would let me run the show, I’d turn it right around. But he promised his father to stick it and, even though it’s killing him, he will. Thanks, mate.’ Crossing the showroom Cleo took a bundle of junk mail and brown envelopes from the postman.
‘Do you know where Maple’s son is now?’
‘No. Someone told me he’s a doctor. I should be more interested, but if William doesn’t want to know us, fine.’ Cleo buffed the bonnet of a bright red BMW on her way back to the desk. ‘Appare
ntly Grandad never got over Maple’s murder. When Vernon’s boss left him this place, instead of thinking it amazing, Vernon felt guilty because Maple never got a life. Everything he did was to make it up to her. It drove his wife and my dad crazy.’
‘Why did William disown you all?’ Beverly looked outraged.
‘Vernon only told him he was Maple’s son after Maple’s parents died. William was angry that they’d all lied to him. He wouldn’t touch a penny of his inheritance.’
‘It’s nice of you to be so frank with us,’ Beverly said. ‘I promise you won’t regret it. We want justice for Maple.’
‘What I will regret is you buying a car to get a foot in the door.’ Cleo looked stern. ‘There’s a cooling-off period, as long as you don’t drive it to Scotland and back.’
‘I won’t cool off,’ Beverly said. ‘What did Cliff want to do, you know, instead of selling cars?’
‘Be an archaeologist. Too late now, he can’t even manage a gardening trowel.’ Cleo suddenly looked sad. ‘Listen, guys, Dad won’t care if you discover who murdered Maple, but I will. Her murder destroyed our family.’
‘Murder does that,’ Jack said.
*
‘Next time you and me go undercover, maybe don’t follow through?’ Jack said as they drove off in his own crock of a car.
‘I wanted to spend the money Nan left me on something special,’ Beverly said. ‘You can’t say it wasn’t worth it. Now you have a fancy motor in which to go and see Stella. Besides, as soon as I mentioned Maple, it was like a starting gun, Cleo was off.’
‘We’re not going to Tewkesbury to see Stella,’ Jack lied.
Chapter Thirty-Six
2019
Stella
At around the time Jack and Beverly were in Maple’s Motors in London, Stella and Lucie, unaware Jackie was sending reinforcements, were tucking into cream teas in the Abbey Gardens tearoom. Stella had taken one bite of a scone piled with cream and jam, when she spotted Andrea the gardener wheeling her bike down the yew path.
In a madcap dash, Stella and Lucie caught up with Andrea and, keeping a discreet distance, trailed her as she cut down the alleyways that criss-crossed Tewkesbury.
The route was circuitous and Stella began to suspect Andrea was onto them and was taking them on a wild goose chase. But finally, they emerged onto the high street near the New Leaf, the bookshop where Stella had met Janet and she’d been accosted by Clive.
Andrea had stopped and was chaining her bike to a lamp-post. With no shops on this stretch there were few pedestrians so Stella and Lucie feigned interest in the menu outside the Tudor House Hotel. Risking a peep, Stella saw Andrea letting herself into Gladys Wren’s boarding house.
‘We didn’t need to follow her, we knew she was Gladys’s lodger,’ Stella said.
‘Never mind. If we’d come straight here, it wouldn’t have been half as much fun,’ Lucie said.
*
Stella had never doorstepped anyone. Squeamish, she hung back as Lucie knocked and stood ready to jam her tactical-strength boots into the gap when Andrea tried to slam the door. This wasn’t what happened.
‘Nice of you to see us, Andrea.’ Lucie barged into the hall and, ignoring Andrea’s threat to call the police, pounded along the passage. Stella shut the door in case Andrea flew out into the street yelling for help.
‘I’d kill for a cuppa.’ Seating herself at Gladys Wren’s Formica table, Lucie showed her teeth.
‘I said I won’t talk to you. Leave now.’ Andrea’s whooshing motion was wasted on Lucie who was ferreting in her bag. In the harsh strip-light, her complexion was sallower than outside in the abbey gardens.
‘I abandoned a jolly nice pot of lapsang for you.’ Lucie took out a package wrapped in tissue. To Stella’s amazement, at the sight of what was Lucie’s scone, complete with jam and cream, Andrea switched on the kettle and assembled mugs. Wishing she’d had the presence of mind to bring her own cream tea, Stella sat at the table.
‘How long were you and Roddy together?’ Lucie darted dainty licks at her scone.
‘How do you know that?’ Andrea flopped down at the table.
‘Ooh, where to start? With tea, I think?’ Lucie pointed at the kettle as it boiled.
‘I don’t have to talk to reporters.’ A superfluous protest since, clearly, Andrea did have to talk to Lucie. She resumed tea-making – Lady Grey, Stella noticed.
‘OK, babes, if you’re a gardener, I’m a blue-headed unicorn,’ Lucie said. ‘Can you even call a spade a spade? You lived cheek by jowl to Roderick March yet, at the Death Café, you were strangers. Not even the nod of recognition we’d expect, given you lived under the same roof. We know March was operating incognito, he’d instructed dear Mrs Wren – she is a poppet, isn’t she – to act dumb around him. But what were your instructions?’
‘Roderick didn’t expect me to be there. I wanted to mess up his plan.’ Andrea plonked a chipped mug in front of Stella. ‘Show him I can’t be walked over.’
‘Why?’ Stella said.
‘He’d gone there to ask you out. He’d missed his chance at the Abbey the day before because I phoned him.’
‘He couldn’t have known I’d be there, I never told him.’
‘He saw your name on the abbey’s cleaning rota.’ Andrea spat out the words.
‘How come anyone could see that?’ Lucie asked Stella’s question.
‘It’s in the abbey’s admin office. Rod sneaked in there.’
‘Is that what Roddy told you, that he planned to ask me out?’
‘His name was Rod. Rod March, and it’s disgusting you can even ask.’ Andrea’s eyes, like small round pebbles underwater, were hard and unremitting.
‘Sorry?’ Stella wilted. The trouble with doorstepping was you could end up in a kitchen packed with murder weapons.
‘Take it from the top, Andrea, skip nothing.’ Lucie accepted her tea from Andrea with a scary smile. ‘We’re all friends here.’
‘We met on Tinder,’ Andrea said.
‘That’s great.’ Stella tried to be encouraging. Lucie shot her a look. Be invisible.
‘Rod was gorgeous, with nice eyes – why was a hunk like him on a dating site? And when he walked into the restaurant – he suggested Nando’s – he was as good as his photo. I was smitten.’ Her smile faded. ‘When I waved him over, he couldn’t hide his disappointment. I waited for his phone to ring – my friend Sally was calling me after half an hour so I could high-tail it if he was a dud; he had to have lined up the same thing.’
‘Did it ring?’ Lucie swiped to a fresh page.
‘No. Of course later I knew he’d have upped and gone regardless of my feelings. But I didn’t know, so I went into overdrive to keep him scoffing his peri-peri wings. I told him about my private project. About an unsolved murder of a woman in 1940, Maple Greenhill. I told Rod that I knew who killed her and that I planned to expose him.’
‘Did you intend it as a podcast, with you as star detective?’ Lucie clacked her teeth. A new and unsettling habit.
‘All my life I’ve slaved at a job, nine to five, five to midnight, weekends, no holidays,’ Andrea said. ‘It was not a bloody podcast… it was for… for me. My private quest, and he stole it.’
‘Roddy stole the idea from you?’ Stella said.
‘Did Rod tell you he was too tired for sex, but not so tired to be up all night on his laptop listening to true-crime podcasts?’ Andrea snarled.
‘Ouch. Let’s play nice,’ Lucie crooned. ‘I’m guessing you’re a teensy bit annoyed with the late Mr March. No matter, trot on.’
‘Rod stayed, he bought more drinks, ordered a plate piled with those Portuguese tarts and had me tell him everything. We went back to my flat and, after sex, like a love-sick idiot, I showed him my notes. Next thing, he’s dumped the cadaver grave thingy for his podcast for my murder. It’s only cos I threatened to cut off his balls with my Victorinox knife that I got to be assistant researcher.’
‘Yet you’re a garde
ner.’ Stella felt outrage on Andrea’s behalf.
‘I actually knew they were cyclamens,’ Andrea told Lucie.
‘I meant, did he pay you for the research?’ Getting the picture, Stella doubted it.
‘I gave up work and used my savings.’
‘That was some step.’ Stella didn’t know why, but felt Andrea was now lying.
‘Whenever he stayed, before going to sleep – after spending every evening under the duvet recording his podcast, Rod was too tired to have sex. He’d put himself to sleep to a true-crime podcast. We had an ear bud each for better sound. He didn’t care that they were about real dead people, he skipped the bits where their families cried or said they would never get over the loss. Our first row was when I called him morbid and he said did I need a mirror? I said it wasn’t the same…’ Andrea drew breath. ‘His podcast would be the best since Serial. It would add to the greater good, bring closure and restore truth for the victim. I had to make notes on what worked, and what was too sentimental or sensational. I had my uses.’
‘A thorough approach.’ Lucie would approve of delegating donkey work.
‘He was thorough.’ Andrea took their half-drunk cups, tossed the remainder down the sink and washed them up. ‘Turned out he was doing digging of his own. He found her. Stellah Dar-nell. He was so excited he got an erec—’
‘Stop.’ Lucie raised her palm.
‘He didn’t find me.’ That was exactly what Roddy had done.
‘Then he learnt that in 1963, some doctor called Sir Aleck Northcote was murdered here in Tewkesbury. His son hanged for it. Roddy got a bee in his bonnet that the son was innocent.’
‘How come he was so sure?’ This earned Stella a venomous look from Andrea and she decided it was wise to leave it all to Lucie.
‘He was sure that someone killed Northcote in revenge for his strangling Maple Greenhill. The podcast was, as he said, now on skis. He stole my project.’ Andrea looked fit to kill. Stella caught her breath. Perhaps she had.
The Distant Dead Page 23