The Distant Dead

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Tough titty indeed.’ Lucie turned her mouth down at the corners.

  ‘He said what the podcast needed for ratings status was this cleaning woman, Darnell.’ She fixed Stella with a cold gleam. ‘He stalked you online. He knew you’d snap him up, said he was younger, brighter and more now and happening than some old hack you worked with. You’d pull in the thinking listeners who hid their true-crime addiction by framing it as a social and cultural experience. When all’s said and done, they’re just like other armchair rubber-neckers, thirsty for a nasty murder as a bedtime story. It was my idea to contextualise the crimes. I was still trying to impress Rod. “Focus on the victim,” I said, “make them live, give them back their dignity.” He loved that, he said, “Victims have traction these days, they’re all the rage.’’’ Andrea jabbed the washing up brush at Stella. ‘You and him planned to elope into murder sunset.’

  ‘That’s silly.’ Stella laughed accidentally. ‘Of course we didn’t.’

  ‘I am not old, I am more now and happening than March.’ Balling up her tissue, Lucie had been simmering. ‘And, more to the point, unlike him I have a pulse.’

  ‘Roddy never asked me.’ Stella had noticed before how the less guilty she was, the more guilty she felt.

  ‘He rang your cleaners. A woman claiming to be your PA – lah-de-dah – wouldn’t divulge where you were hiding,’ Andrea said. ‘I hoped he’d given up and returned to me.’ She slumped in her chair. ‘Until he found the cleaning rota.’

  ‘I would never have agreed; I work with the best journalist. We’re a team.’ Stella looked at Lucie. ‘Although I’m a cleaner and him calling me wouldn’t have changed my mind.’ Who had wanted Roddy dead? If Giles Northcote wasn’t his father’s killer, who was? Who impaled Clive on his sundial? Stella needed answers. Roddy’s asking her wouldn’t have changed her mind, but his murder had.

  ‘I read he died in your arms.’

  ‘I found him.’ Stella’s nod was non-committal.

  ‘Andrea, did you kill Roddy March? Hell hath no fury, et cetera.’ Lucie liked to provoke. Tensing, Stella did not.

  ‘I warned him against using the name Roddy on our podcast.’ Staring off in the distance, Andrea appeared in a fugue state. ‘Listeners will take Roderick more seriously.’

  ‘I’m thinking Mr March went for cutesy,’ Lucie said. ‘I’ll ask again. Did you murder March?’

  ‘Since you’re so good at this stuff, you work it out.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  2019

  Jackie

  IRENE AND HENRY COTTON

  BELOVED PARENTS OF GEORGE AND JOSEPH

  15 JUNE 1935

  JOSEPH COTTON 1909–1940

  ‘I knew this story, one of the boys did it for a school project – Mark, I think. The shared death date had fascinated him. The Cottons died in a rail-crash near Welwyn Garden City, it’s on the internet now but Mark had to write to British Rail and look up newspapers in Chiswick Library. For years after he’d pick flowers and make us troop over here on the anniversary. Have to admit, Jack, I do see this as a sign.’ Jackie shone her torch on the adjacent grave.

  GEORGE COTTON

  1894–1979

  ‘I saw this the other day.’ Unhappiness had made Jack easily annoyed.

  ‘Shame you didn’t tell me – I’ve spent the afternoon trawling the internet,’ Jackie said.

  ‘I didn’t know George Cotton was significant. I was just…’ Jack fell silent. They knew he’d have been up to his old habit of stalking graveyards.

  Jackie couldn’t argue, it was due to Jack’s habit they were there now. The cemetery was locked after dark but he knew a secret way in behind a beech tree and a break in the railings. Instead of showing them Cotton’s grave on her phone, they stood before the real thing. Jackie continued, ‘George Cotton, as you know, investigated Maple Greenhill’s murder. I’ve been hitting the online sites and on Ancestry found that in 1941 Cotton was an ARP warden which means he must have left the police. Because of the war, there was no census in 1941, and the previous one was destroyed by fire in the forties. I followed a breadcrumb trail of birth and marriage certificates, the Cottons’ daughter’s birth certificate in 1922. I found that Agnes died in 1940, which may have been why he stopped being a police officer. The 1971 census had George Cotton still living in Queen Adelaide Road where his daughter was born.’

  ‘Why isn’t Agnes here too?’ Jack raked the area with his own torch.

  ‘For that I went to Find a Grave. Agnes is buried in Liverpool where she was born. She was forty when a bomb hit the fire station where she worked on the phones. Twenty-ninth of December 1940. There’d been a hiatus of raids due to crap weather, it started up again that night. One fatality, many injured. She apparently chatted away to the men digging her out for over an hour. She said, “I’m not hurt much,” and died the moment they got her out.’

  ‘I can’t bear that.’ Beverly groaned. ‘What a brave woman.’

  ‘I wonder if maybe Agnes’s parents wanted her near them.Poor George, forced to cover up a murder case, then his wife dies.’ Jackie shone the torch on George’s grave. ‘We’re lucky we haven’t had to live through a war on the home front. Life stopped, the blackout, rationing, a swathe of new confusing laws. And the noise, smoke, the destruction of your home, whole streets went. I couldn’t live thinking my children, my family and friends could die at any time.’ Jackie stopped. ‘Sorry, folks, digging up the past has got to me.’

  ‘My nan’s mum got told off for not having her gas mask on a bus. Nan was there, she got scared her mum would go to prison,’ Beverly said.

  ‘And they were never needed, thank goodness,’ Jackie said. ‘June, their daughter, died of cancer the same year as George, in 1979 aged fifty-seven.’

  ‘George had a tragic life,’ Jack said.

  ‘I’m sure not. A life distilled to paperwork leaves out lots of good bits. Those days when a beam of sunlight lifts your mood.’ Jackie led them back through the secret hole in the railings and switched off her torch. ‘According to one of those newspaper cuttings in Julia Northcote’s Lyons’ Swiss Roll box, Cotton’s right-hand man at the time of Maple’s murder was PC John Peter Shepherd. He also left the police in 1940. He joined the Royal Engineers in January 1941, survived the war and died three years ago in a nursing home, unmarried and childless. Agnes dying in 1940 might explain Cotton leaving the force, Shepherd could have wanted to fight for his country, but something doesn’t feel right. They needed police officers on the home front, so why let Cotton Shepherd go? From Julia Northcote’s letter, I suspect both men were removed from the scene because they solved Maple’s murder and got the wrong result. Ah, here’s your posh new jalopy, Bev.’

  They were drenched in car headlights as a racing green Mini stopped in the circle of lamplight and, climbing out, Cleo Greenhill tossed Beverly the keys.

  ‘She’s fuelled up and ready to go. Handles like a dream.’ Cleo patted the bonnet.

  Jackie detected more sincerity in the woman’s tones than she’d expected when Jack told her Beverly had bought a car in fifteen minutes flat. Still, although impulsive, Bev rarely made mistakes.

  ‘Can we drop you back at the garage?’ Beverly asked when she and Jack had stowed their bags in the boot and were ready to leave.

  ‘You’re fine, my wife’s waiting.’ Cleo jerked a thumb at a white BMW sports parked further down Corney Road. Jackie knew Cleo had come out for Bev, letting her know she wasn’t the only lesbian in town.

  Jack and Bev climbed into the Mini.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s under guarantee,’ Jackie couldn’t help saying to Cleo as they watched the Mini’s rear lights recede.

  ‘Three years, plus I’ve extended cooling-off to a month. All I care is they prove that Creep-Bag pathologist Northcote murdered my dad’s Aunty Maple. And, if they do find who killed Northcote in the sixties, if he’s still on this earth, I’ll shake his hand.’ Cleo punched a fist into her palm.

  ‘I’m so
rry they weren’t straight with you. Blame me,’ Jackie said.

  ‘I knew they weren’t the happy couple they said they were. I could spot Bev a mile off, takes one to know one, and Jack looks like he’s lost a tenner and found a fifty pence piece. Beverly was initially less bothered by the Mini’s TwinPower Turbo or multi-function instrument display than talking about Maple. Although she must have been listening to my list of deluxe features because she bought the car.’ Cleo gave a husky laugh. ‘Jackie, please would you do me a favour?’

  ‘If I can.’ Jackie liked Cleo Greenhill.

  ‘If my grandad Vernon killed this Northcote, please tell me first so I can prepare Dad?’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  2019

  Stella

  ‘I was born in this room,’ Joy Turton said.

  ‘Gosh.’ Stella had no need for her finger test – an aluminium lamp illuminated a veil of dust on the dining table, window sill, along the top of a large television. She hoped it had been cleaner when Joy’s mother was giving birth.

  The electronic keyboard, a skirt around the stand that made it look like an altar, and the G-plan sofa were counter to what Stella had expected from Joy’s embroidered jacket with animals and arrows. But Terry had taught her not to expect or assume so maybe the stylish décor, tumbleweed fluff and home-spun garments were reflections of Joy’s complexity. A tussle with the old and the new. Were it not the best route to the organist’s wrong side and would look like touting for work, Stella would offer to clean.

  ‘You didn’t know Roddy March before the Death Café.’

  ‘I did know him,’ Joy replied.

  ‘I got no sense of that at the Death Café.’

  ‘Why should you have “got the sense”?’ Joy hadn’t offered a drink. Not that Stella fancied risking her crockery. ‘Personally, I was there to discuss death, not to get a sense of anyone.’

  ‘How did you know him?’ Stella doubted that any suspect her dad had interviewed had scared him like Joy was scaring her.

  ‘He interviewed me for his podcast.’

  ‘Why?’ Stella said. ‘You never said you knew Northcote.’

  ‘Do I have to reiterate my motive for going to the Death Café? I was a child when Sir Aleck met his death. I knew him only as an adult one saw about the town. I met Mr March fussing about the abbey. Now I know he was there for his podcast. I do hate liars.’ She stared at first Stella, then Lucie.

  ‘Did you hate March?’ Lucie’s fearlessness had, in the past, twice nearly got her killed.

  ‘You don’t fool me,’ Joy said. Stella wished she’d properly debriefed Lucie on the characteristics of the group – such as she’d observed – before they’d started interviews. ‘I hated Mr March for lying about why he was in the abbey – it was not where his mother worshipped in her youth – but if you’re suggesting I left the Death Café, ambushed him by the monk’s tomb and stuck him with a knife, you’re as much of a fool as March was.’ Joy played silent chords on her keyboard. ‘Incidentally, will I be remunerated for this chat?’

  ‘March was in Tewkesbury to find out the truth of the Cloisters House murder.’ Stella jumped in before Lucie spouted any nonsense about making Joy rich. ‘So, you didn’t know Sir Aleck?’

  ‘I was ten when he was murdered.’ Joy was suddenly defensive.

  ‘Ten-year-olds are the best observers. I bet you were one of them,’ Lucie beguiled.

  ‘Your methods are tired, missy,’ Joy said. ‘Flattery leaves me cold.’

  ‘Lucie wasn’t flattering you,’ Stella said. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, the cottage is a stone’s throw from Cloisters House and the abbey. Can you recall seeing any strangers about that day?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I did see.’ Joy’s cheeks puffed like a hamster as if her words had been stowed there for this moment. ‘Sir Aleck had her against the wall, legs open. Shocking sight for any child, especially a gifted musician. She lied to the police. She never saw that film, she was busy taking liberties and what’s more,’ crouched over her keyboard, Joy looked like the ten-year-old girl she had been, ‘I asked her, in the film, who did the murder. She told me I was far too young to know. Yes, ten-year-olds are observant, and I was far too young to observe what I saw.’

  ‘Who was this woman?’ Lucie and Stella asked at the same time.

  ‘The housekeeper, Miss Fleming, as was. Aleck Northcote, Roddy March, Clive Burgess. Don’t be fooled by Mrs Wren’s ditsy manner, she has sharp elbows and sharp teeth.’ Joy’s cheeks retracted. ‘You don’t have to look far for your killer.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  2019

  Stella

  Girl in the Headlines. Stella read the Wikipedia page on her phone.

  It was seven o’clock and the abbey was closing soon. They had timed how long it took to walk from the tearoom to Roddy’s death-site. Walking fast, two and half minutes – two if his killer ran.

  ‘The film Gladys Wren told police she saw at the Sabrina cinema in Tewkesbury the week Northcote was murdered. A British noir thriller set in London about a model who gets shot dead. Mrs Wren told us her fiancé Derek didn’t want her to change her night off because the programme changed the following day. Then he got called away and she said she watched the rest on her own.’

  ‘Good alibi, you’re seen going in and, in the dark, who notices you slip out unless you block the screen?’ Lucie said.

  ‘Except Joy swears she saw her in Cloisters House having sex with Sir Aleck.’

  ‘Did Gladys kill him because he wouldn’t marry her?’ Lucie walked her fingers up the monk’s protruding ribs.

  ‘Or Aleck Northcote was jealous of Gladys being with Derek, tried to kill her so she killed him. Then she pretended to find him.’ Stella was struggling with bias; she didn’t want Gladys Wren to be a murderer.

  ‘Or she killed him in cold blood,’ Lucie said.

  ‘Or Joy made it up to divert us from suspecting her.’ Stanley made a ruff-ruff sound as Stella raised her voice, ‘I forgot, Joy did leave the table. She went off to the servery and made chamomile tea for herself and Roddy March. What if she was in league with someone else and took that chance to speak to them.’

  ‘I can’t see Joy in league with anyone. Was there a signal between her and Roddy?’ Lucie said.

  ‘Only that he must have asked for chamomile because Joy had made him some. When he collected his mug from the servery counter, they could have arranged to meet at the starved monk. Except it happened so quickly, I doubt it.’ Stella’s dad advised keeping it simple, start with evidence and likely suspects. That was the crime scene. Widen the net only after ground zero has been swept. Working that way Janet had found enough to convince her Roddy and Clive’s deaths were muggings.

  ‘He was stabbed moments before you found him. You left last,’ Lucie reminded her. ‘If Roddy was expecting to meet one of them here, that half an hour start he had on you all is irrelevant. No one else left when he did. Whoever did that needed the two and a half minutes plus the seconds it takes to run a blade into a man’s back. Three minutes max.’

  ‘I left about five minutes after the rest. Felicity was still there. I didn’t go straight to the monk, I listened to Joy on the organ, then I saw the beanie. By the time I found him it was more like seven or eight minutes after I left the Death Café.’

  ‘Joy is looking good for this.’ Lucie crooned to the starved monk. ‘If she’s not the killer, she’s missed her vocation – she’s got the hallmarks of a murderer.’

  ‘Janet said that Felicity is Joy’s alibi for both Roddy and Clive’s deaths, they’re planning the Christmas recital. So, if we think Roddy and Clive were killed by the same person, it rules them both out.’

  ‘Or they both did it. Hey, maybe the whole group did it.’

  ‘Joy did say she had expected there’d be no men there. It’s the men that were there who are now dead.’ Stella was looking at a photograph of the Sabrina cinema on her phone. The flat-fronted thirties building where G
ladys Wren, then Miss Fleming, had seen Girl in the Headlines. Going by cars parked outside – a VW Beetle and a Ford, the picture dated from the sixties. ‘Hang on, the Sabrina closed in 1963. The last showing was Terence Stamp in Billy Budd in September that year. Mrs Wren can’t have seen Girl in the Headlines there in November.’

  ‘Nice work, Sherlock.’ Lucie patted the monk’s forehead.

  ‘I suppose she might have got the venue wrong.’ Stella was startled by her phone buzzing and flashing in her hand. ‘It’s Felicity.’

  ‘Bet Joy by Nature got on the blower as soon as we left. Felicity will be wanting a starring role in my article.’

  *

  It turned out Felicity did not want to feature in Lucie’s story. She wanted Stella to clean for her. Semaphoring wildly, her ear to Stella’s phone, Lucie made Stella agree to see Felicity immediately.

  They parted at the end of the yew path, Lucie to the shop for nippet supplies, Stella for Cloisters House.

  ‘Thank you for coming so soon, you must be very busy.’ Felicity flung wide the great front door.

  ‘No problem.’ Stella didn’t say that since finding the bodies of Roddy and Clive she had no work at all or Felicity might sniff desperation in her speediness.

  ‘Would you like a drink? I’m having one.’ Felicity led her into a large sitting room, a parquet floor gleaming in the light of a roaring fire. The floor didn’t need polishing.

  Stella wanted to scope the job, but Lucie had instructed she milk Felicity for clues. ‘A pathologist living in a murdered pathologist’s house who hosts a death café. The profile of a serial killer.’ So, she said, ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

  This turned out to be whisky, which Stella disliked, but was too polite to admit. Sitting where Felicity indicated, on a leather chesterfield, she furtively took in the room. Walnut radiogram, open bureau on which were papers and a laptop. A bookcase of leather-bound books, more books in glass-covered cases along one wall. Stella stared at an oil painting above the fireplace – the man’s face was familiar, but she couldn’t place him.