‘Aleck Northcote.’ Felicity handed her the whisky. ‘The pathologist.’
‘The man who lived here?’ And was murdered in this very room. Stella gulped the whisky, grateful for the burning sensation that travelled down her gut. ‘Did you know him?’
‘As I said at the Death Café, sadly no.’ Felicity looked mournful. ‘Every pathologist worth his salt dreams of knowing Sir Aleck. Thanks to him forensic detection is now a credible weapon against evil. He is our father.’
‘Did you buy the picture?’
‘I stole it.’ Felicity was stony-faced. Then she threw her head back and uttered a braying laugh. ‘Of course I bought it. I bought all this, lock, stock and test tube. I live in his world – my ex-colleagues can laugh all they like. Jealousy, what would they give to live here? There’s pressure on me to open it as a museum for the discerning; only over my dead body, I say.’
‘Northcote died in 1963, surely you weren’t a pathologist then?’
‘I was in my first year at King’s. A mere kitten on the slopes of the dead.’ Felicity poured herself another drink with, Stella noticed, a shaky hand. ‘Every day I walk in Sir Aleck’s shoes imbibing the atmosphere in which the great man lived.’
‘And where he died.’ The whisky had loosened Stella’s tongue.
‘Sir Aleck didn’t die, he was murdered,’ Felicity snapped. ‘There on the hearth. Not with that poker, the police took the original. It’s in their Black Museum. A shame – removing an object from a context is like robbing Samson of his hair. It loses its power.’
‘I see.’ Stella believed that the less power a poker had to bludgeon someone over the head the better. ‘Do you believe that Northcote’s son killed him?’
‘Don’t be taken in by that silly podcast man,’ Felicity admonished. ‘I’ve had the police grilling me to a turn. Of course Giles did it, the little blighter.’ Felicity’s speech was slurred, but her eyes were sharp.
‘I wondered if you’d considered that Roddy might have a point.’ Stella attempted a couldn’t-care-less expression.
‘I am interested in his life, not his death. March was out to be famous, sometimes there is smoke without fire. I offered to do March’s autopsy – it’s rare we get to look inside those we’ve met in life.’
‘Had I better see the house?’ Stella nearly said before the light fails, but at nearly eight on a rainy December night that was plainly absurd.
Upstairs, Stella leaned on the window sill of the professor’s bedroom, unused, because Felicity said it would be like having sex with him to sleep in his bed. Stella thought this was going a bit far. For herself, Stella didn’t think that, in the heavily draped four-poster, surrounded by dark oak furniture, she’d get a good night’s sleep.
‘This was Aleck’s home and now it’s mine. You know his wife killed herself?’ Gone was the dreamy voice of the Death Café, Felicity sounded furious as if Julia Northcote had let the side down. ‘He was the one to find her, naturally she knew that. So cruel.’ She stood in the passage that ran the length of the house. ‘I’m sorry but there’s three lavatories to clean.’
Three toilets, two bathrooms, one an en suite, all this cheered Stella. She knew the answer to her next question, but wanted Felicity’s version. ‘Did Northcote live here alone?’
‘Yes.’ Felicity opened another door. ‘Guest bedroom and another one over here.’ She opened two more doors. Considering how to handle an answer which flew in the face of truth, Stella noted single beds, each with silk eiderdowns. Oil paintings of rural scenes hung on the walls.
‘This was the housekeeper’s room and one day will be for the carer.’ Felicity opened a door at the end of the passage. ‘I plan to die in this house.’
‘He didn’t live alone.’ Surprised that Felicity could be so open about her last years, Stella hadn’t meant to point out Felicity had contradicted herself about Northcote living alone. Or maybe she didn’t think servants counted.
‘I heard Northcote’s housekeeper was involved with him. Did you hear that?’ Stella felt a heel.
‘She was not.’ Felicity’s shout made Stella’s eardrums pop. ‘A disgusting rumour, and out-and-out libel were Aleck alive. Who told you that?’
‘I may have got it wrong.’ Stella leaned on the slab.
‘Was it that man, Roddy March?’
‘It may have been.’ Stella felt bad for dobbing in the deceased. Even if she had been willing to reveal her source, Joy the organist was a child at the time and more than likely she’d misconstrued whatever she saw.
‘I’ll send you a quote.’ With a shock Stella saw the Bakelite phone on the wall in the hall. Below was a table with a compartment filled with faded telephone directories, most for London. Stella supposed Northcote had phoned through more to the capital than locally in Gloucestershire. She was looking at the very receiver that Northcote pulled off the cradle when, bleeding to death, he had tried to call for help.
‘Good.’ Felicity had been formal since Stella had asked about the housekeeper. Perhaps Joy was right after all. ‘If you hear any more revolting rumours, please scotch them. Indeed, when you work for me, what you see or hear must be scotched at once. I don’t like gossips.’
‘Always.’ Stella felt a burst of the rage which recently had dogged her. She doused it with politeness, ‘It’s a lovely house.’
‘It sat empty for years until the seventies when I got it for tuppence with a legacy from a ghastly aunt. Goddamn scandal. Stamped with Aleck’s spirit, it was worth a million.’
‘Lovely.’ Stella charged for the front door.
After waving at Felicity, shaken by the pathologist living in a ghost house, Stella accidentally cut down Mill Street and was brought up short by a roaring sound, finding herself on the bridge over the weir. Below, foaming water torrented through the filters. In the thin lamplight a stick was being tossed on the spume. Stella watched it spin. It sank then briefly resurfaced before being whirled away into inky blackness.
On the other bank of the Avon she could just see Stag Villas. Again, no lights. Had Clive had neighbours? Stella shut her eyes to the vision of the elderly clockmaker splayed over his sundial, his terrible grimace describing the violence of his end.
The relentless pounding beneath the wooden slats mesmerized her and gazing down at the churning water, Stella swayed as if drunk. She gripped the cold, slick ironwork of the guard rail.
The weir obliterated other sounds so it was only when Stella felt the slats vibrate that she realized she was no longer alone. She had time to see an arm raised and to compute, not feel, terror. Then the arm came down.
Chapter Forty
2019
Jack
Bev wanted to keep costs down and find a bed and breakfast, but Jack said they’d have more anonymity in a hotel. He was on a decent whack with London Underground, so it was his treat. They booked rooms on the third floor of a hotel on Tewkesbury’s high street. Peering out of the tiny casement window, Beverly had been delighted to see her Mini in the car park below.
After they’d unpacked, Beverly joined Jack in his room and now they lay on his bed sipping tea and sharing one of the little packets of shortcake biscuits that came with the UHT milk capsules and tubes of instant coffee.
‘Shall we have a nose around the town?’ Jack jumped up.
‘Only if you promise not to call on Stella.’
‘Promise.’ Jack was desperate to call on Stella, but it was nearly ten and Stella liked an early night. It was wiser to wait until morning.
With only a couple of burger bars and an Italian restaurant still open, the town was quiet. Jack led them down Red Lane, a narrow passage that at one time, he supposed, was one of the alleys which had once been slum dwellings. This alley emerged opposite what Bev said was a derelict flour factory. On this dimly lit winter’s night it was every bit dark and satanic.
‘This is creepy.’ Beverly sounded ecstatic rather than afraid.
They stood on a wrought-iron bridge over what Jack’s
app said was the Avon, but might as easily be a canal in Venice. Looking into the fast-running water, Jack made a silent wish that Stella would welcome him with open arms.
Returning to the path, they passed a barge moored, the creaking of timber as it eased away from the bank and back again could be groaning. Jack’s chest contracted when he saw Tewkesbury Abbey, peeping above rooftops. Since his fleeting visit to the town, in his mind the abbey encompassed Stella. Was she there now?
‘The abbey is closed. We’ll go tomorrow and see where Mr Roddy Podcast was murdered.’ Beverly had taken to reading Jack’s mind. ‘The other dead man, the one who made clocks, lived across the river over there.’
A hum became a roar and suddenly they were by the weir. Water streamed through the sluices and in that moment was smooth as steel before it hit the river and tumulted to a seething mass.
The bridge was more workaday than a Venice version. Jack guessed a clapboard structure housed the sluice controls. The son of a civil engineer, bridges and tunnels were in his DNA; it was no accident he drove an underground train.
‘George Cotton died here.’ Beverly’s torch lit their way between Fletcher’s Mill and a low brick wall onto a gantry which angled out to the bridge. ‘We’ve come straight from his grave to the last place on this earth he saw before he fell in,’ she said. ‘Actually, how was that possible? This railing’s pretty high and he was in his eighties, he’d have had to climb it.’
‘His daughter had just died of cancer, maybe he came here to die.’ Jack could think of worse places.
‘Why come all the way here?’
‘Tewkesbury was where Northcote had lived. Maybe he too was interested to know who administered the death penalty twenty odd years after Northcote should have got it.’
‘Even if Cotton was obsessed with his unsolved case, why not come before?’
‘Like you said, June had died, his police career had ended badly, what had he to live for?’ Jack watched water pushing through the sluice and felt his veins fill with terrific velocity as it slammed into the river. ‘Come on, the sooner we’re in bed the sooner we’re up.’
‘Eeugh.’ Beverly held her hand in front of the torch on her phone.
‘You’re bleeding, how did that happen?’ Jack gave her a tissue.
‘It’s not me.’ Dabbing her fingers, Bev shone her torch. ‘It’s here.’
Jack sniffed the smear on the railing. ‘Definitely blood.’
‘It’s down there too.’ In the torchlight, drops of blood were dotted at their feet. There was the fraction of a shoeprint, not either of theirs as it was further to the left.
‘Probably a fight.’ Jack’s gaze drifted back to the deluge below.
‘Another mugging,’ Bev breathed. ‘We should tell the police.’
‘Tell them what?’ Jack got out his phone and aimed the torch towards the gantry. ‘It’s not like we saw anything.’
‘Look, there’s more.’ Bev’s torch pinpointed a trail, the drops of blood closer together.
The drops led over the gantry and stopped on the bank. The injured man could have staggered off in any of three directions. They were about to give up when Jack found another drop by an arch on which the words ‘Victoria Gardens’ were fashioned in iron. He’d read about the Victoria Pleasure Gardens in the hotel information folder. Built in 1897 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the arch was made when it was Elizabeth’s turn in 2012. It was no pleasure tracking bloodstains.
‘He went in there.’ Bev dropped her voice.
LED lamps lit a path beside the Avon, washing trees, shrubs and the ghost shapes of dug-over flower beds in pools of icy white light. In some places, the river had swelled over the bank. A mirror to the sky.
‘Is the river always that high?’ Beverly whispered.
‘Tewkesbury often floods.’ Another snippet from the hotel folder. Jack’s heel skidded and, envisaging blood, he saw the path had become mud stuck with twigs and leaves.
‘There’s someone on that bench.’ Beverly grabbed his arm.
Shadows of branches played tricks with what was tangible and what was in his head. Jack had a bad feeling.
They trod across the once ornamental lawns, now a quagmire. The bench where Beverly had seen someone was empty.
‘Damn, he must have seen us.’ A first aider at Clean Slate, Beverly would have been set to flex her skills. ‘Or I imagined it.’
‘You didn’t. Look.’ Outlined under the other Jubilee arch, a figure moved, swaying with the shadows of branches blown in the wind.
‘It’s not a man.’ Bev was already running towards the arch. ‘It’s Stella.’
*
Stella wheeled around as they crossed the car park beyond the gardens. She tried to run.
‘Stella. No.’ Beverly and Jack were brought up short.
In the thin LED light, Stella’s face was streaked with blood, her hair matted. Her face, where it wasn’t bloodied, was a dreadful pale.
‘My poor darling.’ Forgetting about giving Stella space or any of the rehearsed speeches he’d composed, Jack caught her in his arms.
‘Sit on this.’ Beverly pulled out a triangular canvas bag from her shoulder bag and passed it to Jack. He recognized it – Lucie had one. A shooting stick.
Standing back, he released the catch and the folded metal sticks snapped to attention. Taking Stella’s hand, he guided her onto the saddle-shaped seat.
‘Where does it hurt, Stell?’ Bev was unzipping her first-aid bag.
‘Everywhere,’ Stella groaned.
‘We’re taking you to hospital,’ Jack said.
‘I’m all right.’ Stella waved a feeble hand. ‘No need.’
‘Christ, Stell, this is a deep gash, did this happen on the weir?’ Beverly began dabbing at Stella’s face with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic.
‘I just need sleep.’ Stella’s words were slurred.
‘You’ve banged your head. We must get it checked out.’ Jack didn’t need to know first aid to realize a head injury could be serious.
‘I didn’t bang my head.’
‘What did you do?’ Jack felt a chill dread envelope him.
‘Someone tried to kill me.’
Chapter Forty-One
2019
Stella
‘You’re not allowed to work.’ Batting at Stella’s open laptop, Lucie placed a mug of slippery elm beside Stella. ‘Your gru-el, Olee-var.’
‘The doctor said my skull isn’t fractured, no haemorrhaging. Now the painkillers are working, I’m fine.’ An overstatement, Stella had the ghost of a headache.
She had woken at six and, fortified by ibuprofen, dragged on a jumper and joggers. Wandering into the front room with the vague notion of doing her usual clearing up, she had found Lucie ensconced in Stella’s usual place on the sofa. Lucie directed her to the cockpit where she draped a blanket over Stella’s legs and micro-adjusted the recliner until Stella said she was comfortable.
A martyr – as Lucie put it – to heartburn, Lucie went off to make the slippery elm drink that Lucie used as a fast-food supplement and antidote to nippets. Stella fancied a bowl of cornflakes but now accepted it graciously.
Now Lucie was back and had caught Stella setting up a spreadsheet of facts gleaned about what had become a chain of murders. Date, names, location of crime, narrative of crime, links between players. Suspects. It wasn’t work, she told Lucie; colour-coded conditional formulas were next best to slippery elm.
‘While you were being scanned and mummified in that fetching bandage, Jack and Bev told me they’ve found Roddy March’s unrequited victim.’ Legs bunched under her, Lucie consulted her notebook. ‘December 1940, a prostitute is murdered in the London Blitz, name like a tree… Here we are, Maple Greenhill. Twenty-three-year-old living at home with parents, younger brother Vernon and her baby boy. The Greenhill mum and dad had passed him off as their afterthought. The senior investigating officer – Divisional Detective Inspector in those days – was George Cotton aged…
they didn’t say, but here’s the thing…’ Lucie glugged her slippery elm as if it was vile medicine. Stella was rather enjoying hers. ‘In 1979 Cotton died in Tewkesbury on the very bridge where some git lamped you last night. Fishy-wishy, yes?’
‘Janet reckons the attack was a random robbery – they nicked my rucksack, there was about a hundred quid in my purse.’ This loss hurt more than the pain in her head. Stella returned to populating rows with the Greenhills and Cotton the detective, coding 1940 green to differentiate from the grey of the present day.
‘Janet being wrong is not a first.’ Lucie slammed her emptied mug on the coffee table. ‘Thank God your notebook was in your jacket, or the murderer would now know how close we are to fingering their collar.’
‘Or, how far away.’ Stella saved the spreadsheet just as the doorbell rang. ‘It’s half six in the morning, who can that be?’
‘Who indeed.’ From Lucie’s wide-eyed look, Stella guessed Lucie knew exactly who it would be.
‘Ta-dah.’ Lucie flung wide the lounge door and with a swooping action presented Beverly. And Jack.
‘I hope it was all right to come.’ Jack hung back.
‘Naturellement, Jacaranda,’ Lucie crowed. ‘Bev, help me get breakfast, you must have left before the hotel was serving.’
‘I can leave.’ Jack moved to let them pass.
‘Maybe you could sit here.’ Stella nodded at the leather pouffe in front of the armchair. ‘It’s not that comfortable, but…’ I need you next to me popped into her head. ‘Could you help with this?’
‘A hundred per cent, I can.’ Jack was on the pouffe, leaning over the arm of the cockpit in seconds. He looked at the spreadsheet. ‘Lordy, how many suspects? If I was murdered, I’d hope the number of those wanting me dead was smaller.’
‘You’re much nicer than Roddy March.’ Stella realized that dying in her arms didn’t make March a good guy. He had used Andrea, probably Gladys Wren too, although at least she’d got something back. He’d gatecrashed Felicity’s Death Café where he’d mocked Clive and derided Andrea in his notes. She told Jack, ‘They could all have killed March, and Clive being the next victim doesn’t rule him out as Roddy’s killer.’
The Distant Dead Page 25