The Distant Dead

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘This is hopeless, Joy could be anywhere.’ Stella tried to work out where the door was. The marble said Joy knew exactly where they were.

  ‘I know where she’ll be,’ Felicity said. Stella felt a flood of gratitude. Felicity had come to the abbey when it would have been safer for her to call the police from a public place. Stella didn’t need to ask Felicity where Joy was. She knew.

  Joy had returned to the scene of her crimes. The tomb of the starved monk.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  2019

  Jack

  ‘What do you mean, you know who killed Roderick March?’ Janet burst into the interview room with notebook and takeaway coffee. They hadn’t even been offered water.

  Jack felt as exhausted as Janet looked. A crash on the M4 had put four hours on the two-hour journey. He’d been sitting with Andrea and William Greenhill at a sticky plastic-coated table for a long half hour. Janet intended them to suffer. Their news, highlighting a series of police mistakes, would not improve her mood.

  The electric wall clock said two minutes past seven o’clock. The room’s high ceiling did nothing to dispel stifling heat pumping from a tubular radiator or the odour of overused furniture and compounded fear.

  ‘We know who murdered Maple Greenhill and Julia Northcote in 1940 and 1941, and then Aleck Northcote in 1963.’ Jack wanted Stella there, but when he’d tried calling from the gents’ toilet in the police station and several times in the interview room, she hadn’t picked up.

  To her credit, Janet said nothing while Jack – his account spliced with Andrea’s snappish interjections – bitch, shitbag, and one worthy of Lucie, fountain of crap – outlined each discovery. March’s crouching image on the virtual tour of Northcote’s London home, the Lyons’ Swiss Roll box with Julia’s account of her husband’s confession which she’d secreted in the house before Northcote murdered her too. How Divisional Detective Inspector George Cotton told William he had evidence – a coat, a mending ticket, a cigarette lighter – leading to Northcote as Maple’s murderer. At this William Greenhill had shouted, ‘This is hearsay.’

  ‘Dad, we’ve been through this, you heard it from George Cotton, that’s the horse’s mouth.’ Andrea had found patience for her father.

  ‘You don’t agree, sir?’ Janet didn’t look up from her notes, taken despite her request to record the interview, informal as it was.

  ‘It’s not a question of agreeing,’ Greenhill said. ‘Northcote can’t defend himself.’

  ‘Why are you defending him?’ Andrea went pale. ‘Did you do it? Is that why? Revenge for Maple, your mother?’

  ‘Is your daughter correct, Mr Greenhill?’ Now Janet did look up.

  ‘No, she’s not.’ Jack saw it all. ‘Or not exactly. William, let me tell them what you have believed for, what, fifty-six years?’

  ‘Don’t meddle, son.’ William shrank into the collar of his raincoat. Not, Jack knew, a sign of guilt.

  ‘Get on with it, Jack,’ Janet said.

  ‘William believes that the visitor Aleck Northcote received after his son Giles had gone was Vernon Greenhill. I’m guessing Vernon told William he wanted Northcote to hang. When the pathologist’s housekeeper found Northcote dead on the hall floor in 1963, William believed Vernon had carried out his threat. Vernon’s granddaughter Cleo also fears this. I thought so too for a while. Seeing the state of Vernon’s son Cliff, so does he. Cotton told William the truth about Maple’s murder, did he also tell Vernon? Did Maple’s brother decide to take an eye for an eye?’

  ‘Vernon is dead,’ William said. ‘It does no good to rake up the past.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, sir.’ Janet perhaps agreed, thought Jack.

  ‘Northcote was murdered out of revenge,’ Jack said. ‘That’s pretty much a no-brainer. But the person who smashed his skull with a poker was not Vernon.’

  ‘Who then?’ Andrea didn’t look happy.

  ‘The same woman who would later murder Roddy and Clive because they discovered the truth. Through a jungle of blackmail, ill-temper and deceit we should’ve seen it.’ Jack saw dismay as Janet comprehended the extent of her mistake. ‘Two people were not killed by a gang and nor, half a century ago, did a young man murder his father in a fit of filial fury.’

  Stella, the daughter of Janet’s detective hero, should be here.

  ‘Do you have evidence?’ Janet’s face said she was on board. ‘This man was a pillar of the community with no previous convictions and a lot of gongs. We can’t just go accusing a murdered man of rape and murder.’

  Jack was trying to think of how to fudge that they had no evidence but then Andrea leapt up.

  ‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘Come with me.’

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  2019

  Stella

  ‘Stay close, Stella. Do not underestimate Joy. She is dangerous.’ Grasping Stella’s elbow, Felicity crept along the darkened ambulatory.

  At first Stella thought the Wakeman Cenotaph was empty. Two candles cast a glow over the starved monk and made fabric draped across the front of the small altar appear woven with threads of gold.

  Joy had lit the candles. The right-hand side of the chapel was screened by the carved fretwork beneath which was the monk’s tomb. Felicity paused. Stella realized she must be scared. Strangely, this gave Stella courage. She edged to the left and peered around the tomb.

  Joy was on the floor, her head forward, hands cupped on her lap. Her palms were filled with blood like an offering. It had drenched her chest. Blood welled from a slit in her neck. Joy slowly lifted her head. She gazed past Stella as if to something beyond. Stella got the scene immediately – Joy had tried to kill herself. She was dying.

  ‘Joy, can you hear me?’ Fear evaporating, Stella knelt before the recumbent body. Desperately she looked about for something with which to staunch the blood. Her scarf. She unwound it from her neck and bundled it, pressing it against Joy’s neck.

  ‘Felicity, 999, call an ambulance,’ Stella shouted.

  Silence.

  Stella leaned into the wound, trying at the same time to maintain Joy’s airways.

  ‘Help is coming.’ Fleetingly Stella noted she was trying to save the life of a multiple murderer. Joy’s eyes looked less vague, they were focused beyond Stella. Stella looked round.

  Felicity was illuminated by the candles on the altar table. In her outstretched hand, held perfectly steady, was a knife. Stella knew instantly that it was Sir Aleck Northcote’s cartilage knife, the one stolen from Felicity. By Joy.

  ‘Don’t hurt her,’ Stella implored Felicity. ‘You of all people know that Joy must face a fair trial. Don’t implicate yourself for Northcote, he’s long dead and he wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘If that wasn’t pathetic, it would be funny.’ Felicity gave a peculiar high-pitched laugh. ‘Leave her, Stella.’

  ‘Please don’t do this.’ Stella held her scarf against Joy’s neck. Joy appeared to be using every ounce of strength to implore Stella not to let Felicity hurt her. ‘Felicity, you’re a doctor, think of the Hippocratic Oath.’

  ‘I don’t save people’s lives. My bible is the corpse.’ Felicity pointed the knife at Stella. ‘Leave her.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Stella said as Joy’s head dropped forward again.

  ‘This way, Stella.’ Felicity sounded almost kind.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  2019

  Jack

  ‘We can’t search Ms Branscombe’s home without a warrant. Please come out of there, Ms Rogers.’

  ‘My name is Greenhill.’ Andrea thrust her spade into the bed of soil which, the night before, Jack had supposed was Stella’s grave. ‘I can be here, I’m her gardener. Jack, for God’s sake, hold the torch steady.’

  ‘Without a warrant, anything you find will be ruled inadmissible by her lawyers.’

  ‘I’m planting the rosemary and lavender bushes as Felicity asked me. I would have put them in earlier, but I had to visit my elderly father, milud. Madam Felici
ty would be cross to find the bushes still in their pots.’ Andrea was heaping soil beside a deepening hole. ‘Anyway, she’ll be at her rehearsal.’

  Jack looked beyond the veg patch to the house. Every window was dark. Lucie, Stella and Beverly would be at the rehearsal too.

  ‘Is this enough evidence?’ Andrea waved a Tesco Bag for Life at them, then kneeling on rotting foliage emptied out the contents. Two sealed plastic bags. ‘That poker matches the description of the one given by Northcote’s housekeeper which in her autopsy of him, Felicity said matched the wound in Northcote’s skull.’ Andrea waved the other, larger bag at them. ‘This is Felicity’s disguise, the fruits of various charity shops, she easily fooled them both. Stella Darnell and Lucie May no doubt gave signed statements they’d seen a drunken old man swaying along the footpath?’

  Janet didn’t respond.

  Jack’s phone rang.

  ‘Stella, are you OK?’ White sound, rushing so loud Jack had to hold the phone from his ear. ‘Can you hear me, Stella? What’s going on?’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Something’s wrong.’ Jack never had trouble following a hunch. The phone rang again, it was Lucie.

  ‘Darling! Don’t worry. Stay calm. Bev and me have narrowed the suspects to two. Joy and Felicity. Or both. Whatever, I was lured away and left Stella in the abbey. We’re on our way there now, when will you get back from Chertsey?’

  ‘I’m here.’ Dashing rain from his eyes, Jack leapt over the makeshift grave and tore across the abbey green. He pushed on the great heavy door and raced up the nave. He didn’t need to be told where Stella would be.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  2019

  Stella

  Spumes of water thundered through the weir. Soaked by rain Stella was at the mercy of the elemental. A primal roar that stirred the depths of every fear she had ever felt. The black floodwaters were not her only enemy.

  ‘You should have stuck to cleaning.’ Felicity was seemingly oblivious of the water welling up through the footboards on the bridge and the deafening crash of the swollen river pushing through the sluices. ‘You had to meddle.’ Again, that strange fluted laugh. ‘With that podcaster and my idiot gardener trailing in your wake.’

  ‘Andrea is not a gardener; if you were genuinely interested in your garden, you’d have seen that. She is a brilliant 3D software engineer. Her scan of our flat initially put us off your scent. It was intended as a warning to me to leave Tewkesbury, so she could have Roddy March to herself. Not even your morgue got me worried.’

  ‘Stella, you are not such a bright girl.’ Her back to the sluice-housing, Felicity appeared monstrous. ‘You and your gaggle of playmates. They’ll be scuttling around the abbey now. They’ve found Joy the Poison Pen bled out and lifeless. Like headless chickens they’ll be tearing into every nook and cranny, every tomb and chapel looking for you. As a cleaner in a little flat in Tewkesbury we could have been friends. You were my ally at the Death Café, I was so disappointed that didn’t come off. Then you spoilt things. Like the fools who ended up on my slab.’ Felicity tapped the cartilage blade on the gantry railing. It made a sound like a Tibetan bell. Clarity within the tumult.

  ‘Why did you murder Roddy March and Clive Burgess?’ Stella clung to the age-old tactic of keeping Felicity talking.

  ‘Clive overheard me outside the tearoom telling March to meet me in the abbey after the Death Café. Gentleman Clive had spent his life opening doors for silly women he despised, it never entered his mind that one of those women would kill him.’

  ‘You must have been there when we…?’ Stella was soaked through. Everywhere was water. ‘You were the old man.’

  ‘See what I mean? Not so bright, are you? If only you’d left well alone. I did try another way. Andrea was rabidly jealous of you and March,’ Felicity shouted above the cacophony. ‘Isn’t it frustrating how dense fools like March, with puny egos, capture the hearts of clever women? Though with those manners, Andrea was lucky to have him. I encouraged her jealousy. Let her be the one to drive you out of Tewkesbury.’

  ‘She didn’t have March, he used her.’ Stella could not bear that the last moments of her life might be talking about March. A stupid thought in itself.

  ‘We used each other. I killed March to stop him using me. He would have destroyed my reputation with his trashy podcast. His life was nothing and Clive was a vile woman-hater. As for you, I resent that you have put me in this position.’

  ‘You murdered Aleck Northcote.’ If this had dawned sooner, Stella wouldn’t be hanging over a raging weir with a murderer deciding when she would die.

  ‘Stella the Slow Detective.’ Felicity’s breath smelled of peppermint. Her clothes of formalin. Smiling like a best friend, Felicity laid the flat of the cartilage blade against Stella’s neck. ‘Don’t worry, Stella, this is not how you will die.’

  ‘Why did you murder Northcote?’ Stella forced herself to sound calm. ‘At the Death Café, you said he was your hero.’

  ‘I wanted to a be a pathologist ever since I was twelve when I discovered one could cut up human bodies and see their insides for a living.’

  ‘You must only have been about twenty.’ Lucie had warned that no age was too young to murder. Joy, the blackmailer, liar and a snoop, was ten and, until half an hour ago, the prime suspect.

  ‘Too young to die, too young to murder.’ Felicity ran the side of the blade down Stella’s neck. If she slit her skin, Stella was too numb with cold and fear to feel it. ‘Too young to be raped.’

  ‘Aleck Northcote raped you?’ Stella blinked away water that ran down her face like borrowed tears. If she wet herself the rain would disguise it. Death would disguise it.

  ‘A fellow student boasted how he’d taken his copy of Northcote’s autobiography, Mind over Murder to Tewkesbury and called on Northcote. He was invited in for tea. Northcote signed the book, “To my successor”. Sebastian, that was his name, got low marks, I corrected his mistakes and helped him revise. He was a less than mediocre pathologist.’

  ‘Northcote probably wrote that in every book.’ Stella was reassuring Felicity. Anything to be allowed to live.

  ‘Only for men.’ Felicity pressed the blade against Stella’s skin. ‘Women have to work twice as hard to astound and astonish so that we cannot be ignored. When I visited Northcote, it would be a meeting of supreme minds across the generations.’

  A siren. The town was flooding, Lucie and Beverly would be trapped in the abbey. Jack wouldn’t reach Tewkesbury. ‘Felicity, please let me go, people need help.’

  ‘Don’t plead, it’s pathetic,’ Felicity grated. ‘I intended to find Northcote alone, Sebastian said the housekeeper left at six. At Paddington, newspaper hoardings said that JFK had been assassinated. Perhaps this was why one selfish individual chose to jump in front of a train so I didn’t get to Tewkesbury until that evening. No matter, I too was welcomed in. Aleck and I were locked in a discussion about facial reconstruction. He was genuinely fascinated by my theories. He was charm itself, I was transported. My career was made. Here was the greatest living pathologist caught in my spell.

  ‘It started with a hand on my leg. He oozed compliments. You are quite something, aren’t you, dear. Then he grabbed me. He was savage, clumsy. Revolting. A rabid dog. A dog that had to be put down.

  ‘Later, on the train back to London, I read the inscription: “For my Girl in the Headlines”. The film Northcote said Gladys, his housekeeper, was seeing that night. Joy told me Gladys lied.’

  ‘That’s what Clive meant about John Lennon,’ Stella exclaimed. ‘You got Northcote to sign a copy of his book and then you killed him.’

  Felicity waved the knife impatiently, ‘One night Joy told me that Gladys Fleming, as was, had been with Aleck that evening. Joy believed Gladys had killed him.’

  ‘How come Joy told you?’ Stella’s jaw ached from her effort to stop her teeth chattering. The river crashing through the sluices expressed the roar of terror Stella felt. In the sky
, ragged skeins of white cloud became sooty black as they passed across the moon.

  ‘When I bought Cloisters House, I joined the choir. I’ve always loved choral music. Joy came to Cloisters with one of her fussy musical arrangements. After several glasses of brandy – “medicinal, the organ plays havoc with my lower back” – her tongue loosened and out it poured. No friends as a child. She spied on others and bartered secrets to get friends. But she had kept one secret. That Aleck had an affair with his pretty young housekeeper, the gorgeous Gladys. She’d seen them “in this very room”. Giles Northcote hadn’t murdered his father, she said. It was Gladys Wren who’d bludgeoned Aleck with the poker. This was the real music to my ears: I was safe. If there was doubt about Giles Northcote’s guilt, Gladys was next up as culprit. That was until that scoundrel March arrived in Tewkesbury with other ideas.’

  ‘You let an innocent man hang?’ Stella should not be shocked; were Roddy March’s suspicions true, someone had let Giles Northcote die to save their own skin.

  ‘Holier than thou doesn’t suit you, Stella. I killed Northcote because he raped me. I wasn’t his successor, I was his sex doll. Should I have given myself up to the police for his son, a gambler and a drunk?’

  ‘How did Joy find out you killed March?’ Stella’s measurement of time was in inches as the water rose. If she leapt in, what chance would she have? At least she’d control her own death. I love you, Jack. Stupidly it occurred to her that it was two days until Christmas and she wouldn’t see him.

  ‘March called me that night at the first Death Café. It was him threatening me, I never as much as sent him a poison pen letter. I dismissed all of you and told him to meet me by the cadaver tomb after the rescheduled session the following night. I already had it in my mind to frame Joy – here was the perfect chance. I stabbed him and was out of there before Joy had finished playing.’