‘Gladys won’t let her. That Joy can’t play the organ is punishment enough. I doubt I’d be so forgiving.’ Janet got up, ‘Stella, I do hope our paths cross again. Not my place to say, but… well, Terry would have been effing proud of you.’ She tucked her chair under the table. ‘He said pay attention to the irrelevant, the peripheral and the outlandish, it can lead to the truth. I didn’t do that. His daughter did.’
‘I didn’t.’ Stella got up and, edging past Lucie, touched Janet’s shoulder. ‘Dad also said the police welcome information from the public. I should have told you my suspicions.’
‘Enough with the mea culpa, girls,’ Lucie cried. ‘Blame Aleck Northcote. He wrought trauma on women for decades and got every gong in the book for slicing up more. I’ll be there when they rip his plaque off the wall of Cloisters House.’
After Janet had left, everyone ate and drank in what Jackie felt was companionable silence.
‘Do you plan to write a true-crime book?’ Jackie asked Lucie.
Stella shot her a reproving glance, she was protective of Lucie and the true-crime books that never reached fruition. But Jackie wasn’t teasing Lucie, she thought that, unless another murder came along in the meantime, this chain of murders spanning 1940 to the present day might be the one to take Lucie over the finish line.
‘Books schmooks.’ Lucie sat back as a second doughnut with a fresh pot of tea was put in front of her. Again, she shared her doughnut with Stella and again Stella polished off her half.
‘The future is in podcasts,’ Lucie said. ‘I’m doing one.’
This time the silence was of astonishment.
‘Andrea’s got the material, I’ll script it, and me and Andrea will co-present.’
‘You’ll be better than March, better than any podcasters I’ve heard.’ Stella licked sugar off her upper lip. ‘You’ll tell it fairly and without sensation.’
Jackie wasn’t sure she shared Stella’s confidence.
‘You listen to true-crime podcasts?’ Jack stared at Stella. Jackie wondered how Jack would be with the new Tewkesbury-improved Stella who liked true-crime podcasts and attended evensong.
‘We will bring Maple back from the dead. Listeners will meet a vivacious clever young woman who was cut down before she could begin her life and be a mother to her son.’ Lucie slurped tea. ‘We’ll give William Greenhill his mum.’
Jack jolted as if he’d received an electric shock. Jackie saw Stella see it too. Stella moved closer to Jack, their shoulders touching. Lucie meant well, but nothing and no one could give back William Greenhill or Jack their murdered mothers. Perhaps, though, their sons might learn to feel the love of those who loved them. Perhaps William could find peace with his estranged family; and his daughter, now she knew the truth about his past, could forge a new relationship with him.
Jackie only had to look at them to see Jack and Stella had found each other again. Stella had told Jackie she could accept Terry’s death, she carried him in her heart.
‘Andrea needs me for journo credibility; as a designer she deals in pictures and code. I had thought the podcast would be just you and me, babe.’ Lucie was rummaging in her Driza-Bone. ‘Hope you don’t mind, Stellagmite, we’ll have you as consultant.’
‘This is Andrea’s story.’ With Stanley snoozing on her lap and Jack holding her hand, Jackie could see Stella was in seventh heaven. ‘From now on, I’m sticking to cleaning. No more solving murders.’
‘And my mother was a bright red rooster.’ Lucie raised the hip flask she’d recovered from the depths of her coat and took a generous swig of nippet.
‘Here’s to our next case, Sherlock.’
Acknowledgements
During the night of 10 December 1940, my grandad, an officer at London’s Pentonville Prison, sat with Jose Wahlberg, a young convicted spy. The note of gratitude that Wahlberg wrote to Albert Nelson, on a cigarette packet perhaps minutes before he was hanged for treason, is still in our family’s archive box. I haven’t dramatized this in The Distant Dead, which is a murder mystery, but it did inspire me to set the novel in the 1940 London Blitz.
The Distant Dead was written in 2020’s first lockdown. I planned it before Covid-19 overtook the world, but it didn’t take a genius to find parallels between the privations and strictures of the Blitz and those set out by Boris Johnson’s government to protect the National Health Service. The pandemic slogan, ‘We’re in it together’ was a wartime rallying cry too.
In 1940 rules made criminals of the law-abiding, for leaving a chink in a blackout curtain or a gas mask at home. In the pandemic too, well-intentioned people ignored, bent or broke rules around ‘Bubbles’ and high days and holidays. Living with limitations on movement, seeing businesses vanish and reading of the daily death toll, I felt an affinity for the civilians on Britain’s home front in 1940. History was just a breath away.
Lockdown meant cancelling appointments with e.g., the National Archives, the Metropolitan Police Archives and the University of Sussex archives at the Keep. These collections have material online, but nothing beats handling actual documents. I did make extensive use of UKPressOnline, the BBC’s British Genome Project and of the British Newspaper Archive. I read many texts, watched government propaganda films. A core book was Murder Capital: Suspicious Deaths in London 1933-53 by Amy Helen Bell (Manchester University Press, 1988). Myth speaks louder than reality and from this book I read that while shelterers in the tube did huddle over board games and sing Vera Lynn songs, in dark stations and stairways, women were raped and murdered. Crime was rife. The Nazis weren’t the only enemies.
In 1940, nineteen-year-old Maple Church, a ‘respectable’ clerk with Hackney Borough Council was murdered in a bomb-damaged building after a night out in London. My character Maple bears no resemblance to Maple Church, however her name is by way of tribute. I hope Maple is resting in peace.
As a novelist, I am proud to be part of a wonderful team. Against the thorny backdrop of furloughs, staff shortages and home-schooling, Head of Zeus worked hard to bring The Distant Dead into being. Thank you so much to:
Christian Duck – Production, Liz Hatherell – Copyeditor, Vicky Joss – Marketing, Anna Nightingale – Editorial Assistant, Lauren Tavella – PR, Mark Swan and Matt Bray – Cover design, Jon Appleton – Proofreader. I am lucky to have the fabulous Richard Attlee reading the audiobook.
Laura Palmer who, has for nearly a decade, helped make my novels the best they can be.
Always thanks to Georgina Capel and all at Georgina Capel Literary Agency, including Irene Baldoni, Philippa Brewster and Rachel Conway.
Thanks as ever, to retired Chief Superintendent Stephen Cassidy and to ‘The Detective’s Mother’ – Shirley Cassidy.
Friends and family have been vital in this tough time, I’ve valued your support and encouragement.
Heartfelt thanks to my fab cousins, Tasmin Barnett (adopted ‘younger sister), Roger Goodwin, Ronnie Rees. William Nelson and Katherine Nelson. To my Uncle and Aunty, Peter and Lynn Nelson. To my dearly loved Aunty Agnes who, being looked after in her care-home, has been painfully out of reach and died of Covid four days after receiving the vaccine.
Thank you, Elizabeth Anscombe, Teresa Andow, Sarah Barclay, Laura Barnett, Melissa Benn, Philippa Brewster, Jenny Bourne Taylor, Kathryn Burton, Jonny Burton, Elaine Butlin, Stuart Carruthers, Marianne Dixon (aka Vikasini), Helen Eve, Susan Eve, Hilary Fairclough, Katrina Heather, Nigel Heather, Flis Henwood, Lisa Holloway, Christine Muscato, Emma O’Grady, Steve O’Neill, Shirley (Sam) Margerison, John Pumphrey, Tina Ross, Rick Ross, Ruth Ussher, Paul Ussher, Guy Warner, Joann Weedon and Harriet Wood. My particular thanks to Juliet Eve for her gimlet eye.
Libby’s Patisserie became a take-away during Lockdown. Our lattes and brioche, brought to a bench across the street on a tray by Libby’s partner Matt, became more special than ever.
The highest of fives to the fellow members of the ‘Crime Trio’, Elly Griffiths and William Shaw, who, as fellow writers and good
mates, keep me up and running. Here’s to more rainy-day meetings on a grey windswept beach, hopefully only for old times’ sake.
A special mention goes to Domenica de Rosa (11.11).
Where is a writer without readers? Thank you all for your wonderful messages. Those requests to write faster spur me on!
My gratitude is due to all bookshops which during the pandemic yet managed to get fiction to readers. To the bloggers whose ‘Tours’ were spiced with particular value in this Virtual Time. A big shout out to David Gilchrist and all who run the treasure that is the UK Crime Book Club. If you’re not a member, don’t miss out!
It’s rare my novels include an autobiographical element. However, like Stella with Stanley, I’ve spent hours in Tewkesbury Abbey listening to Evensong with our dog Alfred napping on my lap. On our last visit, in front of two security guards, he disgraced himself and me, by lifting a leg against a pillar in the north ambulatory. Despite this, I’m grateful to Alfred for his company and for those lockdown walks he made legitimate.
I wouldn’t have put fingers to keys without my beloved wife, Melanie.
Lesley Thomson
Lewes, 2021
About the Author
LESLEY THOMSON grew up in London. Her first novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was a #1 bestseller and the series has sold over 750,000 copies. Lesley divides her time between Sussex and Gloucestershire. She lives with her partner and her dog.
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