The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

the sun and be refreshed by gentle rain.’ Felicity must have forgotten she wasn’t meant to express an opinion.

‘Only the headstone will have that,’ Joy said. ‘You’ll be six feet under in a loamy cell.’

‘Mr March, why you have come today?’ Felicity sounded more accusatory than curious.

‘Why have I come? Ooh, tough one.’ Roddy March sucked his pen. ‘Long story short. Most of you will have heard the first episode of The Distant Dead, my podcast about murder victims whose real killers never paid for their crimes because the cases were firmly closed.’

‘Not had the pleasure, old son,’ Clive said.

‘Yes.’ Andrea sounded grudging.

Joy murmured something which might have been ‘certainly not’.

‘I thought you were…’ Stella realized she’d misunderstood – March had never actually said his podcast was about cadaver tombs. She was rather disappointed.

‘Ooh yes, lovey. Very good, kept me guessing, you should listen, Joy.’ Gladys looked at Joy. Stella thought if Jack was there, he’d say there was little love lost between Joy and Gladys.

Felicity said nothing, and Stella assumed that, as a pathologist, Felicity wouldn’t care for a podcast which sought to prove that the police – and by extension her own profession – had made a mistake.

‘I’m clawing back justice for those who, as Clive says, did not defy time. If you go to your grave with an innocent person charged with your murder, your story has the wrong ending. You are robbed of your legacy.’ Inexplicably, he nodded at Joy, then Stella remembered Joy had talked about legacy the evening before. ‘The Distant Dead will name the true killers of murders committed in the last hundred years. Murders by the likes of James Hanratty and Timothy Evans.’

‘DNA proved that Hanratty did kill that scientist,’ Andrea said.

‘Don’t split hairs, love,’ Gladys Wren said. ‘For years he was supposed innocent, that’s what Roddy means.’

‘I’ll be starting with a murder familiar to many of you. The Tewkesbury Murder Mystery. Although, since 1963 when it occurred, many have been bumped off in this town, it is the brutal killing in Cloisters House by the abbey wall that remains etched in the public’s memory.’ March took the last piece of cake.

‘Not that many murders.’ Andrea sounded defensive. ‘Fewer than in Cheltenham.’

‘And it’s no mystery,’ Joy said. ‘Another instance of son kills father.’

‘Trust you to rain on his parade, Madame Joy.’ Clive raised an eyebrow.

‘It was an open and shut case.’ Joy shut her mouth, lips pursed.

‘Joy, Clive, go, you guys. I intend to provoke just this conversation. The hive mind will shine a light on the true killer.’ Roddy March splayed out his palms. ‘Of course, the twenty-second of November 1963 was etched on memories because—’

‘You said etched already,’ Andrea said.

‘—many of you can recall what you were doing when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but Kennedy wasn’t the only famous man to meet his maker that day. On that same Friday, renowned Home Office pathologist Professor Aleck Northcote was having a nightcap when there was a loud knock on the door.’

‘You can’t know it was loud,’ Felicity said.

‘Did you know him?’ Gladys Wren asked Felicity. ‘With you both being in that business? Small world, I’d suppose.’

‘No,’ Felicity said. ‘Obviously I’ve heard of him, his textbook is the bible. Northcote would be 118 if he was alive today. I’m younger.’

‘You don’t look anything like it, dearie,’ Gladys said, although Felicity hadn’t given her age and everyone in the room looked younger than 118.

‘And what if the intruder had a key?’ Andrea said.

‘Professor Northcote signed my copy of his autobiography when I was a student.’ Felicity appeared to be off down memory lane.

‘The son was guilty, they proved it beyond doubt.’ Joy abruptly scraped back her chair and crossed to the servery. ‘I was eight at the time.’

‘Like you said, kids of that age know right from wrong,’ Gladys said, apparently without point. ‘We all have occasion to know about that night.’

‘Stella doesn’t know what the hell you’re all talking about, do you?’ Andrea rounded on Stella.

‘Well, I—’ Stella felt the atmosphere had taken an unpleasant turn.

‘That evening, while the world was reeling from Kennedy’s death, Giles Northcote takes the mid-morning train from Paddington bound for Tewkesbury to tap his old pater for another loan.’ March talked as if no one had interrupted. ‘Giles has run up yet another gambling debt, he risks being blackballed from his club. Yes, there’s a sweet Victorian feel to this narrative. He is expected. Aleck tells his trusty housekeeper that Giles is coming and that he knows it’s not a social call. The young buck is seen drinking in the Black Bear at lunchtime and later pacing the Victoria Pleasure Gardens, presumably getting up courage to face his dad.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Andrea said again.

‘Then around eight that evening, Giles Northcote weaves his way along the high street to Cloisters House. The story is one played out all over the land for generations: Papa refuses to cough up and by now pissed and desperate, Giles batters him over the head with a handy poker. He steals cash from Northcote’s wallet, swipes a silver cup Aleck won for running round the world or some such in his gilded youth. Miss Fleming, aforesaid housekeeper, comes back from the pictures to find her master dead in the hall, his groping fingers centimetres from an original 1930s Bakelite telephone.’

‘The kind of phone doesn’t matter,’ Andrea said.

‘He’s setting the scene.’ Gladys seemed to have taken to Roddy March.

‘I lead my listeners on a journey, they see what I see,’ March told Andrea. Although Stella rather thought Andrea had earned it, she felt a bit sorry for her. March was hijacking the Death Café and Andrea was the only person who appeared to mind. Stella saw it as a get-out from having to say any more about herself.

‘Northcote was my customer.’ Clive rubbed his chin. ‘His skeleton clock was the first timepiece I handled, as a wet-behind-the-ears seventeen-year-old,’ he said in a dreamy voice as if they were at a séance.