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

‘Auto… Sorry, lad, what do you mean?’ Cotton looked up.

‘He means cars. Vernon likes to talk American. He mends Cadillacs, Daimlers, you name it.’ It was as if, forgetting why the police were there, Keith felt momentary pride in his son.

‘Daimler is British.’ Impatient, his son missed the moment. ‘Maple said his car would pay for this house.’

‘This house is nearly paid for,’ Keith said and glaring at Cotton who perhaps hadn’t hidden his surprise, ‘I’m an actuary. Maple comes from a respectable home.’

‘Did Maple say what sort of car this man drove?’ Cotton chased the smallest hare.

‘No, I’d remember that.’ Vernon frowned. Cotton knew the poor kid was on the foothills of the guilt he would feel, for the rest of his life, about his dead sister.

‘My daddy isn’t in the ar-my, Mummy says he’s saving so-wells for England.’ William had gone from fast asleep to wide awake. Cotton could envy him that.

‘Tell us about your daddy, William?’ Cotton stooped down to the boy.

‘He can’t make them bet-ter, he gives them to God.’ Overcome with shyness, William buried his face in his grandmother’s tummy.

‘He makes things up. Hears about the other kiddies’ dads being in the army and invents one for himself,’ Evelyn said stiffly.

‘His dad is in the army. The blighter signed up to shirk duty to his son and my sister. He deserves everything the Nazis give him.’ No one disagreed with Vernon.

*

‘What if William isn’t making it up, sir? What if that stuff about his daddy is what Maple told him about this secret man?’ Shepherd said when they were in the car.

‘You might have something, Constable.’ Cotton slapped the dashboard with his notebook. ‘Maple tells William bedtime stories about her so-called fiancé. He’s not a soldier, he saves souls. Oh,’ he groaned, ‘please God tell me that our killer isn’t a vicar.’

Chapter Eleven

2019

The bells tolled midnight. Footsteps clipped on stone. All the lamps had been put on, animating censing angels, fierce-faced tabor players and exposing the triforium walk high up in the vaulted ceiling. Yellow numbered markers dotted the tombstoned floor. Tewkesbury Abbey was a crime scene. The plastic barriers left by workmen had been stacked against a pillar.

The rattle of wheels made Stella look up. Roddy’s body was being wheeled to the north door on a gurney. Her teeth began to chatter. Stella had insisted she didn’t need to go to hospital, but huddled by the rood screen, she was grateful for the beaker of sweet tea conjured up by a policewoman. Her fingers and toes had gone numb. Her mind was numb. Jaw clenched, Stella accidentally bit her tongue. She tasted copper. She smelled copper. Her trousers stiffened as Roddy’s blood dried.

The rattling faded then Stella heard the boom of the north doors. Looking at Jesus on the Cross through the rood screen, she saw instead Roddy March, his teeth bared in agony, gasping for breath in her arms.

Cawomy. Had Roddy really been trying to say ‘Chamomile’? It could be the name of his girlfriend, the jealous caller. Caroline, Karen, Charmian?

Where the north ambulatory had been blocked off with plastic barriers because workmen were repairing was police tape and arc lamps.

Only when Roddy’s body was extracted from her embrace had Stella understood help had arrived. Legs buckling, she was helped to her feet by two police officers. They leaned her against the starved monk to get her breath.

Someone wants to kill me.

Roddy had said that when Felicity told him he had to leave the Death Café. She had escorted him out and then he had been killed. Stella had so nearly followed him, but aware that Felicity’s Death Café was already a disaster, had felt she should stay.

‘Sorry to keep you, Stella.’ A woman came out of the north ambulatory and wove between the chairs towards her. Dark-suited, high heels, short hair, foundation, mascara, red lipstick in the middle of the night, when the woman – the SIO, Stella guessed – had probably been called from her bed. Wait, surely not. It was.

Janet Piper belonged to Stella’s old life in London – what was she doing here?

‘Janet.’ Stella was appalled to feel on the verge of tears. The Death Café, Roddy’s murder and now surrounded by strangers, it was Janet Piper, once WPC Piper, one of her dad’s favourite colleagues. Had Terry Darnell been a different kind of man they might have had an affair. Even as a girl, Stella had divined that Janet loved him. She’d organized Terry’s leaving do and, later, the force funeral, the Union Flag draped on his coffin. Stella’s mother had been certain Terry was unfaithful with Janet, but Suzy Darnell’s facts required no evidence.

Janet, like Martin Cashman, her dad’s best friend, had always had Terry’s back. Stella had last seen Janet in Hammersmith police station when she’d given her a witness statement on the case Lucie May called The Playground Murders. Why was Janet in Tewkesbury?

Stella’s expression must have betrayed this because, sitting down, Janet said, ‘I moved to Gloucestershire two months ago. More trees, less murders, or so I expected.’ Janet signalled in the direction of the cadaver tomb where Roddy had been murdered.

‘Never mind me, you’re the last person I expected to meet and, forgive me saying, in a church. Otherwise, business as per, you finding a body.’ Despite her levity, Janet sounded concerned.

‘It’s a long story.’ A very short story, but not one Stella wanted to tell.

‘Catch me over a drink.’ Janet touched her shoulder. ‘It’s great to clap eyes on a familiar face, especially yours. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new job, I’ve got a top floor flat overlooking the Severn, above the floods, and the walks around here are to die— ahem, fantastic. Yet I’m homesick for the Shepherd’s Bush Road and, get this, I miss Hammersmith Broadway in the rain.’ Janet rapped her notebook. ‘And no one’s a patch on Terry, he was a one-off.’

‘Did you find his notebook?’