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

‘I think it was then Roddy told us someone wanted to murder him,’ Stella said.

‘Say again.’ Bolt upright, Janet stared at Stella.

‘Roddy claimed someone wanted to murder him. He’d had death threats, a dead bird on his car.’

‘What sort of bird?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Stella was surprised, it was the sort of off-the-wall question Jack would ask. ‘That’s about when Felicity suggested he go to the police in Cheltenham. The station here is shut.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Janet pulled a face. ‘Did you believe him? Great way to whip up followers for this podcast.’ Janet was writing. Stella knew that, years before, having passed her sergeant exams, Janet had come top in Pitman’s typing and shorthand. Terry made her keep it quiet to avoid becoming, as he’d said, CID’s Girl Friday.

‘I think Roddy wanted to stay talking to the group, but Felicity was firm. I saw her point, the session wasn’t going according to plan. Afterwards, the man called Clive said more about the murder Roddy was investigating. It was in Cloisters House, that big house on the other side of the abbey wall.’ Stella tilted a hand towards the altar. ‘Andrea, she’s the abbey gardener, complained Roddy was a time-waster who leeched off the attention of others. She seemed to have taken a dislike to him.’ Stella rubbed her face. If only she’d gone after Roddy when he left.

‘This Andrea, could she have disliked March enough to stab him?’ Janet tapped her upper lip with her pen. ‘Are you sure she didn’t see his potted description of her?’

‘I got the impression Andrea was like that generally. That, or she didn’t like me either. I wouldn’t expect her to attack me.’

‘Sounds like, piss her off and you’re in her sights,’ Janet said. ‘I’ll look forward to my chat with her.’

‘Roddy can’t have got in her way, he hardly noticed her.’

‘That March described Andrea as a loose cannon suggests she’s a disrupter – but how did March know that?’

‘Her attitude was combative, impatient. She pushed against the spirit of the Death Café. When Felicity asked what Andrea wanted from the session she said she hoped to get home without getting caught in the rain again.’ Stella flapped the foil blanket. ‘Thinking about it, that was the first night, when Roddy wasn’t there.’

‘What murder was March investigating?’ Janet seemed satisfied with this.

‘Friday the twenty-second of November 1963.’ Stella was glad to have observed one specific fact; it felt that her supposed raptor skills had deserted her. She told Janet about the murder of the pathologist and how his son was executed for it. Janet was animated – she’d heard of Professor Northcote.

‘Your dad heard Northcote got too big for his boots, the man’s word was gospel. Terry said, in the early sixties, when he was stationed in east London, one old geezer at the Hackney mortuary could remember Northcote working through the Blitz. Terry mistrusted heroes, the best professionals work in teams. I never let myself forget that.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘The Northcote case was cut and dried. Sounds like March was creating fake news. There’s many a failed reporter going for reinvention as a top-list podcaster. The lovely Lucie May comes swiftly to mind.’

‘Roddy said he had proof Giles Northcote didn’t kill his father.’ At the mention of Lucie, Stella felt uncomfortable. No love was lost between Janet and Lucie May with whom, after Stella’s mum left Terry, he actually did have an affair.

‘Did anyone seem uncomfortable about this? Supposing for a second that March was on to something, him saying that could have put the wind up someone in the group. Perhaps that was his intention?’

‘Hard to say. No one seemed bothered that he’d gone.’

‘To your knowledge did anyone follow him? Apart from you, of course.’

‘Joy was in the abbey when I arrived, she plays the organ. But I think he was alive during the music.’ Cold and exhausted, Stella tried to think how it had gone. When did the music stop? She couldn’t get past the terrible vision of Roddy’s stricken face. The blood.

‘I just talked to her. Playing that thing, she claims not to have heard anything. As you know, March was stabbed in the back. The killer didn’t require strength, just the element of surprise.’ Janet returned to her earlier point. ‘I’m tending to think March went to this starved monk tomb hoping you’d meet him. Are you sure he didn’t suggest a rendezvous there?’

‘No.’ Stella’s stomach plunged. Up until now Janet had been chatty, almost as if they were mates, now she was homing in. As Stella knew in a murder case, everyone’s a suspect and especially the witness who found the body. ‘This is probably nothing.’ She told Janet about the van slowing to a stop on the road from Winchcombe.

‘We’ll check if March drove a white van. That could be kids, there’s been a spate of muggings. One MO is fake car trouble. Driver behind offers help, kids wave a knife and demand cash. You had a lucky escape. We had a mugging in the abbey.’ Janet dropped her pen and retrieving it said, ‘Not all woolly lambs and rolling combine harvesters in the country.’

‘I should have gone after Roddy,’ Stella said.

‘Don’t beat yourself up. If you had we might be shunting you off to the morgue too.’ Janet swished to a fresh page in her notebook and looking at Stella asked, ‘While I think of it, why did you come to the abbey after you left the Death Café?’

Right at that moment, Stella was asking herself the same question.

Chapter Twelve

1940

‘…Only that the Palais de Danse was the last place where the victim was believed to have gone. My constable will be there within the hour.’ Suffering Jesus. Cotton replaced the receiver onto the cradle before he said anything that might land him in trouble. The manager at the Palais swore it was unlikely any of his staff recalled Maple, ‘…and since she wasn’t killed