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

exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…

After a bit, her gaze wandered. Beyond the font, there was a shadow.

Murderers returned to the scene of the crime. As the congregation rose for the Apostle’s Creed, Stella, paralysed by damp terror, stared at the shadow.

… he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Stanley struggled and she had hold him tight to stop him escaping. Dogs might be welcome in the abbey, but not ones who cantered about. The shadow had gone. Stanley began to mew.

Someone had sat behind her.

With the whole abbey why choose there? Filled with rage, Stella reminded herself she could shout for help. But she was like stone, she could not move.

…the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting.

Amen.

Stella shut the prayer book and turned to confront him.

It was Jack.

*

‘Please come home.’ Jack came and sat next to Stella and submitted to Stanley’s excited slathering and head-butts.

Evensong was over. The chords of Handel’s Voluntary had died away. The straggle of worshippers and the priest had left.

‘I am home.’ Stanley only mewed when he recognized someone he loved. She contemplated the area where workmen were restoring the floor at the base of the pillar – the barriers seemed somehow brighter in the dim light from above.

‘You live in Hammersmith, not here. Everyone misses you.’ Jack addressed the choir ceiling. ‘I miss you.’

‘Like I said, I’m no use to anyone right now, not fit for human consumption, as Mum would say. I need space on my own. To sort stuff out.’ Stanley was curled up on Jack’s lap asleep. He was home.

‘You are use to me,’ Jack said. ‘And you’re not on your own, Lucie’s with you. Don’t tell me she gives you space.’

‘Actually, she does.’ Stella felt the truth of this. Lucie chatted on about her terrible editor, her unwritten book as if she’d finished it, she read out gruesome stories from the Gloucestershire Echo, stopping to heckle, ‘Garbage, this kid can’t write. Where was the editor?’

Within Lucie’s noise and caper, as if in the eye of a storm, Stella had found peace. Until Roddy was murdered her chief fear had been that, nearly recovered, Lucie would soon return to London and leave Stella behind.

‘Jackie and Bev send their love. Your mum said she’d love to hear from you.’

‘I only wrote to her yesterday.’ From his face, Stella saw Jack didn’t know she was in touch with her mum. That meant he’d made it up. Had Jackie and Bev sent love?

‘What about Clean Slate? You need a job. Jackie said you’ve stopped drawing salary.’

‘I can’t take money for doing nothing.’ Stella contemplated the sleeping Stanley. ‘I have a job. Cleaning.’

‘Where?’ Jack looked shocked.

‘Here.’ Her turn to lie. She had found whatever space it was she had wanted by dusting off tombs and the bosses, angels with their instruments, a rebec, tabor, zither, one had a pipe, hurdy-gurdies. That was all over. Misery overwhelmed Stella. ‘I’m in a team.’

‘You were already in a team. Us.’ Jack frowned up at the gigantic piers supporting the roof. ‘Justin and Milly miss you.’ He jolted as if with an electric shock and Stella knew this bit was true.

‘They have you and Bella. Anyway, the children email me, didn’t Bella say?’

‘What? They are too young,’ Jack said.

‘Well, not literally, Bella scans their pictures and emails them.’

‘No, she didn’t say.’ Jack was fiddling with Stanley’s ears as if trying to tie them together.

‘She sent a story Justin and Milly made up.’ She and Jack had vowed never to have secrets or lie to each other. Even when they’d been an item neither had kept that promise.

‘What about? Us?’

‘No. Stanley was in it.’ Stella would not say that in their story the twins’ daddy found a big house for Stella where Daddy and you have a huge wedding. If she told Jack he’d be in floods. And so would she.

‘Even my children can’t put you and me back together again.’ Jack looked disappointed and Stella wondered if he’d been hinting about their marrying to his kids. No, they were independent little beings, they’d see for themselves their daddy was sad.

‘Lucie said you have a case,’ Jack said after a bit. ‘She said you found a dead body here. Is that why you came to the service? Are you OK?’

‘Lucie shouldn’t have told you and Roddy wasn’t dead he was dying.’ She was horrified – who else had Lucie told? What if Janet found out?

‘Roddy.’ Jack repeated the name. ‘Did you know him?’

‘No. Although we had met before…’ Despite the likelihood Lucie had told Jack, she didn’t want to talk about the Death Café.

‘I heard March’s podcast. I think the case he was investigating, the murder of that pathologist in the sixties, must be connected to his own murder.’

‘Professor Northcote was murdered nearly sixty years ago. More likely it’s someone with mental health issues, or Roddy was mugged. He was robbed.’ That morning she’d disagreed with Janet saying something like that, but now Jack’s certainty about the murder had Stella arguing against herself. Jack had chewed it over with Lucie.

‘Lucie says you’re helping Janet, your dad’s old colleague. Fancy her being here, what a coincidence.’

‘You don’t believe in coincidences,’ Stella reminded him.

‘No, well.’ He stroked Stanley. ‘Lucie says Northcote was a Home Office pathologist who used to live near Ravenscourt Square Park. That not far from me in Kew. We could check it out.’ Jack sounded tentative.

‘It’s a matter for the police,’ Stella said stiffly. Lucie would have declared them a team. Like the old days, darrrling. Stella wanted nothing to do with murders from the past or in the very present.

‘You know as well as I do the police miss stuff. Look, Stell, I get you want space, that we’re on a break or… but let’s do this, be a team just once more.’

Someone was coming up the north ambulatory. It wasn’t… it was.

‘Hello, Joy.’ Instinctively, Stella shifted up to Jack.

‘Good evening.’ Joy stopped. ‘Stella, was it?’

‘Yes,