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

about death, but what with Joy and poor dear Clive taking lumps out of each other and Felicity getting steamed up, it went clean out of my head.’ Gladys hovered by the door. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went. It got me out. Roderick was an eye-opener; my evenings are deathly dull now.’

Promising newly baked Dorset apple cake, Gladys went out.

‘We need to see March’s room,’ Lucie hissed from the pouffe.

It was Lucie’s idea to get into Roddy’s room. Stella had been against it. What a great way to get properly in trouble with Janet and the police. Then Lucie suggested they pay their respects to Roddy’s landlady, she must be grieving. Aware Lucie was only trying another way to see where Roddy had stayed, Stella recalled she’d liked Gladys, she would like to know how she was doing.

‘His room will be sealed.’ Stella was determined to keep Lucie reined in.

Roddy’s address was the last bit of information that Janet had given Stella before she had cut Stella loose.

‘Our Mrs Wren knew March and your grumpy gardener.’ Lucie was consulting her version of the diagram Stella had done of the seating in the Death Café.

‘Here you are, girls.’ Mrs Wren was back. ‘Stella, with you and Roddy being friends and all, you must be heartbroken, I know I am.’

‘We weren’t—’

‘Dreadful, awful,’ Lucie dug Stella with an elbow. ‘So Roddy told you that he knew Stella.’

‘He mentioned they were going to work together on his poddy thingy. What a disappointment for you, dear.’

Stella took refuge in what proved to be delicious cake.

‘What paper did you say you wrote for?’ Her expression peaceable, Gladys leaned down to Lucie.

‘I didn’t,’ Lucie said. ‘The nationals, whichever coughs up the right price.’

‘Roderick would want me talking to you. “Knock yourself out”, he’d say. That did make me laugh. He promised me helping him with his podcast would make me rich. Sitting right where Stella is now. “You’ll be able to get a new boiler and pick and choose your guests.” I said, a new hip will do me, Mr Prince.’

‘Roddy wanted you to help him…’ Stella felt herself flush. She’d assumed Roddy had wanted to pick her brains as a successful detective, but he’d asked his landlady too. Was he even serious?

‘Every night, we’d have a sherry – or two – and he’d ask his questions. Even though it was about me, I had to think. My memory’s not so good. Roddy said it’s not Alzheimer’s, it’s me being a busy businesswoman. The gorgeous boy, always trying to make me feel on top of the world.’ Gladys smiled to herself.

Stella noticed Gladys Wren wasn’t as smartly turned out as at the Death Café. Her pink shell-suit had seen better days and while she’d obviously combed her hair it looked unwashed. She wore no make-up.

‘What questions did March ask?’ Lucie was poised over her notebook.

‘What the professor was like, was he kind, nasty, who were his friends, that sort of thing. Right down to what he liked to eat.’ Gladys Wren cut up the rest of the cake. ‘Help yourselves, don’t stand on ceremony.’

‘How could you know?’ Stella said.

‘Didn’t I say?’ Gladys said. ‘I was Sir Aleck’s housekeeper.’

Chapter Thirty-One

2019

Jackie

‘You look as if you spent the night here.’ Jackie hoped Beverly and Jack hadn’t done something illegal that both would deeply regret. Without Stella, Jack was a loose cannon and Bev would do anything for Jack and Stella. His hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, Jack’s sheepish countenance didn’t reassure.

‘We didn’t sleep.’ Yawning, Beverly pulled back her hair and secured it with her diamanté scrunchie.

Please not. Squaring off a bundle of dormant customer files she hoped to bring to life, Jackie let the silence reach a crescendo.

‘It was Bev, I’d never have asked her,’ Jack eventually said.

‘Is it always someone else?’ Distantly Jackie noted how once quietly pleasurable office tasks had become purgatory.

‘I shouldn’t have gone. Jack rescued me.’

‘I doubt that,’ Jackie muttered. Modelling herself on Stella, Beverly rarely lied. Jackie had hoped with no Stella, Bev would keep out of Jack’s slipstream. Bev was sunshine incarnate to his dead of night.

‘We’ve arranged everything next door where there’s more space to spread out.’ Beverly opened Stella’s office door. Reluctantly, Jackie followed her.

‘Spread what out and you shouldn’t have gone where?’ Seeing Stella’s empty chair, Jackie felt her chest tighten. Then she saw that the carpet tiles were covered with papers.

‘We’ve found the murder that caused Professor Northcote’s murder.’ Beverly knelt down. ‘Roddy March was either hiding this box of papers on the virtual tour or he was about to retrieve them and was interrupted. Either way, we’ve got them now.’

Dead Prostitute Worked in Dead Man’s Home. On a yellowed front page of the Daily Express. Strangler Kills Girl for Extorting Cash emblazed across the Daily Despatch. The Daily Mail said, Greed Spells Girl’s End. All were dated 12 December 1940.

‘As you see, newspapers called Maple a sex-worker. In fact, she was an accounts clerk at the Express Dairies which used to be on King Street. She was found strangled in a house owned by a solicitor who was killed fire-watching. Apparently, lots of people were. Police said that she knew the house was unoccupied and lured clients there to, as the News of the World said, “ply her trade”.’

‘How does this relate to Sir Aleck Northcote?’ Jackie mustered herself.

‘He did the autopsy on Maple.’ Beverly’s eyes gleamed. ‘Jack found the PM report. Her hyoid bone was crushed with, quote, “terrific force from behind”. As Northcote puts it, wait…’ Beverly scrabbled among the papers and finding a stapled document, read, ‘she “put up a struggle but her assailant was too clever for her”.’

‘How clever do you have to be to grab a woman from behind and squeeze the life out of her?’ Casting back eighty years, Jackie felt inchoate rage for the self-satisfied pathologist, even though his own end had been even more grisly. ‘His job was to find cause of death,