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

‘We should go,’ Stella said.

‘Nice room.’ With a view of a brick wall, dark and dingy even with lights on, it was not nice. Her gimlet eyes scouring every corner, Lucie would be buttering up the landlady.

‘I’d give it a spruce every day, not part of the service, but Roderick was up to his ears. Look at this mess, I can’t let his parents see it.’

Black fingerprint powder speckled every surface: the corner sink, the small induction hob, a kettle with the lid off lay on top of a mini-fridge. Drawers had been opened and a shirt was caught between the wardrobe doors. Janet had said they hadn’t found Roddy’s laptop or his notebook. Stella felt hopeless – what could she and Lucie hope to find? Beyond the ruined dreams of a dead man.

‘So, Gladys, fancy you being the one to find Professor Northcote dead all those years ago.’ Lucie did her Red Riding Hood smile.

‘I’ll never forget the sight of him there in the hall.’ Gladys clasped her hands in front of her paisley overall. ‘A great long streak of blood on the floor where he’d dragged himself to the phone. I found it hanging off the hook. Police said Sir Aleck knocked it off the cradle trying to dial. Like I said to Roderick, that young Giles might have been a trial to his father, but what son isn’t? He was a sweet soul at heart.’ She lowered herself onto the end of Roddy’s bed. ‘There’s evil in this world.’

‘Too sweet a soul to commit murder?’ Lucie was disguised as a sweet soul.

‘Giles loved his dog. They say it starts with animals and children then works up. He needed money and the police said desperate people will do anything. The professor said his son was a lost cause. “Gladys,” he said, “the boy’s a bottomless pit, his mother spoiled him. One day it’ll end badly.”’ She smoothed the candlewick bedspread. ‘Sir Aleck was out of sorts after Giles left for London. Derek came to take me to the pictures, it was my night off, and I wasn’t giving that up to stay behind. In the end Derek got a shout, he was a fireman, so we never did see the film.’

‘I understand you didn’t live in,’ Lucie said.

‘Sir Aleck was on at me to stay. Since his wife had done away with herself, he said he hated the empty house. Some nights I did make up a bed in the attic.’ Mrs Wren gave a peremptory sniff as if warding off any lewd ideas that Lucie or Stella might harbour.

‘Julia Northcote died in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1941.’ Stella was confirming the date, but felt her tone implied that by 1963 Professor Northcote should have got over it.

‘He was never the same man after that, or so he said.’ Mrs Wren got off the bed. ‘I wish I’d never agreed to go with Derek, but the film was finishing in Evesham that night. If I’d stayed poor Giles would be alive.’

‘And perhaps Professor Northcote?’ Lucie said.

‘Yes, him too.’ She gave another sniff.

‘If you’d stayed, you could have been another victim.’ Stella was surprised this hadn’t occurred to Gladys.

‘Who do you think did it?’ Lucie rounded on her.

‘I’m no detective.’ Gladys’s expression suggested to Stella that she knew that Lucie was preparing to pounce. ‘All I know is, whatever people say, it wasn’t me.’

‘Who used to come to Cloisters House?’ Stella interrupted. To her Gladys seemed genuinely upset by Roddy’s death. Personally, Stella was sticking to her first impression of Gladys as a kindly woman, not the sort to kill her ex-employer and then Roddy to prevent him exposing her. An opinion based on intuition, usually Jack’s domain, that Stella could not substantiate.

‘Northcote was generous to all callers, handing out half-crowns to the butcher’s boy, the rag and bone man. When it came to the new window cleaner, I said see how he does first, but would Northcote listen? He bought me all sorts too.’

‘Apart from Giles, did any of these tradespeople visit that day?’ Stella said.

‘Harry with the meat, cheeky so-and-so, wanted to marry me. Derek saw him off. Harry’s got his own shop now, his grandson manages it. Giles in the evening, of course, poor lamb. No one else while I was there.’

‘You must have been young at the time. What are you now, sixties?’ Lucie’s crooning tone might work on her budgie, but Gladys Wren wasn’t fooled.

‘Come on, love, you’re as bad as Roderick dripping flattery. As you well know, you and me are in our seventies. I was eighteen then, Cloisters House was my first job and last job, because Derek and me got wed.’

‘Goodness, not a bad position for someone so young. I suppose Aleck planned to train you up.’ Lucie swam over the reference to their ages.

‘Sir Aleck was keen to give me a leg-up.’ Gladys’s eyes glazed – grief was tiring, Stella knew. Gladys was downbeat compared with the chirpy personality she’d displayed at the Death Café.

‘Could Northcote’s murder have been a random attack?’ Stella asked gently.

‘Not a bit of it. He knew whoever it was or he’d never have let them in. He never let just anyone over the threshold.’ Her agitation now apparent, Gladys worked her lips. ‘Ladies, if there’s nothing else…’

‘So, you telling the police this led them to charge the one visitor Sir Aleck Northcote would have unhesitatingly allowed in. His son. That’s why they charged Giles with his murder.’ Pounce. Lucie might have bided her time, but Gladys putting her at over seventy was tantamount to a declaration of war. ‘What about Roderick March, did he have visitors?’

‘Only Clive the Clock, as Roderick called him.’

‘Wait, he knew Clive?’ Lucie said.

‘Clive Burgess cleaned a watch for him.’

‘They never said they knew each other.’ Stella reflected that nor had they said they didn’t. ‘Did Roddy interview Clive for The Distant Dead?’

‘Yes, Clive came here after the first Death Café, thick as