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

and phone as evidence of mugging. Assailants take his wallet which tells them where he lived. They get in and strip his room of valuables. Who else had access to March’s bedsit?’ Lucie stopped by a shelf of second-hand books on sale for two pounds each. ‘Here’s an idea. Gladys is to meet March in the abbey after the Death Café. She scampers across, stabs March and dumps his beanie on a chair to make it look like he’d been listening to Joy’s sublime music. When you steam in searching for God, it was her shadow you saw on the wall.’

‘I wasn’t—’ Stella spotted a novel by Ngaio Marsh, the writer Jack mentioned when he’d found Stella in the abbey. On impulse, she dropped a few pound coins into a box on the wall and took it.

Above the hum of heating and the echo of echoes which filled the abbey with an eerie non-specific sound, she heard a familiar voice. She peeped into the gift shop. A woman was wrapping up a set of abbey mugs and chatting with an elderly couple in matching Burberry macs.

Stella shrank back and whispered to Lucie, ‘That’s Joy, the organist.’

‘We’re in business.’ Lucie turned on her phone’s recording app and, whisking around the Burberry couple, she flapped into the shop. Stella trailed after. This was not going to go well.

‘Lucie May. I’m Stella’s best friend. Joy, I think?’ Lucie floated about in front of the counter, tipping her head like a bird as she appeared to admire the gifts for sale.

‘Hi, Joy.’ Stella executed a wave behind her.

‘Stella. You are becoming quite a regular. Have you bought tickets for our recital yet?’

‘No. I’ve been busy.’

‘Goodness, haven’t you. Finding bodies all over the place. And poor dear Clive to boot. Are any of us safe?’ Joy clasped a large green pendant to her embroidered chest.

‘Isn’t that jade darling.’ Lucie loomed at the pendant.

‘Malachite.’ Joy straightened a pile of abbey teacloths. ‘There’s a nasty gang going about. I’ve asked for extra security.’

‘We must band together to bring this killer to book before there is a third death.’ Lucie sailed about the gift shop nudging display carousels into a gentle spin, sniffing scented candles. ‘I only had the pleasure of meeting Clive post-mortem.’

This was the wrong tone to take with no-nonsense Joy. Wildly, Stella snatched up a group of plaster models labelled Nativity Figures and presented them to Joy. ‘I’ll have these, please.’

‘Would you like them wrapped as a Christmas gift?’

‘They’re for me, it’s fine.’

‘They’ll be half price after the festive season. You didn’t hear that from me.’ Joy slipped the figures, Mary with Jesus in her arms and Joseph draped in sickly orange robes, into a paper bag and slid it over the counter to Stella.

‘Joy, would you be willing to chat with Lucie and me? Lucie’s a reporter, she’s concerned to find Roddy’s killer.’ Stella pre-empted Lucie.

‘Concerned to get a story, methinks.’ Joy tweaked the battalion of Mary and Josephs to close the resulting gap. Unattractive though the Nativity pieces were, Stella was pleased with her purchase. Their heads bowed, Mary and Joseph exuded calm.

‘We have to earn a crust,’ Lucie cackled.

‘You’ll earn a loaf of bread and a good few fish too with any story about this.’ Joy moved one of the Marys along the line as if in checkmate.

‘If you’d rather not get involved…’ Lucie beamed.

‘Come to my cottage later. I promise not to be dead when you arrive.’ Stella was instantly calm, watching Joy scribble her address on an abbey opening times leaflet. Joy would be a match for Lucie.

‘Bagged.’ Popping a fig into her mouth, Lucie swam out of the north ambulatory and out of the abbey. Stella caught up with her on the yew path. ‘Don’t be fooled by that air of sanctity, those types are first in line to kill. One down, two to go. Grumpy Andrea and Morticia, Queen of the Death Café.’

‘Felicity.’ Stella felt bound to tone Lucie down.

The rain had eased, but tumbling dark clouds rolling above the Avon threatened a storm.

‘What’s he doing?’ Lucie pointed at a figure, sketchy in the rain, bending by the wall adjoining Cloisters House.

‘It’s a woman. That’s Andrea,’ Stella realized.

‘Our eggs are gathering in their basket.’ Giving a sniff like the bloodhound Jack said Lucie was in another life, she beetled across the abbey lawn. Sensing action, Stanley dragged Stella after her.

‘Coo-ee, Andrea?’ Lucie pronounced it ‘And-raya.’

At the Death Café, Stella hadn’t needed an eagle eye to know Andrea preferred plants to people. Where they could, people chose work to suit their nature.

‘It’s you that is the artist behind these beautiful gardens.’ She swept out an arm, taking in the grass and grey tombs wet with rain.

There was no answer to this and Andrea gave none.

‘Stella told me all about you.’

‘Only that I’d met you,’ Stella quickly said. ‘Lucie’s keen to find who killed Roddy. Maybe you haven’t heard, but Clive the clockmaker was murdered last night.’

Andrea leaned on the handle of her spade and stared off towards Cloisters House, as if by fixing on the middle distance, she could make Stella and Lucie disappear.

‘Are you OK? You know, with… murders happening?’ Lucie looked at Stella with a ‘we’ve got a right one here’ expression.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘What a shock, Roddy and Clive both dead. It quite rattled me.’

‘You didn’t know him.’

Lucie got out her phone. ‘Can I record this? Hearing and memory are jiggered. Do not get old.’ Lucie rarely referred to her age. Stella knew, as did Gladys, that she was over seventy, but Lucie usually portrayed herself as reluctantly staring forty in the face.

‘I’m working.’ Andrea put a booted foot on her fork. ‘Careful, don’t squash those crocuses.’ She pointed to a clump of purple flowers that Lucie, stepping backwards, nearly squashed.

‘We won’t stop you. Evenings are more civilized. We’re seeing Joy at seven, we can be with you by end of play. I’m presuming you stop digging when it’s dark.’ Lucie essayed a wave at a