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

left the Death Café, ambushed him by the monk’s tomb and stuck him with a knife, you’re as much of a fool as March was.’ Joy played silent chords on her keyboard. ‘Incidentally, will I be remunerated for this chat?’

‘March was in Tewkesbury to find out the truth of the Cloisters House murder.’ Stella jumped in before Lucie spouted any nonsense about making Joy rich. ‘So, you didn’t know Sir Aleck?’

‘I was ten when he was murdered.’ Joy was suddenly defensive.

‘Ten-year-olds are the best observers. I bet you were one of them,’ Lucie beguiled.

‘Your methods are tired, missy,’ Joy said. ‘Flattery leaves me cold.’

‘Lucie wasn’t flattering you,’ Stella said. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, the cottage is a stone’s throw from Cloisters House and the abbey. Can you recall seeing any strangers about that day?’

‘I’ll tell you what I did see.’ Joy’s cheeks puffed like a hamster as if her words had been stowed there for this moment. ‘Sir Aleck had her against the wall, legs open. Shocking sight for any child, especially a gifted musician. She lied to the police. She never saw that film, she was busy taking liberties and what’s more,’ crouched over her keyboard, Joy looked like the ten-year-old girl she had been, ‘I asked her, in the film, who did the murder. She told me I was far too young to know. Yes, ten-year-olds are observant, and I was far too young to observe what I saw.’

‘Who was this woman?’ Lucie and Stella asked at the same time.

‘The housekeeper, Miss Fleming, as was. Aleck Northcote, Roddy March, Clive Burgess. Don’t be fooled by Mrs Wren’s ditsy manner, she has sharp elbows and sharp teeth.’ Joy’s cheeks retracted. ‘You don’t have to look far for your killer.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

2019

Stella

Girl in the Headlines. Stella read the Wikipedia page on her phone.

It was seven o’clock and the abbey was closing soon. They had timed how long it took to walk from the tearoom to Roddy’s death-site. Walking fast, two and half minutes – two if his killer ran.

‘The film Gladys Wren told police she saw at the Sabrina cinema in Tewkesbury the week Northcote was murdered. A British noir thriller set in London about a model who gets shot dead. Mrs Wren told us her fiancé Derek didn’t want her to change her night off because the programme changed the following day. Then he got called away and she said she watched the rest on her own.’

‘Good alibi, you’re seen going in and, in the dark, who notices you slip out unless you block the screen?’ Lucie said.

‘Except Joy swears she saw her in Cloisters House having sex with Sir Aleck.’

‘Did Gladys kill him because he wouldn’t marry her?’ Lucie walked her fingers up the monk’s protruding ribs.

‘Or Aleck Northcote was jealous of Gladys being with Derek, tried to kill her so she killed him. Then she pretended to find him.’ Stella was struggling with bias; she didn’t want Gladys Wren to be a murderer.

‘Or she killed him in cold blood,’ Lucie said.

‘Or Joy made it up to divert us from suspecting her.’ Stanley made a ruff-ruff sound as Stella raised her voice, ‘I forgot, Joy did leave the table. She went off to the servery and made chamomile tea for herself and Roddy March. What if she was in league with someone else and took that chance to speak to them.’

‘I can’t see Joy in league with anyone. Was there a signal between her and Roddy?’ Lucie said.

‘Only that he must have asked for chamomile because Joy had made him some. When he collected his mug from the servery counter, they could have arranged to meet at the starved monk. Except it happened so quickly, I doubt it.’ Stella’s dad advised keeping it simple, start with evidence and likely suspects. That was the crime scene. Widen the net only after ground zero has been swept. Working that way Janet had found enough to convince her Roddy and Clive’s deaths were muggings.

‘He was stabbed moments before you found him. You left last,’ Lucie reminded her. ‘If Roddy was expecting to meet one of them here, that half an hour start he had on you all is irrelevant. No one else left when he did. Whoever did that needed the two and a half minutes plus the seconds it takes to run a blade into a man’s back. Three minutes max.’

‘I left about five minutes after the rest. Felicity was still there. I didn’t go straight to the monk, I listened to Joy on the organ, then I saw the beanie. By the time I found him it was more like seven or eight minutes after I left the Death Café.’

‘Joy is looking good for this.’ Lucie crooned to the starved monk. ‘If she’s not the killer, she’s missed her vocation – she’s got the hallmarks of a murderer.’

‘Janet said that Felicity is Joy’s alibi for both Roddy and Clive’s deaths, they’re planning the Christmas recital. So, if we think Roddy and Clive were killed by the same person, it rules them both out.’

‘Or they both did it. Hey, maybe the whole group did it.’

‘Joy did say she had expected there’d be no men there. It’s the men that were there who are now dead.’ Stella was looking at a photograph of the Sabrina cinema on her phone. The flat-fronted thirties building where Gladys Wren, then Miss Fleming, had seen Girl in the Headlines. Going by cars parked outside – a VW Beetle and a Ford, the picture dated from the sixties. ‘Hang on, the Sabrina closed in 1963. The last showing was Terence Stamp in Billy Budd in September that year. Mrs Wren can’t have seen Girl in the Headlines there in November.’

‘Nice work, Sherlock.’ Lucie patted the monk’s forehead.

‘I suppose she might have got the venue wrong.’ Stella was startled by her phone buzzing and flashing in her hand. ‘It’s Felicity.’

‘Bet Joy by Nature got on the blower as soon as we left. Felicity