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

letter. I dismissed all of you and told him to meet me by the cadaver tomb after the rescheduled session the following night. I already had it in my mind to frame Joy – here was the perfect chance. I stabbed him and was out of there before Joy had finished playing.’

‘But he was listening to the music.’ Stella struggled to recall that evening.

‘That was me. For such a ghastly woman, Joy’s music was angelic, couldn’t resist it. And you had arrived so I couldn’t leave.’

‘But his hat was on the chair.’ Stella had an idea. ‘Did you move the plastic barriers?’

‘March left his hat and I had asked him to move the barriers. It would lead the police into thinking that the murderer would have passed Joy.’ Felicity didn’t appear to mind that she was soaked through. ‘All in all, I had March set up his own murder.

‘Clive saw me visit Northcote that night. I gave him some guff about being the pathologist on the scene. He seemed to swallow that, but over the years he began coming out with remarks apropos of nothing. Time was his to bide, he’d say. Truth will stop the pendulum. I tried to stop him coming to the Death Café, but could think of no good reason. When I saw Clive talking to you in the high street, I had to do something and fast. Joy told me Clive had instructed her to go to the police if anything happened to him, but the fool didn’t believe him so came to me instead.’ Felicity shouted over the raging turbulence. ‘You are not distracting me, Stella, I, too, can bide my time. You are a deserving listener for a story which, sadly, isn’t in my autobiography.’ Felicity yelled, ‘March was not supposed to come to the Death Café. That threw me.’

‘Northcote raped you. You know better than me that you’d get manslaughter,’ Stella yelled back.

‘It was my first time, I bled on his carpet. If they’d kept the carpet, they could now test it for DNA. That would be that. But since they had their man, they burnt it. I threatened to tell the police and Aleck laughed. I was dressed in black, my alter ego was Cat Woman. One must stand out from the herd. They’ll think you a common tart. Stella, when the other side doesn’t play fair, it’s idiotic to stick to the rules.’

‘That will be taken into account.’ Stella was clutching at straws, but the rage fuelling her terror was for Felicity. Something pinged in her brain. She jerked her head. Car wo my.

‘Keep still,’ Felicity yelled.

‘Cat woman.’ Stella gripped the railing. In the moonlight, the water might be liquid steel. ‘Roddy tried to tell me. It was you.’

‘Oh dear, Stella. Several steps behind. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,’ Felicity taunted her.

Stella didn’t believe in ghosts. That was Jack. But staring down at the spume, Stella felt the presence of George Cotton. She held his last moments as another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. As Felicity had said, too late.

‘George Cotton worked out that you killed Northcote. He came to see you.’

‘One step at a time, don’t tax your brain.’

‘Why did you kill him? He didn’t like Northcote any more than you did.’

‘Cotton was a police officer at heart. No murderer should get away with it even if the victim was a killer. He and his wife Agnes had never held with capital punishment. He wanted me to give myself up.’

‘You murdered three people to avoid being caught for murdering Northcote.’ Soon it would be four.

‘There you are again, like Joy, moralizing. Northcote knew he could thrust himself into me, button himself up and pour himself a Scotch. I put a stop to him – after me there were no more rapes. I killed the fatted calf. The golden goose. The man whose work had inspired me. I was his successor. Cotton, March, Clive were collateral.’

‘Did he mention Maple?’

‘Here we go. What about me? Maple was a silly cheap missy with aspirations way above her station. She did not come up.’ Felicity’s words were caught up and whipped around like hornets. ‘Maple Greenhill left her son at home during an air raid to cavort with Aleck Northcote. It’s the Maple Greenhills who paved the way for me. How could Northcote respect my sex with girls like her out to bleed him?’

‘He never promised to marry you. He didn’t pretend he liked you. He bought Maple gifts, he dated her.’ Stella was fighting for her own life. ‘If you don’t intend to stab me, stop doing that with knife.’ Never antagonize the enemy if you can’t escape. Stella ignored her father’s advice.

‘Stella Darnell, what a trouper. Perhaps we could have been friends.’ Felicity lowered the knife and rested her palms on the railing. ‘I remember being confounded by the splinters of bone, grey brain matter, blood. I expected Northcote to be greater than human. A god made of gold. Even after he’d raped me, laughed at me, discounted me, Northcote the pathologist was the point of my life. I didn’t understand how he could look like any other corpse.’

Water slapped over the boards. Foam spewing through the teeth of the weir appeared phosphorescent. Stella pictured Jack. Don’t think about Jack. It had been Felicity who mentioned legacy at the Death Café. Stella’s legacy would be the manner of her death. This felt more terrible than death itself.

‘… saw Northcote speak at UCL in my first year, his rich brown voice, his sheer brilliance, my heart soared, as if he spoke only to me.’ Felicity was back with her story with Stella nothing but her captive listener. ‘After he… after… I went upstairs and drew a bath. After that, I made sure to clean where I touched – this was 1963, like I said, no DNA, but there was fingerprinting, blood types, hair samples. I was a brilliant young pathologist, I made no mistakes. Not like Northcote. I agreed