The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (most difficult books to read .txt) 📗

‘The chap was terribly conceited, but he took me under his wing. I suspect I was the son Giles was not. My father couldn’t get on with him so he was happy to let me loose on the man’s clock. Think he wanted me to botch it, one in the eye for me and Northcote. I was the fourth Burgess at Burgess and Son, and, like his father before him, my old man was jealous of my skills. You never forget your first piece, an elegant Charles MacDowell clock, simple design with oblique toothed gearing. Exquisite.’

‘What has this to do with death?’ Andrea asked.

‘It did end badly because when Northcote’s boy did for him, Northcote hadn’t paid. He’d promised to give me double. I’d forgotten to get him to sign a receipt, we had no proof of the work. Got it in the neck for that, I can tell you. When I heard the news, I wanted to motor to Wormwood Scrubs for How to Kill Your Father tips from Giles.’ Clive scratched at a blob of food on his tie. ‘You’d be on the right track. Many in Tewkesbury had reason to bash Professor Northcote’s head in. The blighter supposed that, being knight of the realm, he needn’t pay for The Times, his pipe tobacco or bar tabs run up when he was ingratiating himself with the masses so they’d make him mayor.’ Clive was revving up. Northcote’s murder might have been days ago. Clive had said time was a construct; maybe, for him, the murder was yesterday.

‘I’m afraid that there was no doubt the son did it,’ Felicity said. ‘They found Aleck’s cup – for the four-minute mile, two seconds slower than Roger Bannister – in Giles’s flat. He was going to sell it.’

‘I thought you didn’t know him?’ Andrea said.

‘No more I did, but we path. students venerated Professor Northcote. He was Aleck the Great.’ She looked nostalgic.

‘Here’s what really happened.’ Roddy March held up his pen. ‘After Giles left that night, Aleck received another visitor.’

‘Who?’ Perhaps Felicity had forgotten it was meant to be a Death Café.

‘He’s not going to tell us.’ Joy was at the servery counter. Roddy March jumped up and took one of the mugs she’d left there. The scented steam coiling into the cooling air, Stella knew was chamomile. She hadn’t heard March ask for the tea, but befuddled by the occasion, could easily have missed it. ‘He’s here to plug his pod-thingy, aren’t you, Mr March.’ The teabag dripped over the plate. Watching it slowly revolve, Stella pictured a body dangling from gallows. ‘I’ve heard of these podcasts; mostly you never find out who did what, they merely sensationalize the crime.’

‘The murderer still lives amongst us.’ Roddy March’s tone would have gone well in a séance. Although the fire was still burning in the grate, the atmosphere was distinctly chill. Stella regretted that she had come.

‘For the guilty, time knows no statute of limitation, the clock of crime is always ticking,’ Clive said.

‘True-crime podcasts are done to whip up drama. You should consider the families of the victims.’ Stella cast about for how to get the discussion back to cremation and burial. Except Jack would say that was her rescuing.

Joy did it for her. Complaining it wasn’t Agatha Christie, she rapped the table with her cake fork. ‘I came here to talk about death, not murder.’

‘Murder is death,’ Clive said.

‘Mr March isn’t dead yet,’ Joy said. ‘None of us is.’

‘The mystery will be solved,’ Roddy cried. ‘In the last episode I do the big reveal. You learn the identity of Northcote’s true killer. You’ll hear the why, the when and how the true murderer escaped justice for decades. This is a case of cause and effect. Northcote’s murder is an echo from a long-forgotten murder that took place in London during the war. As you’ll discover, time ain’t always a healer.’

‘Time is never a healer. It simply passes.’ Clive winked at Joy. ‘I do not mean it dies.’

‘You will be hooked.’ Roddy dropped his voice. Stella was startled to see he was talking to her.

‘Mr March.’ Felicity jumped up. ‘Enough. You weren’t here yesterday when I outlined Death Café ground rules. You are promoting your business. If you have nothing about death to share with us, you must leave.’

‘Roddy’s not an undertaker or a coffin-maker.’ Gladys seemed to have taken a shine to March. ‘Although, I wouldn’t make a song and dance about doing either of those.’

‘You’ll need both one day,’ Joy said.

‘I do have something to share,’ Roddy told Felicity.

‘Seriously, can we move on?’ Andrea said. ‘We’re wasting time.’

‘There’s always time,’ Clive said.

‘Someone wants to kill me,’ Roddy said.

Chapter Eight

Thursday, 12 December 1940

Divisional Detective Inspector George Cotton had the stomach for an autopsy. Thirty years in the Metropolitan police had hardened him to the reek of bodies and disinfectant. With the morgue attendants banging in and out of the swing doors to the yard, he covered his nose and mouth with his scarf, not for the smell but to ward off the arctic cold.

How he longed for a different reality. Him in his office, chair up to the radiator, and Maple typing away at Express Dairies on King Street. At five, she would begin her journey home to Corney Road, back to her family.

Instead, Maple lay on Northcote’s porcelain slab, her head cushioned on a block. Hammersmith’s cheery mortuary attendant Ed White – Weissman until the war – stripped her, calling out each item for PC Shepherd to record in his notebook and dropping it in a brown paper bag. Camisole. Boned brassiere, silk stockings, right leg torn at calf…

Cotton’s thoughts were halted by the crack of the ribcage as Dr Northcote made the first incision. Cotton clenched his jaw as he observed the stony-faced pathologist working with nimble craftsman’s fingers.

Months of the Blitz had exposed Cotton to twisted, mangled corpses, burnt in the fires of incendiary bombs, crushed by masonry, shredded by shrapnel. Nothing had inured