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

and is strangled from behind. In the struggle the ticket falls out of wife’s handbag. That didn’t work, Cotton interrupted himself. Ticket in pocket. Husband has no idea when he picks up the coat and, on a whim, thinking Maple would look fine in it, gives it to her. Maple finds ticket, so knows coat belonged to her lover’s wife. He’s married. Knowing she will die, Maple tucks ticket in coat cuff to tell police that her killer is the wife. Wife sees Maple is wearing her coat, goes mad, kills her.

‘Who might you be, madam?’ Cotton stepped forward.

‘Inspector, this is my best customer.’ Bright came around the counter, talking as if they were meeting at a tea party. ‘This is Mrs Northcote.’

Cotton heard the woman’s name and his theory fell apart.

*

‘I’m too old for pantomimes.’ June was sulking over her mushroom soup. ‘Gerry took me to the new Humphrey Bogart at the Warner cinema, a proper grown-up picture .’

‘For goodness’ sake, June, proper grown-ups can be kiddies sometimes. Try not to be ungrateful, Poppet, these days, we’re none of us too old for a good laugh.’ Agnes laid her hand over Cotton’s on what she’d declared was a lovely white tablecloth. ‘I’m in heaven, Georgie.’

George’s Christmas treat – Blitzmas the papers were calling it – the matinee of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp at the Coliseum followed by a slap-up meal in Lyons’ on Oxford Street – the Mountview Café, no less – hadn’t impressed June. His girl was growing up. Did his little girl have secrets like Maple Greenhill? Not likely, and the diamond ring on her finger wasn’t a Woolworth’s bargain.

All afternoon, diverted by the pantomime, falling about at jokes about air-raid sirens and tripping over the bed in blackout, Cotton had been briefly transported from Maple’s murder. It was back with a vengeance and, appetite gone, Cotton forced his soup down.

‘Penny for ’em, love?’ Agnes was tipping her soup plate away to get the last drop. The soup tasted bland and watery – her calling it heaven put a gloss on it, she could make better at home. ‘It’s that poor Maple, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry.’ He shouldn’t mention work when they were having a night on the town.

They’d been married a month when Agnes had persuaded him to tell her about his day. He’d wanted to keep from her the man’s rotting body strung from his bedroom door in an Earl’s Court mansion block; the two kiddies gassed by their father because his wife was leaving him. Cotton didn’t want Agnes to have in her mind the pictures which haunted his.

‘If I’m going to be a proper wife, I must share everything,’ she’d insisted.

In twenty-two years of marriage, Agnes had listened to stories of murder, suicide, traffic collisions, violent burglaries. She’d walked with him into his seamy underworld. Agnes truly was his better half.

So, when Cotton told Agnes about Maple Greenhill, he’d left nothing out. How Maple had lain twisted on a rug, her arm flung wide as if, even as her soul left her, she was pointing to her murderer. He had told Agnes about the mending ticket, the coat, the lighter. He stopped as something else occurred

‘He had scratches on his arms, from gardening, he said.’ Cotton wiped his hands down his face, ‘Aleck’s never been a gardener, he always says it’s Julia with the green fingers.’

‘Shocking. Poor lamb, she must have fought for her life. Now it’s her mum and dad I feel for. Those pictures in the Express showed her as a nice-looking girl. If I lost June that would be me done with. I’d tell the Nazis, do what you like you can’t hurt me.’ Agnes brushed the back of her hand on June’s cheek.

‘I can look after myself and it won’t be me being strangled, I’m not a prostitute.’ June recoiled from Agnes’s hand.

It seemed to Cotton the room fell silent at the word. But with the quartet – playing some Fats Waller tune – and the murmur of other diners, no one had heard. He expected, too, that the pillars encircled with lily-shaped lamps and circular lights in the high ceiling acted as baffles.

‘Maple wasn’t a prostitute.’ He was patient. ‘She was engaged to her sweetheart like you are.’

‘Not like me at all.’ June clattered down her spoon. ‘If Gerry took me to a dance hall, he’d walk me to my door.’

They looked at their laps while the Nippy took their plates away and brought the main course: Empire beef, potatoes and carrots. Then Christmas pudding with carrots substituting fruit. Agnes said, ‘Everything tastes better when someone else has cooked it.’

Cotton could only think that one thing worse than failing to solve a murder was when you had solved it and the solution was worse than not knowing.

‘We should go. I don’t want to be caught in the St Martin’s Lane shelter, it smells.’ June broke into his thoughts. Cotton waved for the bill.

‘You always say the solution to the murder is there if you do the legwork.’ Agnes might have second sight.

‘If I forget, you remind me.’ Cotton smiled at his wife. Never in his life had it occurred to him to have an affair. Agnes was everything.

‘Dad.’ Out in the cold street, taking his arm, June gave him a sheepish smile. ‘Gerry never takes me to places like this, he says now we’re engaged we’ve got to save.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening.’

‘Gerry’s a sensible chap. ’Sides, if it’s not down to your old dad to treat his two best girls once in a while, what’s he for?’

‘That’s better.’ Agnes did up her coat. Cotton saw the tear in her sleeve from a nail. Since she’d joined the AFS, Agnes neglected herself. There was that astrakhan coat in Bright’s window. Hang the expense. It must be hers.

Waiting on the Underground platform, already packed with shelterers, Cotton kept his family close. Some of the public were no better than the Nazis.

On the