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

weir, water crashing through the sluices into the Severn. And above the tumult, Roddy’s dying whisper, ‘…Cah… ca… wo… my…’

Car Wo My. Car Wo My.

Roddy March’s dying words had become a mantra. But no amount of repeating what amounted to a series of sounds, Stella could make no more sense of what Roddy had been trying to tell her.

Chapter Twenty-One

December 1940

‘After Ernest, my sister and her husband are chivvying me to put a toe in the water. They took me to the Palais, to get acclimatized, nothing more. Sue went to powder her nose, David was getting drinks, that’s when I saw them. Clark Gable doesn’t say it. He reminded me of Ernest; the way he danced he must have had proper lessons. She was unremarkable, but love transforms a face. Daft, but watching them I felt the chance of romance hadn’t after all died.’

Cotton circled Clark Gable in his notebook. He knew Una Hughes had meant the man with Maple really did look like Gable. Her own features would once have been attractive if not dulled by bags under her eyes. She had told him she was the walking wounded from grief and, with warnings coming thick and fast night and day, got no sleep. Recently he’d noticed Agnes looked worn out. She spent most nights on the substation telephone and, if they asked, making tea for the regulars. The Auxiliaries had to make their own.

‘What time did they leave?’ he asked.

‘Let’s see, well, Moaning Minnie went off at ten thirty. We decided to stick it out, it’s exhausting reacting to every warning and half the time nothing happens. When I looked again, I couldn’t see them. I could have cried. Sue, my sister, said stuff and nonsense, they weren’t Romeo and Juliet, makes no difference to you. But you see, it did. It spelled The End.’ Una Hughes patted her rolled fringe. Cotton felt saddened; widowed at twenty-five like so many other girls, Una Hughes was too young to be deciding her life was over.

‘When Maple – a pretty name – popped up on the screen before the newsreel, I nearly fainted. Poor girl. There’s people dying every day, but Maple Greenhill and her chap were meant to be spared. A girl like her being dead, it’s like Adolf has won.’ Cotton, somewhat of a romantic, was inclined to agree.

Mrs Davis had come to the station asking for Divisional Detective Inspector George Cotton. She’d started talking before he’d even got her sitting down with a cuppa. ‘Her face popped up on the screen at the Carlton up town. I’d gone with my mother to the new Errol Flynn… really, Inspector Cotton, it can’t have been Maple’s chap who did it, he looked so respectable. Debonair, actually bit like Errol Flynn now I mention it.’

‘Would you recognize this man if you saw him again?’ Cotton said.

‘Oh yes. I can see him now clear as day.’

*

Sitting in the library of Northcote’s palatial home in Ravenscourt Square that evening so, Cotton observed, could he. Clear as day.

‘I need this.’ Aleck Northcote was pouring himself another whisky from the crystal decanter on a drinks trolley. Snapping his teeth on the stem of his pipe, he relaxed back in his armchair. ‘Hell of a day, George. Six warnings, one being the bomb that hit the docks and burst a watermain. It closed off the Whitechapel Road and delayed me on my way to the mortuary. I tell you, the Führer had me in his sights. I’m a liability – where I go the Hun follow. To top it, Jumble’s fractured her damn leg at the Hippodrome, doing high jinks with some fancy man. Thank God today is over.’

‘Poor Miss Porter.’ Cotton was surprised to hear Northcote’s secretary – Jumble was Northcote’s pet name for her – got up to ‘high jinks’. He’d refused a whisky, although he too could do with it – he was still on duty.

‘Poor me,’ Northcote wailed. ‘I can’t begin to say, I am at sixes and sevens without her, my fool of a lab assistant is useless.’ He tamped down his pipe and lit it. Puffing, he asked, ‘Any luck with that prostitute? I gather old Bob wants it bagged. Good as said you were wasting too much time on it.’

‘Hackett said that?’ Cotton hadn’t known the two men were on first-name terms.

‘I asked him, mainly to stop him asking me about his damn haemorrhoids. I advised, keep taking the ointment and lay off the sauce – that depressed him.’ Northcote held his pipe aloft.

Cotton was startled when the door opened. To his dismay Julia Northcote walked in. Seeing Cotton, she gave a start. When he’d called to arrange to see him, Aleck had said his wife would be at some dull old lecture on nutrition for the poor, so Cotton had expected to find the coast clear. He stood up.

‘Good evening, Inspector.’ Her gaze slid off him.

‘You know each other?’ Northcote gestured to the drinks trolley. ‘One of your gins, dear? You fought free and escaped the spinsters then?’

‘I met the inspector at the police shindig you dragged me to.’ Why had she lied? ‘I didn’t escape, they’re good women, it ended early to beat the Nazis. Nothing for me, I feel thoroughly second-rate. I’m off to bed. I’ll leave you to… your business.’ This time, Julia Northcote looked at Cotton properly.

‘George and I are chewing the cud of crime and punishment.’ Northcote was cheery.

‘Inspector, I wish you every success with your investigation.’ Her hand on the door, Julia Northcote was still looking at Cotton and, although it felt rude, he made himself hold her steady gaze. ‘I’m confident you will find the monster who soiled that girl then snuffed her out.’

‘I hope to, Mrs Northcote.’ Julia Northcote knew.

‘George puts Sherlock Holmes to shame, dear, but on this I can’t share your confidence. George and I know that in sordid cases like this, the only hope is when, or if, the chap kills