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

and found one addressed to Stella.’ Beverly glanced at Jack who was frowning. ‘Don’t look like that, Stella diverted her work inbox to me, not that I found it there. It was sent two weeks ago – I missed it.’

‘You can’t cover everything.’ Jack’s frown wasn’t judgement on Stella’s right to privacy – he knew about that – he was sad Stella wasn’t there to check her own email.

‘I can actually,’ Beverly said. ‘It was from Roderick March. The podcaster who was murdered?’

‘If it was in the junk folder, that means Stella never got it,’ Jack said.

‘I’ve got it here.’ Beverly went to her rucksack – a replica of Stella’s – and fished out her pretend police notebook. Inside was a folded paper. ‘Listen.’

‘“Hi there Stella,

Good to link up. As you know, I’m an investigative podcaster. Like the Innocence Project in the States, but better. I seek justice, not for the living, but for the dead, for those who have been silenced.”’

‘OMFG,’ Graham groaned. Jackie sssh’d him.

‘Stella said she didn’t know March.’ Jack felt himself grow hot.

‘Which means she didn’t know him.’ Jackie told him. ‘March, on the other hand, assumes Stella has heard of him and will want to “link up”. Hubris, pure and simple.’

‘It gets creepier,’ Beverly rattled the paper. ‘“You’ve snared a few solves. So, here’s one to assist me with. I belled your office and a starchy lady said you’re on sabbatical. Awesome. Madam wouldn’t spill details, but we investigators can walk through walls. I found your personal email, no sweat.

‘“My podcast airs soon and it would be cool to have you on board. I’m in Tewkesbury, ground zero. Can you be here pronto? Should have nabbed you sooner, my bad. Roddy.”’

Reading over Beverly’s shoulder, Cheryl scoffed, ‘“Award-winning journalist and crime consultant. How cold is your murder? Call me.”’

‘Not to be rude about the dead, but what a clown.’ Bev flopped back down at the table.

‘March must have gone to that Death Café to meet Stella,’ Jack said.

‘Has anyone heard his podcast?’ Graham began clearing the plates.

‘Yes,’ Jack and Beverly both said. Between them they outlined the 1963 murder mystery.

‘Sounds like the bloke was fanning the embers of a failed career, all smoke no fire.’ Graham loaded the dishwasher.

‘Lucie thought that,’ Jack said.

‘If, as March claimed, he found this Professor Northcote’s true killer, it’s obvious who murdered him.’ Beverly was making notes, as Stella would if she were there. Capture even the most irrelevant, it may be key.

A police siren blared. Jack took his phone from his back pocket, ‘It’s Lucie. Please keep quiet, she mustn’t know you’re here.’

‘We live here.’ Graham tossed a tablet of dishwasher soap from hand to hand like a juggler.

‘Gray.’ Jackie pulled a face at him.

‘No need, it’s a voicemail.’

‘What did she say?’ Beverly looked ready to write down whatever was said. As Stella would.

‘A couple of things. As you know, Janet is secretly keeping Stella updated on the case. Lucie says Janet’s homesick and Stella equals Terry.’

‘Stella equals home.’ Beverly’s comment silenced them.

Finally, Jack went on, ‘Janet met Stella in a bookshop this afternoon then rang her later to say there’s a statue of the Virgin Mary and a candlestick missing from a tomb in Tewkesbury Abbey. Apparently, they were there last Sunday and were probably stolen around when March was killed. Janet is thinking it’s aggravated robbery or whatever and not to do with March and his podcast.’

‘Is that what Lucie and Stella think?’ Jackie asked.

‘No idea about Stella, but Lucie said it’s Janet Piper seeing no further than her nose. Lucie said one of the Death Café people, a clockmaker, has invited them to his house tonight, she’s leaving now.’

‘According to my research,’ Beverly was consulting her notes, ‘Northcote’s forensic evidence put away tons of villains over forty years from before the Second World War. If March’s murder is connected to the murder of the professor, that’s a lot of suspects.’

‘I think that’s where the answer lies.’ Jack told them about his day at the archives, Julia Northcote’s suicide, that the house where she hanged herself was up for sale and about the man he’d spotted on the Virtual Tour. ‘I’m wondering if the two murders we know about are links in a longer chain of killings. Three at least.’

‘What’s your evidence?’ Cheryl asked.

‘I don’t need it, I use intuition.’ Jack pulled himself together; Stella’s leaving was making him a nasty person. ‘Suppose Julia’s relatives blamed Aleck Northcote for her suicide and wreaked revenge? The inquest said she didn’t leave a note, but if she did and it was critical of Northcote, he might have destroyed it.’

‘Twenty-three years later?’ Impatient with intuition, Beverly would be missing Stella’s down-to-earth approach. Stella would understand Jack.

‘Someone murders Northcote because Northcote made his wife unhappy then someone else murders the podcaster for threatening to reveal Northcote’s murderer.’ Cheryl was following him.

‘Stella told me the attendees of the Death Café have alibis,’ Beverly said. ‘March left first. One fishy customer is an organist who went to the abbey straight after and was playing music. But Stella was there too so either Stella murdered him or neither of them did.’

Stella had been talking to Beverly. Jack couldn’t check a flare of jealousy.

‘Look at this.’ Beverly laid an A4 photocopy of the front page of a Gloucestershire Echo on the table.

Cleaner Finds Man Dying in Tomb

‘It says he was dying, not dead. Did he speak to her?’ Cheryl said. ‘If he did, Stella might be in danger.’

Jack felt shame this hadn’t occurred to him. Stella had found the body, she was front page news. Any murderer worth his or her salt would see her as a threat.

‘She told me it’s a matter for the police,’ Jack said. ‘She’s not investigating it.’

‘She was fobbing you off.’ Beverly could be blunt.

‘I think I got that, Bev.’ Nasty person was back. Stella had lied. She and Lucie were deep in the case. Bev, perhaps Jackie and Cheryl too, were a team.

‘There you go, mate.’ Graham put down a