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

lame excuse would do. ‘Cliff was telling me about Maple. Your great-aunt.’

‘Never met her.’ Cliff tossed the empty bottle in the bin.

‘I wondered if I could drive it away today.’ Bev appeared behind Cleo.

‘I’d love you to, but it must go through our workshop before we roll it out. Come back in two days, make it three.’ Cleo gave a tight smile.

‘We can have it ready for you tonight.’ Cliff Greenhill found his inner salesman.

‘Dad.’ Cleo eyed her father.

‘Get the lad on it, he’s only twiddling his thumbs.’ Cliff waved a hand.

‘We’ll see what we can do.’ Cleo’s pantomime that Maple Motors had more much business than they could process was painful to watch.

Back in the showroom, Beverly ignored Jack’s prods and hisses that her charade should stop. He couldn’t bear Cleo to believe she’d got a win.

‘I’ll have the Countryman ready tonight,’ Cleo told Bev.

‘We haven’t quite made up our mi—’ Jack started.

‘That’s the best news, thank you.’ Beverly looked so pleased she almost convinced Jack.

‘If you’re sure.’ Cleo handed Beverly a pack and it dawned on Jack that Cleo had made her first December sale.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Beverly asked.

‘That’s not why you’re here.’ Hands on her hips, Cleo confronted Jack. ‘Mr Man here was asking about Maple, my great-aunt. What are you, journalists?’

‘We’re trying to find out who killed Maple.’ Jack sat down at Cleo’s sales desk. It was do or die. He launched into the whole story. How they had come to connect Maple’s murder with the murder of Sir Aleck Northcote in 1963 and with two murders in the last week in Tewkesbury.

‘The podcast man.’ Cleo got them drinks. ‘That’s why he looked familiar. He was here pretending to buy a car a few weeks back. He asked for Dad, which was a mistake because Dad sent him packing as soon as he mentioned Maple. I only saw him as he was leaving.’

‘March believed he knew the real killer of Aleck Northcote. He probably wanted to know if Cliff’s father and grandparents had ever harboured suspicions about who killed her,’ Beverly said.

‘As you saw, Dad won’t talk about Maple, he blames her for him being a car salesman and he hasn’t forgiven Maple’s son William, my dad’s cousin, for escaping. My grandfather Vernon put pressure on Dad to keep the showroom going.’ Cleo let out a sigh. ‘Like Maple would care.’

‘You seem to care,’ Jack said.

‘I do. Selling cars is the dream job. If only my dad would let me run the show, I’d turn it right around. But he promised his father to stick it and, even though it’s killing him, he will. Thanks, mate.’ Crossing the showroom Cleo took a bundle of junk mail and brown envelopes from the postman.

‘Do you know where Maple’s son is now?’

‘No. Someone told me he’s a doctor. I should be more interested, but if William doesn’t want to know us, fine.’ Cleo buffed the bonnet of a bright red BMW on her way back to the desk. ‘Apparently Grandad never got over Maple’s murder. When Vernon’s boss left him this place, instead of thinking it amazing, Vernon felt guilty because Maple never got a life. Everything he did was to make it up to her. It drove his wife and my dad crazy.’

‘Why did William disown you all?’ Beverly looked outraged.

‘Vernon only told him he was Maple’s son after Maple’s parents died. William was angry that they’d all lied to him. He wouldn’t touch a penny of his inheritance.’

‘It’s nice of you to be so frank with us,’ Beverly said. ‘I promise you won’t regret it. We want justice for Maple.’

‘What I will regret is you buying a car to get a foot in the door.’ Cleo looked stern. ‘There’s a cooling-off period, as long as you don’t drive it to Scotland and back.’

‘I won’t cool off,’ Beverly said. ‘What did Cliff want to do, you know, instead of selling cars?’

‘Be an archaeologist. Too late now, he can’t even manage a gardening trowel.’ Cleo suddenly looked sad. ‘Listen, guys, Dad won’t care if you discover who murdered Maple, but I will. Her murder destroyed our family.’

‘Murder does that,’ Jack said.

*

‘Next time you and me go undercover, maybe don’t follow through?’ Jack said as they drove off in his own crock of a car.

‘I wanted to spend the money Nan left me on something special,’ Beverly said. ‘You can’t say it wasn’t worth it. Now you have a fancy motor in which to go and see Stella. Besides, as soon as I mentioned Maple, it was like a starting gun, Cleo was off.’

‘We’re not going to Tewkesbury to see Stella,’ Jack lied.

Chapter Thirty-Six

2019

Stella

At around the time Jack and Beverly were in Maple’s Motors in London, Stella and Lucie, unaware Jackie was sending reinforcements, were tucking into cream teas in the Abbey Gardens tearoom. Stella had taken one bite of a scone piled with cream and jam, when she spotted Andrea the gardener wheeling her bike down the yew path.

In a madcap dash, Stella and Lucie caught up with Andrea and, keeping a discreet distance, trailed her as she cut down the alleyways that criss-crossed Tewkesbury.

The route was circuitous and Stella began to suspect Andrea was onto them and was taking them on a wild goose chase. But finally, they emerged onto the high street near the New Leaf, the bookshop where Stella had met Janet and she’d been accosted by Clive.

Andrea had stopped and was chaining her bike to a lamp-post. With no shops on this stretch there were few pedestrians so Stella and Lucie feigned interest in the menu outside the Tudor House Hotel. Risking a peep, Stella saw Andrea letting herself into Gladys Wren’s boarding house.

‘We didn’t need to follow her, we knew she was Gladys’s lodger,’ Stella said.

‘Never mind. If we’d come straight here, it wouldn’t have been half as much fun,’ Lucie said.

*

Stella had never doorstepped anyone. Squeamish, she hung back as Lucie knocked and stood ready to jam