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

for the victim. I had to make notes on what worked, and what was too sentimental or sensational. I had my uses.’

‘A thorough approach.’ Lucie would approve of delegating donkey work.

‘He was thorough.’ Andrea took their half-drunk cups, tossed the remainder down the sink and washed them up. ‘Turned out he was doing digging of his own. He found her. Stellah Dar-nell. He was so excited he got an erec—’

‘Stop.’ Lucie raised her palm.

‘He didn’t find me.’ That was exactly what Roddy had done.

‘Then he learnt that in 1963, some doctor called Sir Aleck Northcote was murdered here in Tewkesbury. His son hanged for it. Roddy got a bee in his bonnet that the son was innocent.’

‘How come he was so sure?’ This earned Stella a venomous look from Andrea and she decided it was wise to leave it all to Lucie.

‘He was sure that someone killed Northcote in revenge for his strangling Maple Greenhill. The podcast was, as he said, now on skis. He stole my project.’ Andrea looked fit to kill. Stella caught her breath. Perhaps she had.

‘Tough titty indeed.’ Lucie turned her mouth down at the corners.

‘He said what the podcast needed for ratings status was this cleaning woman, Darnell.’ She fixed Stella with a cold gleam. ‘He stalked you online. He knew you’d snap him up, said he was younger, brighter and more now and happening than some old hack you worked with. You’d pull in the thinking listeners who hid their true-crime addiction by framing it as a social and cultural experience. When all’s said and done, they’re just like other armchair rubber-neckers, thirsty for a nasty murder as a bedtime story. It was my idea to contextualise the crimes. I was still trying to impress Rod. “Focus on the victim,” I said, “make them live, give them back their dignity.” He loved that, he said, “Victims have traction these days, they’re all the rage.’’’ Andrea jabbed the washing up brush at Stella. ‘You and him planned to elope into murder sunset.’

‘That’s silly.’ Stella laughed accidentally. ‘Of course we didn’t.’

‘I am not old, I am more now and happening than March.’ Balling up her tissue, Lucie had been simmering. ‘And, more to the point, unlike him I have a pulse.’

‘Roddy never asked me.’ Stella had noticed before how the less guilty she was, the more guilty she felt.

‘He rang your cleaners. A woman claiming to be your PA – lah-de-dah – wouldn’t divulge where you were hiding,’ Andrea said. ‘I hoped he’d given up and returned to me.’ She slumped in her chair. ‘Until he found the cleaning rota.’

‘I would never have agreed; I work with the best journalist. We’re a team.’ Stella looked at Lucie. ‘Although I’m a cleaner and him calling me wouldn’t have changed my mind.’ Who had wanted Roddy dead? If Giles Northcote wasn’t his father’s killer, who was? Who impaled Clive on his sundial? Stella needed answers. Roddy’s asking her wouldn’t have changed her mind, but his murder had.

‘I read he died in your arms.’

‘I found him.’ Stella’s nod was non-committal.

‘Andrea, did you kill Roddy March? Hell hath no fury, et cetera.’ Lucie liked to provoke. Tensing, Stella did not.

‘I warned him against using the name Roddy on our podcast.’ Staring off in the distance, Andrea appeared in a fugue state. ‘Listeners will take Roderick more seriously.’

‘I’m thinking Mr March went for cutesy,’ Lucie said. ‘I’ll ask again. Did you murder March?’

‘Since you’re so good at this stuff, you work it out.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

2019

Jackie

IRENE AND HENRY COTTON

BELOVED PARENTS OF GEORGE AND JOSEPH

15 JUNE 1935

JOSEPH COTTON 1909–1940

‘I knew this story, one of the boys did it for a school project – Mark, I think. The shared death date had fascinated him. The Cottons died in a rail-crash near Welwyn Garden City, it’s on the internet now but Mark had to write to British Rail and look up newspapers in Chiswick Library. For years after he’d pick flowers and make us troop over here on the anniversary. Have to admit, Jack, I do see this as a sign.’ Jackie shone her torch on the adjacent grave.

GEORGE COTTON

1894–1979

‘I saw this the other day.’ Unhappiness had made Jack easily annoyed.

‘Shame you didn’t tell me – I’ve spent the afternoon trawling the internet,’ Jackie said.

‘I didn’t know George Cotton was significant. I was just…’ Jack fell silent. They knew he’d have been up to his old habit of stalking graveyards.

Jackie couldn’t argue, it was due to Jack’s habit they were there now. The cemetery was locked after dark but he knew a secret way in behind a beech tree and a break in the railings. Instead of showing them Cotton’s grave on her phone, they stood before the real thing. Jackie continued, ‘George Cotton, as you know, investigated Maple Greenhill’s murder. I’ve been hitting the online sites and on Ancestry found that in 1941 Cotton was an ARP warden which means he must have left the police. Because of the war, there was no census in 1941, and the previous one was destroyed by fire in the forties. I followed a breadcrumb trail of birth and marriage certificates, the Cottons’ daughter’s birth certificate in 1922. I found that Agnes died in 1940, which may have been why he stopped being a police officer. The 1971 census had George Cotton still living in Queen Adelaide Road where his daughter was born.’

‘Why isn’t Agnes here too?’ Jack raked the area with his own torch.

‘For that I went to Find a Grave. Agnes is buried in Liverpool where she was born. She was forty when a bomb hit the fire station where she worked on the phones. Twenty-ninth of December 1940. There’d been a hiatus of raids due to crap weather, it started up again that night. One fatality, many injured. She apparently chatted away to the men digging her out for over an hour. She said, “I’m not hurt much,” and died the moment they got her out.’

‘I can’t bear that.’ Beverly groaned. ‘What a