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

*

It turned out Felicity did not want to feature in Lucie’s story. She wanted Stella to clean for her. Semaphoring wildly, her ear to Stella’s phone, Lucie made Stella agree to see Felicity immediately.

They parted at the end of the yew path, Lucie to the shop for nippet supplies, Stella for Cloisters House.

‘Thank you for coming so soon, you must be very busy.’ Felicity flung wide the great front door.

‘No problem.’ Stella didn’t say that since finding the bodies of Roddy and Clive she had no work at all or Felicity might sniff desperation in her speediness.

‘Would you like a drink? I’m having one.’ Felicity led her into a large sitting room, a parquet floor gleaming in the light of a roaring fire. The floor didn’t need polishing.

Stella wanted to scope the job, but Lucie had instructed she milk Felicity for clues. ‘A pathologist living in a murdered pathologist’s house who hosts a death café. The profile of a serial killer.’ So, she said, ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

This turned out to be whisky, which Stella disliked, but was too polite to admit. Sitting where Felicity indicated, on a leather chesterfield, she furtively took in the room. Walnut radiogram, open bureau on which were papers and a laptop. A bookcase of leather-bound books, more books in glass-covered cases along one wall. Stella stared at an oil painting above the fireplace – the man’s face was familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

‘Aleck Northcote.’ Felicity handed her the whisky. ‘The pathologist.’

‘The man who lived here?’ And was murdered in this very room. Stella gulped the whisky, grateful for the burning sensation that travelled down her gut. ‘Did you know him?’

‘As I said at the Death Café, sadly no.’ Felicity looked mournful. ‘Every pathologist worth his salt dreams of knowing Sir Aleck. Thanks to him forensic detection is now a credible weapon against evil. He is our father.’

‘Did you buy the picture?’

‘I stole it.’ Felicity was stony-faced. Then she threw her head back and uttered a braying laugh. ‘Of course I bought it. I bought all this, lock, stock and test tube. I live in his world – my ex-colleagues can laugh all they like. Jealousy, what would they give to live here? There’s pressure on me to open it as a museum for the discerning; only over my dead body, I say.’

‘Northcote died in 1963, surely you weren’t a pathologist then?’

‘I was in my first year at King’s. A mere kitten on the slopes of the dead.’ Felicity poured herself another drink with, Stella noticed, a shaky hand. ‘Every day I walk in Sir Aleck’s shoes imbibing the atmosphere in which the great man lived.’

‘And where he died.’ The whisky had loosened Stella’s tongue.

‘Sir Aleck didn’t die, he was murdered,’ Felicity snapped. ‘There on the hearth. Not with that poker, the police took the original. It’s in their Black Museum. A shame – removing an object from a context is like robbing Samson of his hair. It loses its power.’

‘I see.’ Stella believed that the less power a poker had to bludgeon someone over the head the better. ‘Do you believe that Northcote’s son killed him?’

‘Don’t be taken in by that silly podcast man,’ Felicity admonished. ‘I’ve had the police grilling me to a turn. Of course Giles did it, the little blighter.’ Felicity’s speech was slurred, but her eyes were sharp.

‘I wondered if you’d considered that Roddy might have a point.’ Stella attempted a couldn’t-care-less expression.

‘I am interested in his life, not his death. March was out to be famous, sometimes there is smoke without fire. I offered to do March’s autopsy – it’s rare we get to look inside those we’ve met in life.’

‘Had I better see the house?’ Stella nearly said before the light fails, but at nearly eight on a rainy December night that was plainly absurd.

Upstairs, Stella leaned on the window sill of the professor’s bedroom, unused, because Felicity said it would be like having sex with him to sleep in his bed. Stella thought this was going a bit far. For herself, Stella didn’t think that, in the heavily draped four-poster, surrounded by dark oak furniture, she’d get a good night’s sleep.

‘This was Aleck’s home and now it’s mine. You know his wife killed herself?’ Gone was the dreamy voice of the Death Café, Felicity sounded furious as if Julia Northcote had let the side down. ‘He was the one to find her, naturally she knew that. So cruel.’ She stood in the passage that ran the length of the house. ‘I’m sorry but there’s three lavatories to clean.’

Three toilets, two bathrooms, one an en suite, all this cheered Stella. She knew the answer to her next question, but wanted Felicity’s version. ‘Did Northcote live here alone?’

‘Yes.’ Felicity opened another door. ‘Guest bedroom and another one over here.’ She opened two more doors. Considering how to handle an answer which flew in the face of truth, Stella noted single beds, each with silk eiderdowns. Oil paintings of rural scenes hung on the walls.

‘This was the housekeeper’s room and one day will be for the carer.’ Felicity opened a door at the end of the passage. ‘I plan to die in this house.’

‘He didn’t live alone.’ Surprised that Felicity could be so open about her last years, Stella hadn’t meant to point out Felicity had contradicted herself about Northcote living alone. Or maybe she didn’t think servants counted.

‘I heard Northcote’s housekeeper was involved with him. Did you hear that?’ Stella felt a heel.

‘She was not.’ Felicity’s shout made Stella’s eardrums pop. ‘A disgusting rumour, and out-and-out libel were Aleck alive. Who told you that?’

‘I may have got it wrong.’ Stella leaned on the slab.

‘Was it that man, Roddy March?’

‘It may have been.’ Stella felt bad for dobbing in the deceased. Even if she had been willing to reveal her source, Joy the organist was a child at the time and more than likely she’d misconstrued whatever she saw.

‘I’ll