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

to be an idiot. You and Roddy are peas in a pod.’ Although already stifling, Andrea turned up the heater. ‘You want to abort this mission, then tell Dad you and your cleaner girlfriend are poking into his mum’s murder. If you’ve got any sense at all, you will trust me.’

‘It’s wrong to lie.’

‘Says the liar,’ Andrea said. ‘Roderick March was one dipshit, but my fate is to fancy dipshits. Nice blokes like you don’t do it. Dad’ll probably see through it, but at least give it a try?’

‘No.’

After that they drove in silence.

*

‘Dad, this is Jack.’

‘You’re my daughter’s latest man off the internet.’ Greenhill was so bowed by osteoporosis that to scrutinize Jack he had to twist his head to the side.

‘I met Andrea in the abbey grounds.’ Jack tried to placate Andrea. ‘She’s jolly nice, Dr Greenhill.’ He wasn’t supposed to know this was William Greenhill.

‘Westminster Abbey?’ Greenhill loomed into Jack’s chest. It felt sobering; he’d once have been as tall as Jack.

‘Tewkesbury.’ Jack felt Andrea’s eyes lasering into his back. Turning he mouthed Sorry, but Andrea was as grim as the reaper.

‘What the hell were you doing there?’ Greenhill looked past Jack to his daughter. Jack had just aborted the mission.

To the man whom Divisional Detective Cotton had divulged that his mother had been murdered by Sir Aleck Northcote, Tewkesbury would clang a loud bell. ‘That was in confidence. This man isn’t in love with you. Even I, a dull-witted doctor, can see that. He’s a reporter.’

‘He’s not, Dad. However, he does care about Maple. He’s working for your family, the Greenhills.’ Andrea was talking fast to keep her father there.

Seeing Greenhill’s face Jack knew it wouldn’t work so, risking his lovely leather lace-ups, he inserted his foot in the doorway.

‘Your cousin Cliff, he’s Vernon’s son, and Cliff’s daughter Cleo want to know who murdered Maple. They need closure.’ Jack wasn’t sure that, through a fug of alcohol, Cliff Greenhill cared, but to Cleo who, Bev had told him had given her a silly deal on the Mini, it mattered very much.

‘Closure? That’s crap.’ Greenhill tried to shut the door.

‘Ouch,’ Jack said.

‘Cliff wasn’t alive when my mother was strangled. It was me wearing a jumper that she’d taken so long to knit for me, it was tight.’

‘Dad. Please. Let us in.’ Gone was the Heathcliff demeanour, Andrea was pleading.

‘Just you. He can sling his hook.’

‘Know what, Dad? This is also about me.’ Andrea’s moment of pleading switched off like a light bulb. ‘I traipsed after Roddy to Tewkesbury because I want the truth. You lied to me the way they lied to you. Although not for a good reason. You throwing him out sent Roddy March after a woman he thought would win you round. A poxy Mrs Mop. He dumped me.’

‘He would have dumped Ste—’

‘Enough. Roddy fancied Stella, she wouldn’t have refused him.’ Andrea was fizzing. ‘Dad, Maple might have been your mum, but she was my grandmother. I never met her, she never got to know me, but she’s family and I will avenge her.’

‘Don’t do anything rash…’ Jack mimed sorry again.

‘We all owe it to Maple to know about her last moments. To live those last moments with her. Then Maple can be at peace.’

‘Jolly good.’ Jack was impressed.

‘Please be quiet,’ Andrea fumed. ‘And before you say it, the victim thing was my idea, not Roddy’s.’

‘Northcote was never charged with murder. Cotton was a bitter man spreading false rumours.’ Greenhill shambled into the house.

Andrea followed him in. When Jack hesitated, she hissed, ‘Are you coming or not?’

‘George Cotton told you it was Northcote, but the man couldn’t be charged, he was needed for the war effort,’ Andrea said to her father.

‘Ex-coppers get obsessed with failed cases. I saw that. The war stopped Cotton retiring, then it killed his wife. He was a broken man. All he had left was that case. He actually told me that. Northcote’s career soared while Cotton’s had gone south.’ Stiffly putting out a steadying hand on a stack of Lancet journals, Greenhill lowered himself into a more recent vintage of Lucie’s cockpit. At his feet lay scattered pages of the Telegraph as if, after reading, Greenhill dropped each one.

‘You told me Cotton said Julia Northcote had promised him she would tell the world. Northcote murdered her before she could put anything down.’

‘If there was anything to tell, she took her secret to her grave,’ Greenhill said.

‘Why are you doing this, Dad? Don’t you want to help your mother?’ Andrea paced the room. Jack felt for her: for whatever reason, Greenhill had changed his original account.

‘I bought Northcote’s house.’ Andrea was speaking quietly, Greenhill’s state-of-the-art hearing aids must have ensured he heard every word because he was as white as a sheet. ‘I was scanning the house when Roddy found the box under a floorboard. Julia Northcote had kept her promise to George Cotton after all.’

‘So that’s how it happened,’ Jack said.

‘I was a fool,’ Andrea flashed at him. ‘On his first date, Roddy turned up. I had to pay for the meal in the expensive restaurant he’d said was dreamy. Take note of how a relationship starts, Jack, it’s a good hint for how it will go on.’

‘Men are liars and toads,’ Greenhill spluttered. Jack caught the west London accent beneath his finely tuned doctor’s voice.

‘We know Northcote murdered his wife,’ Jack said.

‘She killed herself, I’ve seen the path report.’ Greenhill shook his head vigorously. ‘His wife was ill.’

‘Old boys’ network – the pathologist had his own career to think about. He flipped forced hanging to suicide. Julia Northcote left a letter and newspaper cuttings in a Lyons’ Swiss Roll box in the dressing room. It states categorically that Northcote confessed to strangling Maple and that, if anything happened to her, whoever read the letter was to tell Clement Attlee who Julia Northcote seems to have admired. Roddy said the letter would make our fortune.’ Andrea gulped for air. ‘Julia probably planned her letter as insurance against her