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

husband hurting her. But Northcote was a risk-taker and he killed her anyway. His risk paid off, he got away with it. Until the night of Friday the twenty-second of November 1963.’

‘I’ve seen the letter, sir.’ Jack was scrupulously polite. ‘I’m sure it’s genuine.’

‘You stole it.’ Andrea couldn’t possibly get any angrier with him. Yes, she could.

‘That’s not quite right,’ Jack said. ‘Julia wanted it to be read.’

‘Julia, is it?’ Andrea spat. ‘Found an affinity with the distant dead, have we?’

Jack judged it best not to admit that he had. Julia and Maple were almost friends.

‘It is likely a soldier or a corrupt ARP warden murdered your grandmother. There was a lot of that.’ Greenhill looked defeated.

‘Is this the medical profession looking after its own?’ Andrea said. ‘Since Shipman we all know doctors can kill.’

‘I don’t like rushing to judgement.’

‘Maple Greenhill was murdered in 1940 – hardly rushing.’

‘Someone wanted Northcote dead,’ Jack said.

‘You’re like her other man, making mystery where there is none. Haven’t you got a better way to spend your time than leading on my daughter?’ Greenhill looked at Jack with pure distaste.

‘Dad. He’s not leading me on. This is about me.’ Andrea got up. ‘I believe George Cotton and so do you. Why are you doing this?’

‘As you said, my mother has been dead a long time. It won’t help her to destroy people’s families. And their reputations.’ Greenhill looked uncomfortable. Had someone got to him?

‘Northcote killed her, we have the proof. I want her story to be told.’

‘Why did you change your name?’ Following a thought train, Jack was surprised when Greenhill answered him.

‘I grew up in the shadow of my sister’s murder. Maple was a millstone around all our necks. My parents – grandparents – were destroyed. Dad said Mum couldn’t bear him to peck her on the cheek after Maple died. They couldn’t be pleased for Vernon when his boss left him the garage or the birth of Cliff, their first grandson, second if you include me. Dad died the day he retired. Mum soon after. They’d died in spirit in December 1940.’ Greenhill spoke in a monotone. ‘Then big brother Vernon dropped the bombshell. I was Maple’s illegitimate kid and he was my uncle. They had fooled me. I changed my name to be rid of the dead.’

‘Jack’s mother was murdered when he was a boy,’ Andrea said. They had agreed she’d use it as a lever, but still Jack felt as if he’d been punched in the face.

‘Don’t fib, dear.’ Greenhill was the severe dad.

‘She was strangled next to the River Thames in 1981.’

‘Did they catch the killer?’ The doctor’s tone softened.

‘Not at the time.’ Jack’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

‘Jack and his partner identified her killer in 2012.’ Andrea was on a roll.

‘Did that bring you closure?’ Greenhill was faintly acid.

‘I wanted her killer dead, but when that happened, nothing changed. Revenge would have satisfied me briefly before it wore off. Only my mother returning would do.’ Jack hadn’t fully thought this before.

‘I’ll make tea.’ Andrea left the room.

‘If you could find your mother’s killer, would you want revenge?’ Jack asked William.

‘I don’t like to call him her killer, it creates a link that was never there in life.’

‘Maple told her brother Vernon she had a secret fiancé who was a doctor. Northcote was seen with her at the Hammersmith Palais – isn’t it likely he murdered Maple?’ Jack went for it. ‘Dr Greenhill, did you kill Roderick March because he was going to reveal you are the actual murderer of Sir Aleck Northcote?’

Chapter Fifty-Two

2019

Stella

Stella had asked Lucie to go to the Christmas rehearsal at the abbey. Amidst the turmoil of murder and Stella’s growing fear that, rather than make a pass at Jack, Andrea would try to kill him, Stella needed peace. Lucie hadn’t needed persuading, she’d zipped and buttoned herself into her Driza-Bone against the rain and was out the door. Perhaps she too needed peace. Stella’s phone buzzed.

Stock-taking for Joy. Will quiz her.

‘We should pull Bev out of there.’ Stella paused for Stanley to lift a leg against a tree trunk on the yew path.

‘Give Beverly a chance to shine, Stella. Ah, looks like Felicity was right and Joy was wrong.’ Lucie was reading a notice on the abbey door.

Due to severe weather, rehearsal postponed.

‘We have to at least check on Bev.’ Stella tried the door. It opened. ‘Besides, Joy said she’d play whatever the weather.’

They gravitated to chairs near the choir where Stella had seen March’s beanie.

‘Northcote murders Maple Greenhill to save his rep then murders Julia, because she’s going to dob him in for Maple. Sickening.’ A puddle of water from her coat had collected around Lucie’s feet. ‘Northcote in turn is bumped off, supposedly for refusing son Giles a handout. If we are to believe Rodders and Virtual Andrea, Giles went to the gallows an innocent man. Who wanted Northcote dead?’

‘It had to be out of revenge,’ Stella said. ‘That narrows it down to anyone who cared about Maple.’

‘Or held a grudge against him. And since he seems to have been an evil genius, our net widens again.’ Lucie was flipping through the hymn book.

‘Gladys Wren had a lucky escape,’ Stella said.

‘Not if, according to Joy by Cheque, lovely Gladys murdered Northcote.’ Lucie began to hum the carol she had open in the book. Stella could see it was ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’, but didn’t recognize Lucie’s version.

‘I think Gladys’s story of faking her alibi rings true. We know that murder ensnares those with secrets of their own.’

‘Ooh, I like that.’ Fumbling in her bag Lucie scribbled the phrase in her notebook. ‘But Joy said she saw Gladys.’

‘I think she saw Northcote raping Gladys and conflated the scene with hearing he’d been murdered. She was a child, she probably only made sense of it as an adult and seems to have seen mileage in her knowledge,’ Stella said.

‘At ten she was a peeping Tom; what she saw made