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

A large stuffed hen was wedged between Stanley’s jaws as he lay on Stella’s lap. He had claimed Jack’s present to Stella for his own.

Passing round cakes, doughnut for Lucie, chocolate brownies for Bev and Jack, Jackie opted for a Portuguese tart, but couldn’t persuade Stella to share. Jackie’s second family was reunited, for the first time in months she could relax. When she’d come to Tewkesbury the night before, Stella had told her she was coming home and would start work after Christmas. Clean Slate would rise from the ashes.

‘It began in December 1940 in the middle of the Blitz,’ Stella said. ‘Aleck Northcote strangled Maple Greenhill.’ She raised her mug. ‘To Maple, dead long ago, never forgotten.’

‘Cleo says William is changing his name back to Greenhill. Andrea’s sacked Zack for embezzlement.’ Bev had been on the phone to Cleo Greenhill as they all walked to the tearoom. ‘Andrea’s scanning a virtual tour for Maple’s Motors. Cliff is going into rehab. When he’s out, Cleo is encouraging him to start an archaeology course and leave the showroom. Cleo has asked Andrea to be co-director. Maple’s granddaughter kind of fits with Vernon’s dream of Maple’s son joining. Cleo and Andrea are the dream team.’

‘At least that’s one good outcome from this sorry tale.’ Lucie sighed. ‘This chain of murders could not have a happy ending. Maple Greenhill’s own dream proved to be a nightmare, Julia Northcote failed to send her husband to the gallows, Roddy March’s parents lost their only child. Clive at least had a fitting end.’

‘Is there such a thing as a fitting end?’ Jack wondered.

‘I want to die in my sleep and know nothing about it,’ Beverly declared.

‘OK for you, but a tragedy for the rest of us,’ Lucie said. ‘Me, I expect there’s a few who want me to shuffle off the mortal coil. My winged idiot of an editor for one. What a hash he made of saying how pleased he was that I’m coming back to work.’

‘Joy will never play the Grove organ again,’ Stella said.

‘My heart breaks,’ Beverly snapped. ‘Joy-less was a first-class nasty person.’

‘She loved playing in the abbey.’ Stella did feel sorry for Joy. Unhappiness had made her nasty. It hadn’t made Stella all that nice.

‘The first organist in the country to be blackballed for blackmail. There’s her legacy right there.’ Lucie scribbled the phrase in her notebook.

‘Gladys Wren is exonerated,’ Jack said.

‘I’m pleased for her.’ Beverly sounded heartfelt. ‘She never did anyone any harm. She didn’t even murder the man who had abused her for years. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. I don’t blame Felicity that she did.’

‘Can I join you?’ Janet was detective-smart in a black suit, white shirt and mac with the collar up.

‘Please do.’ Jackie pulled out a chair when no one spoke and made everyone shuffle round.

‘I went to Gladys Wren’s boarding house; she said you were here. I want to apologize, Stella, I should have listened. Lucie, you too,’ Janet added with, Jackie guessed, monumental effort. Lucie had been the bane of what was now the Met Police’s Central West division for too many decades. ‘I got it wrong.’

‘Not the first— ouch.’ Lucie winced when Jackie kicked her ankle.

‘There’ll be an enquiry, from which I’ll emerge stinking of horse-shit.’ Janet sat forward, her hands between her knees.

‘You followed the evidence,’ Stella said. ‘Like you – and me – were taught. If I’d been the SIO I’d have got it wrong too. I only realized Felicity was the murderer when she had a knife at my throat.’

‘I’d have solved it.’ Lucie was not gracious in victory. ‘All I lacked were the resources of a county constabulary.’

‘We have retrieved Felicity’s body from the Avon. It was caught in reeds miles downstream.’

Lucie was cutting her doughnut in half. Jam dripping, she passed one piece to Stella. Jackie knew it was Lucie acknowledging that, cold-blooded killer though Felicity had been, Stella would mourn her. Felicity’s life had been ruined by Northcote. A kind of murder.

‘The irony is,’ Janet accepted a mug of tea from Jackie, ‘Roddy March’s laptop and notebook along with his wallet were in a safe in Felicity’s basement mortuary. Not that the notebook would have led us to the killer. The only person he had a good word to say about was you, Stella. He thought you, observant with the makings of a forensic cleaner as well as “not a bad looker”.’

‘I don’t know how he could think any of that,’ Stella snapped.

‘The only time the guy had it right, I’d say, except he missed out first-rate detective.’ Janet shot her a smile. ‘We finally found his podcast files in a cloud under the pseudonym, Charles Foster Kane, as in Citizen Kane. March outlined the rest of the series and revealed the name of Northcote’s killer. It wouldn’t have helped any of us, the dill-brain pointed the finger at Joy Turton. He reckoned Joy was jealous of Gladys having, as she supposed, an affair with Northcote and to deprive Gladys of him, killed him. He was both right and wrong. Joy didn’t take her jealousy out on Northcote, but on blackmailing poor Gladys, who became a handy source of income.’

‘Joy made sublime music.’ Stella made no sense of that. All that made sense to her now was that she loved all the people sitting around the ‘séance’ table in the teashop.

‘Just think,’ Janet sipped her tea, ‘Dame Professor Felicity Branscombe could have gone to her grave with her reputation as a top pathologist whose evidence put violent murderers where they belonged intact. We might never have known she’d murdered Northcote and Cotton. Because yes, Cotton had worked out Felicity killed Northcote. A detective, haunted by the man who had got away with murder, he’d gone to an exhibition of pathologist artefacts. It included the copy of Northcote’s autobiography signed for Felicity which her ego had propelled her to contribute. Cotton must have made sense of “To the Girl in the Headlines”, the housekeeper’s