‘How else did she afford that mink? It’s worth at least ten guineas. I bought one for Julia. To cheer her up,’ Northcote said.
‘Perhaps her sweetheart promised riches then backed out. She’s upset and he kills her.’ Cotton was thinking aloud; he would never convince Northcote to change his mind about women who sold their bodies for sex.
‘Porter will post over my report. My guess is fabric, a tie perhaps, pulled tight from behind. Stockings would work, but she was still wearing them. Man catches her unawares, she twists and claws like a cat, and protecting himself, he quietens her. For good.’ Eyes narrowed at the sky, Dr Northcote took a drag of his cigarette. ‘Odd he didn’t try to hide her body. There’s a burnt-out house a couple of doors down. That’s why the house we found her in was declared unsafe. Christ, the Blitz is open house for murderers and looters.’
‘I’m betting he was disturbed.’
‘Didn’t you say the all-clear was sounding when neighbours heard the scream? He would have got the hell out.’ Northcote crushed his cigarette on the ground. Alberta Porter was out of the Daimler and ready with the door open.
‘I’ll check with the PC who got there first,’ Cotton said. ‘You said Maple was still warm when you arrived. Last night’s temperature was below zero. Like you said, she’d been dead minutes.’
‘Don’t get too exercised, George. We both know that as long as girls like these take advantage of the blackout these murders will increase.’ Northcote climbed into the car and nodded to Porter to do the same. One foot on the running board he gave a wry smile. ‘Maple’s man will be an inebriated soldier called back to base without a care in the world. We both know that.’
‘You got there damned smartish.’ Cotton could always rely on Northcote. ‘I thought we had a chance with you on the scene so quickly.’
‘It was damn near on my doorstep.’ Northcote sounded offended by this. He shut the door and, winding down the window, started the car. ‘Just as well I did or she could have lain there for weeks. If I remember, poor old Hurrell had no relatives. A bit of a recluse.’
‘That would have made your job harder,’ Cotton agreed.
‘You forget the hyoid bone.’ Northcote was smooth in his correction.
‘Of course.’ Cotton touched the knot on his tie. Northcote had given them a sketch of the murderer. Blood group AB negative, greying hair, the downward pressure on Maple’s throat suggested he was tall. If the cigarettes Cotton had found in the grate were chucked there by the killer, he smoked Chesterfields. It seemed Hurrell, the house owner, had not kept cigarettes at home. There had been a full packet of Player’s in Maple’s handbag so he’d given her one of his. The likelihood that he’d strangled her with his tie might say the killing was unplanned.
Northcote reached up out of the car window and shook Cotton’s hand. They enjoyed batting about ideas. Cotton was always grateful to have Northcote doing the PM rather than his younger colleague, Dr Bradman, a spiv who had an inflated belief in his talent coupled with a tendency to underestimate Northcote’s.
Settling into the police-issue Wolseley, Cotton asked PC Shepherd to drive back to the house by the river where Maple Greenhill’s strangled body was found.
Chapter Nine
December 2019
Stella
Within the ancient walls of the grounds, insipid lamplight projected hazy shadows across the headstones, the writing worn to impenetrable hieroglyphics by centuries. The tower rose up and beyond, curdling clouds threatened more rain. Every now and then, as indeterminate as a passing thought, a bat flicked across the mauve-black between the yew trees.
The suspended silence was shattered by a scream. Across the dappled cemetery came crude skeletons, red-toothed werewolves and ghouls, luminous faces grinning. Teenagers were enacting a party-shop horror show. They ran close to Stella, standing by the south wall, without seeing her in the gloom. Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they were gone.
As Stella skirted the abbey, she saw a light in an upper window of Cloisters House. She had passed by the large detached house many times without noticing it. Now she knew it was where Professor Northcote had been murdered in 1963. Stella did in fact know about the murder. As part of what she called due diligence, she had read up on Tewkesbury. One website called Northcote’s death a classic murder story; Wikipedia said the news got little press attention because of Kennedy’s assassination on the same day. Spotting a reference to a biography of the pathologist, Stella realized it was in her dad’s collection of true-crime books that she’d found in his attic. On impulse, she had dropped it into her suitcase. She hadn’t unpacked it. She decided to begin it when she got back to the flat.
Outside the abbey, Stella peered through the bars of a tall iron gate to the back garden of Cloisters House. She made out wigwam frames and a line of raised beds made from railway sleepers. The gate was secured with a padlock and chain. Unlike Jack, she would not dream of trespassing.
When March said he’d received anonymous texts and a dead bird had been left on the bonnet of his jeep, losing patience, Felicity had made him leave. Had Stella, instead of Felicity, gone outside with March and given directions to Cheltenham police station, she could have escaped. Although having to hear more on his take on the Northcote Murder Mystery might have been no escape at all. Recalling March’s phone call in the abbey yesterday, it was better his jealous partner accompanied him to the police station
Stella wandered across the abbey grounds unconsciously, and, as Jack avoided cracks in paving for bad luck, she stepped only on lozenges of light cutting through the splaying branches of a vast oak tree. Disappointed
