A Necessary End Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by J. M. Gregson From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Recent Titles by J. M. Gregson from Severn House

  Lambert and Hook Mysteries

  AN ACADEMIC DEATH

  CLOSE CALL

  DARKNESS VISIBLE

  DEATH ON THE ELEVENTH HOLE

  DIE HAPPY

  GIRL GONE MISSING

  A GOOD WALK SPOILED

  IN VINO VERITAS

  JUST DESSERTS

  MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

  MORTAL TASTE

  SOMETHING IS ROTTEN

  TOO MUCH OF WATER

  AN UNSUITABLE DEATH

  MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

  CRY OF THE CHILDREN

  REST ASSURED

  Detective Inspector Peach Mysteries

  DUSTY DEATH

  TO KILL A WIFE

  THE LANCASHIRE LEOPARD

  A LITTLE LEARNING

  LEAST OF EVILS

  MERELY PLAYERS

  MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

  MURDER AT THE LODGE

  ONLY A GAME

  PASTURES NEW

  REMAINS TO BE SEEN

  A TURBULENT PRIEST

  THE WAGES OF SIN

  WHO SAW HIM DIE?

  WITCH’S SABBATH

  WILD JUSTICE

  LEAST OF EVILS

  BROTHERS’ TEARS

  A NECESSARY END

  A NECESSARY END

  J. M. Gregson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and 2015 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by J. M. Gregson

  The right of J. M. Gregson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Gregson, J. M. author.

  A necessary end.–(A Percy Peach mystery)

  1. Peach, Percy (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. 3. Police–England–

  Lancashire–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-07278-8441-1(cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-548-3 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-591-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Ellie, a young lady who reads much and will eventually go far.

  It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

  Seeing that death, a necessary end,

  Will come when it will come.

  Julius Caesar

  ONE

  Enid Frott needed to be in charge of something. She was that sort of woman.

  She hadn’t admitted that to herself yet, though. She was still constantly telling herself that you couldn’t expect things to be the same, once you’d retired. You needed to make adjustments. You needed to slow down a little and create a different way of life for yourself. You had plenty of interests, hadn’t you? You weren’t stupid and you were well capable of making the necessary adaptations to your lifestyle. Surely you’d thoroughly enjoy the process, if you gave yourself a little time. You should expect it to take time. Everyone said that, didn’t they? You couldn’t expect to settle into the joys of retirement overnight.

  It was three months now and time didn’t seem to be helping her much. Enid had always been contemptuous of clichés – lazy thinking, in Miss Frott’s view – but time was hanging heavily on her hands. She couldn’t think of a better way to put it, when she looked the situation in the face. And she’d always made a point of confronting things head-on. Anything else was a cop out. Another damned cliché – or was it an Americanism? Perhaps her mind was slowing up, as some people said minds did in retirement. But no, she wasn’t having that. Not at sixty-three. Perhaps she should have insisted on staying on at work. But she’d been too proud for that. She wasn’t going to hang around where she wasn’t wanted.

  Enid glanced at her watch. Time she was moving on. Twenty minutes was quite long enough for a cup of coffee. When she’d been working, she’d taken her coffee on the hoof, as often as not. She’d liked to set an example to the girls in the office. You could ask more of them when you didn’t spare yourself. Flying Frotty, they’d called her, when they’d thought she couldn’t hear; she’d heard them all right, but never reacted. Quite a flattering nickname really, on balance. No one had ever accused her of being lazy or incompetent.

  It was quite pleasant up here after the chaos below. Good idea for the store to have its café on the top floor, away from the maelstrom of Christmas shoppers. She wouldn’t have minded another few minutes at her table in the corner here, if she’d had something to read. Her own fault, that: she should have shoved a book into her bag. She enjoyed her own company, but she’d never been a great people-watcher.

  There were a lot of people waiting at the lift, but she chose to walk past them and then down the stairs to the toy department. Good exercise. Excellent for the knees, her neighbour had said – not that she needed to be thinking about things like that. Not for ten or fifteen years yet. She tripped down the successive flights of stairs quite quickly and was scarcely out of breath at all when she pushed through the door on her chosen floor.

  It was even more crowded now than when she had left the department and gone for coffee. She was trying to buy presents for her two great-nephews. Books would have been the thing, in her view. Educational as well as enjoyable, and a source of lasting joy if you chose the right ones. But she wasn’t quite sure what was appropriate for boys of eight and six, and the girl on the counter had been totally useless. Better to go to a specialist bookshop if you wanted that sort of advice, the girl had said. She’d spoken as if Enid had been asking for some strange and esoteric novelty, when books should have been a standard purchase.

  Her nephew’s bitch of a wif
e had been no help to her, as usual. Computer games were more the thing now, she said patronisingly. She’d spoken as if she didn’t expect Enid to understand, when a few months earlier the older woman had been instructing young girls in the mysteries and possibilities of IT in the office. Enid wished she’d had Althea under her control for a month or two there. She’d have had her skipping around and giving respect, not looking at her with that sneer she seemed to reserve for her husband’s family.

  Charles hadn’t been able to offer her much in the way of present suggestions. He seemed content to leave all that sort of thing to his wife. Men were like that. But then it was probably fair enough to put it on Althea, since the bitch seemed determined to stay at home even now that the children were well established at school. Her nephew didn’t even know what he wanted for himself. A sweater, Charles had suggested under pressure. But surely he’d need to select that for himself? She’d have to go to M&S. He could take it back himself if it didn’t suit. Same for the bitch: whatever Enid bought for her was never acceptable.

  She looked at a toy car with batteries for the six-year-old. But she wasn’t sure he was the right age for it. And it was ridiculously expensive. She wasn’t stingy, but you didn’t want to throw money away, not when you were spending sums like this. And Enid wasn’t sure what was the right amount to spend. You mustn’t spoil children; everyone said that. She’d never had any children of her own and she didn’t regret that. Not really. She’d told herself many times over the years that she didn’t regret it. You couldn’t have everything – well, you could now, but not when she’d started. Kids might have been welcome at one time, but she’d had a long and satisfying career. People should remember that.

  Ms Frott took a long, despairing look at the crowds of people milling around the counters on the children’s floor and decided to abandon ship. Another cliché, that, but she was fed up with this. She went outside and looked up through the gathering November gloom at the Manchester skyline, or at least at that section of it which she could see. She’d known Market Street and Piccadilly and the other shopping streets around it quite intimately at one time. She could have directed people to the best places to shop. Marshall and Snelgrove for good quality clothes at fair prices. Lewis’s for good advice and keen prices on white and electrical goods. Had life really been simpler then, or did it just seem so from the distance of years?

  She tried a couple of other shops, but they were even more crowded and people were even more frantic than in the big store she’d just left. A woman who was shouting for the attention of a salesgirl trod on her foot and scarcely bothered to apologise. Enid limped away with a thunderous face and went to queue for the bus to Altrincham. Leave it to Althea to get whatever presents she thought were appropriate, as she’d done last year. Or just give them money, which they seemed to like as much as anything. But that would just ‘go towards’ some major purchase they were saving for. It didn’t give her as much satisfaction as buying a present might have done. As buying a book and seeing them read and enjoy it might have done. She’d do that next year, and bugger the bitch.

  It seemed to take much longer to get out of the centre of the city now. It was the same in every conurbation, she supposed, with the traffic as dense as it was nowadays. She was lucky living in Brunton. The traffic was bad enough there, but the population was only a hundred thousand, and you were soon out of the town and into the Ribble Valley. She’d be quite glad to get back to her own comfortable and spacious flat.

  They were running into Cheshire now, though you’d scarcely have known it, with the road just as busy and the houses almost as densely packed as ever. Althea always took care to tell people that she lived in Cheshire, not Manchester. Pathetic, really. If you were vulgar you were vulgar, wherever you lived. But jumped-up plebs never realized that.

  She went and lay on the bed in her room when she reached her nephew’s house. She was surprised how tired she was, and it saved her from making meaningless conversation with the bitch. She got up when she heard the boys come into the house from school. They liked her, in their noisy, boisterous way, and she was surprised how much she liked them and how easy she found it to talk to them. Young Thomas wanted to show her how much his reading had come on and Jason had been awarded a gold star in maths for his facility with fractions. Enid knew all about fractions and was delighted to show him that she wasn’t the ignorant old biddy that he’d assumed she was.

  She was glad when her nephew Charles got home from work. It was easier to talk to the bitch with him around. To talk to Althea, she told herself firmly: she must give the woman a chance and listen to what she had to say. There was a generation gap between them, that was all. Nothing between them but thirty-odd years, really.

  ‘Aunty Enid had a bad time in town, darling. Didn’t manage to get anything she wanted. I expect it was terribly hectic, a month before Christmas.’

  She always speaks of me as though I’m not there, as if I were a backward child, thought Enid. I’m being unfair again. ‘I should have made a list of exactly what I wanted before I went. That would have made it much easier. Or shopped in Brunton, perhaps. I know my way around there, and some of the shopkeepers know me. I thought I’d get a better selection of things in Manchester, the way you used to do. But the choice was just the same, really.’

  ‘We find it better to shop online, a lot of the time, don’t we, darling? I could easily show you how to do that, Enid. It’s much simpler than you’d think.’

  ‘I’ve done it myself. Quite often, actually. But I like to see exactly what I’m getting, whenever it’s possible.’ Enid knew that she was tight-lipped, grudging, tense. She didn’t want to be, but the bitch always got to her.

  The children had left the table now. They’d eaten enough to earn their exit and they’d gone off to watch the telly in the other room. That’s what seemed to happen nowadays. Not like when Enid and her brothers were young. You didn’t speak until you were spoken to then and it was the adults who conducted the conversation, talking about things you didn’t understand and didn’t need to understand. It was all different now. The children were asked for their opinions about everything and you couldn’t have a decent adult conversation about politics or music or books or anything like that. Probably just as well really: Althea wouldn’t have been able to sustain an adult conversation for long.

  Now who was being bitchy? Enid Frott hated herself for what she was thinking and tried to banish it, but she knew that she was never going to like this woman. Controlled neutrality would be the best she would ever manage. She said as brightly as she could, ‘Would you like me to read the bedtime story to the boys? I could do it separately, if they have different ones now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure they’ll have time for stories tonight, Enid. They’ve got homework to finish. And Jason’s reading quite well himself now. He likes to have his own books.’

  Enid smiled and nodded, biting back the thought that it was still good for kids to have stories in bed, that they liked being read to even when they could read for themselves. It wasn’t her business, was it? And she must respect the views of the parents, who would know their children as she never could. She said carefully, ‘I’ll need to be off quite early in the morning. But I’ll be able to wave goodbye to the boys as they go off to school.’

  There was quite a long pause which no one seemed to know how to fill. Then Charles said with a false brightness, ‘So how is retirement going, Aunty Enid?’

  He’d asked her that before, scarcely twenty-four hours ago. But he meant well, so she mustn’t snub him. ‘Well enough, I suppose. I’ve been drawn into all the bridge I can take and I’ve joined the local branch of NADFAS.’ She glanced at Althea’s uncomprehending face and explained, ‘National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies. Quite a mouthful, really. Some of the men just call it the Fine Farts.’ She grinned at Charles and enjoyed the look of shock on his wife’s face. ‘Takes a bit of time to adjust to life without work, but I’m getting there.�
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  Her nephew nodded thoughtfully. ‘You need something to organize, knowing you, Aunty. You’ve always loved books and reading, haven’t you? Why don’t you start a book club and compare notes with other people who also read a lot? I’m sure you’d enjoy that.’

  ‘It might be worth thinking about,’ agreed his aunt.

  And think about it Enid Frott did, in the days which followed.

  TWO

  Funerals were strange occasions, Enid Frott thought. When you weren’t at the very centre of them, as widows and close relatives were, you could observe funerals and study them as the strange rituals they were. Touching, at times, but strange all the same.

  She’d been Frank Burgess’s PA for fifteen years, but he’d been eighteen years older than her, so that his death hadn’t come as a great surprise. He’d been eighty-one and ailing for some time, and she hadn’t seen him in the last few years. As she sat in the back row of the crowded crematorium, she regretted that. Grief was affecting her much more deeply than she would have expected.

  Frank hadn’t been a religious man, but he was being seen off with a clergyman and hymns. Curious how people lost the courage of their convictions, when it came to the end. She wondered if she would want hymns and prayers and a clergyman uttering pious, conventional thoughts when she went. Emphatically not, she thought: she’d always been a woman who knew her own mind. She’d feel she was losing face, if she didn’t carry things through. Then she grinned at herself. What the hell would it matter to her, when she was gone? She wouldn’t have any face to lose, would she? She tried not to think of how few people might attend her last rites. Enid dropped her head and studied her order of service sheet assiduously.

  ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ was over now; they were listening to the eulogy from one of Frank’s sons. She was surprised how much she’d enjoyed singing the hymn. Memories of childhood and youth and that innocent and very different Enid Frott, she supposed. At least today they wouldn’t be standing at a graveside in the freezing rain and throwing earth upon the lid of a coffin. She shuddered at the remembrance of her grandmother’s and her father’s funerals and the dark shadows of the hereafter they had brought to her as a young and impressionable girl.