Читать книгу Coffin’s Game - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 10

Archie Young and Coffin were back in the Chief Commander’s office. Coffin had watched with an expressionless face as the body, which he refused to own, was packed into a black bag to be transported to the mortuary. The police used the one in the University Hospital where a special room had been allocated to them.

Archie picked up the blue leather handbag, now packaged in a piece of plastic. ‘I think you should look at what was found in this bag.’

Coffin gave it a bleak look. He was not sure, but he thought he was angry with Archie. For certain, anger from somewhere, caused by someone, was welling up inside him. Perhaps it was from the pain, for there was pain all right. He said nothing but continued to stare at the bag.

‘You thought you recognized the bag.’

The bag was dark leather, very soft and quilted with a gold chain and gold emblem on the front. Even Archie Young had seen similar ones around, swinging from the shoulders of the fashionable. Some were genuine, others imitation. This one looked the real thing.

‘Stella has one like it. I gave it to her. Chanel, she chose it herself. But there must be many others, they are so fashionable.’ Which was why he had given one to Stella, who had a taste for what was fashionable and expensive.

He studied the soft blue leather object, reluctant to open it, even to touch it.

‘Better open it, sir. Or shall I do it for you?’ A thin pair of transparent plastic gloves was held out, ready. Still reluctant, Coffin smoothed on the gloves; he knew the rules.

‘No.’ Coffin stretched out his hand, now masked, and lifted the tiny gold fastening. The bag yawned open in front of him. ‘It’s been damaged, the bag should open more slowly.’

‘Yes, I reckon it’s been wrenched apart. Not malice, I don’t think. Whoever did it wanted to be sure that it fell wide apart. So you could see what was inside. At a glance.’

Coffin looked at Archie Young sharply. ‘You meant something by that.’

‘Take a look, sir.’

Coffin frowned as he drew out a photograph. He laid it on the desktop in front of him. Archie, watching the Chief Commander closely, saw the colour melt from his face to be replaced by a pallor and then a flush that spread to his throat and touched his temple. Coffin put out his hand and covered the picture. He looked up at Archie Young: ‘That photo is a fake. Stella is not mad, bad and dangerous.’

‘No,’ said Archie. ‘Of course not.’ But he said it awkwardly, half defensively.

‘Stella does not eat human flesh. God, no. That woman –’ he tapped the picture – ‘is eating an arm, I can see the wrist. A bleeding human arm.’

‘Bit of,’ said Archie even more awkwardly. And it wasn’t actually dripping with blood. The blood, if that was what it was, looked dry.

The picture, of course, was a fake, but why? And the face, and the body, what you could see of it, was certainly Stella Pinero’s.

Archie felt miserable: it was a bloody awful thing to have happened. No, he mustn’t keep using that word, there was too much blood around as it was. He looked with sympathy at the Chief Commander, who seemed suddenly older.

‘The dead woman is not Stella,’ said Coffin. ‘And this photograph is not of Stella.’

He’s a good man, Archie said to himself, whatever she’s done to him, he doesn’t deserve this.

The devil got a hold of his tongue because he heard himself say: ‘Some anthropologists think that kissing developed from biting.’

‘Thank you.’

There was a pause during which Archie Young tried to think of something sensible and wise to say, before he decided that silence might be best.

Coffin shook himself, like a dog coming in from the rain. ‘Let’s get down to this. We are policemen, investigators. Who is the dead woman, and how did she die?’

‘We don’t know the answers yet to the first question. As to the second, it looks as though she was strangled. The face was beaten after death.’

‘And the next thing, after establishing identity …’ Coffin started the sentence.

If we can, said Archie Young silently to himself. He had dread feelings about this dead woman.

‘Is to find out how and why she was carrying my wife’s handbag. If indeed it is Stella’s and not a replica,’ Coffin pushed on. ‘And that in itself is a strange thing. Why?’

It’s all strange, Archie thought, mighty strange. ‘Of course we will find out who she is,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. He grappled with another problem: how to refer to the Chief Commander’s wife in the embarrassing present circumstance.

He compromised. ‘Miss Pinero might be able to throw some light on it when questioned.’ Coffin looked at him gloomily, even apprehensively. Archie floundered on. ‘The bag might have been lost or stolen.’

‘With the photograph in it?’

Wonder if he’ll have a breakdown, Archie thought. He looks as though he could. On the edge. But no, he’s a strong fellow, mentally and physically. Except he loves that woman, that’s always dangerous. ‘It’s a joke that photograph,’ he said.

‘The dead body is not a joke,’ said Coffin savagely.

Archie Young was silenced. From the outer room, Coffin could hear Paul Masters chatting away cheerfully. Too cheerfully, he thought sourly, and there was a woman laughing. For a moment, he thought it might be Stella, but it was one of the secretaries. He knew the voice, there was a brassy ring to it which today he found irritating. She laughed again, damn her. He wondered if he could institute a no laughing rule like a no smoking rule.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Coffin heard himself saying. ‘I have not the least idea in the world where Stella has gone.’

That, thought Archie, is one of the comments you are better off not hearing. He liked and admired the Chief Commander, he liked and admired Stella Pinero, too, but he wanted to keep out of their relationship. Let them sort it out. She would turn up. You had to allow actresses their freedom. ‘She’ll get in touch,’ he heard himself saying.

Coffin looked at his old friend and colleague and suddenly realized he was being offered sympathy. He laughed and pulled himself together.

‘I am sure she will, Archie, and it had better be soon.’ There was a note in his voice which suggested that Stella, when she returned, would have some questions to answer. He stood up. ‘I’d better get back to work.’

The Chief Superintendent rose too. ‘Anything new on the bombers?’

Coffin shook his head. What he had learnt on his trip north was confidential even from Archie Young. ‘Nothing much,’ he said in a noncommittal voice. ‘Inspector Lodge was first in to inspect the body in Percy Street, I suppose?’

‘Pretty smartish,’ agreed Archie Young. ‘Asked to come with me as soon as he heard about it. He was told, of course.’ Anything to do with the bombed area was for him to know about, he was their expert, the local, middle-range one. All the foremost terrorist watchers had probably been in Edinburgh or wherever it was the Chief Commander had really gone. On this point, Archie had his reservations. Edinburgh first, and then on to – where?

‘I suppose he hoped he’d got a dead terrorist.’

‘I don’t know what he hoped. He doesn’t show his mind, that one.’

The two looked at each other. They would be glad to be rid of the Todger, but life was not so simple.

‘He’s very good at what he does,’ Coffin allowed. Not a loveable man, but who would be in that job. He could not regard himself as a totally loveable person. He heard Stella’s voice: ‘No, darling, not a cuddly person. Many good qualities and I love you madly, but not cosy.’

Was that why she had gone away? Was she running away from him?

Did Stella love him? He had never felt totally sure. You had to remember that she was an actress.

And where was she, damn her.

‘I’ll take the bag with me,’ said Archie Young, reaching out a hand for the bag in its plastic container. ‘Forensics, and all that.’

Coffin nodded.

‘If I could suggest, sir, you might have a look round at home to see if Miss Pinero’s bag is there or not.’

‘I will, I will.’ He would get round to it when he felt less sore.

‘Or she might say herself …’ Archie left the rest of the sentence delicately unsaid.

‘When we speak again, I will certainly be asking,’ said Coffin. He watched the Chief Superintendent depart with careful, depressing tact, closing the door quietly and not smiling.

Feeling unloved and out of sorts, Coffin slumped back in his chair and went to work on the mound of papers in front of him. Word processors, far from reducing this load, added to it daily. A truism, of course, but he was not in the mood to be original.

He wondered where Stella was and why she had said nothing which was true; but he shrank from the painful thought that perhaps it was better he did not know more. A lie had to hide something, didn’t it?

‘I would not have this feeling if it were not for that terrible photograph. Which was not a joke. A fake, but not a joke.’ And also because of the information gently passed over to him in Scotland. At the time he had tried to reject it, shrug it off as a case of mistaken identity, or a computer error, or someone’s genuine mistake, which did happen even with the men he was being briefed by. Now he did not know.

He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. From inside, he withdrew a bundle of letters. Underneath was yet another, smaller bundle, older and grubby, as if much opened and read. All the letters were from Stella, he had kept every letter she had written to him: the older packet dated from when they first met, before they quarrelled and parted. The more recent letters were since they met again, and were written by Stella when away filming or on tour. He had asked her to write as well as telephone and he had written back.

‘My secret hoard,’ he said aloud. He never asked if Stella kept his letters.

There were no photographs. ‘I hate being photographed except in the way of publicity business,’ Stella had said, adding with a giggle: ‘Besides, photographs are dangerous.’

Yes, Stella, they certainly are.

He packed the letters in his briefcase to take home where he could study them to see if they could tell him who took that photograph of Stella and, more importantly, who doctored it.

Who did you know, Stella, who could treat you in that way? Who wanted to make you look half-woman, half-beast?

He picked up the telephone. Paul Masters answered promptly, as if he had been awaiting the call.

‘You know what’s been going on?’

‘Just a bit, sir. If I may say so, sir, don’t worry.’

He’s sorry for me. Coffin accepted the gift with resignation. No doubt there was sorrow and pity all around him at Headquarters, seeping out into the whole police division which he commanded. Many a laugh and a joke too.

But the photograph was not to be laughed at. Some strange fish had swum into his pool and must be accounted for, and, if necessary, caught.

‘Get me Chief Inspector Astley, Paul, please.’

‘She’s here actually, sir. Outside. Shall I send her in?’

‘Yes, do.’ So had it been Phoebe laughing?

She swung into the room a second later, her face grave. She had not been laughing. But she smiled when she saw him. ‘I was on my way to you. I knew I had to see you to tell you what the latest was.’

‘You know about the body in Percy Street? Of course you do.’

Phoebe advanced into the room with the confidence of an old friend and ally; she perched herself on the windowsill. She invariably dressed soberly for work; today she wore black trousers with a cream silk shirt, but there was always the impression with Phoebe that underneath was lace and silk, probably in red. It was a tribute to her impact on her colleagues because, as she confided to her friend Eden when she heard the rumour going around about her red knickers, in fact they were white cotton, ‘from my favourite high street store, and made in Israel’.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

‘Yes. I thought you’d given that up.’ In an early brush with what might have been but was not something malignant, Phoebe had given up all sins of the flesh from food to sex. Rumour had it that those days were over. Rampantly, cheerfully over.

‘I’ve started again.’ She lit up. ‘When under stress.’

‘And you are under stress?’

‘I’m catching it from you.’

‘Right,’ said Coffin. For a moment he said no more. He trusted Phoebe, to whom he would probably speak more openly than to anyone else. Except Stella. The Stella he had lived with and loved, but it looked as though there was a Stella he had never known. I won’t allow this thought to enter my mind, he told himself. I have to trust Stella, to believe in Stella.

‘I was coming to see you because the Todger called me in.’ She looked at him gravely.

‘He would do,’ said Coffin. Phoebe’s area of responsibility touched upon that of Inspector Lodge. They did not like each other, but there was respect.

‘I went round to Percy Street, the body had gone by then. I was told why they had thought it was Stella and got you round there, although I am bound to say I would not have thought it was her for a minute.’

‘There was another factor …’ he could hardly bring himself to call it a reason.

‘The handbag? I was told about it and what it contained.’

‘That was why I was brought round at speed,’ Coffin said gloomily. ‘I understand it, the bag has gone for forensic testing, and I am supposed to be going through Stella’s things to see if the one she owned, her bag, is still there. But I am not doing it because I am perfectly certain the blue Chanel bag is the one and original.’

‘Could be,’ said Phoebe, ‘but I shouldn’t let it worry you, it’s just a dirty trick. We’ll sort that one out, don’t worry. Her bag was used to create the illusion, someone wanted to distress you.’

‘Someone succeeded.’

‘But it wasn’t Stella, and I am surprised that the illusion held for as long as it did. Once the body was moved and taken round to Dennis Garden for examination.’ Phoebe picked a loose piece of tobacco from her lips, and smiled slightly. Professor Garden, an academic from the local university, was a pleasure to cross swords with. ‘Once Dennis got it on the table – even before, I should guess – he knew not only was it not Stella Pinero but that it was not a woman. Too flat, no breasts.’ She went on talking, giving him time to start breathing again; he seemed to have stopped. How long can the brain go without oxygen? ‘The pelvic structure, of course. Quite different, you can always tell.’

‘I suppose that, unconsciously, I saw that too. I knew it wasn’t Stella.’ Coffin went to the window to stare out. He could see across the road to the big car park where his own car had its privileged place; looking beyond was a large modern school where he had once given away the prizes, and further away the roof of the University Hospital where Dennis Garden taught and operated on the living and gazed upon interesting corpses with whom he was able to set up a relationship at once intimate yet impersonal. He fancied he could see one of those discreet, black-windowed ambulances turning in now to deliver another customer for Dennis’s attentions. Coffin turned back to Phoebe. ‘I suppose as Lodge called you in he thinks there is some terrorist connection.’

‘His antennae are twitching,’ said Phoebe.

Coffin came back to sit at his desk. ‘That needs thinking about.’ He tried to wave away Phoebe’s cigarette smoke. ‘I wish you’d put that out.’

‘Fag finished.’ Phoebe crushed the cigarette out on the sole of her shoe, then threw the stub away. The need for the counter irritant was over: Coffin was back on the job.

‘Pity about the face,’ said Professor Dennis Garden. He sounded genuinely moved. ‘The hair was a hairpiece on a band. Very good quality,’

‘It does make identification difficult,’ agreed John Coffin.

‘Not only that, but from what I can make of the bone structure, he had a graceful, pleasing face. Small-boned altogether, or he would never have got into the jeans,’ Garden said in a regretful tone.

‘Strange there wasn’t blood,’ observed Coffin. ‘Not much on the hair or hairpiece. What do you make of that?’

‘Not much at the moment.’ Garden was giving nothing away. ‘I have not examined the body properly yet.’

‘There was not too much blood in the room where he was found, but he was probably killed there. Interesting in itself. I wonder why?’

Professor Garden smiled happily. ‘Your problem, my dear, not mine. I deal with only this end of the affair. It’s for you to fiddle out the rest. If you can.’ He waved a hand to an attendant. ‘Seen all you want? Right, let’s put this poor fellow away to rest.’ The attendant wheeled the trolley to the refrigerated cage. ‘I shall have to be at work on him later, but I promise you I’ll do it delicately.’ His pale blue eyes glinted with amusement at Coffin. ‘Bit below you, isn’t it, to be taking an interest in a simple case like this?’

‘I always knew it wasn’t my wife,’ said Coffin bleakly. He knows all about it, every last detail, probably seen a copy of the photograph, or a drawing, or heard it with every elaboration and joke that his colleagues’ humour could devise …

‘Of course, of course. Very nasty moment it must have been. But soon over, you knew at once it was not Stella.’ He crossed himself carefully. Amid a myriad of other interests in Dennis Garden’s life was a feeling for a god. He was not always sure which god but he knew it was one to keep on good terms with. Besides, he liked Stella (inasmuch as he could admire any woman, his tastes not going that way), and wished her well. He would not have enjoyed doing a postmortem on her. He had an idea already that he was not about to enjoy this one.

‘What about the hands?’ Coffin asked.

‘Ah, you saw the significance of the gloves?’

‘One of the ways I knew it was not my wife,’ said Coffin. ‘I knew that Stella would not wear white gloves with jeans. So, what about the hands?’

‘You were right to be worried; the fingers were cut off at the knuckles.’

Coffin nodded. ‘No fingerprints then? What about the thumb?’

‘Even the thumb has gone … Whoever did it was taking precautions about identification … But don’t worry too much, science is wonderful, something might emerge that helps.’

But he was glad it was not Stella’s body they were discussing. He was skilled in morbid anatomy; he taught it, even enjoyed doing so, but one does not want to cut up one’s friends. Although there is always pleasure in a job well done. Already he had it in mind that he would identify this body for the police. No one got the better of Dennis Garden. Anyway, damn it, the face – he knew how to reconstruct the face. He had a sense of knowing that face.

He saw the Chief Commander to the door. What was she doing though, the beautiful and talented Stella, wandering away without warning to her husband when their marriage was supposed to be a notable success?

Not a man you could play around with, he considered, watching the Chief Commander’s retreating back. There was something to the set of Coffin’s shoulders that suggested he might not be easy.

Coffin summoned Inspector Lodge to see him. Lodge arrived with speed, suggesting to Coffin’s anxious mind that he had been expecting a call.

‘You went round to Percy Street very fast. Was there any special reason?’

The Todger took it quietly. ‘I wondered if we might have a terrorist there.’

‘Any other reason?’

The Inspector became even quieter. ‘Always interested when something like this turns up … it’s my job.’

Coffin waited.

‘In confidence, we have had an insider working here, I thought it might be my plant.’

‘And is it?’

Lodge shrugged. ‘No identification yet.’

‘Is your insider a man or a woman?’

‘A man,’ he said with reluctance. How he hated to part with information. Coffin thought.

‘So it could be the dead man?’

‘I am waiting to find out more, see who’s missing, run checks, but yes, I think, yes.’

‘And why was he dressed up like my wife? With a handbag containing a photograph of Stella? Any views?’

Lodge looked away, then back so that his eyes met Coffin’s bleak gaze.

‘Ah,’ said Coffin, understanding what he saw. No need to make mysteries here, he told himself, least of all to yourself. This man has been told what was shown to me with relative delicacy … yes, I have to say they tried to be humane.

No more was said on that secret subject. Lodge departed murmuring that he would keep the Chief Commander in touch, but it looked at the moment that this was a terrorist killing. How his man had been flushed out, he did not yet know, but it was vital to find out.

‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who got on to him or how, but by God I am going to find out.’

‘A traitor in our midst,’ said Coffin sadly.

‘I hope not, but we may have to face it.’

‘Let’s meet for a drink sometime soon,’ said Coffin. There was a hole here that needed mending, patching up, and it was his job to do it.

After Lodge had gone, Paul Masters came in with a tray of coffee and file of papers.

‘Hot and strong. And this is today’s list: a CC and Accounts meeting at midday. A delegation from Swinehouse … ethnic problems. And Anthony Hermeside from the Home Office is inviting himself to lunch …’

Coffin groaned.

‘Yes, good luck, sir. I have all the notes you will need to brief you on him in the folder. Oh, and Hermeside doesn’t drink.’

He departed in polite good order. He had arranged what he could, smoothed Coffin’s path and now it was up to the Chief Commander.

Coffin drank his coffee, which was, as Paul had said, hot and strong, there was cream to go with it and a new sort of chocolate biscuit, all confirming once again that everyone knew everything and quite possibly more than could be known – rumour always magnified a story – and he was being offered comfort.

He drank some more coffee, gazing at a corner of the room where it seemed to him a part of his own mind was circling.

‘Ever been betrayed?’ he asked this self.

‘Many times and oft,’ Old Sobersides up in the corner, who seemed to know more about his life than he did himself, came back with. ‘And you just have to get on with it.’

He had asked for a report on the body in Percy Street to be delivered quickly, and it was now on his desk.

The report, put together with speed by Sergeant Mitchell said:

The body is that of a white male, probably aged between thirty-five and forty. He was not dirty, he had not been living rough, nor was he undernourished. His hair, beneath the wig, was dyed.

Cause of death was a neat stab wound which had not bled profusely. We will know more about this when the pathologist reports.

It appears that he had been killed in the room where he was found. Blood traces, cleaned up but still to be seen, indicated this. Forensics are working it now.

Also, it is clear that he had walked there, wearing the clothes in which he was found. A video of him rounding the corner out of Jamaica Street shows him on the afternoon of the day within twenty-four hours of which he died. He was alone.

A first search of the rest of the house has turned up nothing except bomb-damaged furniture. Bed linen and towels in a cupboard in the upper bedroom, along with some old clothes.

A copy of the relevant part of the video is attached.

It was a blurred dark picture but one in which a figure, wearing jeans, swinging the Chanel bag over a shoulder, could be clearly seen turning the corner.

Good work, Mitchell.

He studied the picture again. Yes, there he was, centre picture, clearly shown. The end of the street was more blurred.

Well, that was it, for the moment.

Taking advice from his darker, grimmer self, Coffin did as he was told and got on with the job, following the appointments laid out in his diary and pointed to by Paul Masters.

Used as Coffin was to the dead times in an investigation when nothing seems to move forward, he found it hard. In a way, it was Inspector Lodge’s case if the dead man was indeed his man. Equally, because of the involvement of Stella, Coffin ought to keep out. He did not intend to do so.

He worked through the day, keeping his head down to avoid the interested eyes and hints of sympathy, but his temper was not improved by either.

Paul Masters had accompanied him into one committee meeting to keep the notes.

As they entered this last meeting together, Paul Masters passed on one more message to the Chief Commander. He was sensitive to his chief’s moods and knew at once that he would not be pleased at what he was about to learn.

The message was in a sealed envelope, but nevertheless, through his own channels, Paul knew what was in it.

‘From Chief Superintendent Young, sir. He wanted you to have it soonest.’ You might need a strong drink when you’ve read it, instead of this committee of ways and means.

Coffin went into the room, already full of committee members, took his place at the head of the table, surveyed them bleakly, muttered an acknowledgement, then opened his letter. Why is it, he was saying to himself, that even colleagues you liked and respected (not always the same thing by any means) turn into trouble when they become committee members?

He read the letter quickly. ‘Thought you would wish to know that the dead man has been identified as Peter Corner, who was working undercover for Lodge. He had taken a job as office assistant and manager of the firm of builders repairing the house in Percy Street where he was found. He was identified by his underclothes, which had not been changed when he was dressed up as a woman. He had an invisible coded number, as is the rule, inside his pants.’

Coffin looked up from the letter. He could already tell that the bad news had been saved until last. ‘Lodge has sealed off the room which Corner rented in Pompey Land, Spinnergate. He found some notes there in which Miss Pinero’s name was mentioned.’

Damn, damn and damn, thought Coffin, even as he opened the meeting in a polite, calm voice.

Archie Young had scribbled an additional line or two himself which Paul Masters was not privy to since it had not been typed and thus was out of the chain of communication.

‘Series of photographs of Stella, taken in a bar, in company with an unknown man.’

Damn again, so the dead man had been watching Stella. Of course, she knew a lot of men, met them in the way of business.

Old Killjoy, his other self, who had come along with him and was nesting in the corner of this room, said sceptically: So?

Still, if there was anything bloody to come out, he would rather Archie Young knew than anyone. Not sure about Lodge, though.

He became aware at this point that the committee was waiting for him to speak. He forced his two selves to fuse, and took up the duties of a chairman of a difficult committee which must get down to business.

It was the last committee of the day. He considered telephoning Archie Young, but knew, suddenly, he wanted to be at home. He collected the dog, who had spent the day with the two secretaries who were his devoted slaves, put him in the car with his briefcase and overcoat to make the short journey back to the old church tower which still dominated the Pinero Theatre complex.

He parked the car, dragged out the dog, who wished to stay comfortably where he was, and unlocked the heavy front door to his home. Because of security this was something of a complicated business.

‘Stella?’ He stood at the bottom of the staircase, looking up. ‘Stella?’

There was no answer. Instead a kind of deadness as if no one really lived here any more.

Coffin sat on the bottom step, Augustus leaned against him, and they communed with each other on the misery of those left behind.

But life had to go on, as Augustus presently reminded Coffin by letting out a low, hungry growl. It was his asking growl, and said, ‘Food.’

‘All right, boy.’ Coffin got up. ‘Don’t know what I’ve got for you, but if all else fails we will go to eat at Max’s.’ Max had started with a small simple eating place not far from the old St Luke’s church, but skill and hard work from him and his family of pretty daughters had given it great success, to which he added a restaurant and bar in the Stella Pinero theatre.

Max had, however, helped Stella to fill a deep freeze with meat and fish dishes so Augustus and Coffin shared a warmed-up chicken casserole. Then Coffin made coffee while Augustus retired to bed.

In the silence of the living room, Coffin took out the packets of Stella’s letters. He opened first the collection which dated back to their earliest days together. Stella was a good, gossipy letter writer.

Will I find someone here, Stella, who is your dangerous friend? – Friend? I should not use that word.

He read quickly, seeking likely names: here were Ferdy Chase, Sidney Mells, Petra Land. These names came up frequently, not surprising really, he reflected, because in those days Stella had been a member of the Greenwich Repertory Company as had these performers.

One or two names, not to be associated with that group, but of whom Stella had gossipy stories to tell, came in: a man called Alex Barnet … a journalist, Coffin decided, and a woman referred to simply as Sallie, someone with the surname Eton, probably adopted. Actors always invented good names.

The letters were full of theatrical stories and jokes. The story of Marcia Meldrum at the height of her powers, screaming in fury when the bit of moveable scenery (Norman Arden was famous for his moveable scenery) rose up and took her wig with it. All right, she was famous for her thin hair, and her scalp had shone through, but her furious speech had gone down in theatrical history. And the tale of Edith Evans, her youngish lover and the staircase, yes that had a wicked twist to it.

Was this why I kept them? he asked himself. No, it was because when I had them, I hung on to a bit of Stella, and I always had this feeling that she meant more to me than I ever did to her.

Where was I when Stella wrote to me? The letters had various London addresses, so from that he knew they came during the restless period when he was moving around from lodgings to lodgings. All in various parts of South London, he noticed. Not the best part of his life.

Then a long gap when the two did not meet – let’s not go into that now, I am depressed enough – but it had been marriage, death and disaster for him. Stella had swum on the top of the water much better, making a success of her career, a short marriage but bearing a daughter, now a success in her own right, living far away and not much seen but in loving communication with Stella. Stella was better at human relations than he was, he reflected.

Another batch of letters. They were married now, but she still wrote when in New York or Edinburgh or on an Australian tour.

New names, but that was understandable because in the theatre you were friendly with the people in the play with you and then you all moved on.

Josie Evans, Bipper Stoney (what a name to choose, but a well-known singer), Heloise Divan. Marilyn and Henry Calan … yes, he remembered those, nice people.

One or two names hung around with Stella saying, And do you remember? Ferdy Chase, was one. Also Sallie … sex of the latter not clear. Coffin had assumed a woman, but now wondered if Sallie was not a man.

Stella just briefly mentioned names and meetings. Coffin knew he could run a check on these names.

Sylvia Soonest, Arthur Cornelian. Some of the names he remembered and could put a face to. Eton again.

Then he folded all these letters away and turned his mind to the photograph.

He knew he dreaded picking up anything of these latter letters but it had to be admitted that the doctored photograph did not show a very young Stella.

He forced himself to think about the photograph again: you could not see her face except in profile, and the curve of her back.

Fake, fake, fake, he said to himself. Come back home and tell me so, Stella.

The door bell rang, loudly, twice. It was Phoebe on the doorstep with a bottle under her arm.

‘Came to see how you are. Had anything to eat?’

‘I think so.’ He tried to remember. ‘Yes, the dog and I found something in the freezer.’

‘Have a drink then. Not a bad wine, not the best claret in the world, but that would be hard to find round here. And this is, so my worldly friends tell me, drinkable.’ She rolled the word round on her tongue as if she found it a bit of a joke. She looked towards him to see if he found it a joke, too. No, no laugh. ‘We will drink this together and get really sozzled.’ At least you will, if I can manage it.

They sat down together at the kitchen table in front of the big window which looked across the road to the old burying place now secularized into a little park. It was seldom used, too many ghosts for most people. The cats of the neighbourhood found it a good hunting ground.

The bottle of wine was opened and, after the first glass, Phoebe decided her old friend looked better.

‘Now what would you do,’ she said, ‘if this was not Stella but another woman who was missing?’

‘Oh, send people like you to find her.’

‘And how would they know where to look?’ She filled his glass again. They drank in silence for a moment or two.

‘I suppose I’d search for an address book, or a diary. Take a note of bills, anything that might give a hint.’

She just looked at him.

‘But it’s Stella,’ he protested. Stella’s privacy, how could he invade it?

‘If Stella is in danger – and I think that photograph on the dead man suggests she is – you have to find her.’ She filled both glasses again, almost emptying the bottle. ‘Can I help? Want me to do it?’

‘No. Thanks, Phoebe, but no.’ He stood up. ‘I am probably going to hate myself for what I am going to do.’ He held out a hand. ‘Thanks for coming.’

In the bedroom, Stella had a pretty white painted desk, very small, where she kept her private letters, as opposed to the professional ones which her secretary at the theatre kept on file. Very few letters, but he put them aside to be studied. A postcard with a view of the Tower of London, a scrawl on the back which said: ‘See you, love and remembrance, A.’

There was a blue leather diary with notes and reminders of engagements, mere initials which he could make nothing much of at the moment.

A big white card with letters in gold, advertising the Golden Grove Health Hydro, was tucked under the blotter but near to the telephone. The telephone numbers in neat gold print had been copied in large pencilled letters in the margin.

Coffin was aware of this trick of Stella’s: she was short-sighted so that she sometimes wrote the telephone number she wanted out in bold letters to be seen while she dialled.

Worth a shot, he thought. It was late evening but they would probably answer. Wouldn’t want to miss a booking.

‘Good evening,’ said a soft girlish voice, ‘the Golden Grove Hydro. Can I help you?’

He introduced himself. ‘I think my wife, Stella Pinero, is staying with you. Can I talk to her?’

There was a pause. ‘But Mr Coffin,’ the soft voice was plaintive, reproachful, ‘she cancelled. You yourself rang to say she could not come.’

Coffin put the receiver down, only too aware that whoever had rung, it had not been him.

He dialled Phoebe Astley’s number. He had to talk to someone.