Читать книгу A Double Coffin - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 7

Coffin went home to his wife, Stella, whom he found lying across the bed, wearing a red satin trouser suit, and painting her nails in a very delicate shade of pink. He liked her in red, but it made him nervous. It betokened what he thought of as her flighty mood. This was a mood which he loved but feared because you never knew how it would take her.

‘My darling,’ he said. ‘How glad I am that I am married to you.’

Stella sat up. ‘So am I, my dearest. It is very nice for me.’ She sounded slightly surprised. But she was a generous woman who liked to return praise for praise. Even if it was not strictly true, since they had their ups and downs and she could not deny that she sometimes found her husband tiresome. It was part of the function of being a husband, perhaps a necessary one.

‘I love you, darling.’ She held out her arms for a kiss.

They had hitherto conducted their marital conversations rather in what she called the ‘Noel Coward style’. In other words, relaxed, amused and detached. Except when they were quarrelling, when there were no holds barred. Stella enjoyed the quarrels, she said they gave her scope. As a dramatic actress, she needed scope.

It occurred to her to say: Mind my nail varnish, but this would have been both unkind and bad manners, so she enjoyed the embrace, only turning her eyes for a quick glance as she emerged. All well, no smudging.

‘What’s up?’

‘Why should anything be up?’

How to put this tactfully? ‘That was kind of a desperate kiss.’

‘You certainly know how to cut a fellow down to size,’ said Coffin, rolling over on his elbows on the bed, but he was more amused than angry. ‘Not desperate, just bewildered.’

‘That isn’t like you.’ Stella rescued the bottle of nail varnish, and put it away tidily in a case. It was true, her husband was usually in control of himself and the scene: sometimes angry, sometimes depressed, but always sure he knew where he stood. Or that was how she saw him.

‘I have just listened to the most extraordinary tale and I don’t know whether I believe it or not.’ He stood up, and walked to the window. There just in view was the old churchyard. A woman was pushing a pram round it, and there were two dogs behaving the way dogs do. An old man was sitting on a bench, apparently asleep. It was not going to be an easy area to excavate. If he decided to do it.

‘I suppose it is one of those cases you can’t talk about,’ said the experienced Stella.

‘I am going to talk about it to you.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ Stella appreciated the compliment.

‘You’re sensible.’

Ah, the compliment shrank a little.

‘So I am,’ she said, getting up, wrapping the silk jacket – which the warm embrace had disarranged a little – more closely round. ‘What are you looking at out there?’

‘The old churchyard.’

Death again, she thought, there’s always death in our life. My husband’s career has been largely built on the deaths of men, women, and children.

‘It figures in what I am asked to do: I am asked to investigate a serial killer who did the deeds over eighty years ago (only they were not called that then but monsters), and find the grave of one of his victims.’

‘It’s a joke?’

Coffin shook his head. ‘No, it wouldn’t be funny if it was, but it isn’t.’

‘You can ignore it, say you are too busy to investigate deaths so long ago.’

‘I’m too busy all right,’ said Coffin gloomily.

‘Who is it who is asking you to do such a thing?’

Coffin took a deep breath. ‘Richard Lavender, former Prime Minister.’

‘I thought he was dead. No, that is not true, I didn’t think about him at all. Past history.’

‘Go on,’ said Coffin, still gloomily. ‘You aren’t cheering me up, but it’s what I thought myself. More or less. He is not dead, very old, but alive and articulate. Also, it seems, the possessor of a conscience that must be assuaged.’

‘He didn’t do the killings? Don’t tell me he was the mass murderer! What a play it would make.’

‘It would take a Shakespeare to do it justice … but no, he said it was his father who did the killing. He and his mother did the burying. At least, if we can believe him.’

She caught the note of doubt in his voice. ‘You don’t believe him?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. Come on, what do you think, you’re outside it, what do you think?’

‘Be sensible, you mean.’ Stella sat down at her dressing table, and studied her face. She drew her mouth down in an ageing but sensible expression. ‘Well, why should he lie?’

‘That’s it. What is the motivation? I can’t make it out. He says he wants to die with a clear conscience.’

‘We all want that, I suppose, but it hasn’t worried him all these years.’ A thought struck her. ‘He must have been very young, you can’t blame a child.’

‘Not quite a child. A very clever one, too. And then all those years in power, controlling London. Why didn’t he do something then?’

‘He does believe it?’

‘Mm, mm. I think so … but I feel he might be under the influence of the people he lives with … A man called Jack Bradshaw.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Stella.

‘You know him?’

‘Comes to the theatre, belongs to the Theatre Club, even does the odd review for the local paper. Yes, I know him.’

‘What do you make of him?’

‘I like him, I think he’s got a sense of humour.’

‘Perhaps this is his joke,’ said Coffin, gloomily again.

‘He may not be kind,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I would count on him to do the kind thing. It might not be a kind joke.’

‘It wouldn’t be, but unkind to whom to rig this up? Apart from me, of course. He’d have to hate the old man to manipulate him in that way. He could do it, I suppose, he’s writing his life. Perhaps old Lavender is senile.’

‘Does he look it?’

‘No, but it might need a trained observer.’

‘Aren’t you one?’

‘In a way, yes … This conversation isn’t getting anywhere. Give me a new start.’

‘Does he live alone? Is there anyone else?’

‘He may have more of a circle than I know. I could find out, and there is the niece. Great-niece, but she is just a domestic character.’

Stella shook her head. Women are never just domestic characters. Inside they are plotting another world like everyone else. Probably even animals did it in their own way. Cats certainly did, she thought, looking down at her own cat, former lost cat, ex-warrior of the streets, now an aged domestic retainer in a livery of tabby.

‘Do you think he is mad?’

‘He could be. With the sort of madness that can come sometimes with extreme old age … Not exactly madness, really, just too many memories, too many dreams remembered.’

‘It seems to be the memories that are the trouble.’

Coffin went to the window to look down on what he could see of the former church below, now part of the St Luke’s Theatre Complex, and then beyond to what had been the old churchyard, with the aged tombstones ranged around it like dead teeth.

The church was a solid Victorian building which had survived two world wars, much bombing, only to fall victim to the decline in churchgoing. The church had been deconsecrated, and converted into a dwelling in the tower, into which Coffin had moved, while the church itself had been turned into a theatre, and a theatre workshop and an experimental theatre.

‘It was a different world outside there then, when he was a boy. The London of his childhood was rougher and nastier and poorer in so many ways. Dark streets, and cramped, crowded living places.’

‘Oh come on. Dickens was dead, you know.’

But Coffin would not be stopped. ‘As a boy, he must have heard all about the murdered women, read about them in news sheets. Talked about it. Perhaps he buried it in his memory through the years as he became rich and successful. Now he has let the memory out, and he has taken on the guilt.’

Stella said: ‘I must think about that … perhaps there was something in those days that he had guilt about and he has transferred it … Make a good play.’

‘Jack the Ripper was not so far off in the past. Still a terrible name to conjure with. Talked about at the time … People would have been reminded of him. It would have been in his mind.’

‘Perhaps his father was Jack the Ripper,’ said Stella lightly. ‘Come back for a second go.’

‘That would be something, to identify the Ripper after all this time,’ said Coffin, ‘and to have him father a Prime Minister.’

It was not quite a joke.

As he looked out of the window, he saw a tall figure going into the old churchyard; Coffin watched as the young man threw himself full length under a tree and buried his face in his hands.

An actor, of course. Only an actor walked with that air of ease and elegance, and then behaved with so much emotion. Unless he was a duke.

‘Who is that beautiful young man who crossed the road with such consummate grace and then fell on his face?’

Stella got up to look. ‘Oh, that’s Martin. Martin Marlowe. He’s just joined the company. He is lovely, isn’t he?’ There was frank appreciation in her voice: no one liked a beautiful young man more than Stella. Usually it went no further than detached admiration, but possibly not always.

Coffin looked at her and shook his head. ‘Not for you, darling.’

‘I wouldn’t think of it.’

‘You may think. Look but don’t touch.’

Stella laughed. ‘You are a pig. Or you can be. But bless you, I promise you that boy has enough emotion in his life without me joining in.’

‘I thought that from the way he fell upon the grass. Hamlet himself.’

‘Oh, do you think so?’ Stella was appraising. ‘I see him more as Romeo. Romeo after he’s lost Juliet.’

‘Has he lost his Juliet?’

‘Not yet, but he’s well on the way. He’s had a noisy row with his girlfriend, everyone heard, he was most articulate. So was she, come to that.’ She didn’t sound too miserable at the thought. ‘It will give depth to his acting, of course.’

Coffin was still looking out of the window. ‘That must be why he is beating the grass with his fist. Is that sorrow? I am bound to say it looks more like anger.’

Stella came to look. ‘I expect he is just rehearsing his part.’

‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Martin Marlowe.’

Coffin was thoughtful. ‘Real name or just for acting?’

Stella said slowly, ‘His real name.’

‘Ah.’

There was a pause, then she said: ‘You know who he is?’

Coffin said slowly but without emphasis: ‘I know.’

‘I suppose you usually get to know things like that.’

‘It’s part of the job. As you say, I get told that sort of thing.’

‘He doesn’t talk about it a lot, but he understands that people know and do. He doesn’t hide it, I call that brave.’

‘I didn’t know he was in a cast here.’

‘He’s only just joined. I went down to Bristol to see him act there, liked what I saw and offered him a part. He’s very young still …’

‘I could see that.’ It had been a very young man who had flung himself on the grass, and then to hammer it with his fists. An emotional young man. He did not accept Stella’s comment that he was rehearsing his part.

‘He did well at RADA, didn’t win any prizes, but we all know that prizewinners don’t necessarily have the most brilliant careers.’ Stella herself had never won a prize as a young actress, but her career afterwards had brought her several; she was up for a BAFTA award now. ‘But he has a way of getting straight at the audience that will stand him in good stead.’ She added: ‘Of course, he knows some people remember what took place and will talk about it. He accepts it. He told me that he doesn’t remember much …’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘He was only eight.’

‘You can remember a lot of what happened to you at eight,’ said Coffin. ‘And death … murder … your own father.’

‘But that is just what would block it.’

‘What about the sister?’ The sister had been much older, about sixteen.

‘She is a surgeon in a hospital in East Hythe.’

‘Isn’t it unwise to let a young woman so well acquainted with a knife become a surgeon?’

Stella was angry. ‘That is very unkind. And not like you.’

‘Yes, perhaps it is in bad taste.’

She is a different person from the girl who stabbed her father.’

But Coffin had read the official reports on the murder, had read the pathologist’s notes and seen the photographs of the victim. None of these had been seen by Stella.

Fourteen years earlier a family tragedy had been played out across the river in Chelsea. Henry Arthur Marlowe, a reasonably successful barrister, but a heavy drinker who became violent when drunk, was stabbed to death by his two children: a son, Martin, aged eight and a daughter, Clara, then sixteen. They stabbed him to protect their mother whom her husband treated savagely when drunk. Within a few weeks, the mother killed herself. In spite of everything, she had loved her husband. The girl Clara was in deep shock, inarticulate, not able to talk freely; not willing to, either.

The sitting room in the house in Vernon Gardens was full of blood, there was blood on the stairs, blood in the bathroom and blood in the bedroom where Averil Marlowe lay deeply asleep; she had taken a sedative.

The victim was lying, his body half across the doorway into the hall. He had been stabbed several times. Each wound penetrating deeply. This had been no quick killing.

The girl had let her mother have her sleep out before waking her with a cup of tea to tell what they had done. She herself telephoned the police, confessing to the killing.

When the police got there, the boy was found, asleep with the knife clasped to his chest. Both he and the girl were covered in blood which they had not washed off.

From prints on the knife the boy had certainly held the knife, and there was a bloody thumbprint on his father’s shirt.

But the girl did the main job. Detective Inspector Headerley had said. And he had added a scribbled note to the report that Coffin had seen: ‘And she wasn’t joking, every blow was meant.’

The boy, being so young, was not charged with any crime and could not be charged – he was sent to live with foster parents. The girl was put into a special establishment for disturbed and violent children, where she had a breakdown but responded to treatment, and after she was calm and cooperative, no trouble to anyone. Being highly intelligent, she had no trouble getting the exam levels demanded by the medical school of her choice. Her background was known, but after several interviews she was accepted. She was the best student of her year, but she had one little idiosyncrasy: she never spoke unless spoken to.

Still looking out of the window, Coffin said: ‘Do they still see each other, the brother and sister?’

‘I believe so,’ said Stella. ‘But I am only just beginning to know him, and I have only seen her once.’

‘Did she speak to you?’

‘No, that’s how it goes, I believe.’

‘Hard on her patients.’

‘Martin says she has a professional technique for work. I think they fill in a questionnaire and read it to her, that gets her going.’

Coffin still had his eyes on Martin, then he turned to Stella. ‘I have always had a feeling that we got something wrong about that case.’ He shook his head. ‘And yet I don’t know what.’ He looked out of the window again. ‘He’s getting up.’

‘Rehearsal over,’ said Stella cheerfully.

Coffin watched Martin’s progress; he certainly was handsome, and strode forward with a gentle, elegant air that was attractive. ‘He’s coming this way. I believe he is going to call on you.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Stella. ‘I asked him over for a drink.’

‘Stella,’ said Coffin warningly.

‘No, of course not.’ She sat up very straight and managed to look indignant. ‘Nothing like that. Why, he’s a baby.’ Then she said sweetly: ‘You’ll get a stiff neck if you look out of the window at that angle, and you know policemen are very prone to stiff necks … it’s an occupational disease.’

It was very hard to get the better of Stella, reflected Coffin as he went down the long staircase to let Martin in and take him to the sitting room, which, like the bedroom, overlooked the churchyard. It would be flooded with sunlight, and Stella had recently redecorated it in soft yellow. He was still laughing when he got to the door.

Martin stood outside on the low step, running a hand up and down the soft silk sleeve of his jacket. He looked expectant but smiled tentatively. ‘Stella asked me in for a drink before dinner.’

‘I expect she will ask you to dinner too. Come on in.’ Coffin held the door.

‘Oh, I never think of her as cooking.’

‘Oh, she won’t cook it.’

Martin looked at Coffin with surprise and query.

‘Not me either,’ said Coffin. ‘I expect we will go to Max’s or get him to send something over.’

The young man tripped on the stairs and apologized. ‘S-sorry.’ He had a little stammer.

‘This is a difficult staircase. Copied from a Norman trip stair in castles, I always say,’ joked Coffin. He put out a hand to steady the lad.

‘S-sorry … I’m not usually so clumsy.’ Martin had this slight but not unpleasing stammer. ‘I’m always nervous with a policeman.’ He looked at Coffin. ‘I’ve got a bit of a past, as you know.’

Coffin nodded silently.

‘I always tell people if they don’t know, just to get it out of the way.’

‘You had no need to tell me.’

‘I expect you knew anyway. You probably know more than I do. The thing is, I’ve forgotten. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘No, not silly at all. It’s probably a sensible way of dealing with it.’

Martin looked at Coffin as if he didn’t know exactly how to take this. Then the sitting room door was opened smartly and Augustus burst forth with a little bark. Stella followed, red satin catching the light. ‘He says he needs a run,’ she said, holding out her hand to Martin. ‘Come in, Martin.’

Martin bent down to pat the dog. ‘Good boy, nice fellow.’ He looked up. ‘I’ll take him, Stella. Just across the road to the park.’

‘I don’t know if dogs are allowed there,’ said Stella doubtfully.

‘Oh, this fine fellow won’t be stopped. He’s a real beauty. You were right to get him, Stella.’

Augustus and Martin seemed acquainted, which Coffin found mildly irritating. ‘You know the dog?’

‘Oh yes, isn’t he nice? He’s from the Deddington kennels … they have a lot of the old Alderbourne breed in them which makes them special. I knew it was the right place to go to.’

‘I’ve always had mongrels before,’ said Coffin, thinking of his last dog and the dog of his troubled boyhood, who had appeared out of a bomb shelter, the only survivor. Coffin had always felt that he and that first dog had a lot in common. But then he had felt the same about the second, only a mongrel, a rangy beast and a good fighter.

‘Oh, they’re the best of all,’ said Martin, ‘if you can get a good one, but if not you can’t go wrong with a peke.’

‘And so you told Stella?’

‘Yes, she took my advice.’ Martin bent down to pat the dog. ‘Come on, Gus, off we go.’

They bounded down the stairs, sure-footed this time.

‘So he chose the dog for you,’ said Coffin, coming back into the room and throwing himself on the sofa. ‘Let’s get out the champagne.’

‘Oh, come on.’ A flutter of red silk settled beside him. ‘Don’t be childish, besides, he’s your dog, I bought him for you. He’s Augustus, his mother was called Empress and his father was Pompey, Policeman of Rome.’ And she laughed.

Coffin laughed in spite of himself. ‘You are making that up.’

‘You can look at his pedigree.’

He stood up. ‘I don’t believe a word of it, but I will get the drinks out. And do you want champagne?’

‘No, of course not, he’s far too young to give good champagne to, let him have gin and like it. Or a nice sweet white wine, much more his style.’

‘I’d be surprised,’ said Coffin, as he moved away. ‘He has obviously got good taste.’

He got the reward for his good humour because Stella came up to him and kissed his cheek. ‘That is a lovely compliment, thank you.’

‘He’s back, there’s the bell.’

Dog, Martin and Coffin, with a tray of drinks, came back into the living room together. By this time, Stella was standing by the window staring down across the road to the old churchyard. Last year it had been turned into a small park, and all the dead, long dead they were by then, were disinterred and buried in one big grave in the new cemetery in East Hythe Road, where one great stone was their memorial. The old headstones were placed like a stone fringe in the former churchyard. The years had worn away most of the inscriptions but some could still be read: she remembered a Duckett, several Cruins, and many Earders, all of which names the district still knew. Families seemed to stay in Spinnergate over the generations.

Surely, she asked herself, when the churchyard was turned into a park, and graves were dug up, they would have found a body if one had been buried there?

As Coffin came up to her, offering her a glass of wine, she looked towards where Martin was playing with the dog, and murmured: ‘But wouldn’t a body have been found last year when the graves were dug up?’

‘I have been wondering about that myself,’ he said quietly. ‘None was found as far as I know, and I think I would know, but as I remember only the central area of the churchyard was excavated, and a wild area with shrubs and grass around left.’

He moved away to give Martin his drink. Martin stood up and smiled. ‘Thanks, I feel better already. I felt suicidal before I came … this is my big chance’ – he looked at Stella – ‘and I don’t want to fluff it …’ He walked over to her, drink in hand, and followed by Augustus. ‘I really have a problem with Shakespeare … I know you are not supposed to say so, but the verse is so difficult … it’s dialogue, right? I want it to sound like dialogue and not verse.’

‘Well, Olivier managed it,’ observed Stella, ‘and Gielgud managed to combine both.’

Martin groaned. ‘Have a heart, please. I am not in their class. Not yet.’

‘What’s the part that worries you?’ asked Coffin, trying to take his own mind off a dead woman who might not be there.

‘Malvolio, a tricky part at the best and I have to get it across to an audience of schoolchildren.’

Stella explained: It’s an examination text this year – we always try to do a performance of the play if we can. We get a grant from the Schools Theatre Society on condition we do it. Short run and full houses … the kids are conscripted.’ She turned to Martin. ‘Best part in the play, and you know it.’

‘And the most difficult … I’ve always fancied Sir Toby Belch.’

‘You will have to wait a decade or two to do that.’

‘Or Maria … good part, that.’

‘Don’t go bisexual on me.’

Coffin watched them gloomily: they were flirting, it was only a theatrical flirtation, which did not usually mean much, but he found it hard to handle. And you never knew where it could go: to bed quite often, and then best friends for ever, only they might never meet again – that was the theatre world.

I’m afraid, he said to himself, that’s it. I am afraid. I fenced myself in, I built a wall and felt safe inside it. Stella broke down that wall. I can’t risk anything with Stella and nature has not made me a trusting customer.

Nature and his profession. There he was again, thinking about Dick Lavender and his astonishing story. He wondered if he could get away with doing nothing, and telling the old man that there had been nothing to find.

But bodies and bones have a way of outing themselves when least you want them to.

He raised his eyes to Martin, who was saying that in many ways Shakespeare’s tragedies were easier to act than his comedies. ‘We laugh at different things now compared with Tudor England, but we cry at the same. I could manage tragedy.’

No doubt, thought Coffin. Perhaps we all can.

‘Depends on the part,’ said Stella, always willing to enter into a good theatrical discussion. ‘I defy anyone to call Hamlet easy, or Lear.’

‘They support you,’ said Martin with animation, ‘Iago must be a wonderful part to play.’

‘We don’t do Othello much for the school and college audiences,’ said Stella drily.

Augustus sidled up to Stella, opening his mouth and looking at her intently. He gave a little bark.

‘He wants a drink.’ Martin reached out a hand to pat the white head.

‘He’s not having gin or wine.’

The loose sleeve of Martin’s jacket had fallen back; Coffin saw a line of just-healed scratches on his arm. Three ragged, not parallel but haphazard, lines. Gouged out. They didn’t look like loving but overpassionate scratches, more as if delivered with a sharp instrument. Say a knife. To his experienced eye they looked both deep and sore. Fairly new, also.

‘I’ll get a bowl of water,’ Coffin said. A self-mutilator? Or how much did the lad see of his sister of the knife?

The conversation was going on when he got back. Stella was showing Martin a book of her press cuttings; she was unusual among actresses since she kept bad notices as well as good ones. ‘Look at that one’ – she pointed – ‘the stoat … never got a good notice out of that man, I always got the parts his girlfriend wanted. Even when he decided that he wanted a boyfriend and not a girlfriend, he didn’t change to me … Now this one, bit sharp, but not bad. I was a bit facile in those days.’ She frowned. ‘I think I have got over that, life knocks it out of you in the long run.’

Martin picked out a review. ‘You know, I couldn’t do that … keep the bad notices. I’d have to tear them up, pretend they hadn’t happened.’

‘It’s one way,’ said Stella, closing the book.

‘That’s what makes Jaimie so mad with us … my girlfriend,’ he explained. ‘She says I bottle things up. So I do, I suppose.’ He sighed and suddenly looked very young.

‘Jaimie is not usually a girl’s name, is it?’

‘Can be. She’s very strong, is my Jaimie, but we do get across each other,’ he said sadly. ‘I expert we will split up. She says I’m a dreamer, not focused and too repressed.’

‘She does love you.’

‘I daresay it is true … she’s very focused herself.’

‘What does she do?’

‘A writer … freelance journalist … she says I am a table for one permanently reserved.’

‘She has a good turn of phrase.’

‘She’s very clever; she’s on to a good story at the moment.’

‘Oh?’

‘No, she hasn’t said much, probably afraid I’ll talk too loudly. Something from the past is all I know.’ He had seen Coffin notice his arm and he smoothed the sleeve down in a protective way. ‘Never keep a cat,’ he said lightly.

‘We do, but it doesn’t scratch.’ Not quite true because Tiddles not only put out a sharp paw on occasion but had been known to bite as well. Lovingly, Stella always said, but Coffin wondered.

When the telephone rang, Stella, who was nearest, picked up the receiver. Her voice registered surprise. ‘It’s for you, Martin.’ And she handed the telephone over.

‘Jaimie, hello. Yes, I’ll be there … d-down …’ He was stuttering again. He turned to Stella: ‘It’s Jaimie, I asked her to pick me up here.’

Stella nodded. ‘She’s on the way then?’

‘Down below, mobile phone.’

Stella decided to be gracious; she was also curious. ‘Ask her to come up for a drink.’

Martin stood up, a wary look on his face. ‘Thank you, I know she admires you. She would I-love to come.’ Once again he stammered.

They heard him clattering down the stairs, the door open, then silence.

There was a long wait.

‘She doesn’t want to come,’ Coffin said.

‘No, in spite of admiring me so much … Wonder what she’s like.’

‘Tough, I guess.’

‘Wonder if she gave him those cuts on his arm?’

‘You saw them?’

‘Of course, and no cat did them. She did. Love and hate.’

Coffin stood up. ‘I think they are coming.’ He held up a hand. ‘Listen.’ Someone fell up the stairs, then laughed an apology, getting only silence in reply.

Martin was first into the room; he was followed by a tall, young woman with a mane of fair hair, unbrushed, wearing dark jeans and a dark sweater. She had a small, lovely face, but she looked cross.

Proudly, Martin introduced her: ‘This is Jaimie.’

She held out a hand. ‘Jaimie Layard.’ The hand was not directed at anyone in particular.

Stella took the hand, pressing it gently before returning it to its owner. ‘Jaimie is a pretty name, but unusual.’

Jaimie’s face did not change, but she was willing to provide some information. ‘I took the name myself, I got it out of a book at the time – I was aged eight. I was christened Jessamond and it wasn’t right for me, I didn’t want to go through life as Jessamond. Jaimie did me, I might have chosen anything though. I don’t see why you shouldn’t change your name as you grow.’

‘Actresses do change their name,’ said Stella. ‘I use my own, but it might have suited me to change it. And if there had been another Stella Pinero on the boards, then I would have had to change. Couldn’t have two of us.’ She smiled at Jaimie. ‘A professional matter. You are a writer?’

‘Journalist.’ Jaimie accepted the glass of wine that Coffin was offering to her.

‘Which paper?’ asked Coffin.

Jaimie drank some wine. ‘Freelance,’ she said after a pause.

‘Martin says you are working on a story?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s something or nothing. I may drop it.’

How does a freelance journalist live, if she drops her story without getting it into print? Coffin asked himself. Jaimie, although plainly dressed, was not poorly dressed, her clothes were expensive, the bag thrown over one shoulder was beautifully shaped and of very good leather. Even her hair was designer-unbrushed. Then he remembered her name was Layard. Money, there. He remembered something else about the Layard family too: soldiers, fighting men all, Jaimie looked a fighter.

At the moment, she looked a cross, aggressive fighter who was not pleased with Martin, not pleased to be dragged up the tower, and even less pleased to meet a policeman and his actress wife. Maybe she suffered from jealousy and if so he had a fellow feeling.

The telephone rang on the table by his side. He picked it up.

‘This is Dr Bradshaw … May I speak to John Coffin?’

‘Speaking.’

‘It really is John Coffin himself? This is such a very confidential matter.’

Coffin covered the telephone. ‘Stella, I will take this call downstairs. Please excuse me, everyone.’

In the kitchen, he asked what the call was all about.

‘First, here is the telephone number of the journalist.’ Jack Bradshaw read it out. It was a local number. ‘But I have not succeeded ever in talking to her directly, you get the answerphone and later she rings back.’

A phone in a rented room. Coffin thought. But we could trace it easily enough.

‘Her name.’ Jack went on, ‘did I say, is Marjorie Wardy?’ His voice dropped.

Coffin held the receiver to his ear: And I might already know who she is.

‘Can you describe her?’

‘Tall, wearing dark spectacles, with curly black hair.’

Ah. Well, there were wigs.

‘I expect I can find her. And she is digging around in the story?’

‘I think so, from the questions she asked. But I cannot imagine how she got on to it.’

‘Dick Lavender hasn’t spoken of it to anyone?’

‘Not that I know of, he’s only recently told me. I could sense he was working up to something but he took his time. To tell you the truth, I believe it was her questions that made him feel he must unburden himself before it was done for him.’

‘Would it be so terrible if it came out? It will in the end if I go investigating.’

‘He thinks so. If it comes out that his father was a killer of women, then he wants to be the one who tells the story.’

‘Yes, I see the force of that.’

‘But there is something else: I told you he had had anonymous letters … Today there was an attack on him.’

‘What? Is he harmed?’

‘A big bunch of mixed flowers was delivered … it was covered in transparent paper; when it was opened it appeared that the flowers had been covered with some sort of irritant powder affecting the eyes, nose and throat.’

‘So what happened?’

‘It was opened by Janet, she deals with all parcels, he never came near it, but it was meant to hurt. For an old man the result might have been serious. No, it was sent by an ill wisher.’

‘Not one who knew the ways of the household, though.’

‘True. So no one close. There is hardly anyone, to be honest, only Janet and the woman who comes in once a week to help with the laundry – the old man likes all his personal linen washed and ironed by hand, no laundry. But Lavender thinks, and I think too, that it is someone who knows the story. And wants …’ He hesitated.

‘Vengeance? It’s been a long time coming. Hardly likely to be a contemporary of Lavender as a boy.’

‘No, but possibly the descendant of one, someone, man or woman, who knew about it from parents or grandparents. Seriously, I believe there is someone out there who is after the old man. And I cannot believe it goes back to his days in government, although God knows he made enough enemies then. But most of them are dead. No, this is someone else.’

Oh good, Coffin thought, not only do I have to find the remains of a long-dead woman, but I also have to find a hunter in the shadows.

He went to the kitchen to look out; he was nearer to the old churchyard on this lower floor. A child was playing on the grass while his mother stood watching. An older woman was walking towards one of the flower beds. An old man sat on one of the seats, smoking and reading a paper.

Peaceful scene. Coffin thought. I may be about to turn it into a less tranquil place. He could imagine the digging, the police screens set up to shield what they might have found.

He turned away. I have been told an extraordinary story. The threatening letters to Richard Lavender, and now this bunch of flowers, they are not dangerous episodes in themselves, but there is a threat.

He heard Martin and Jaimie tumbling down the stairs, he could hear voices which sounded angry. He thought he heard her say she didn’t want to come to this house again.

Upstairs, Stella was finishing her drink with a thoughtful look. ‘I didn’t ask them to stay for a meal, I think they are about to have a quarrel. One of many, I fear. So I encouraged them to go.’

Coffin sat down beside her, he picked up the end of the silk girdle that went round Stella’s waist and was tied up on the side. ‘Do you think you could hide all that fair hair of hers under a wig?’

Stella shrugged. ‘I expect you could. Yes, I daresay. Why?’

‘Tell you later, but I feel as though I am being led into an unpleasant business.’

And as if the past had reached out a bony hand to tweak him. He did not enjoy being reminded of his own boyhood and youth, when he had felt that he might get stuck in a world he did not like and when he knew it was up to him to fight his way out.

He was going to need assistance with the problem the former Prime Minister had set. It was like being given an errand by Mr Gladstone, the moral imperative was strong.

Phoebe Astley, he thought, he would set her to work.

He looked at Stella; if she was jealous of any other woman in his life, then it was Phoebe.