‘Oh look, and there’s a splendid shelf in the bathroom for my Oscar.’
‘Is that where you keep it?’
‘Just this one. I’ll have to think again for the next one.’ If ever, Stella thought. Fat chance. When had she made her last film?
Their eyes had met in a glance of amused understanding; they liked each other, a friendship could be put together here of the more detached, long-range sort that women rarely manage.
‘Are they really made of solid gold?’
‘I don’t think so. Mine isn’t,’ said Stella absently. ‘I believe I shall be happy here.’ She was due for a spell of being happy. Everyone had their turn, didn’t they?
‘I hope the building still in process won’t disturb you too much. Don’t worry about security, it’s pretty good. I had special locks and bolts put in. I’ll see you get your keys. We used to have a caretaker on the site, but the last one left without giving notice.’
‘That’s the way it goes.’
‘He’d been here some time, too. I think he had a quarrel with the builders. But I’m interviewing another one. And my brother has the apartment in the tower. He’s a policeman.’
‘I know,’ said Stella. She had seen him around, and kept her distance. ‘I know him. Have done for years. On and off.’
When they had first known each other, he had loved her and she had not loved him back, or not much. When they had next got together, she had loved him more, or so she thought, and he had been more casual. Now they hardly seemed to know each other at all, and that was sad. It was not how it should have been. Somehow, somewhere, they had missed a turning they should have taken.
‘He’s a good bloke.’
Stella had agreed, but to herself she had added: A difficult man. Too much death hanging about him. I mean, she said to herself, what is it when you make love to someone and you smell carbolic on his hands? And you say: My God, what’s that, what have you been doing? And he says: Well, just something I came close to and I thought I’d better … Yes, wash it off. Well, what did that do to you?
The kitchen was small but well arranged.
I might even try to cook again, thought Stella. She looked at her beautifully painted nails. The only bad thing about cooking was the washing up. Her last marriage had foundered on the piles of dirty crockery filling the sink. Marry an actor, marry a successful one, and he hasn’t got time to do the dishes, either! Marry a failure, and it’s beneath his dignity. Somehow they had never got round to buying a dishwasher.
She opened the refrigerator. Letty had left a bottle of champagne inside with a card that just said WELCOME. The refrigerator had a nice freezer on top but this she did not open.
What was that noise she could hear? People talking loudly and a car arriving. Louder voices now. She hoped she wasn’t always going to be so aware of her neighbours.
Correction: the neighbour. The only one she had so far: John Coffin.
In the living-room with a view on to the old churchyard, now turned into a piazza and garden leading to the Theatre Workshop, she paused to realize for the first time that living so close to the job would make her vulnerable to all those members of the cast she might want to avoid. There was always someone, usually more than one, in a company who wanted to argue, complain, cry or even just talk. Her present production was blessed, if that was the word, with a young actress, Lily Goldstone, from a notable theatrical family, who had strong political views. She was always trying to buttonhole Stella.
But the evening sun rested so beautifully on the wall, filling Stella with hope. I can be happy here, she thought, and she poured herself a glass of champagne from the bottle that Letty had left her. Why not? She could go back to mineral water tomorrow.
While she sipped it she stared out of the window. From another window she could see the main road. She stared.
There was a police car, with lights flashing and a party was being loaded into it. She could see a small boy, and two women wearing flowery hats, while a fourth figure seemed to be explaining that he could not leave his cleaning cart.
Good actor, that man, I like his mime, thought Stella, watching the moving figure. I must find out what is going on.
She went into the hall, flinging open her front door with a flourish, but clutching her wine.
She walked straight into John Coffin. They stared at each other.
‘What’s happening?’
He did not answer at once.
‘No, don’t tell me. Who’s dead?’
He still didn’t answer.
Stella shrugged and held out her hand. ‘Well. It’s a way to meet.’ She was half amused, half cross. It was so like their whole career together, which had stretched over many years and endured many ups and downs.
‘I have seen you around. I thought you were avoiding me.’
‘Yes and no.’ Stella showed her glass. ‘Come in and have a drink. Your sister left me a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator as a coming-in present.’
‘More than she did for me.’ But come to think of it, perhaps she had; he hadn’t opened the refrigerator since he moved in, he must take a look.
He followed Stella into the bare living-room. At least he had carpets down and pictures on the wall, he was one step ahead of her.
‘You don’t mind a toothglass?’ Letty’s interior decorator had provided two, one each side of the basin. The basin looked like pale green marble but probably was not. ‘You’re in the tower, aren’t you? What’s it like?’
‘Fine,’ said Coffin, adding cautiously, ‘so far.’
‘And what was all that commotion about?’
‘Nothing that need concern us here.’
‘I hope you are right. I haven’t moved into a murder den, have I? With dead bodies hidden under the floorboards?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So what was it?’
He remembered she never gave up. And then he thought that word would soon get around about the head. Mimsie would see to that, not to mention the road-sweeper and the boy.
‘I suppose I might as well tell you, but keep quiet about it. It was a head. In an urn. And it somehow got mislaid.’ He did not believe that to be true for a minute.
‘And turned up where?’
‘In the gutter and was brought to me here.’
‘Why?’
‘It seemed to be addressed to here. To the church.’ Stella drank some champagne. ‘Your sister told me that no bodies had been buried here for a long while.’
‘That’s quite true.’
Stella poured them both some more champagne. ‘Drink up, it doesn’t keep. So did you recognize the face?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’ Hard to distinguish the features in that swollen face. He hadn’t tried very hard. But no, he didn’t think he knew him. Or her.
‘Well, someone out there has lost a head.’
‘Can we stop talking about the head?’
Stella moved a step away, placing herself with unconscious artistry in mid-scene and where the spotlight of the sun fell upon her. ‘I ought to congratulate you on your big success, what you’ve done, where you’ve got to.’
‘Consider it said. What about you?’
‘Up and down. You know how it is in this business.’
‘Letty says you are going to have a big success with your production of Hedda Gabler.’
‘We’ll have to wait and see. Letty has put in a very good actor-manager. Do you know him? Charlie Driscoll.’ Coffin shook his head. ‘He’s formed a theatre club and got Peter Pond to find the money to put on four plays. I’m doing one of them, the Ibsen. Charlie will be Judge Brack.’
‘Not acting any more?’
‘Not given it up, don’t think that. I might do something with Peter later. Something modern … What will happen to the head and the little party that were carrying it away?’
‘They will be taken to the local station, where the head will be deposited. Then they will give statements, after which they will be d
riven home. Why are you so interested?’
‘I believe I know the boy. He hangs around the theatre, I think he’s stage-struck.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Older than he looks, like all of us pro’s.’
‘You aren’t suggesting he knows anything about the head?’ It was, after all, a highly theatrical discovery.
‘No, of course not. But I can’t think of anyone who will get more out of it than he will.’ Stella picked up the bottle. ‘Let’s finish the champagne.’
Theatricals have a notoriously strong tolerance for drink, and so do policemen, it goes with the job, but what with not having eaten and the closeness of Stella, John Coffin began to feel as if he was floating.
Stella started again.
‘And what about the head? Where will that go?’
‘An inquiry will start to establish whose head and where it came from. I expect they will begin by asking questions at the funeral parlour.’
‘I don’t like it. The poor chap who’s lost his head! Was he dead when it was cut off?’
She had a point there.
‘That will be one of the questions asked. I think it was probably cut off after death.’
Either way it was nasty.
Stella shivered. ‘Well, I hope it’s no one I know.’
‘That’s not likely, is it?’
‘No, none of my friends are missing,’ Stella agreed. ‘But some of them would have to be gone a very long time before I noticed … And then, where is the rest of him?’
‘I expect we will find him,’ said Coffin. Bodies had a way of turning up.
‘Supposing you found two bodies, and both were headless, how would you know to whom the head belonged?’
‘Stella, how much champagne have you had?’
She put her glass down on the table. ‘Far too much. Would you like to take me out to dinner? I’m interested in crime at the moment.’
‘We can go to the Indian place round the corner, I suppose.’
‘Oh, how keen you sound.’
‘I am keen. Why are you interested in crime?’
‘I’m producing Hedda Gabler. She was a criminal, a delinquent soul if there ever was one. I don’t see her as a tragic heroine but as a criminal.’
‘Poor Ibsen. Well, come on, let’s go and eat curry. And tomorrow, if you are still interested in crime, you can come to a reception for some foreign policemen in our Black Museum and take a look round.’
The Indian restaurant, the Empress of India, was a friendly place, quiet and dark, where Stella seemed fully as well known as John Coffin, if not better.
‘We often eat here after rehearsal. This is my first play as director, but I had a part in Trelawney of the Wells, which opened the Workshop.’
‘What part was that?’
Stella grimaced. ‘Not Trelawney. I’m a year or two too old for that, alas. No, I was Mrs Mossop. I had to pad, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Coffin loyally.
‘But not as much as all that,’ went on the ever honest Stella. ‘So I’ve been on a diet ever since. Not tonight, though.’
Over the curried chicken and poppadoms they gossiped about the Theatre Workshop. The boy was mentioned.
‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Well, we call him Little Billy. What did he tell you?’
‘William Larger.’
‘There you are, then.’
Not for the first time, Coffin registered the sometimes simple jokes that satisfied theatre folk.
Over a last glass of wine, Stella leaned forward. She had been making up her mind to speak and the wine helped.
‘Didn’t tell you quite all the truth.’
‘No?’
‘Someone has gone missing from my circle.’
‘Who?’ Coffin asked.
‘A girl. One of the group at the Workshop. She just went off and never came back. She had had a quarrel with some of the cast about the costumes.’ Stella leaned back and looked at him. There was a lot more to tell, but she would get it all out by degrees. ‘Could the head have been hers?’
‘What was she like?’
‘Very young. Pretty face, blonde hair and big blue eyes. Strong-boned. Quite a big girl.’
‘I don’t think it was her.’
‘No?’
‘No. Anyway, she must have had friends and family who would be missing her.’
‘I don’t know.’ Stella was doubtful. ‘She came from New Zealand. It might be some time before they noticed.’
Coffin thought about the teeth he had seen. The teeth had looked big and old. Stained and irregular. One or two missing.
‘I think it was a man,’ he said. ‘Probably a man.’
But you could never be sure. Teeth in a dead head always looked bigger than they were.
Little Billy felt he was not getting the attention he deserved from his parents. His arrival home in a police car had caused some concern, but now they seemed more preoccupied with a fierce discussion about selling their time-share villa in Spain. His father had recently started his own business in Leathergate and wanted every penny, whereas his mother was thinking about her suntan.
‘Let me get Rowanworks off the ground and we can afford a villa in Tuscany,’ pleaded his father. ‘Spain’s getting too crowded now, we’d be better off making a move.’
He had judged his wife aright. Tuscany was assuredly more chic. Her opposition softened.
‘I do prefer Italian fashion to Spanish,’ she said, giving a considered, judicial verdict.
‘There you are, then. You can shop in Rome.’
‘Milan is the place.’
‘You shall shop in Milan, then.’
‘Or Florence,’ she said musingly. ‘Florence may be best after all.’
‘Florence, then,’ said Keith.
Little Billy managed to get his voice in. ‘Mum, Dad, you aren’t listening to me.’
‘Don’t call us that,’ said his mother automatically, ‘it’s so vulgar.’
He ignored this. ‘Mum, you don’t seem interested in what I found, the head in the urn.’
‘I think it’s horrible. You shouldn’t dwell on it any more. Put it out of your mind.’ She turned back to her husband. ‘All right then, sell the place in Lasada.’
‘Dad, there’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Don’t encourage him, Keith.’
‘Haven’t you got some lines to learn?’ Keith Larger paid the fees at the well-known school for young performers attended by his son and he was a man who liked to get value for his money. The boy had talent, fine, but you had to work as well. He always had.
‘Word perfect.’
‘That’s not enough,’ said his mother. She had been a theatre child herself in her time, it was from her that Billy got the urge to perform, and she understood that there was more to knowing a part than having the words.
‘I think we ought to consider buying outright this time, Debbie,’ said Keith, pursuing his advantage. ‘Give me a year or two and I’ll be ready to buy.’
His wife considered the proposition. ‘We could rent somewhere while we think about it. What about Lucca?’ She had several smart friends who had bought old farmhouses near Lucca. There must be more English there now than native Italians. ‘Do you think we ought to go out to Italy in the autumn and start looking around?’
They plunged into their conversation, ignoring Billy.
Through the welter of words such as Tuscany, Lucca being too popular, and Valentino being right for grand clothes but really Ferragamo was so marvellous otherwise, and of course Gucci for bags, he carried on regardless. He had often sat in on such family conversations.
Over their voices, he said loudly: ‘I think I know who it was in the pot. I recognized the face.’ He frowned. ‘Well, not the face itself. It was the hair.’
His parents did not seem to hear.
‘Not by name, maybe,’ continued Billy, his voice rising above theirs, ‘but seen abo
ut. Someone I’d seen.’
They took no notice. Quite possibly they did not believe him.
He settled himself into thinking about what he could do with what he regarded as his nugget of information.
The reception in the Black Museum for the foreign visitors was a great success and not surprisingly the star was Stella Pinero.
She arrived late, when the room was already crowded, but in time to make a splendid entrance, looking suitably elegant in black, smelling of lily of the valley. She was well received (as they say in theatrical circles) by Herr Hamburg, Dr Copenhagen, Professor Uppsala (he was a very honoured criminologist), and Monsieur Bruges, these being the labels Coffin had attached to his distinguished visitors. He had their real names on a list secreted in his hand for introduction, hardly necessary except as a politeness since they all wore labels for those who were long-sighted enough to read them.
Stella, having fascinated the visitors, turned her attention to Tom Cowley.
‘Now, you’re the expert!’
‘Wouldn’t say that.’ But he looked pleased.
‘It’s your museum.’
‘Wish it was.’ He cast a look at his old friend, John Coffin.
‘You’ve got some marvellous things here.’
Marvellous was not quite the word, Coffin thought. Stella was overdoing things a bit, as she so often did in private life, while being subtle and restrained on the stage. Her natural exuberance had to burst out somewhere.
‘This old boot, for instance. I mean, it’s so evocative of its period, isn’t it? What did it do?’ The boot was mounted on a small stand enclosed in a glass case. It was unpolished with the laces undone as if just cast aside. A big foot.
‘The foot inside it kicked a copper in the head so that he died. His murderer tried to throw the boots away, but was caught with one on and one off.’
‘An historic boot,’ said Herr Hamburg, who had taken a fancy to Stella.
Had it really belonged to the grandfather of Mimsie Marker?
‘What date was this murder?’
‘1922, John. Louie Fischer was the killer, one of the Swinehouse gang that were operating then. They all wiped themselves out in the end. Fischer killed PC Arnold.’
Coffin in the Black Museum Page 3
