Coffin in the Black Museum

by Gwendoline Butler

  Nearly two decades ago a girl had been strangled, but her killer had never been caught, although he had left a fingerprint behind. They had tried an area check, with a house to house fingerprinting of all males, but the killer had not been found. One of their failures, Tom Cowley had said. A young policeman had been suspected of her death, but released without being totally cleared. Later, his wife having died in childbirth, he had killed himself.

  The real killer, Coffin knew, had rested for a while, then taken up his labours again.

  At the hospital entrance, Coffin met Archie Lane. ‘Turn back,’ Coffin said, ‘and do what I tell you. Get a print of the hand of Peter Tiler, as delivered to us in the pot with his head, and see if the thumbprint matches the print on the newspaper in the Black Museum … I think that is why we were given the head and hand, to point out to us a long-unidentified killer. It was a revenge killing.’

  ‘I’ve got Ted Lupus outside,’ protested Archie Lane. ‘He’s come to see his wife.’

  ‘I want a word with him,’ said Coffin. He threaded his way through the crowds arriving for the hospital visiting hours. Across the taxis and buses he saw the BMW.

  Ted Lupus was just getting out of his car. He stopped when he noticed Coffin. ‘I’ve come to see Kath.’

  ‘You’ll see her later. And she’ll see you.’

  ‘She’s ill. Not herself

  ‘I know that as well as you do. Better, perhaps. Get back in the car. We can talk there.’

  ‘Kath’s done nothing.’

  ‘She tried to protect you. But of course, in doing so, she accused you.’

  Ted Lupus gripped the steering-wheel of the BMW. ‘Shall I drive? Or do we just sit here.’

  ‘Drive if you like, but don’t try anything silly.’

  ‘Not my style.’

  No, silliness was not his style, thought Coffin. He was a practical man who had keys, to the St Luke’s complex to move around in freely, into Stella’s flat when he wanted, and into the Black Museum, too. He probably knew how to get into most of the buildings in the district.

  ‘What about Peter Tiler, then?’

  Ted Lupus drove out of the hospital, swinging left into the main road that ran parallel with the river. He did not argue, a pragmatist, he accepted what was coming. But he still wore his black armband, and that said something about him too.

  ‘You have any idea why I killed him?’

  ‘I think so. You certainly tried your best to tell us. You broke into the Black Museum and laid out the exhibits.’

  ‘I thought you’d never get there. I wanted him dead once I realized he was the killer whose fingerprint was on that paper in the case. I saw it at that party in the Black Museum. And I’d seen his thumb times enough. Noticed it when I was working in St Luke’s.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell us?’

  ‘I wanted him dead. Not resting in prison, then coming out again after so-called life.’ There was deep anger in his voice. ‘And I wanted to do it myself. It was my job. But I also wanted him known for what he was.’ A low rumble came out of his throat. ‘A man who killed women.’

  He drove on in silence. They were passing the Tube station where Mimsie Marker gave them a sharp look. Ted Lupus waved to her. ‘There she is. You should have asked her. Bet she knows all about it.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Mimsie knows that my young sister was the wife of the policeman who was accused of the strangling. My sister died. She died of grief and the kid with her.’ Unconsciously, he glanced at the black armband. ‘Her husband hanged himself. For years I could never make up my mind if he was guilty or not. Not until that day in the Black Museum. And then I thought: Peter Tiler, of course. We all knew the Tilers were a rotten lot. Even then I didn’t know how rotten. Not till all the bodies turned up.’

  ‘But you admit you killed him?’

  Ted Lupus had driven back to his own home, taking the route automatically. The courtyard leading to the river walk was straight ahead.

  Thoughtfully Ted said: ‘After all, I might not have killed him. I cling to my life with the best.’ He turned to give Coffin what might have been a smile in happier circumstances. ‘This is just between you and me. I shall deny I said anything. Got that?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Coffin. ‘I’m not promising. It takes two to play that game, and I’ll get you if I can.’

  Ted Lupus shrugged. ‘I enjoy what I’ve got. I didn’t want to throw it away, but when I went round to Hillington Crescent I couldn’t get an answer. I went round the back and in through the garden door. I remember there was a cat on the window, looking in. And I saw that poor Tiler cow, hanging there. I think she must have threatened to go to the police. I knew Tiler had done it. He came in from the garden shed as I stood there. He looked at me. Just looked. He almost seemed to smile. Then I hit him. Couldn’t stop myself. You’d have done the same yourself.’

  ‘I might not have done the rest of what you did.’

  ‘I have to say I enjoyed it. I put him in the back of the car. Yes, this one you’re sitting in now. Took him to the yard and did what I did, then I hosed the place down. I kept the head overnight in the freezer in the empty flat. I got the pot from our place and the label I pinched next day from the funeral parlour. My firm was doing some work there. I needed the label to put an address on. I didn’t want the head and the hand going to any old rubbish dump. I wanted you lot to see. And mighty slow you were. What was left of him I buried a bit later that night in St Luke’s. Of course, I didn’t know what company he had there. Kind of poetic justice, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You could say so.’

  ‘Then I left the head in the urn in the yard at the theatre for anyone to find. There’s quite a few of those urns around, you know. Plenty of other people round here have one, your sister included. Yes, that makes you wince, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Coffin, thinking that Ted would have a hard job involving Letty in anything.

  ‘I am sorry I left his other hand and so on in …’

  ‘Teeth,’ said Coffin. ‘That was what you left with the head.’ He really minded about those teeth because Stella had.

  ‘I wanted him dead. It was really a good moment. I shouldn’t say that, should I? But it was. Just as the worst was when Kath guessed.’

  He drove the BMW into the courtyard. ‘I usually park here … I could drive straight ahead, over the parapet and into the river. Both of us. We couldn’t get out. I’ve locked the car doors.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ said Coffin, not touching him.

  ‘No.’ Ted Lupus started to back the car. ‘I’m going to turn round, drive to the hospital, see my poor Kath, and then you can do what you like with me.’

  As they neared the hospital, he said: ‘That business with the boiler … Did Peter Tiler eat flesh?’

  ‘And did he?’ asked Mimsie Marker, who of course had heard everything and knew everything and needed to check this last item to add to her memories. She handed Coffin the evening paper where the case had brought big black headlines. The general belief in the neighbourhood was that Ted Lupus would plead guilty to manslaughter and would somehow get away with it. There was a long tradition of getting away with things in Coffin’s new area of command. Then Ted and Kath might move away, go abroad, or they might stay here and face it out. That was in the tradition of the neighbourhood, too. Coffin would learn.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. No sign of teeth marks on the bones. Just a way of disposing of one of the bodies that Tiler tried and never tried again. I suppose they got rid of the boiler.’ Perhaps his wife had guessed, poor woman, or tried to do a wash too soon. And there must have been a smell, you could never hide a smell.

  ‘I always said to remember family relationships, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did, Mimsie.’

  ‘Mind you, I didn’t know what a kinky one he was for uniforms.’ She sounded almost regretful at what she had missed.

  So there was something that Mimsie did not k
now before me, thought Coffin.

  ‘And how’s Miss Pinero?’ said Mimsie, giving her feline grin. Somehow she reminded Coffin of the black cat, who also knew the killer.

  *

  Some weeks later, when the case was beginning to recede from the public mind, Stella sat alone in her flat. Behind her she had a very successful first night for her production of Hedda Gabler which had won high praise from all the critics. She was pleased, Letty Bingham was pleased, but now Stella was suffering from the reaction. A grey depression settled on her soul.

  Is this all I’ve got to look forward to? she thought. A life alone in this place? Don’t I want something more?

  In low spirits, she went to her refrigerator (a new one) to get out a bottle of champagne. You could always pretend to be happy.

  Then she heard her doorbell ring.

  In his sitting-room at the top of the tower, Coffin had been trying to read his mother’s diary. He would look at a page until a word stood out, then he would throw the book some distance, pick it up, and try again. Occasionally, he would walk about the room, then come back to stare at a page in hope of illumination.

  ‘Luck?’ he said. ‘Is that word luck?’

  Or was it fuck? Surely not, Mother, he thought, shocked. But was that what Letty had meant? Was he in for a bath in erotica?

  He felt a tap at his ankle and looked down.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I feel the need for a bit of company, too.’

  When Letty opened her door, he was standing there with Tiddles under his arm. Somehow, neither cat nor man were sure how, they ended up together. Was it a life partnership?

  ‘Can we both come in?’

  Later still than all this, Old Bean finally decided to settle for the winter in his favourite spot on the Essex coast. He knew the farmer who let him rent a bit of scrub land from which there was a fine view of the sea.

  He unpacked his possessions with the idea of seeing what he could sell. He was a bit of a magpie, hoarding treasures both little and big, but occasionally they had to be turned into cash. A man must eat, and even more drink.

  He shook out a roll of several old red curtains. What a stink, he thought. Wonder how many dead bodies have been rolled up in here? He smelt himself by the end of the summer and no bath, but you never know your own smell.

  He folded the curtains up again, pushing them under his bed. He was a drinking pal of a man who bought old rags by weight, and they certainly weighed.

  That night a great wind swept in from the Atlantic, bringing devastation to Southern England. Essex was in the front of the storm.

  A huge oak tree fell across Old Bean in his caravan, crushing him and his bed into the red flock curtains on which he lay. Once again they were a shroud.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gwendoline Butler is a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still has a tremendous affection. She was educated at one of the Haberdasher’s Schools and then read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married, and it was while her husband was Professor of Mediaeval History in the University of St Andrews that she first began writing crime fiction.

  In the early 1970s she returned to live near London when her husband, Dr Lionel Butler, became Principal of the Royal Holloway College, University of London. She is now a widow and lives in Surrey; she has one daughter.

  Gwendoline Butler spends her time travelling, and looking at pictures, furniture and buildings. She has also found time to publish some thirty-odd books — she says she has always been too alarmed to count the exact number.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  One evening in April, 1988, I sat in Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, listening to Dr David Owen give that year’s Barnett Memorial Lecture. In it, he suggested the creation of a Second City of London, to be spun off from the first, to aid the economic and social regeneration of the Docklands.

  The idea fascinated me, and I have made use of it to create a world for my detective John Coffin. I hope to use it for a series of books set in this Second City.

  Thank you, Dr Owen.

  On the matter of the infection that spreads through the city, I took expert advice from a virologist who does not wish to be named but whom I must thank. Any mistakes I have made are my fault and mine only.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Coffin on the Water

  Coffin’s Dark Number

  Coffin Underground

  Coffin and the Paper Man

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