Coffin on Murder Street

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Not suicide, then?’ said the CID man. They were usually suicide. Or accident. ‘Wonder if she’d been drinking.’

  ‘She was dead when she went in the river. She had a blow on the head.’

  ‘Might have been drunk and hit her head as she fell.’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ said Dr Salt. He arranged for the body to go to the police morgue. ‘One good thing, she soon came up. Didn’t stay down long.’ He hated it when the bodies had been too many weeks in the water. ‘No, it didn’t keep her down. You can never tell with the old Thames, can you?’

  She appeared to have no handbag and no possessions. A search along the river bank produced a blue leather handbag. It was found near the bridge at Staines. It was empty.

  ‘Mugged and then dropped in,’ said the CID man. ‘I reckon she went in over the bridge at Staines. Or she was driven to Wraysbury and dropped in there. Could have been killed anywhere, of course.’

  But she had been found dead on his patch, which made it his business. He went back to his CID headquarters to set the investigation in train. To establish an identity seemed the first requirement.

  A day passed, during which the pathologist started his work on his nameless subject.

  Body 123, white.

  She might have gone unidentified longer if an alert WPC, coming into the morgue on other business, had not seen her face. The WPC was a keen watcher of soaps on TV and had liked the one in which Nell Casey had starred.

  She looked and then looked again. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘but I think …’

  The investigating officer received the tentative ID with mixed feelings. This was not going to be a case that easily wrapped up. One happy thought soon occurred to him: he must inform the Second City Force, Neil Casey was part of their problem.

  And she was a problem: the more he thought about it, the less it looked like a simple mugging.

  John Coffin, to whom the news of the finding of Nell’s body came after Archie Young and Paul Lane had digested it, was sure it was no mugging.

  Inspector Young, not averse to hobnobbing with the top brass, delivered the news himself. ‘What the devil was she doing out that way? Of course, she could have been killed anywhere and just dumped, poor cow. But why and how?’

  ‘The post-mortem?’

  ‘Not complete yet.’

  ‘Push them.’

  He still had to tell Stella Pinero.

  He told her that evening after the performance of The Circle where he performed admirably as a butler.

  There was a party following it for the cast and friends in the bar of the Theatre Workshop.

  ‘I’m glad that’s over,’ he said. ‘How you do it night after night, I do not know.’

  ‘Nervous, were you?’

  ‘Anxious. Not that I had much to do, but you don’t want to make a fool of yourself in public.’

  ‘Ah, there speaks the amateur.’ She sipped a glass of the champagne that had been provided by the Friends of St Luke’s Theatre. These were the former Friends of the Theatre Workshop who had now adopted a grander title. They always produced champagne for important parties and since several of them (including the one playing Lady Kitty) had performed in The Circle, this ranked as an important occasion. ‘Still, you did well with what you had. Bit stiff.’

  Still cross with me, he thought. Wonder what I’ve done? Maybe nothing. She might have some private worry of her own, although with Stella, private things usually became public pretty soon.

  ‘That was the producer,’ he said in self-defence. ‘She said to be formal.’

  ‘Not pompous, though.’

  Very cross, he thought.

  The party swirled all round him, he could see Gus being charming in one corner, and Ellie Wakeman, current star at the National and his new friend (so they said), keeping close to him. And there was Ellice Eden talking to Lord Bromley, who owned a bank and a newspaper or two and a TV network, and who had been brought along by Ellie Wakeman whose father he was. You had to salute Gus Hamilton, he thought, a very useful contact for him there. Give or take a death or two, Gus never put a foot wrong.

  Then he was immediately ashamed of himself for his flippancy. It was true what I thought earlier, we worry more about a pimple on our own face than a great wound on the face of a friend. Even I, who ought to know better, am more anxious about the threat of a Commission of Inquiry into my Force than I am about the death of Nell and the disappearance of the boy.

  Not quite true. He put the glass of champagne down. Suddenly it didn’t taste so good. Thank God, he thought. I can feel pain now, the proper pain.

  ‘Come outside, Stella.’

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Not right outside. Just out into the colonnade.’ The architect had created a protected walkway with columns on the outer side which would lead from the main theatre in the old church to the Workshop Theatre.

  It had ceased raining but a chill wind was blowing. Stella shivered and drew her wrap closer around her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, come on, if you want to kiss me. I’m too old for this.’

  ‘I don’t want to kiss you, Stella.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, it’s that pretty policewoman, I suppose. Nice girl and clever, you said so yourself. Young too.’

  ‘Shut up, Stella, and listen.’

  There was laughter and music through the open doors to the room where the party roared, and he could hear Lady Kitty still being Lady Kitty to the life, and out here there was a very faint smell of the first spring flowering. Life did go on.

  ‘Nell has been found.’

  Stella looked at him and needed no more. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ He put his arms round her. ‘I’m so sorry to tell you like this. I should have done it better.’

  She didn’t move away, but stood still within his embrace. ‘No, you did it right. I’d rather have it straight out.’

  There was a moment of silence, even the party had gone quiet. Then a door opened and noise and light poured out. The light shone on Stella’s face, pointing up her features and leaving her eyes in shadow. She had lost weight, Coffin thought, but weight came and went with Stella, usually on purpose. He hoped she was all right, she worked too hard. He felt a sudden rush of deep affection for her. Darling Stella.

  ‘She killed herself, I suppose?’ said Stella. ‘What a shame.’

  ‘No, it looks like murder.’

  Gus Hamilton had left the party and was walking towards them. Stella saw him, she opened her eyes wide. ‘Him?’ she breathed.

  Coffin shook his head. ‘I think not. I don’t know.’

  Gus came up to them. ‘Saw you leave … Someone just picked up a newsflash on the local TV programme. Nell, she’s been found. She’s been murdered.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coffin. ‘I’m afraid it looks like that. I am sorry, Hamilton.’

  ‘There was a bit more: seems there’s been a suspected child murderer on the loose round here. You kept quiet about that, didn’t you?’

  ‘It seemed wiser …’ began Coffin. Then he saw what was coming.

  ‘You bastard,’ said Gus, swinging back his arm and hitting Coffin on the jaw.

  CHAPTER 19

  Still that same day in March, and then on to the next day.

  ‘Someone will kill Gus one day,’ said Stella as she applied hot water to the blood from his nose and cold water to his left eye. She had led Coffin across the courtyard and up the staircase of his own tower. They were in his kitchen. ‘You’re going to have a tremendous shiner.’ Was there a note of satisfaction in her voice?

  ‘If he doesn’t kill them first.’

  Stella stood back. ‘There, I’ve tidied you up. Say thank you nicely.’

  ‘Thank you, Stella.’

  Relations between them had been miraculously restored, they were best friends, tender and true again.

  ‘Where’s Gus?’

  ‘Crying on the stairs, I think.’

  ‘Fool.’


  ‘He said he’d stay outside until you said he could come in.’ She added in a pleading voice: ‘He is very upset … Gus always lashes out when he is upset.’

  ‘I’ve noticed,’ said Coffin tartly. ‘You can stop throwing water all over me, Stella, I’m all right. Fine, never felt better.’ He stood up. ‘But thanks for looking after me.’

  ‘You need it sometimes. Here, have a tissue, you’re still dripping a bit’

  Gus appeared at the door. ‘Can I apologize or would you prefer to shoot me?’

  ‘Come in and sit down.’

  ‘I’ll get us all a drink,’ said Stella. ‘I think we need it, I know I do.’

  ‘Stella, I’m sorry,’ said Gus. ‘You must be feeling bad, too. Nell’s dead. That I know, but how did it happen?’

  ‘She was found in the Thames near Staines, but she was not drowned, she was dead when she went in.’

  ‘So that makes it murder?’

  ‘Probably. We won’t know for sure until after the post-mortem. But she had a blow on the head; it may not have killed her.’

  ‘I suppose I’m under suspicion?’

  ‘We’re a long way from any definite suspect yet, Hamilton.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I believe that,’ said Gus thoughtfully. ‘If I was in your shoes, then I’d give me a long hard look … I liked Nell, I loved her. Once I loved her, anyway, but our relationship wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t all my fault. You think Nell was straightforward, she wasn’t. Especially about sex. I don’t find this easy to say, but for us, it didn’t work. I don’t know if it was my fault or hers, but it didn’t seem to come easy. That was why we quarrelled, really. Well, mostly. There was a rough edge to Nell.’

  And to you, Coffin, thought, and wondered how much truth there was in all this and what weight to put on it. He touched his eye. Sore. A long time since a suspect had hit him.

  Gus said: ‘And the boy? What about him? There’s no sign of him?’

  ‘As yet, no,’ said Coffin carefully.

  ‘He’s probably dead too, isn’t he?’

  ‘The chances are, yes.’

  Stella started to cry. ‘Oh, please, this is horrible.’

  ‘We have to think about it, Stella. I don’t think the police here have handled this well. They’ve known they had this suspected child murderer on the loose and kept it quiet.’

  ‘We are looking for him,’ said Coffin. ‘There’s been an intensive search for him all this time.’

  ‘And now he’s killed Nell and probably the boy before her. Who is he? You don’t know. Where is he? You don’t know that either. He’s there, and you can’t find him. You’re no bloody good.’

  William Duerden had come into the Second City of London and hidden himself in the undergrowth of that crowded metropolis. A hidden tiger looking for his victim.

  ‘That’s quite an accusation,’ said Coffin quietly. ‘I have to hope it’s not true.’

  Or not all of it. He had his own view of what had happened, and why.

  Stella looked at Coffin, wondering if he would defend himself, wanting him to do so, and puzzled that he did not. She knew him so well and he wasn’t reacting the way she had expected he would. He always defended himself.

  He felt guilty, she said to herself. I feel guilty, Gus feels guilty. But we aren’t guilty, Duerden is guilty. This is grief.

  She put out a hand and touched Coffin’s hand gently. Then she reached out and held Gus’s hand.

  ‘Oh, you’ve hurt your hand, Gus,’ she said. ‘It’s all scratched and torn.’

  Gus snatched his hand away. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

  Next morning, the hunt for William Duerden was in full cry. He had got to be found. Superintendent Paul Lane, assisted by Archie Young, was conducting the investigation in person. He held a press conference in which he explained what was going on. A joint team, Middlesex and Second City, were inquiring into the death of Nell Casey, the media were told. The neighbouring Thameside Forces, covering Surrey, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, were holding a watching brief.

  All secrecy was dropped and photographs of Duerden and also of the boy Tom were seen on television and appeared in all the newspapers. There was not much comment because there was not enough hard news, but there was plenty of publicity.

  Here and there a paragraph about the Papershop Group was laid judiciously next to a photograph of Tom or Duerden so that people could draw their own conclusions.

  Paul Lane and Archie Young had been on continuous duty for almost twenty-four hours now and did not expect respite. They would be making regular reports to John Coffin.

  Duerden had to be found. All channels were open.

  ‘The vanishing man,’ said Paul Lane sourly. ‘Where the hell is he?’

  They went over all that they had on him.

  In late February they had received the report from the Merseyside Force that Duerden was believed to be heading their way. He had few friends, except those ‘in the trade’, and these were naturally secretive, but one of them had passed on this bit of information, passing it in the hope of some small concession for himself.

  There had been a reported sighting of him in Spinnergate, walking up and down the parade of shops by the Tube station. Mimsie Marker, no less, who knew of everything secret or otherwise, had told a startled uniformed man in a patrol car that she ‘thought she had seen Duerden by the video rental shop on one afternoon, and there he was again now’.

  Since at that time Duerden’s move towards London was not supposed to be known by the public, the constable asked her what she was talking about. In the space of time it took Mimsie to convince him that she knew, the man, who might or might not have been Duerden, had gone. Mimsie claimed she knew him because his photograph had appeared in the papers when the last little girl had been killed. She saw all the papers and had a very good memory for faces, she said. But she thought he might have been wearing a wig.

  Duerden had been more reliably sighted buying a ticket for the Dockland Light Railway.

  After that he had disappeared, and except for the reference to him in the records of the Papershop Group, he might never have come south at all. Assuredly he had come south because he knew of them, but they were a cagey, tight-lipped lot who could afford good lawyers. They might be prevailed upon to give information, but had not yet done so.

  Not that other reports of where Duerden might be, from the Tower of London to the Bespoke Tailoring Department in Harrods, did not flow in. All pointing nowhere.

  ‘Thirty-two alleged sightings so far,’ said Paul Lane sourly. ‘And not one of them for real. Except possibly the one with the kid and the woman in a nurse’s dress.’ He was clinging to that, but it had not led anywhere as yet.

  ‘The Invisible Man,’ said Archie Young. ‘He’s bought another face. Had plastic surgery.’

  ‘That costs.’

  ‘He could do it with make-up.’

  ‘Thirty-two sightings,’ said Lane again. ‘Thirty-three by now. And not one of them him.’

  But the depressing thought was that they could not be sure. He might indeed have been one of those elusive figures.

  The thought began to grow that he was indeed among them, wearing a different face.

  For Lane and Young the day wore on unprofitably.

  Coffin, at home, had received several congratulatory letters and cards on his performance in The Circle; he had made an exemplary butler. Marvellous presence, supreme diction. He put on dark spectacles and went out.

  WALKER is wearing shades, the message sped as soon as he was sighted. The undertones, the unexpressed jokes going with it, were ribald. Ribald but respectful. And careful. He looked in a mood.

  He had requested and received the very first pathology report on Nell Casey’s body. It was on his desk. The full forensic reports of the debris on her body and clothes, which might be so helpful, hinting at where Nell had died and at whose hands, would come later. The killer inevitably leaves some trace of himself behind.

  C
offin stared at the folder in which the report was placed and had the feeling that it was burning a hole in his desk. He wanted to read it before anything, but he was both more and less than a detective. His telephone was already ringing with the first call of the day and his answering machine had already logged a queue of others.

  He picked up the telephone.

  When he had dealt with some pressing letters and conducted two short interviews, he picked up the report.

  The exact time of Nell Casey’s death was hard to establish, the report said, but she had been dead for approximately three days when her body had been found. The remains of food in her stomach suggested that her last meal had been of bread and ham, some form of light lunch was suggested.

  She had been hit on the head and then strangled manually. No great pressure would have been needed. She had certainly been dead when dropped into the water.

  The detailed examination of Nell’s body followed. No rape, no sign of recent sexual intercourse. No disease. A healthy lady.

  But was she? What was she really?

  This was the point at which Coffin raised his head from the page. ‘So that was it? That was what worried me about her and puzzled Jumbo all those years ago? I’d like to know what Gus Hamilton has to say on the subject.’

  Attached was a brief report on her clothes and her handbag: so far they had revealed little but might offer more help on a further examination. The handbag was empty. The pockets of her jeans and shirt contained nothing but a handkerchief and a return railway ticket from London to Staines. She had bought the ticket at the London terminus of Waterloo.

  He walked to the window to look out. His bit of London stretched below, full of the usual number of crooks, villains, sexual deviants and shysters. Perhaps he had more than average in his new city. But he had a lot of good people and a few saints as well.

  People were always unexpected. ‘No wonder she was so elusive.’ If that was the right word. ‘I wonder what they made of her in Abbey Street, back of Costelow’s?’ The old Costelow’s, of course. They must try and flush up someone who had known Nell then. ‘I’ll tell Lane that.’