Before dying he had made a valid will and with the will was a letter to be sent to John Coffin.
As the days have passed [he wrote], I have come to realize that what moved me was a profound and overwhelming jealousy. I was jealous-of what Casey was, what she had done and what she had it in her to do. It was a very destructive emotion and it has destroyed us both.
In his will he left half of his comfortable fortune to the child Tom.
I owe him something, and unlike some, I pay my debts, and you know, he was a great character. He laughed at me when I picked him up as Nurse Eden. He knew I was a joke. I’m afraid he was bored while he was with me. Not afraid, but bored. The money is to make up.
The other half of his fortune went to found two drama scholarships to be called The Nell Casey Scholarship for men and The Peter Astell, for that was HIS name, for women. A condition of the bequest was that Gus Hamilton be chairman of the judging panel for the rest of his life.
Thus ensuring that every year Gus would have to think of the name of those two people.
But before all this there was one last scene involving Jim Lollard to be played out.
John Coffin was informed of it in person by the head of the Second City Security Unit.
‘We didn’t write old Lollard off,’ said Superintendent Ascot (soon to be promoted to Chief Superintendent as a result of his current work). ‘That would have been foolish, we can’t afford to ignore any source, so we went through his house with a fine-tooth comb.’ The Superintendent used the cliché with relish. ‘And the stuff that man had! Papers piled everywhere, or pinned on to the backs of doors, with a diary here and notebook there, and a kind of a tally board of dates and events on the wall. A life work, it was.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘And we got interested in a man he called Michael Henry. Henry had taken a flat in Regina Street, just down the road from where Lollard lived. He appeared to be running a mobile housecleaning operation from a small van.’
‘Go on,’ said Coffin. He had seen that van himself.
‘Good cover, anyway, and he had probably had some genuine jobs in South London. He worked with a small team of two men and two women. We’ve got the lot. We’ll never know what excited Lollard’s suspicions, anything or nothing, but he was right. We took a chance and searched the flat.’
‘And found what?’
‘A good quantity of explosive and bomb-making material. Together with guns, and a list of addresses.’
Two addresses in particular had attracted their attention.
One was that of the Police Headquarters.
‘And the other was your own address, sir, in St Luke’s Mansions.’
‘To be expected, I suppose.’ He was probably on several lists, but in spite of himself, Coffin felt a chill. This was real.
‘And there was a date, attached to a note of the theatre there. Henry had a ground plan of the place. The bar and restaurant were starred in red. Apparently he had got himself a cleaning job there, we have checked with Miss Pinero. But I’m not sure how much cleaning was planned.’ Ascot passed a document across. ‘Take a look, sir.’
Coffin read slowly and sombrely. There was indeed a date, about three weeks ahead. The day on which the Festival was due to hold a big reception, to be attended by a number of great theatrical figures. He was going to be there himself.
A time was noted down: twenty-two-thirty hours.
There did not seem much doubt that at ten-thirty on the evening of that day in April a bomb had been due to explode, nicely timed to do the maximum damage. He did not need to speculate on the number of the casualties: they would have been massive.
He raised his head from his reading and took a deep breath. ‘Lollard was not so far wrong. Mass murder, was it? That would have been a day all right.’
A day on which he would have lived, and possibly died, on his very own Murder Street.
If you enjoyed Coffin on Murder Street, check out these other great Gwendolyn Butler titles.
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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 at 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.
Also by the Author
COFFIN AND THE PAPER MAN
COFFIN IN THE BLACK MUSEUM
COFFIN UNDERGROUND
COFFIN IN FASHION
COFFIN ON THE WATER
A COFFIN FOR THE CANARY
A COFFIN FOR PANDORA
A COFFIN FROM THE PAST
COFFIN’S DARK NUMBER
COFFIN FOLLOWING
COFFIN IN MALTA
A NAMELESS COFFIN
COFFIN WAITING
A COFFIN FOR BABY
DEATH LIVES NEXT DOOR
THE INTERLOPER
THE MURDERING KIND
THE DULL DEAD
COFFIN IN OXFORD
RECEIPT FOR MURDER
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