Coffin in Fashion

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘He wants to talk to you about Ted Mosse,’ said her husband. ‘Nothing to do with Darby and Joan.’

  Her eyes lit up with understanding. ‘Oh, don’t I know you? You bought the house from Rose Hilaire. I’ve seen you with Gabriel. Another chap with a uniform in that house.’

  True enough, although he hadn’t realized it so clearly before, that house did attract uniforms one way and another. There were policemen all over it now.

  But people took houses, not houses people. Surely?

  ‘I’m plainclothes,’ he said mildly.

  She moved across the kitchen to the stove and put on a kettle: tea-time again. ‘So it’s old Ted?’

  ‘Yes. How well did you know him? What sort was he?’

  ‘You policemen are all the same. Do they issue you with a set of questions to ask when you train? What sort of a question is that? I’m not God. Ask one of your lot. He seemed to know enough policemen at one time. Fancied the uniform, I always thought.’

  ‘They’ve got short memories.’

  ‘Long for what suits them. Wouldn’t want to remember when he was once a friend, I suppose. Not when you think of what he ended up.’

  ‘Exactly.’ And what I’m looking for, Coffin thought, is what they might not remember, the little details, the sequence of small events that might shift Ted Mosse into a different perspective. I am a fly on the face of the Almighty, crawling over the surface to see what’s what. He had expressed a similar thought to a neurologist friend of his once, to receive an alarmed look in reply. It was, clearly, a sinister symptom. He scratched his nose thoughtfully.

  ‘He was a poor old thing when he died,’ said Mrs Ford. ‘Couldn’t do a thing. Shouldn’t have been left on his own, but that’s Rose Hilaire for you. He was kind to her as a kid. Kind to all kids. Had time for them. He’d take the boys to football matches. Once took all us little ’uns in Paradise Street to the Woolwich panto.’

  ‘He kept in with youngsters to the end, didn’t he?’ After all, several had been found dead in his house.

  There was a second’s silence.

  ‘I suppose they knew it was a friendly house.’ Arthur spoke entirely without irony, although he was clearly aware that it was so friendly to some, so open-armed, that they never left it.

  ‘Never had a child themselves, did they?’

  Mrs Ford said primly, ‘I never got to know them well in their child-bearing years.’

  She picked up her paint brush. ‘I’m off to work again.’ She was off up the stairs without another word.

  On the way out old Ford said, ‘Don’t take any notice of my wife. She was brought up very nicely and she doesn’t like to see bad in anyone. There’s good in everyone, she always says, and so there is.’ He nodded his head vigorously. ‘You find what you look for.’

  Coffin waited. He hoped you did. From the room above he could hear Daisy bursting into vigorous song.

  ‘Ted did like children and youngsters. They both did. But his wife now, she liked them in a motherly kind of way. No fuss, no display, but you could see she did. With Ted it was different.’ He hesitated, seeking the right word. ‘It was a sort of excitement to him.’

  He looked at Coffin with large, pale, expectant eyes. He had delivered his little message well.

  ‘I’m sweating,’ said Coffin.

  Out of Decimus Street, and round the corner into Paradise Street, and immediately he was back in his childhood, eight years old and with itchy feet.

  Until this moment he hadn’t remembered that he had actually been here before. It was a fabled street, but for him it had been forbidden territory. But now he could smell and feel the past of that boy. He had been here before, and on a hot afternoon. Did he remember cricket with a bat from Woolworth’s and the wicket marked in chalk on that brick wall? There had been a barrel-organ playing then, he was sure of it.

  No barrel-organ now, but pop music bouncing from a transistor through an open window.

  He walked slowly down the pavements. No front gardens in Paradise Street; the flat-faced little houses fronted straight on to the road. He knew well that you opened the front door to walk into the kitchen. In the old days, Grandma was usually propped up on an upright chair and sat in the open door to enjoy the street scene. All day.

  A few doors were open tonight, but he couldn’t see any old ’uns. He was looking for Brenda Blond.

  He had heard the name Blond, Dagmar, through Gabriel and stored it in the back of his mind. Dagmar was a friend of Rose Hilaire’s. Blond didn’t sound like a Paradise Street name, especially with Dagmar thrown in. Surely they had all been Blackers, or Tickles or Sprotts. Or those that got to Hook Road School. Of course, there were always the others who never went to school, who never declared themselves, but lived out their lives very privately, avoiding the school officer, the rent man, the army, and sometimes even prison.

  The two elements, those who more or less kept the rules and those who never tried, had always lived side by side in Paradise Street.

  Old Eddie Mosse had been a strange man to come out of Paradise Street. And yet perhaps not, because the more you looked at Mosse the odder he became. What he was looking at was not a murderer, but a man at the roots of murder. A man who attracted crime. Who perhaps found it attractive.

  A beautiful metallic green sports car was parked at the kerb. A rich car for Paradise Street; he looked at it curiously, noting the number automatically. There was a boy sitting in the car. A fair-haired, beautiful boy.

  A yard in front of him a door opened smartly and two women emerged; both made for the car. If they saw him, he was of no significance.

  ‘Rose, don’t be too upset. You’re going to end up lucky, I can feel it.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘No, Rose, not even in joke do you say that.’

  ‘He let me down.’ She was looking directly at Coffin now, but was not seeing him.

  ‘Men always do let you down.’ The authentic voice of Paradise Street talking.

  Rose Hilaire had observed Coffin properly now, and knew what she was seeing.

  ‘I told you from the beginning that Joe Landau was no good for you. But at least he didn’t get you pregnant. And it’s all imagination, this – ’

  ‘Dagmar, shut up.’

  The fierce note in Rose Hilaire’s voice got through to Dagmar Blond, who stopped talking at once, but the last phrase on her lips came out like a ghost: ‘seeing yourself kill – ’ The last word of all disappeared.

  Rose turned to Coffin. ‘What do you want? Is it about the house? You bought it, didn’t you?’

  They hadn’t met but her intelligence service was obviously sharper than Coffin’s own.

  He answered the first question. ‘I came looking for Brenda Blond.’

  Rose looked at Dagmar. ‘My mother,’ said Dagmar in surprise. ‘Why her? Anyway, you can’t, she’s ill.’

  ‘What is it you wanted?’ Rose was still aggressive, hostile; she knew Coffin had overheard their conversation. ‘I’ve seen you with Gabriel, haven’t I?’

  ‘That little bitch,’ said Dagmar. ‘I told you she was trouble.’

  ‘Gabriel is no trouble to me. I’ve settled with her; she knows her place,’ Rose said over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off Coffin’s face.

  He too was staring at her. Hitherto he had only visualized her through Gabriel’s eyes, and he saw now that his little friend was not an accurate describer.

  Rose, vibrant with barely suppressed anger, was the most striking woman he had ever seen.

  She was younger than he had believed, older than he was, but not by much. She was also pretty; Gabriel hadn’t let that out, either. Gabriel had the unconventional good looks of her generation, high cheekbones with a wide mouth and slightly slanting green eyes, another period might have called her plain. But Rose’s looks went back to an earlier time with big, wide eyes and strong yet delicate profile.

  Perforce Coffin knew a good deal about her. He knew she was a highly suc
cessful businesswoman with, according to Gabriel, no real flair for fashion but a keen eye on the market-place. He knew she had a failed marriage with a strange son, Steve.

  He knew that she had been the owner of a house in which murder had been effected; he knew that she had inherited this house from her uncle, Ted Mosse, an old man who was himself worth investigating. A man who was called an enigma in Mouncy Street, a poor old fellow in Decimus Street, and a proper bastard in Paradise Street. A man who loved children, or anyway, was interested in them, but had none himself. He knew too that she had a lover called Joe Landau by whom she was not pregnant. And last of all he knew she believed herself capable of murder.

  What she knew of him, he could only guess at.

  ‘I came asking about Ted Mosse,’ he said diffidently.

  ‘He was a proper bastard, and a rotten influence and I hated him.’ The words exploded in the air, he could almost feel them bounce.

  Before he could answer, Rose got into her car, banged the door and was away.

  After a few feet, she stopped, and thrust a hand through the window at him.

  ‘Here, here’s my card. I owe you something for selling you the house. Come over and I’ll tell you something.’

  Chapter Nine

  He went to her straight away; the mood Rose was in he would get more out of her, and the mood he was in he wanted it.

  But he had a problem: the card she had so rapidly thrust into his hand was her business card, no home address, just Belmodes, Mouncy Street, which he knew but where he did not want to wait to visit.

  Tonight was the time.

  On the corner of Mouncy Street was a telephone-box. From inside, he could keep an eye on his own house where nothing much seemed to be happening. Almost it appeared empty, deserted even by the police, but he doubted that this was so, there were probably men inside at this very minute. He wondered if he could get them to pay the mortgage.

  Hopefully, he looked first for Rose Hilaire in the telephone book; no such name, so she must be ex-directory.

  So he dialled Gabriel’s number. ‘Gaby? It’s John.’

  She interrupted him. ‘Oh, I know who it is. I recognized your voice.’ Behind her voice, he could hear music, pop of some sort, he didn’t recognize the group, but he could hear the beat banging away. He thought she had someone with her. She said something he could not hear and the music ceased. She listened to what he wanted. ‘Rose’s address? Well, I know it, of course.’ She sounded doubtful.

  ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘She lives in Riverwalk, Greenwich; a new block of flats looking on the river. I don’t know the number.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘You’ll probably see her car parked. She loves to leave it flashing around.’ There was mild spite in Gabriel’s voice.

  ‘I’ll find her.’ He put the receiver down, calling a relaxed, ‘Thanks,’ into the air.

  ‘Oh, change the record.’ Gabriel went back into the room. ‘He’s going after her,’ she said to Charley.

  ‘Ah.’ Charley considered. ‘Well, we don’t mind, do we?’

  ‘Sometimes you are very stupid, Charley. I have got to know him: he would not go round there unless she had given the all clear.’

  ‘He’s a policeman.’

  ‘It’s not his case.’

  ‘I’m not the stupid one,’ observed Charley mildly. ‘You are. You think he’s your property.’ He spoke with the gentle cruelty he could show towards his models and which made some of them call him Charley the Knife.

  But Gabriel would not be stopped.

  ‘You know what she’s going to tell him: that she has this dream, fantasy, God knows what it is, that she killed one of the kids.’ Perhaps all of them, Rose had not been specific, or Gabriel had not heard the details. ‘She feels her hands doing it.’

  ‘Is that what she thinks?’ Charley hadn’t heard the story before. ‘Poor soul. But why do you care? You want her out of the way?’

  ‘He’ll be on her side, she’ll get him on her side. And I like him, Charley. I like him a lot.’

  He put his arm around her and drew her towards him. ‘Oh, come on, baby girl, calm down.’ Gabriel occupied a very special place in his life and he wanted her to stay there. He reached out a hand to switch the music on again. ‘Come on, now, is this the girl that sat down next to Bertrand Russell outside the Ministry of Defence and wouldn’t pay her fine, but sang a Bob Dylan at them?’ A plaintive Beatles love song poured all over them proclaiming that you couldn’t buy love.

  ‘No one’s as kind as you are, Charley.’

  ‘I’m a master of disguise,’ he joked.

  ‘Oh, I know she’ll eat him up.’

  In a dry little voice, Charley said: ‘Look on the bright side, perhaps he’ll do the eating.’

  He patted her head. ‘This thing you heard her say – you really did hear it? Not a little fantasy of your own?’

  Gabriel made an inarticulate noise and buried her head in his shoulder.

  He gave her a little shake. ‘Come on now, did you?’ Gaby muttered something which he could not hear but whose message he got. ‘All right then, you did.’ The music swept all around them. ‘But what does it mean? Sounds odd to me.’

  He stared over Gabriel’s head. What was it Rose Hilaire saw, and how was it seen? Pictures seen on a wall, shadow-play? Things in the dark, moving shapes with no faces?

  He could see them himself, for that matter, but he wondered how she could.

  Rose had calmed down a little, but not much.

  Her flat was on the third floor with its windows looking towards the river. He walked up the stairs, feeling the heat. The treads were covered with a kind of rubber and very quiet. Behind him the heat was building up to a storm, the sky was thick with it already. A flash of lightning flicked across the window.

  ‘If I’d known you were going to be so quick I’d have given you a lift.’ She stood aside, silently offering him entrance. ‘Still, it’s just as well. In a minute I might have decided not to talk.’

  As he knew.

  ‘Since I know who you are and you obviously know me, there’s no need for introductions. You are not my friend and I am not your friend, but I owe you something.’

  ‘So you said.’ And he’d come to collect. A debt you didn’t know you had was best not argued with.

  Another flash lit up the sky. A bank of windows lined one wall of the big living-room, illuminating a style of house decoration that life at Mrs Lorimer’s had not shown him. The floor was covered in thick creamy carpet on which stood squat, natural leather chairs. A big, unframed abstract hung on one wall, its colours echoing the cream and tan of the rest of the room. Facing that wall was a picture of a huge hand pointing a gun directly at you.

  Coffin couldn’t take his eyes off it. He thought she was too sophisticated not to know what she had there, but he was surprised all the same.

  He dragged his gaze away from the giant phallic symbol.

  ‘No thunder. Did you notice?’ Rose went to one of the windows and threw it open.

  ‘The storm’s a long way off yet.’ No sign of the boy with the lost angel face. ‘But when it does come you won’t want the window open.’ He could see the dark bank of clouds, feel the rising wind.

  ‘I can close it.’ Rose gave a little shiver as the wind flicked at her bare arms. That summer, scoop necks and arms bare to the shoulders were what every woman wore, with hair loose, or caught in a gleaming beehive. It was the look, leggy, youthful and sexy. Rose did it well; she was just young enough to get away with it. Gabriel was really young, but Rose could pretend with the best. ‘You can always dress ten years younger than your age,’ she told her customers, and she believed it.

  The lad Steve came into the room, silently like a little cat; he was wearing a dressing-gown and pyjamas as if he had started to go to bed, but decided against. Coffin noticed that his clothes, like his mother’s, were expensive and beautiful; the boy wore them well, as if looking good was second na
ture to him.

  He smiled at Coffin, but ignored his mother.

  Protectively and fondly, she said, ‘Don’t worry about the storm, dear, it’s a long way off.’ She moved, placing herself where he had to look at her; Coffin was embarrassed for her.

  ‘But it’s coming.’ He had an unexpectedly deep voice, as if maturity was not so far off. With neat skill he had managed to direct the words as much at Coffin as his mother.

  Coffin did not smile back; he did not like the feeling he was being manipulated. Instead he looked towards Rose. ‘Our talk?’ he said. Let the boy pull his mother’s strings if he liked. Then he was shocked by his own immediate antagonism to the boy. Something nasty here, he thought, and is it him or me?

  ‘Go back to bed, Steve. Close the curtains and play some music. Then you won’t hear the storm.’

  ‘Can’t I stay?’

  Rose looked at Coffin. ‘No.’

  ‘So you’re going to talk about me?’

  ‘No. Go to bed.’

  Coffin walked across the room, laid his arm round the boy’s shoulders. He did it quietly, but with weight. The action looked gentle to Rose, but Steve felt the force. Which was how Coffin meant it to be. He was not pleased with himself for his behaviour, but it worked.

  Steve left the room. Only at the door did he give Coffin a look of such sharp comprehension that any triumph he felt evaporated at once.

  ‘Thanks. But I shouldn’t have let you do that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I should have done it for myself.’

  ‘He’s at a difficult age.’ He did not exactly believe this statement: to his mind Steve was not developing, he was already fully what he had it in him to be. People like Steve are the origin of the myths about changelings.

  ‘He was hard as a baby,’ said Rose, confirming this thought. She went over to a side table. ‘Have a drink, will you? I’m going to. Gin, whisky? I’ve got vodka. I think it’s the sort of evening for vodka.’