The Coffin Tree

by Gwendoline Butler

  Fire Officer Arnold held out his hand to the chief commander. ‘We met once before, sir.’

  ‘I remember. A train derailment, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was, nasty affair … Well now, by the skid marks, I reckon he took the turn too fast and the road was oily with the rain. He hit the wall … he may have been smoking, and by the smell he had petrol in the back.’

  Coffin confirmed this judgement. ‘He did have, and also he had some fireworks in the boot, his wife told us.’

  ‘Poor silly fellow.’ Arnold shook his head. ‘Driving too fast in the rain; people never learn.’

  The Swinehouse duty officer, much outranked by everyone there, kept a silent tongue. He of all the three men knew that his colleague could also put away a pint, and that although they couldn’t take a breath test while he was unconscious, both the blood and urine would tell a story. He hoped that they would all go away soon and leave him to think things out.

  ‘Would you like some coffee, sir?’ he said, by way of a gentle hint.

  Coffin refused. ‘Thank you, but no. Archie, I’ll drive you back to where you left your car.’ An accident, after all. Back to where he was before.

  ‘Outside your place,’ Archie reminded him. It seemed a long while ago. Life had piled on the agony a bit since then.

  As they stood there, the telephone rang on the station officer’s desk. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ and he answered it quickly. Never do to seem slack.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, yes, that message has reached me already, it’s been passed round the whole area but there’s not much we can do: if an adult wants to go missing that’s up to them. Unless there’s reason to believe there’s been violence … Yes, I have a note of the name: Agnes Page.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Coffin.

  ‘Woman called Agnes Page seems to have walked out on her friends. Friend, actually. She’ll turn up.’

  That name again. ‘Who’s worried about her?’

  ‘A friend …’ the sergeant consulted a note. ‘A Miss Brown. She seems to think we can flush her friend out.’

  Eden Brown thought no one was listening to her cry for help. She walked up and down the big living room unable to sleep. Insomnia was hard for Eden who had prided herself on sleeping easily and happily. She had been happy with her own couture business but when that had folded and the man who had lived with her had concluded that he ought to go in search of a younger and richer girl, misery and insomnia had come hand in hand to keep her company.

  The windows of her room overlooked the river, as did the balcony on which, in happier times, she had drunk wine with her lover. The rain was beating down on it now in harmony with her rotten mood. She had not been joking when she offered Phoebe Astley a room. Not for ever, perhaps not even for very long – things must look up; but she needed the money. And even more, she needed company.

  Where was Agnes? Had she gone off of her own will or had she been taken. Women did get grabbed, taken off, hidden, there had been several notable cases.

  Come home, Agnes, and relieve the mind of your friend.

  Her plea was not forgotten or overlooked because both Phoebe Astley and John Coffin were interested. As he drove home, he was wondering where the missing Agnes (if she was indeed missing) had gone and why. And also how she fitted into the picture he was beginning to draw up.

  He could hear Archie Young talking away about what he called the Swinehouse hierarchy and the need for a bit of reform there, but his thoughts went back to his own scenario: What had happened to Felix Henbit and Mark Pittsy and Mary Henbit, and where did Eden Brown with her missing friend fit into it?

  Did they or didn’t they?

  ‘I wonder when we will get the postmortem reports?’ he asked.

  Archie Young, who by now was feeling sleepy, did not answer.

  The storm had passed, the rain dwindled to a fine mist, and in the morning it would be another fine hot day.

  Archie collected his car and drove away, leaving behind a thoughtful chief commander.

  It was already tomorrow and Coffin did not know where he was going. He had the uneasy feeling that Agnes was going to be very important indeed. Who was this Agnes, who was not to be seen but who was putting her footprints all over the case?

  He thought for a moment: Suppose in the beginning, there were two girls, young women really, who somehow got involved in the banking dirty money to clean syndrome?

  Supposing one of them wanted out? Would that be dangerous? And to whom?

  As he reflected, he added the thought: Depends who spoke to her and to whom she answered. Like Detective Constable Felix Henbit, who might then have spoken, or Detective Constable Mark Pittsy. Or the other way round.

  And then someone violent and vicious had got the message.

  So two men might have been killed and Agnes run away.

  And whichever way you looked at it, Mary Henbit was an innocent victim.

  He parked the car. Was he beginning to put together a complete picture now? Was he getting it right, that was the question? There was a bit of lightness there, he sensed it, but perhaps not all there could be.

  Stella lying wide awake asked herself exactly what was her place in Coffin’s life. It seems as though I can easily be forgotten.

  She had the remains of a long quiet evening on her own, not exactly what she had planned. She had cleared away the coffee that the two men had drunk, she had fed Tiddles and walked the dog.

  Then she had gone up the winding stairs to the big bedroom where she had sat down at the dressing table which had crept into the room when they married as the first announcement of her arrival.

  She took off her earrings, noticing without surprise that one of the little butterfly screws that kept the pearl in place behind her ear had fallen away and was lost.

  The third this week, she said to her reflection. There must be a creature in this place that is collecting.

  Then she put herself to bed in the big bed where she had hoped to be joined by someone other than the small furry creature that soon crowded in beside her.

  She heard her husband walking up the stairs, and she was not pleased to hear him say, quite loudly, ‘Bloody Agnes!’

  5

  ‘I apologize.’ He had said this once already and would probably say it several times again; he had an idea that he might be obliged to go on saying it for the rest of his life.

  ‘You could have telephoned.’

  ‘I’m very sorry that I didn’t.’ As indeed he was, and he knew he was going to go on being sorry.

  ‘But you forgot me.’

  ‘Not exactly forgot, Stella. And I have apologized.’

  ‘And I have accepted it,’ Stella said with dignity, with the air of one whom to do less would be beneath her. So might Cleopatra have spoken to Antony. Or, Coffin thought, seizing a more sinister comparison, so might Lady Macbeth have spoken to Macbeth.

  ‘And I have carefully prepared and brought up to you this delicious coffee with the brioche I went out to buy specially at Max’s so it’s quite fresh.’

  Stella sat up. ‘Did you take the dog?’ she asked briskly.

  ‘I did take the dog, and a bloody nuisance he was too.’

  ‘Yes, he always is, one quite loves him for it.’

  Coffin knew to keep silent here; he had the definite feeling that things were loosening up a bit, the harrow was being raised, just marginally, from his neck.

  He arranged the tray on her lap. ‘There’s the post, some letters for you.’ A bill or two for him but that was only to be expected, and only fair. Part of the punishment.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘It was bad manners.’

  ‘And unkind.’

  ‘Yes, that too.’

  Stella leaned back against the pillows. ‘Is that the cat there?’

  Coffin looked down where Tiddles was leaning against his legs. ‘Yes.’ Were they both in disgrace?

  ‘Check his magnet he wears on his collar to get in the cat door. I’ve lost three golden
butterflies from behind my earrings and he may have them stuck on the magnet.’

  Coffin bent down to run his hand round Tiddles’s collar; Tiddles looked puzzled but pleased at what he took to be friendly attention. ‘No, nothing gold … two rusty nails and a pin.’

  Stella, while sipping her coffee, was opening a large envelope that had come in her post. ‘Oh,’ she was pleased. ‘Harry Trainer has sent me the script of his new play; he said he thought Anna might be right for me.’ She was quickly flipping over the pages and counting.

  ‘I’d love to buy you a flight of golden butterflies,’ said Coffin humbly.

  Stella looked at him. She had already worked out that Anna appeared on nearly every page. Good, very good.

  ‘Unless you think golden wasps more appropriate,’ said Coffin, no expression in his voice.

  Stella was quiet for a moment, then she burst into laughter. ‘We did a good bit of dialogue there.’

  I’m over that hill, Coffin decided. Thank goodness.

  Stella poured some coffee and buttered a brioche. It was a starvation day really, but it didn’t do to discourage one’s husband too much.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you, but in your sleep you were muttering the name of Agnes. Distinctly Agnes. Who is Agnes?’

  Coffin was silent, he hadn’t realized the case was so much on his mind: a bad sign.

  ‘Not another name for Phoebe?’ Stella was half laughing, half serious.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘So? Let’s go on with the conversation.’

  ‘I don’t know who she is. Or what she is. I’ve had moments of doubt whether she is a person at all.’

  ‘All the Agneses I knew were women.’

  ‘It may be a code or a cover of some sort.’

  Stella was genuinely interested: ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just have a very uneasy feeling about Agnes.’

  ‘Put the idea away,’ said Stella with decision. ‘She’s got to be real with a name like Agnes. Not like Deirdre or Desiree or one of those misty Celtic names; Agnes what?’

  ‘Agnes Page.’

  Stella drank some more coffee. For a moment she was silent. ‘Do you know, I think I’ve heard of her. Perhaps I’ve even met her.’

  ‘You might have done. If she’s with us at all, she seems to have some connection with a chain of dress shops called Minimal.’

  ‘I believe I did go in to one once. Let me think about it.’

  ‘Have a go.’ Although his wife’s entrance into a case was not always attended with good fortune.

  Stella put down her coffee cup. ‘Yes, I bought a silk shift dress, quite nice but I don’t think it will wear … You’re taking this case very personally.’

  ‘It feels personal somehow,’ said Coffin with feeling.

  Stella looked at his face, he was tired and drawn. All the anger she had felt – justified anger, she told herself – drained away and she said simply: ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, be glad to.’ He removed the breakfast tray so that he could sit beside her on the bed. ‘I’ve told you a bit already.’

  Stella nodded. ‘I know about Felix Henbit.’

  ‘Two of my young detectives who were working on a special case, a dirty money mixed up with a bank affair, both of them killed. Then,’ he looked at the little gold carriage clock on her bedside table, ‘yesterday I got news that a third man had been injured when his car exploded.’

  ‘Was he working on the case?’

  ‘Good question. No. So that seemed to change the picture, and we had to ask if the attacks were just aimed at policemen in general and it was coincidence that two of the men had been working on the same case. Detectives have plenty of enemies and Archie Young reminded me of at least one family that might be capable of it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It looks as though the latest victim was really an accident and his own fault at that. He was carrying fireworks, and he was driving too fast.’

  ‘So he wasn’t murdered?’

  ‘Probably not …’ He thought about it. ‘No, almost certainly not. Anyway, he isn’t dead. Not yet and with luck he will pull through.’ He might not be able to walk because he might not have legs to walk on, but he would be alive. Not a happy man, you could bet on that, but a breathing one.

  ‘But the other two were?’

  ‘Probably, yes. We’re waiting for second postmortem results; we know they had both been drinking heavily which was out of character and I want to know more.’

  Stella nodded, she was polishing her nails with a soft piece of chamois leather while she gave most of her attention to him, although there was a current underneath considering the new Trainer play, the part she might get and whether he would let her have it at the Pinero Theatre. A short, pre-West End run could do marvellous business. But he was so wedded to the National and there was no denying this was one for the Olivier stage.

  ‘So you think that somehow or the other, but you aren’t sure how, that they were both murdered?’

  ‘Yes, and now I think Mary Henbit was killed too. I don’t think she climbed on to that funeral pyre: she was put on it.’ Alive, half alive, dead, he didn’t know. But he would know, the postmortem results would tell him something.

  ‘That makes me feel sick. Why? Why kill her?’

  ‘Felix must have told her something and the killer must have found out. I’m guessing, but Mary must have got in touch with the killer; I can’t think of any other way she would be in danger. Unless …’ Another thought came into his mind, but he pushed it back for the moment.

  ‘What about the other wife?’

  ‘No trouble there. She’s all right, but I am arranging for her to be talked to, so that she is on her guard, and we’ll keep an eye out.’

  ‘Phoebe?’ asked Stella without malice. She had given up, temporarily, being cross about Phoebe, although she might take up the challenge again later.

  ‘No, I shall do it myself.’

  ‘You are not in a very trusting mood, are you?’

  Coffin looked at his wife, he knew he could trust her, even trust her tongue, she knew how to be discreet when she had to be.

  ‘It could be one of us.’

  ‘Ah.’ She stopped buffing her nails. ‘Anyone special in mind?’

  ‘No. No name, no face.’

  ‘But what’s the motive?’

  ‘I’m guessing again. At first, I thought that someone was protecting the money dealers … that may be there, as a subsidiary motive, but now … now I think the killer is protecting himself.’

  Stella frowned now. ‘But from what? What’s the threat?’

  ‘This person dare not be linked with money laundering.’

  Stella could be intelligent. ‘So not a known criminal but someone of good character and good position who doesn’t want to lose it nor risk going to prison.’

  Coffin felt he couldn’t have put it better himself.

  ‘And you think it’s someone you know?’

  Coffin nodded.

  Stella thought about it. She knew her husband very well, had seen him change from a callow, eager, clever youth into a thoughtful, perceptive man. Intuitive, but always logical. ‘Do you have a special reason?’

  ‘I do, as it happens. I don’t know how much it means, I don’t know if Archie Young would set much store by it, but to me it is running up a flag … Before he died, Felix got a message to me, asking me to meet him at the Crown and the Unicorn. It’s not near here, just off Leicester Square; it is not used by any of the local squad. The message said he wanted a word on the quiet. I took that to mean he had something not for any local consumption. He never kept that appointment: I did, he did not. I know now that he was dead or dying while I sat there waiting.’

  ‘How did he get that message to you?’

  Coffin hesitated.

  ‘Not the mysterious Agnes?’

  He laughed. ‘No. His wife. She came round to St
Luke’s Mansions and gave me a note.’

  It might have been why she died. It was a thought that Coffin found hard to bear.

  ‘I wish she hadn’t died like that,’ he said aloud.

  ‘It’s very strange. Why choose that spot? She didn’t live near there, did she?’

  ‘Nowhere near. That’s a very good question and one I keep asking myself.’

  ‘Who owns the bit of land?’

  ‘It’s local council land, once allotments, now running wild. Due for redevelopment. But a man called Albert Waters seems to have proprietary rights over it.’

  Stella looked at him, she could convey much in a look. Now it was all question: ‘Did they know each other?’

  ‘Albert says not. He may not be telling the truth, we shall have to ask him again. Does he know the killer?’

  ‘The killer may know him,’ said Stella.

  ‘There has to be a connection, doesn’t there? Thank you, Stella, Albert Waters could do with answering a few questions.’

  ‘Do you think that one person is responsible for killing all three people?’

  ‘I do think so. I called him the Minder to Phoebe. He’s protecting someone, either himself or a figure behind him.’ He moved over to Stella. ‘I’d better get off.’

  Stella roused herself. ‘I’m getting up. I have a busy morning at the theatre.’ She wrapped her robe round her. It was a new one that she had bought in New York, silky, rose-coloured. ‘Is this too young and frivolous for me? No, don’t answer …’ She moved to her dressing table, studying her face in the glass. It didn’t look too bad, on the whole she was pleased with it; her face had stood up to life well.

  ‘I resolve not to be jealous of Phoebe.’

  ‘You need never be.’

  ‘Did I say that aloud?’ She knew she had, and on purpose too. ‘Well, I always wonder.’

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t.’ It was like a knife she was twisting in him. ‘You’ll see her tomorrow at Geraldine’s, you’ll know then. Pick up what the relationship is between us. Just professional.’

  Stella smiled at him, then started to clean her face. ‘You’re not vain, are you? No personal vanity.’