The Coffin Tree

by Gwendoline Butler

  They managed to smile and wave at Stella as she left with her husband which gave them pleasure too. Stella had announced the prizewinners Best Actor and Best Actress for the Year at the drama school, then handed over the medals. ‘Did it beautifully, didn’t she?’ said Ellie. ‘But she always does. Suppose she won all the prizes herself once?’

  ‘No, I’ve heard she came in through repertory theatre when there still was one, but she had star quality.’ Phyllis admired Stella too, but liked to get her facts right.

  On their way out, they found that Eden Brown had somehow become attached to them; they accepted her company easily and with a smile. ‘Let’s go into the bar to have a drink,’ said Ellie, ‘although the prices have gone up, haven’t you noticed? That Max is getting a bit above himself.’

  ‘On me,’ said Eden, buying her place with them.

  They all looked around to see who was there, no one they knew, but Geraldine Ducking was drinking at the bar where she made room in a companionable way.

  So that made four of them, and Ellie thought that was a nice little group and although she looked around hopefully for the producer or the odd critic or Stella, she settled down, as did Phyllis, to enjoy their post-performance drinks. ‘Boiling in there, wasn’t it? Needn’t have worn a wrap.’

  John Coffin and Stella walked home in a friendly silence. They too were hot. ‘Shall we go for a walk by the river?’ Stella asked, taking his arm.

  ‘No, home I think.’ There might be a message from Archie Young. Whatever there was to know, he wanted to know it tonight.

  Stella yawned. ‘Yes, I’m tired. Think you’re right.’

  The cat and the dog were both on patrol outside the door of Coffin’s tower, it had been a hot evening for them too, but they were now ready to settle down for the night.

  There was a message for the chief commander, it had come through on his fax and was backed up by a spoken message on the answerphone.

  ‘Young here, sir. A quick flash on the fingerprints … None of his in Page’s place, but hers are all over his house. Don’t know what that means, but there it is. I knew you’d want to know.’

  Stella looked at him, her curiosity showing. ‘So what does it mean? Anything or nothing?’

  ‘Ask yourself: who is likely to have been in his house, made free with everything in it, left prints everywhere and not worried. She wasn’t a social worker or a nurse, not that he needed either as far as I could see. So what was she to him?’

  Stella considered what she knew of Albert Waters. ‘Not his wife or his mistress.’

  ‘So what’s left? Someone close, his daughter? We can check … Maybe he burnt his own daughter’s body on that funeral pyre without knowing it. That was why he was sick.’

  The little party in the bar stayed until Max started to close up. It was still very hot, hotter than ever perhaps, but they were in a jolly mood as Geraldine had been generous with her drinks. And Phyllis wondered if there was the chance of some publicity from her. An article? Or even just a mention of a talented young dancer met one evening in the theatre. Or two young talented dancers; she was not selfish and would not grudge Ellie her share.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk by the river to cool down. There’s one spot where the old Western Canal joins the Thames where you can pretend that you are in Venice.’

  ‘Never been to Venice,’ said Eden Brown. ‘I think I’d better get home.’ She had drunk more than she usually did, with a headache beginning to brew behind her eyes.

  ‘Not been to Venice either, but I’ve seen pictures. You can imagine.’ Phyllis was always imagining places and events; if she ever got an Oscar, or married a millionaire and went to choose clothes in Paris, she would have been there already in her mind many times. She linked her arm in Eden’s and drew her along. Ellie did the same with Geraldine, and then she put her arm through Phyllis’s.

  We must make a nice group, strolling along like on the deck of a great liner, she thought, because she too had her imagination as a prop. People might wonder who we are. Pity there’s no camera around.

  As they got closer to the river, they quietened down under the influence of the still dark waters.

  At last they looked down where it lapped at their feet. The tidal river had deposited a burden at the water’s muddy edge.

  It took them a minute to understand what they were staring at, then Eden began to scream.

  10

  Eden was screaming and screaming. Geraldine gripped her arm. ‘Shut her up,’ she said fiercely. ‘Give her a slap.’ She raised her own arm.

  ‘Whoa there.’ Ellie put up a hand. ‘She’s upset, you don’t have to commit battery. I don’t like the look of it myself.’ She put her arm round Eden. ‘Hush dear, turn your face away. Or close your eyes … Is it a head?’

  ‘It is.’ Geraldine’s voice was grim. ‘It’s a head, all right.’

  Phyllis was staring down, her face was very pale. ‘I hope it’s no one I knew.’

  ‘How could it be?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘It’s Phoebe,’ said Eden. Her voice was coming in little gasps now as if breathing was difficult. ‘I know who it is, it has to be her, it’s Phoebe.’

  Phyllis was white, the colour of her lips and eyes standing out, she had overdone the make-up and now looked as if she had had a clown face. ‘How can you possibly tell? Have you looked? Really looked? You can hardly tell it is a face.’

  ‘We have to tell the police.’ Geraldine had a grip on herself. ‘The sooner it is done the better.’ She pulled her mobile phone out of her shoulder bag. She felt a strong temptation to dial the police emergency number and then leave the others to it, but she was a journalist, and Ellie and Phyllis would not fail to mention she had been there. She looked at them. ‘We could all go, we needn’t stay, I could just dial and report without saying who I was. Or mentioning any of you.’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘My dad’s a policeman. We couldn’t do that. Besides, I don’t think Eden can walk at the moment, she’s going to need driving home.’ Eden was leaning heavily against Ellie, her eyes closed, she was silent now except for a small moan whenever Ellie moved. ‘Anyway, she thinks it’s this Phoebe, and she’s going to say that.’

  ‘It can’t be Phoebe Astley, but all right, I’ll ring straight through to the local station, they know me there. A car will come.’ She shrugged. ‘You can all go if you like, I daresay Eden could manage if you help her, I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘I’m tempted,’ said Ellie who seemed to be everyone’s spokesperson, ‘but we will have to talk to them sometime, and it might as well be now; they are bound to ask and wonder what you were doing down here on your own.’

  ‘The police have long since given up asking what I’m up to.’ Geraldine perched herself on a broken bit of wall. ‘But please yourself.’ She searched in her bag. ‘Sit down while I get on with it. Smoke, anyone?’

  A patrol car must have been close at hand because before her first cigarette was finished, there were flashing lights at the end of the road, and a patrol car arrived in relative silence.

  They were all quiet now, even Eden. Geraldine walked across to the car, murmured a few words, then she pointed to the water. ‘Take a look.’

  Both the constables got out of the car to stroll. ‘You sure what you’ve seen, ladies?’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Ellie wasn’t standing for any patronage. ‘What do you think we are?’

  ‘I know who it is.’ Eden stirred, stood up straight and spoke out. ‘It’s Phoebe Astley.’

  ‘Is it now?’ The first policeman was staring into the water. ‘You’ll have to tell us about that, miss, and why you think so … It’s a head all right, but I wouldn’t care to say who it was.’ Or sex, or even what, he told himself. If it was my mother down there, I don’t think I’d know her, that’s hardly a face.

  Swollen, the flesh dark and torn, the hair matted about the face like seaweed, only the forehead and the nose looked human.

  ‘It’s Phoebe Astley. You’ll have
to tell him. He got her to live with me, I didn’t know at first but I guessed. She was on a job for him.’

  ‘What are we talking about, miss?’ The constable kept his voice polite because he could see she was under pressure. ‘Who do we have to tell?’ He turned to the other man. ‘Get on the radio, Joe, and report this. We need help.’

  ‘John Coffin, your boss … He knows her. There was something wrong with her, I could smell it; he couldn’t, he was too close to her. But she was all at sixes and sevens, I’m that way myself so I could tell in her. That’s why she went away.’

  At the mention of the chief commander’s name, the constable put out a hand. ‘Stop there, miss. You’ll have to tell all this to someone else. All I’m doing is reporting the finding of a head. You save that up for later.’

  ‘There’s too much death about,’ said Eden. ‘I’m frightened it will be me next, I’m so close, you see – too close. I’m bound to get hit next.’

  ‘I’ll take her home,’ said Geraldine, ‘I’ll run us all home, my car is just down the road.’ She showed him her press card. ‘I’m well known, that’s my address.’

  The young policeman was genuinely regretful, he felt sorry for Eden, for Ellie and for Phyllis, who hadn’t said a word but who looked sicker with every minute.

  ‘Am I imagining it?’ Phyllis broke her silence with sudden urgent speech. ‘Can you smell a dead smell? I can. It’s coming up from the water, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just the usual Thames smell,’ said the constable, ‘it’s been a hot day, things do go off.’ It was an unfortunate remark which he regretted as he saw Phyllis heave. ‘Stand away from the river,’ he added hastily. ‘Come and sit in the car.’ But that too, was perhaps not the thing to say.

  ‘Too late,’ said Geraldine, hastening to the side of the girl. ‘You’ve done your bit.’ If she had been full of wine when they left the theatre bar, she was dead sober now. ‘Come on, love, here’s a tissue to wipe your face.’ She let her fury show. ‘My God, when’s that other car coming so we can get this over with.’ She wished they had never come to the river to find this gruesome object. Death ought to be tucked away and not show its awful face. It was probably some poor suicide who deserved better than being gaped at by all of them. There was absolutely no point dwelling on any other possibility. ‘Oh, here’s the cavalry,’ she said as another police car drew up.

  ‘The sergeant is here now, miss.’

  The CID had arrived: one sergeant, and one woman detective, the radio message having conveyed the news that there were four women involved as witnesses, one of whom was hysterical.

  You’d have to say two now, thought the patrol man, if not three. No, you could hardly call Geraldine Ducking hysterical; angry, yes. He had taken note of her name and remembered that he read her column when he bought a paper and had finished the sports news. She had a wicked pen.

  He left the CID sergeant taking all the particulars while he himself sped away with his companion, having received another call.

  ‘Fast off, Joe,’ he said. He was glad to be gone, there were things you didn’t want to get mixed up with, especially with how things were with the Second City force at the moment, with all the rumours flying round. He wondered how the chief commander was sleeping?

  ‘I think I’ll forget that I heard about this Phoebe woman,’ he told himself with a yawn. ‘Just never took it in. Not the sort of remark to remember.’

  But of course, he did remember and considered it as the night went on and his tour of duty came to an end. Phoebe Astley and the chief commander? Well, the man had always had a reputation.

  Geraldine drove them all home, depositing Ellie and Phyllis at their different lodgings first, and then taking Eden back to her apartment. She parked the car. ‘I’m coming up with you. You’re not fit to be on your own just yet.’

  Eden protested: ‘Phyllis is worse than I am, she was sick, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Phyllis was sick, yes, but I don’t know about worse … I’ll see you to bed. Got any sleeping tablets? Right, take two with a glass of hot milk.’

  Eden didn’t have any milk, hot or cold, she was on a permanent starvation diet, but Geraldine reckoned orange juice would do.

  She watched while Eden got undressed and into bed. ‘What’s this with you and Phoebe Astley?’ Whom she also knew but did not intend to say so. ‘And John Coffin?’

  Eden drank the orange juice; it had gone stale but she could not resist Geraldine’s firm gaze … I’d take poison if that woman gave it to me, she thought, the way I am at the moment and the way she is. ‘Just one of those things. Forget I said it.’

  ‘Is it likely? I’m a journalist, remember?’

  ‘Then I shouldn’t have said it. I was shocked, that’s all. Of course it wasn’t Phoebe down there.’

  ‘You seemed pretty sure at the time.’

  ‘I was wrong. Still a bit drunk. You don’t think it was Phoebe?’

  There was a pause while Geraldine thought about it. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I’m all right now, you can go.’

  ‘That’s not very polite.’

  Eden closed her eyes. She did not feel polite, she wanted to be left alone. Either that, or to talk her head off.

  ‘You want to talk, I can tell.’

  ‘He put her into my apartment. I didn’t realize that at first, she seemed a nice woman who was looking for somewhere to live. She said she was a businesswoman, in public relations. But later I realized she was a policewoman, then I thought he’d put her there to protect me.’

  ‘Why?’

  Eden ignored this question. ‘Now I’m not sure. She was working all right, but on what? And she was jumpy, nervous.’

  Geraldine said: ‘You’re the one that’s nervous. Why were you nervous and needing protection?’

  ‘All right, I’ll say: Agnes Page was a friend. Make what you like of that, I’m not saying more.’ The sedative was beginning to take hold, her eyes closed.

  ‘Come on, you can’t leave it there.’

  Eden gave a small, private laugh. ‘I can, but I will say that I began to wonder about her, about Miss Phoebe Astley … Letters,’ she said dreamily. ‘I know a bill when I see one, unpaid too. I can smell them. I began to wonder if she was after money, blackmailing someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  Eden let her eyelids drop again. ‘Who? Who is there? You name someone.’ Geraldine allowed herself an answer. There was John Coffin, already deep in trouble.

  What was that word when you were thinking rubbish?

  Crud.

  The night had passed quietly and comfortably in St Luke’s Mansions in that tower which Stella as well as her husband now thought of as home. It had taken her some time to give up her own apartment, a dual life with two places to live in suited her very well in some ways, but she had come to realize that if she wanted this late marriage to work then she had to give ground. He was not going to, it hadn’t entered his head to move to her place, so she had to be the one.

  But once done, she found to her pleasure that it made her happy. She liked the feeling that night and morning, if at no other time (he was a hard man to hold to a schedule), they would be together. It was sometimes her turn to be absent, when she was filming abroad or travelling to raise funds for St Luke’s theatre. You had to work hard to stay in the same place in the present climate, and since Coffin’s lovely sister Letty Bingham had run into financial problems, it had been up to Stella to see the funding did not dry up. She had a large theatre in the old church of St Luke’s, she had the heavy responsibility of the fledgling drama school looking to her for guidance and support. But she was happy, she enjoyed it, and knew she was a lucky woman.

  Stella woke up to see the gleaming green eyes of Tiddles the cat staring into her own. The smell of coffee floated up the stairs, she stroked the cat, who was sitting on her chest, and luxuriated in the knowledge that soon a tray of breakfast would be coming up the stairs. Coffin knew how to manage an elegant break
fast: fruit juice, coffee and hot toast. You could train husbands as well as cats. In fact, better, because cats could be remarkably resistant when it suited them, but husbands liked to please. What a splendid thing sex was, thought Stella leaning back on her pillows, it did oil the wheels.

  Then she remembered their conversation of last night; she was happy – her life, in spite of dips here and there, was going well – but her husband’s life, to which she was now joined, was not so easy.

  ‘I can’t be happy just on my own now, puss. If he’s worried then somehow I am too. I suppose at last I’m really married.’ She considered whether she liked that thought or not; once she would have been through the door and over the hills and far away at any such notion, but not now. If it was part of what made a marriage, then she accepted it. ‘I feel almost holy, puss, I don’t believe I’ll ever be wicked again.’

  She began to laugh, her sense of self mockery getting the better of her. ‘Now that was a nice little scene I built up there, puss. Straight out of a vintage Bette Davis film: the bad girl reforms. I shouldn’t do it, men really are more decent than women.’

  The telephone rang and was answered downstairs. When her breakfast failed to appear, she got up, belted on her dressing gown and went to see what was happening.

  John Coffin looked up at her as she came into the kitchen, he was still holding the receiver but had stopped talking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, just the usual morning report.’ He put the telephone down. ‘Let me pour you some coffee.’

  ‘I always worry when you are so polite in the morning.’ Stella sat herself where she could see out of the window into the sky, it was still hot with the sky a hard blue, but the clouds were massing. A storm before evening, she told herself. ‘You are usually gruffer.’ She let him pour her some coffee while she buttered a piece of toast. He’d burnt that a bit, which was more normal. ‘Is there anything fresh to worry about?’