The Coffin Tree

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Come on, Archie.’ The driver was probably listening, but did it matter?

  ‘Over the months that the investigators from the Bank of England and the City of London Fraud Squad have been digging into this money laundering business, I have got to know one or two. Not the absolute top brass, but they have knowledge, these boys. So I went to them with those questions about those people you wanted me to work on. Tactfully, mind you, with discretion. I mean, I didn’t say too much about why and how I wanted to know. Made it just a kind of gossip. I’m not saying they may not have guessed, but we kept it light.’

  He was pleased with himself.

  ‘I’ll talk quietly.’ He bent his head towards the chief commander and began to talk.

  ‘So they have wondered about those two as well?’

  ‘Sure. They cast their net pretty wide. Daresay they know quite a bit about you and me. They knew about the Intelligence Unit you had set up with Henbit and Pittsy.’

  ‘They were told by me.’

  ‘Yes, sure.’ Young did not add: But they thought you were a bit careful with the full truth. ‘I got the impression they were looking into you.’

  Coffin felt sure of it, but he had been investigated before, and there was nothing to dig up. Nothing that hadn’t been out in the open for some time: his first marriage, his bad time, his good time, his sinking below the surface, his phoenix-like revival. It was all in the records.

  ‘I think they might be calling on you. Just an idea.’

  ‘In a friendly manner, I hope.’

  Archie grinned. ‘Not in a hostile way, of course, not as far as you are concerned, although I would say they do have their likes and dislikes. They have dug deep into Sir Ferdie and they found … well, not exactly gold, the reverse – let’s say a seam of coal, and they don’t love the lady either. So yes, I think there’s material to work on there.’

  He continued to talk as they drove back to headquarters, quietly and with circumspection. ‘I made careful notes.’ He handed over a file of papers.

  ‘I’d say they have been following events in the Second City with some attention.’

  ‘Have they any ideas?’

  ‘Guessing.’

  ‘Like us,’ said Coffin. He added: ‘If they do come, I’ll see if their guess matches with mine.’ And then he said; ‘I’m guessing about the identity of the body.’

  Young said: ‘The letter, if it is a letter, will tell. But it’ll take time.’

  Coffin looked out of the window of the car as it drove into the headquarters yard. ‘But we know who it is in the river, don’t we?’ And he answered himself. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  12

  The day was long for everyone in the Second City, but Coffin put other thoughts aside and got on with the routine of the day. But underneath his surface calm, dark thoughts were gathering.

  The identity of the woman in the river would soon be established for sure now that the body had been recovered. The pathologists and the forensic experts working together would come up with who she was. It was so very unlikely that the body belonged to some unknown woman. This was no outsider, the dead woman was one of two people.

  And he was sure he knew which.

  To the rebellious couple of detectives who had appeared, even masked and silent, on television, he gave little thought. There were standard ways of dealing with such as they and the appropriate disciplinary boards would be set. He looked forward to the process. Resign indeed, that option would not be open to them: he had suspended them. The letters to tell them this had gone out; they must already know.

  At some point in the day, his secretary, the new one, whose name he must remember, had brought in a cup of coffee and a sandwich which he must have eaten, because the plate was empty when she took it away. The coffee he seemed to have overlooked because the cup was still full.

  ‘It’s cold. Can I bring you another one, sir?’

  ‘No, thank you …’ he hesitated, while she waited with a very faint smile. But she didn’t help him out. ‘Thank you, Marina.’

  Bravo, she said quietly inside herself as she closed the door. He’s got my name, I think he’s getting on top of things. She had been seriously worried.

  It was late evening by the time he drove home. As he walked up the winding staircase in his tower home, he heard voices. He paused to listen: that was Stella, and another voice.

  He pushed open the door: Stella was sitting on the sofa with Phoebe and they were in tears.

  He paused, still holding the door. ‘What are you doing?’

  Stella put her arm round Phoebe. ‘You can see.’

  He walked into the room, putting his briefcase on a chair, and stood in front of them.

  ‘Don’t loom.’

  Coffin ignored this. ‘I’m glad to see you are alive, Phoebe, and happy to see you with us again … But where the hell have you been?’

  ‘You are a bully,’ said his wife.

  ‘You keep quiet.’

  Phoebe stood up, tears still on her face, which had a puffy look. ‘No, he has a right to ask.’

  ‘I appointed you to a sensitive position, then asked you to undertake a special investigation. I imagine you started on it, but then you asked for a few days personal leave … I emphasize the few days because you dropped out of sight in the middle of an exceedingly complex case which was still developing. At first, I thought you were working under cover, then I thought you had ratted on me, then I thought you were dead.’

  ‘You were almost right: I thought I was dying.’ She touched her right cheek. ‘I believed that the lump I had found in my jaw was cancerous and that I was going to die in a particularly nasty way. I went away because I had a specialist’s appointment back in Birmingham. His first opinion was that this was likely … so I didn’t get in touch. I couldn’t bear to … if I talked about it, then it became real.’ She paused. ‘It’s not so good waiting for that sort of news about yourself and having this bit of you tested and then that, while all the time the rotten thing is growing. I hid, I hid in my flat and then in hospital; I didn’t read the newspapers and I didn’t listen to the radio or watch television. I read Barbara Cartland and Agatha Christie, they were both great comforts. I didn’t know what was going on here and frankly I didn’t care.’

  She had silenced him.

  ‘And finally, the news came round that it was just an ordinary, non-malignant little tumour that they could cut out without even sawing open my cheek.’ Once again she drew a breath. ‘So that’s it. It’s out of me, I’m cured … except I’m not sure if I believe them.’ She looked at Coffin. ‘You don’t know what to say, do you? Your wife knew, but you don’t.’

  ‘I can say I am sorry.’ He looked at Stella, who shook her head.

  ‘She didn’t say anything,’ said Phoebe, ‘but she cried with me.’

  Coffin sat down, dislodging the cat, and was silent for a long space.

  ‘Did you hear? Hear what I am saying now?’

  ‘I heard. But why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘A, because I’m a coward; B, because I’m a coward; C, because I’m a coward.’

  He was very nearly silenced again. But not quite. ‘Now you are back, are you willing to work?’

  ‘You brute,’ said Stella.

  ‘But a reasonable brute.’ He looked at Phoebe. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m back.’

  Stella put out a protective arm: ‘She’s not strong enough yet, surely you can see that?’

  ‘I’m strong enough.’ Phoebe turned towards her hostess. ‘Thanks, Stella, but I am.’

  ‘Have you seen your landlady yet?’

  ‘I went there first. Eden screamed when she saw me.’

  Coffin was unsurprised: she thought you were dead and that she had seen your severed head by the river.

  He knew now that it was Mary Henbit.

  ‘You’d better start with Eden Brown,’ he said. ‘I think she knows more than she has said. Find out. Now she knows you aren’t dead, she may
talk to you.’

  Stella walked towards the door. ‘I’ll get some drinks or coffee. A sandwich? You two will want to talk.’

  Her husband turned to her. ‘Nothing you can’t hear.’

  Stella patted his arm as she left. ‘I’ll be back, and perhaps some of the details I would rather not hear.’

  Phoebe sat down in a chair near the table, she took a notebook from her bag. ‘Nice woman, and a beauty too. You’re lucky, but I think you know it. Well, tell me what I need to know.’

  Rapidly he went over all that had happened since she had been away; she knew about Henbit and Pittsy, but he told her about the identification of Agnes, of Albert Waters’s part and their relationship.

  And then he told her that the body in the river was almost certainly that of Mary Henbit.

  ‘The last victim.’

  ‘I think she died not long after her husband and possibly before Agnes. Certainly before Albert Waters, who may have been the last to die. But the pathologist will have to establish that for us. There is a piece of paper in Mary’s pocket, a letter, a note, if the scientists can bring anything up, then we may get something there.’ He sat down and said: ‘No witnesses, and the locals don’t want to talk. But the investigating team are digging deep into backgrounds and movements. In the end, with forensics, we will get somewhere.’ And with a bit of luck, he said to himself, you always need that bit of luck.

  ‘But so far you have no idea of the killer … or killers?’

  ‘Just one, I think, but one who may have had help.’

  Phoebe looked at him. ‘But you have someone in mind? Making a guess?’

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Stella as she came in with a tray. ‘Doesn’t he always?’

  Coffin took a drink, while accepting with rueful amusement that both these women knew him very well. He’d better not forget it.

  ‘It’s an either or situation,’ he said.

  Later that night, Stella said: ‘You really were a brute sending her back to work so soon.’

  Coffin studied her with affection; she was brushing her hair at her dressing table with care and concentration.

  ‘It’s as well she is with Eden Brown, they can keep an eye on each other: I think they may both be in danger.’

  Eden and Phoebe, after the first period of caution, were glad to be together again. Eden did feel some protection from Phoebe’s presence, her very survival in the world was reassuring, while Phoebe felt that Eden was a wounded sister to whom no explanations or apologies were necessary.

  Shyly, Eden said that as her shop was closed, she would undertake all the housekeeping, and was there anything that Phoebe would like to eat for the evening meal? She did not eat lunch herself and she imagined that Phoebe would be at work, anyway.

  ‘Let’s go out for a meal,’ said Phoebe. ‘We both need a bit of uplift, don’t you think? Let’s go to Max’s.’

  Eden agreed. Good idea, she said, and then tomorrow she would cook fish, she did some tasty fish dishes.

  They sat in friendly silence. It came into Eden’s mind that if all this got cleared up and she stayed in this apartment then she would enjoy living with Phoebe. They might have a good, quiet, undemanding relationship. She would never marry again and she had an idea that sex was out for Phoebe for the time being. She sensed a hole there in Phoebe’s life, which made something to think about, but it was none of her business.

  If they both survived, there was always that thought.

  Next day. Coffin received two visitors. Their arrival, in the mid morning, was heralded by a brief telephone call from the Treasury. ‘Mr Fish and Sir George England will be calling on you this morning.’ No time named, no polite request asking whether the visit would be convenient. It had to be convenient.

  Coffin stood up as they came, Sir George was tall and thin, he was the younger of the two; Mr Fish was frankly plump. Sir George was neatly tailored in a blue striped suit, he was wearing a Garrick tie, but Mr Fish wore a light blue suit and a bright red tie. The chief commander had met them on several occasions before and had made his own inquiries into them: Sir George was reputed to have the best legal mind of his generation while Eddy Fish was the tougher brain. ‘He has a lovely smile but he never lets go. Georgie keeps him under control if he can, that’s why they go around in a pair.’

  Sir George held out his hand: ‘Good to see you again. Sorry to be so unceremonious.’

  ‘Your secretary said you would be coming.’

  ‘Quite, quite. Couldn’t give you much notice, I’m afraid you must have a lot on your mind … The Queen’s coming down, isn’t she? Always makes work. She doesn’t realize, of course, no idea the work she makes.’

  Coffin kept his thoughts to himself; of course, HM had no idea, although she might make a guess being a shrewd woman. But you could hardly expect anyone to say: Ma’am, this is a lot of hard work. Why not stay home and walk the dogs?

  Besides, a lot of people did enjoy a visit, probably he would himself when it came to it, and Stella certainly would do, making a careful inventory of the royal dress and an accurate valuation of the pearls round HM’s throat and the diamonds that glittered on her lapel.

  ‘Shut up, George,’ said Fish, ‘and let’s get on with it.’

  Not what you expected of a Treasury man. Coffin thought, but he had heard that Fish had been at Balliol.

  Very quickly and tersely, in a kind of duet, but getting all the information in precisely the right place as if they had rehearsed it – they probably had – they told him that the money laundering investigation was finished and that all the people concerned were either already under arrest or would be soon.

  They understood he had his own problems associated with the case, but he would be on his own in completing this investigation; their work was done.

  ‘I know you have one or two suspects in mind,’ said Sir George. ‘Can’t really help you, although naturally we rolled in some bits of information.’

  Fish found this irritating. ‘Come on, George, get on with it. Or I will. Chief Commander,’ and suddenly his voice was as silky smooth as that of Sir George and the accents of Balliol emerged from hiding, ‘your principal suspect was a bagman for the money launderers, carried the money from place to place, taking a rake off.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Coffin. So this was what Henbit and Pittsy had discovered and died for: a bagman covering his tracks, and then going on killing the man Waters who had helped that bagman and the woman Agnes who had guessed. Mary Henbit had been an extra, to be wiped out just in case.

  ‘Can we share a name, gentlemen?’ he said.

  Mary Henbit got her revenge. On the next day when Coffin had his head down over his desk on which lay reports, official letters, social letters, and some rubbish which he could throw aside, he took a call from Archie Young. He sounded excited.

  ‘I’ve had a first report on the letter in Mary Henbit’s pocket… It was protected to a certain extent by a handkerchief and by the envelope. Using some magic I don’t understand, they’ve managed to bring up a few letters in the centre and most protected part of the letter.’

  ‘What? Let’s have it.’

  ‘One whole word and one letter.’

  ‘Ah.’ Too much to hope for a whole sentence, but he couldn’t hold back a sting of disappointment.

  ‘They hope to bring up some more,’ said Archie Young, somewhat hurt.

  ‘You’ve got a copy? Bring it round now. I want to see it.’

  When Young arrived. Coffin cleared his desk and they studied the sheet of paper.

  ‘It’s not a bad photograph,’ Coffin admitted, albeit somewhat grudgingly.

  ‘Comes up clearer in the photograph than in real – they enhance it.’

  ‘That’s definitely Bag.’ Coffin put his finger on the word – Bagman? Yes, he could settle for that. He stared at the letter, which was big and round. A capital letter.

  ‘An A?’

  Coffin was thoughtful. ‘Could be.’ Better than nothing. What he
would have liked would have been a big bold Sir Alfred. You could make a start with that.

  ‘Did Henbit do his capital As in that way?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Young, who felt he wasn’t getting the thanks he had expected.

  ‘Get hold of one of his files and see what you can do in the way of a match.’

  He worked on for the rest of the day, then towards evening, as he was packing up to go home, Archie Young walked in. He just about knocked first, but he was in the room before Coffin had done more than open his mouth.

  ‘I’ve got some specimens of Henbit’s writing you ought to see.’ He planted a photocopied sheet of paper in front of Coffin, then followed it with a second. ‘He did not write his As in that way.’

  The chief commander examined both documents carefully. Felix Henbit had been writing a report on an armed robbery.

  ‘No.’ He sounded satisfied. ‘But I never thought he did. I don’t believe you did either.’ He raised his head. ‘Let’s call Sir Alfred in.’ Or Sir Ferdie as he liked to be called, for no reason that Coffin understood.

  Archie Young raised an eyebrow. He had a thin, narrow face and the eyebrow made him look thinner and more sceptical than ever.

  ‘Yes, really.’ Coffin was triumphant. Here I come, killer. You lying, sneaking, greedy, violent killer. I guess you enjoy killing. Well, enjoy this: I’m on to you. It’s over.

  Brenda James thought about the television programme in which the two policemen had appeared. The programme had worried her. She listened and pondered. Should she say something to the chief commander? Cheek on her part? Would she be brave enough? She doubted it, but after all, murder was murder – one had a duty.

  She thought a lot about duty and her own duty in particular.

  She mulled over her problem all the next day and might have gone on indefinitely but something, she never knew what, perhaps a second restless night, propelled her into action.

  She made her way to the chief commander’s office, watched Archie Young leave, then muscled her way in. At the end of the day, there seemed less than the usual resistance, and anyway, she got in.