‘About what time was this?’
‘Not too sure. Between ten-thirty and midnight. You might remember better yourself. You saw me.’
If he’d stayed, Coffin thought, he might have prevented the murder of Phyllis Henley just by being there.
‘And you had a key?’
‘Yes, I’ve always had a key. Irene gave me one.’ Court produced it in the palm of his hand. ‘Want it?’
Coffin considered. ‘Yes, I’d better have it. I’ll give you a note saying you have handed it to me.’ He went to his desk to start writing it. Court nodded agreement.
The letter was soon written, and the writing of it had provided Coffin with a pause in which to think.
‘I’ll look for what the girl had written myself and see what it amounts to. I was going to take a look round the house anyway. I’ll let you know what I find. If anything.’
‘Thank you.’
‘If it bears on the case at all, I may have to use it, otherwise …’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll see. I can’t promise anything.’
‘Anyway, you know all there is to know now. Letty said to tell you and you’d understand. If anything does come to light about me, then I shall resign from the House. I’ve got no great taste for riding out a storm.’
‘I’ll see you out.’
On the stairs they passed Mrs Brocklebank, key in pocket, on the way in.
Coffin said, ‘I don’t blame you. It could happen to anyone.’ He held out his hand.
Court took it.
‘Thank you for saying that.’
As Coffin walked back up to his flat, he heard an indignant wail from the kitchen.
‘You two gentlemen let the kettle boil dry.’
‘Sorry,’ said Coffin, ‘it just happened.’
The usual male excuse, he thought.
Houses when empty, yet full of furniture and the equipment of day-to-day living like washing-machines and refrigerators and TV sets, show or perhaps develop a character of their own.
Coffin felt this when he stood inside the upper hall of No. 22. It was empty, but the passage of the police through it twice within weeks was clear. Dust, furniture pushed out of place, chalk marks on the floor and everywhere the powder of the fingerprint expert. The dining-room door was unsealed now, but you could still see traces of the sealing.
On his way down Church Row to make this visit, he had met Peter Fleming with a little cargo of children in tow. Weenie was there and her two brothers. Weenie called out in friendly fashion that she was dressed up for a school play.
‘Hello, Weenie, hello, Peter,’ he had greeted the lad. ‘Where’s your sister?’
Peter shrugged. ‘Could be anywhere. Am I supposed to know?’ He was wearing a thick sweater and had his hands thrust in his pockets. He looked cold and cross.
Weenie said in a high, penetrating but convincingly sensible voice: ‘Sarah’s at the Poly. It’s the end of term, she has exams.’ She too was wrapped up with a scarf round her throat, but in her case it seemed to be an affectation, because her dress was a flimsy organza with a frill and she had a wreath of flowers on her head. She looked like a fairy with a bad cold.
‘Is that right?’ Coffin looked at Peter. ‘I’d like to see her.’
He meant that literally. He might not speak to her, but he certainly wanted to see her. In the flesh, living, and acting. It might resolve something for him.
‘It’s what she said. But I don’t check up on her. Perhaps she doesn’t go to the Poly as often as she claims.’
‘Tell her I want to see her, will you?’
Peter shrugged. ‘Can’t say if she’ll come. Her own law, is Sal.’
‘As long as she knows.’ And Coffin went into No. 22 to encounter the sense of long past living that hit him now like a wall.
He knew he had to push against this wall or it would get the better of him. It might be just imagination, probably was, but it had defeated Christopher Court and might do the same to him.
In any house over a certain age a number of people have died. But in this house the dead had faces, almost voices.
As he stood there, the procession filed past him.
Malcolm Kincaid, student.
Bill Egan, recidivist.
Terry Place, villain.
Edward, Irene and Nona Pitt, victims.
Phyllis Henley, policewoman.
There might be others behind them whose names he did not know and whose faces he could not see, but who were invisibly pushing at those in front.
He gave a shiver and opened the library door. Sunlight poured in, lighting up the books which lined the walls and gilding the furniture. Irene Pitt had created a beautiful room; the last time he had seen it had been at their party when it had been full of life and gaiety and happiness. Now a dead azalea in a pot in the window shed its last few dry blossoms in the movement of air from the door. Pale, grey and shrivelled, the petals suddenly fluttered down at his feet, the only movement in the room. Not life, just death in action, like the spasm of rigor relaxing.
On the round library table books and newspapers were laid out as if only just dropped by the reader.
No doubt the investigating police team had examined them, he told himself. Other hands came between him and dead hands.
Oh, come on, he told himself. You’d never handle a second-hand book if that was how you felt. Be your age.
His eyes fell on a book bound in pale green and lettered in gold. Out of the past, speaking on that day he had gone to the MP’s flat and eaten smoked turkey sandwiches, he heard Christopher Court’s voice:
‘The Book of Poisons by Gustave Schenk. Someone had been reading it.’
Now here it was before him, on the library table.
Court could have put it there for you to find, he told himself. He doesn’t have to be telling the truth when he said he found nothing. He was in the house, he admits it.
He must have left the basement door open because a current of air passed through the room, disturbing the papers and brushing more dead petals to the floor.
He closed the library door and picked up The Book of Poisons. It was a straightforward, well-written study of many poisons, mineral, vegetable and animal. At one time it had been well read.
A piece of paper, a torn half sheet of good quality, slipped from among the pages. Page 83 was scribbled on it.
He turned to page 83. ‘Potassium cyanide is harmless to barn owls,’ he read.
Well, now we know, he thought.
On the other side of the piece of paper was a printed letter head: The Polytechnic of the South Side. Dept of Sociology and Contemporary History.
Coffin did not replace the paper in the book, but laid both side by side on the table. He would collect them on his way down. He was glad he had handled them with circumspection. There would be prints.
But a pity to find what he had. He could have wished otherwise. Sarah was being dragged into this whether he liked or not.
He walked on upstairs to the bedroom floor. He had not put on weight with the years, but he was aware of a heaviness in his tread as he climbed.
Bedrooms, a bathroom, a room laid out as an office, for the benefit of Edward, he guessed. It looked unused, full of new furniture and a clean-looking word processor. He must have died before he could give it substantial use. No workplace for Irene Pitt, but she had been going to leave the house and move in with Christopher Court. In any case, he did not know how she worked. She might have had an office somewhere in central London.
Here was Nona’s room. Not hard to identify what was so plainly a girl’s room, with rosy chintz curtains and white cane furniture. A small desk stood in the window with an alabaster lamp on it.
He moved around the room, searching. No diary. Christopher Court had been wrong there, Nona had kept no diary. Not that sort of girl. She had a few letters around, at a first glance none looked interesting.
But in a small case by the bed, he came across the folder of writings. Nona had not kept a diary, but
she had written little sketches and one or two short stories.
He sat on the bed and went through them, reading quickly. Time to go back and study them more closely if he wanted.
Some of the stories and sketches were handwritten, but in a bold clear style, easy to read, while still others were neatly typed. One or two were a mixture of both, as if the writer had worked in snatches. Some of the work, presumably the earliest stuff, was childlike, on themes such as My Friends or Learning to Cook, probably school work; but the later and typewritten material was more sophisticated. That written in a mixture of both was the most personal.
I must disguise names, she had written, because some of this will be read by outsiders. Also my mother might see it. I hope not, because she would guess who Kit and Master are. Would she know who Follower is? I guess so.
His eye moved on. I must never let Kit know how I feel about him. He has no idea. Or does he? Is it possible he feels the same? Just sometimes I sense he does. He does sometimes seem to offer me something not quite friendship from an adult to a child, but something a little harder. I haven’t expressed that well because it is hard for me to think about it. I burn. I blush. I really do.
This was the writing of an eager, sensuous child, just opening her mind to passion.
Well, he knew who had opened it for her.
Underneath and at the bottom of the heap, was a typed manuscript. On it, Nona had written in pencil: Published in the School Newspaper on January 13, 1976. Third prizewinner for Best Short Story in the Junior Section. Then she added with an exclamation mark: But this is not fiction!
It was the story of two young creatures, a boy and a girl, discovering a dead body. He was lying there under the trees with a few wet leaves on his face, which was dark and mottled. He looked as though he had drunk the poison very quickly and then fallen back dead at once. A bottle with some powder still in it was in the grass, and also a tin of Coke and a paper cup. My companion said we could leave the cup but to take the poison. It might be dangerous for any little animals that come looking for food. The little animals had already been there. They had already nibbled at the dead man’s cheek.
How much of this had really happened and how much was invention? Coffin could not tell, but some details read as truth. He decided it was all truth. Nona and one other had come across the body of a suicide, the dead man almost certainly Malcolm Kincaid.
What he also picked up was the shock and horror both young people had experienced. He was terribly dead, wrote Nona. Black and swollen. And on the hands the skin was coming off. It was undignified and animal. I had never seen a dead body before, but I could not stop looking. I shall never be the same person again. I know what death is now.
Fascinated, horrified and yet attracted, a dangerous combination.
Two young people, one of whom was Nona, the narrator, had found the body of Malcolm Kincaid. The police had already suspected the presence of someone like them. One of the pair had taken away the poison. Well, they had always known that there should have been a bottle which had contained poison on the scene of the suicide. Now he knew there had been such a bottle and he knew where it had gone.
This poison had been used to kill the Pitts.
I promised never to speak of this discovery, Nona wrote, and I never have. But one must tell, it was too much to keep quiet. So I write this account.
Thus keeping her word and yet clearing her soul. He had to use the word soul, it came into it somehow. Sadly, Coffin put the little story aside.
He was not at the end of his discoveries, the most significant was yet to come.
He found an advertisement cut from a black and white newspaper or comic, impossible to tell which, of a game described as the ‘ultimate in fantasy games’.
He had met this game before: Tombs and Torturers.
Nona had written on the advertisement: Kit sent me this. I wondered why. I think I know now and I find it exciting.
Oh, Christopher Court, thought Coffin. You are not so innocent after all. What made you send that to Nona? But like Nona, he thought he knew too. It was a kind of invitation.
I will buy one of these for Peter, Nona had written. Perhaps he will play with his sister. She hates me anyway. I have all she wants, and I have it without trying. She told me so herself. Just because my skin is the wrong colour. You’ve got it right there, Coffin thought sadly, hating to go even so far with the theory of Chips Salter that the Pitts had been killed because of their colour.
So Nona had bought the fantasy game herself? There was a terrible irony here.
All around her was a system of loving relationship which supported her. Nona herself had fed into the system the dangerous compound of sex, aggression and fantasy which had destroyed it. She had created her own Frankenstein.
Then she had let the monster out.
A sound behind made him swing round. ‘Oh, hello, Sarah. I thought you were at the Poly.’ He tried to keep the shock out of his voice.
‘I didn’t go after all.’
‘How did you get in here?’
‘You left the basement door unlocked.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘You’ve been here some time, haven’t you? I felt a movement of air.’
‘I’ve been sitting on the stairs, thinking what to do.’
‘I should have thought that was obvious.’
‘To you, not to me.’ She looked at him with a half-smile. ‘General confession and all that?’
‘Any information you’ve got about these killings will be very much appreciated by me,’ he said stiffly.
‘I bet.’ She put a hand through her hair, that bright red hair that Coffin had loved so much. Yes, he had to use that word. The thing is, I don’t quite know what to say.’
‘Oh, come on, Sarah.’
‘All very well for you. You’re safe inside your world. You don’t know what it’s like outside.’ She looked at the box of papers. ‘What have you got there? This is Nona’s bedroom, so I suppose they are hers.’
‘Nona says you hated her. Is that so?’
Sarah said: ‘It certainly was true once. I was jealous, I suppose. I wouldn’t say it was true now.’
‘She’s dead.’
That does change things. But I assure you, hate can cross death if you want it to.’
It didn’t sound like the Sarah he knew speaking. She’d picked up a false sophistication at the Poly. Or was it just nerves?
‘Why did you follow me in here, Sarah?’
‘You know, you know!’
He frowned. ‘Oh, Sarah, you’re making this hard.’
‘You want me to make it easy for you? You think this isn’t hard for me too?’
She sank down on the floor and covered her face with her hands.
She didn’t look very dangerous like that, Coffin thought. He noticed without emotion that there were thin scratches on the back of her hands.
He advanced towards her and pulled her up. ‘Come on, stand up.’ The scratches on her hands were bleeding, some blood transferred itself to his own hands.
‘You’re bleeding.’
‘Yeah.’ Her voice was weary. ‘Inside and out.’
There it was again, that touch of artificiality, a theatricalism that he didn’t quite like in her. But after all, perhaps he shouldn’t blame her. It might be the best way of dealing with the situation they found themselves in.
‘How did you get those scratches?’ They looked fresh.
‘I had a bit of a fight.’
He felt something stiff up the arm of her sweater. He drew it out, she was unresisting. It was a knife. ‘Why have you got this there?’
‘It seemed the safest place to put it. You may not have noticed, but this skirt has no pocket.’
She had responded to the anger in his voice by pulling away.
‘I thought you were my friend. Sergeant Henley came to our house yesterday. You must have sent her.’ And indirectly, he had. ‘I didn’t see her but Weenie and Peter did. Weenie told me. I thou
ght Sergeant Henley was a friend once.’
‘There aren’t any friends in this game.’
‘I don’t call it a game. And I would have thought loyalties and relationships were just what counted at a time like this.’ She was dabbing at her cuts. ‘You might have been more honest with me, come to me, told me what you were thinking.’
But he hadn’t known what he was thinking until so very recently. Or not been willing to put it into words.
‘Well, anyway, I didn’t suspect you of murder.’
‘Thanks for nothing.’ She was preoccupied with her cuts.
‘Where did you get the knife?’
‘It’s one of my kitchen knives. Was. I don’t suppose I’ll be using it again.’ The knife had been sharpened to a wicked point.
She added: ‘I’ve missed two other knives.’
‘How did you get the scratches?’
‘Looking for it. I found it hidden in a climbing rose in the garden, the rose fought back. You could hide a body in that tangle. I knew it was there somewhere, Weenie told me she saw him put it there. Weenie sees everything.’
‘And you were bringing it to me?’
‘I was bringing it here. I was thinking of dumping it on the scene of the crime … Then I found out you were here.’
He didn’t think that was quite true, he thought she had known and had meant to bring him the knife, but did not now like to say so. Family loyalty was a strange business.
So this was the knife that had killed Phyllis Henley. She must have identified the murderer and come here looking for proof. After all, she had known the Fleming family well. What had the woman come to this house looking for? What he had found himself, probably, the written evidence from Nona. Somehow she had guessed of its existence.
‘Come on, Sarah, let’s get you out of here.’ He wrapped the knife in his handkerchief. There would probably be no fingerprints but you had to try. Almost certainly be blood traces, though.
They walked down the stairs together.
‘Did you get mixed up with these fantasy games?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Knew about it. Tried a postal game once. But it wasn’t my scene. I thought it was a joke.’
‘No joke.’
‘I know that now. I had two games. That was enough. The Master, self-appointed as far as I could see (I found out afterwards he was someone I knew at the Poly), told me I was deemed his whipping-boy. I wasn’t having any of that.’
Coffin Underground Page 18
