Coffin thought of the games being played here and elsewhere. It was only just beginning now. Where would the infection be in ten years’ time?
‘Nona played this game? With Terry Place and Peter?’
‘They gave her a role.’
‘Did Nona let Peter have a key to this house?’
Sarah nodded. ‘I think so. I know he had one.’
‘What about Terry Place? How did he get into this?’
‘We’ve always known him. He’s local. He and Peter had a lot in common. They liked old things, talking about history, feeling they were both great and in charge, like you could with the game. And of course, Terry did hate Mr Egan. He won the right to execute him. So Peter said.’
The scrap of paper with Egan’s address on it had probably come from Peter through the no doubt unconscious channel of Mrs Rhoda Brocklebank, thought Coffin. Wherever you turned, she was.
‘And that was the point of the meeting in the tunnel? It was a play in the game?’ And the tunnel was the Tomb. He could understand the fascination now.
‘Yes, but I don’t think Peter thought Place would go as far as he did. Peter loved Nona, he really did, he saved her life then, remember.’
‘Why did he kill her afterwards, then? Because he did poison Edward, Irene and Nona Pitt, didn’t he? He had the poison and he used it.’
‘Love can turn very sour sometimes,’ said Sarah. ‘They dismissed him, you see, the Pitts did. After he had saved Nona, they paid him off.’
‘How?’
They thanked him and gave him money. They said it was for his education. The terrible thing is, I think they meant it well. But it showed they just never thought of Peter as a match for their Nona. And Nona went along with it. It was cruel.’
‘I see.’
‘They blamed Peter, but it wasn’t really his fault, it just happened.’
Did such a terrible sequence of events just happen? Privately, he thought there had been a bond of violence between Nona and Peter ever since they stumbled across the body of Malcolm Kincaid. That had been the real beginning for those two, the rest had followed from it.
And yet Sarah had seen her parents die tragically, comically, without turning towards evil. Sarah was good.
She was crying now, tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘Come on.’ He took Sarah into the kitchen, gave her a glass of water, and took one himself.
At the basement door they met Peter Fleming. He had a knife in each hand, held in clenched fists, each pointed blade directed towards them. On his hands and forearms were the gouged out and bloody scratches that Phyllis Henley, fighting for her life, had given him.
‘You stinker, Sal.’
‘I went a long way with you, Peter. But no more.’
Peter slammed the door behind him, and leaned against it. There was a flashy brightness in his eyes. His menace seemed directed at his sister, he was ignoring Coffin.
‘Crying for Nona, Sarah?’
She did not answer. Coffin tried to put his body between her and her brother, but she edged aside.
‘You ought to be crying for me. I loved her, I saved her life, and they paid me off. I wasn’t good enough. They were black, and rich, and I wasn’t good enough for their daughter.’
Black, thought Coffin, like my dearest Letty, who is palest coffee cream and lovely. At that moment he hated Peter with a vivid personal dislike. ‘She had to be punished. It was my right.’ He raised his head, and for the first time looked Coffin in the eyes. ‘I make the rules, policeman. I am The Master.’
Sarah saw what he was about to do before Coffin and flung herself forward. Peter knocked her backwards, then turned one knife inwards and dug it deep inside himself.
While still erect, he plunged the other knife straight into Coffin’s side.
Coffin could hear Sarah screaming, saw Peter sink to the ground, and as his own blood spurted out and the sense of weakness began at once, he found himself thinking:
Am I going to live to see whom Letty has flushed out in Scotland?
Then the sentence shrank and seemed to march in capital letters across his consciousness.
WILL I LIVE?
He made a tremendous effort of will to hang on to consciousness. I won’t die, he thought defiantly. I refuse.
But in this house, who could be sure?
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About the Author
COFFIN UNDERGROUND
Gwendoline Butler is a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still has a tremendous affection. She was educated at one of the Haberdasher’s Schools and then read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married, and it was while her husband was Professor of Mediaeval History in the University of St Andrews that she first began writing crime fiction.
In the early 1970s she returned to live near London when her husband, Dr Lionel Butler, became Principal of the Royal Holloway College, University of London. She is now a widow and lives in Surrey; she has one daughter.
Gwendoline Butler spends her time travelling, and looking at pictures, furniture and buildings. She has also found time to publish some thirty-odd books – she says she has always been too alarmed to count the exact number.
Also by the Author
Coffin on the Water
Coffin’s Dark Number
Coffin in the Black Museum
Coffin and the Paper Man
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