Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  Coffin didn’t think so, police work was police work. But Stella helped them in recreating the scene when the two students were last seen, standing by Amy’s car. A WPC was found, sufficiently like Amy to play her part, but they had trouble with a double for Martin, no police officer was a match and none of Martin’s fellow students was willing to volunteer. So Stella discovered a young actor who was a match in height and colouring, and after talking with Lady Blackhall and studying photographs, she coached him in the walk and mannerisms of the young Martin. As luck would have it, he was young Darbyshire, Philippa’s son, who had just got his Equity Card. He was also, with suitable make-up, going to be one of the non-singing Valkyries. This had infuriated Our General (who had been approached for help), who thought it was all right for women to act like men but wrong for men to invade their territory.

  ‘It’s the golden thread,’ Stella explained to Coffin. ‘Haven’t you noticed it in life, there is a golden thread linking event to event … that’s what Josephine has taught me. Josephine is a bit of the golden thread here, isn’t she?’

  Josephine, the Valkyries, Our General, some thread, Coffin thought. ‘Thanks for helping with the reconstruction scene,’ he said.

  They were in Stella’s living-room in the apartment which had been created out of the ground floor and old vestry of the former St Luke’s Church. There was an ecclesiastical touch to her kitchen which had strong oak rafters in the ceiling, but her living-room had been nicely secularized. Not much cooking was done here as Stella had long since mastered the art of proxy cooking, buying in what she wanted from Max at the Delicatessen or Harrods and putting it in the microwave.

  Because they shared the ownership of two animals, one cat, one dog, the two of them had regular what they called ‘interchange’ meetings when Tiddles was forcibly returned to the Tower and John Coffin, and Bob was repatriated to Stella. Both animals would emigrate again as food and prospects looked better in the other place. Tiddles was suspected of having yet a third home, so far unidentified but strongly tipped to be the kitchen of the bar-restaurant in the theatre. He had been seen carrying a chicken leg from somewhere.

  Stella’s living-room had recently been refurbished on the strength of the contract signed for her TV series. ‘Should be good repeats,’ she had said as she chose a set of expensive Italian leather furniture, soft and quilted so that you could tell every chair cost as much as a diamond. Of course, she had had new rugs, Spanish these, and thick natural linen curtains with that unironed, crumpled look that was so valuable and sought after at the moment. ‘We ought to be sure of a Christmas showing, maybe more.’

  The film about the two missing young people went out on all the main TV news programmes. With any luck they would get some hard information; there would certainly be some loony responses from those who had seen the couple on the Shetland Islands, in New Zealand or embarking on a space ship for Mars.

  Some other traveller on bus 147a that night might remember the girl or the boy, or both of them together. A slim chance, but possible.

  The report of Archie Young’s interview with the staff at Star Court House arrived on Coffin’s desk the day after the TV filming. Young reported that the trio of women in charge (the place was a kind of cooperative, self-governing as far as possible, with one paid and trained social worker) had been polite but not helpful.

  Coffin dropped into Archie Young’s office to speak to him. Not a popular habit, he knew, but one he meant to continue. Apart from anything else, he was always interested to see Young’s office, a tiny slip of a room, but with a long window-sill which got the sun and on which he was always growing seedlings and small pot plants. Today he had some elderly-looking tomatoes, running up the window on frames, heavily fruited, but unripe.

  ‘Isn’t it time you picked those?’

  ‘I’m waiting for them to ripen.’

  ‘They look past it to me,’ said Coffin judicially. They were unhealthy, infected with some mould, but he wasn’t a plant man himself, and if he had set himself up with plants in pots, then his resident cat Tiddles would have done something unpleasant to them. ‘So how did it go at Star Court? You didn’t seem to get much.’

  ‘Didn’t get anything. They wouldn’t open up.’

  ‘Being deliberately obstructive, are they?’

  ‘Not really, just naturally prickly and difficult, I think.’ Archie Young sounded as if he was still assessing what they had said. They were a strange bunch, living a kind of communal life while fiercely preserving every inch of privacy that could be managed. He respected them for that, but had found Mrs Rolt, the administrator, polite but distant and the one who wore rags and tatters with such an air a puzzle.

  ‘Are they protecting someone, then?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They just don’t believe in men. And particularly the police. They’ve got their own protection down there.’ He looked at his Chief. ‘You know about that? I sort of probed around there but they wouldn’t talk.’

  ‘Our General? Oh, certainly. I can see she might be a conversation stopper from all I’ve heard.’

  ‘I didn’t meet her, I gather she keeps her distance, but I think she might have been in the house. Just the way they acted.’

  ‘I think I will go down there myself. Find an excuse. After all, that bus route does pass very close. Amy Dean could have been there.’

  He called early that evening, after a committee on Policing in the Community had ended a perplexed and anxious session. This particular committee which, mercifully, he was not required to chair, never got anywhere and never would in his opinion in spite of high motives and good will all around. There must be something like dyslexia of the soul, he thought, that impeded people of different groups when they talked of certain matters: you just couldn’t read each other right. He thought that contact with an outfit of women trying to get on with their lives in their own way might be just what his spirit needed.

  And he wanted to ask questions about Amy and Virginia.

  Star Court House could have been a slum. As it was, it came very close to being one, a battered old house that seemed to match its function, but it was saved by the fresh paint on the front door, a strong defiant red, and the row of fierce orange geraniums that lined the windows. No pot plants could be put outside or stood by the door, they would be stolen or vandalized. Unluckily, it was that sort of neighbourhood, a kind of no man’s land between three tall housing blocks and a sad, undernourished-looking park made up of a circle of grass and a children’s paddling pool which was empty.

  But it was on a good bus route and near a busy main road. So it was accessible, a place you knew how to get to, although not the sort of place a taxi-driver would happily take you to. But then few of the women who arrived could afford a taxi, most of them walked from the bus, even if at home they had a choice of cars, or had been prosperous, coming here they seemed to prefer the anonymity of the bus.

  There was no obvious sign of the protection of Our General and her gang, but he was reliably informed that if you made a nuisance of yourself not many minutes passed before you regretted it.

  Watch your back, his informant had advised him, but he didn’t expect to be attacked: his help had been sought. Star Court might not like him or his sex but they trusted him as a person.

  He rang the bell. After a wait, he was inspected through a hole in the door, and then the door was opened.

  It was Josephine.

  ‘I thought it was your eye,’ he said.

  ‘We knew you’d come.’ A large white overall covered her fine-coloured flutter, and she had toned down her make-up a little, this was her working garb. ‘You’re the second. We had an inspector down here.’

  Chief Inspector Young would not like being downgraded.

  ‘All right if I come in?’

  She opened the door wider. ‘Enter.’

  The house was not quiet, he could hear women’s voices down the hall, laughter, a child cal
ling out, music, but it sounded friendly.

  ‘Come into our interview room.’

  ‘Oh, do you have one?’ He was interested in knowing how they worked.

  ‘Have to have, can’t bounce people straight into the kind of madhouse that we sometimes have here.’

  They went into a small room, with several armchairs and a dilapidated sofa. Someone had been smoking in here not so long ago, leaving a strong smell of cigarettes and a deposit of ash on the floor.

  ‘I’ll call Maisie, Mrs Rolt, she wanted to talk to you.’

  He knew the name: Maisie Rolt had got the centre running single-handed in the face of a lot of opposition. ‘Is she all right?’ He had heard that she had been attacked by an unpleasant form of cancer.

  ‘Fighting back,’ said Josephine with a smile. ‘That’s our Maisie.’

  Left alone for a moment, Coffin occupied himself with opening a window to empty the laden ashtray. The grass underneath the window was thick and uncut, more than a match for any nicotine.

  Maisie Rolt came into the room quietly, but without Josephine. She was wearing blue jeans, a dark blue sweater and bright red beret drawn down low on her forehead. She looked cheeky and alert and she smelt strongly of onions.

  ‘Sorry about the smell, onions do whiff, don’t they? But we’re having sausages and mash for supper tonight and a fried onion does liven it up.’

  ‘Sorry if I have interrupted the cooking.’

  ‘Jo’s carrying on. Sit yourself down.’

  Curiosity impelled the next question. ‘Does Josephine live here?’

  ‘Of course not. She’s got a flat in one of the tower blocks on Planters.’

  ‘Is she all right there? Any trouble?’

  ‘She did have a bit at first, got mugged, and her TV stolen, but she made powerful friends and they look after her now.’

  Ah yes, Our General again. ‘Protection?’

  ‘You could call it that, but not for payment. But you didn’t come to talk about Jo.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘There’s a story there, and one day I might tell you, or she might.’

  ‘Or it might come out.’

  ‘Things do come out in the end,’ agreed Maisie Rolt.

  ‘I thought you would be glad to know that a solid investigation into Amy’s disappearance is under way.’

  ‘I am. She hasn’t just gone off, she wouldn’t do that. She was very regular in coming here. We didn’t count on her; help is always useful but we can manage; but it was just not in her character for her to drop out. She’d arranged to take a party to the swimming pool, the kids were all ready, she would never have let them down.’

  ‘Yes, I see that.’ He hadn’t known about the swimming pool trip, and it did carry some weight with him, although with students, he thought, you can never be sure. ‘So you had no warning she might not turn up?’

  She shook her head. ‘No message, nothing, just silence. I found that disturbing. It upset the whole household. And I take that seriously. If some of the women here think it’s bad, then it is bad.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They learn to smell trouble.’

  ‘You don’t ask me if I have any news.’

  ‘Because I know you haven’t, you would have said straight off, you’re that sort. Besides—’ she smiled—‘I have my own sources, I know there’s nothing.’

  Ah yes, Our General, he thought, and possibly Mimsie Marker down at the Tube Station, she was the great communicator.

  The door swung open and a small child appeared, a boy probably, although it was hard to be sure, his or her outfit was unisex: longish hair and a kind of kilt with pants.

  ‘Hop it, Darren,’ said Maisie. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

  ‘The soup’s boiling over.’

  ‘Tell Jo, or your mother, or anyone you can find. On no account touch it yourself.’

  ‘If it is boiling over,’ she said as the door closed. ‘Just wanted a look at you, I expect. His mother probably sent him in, she has fantasies about what goes in this room.’ Maisie gave a hoot of ironic but friendly laughter. ‘And so would I if I’d had her life. Ask no questions because I’m not telling you.’

  ‘What can you tell?’ He was beginning to see what Archie Young had meant. Not so much difficult as baffling.

  ‘I never tell much about anyone really, that’s what I’m good at, keeping quiet. It helps here. Essential. If I was a gossip I’d have been killed by now and this place would have gone up in flames … But it was the two of them, Virginia and now Amy. I talked it over with Josephine and she felt the same.’

  Coffin kept quiet.

  ‘I didn’t want to think it was our fault.’

  ‘How could it be?’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You never know when one thing leads to another until it’s too late. But the girl came to us here, said it was part of her course. I checked, and it was, so all right, but she did more than she need have done, and so did Virginia.’

  ‘Just kindness of heart?’

  ‘Could be, but it worried me then and it does now. They didn’t come together, but they knew each other. I don’t like coincidences that end in disappearance and death. Was it something they got into because of coming here? I don’t know. We’re clean here, no drugs, nothing of that sort. I watch for it. I didn’t ask them why they came, beyond the first query, which is standard. I mean, I have to look out, we do have some dubious characters whose motives are not very nice. I can suss them out. These girls were not like that. I’m glad of help and I don’t dig into people. I’d go mad if I did. We have enough trouble here as it is.’

  It was quite a speech and he wondered what emotions lay behind it.

  ‘We had a man round here asking questions. No, not one of your lot, I can always tell them.’

  ‘A nuisance, was he?’

  Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘He was seen off. We had a couple of guardian angels who dealt with him … Debagged, I think it was called once. Anyway, he left without his trousers and he hasn’t been back.’

  Powerful ladies, Coffin thought.

  ‘How often did Amy come here?’

  ‘Once a week regularly, and other times as we needed more help. She did office work, typed letters, filed them, kept an eye on the accounts. Talked to anyone who wanted to be talked to, some don’t. She seemed to know by instinct. She was good. Good at what she did and a good girl.’

  ‘Did the boy, Martin, come down here?’

  ‘Once or twice but we didn’t encourage it. He was awkward.’

  ‘We are still trying to form a picture of what might have happened. You know Martin is missing too? His wallet was found in Amy’s car.’

  ‘She loved that car.’ It was not an answer but he concluded she had known about Martin, and possibly that was part of her alarm. Did she think he was guilty of violence?

  ‘In confidence—’ he almost stopped there, no question of confidence, soon it would be known everywhere—‘I can tell you that a sweater that has been identified as Amy’s has been found. There was a handkerchief inside it, and with it a bus ticket. A ticket on the route that runs at the bottom of this road.’

  ‘I don’t think she ever used a bus,’ said Maisie. ‘Always came in the car.’

  ‘Someone bought that ticket. And on the day she disappeared. It was wedged beneath a handkerchief.’

  ‘She never used a handkerchief, always bits of tissue crammed into her pocket.’

  ‘It was clean. Might have been just decoration.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’d say it wasn’t hers.’

  ‘Her pocket in her sweater,’ he persisted.

  Mrs Rolt shrugged. ‘You asked me.’

  Darren put his head round the door. ‘There’s ever such a smell of burning in the kitchen.’

  ‘I’d better get back,’ said Maisie Rolt. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t helped. Just pushed your questions back at you.’

  ‘At the beginning of an investigation like this, questions are as valu
able as answers.’

  ‘Thank you for saying that … Would you like to stay for supper? I dare say it won’t all be burnt.’

  To his surprise, he heard himself say yes, he would, thank you, but not tonight, some other time?

  Suddenly she said: ‘I’ll tell you what I feel: we weren’t using her, she was using us. She was getting something, we were giving her something, and I don’t know what it was.’

  Darren burst in again, and said: ‘Our General says she won’t bloody be a Valkyrie and nor will any of her girls. The lads can please themselves if they want to act bloody women.’

  At the same time the telephone rang, and as Coffin left, he heard her dealing with a call from someone called Angela, temporizing on whether Angela could help at Star Court.

  As he walked down the garden path a figure dressed in black leather swept along, nearly knocking him over. He saw the gleam in her eye as she flew past.

  Second time of asking, he thought. She meant to get me if she could.

  Our General. Rosa Maundy, a rose with many a thorn, he thought. Maundy was an old Spinnergate name, you got them on the records way back to the first Elizabeth when they had been Thames watermen. Our Rose. He knew a bit about her now, she worked for her father who ran a small haulage company, it was her power base. A story there too, and he would find out when it suited him, which might be quite soon if she kept trying to kill him.

  He walked to where he had parked his car and drove westward. Sometimes you can walk just so far and no farther.

  At the Tube station in Spinnergate, where he stopped to buy an evening paper, Mimsie Marker was packing up to go home.

  ‘Saved you a paper.’

  ‘You always do.’

  She folded it up in the professional way, as taught her long ago, pocketed the money in the leather bag that hung in front of her like a kangaroo’s pouch and became confidential.

  ‘About those kids that have gone missing, pair of students.’