Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  There was a long pause before Rosa said: ‘I think it’s the name of the wood where Amy Dean was found.’

  So she knew, Coffin thought, I have made a connection at last. The links are joining up.

  ‘Let’s put the newspaper cuttings back in the box,’ said Maisie. ‘I don’t think I want to see them any longer.’

  Coffin picked up the tin. ‘I shall have to take them away.’

  ‘Josie didn’t mean you should see them. No one should have seen,’ said Rosa. ‘Bloody men. Always poking in where they’re not wanted.’

  ‘Be quiet, Rosa,’ said Maisie in a weary voice. ‘You’re in enough trouble as it is. You need all your friends.’

  Coffin picked up the papers. A white sheet fluttered from the folds of the Easthythe Times. He picked it up.

  ‘A letter?’ asked Maisie.

  Coffin read it. ‘Not exactly.’ He held it out for her to read.

  Three lines of poetry, handwritten in pale ink, ran across the middle of the page.

  Regions of sorrow, desolate shades, where peace

  And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

  That comes to all: but torment without end.

  ‘It’s a quotation. Might be from Milton, sounds like Milton,’ said Maisie.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  Coffin said slowly: ‘It reads to me like a confession of guilt.’ He looked at Rosa, whose face was set and grim.

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’ The words came out like hard pebbles dropped in a pool. ‘I’m not saying anything.’ Her mouth shut tight.

  You might have been a pretty girl once, Coffin found himself thinking, but something inside you reached out and twisted your features. We make our own face, Rosa, and you made yours hard.

  He got home at last to his dark, empty tower rooms. Even Tiddles was absent. It would be good to have a proper home. You get what you really want, and perhaps this was the first time he had felt a strong, true need of a settled home.

  He was his mother’s son, after all. She had been a wanderer and a mystery and he saw now that he had been essentially rootless and was a mystery to himself.

  CHAPTER 16

  The next day

  In the morning, he pushed a note through Stella’s door, a formal invitation to dinner that evening. No telephoning at the last minute, no dropping in at Max’s Deli, this was going to be a big evening. He would be delivering a statement, no not a statement exactly, he would be both telling and asking. A declaration perhaps?

  But at the end of the handwritten note, he added, because she had to know: Josephine left a box of mysteries. Ask Maisie Rolt.

  She’ll hate me for putting it like that, but last night’s disclosure was a kind of confidence.

  ‘Tell you more when we meet,’ he muttered as he popped the letter in at her door. She was home, probably bathing, he could smell the strong scent of the rose geranium and jasmine essence she used floating through the letter-box. Tiddles and Bob were there with her. He could hear a snuffling which was must be Bob, and Tiddles’s presence could be deduced from his absence anywhere else.

  Six days now to the interview which would be so crucial.

  What was private as yet from Stella was not private from Paul Lane and Archie Young to whom the documents had already been delivered. By hand, by the Chief Commander himself, late last night. He had already spoken to them both on the telephone before sealing the note to Stella.

  There was no meeting, but a quadruple-link telephone call was set up. Faxes were also busy flipping reports and messages on to various desks. Four different police units were now involved in what was a multiple investigation.

  The Met group investigating Amy Dean’s car had handed over its reports and was more or less out of the picture. ‘Reports meagre,’ was what Chief Superintendent Paul Lane had summed up. Traces of the girl, James Dean and Martin Blackhall were all found. The car itself was sealed, covered and under lock and key. But the general feeling was that there was nothing more to be gained from it.

  At this point, Paul Lane pointed out that an examination of Martin’s hands had confirmed that the scratches were likely to have been made as he climbed out of the river. It was not clear how he came to be in the river, but it was likely he was drunk when he fell in. He had been seen drinking in the riverside pub called the Waterman.

  The mainstream investigation into Amy’s death was still the centre of everything, but it had now drawn into it the death of the woman called Josephine who had built a ring of fire about herself like Brunnhilde.

  The earlier discovery of a dead girl in Pickerskill Wood brought in a new element. Coincidence?

  Or had the killer known of the first discovery and used the place because of some curious kicks of his own?

  Or was the killer of the first girl also the killer of Amy?

  Chief Superintendent Paul Lane was for coincidence. ‘And I don’t believe we will ever discover who killed Amy Dean.’ He was not one of those who soon became on familiar terms with the victim, he liked to keep his distance.

  ‘Or who buried her?’ queried Coffin sharply.

  ‘Or who buried her. The case will stay on the files.’ They wouldn’t give up just yet, he meant, but slowly activity would quieten down. ‘I think you are wrong in reading too much into the newspaper cuttings. Of course we’ll go into it. The old North Thames Division, it would have been then. That was before we were reorganized.’ He still resented that reorganization, even though he personally had profited from it with an accelerated promotion. (But deserved, he told himself.) ‘Probably discover that they got the killer and put him away.’

  ‘And he might now be out and killing again,’ said Coffin.

  ‘If we know his name, then we’ll know where to go and get him. But I’m betting on no connection between the cases. Nothing in the poetry, sir, not to my mind.’ Lane was experienced and sharp, his instincts finely honed by years of murder cases which usually ran to a pattern. He was mostly right and sometimes wrong. He passed over the wrong times in his mind.

  CI Archie Young took an opposing view. Unlike Paul Lane, he was responsive to poetry and could feel the force of the lines from Paradise Lost, he had even read it. ‘There is something in it, I think, sir. Could be. Those lines do tell of guilt. And handing the box over like that when she knew she was going to die. I think that does constitute a confession.’

  He was speaking from the Incident Room set up to deal with Amy Dean’s death and perhaps was the more influenced by that. It was how they felt in that room, a consensus which he had learnt to trust. ‘I believe in the papers found in the box belonging to the woman Josephine.’ He made her name sound like a disease, he had met and feared her; women like Josephine menaced men like Archie. ‘I believe they show interest and knowledge. She collected those papers and preserved them for some reason.’

  He felt he was being listened to, and with respect. ‘And her death, sir, yes, that’s definitely a message.’

  His wife was an educated woman, and although he didn’t think she would ever kill herself, if she did he could imagine her setting up a suicide scene in that way. Some women would.

  Archie Young, having got his voice into the telephoning queue, was having his say. ‘And then it’s confirmed by what the students said. They connect the death of Amy Dean with Star Court House. They didn’t put it directly like that but it was in their mind.’ It was in his, anyway, ‘And that brings us back to the woman Josephine. She’s in there somewhere.’

  ‘But no evidence,’ said Paul Lane.

  ‘We’ll get it. When you know where to look, then you get evidence.’ He spoke with conviction, he felt able to open his mind freely because he could not see the faces of his superiors.

  All this time, Ted Amesbury had been silent, outgunned by the ranks of those in this conversation. The fact that he could not see their faces was no help to him, since of the three he knew only John Coffin by sight. Rather the reverse in f
act, since judging by their voices the Chief Superintendent was a tartar and Chief Inspector Young was too sharp by half. His not to argue with men such as these.

  But he had to make his point. ‘We haven’t got the PM results on Miss Day,’ he said. No more. He knew better than to overdo it.

  ‘Get me all the newspaper reports from two local newspapers. I presume they were microfilmed before they closed down?’

  Archie Young agreed. ‘In the archives, but they may not have much.’

  ‘And of course, all that is on the police files. Where are they now?’

  Lane and Young consulted. ‘In the Met’s Central Collection. Should be.’

  ‘Get them.’

  The material was on his desk by evening. He had to go down to the basement of the building where he worked to read the microfilms. She had not won a lot of space, this dead girl. At first she was not named, and all he read was a description of the finding of the body.

  Two young people had driven to the spot, their names were not revealed either, and parked their car. The headlights had outlined a foot, then a shape covered with leaves. They had got out to look, and then telephoned the police. An investigation had been started, but the affair was sparsely reported, fuelling Coffin’s suspicions that no great interest had been taken. The big story at the time was the disappearance of a local lawyer with a great deal of money that was not his own. He had been traced to Spain. His photograph was prominent, Coffin studied it with interest, but he had never seen the face.

  Never would now, he discovered as he moved the film on: the absconding solicitor had died of a heart attack before he could be arrested.

  The microfilm was hard to read, so that he had to concentrate. The next few weeks had produced only one small paragraph in one of the papers (the other had apparently lost interest entirely), but this paragraph identified the girl as Noreen Day, aged eighteen.

  He leaned back: the probability seemed strong that this was Josephine’s child. Noreen could have been a sister, niece or cousin, but Coffin did not take this seriously. Nor did he admit coincidence. Josephine had treasured (or at any rate, had kept) the newspaper cuttings, the connection had to be close. Very close.

  He walked across to the dispenser in the corner to get a beaker of coffee which he drank while he stretched his legs. He could hear voices in the corridor outside, but no one disturbed him.

  His eyes soon picked up the short account of the inquest. The girl had been strangled, there were recent bruises on her body. Her mother had identified her. Josephine?

  A few bleak extra sentences said the girl’s mother had been detained and questioned by the police but then released.

  Coffin wound the microfilm machine on but there was no more to come. The case seemed to have ended there. The police records would have vital information on it and he would read them next, but one conclusion seemed inescapable: a strong whiff of suspicion of causing her daughter’s death had hung over Josephine.

  He hurried back to his room to see what the police records had turned up. Surprisingly and disappointingly little. The police team seemed to have taken up the case, come to a brisk conclusion as to the killer but been unable to bring in a proof.

  Yes, they had suspected Josephine, but how and why they had arrived at this conclusion were hardly brought out. It almost seemed as if they had satisfied themselves in private discussion and resolved to leave it there. He sensed that Josephine had been disliked.

  Coffin sat back, unsatisfied. The investigation appeared to him to have been hasty and short. A handwritten note was attached to one page. It said: Miss Day has left the country.

  Taking with her, he had to assume, a box with newspaper cuttings and her private despairing cry of guilt.

  Coffin paced round the room. He was restless. One way and another there was a lot of guilt swirling around this affair, his own included.

  What did he have here? Was it tin or gold?

  He had received, by messenger, a formal acceptance of his invitation from Stella. Did he detect a slight amusement? He did. The messenger was a lad from the St Luke’s Theatre Company, dressed for the occasion as a ‘thirties’ telegram boy and wearing a large smile. He recognized the suit as coming from a successful production of You Can’t Take It With You. But Stella was playing his game, and would come.

  Lysette, her day on, had booked a table at the Dreadnought, the new and vastly expensive Docklands restaurant. It was an occasion to be expensive, money had to be spent and be seen to be spent. They would meet there.

  He was early, she was late.

  Stella had turned herself out platinum hard and diamond bright. She was playing his game, but using her own rules. He felt scruffy by comparison, dimmed.

  Which was probably what she had aimed at.

  ‘That dress … ?’ He took her wrap, a gauzy shawl, and stood to attention, they were doing it all the right way.

  She laughed. ‘Not really Lacroix.’

  And the scent was new. He kissed her cheek. He might get to kiss her on the lips but he would have to graduate.

  ‘Those earrings?’

  ‘Ah well, I have to admit those are real.’ She did not attempt to explain how she came by them, two carat diamonds in each ear, and his not to ask.

  ‘Are they insured?’ He pulled out her chair.

  ‘Don’t be so professional.’ She seated herself, and looked hopefully at the wine glasses. Two of them, and one for champagne. Good.

  He sat down himself and nodded to the waiter who was hovering with a bottle. He asked again what Stella knew of his own special predicament. More than he wished, no doubt. She had her own sources of intelligence.

  But a smile in her eyes, and no one could produce such a smile better than Stella, gave him confidence.

  ‘A drink first, then we’ll talk.’

  ‘Champagne,’ said Stella happily.

  ‘Stella, I want to tell you—’

  She stopped him, putting her hand over his on the table. ‘No. Let me tell you.’ The smile in her eyes was real. ‘I know, I know what’s been going on, what’s hanging over you.’

  ‘Not in detail you can’t, because I don’t know myself,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘My sister’s property transactions, and the fact that I bought my flat from her. I thought I paid a fair price, but I dare say they could do something with that. I’m said to be dictatorial and at the same time too free with my Force. I do interfere and I hope I’ll go on doing so. And then there’s you.’

  ‘I’m not anything.’

  ‘You’re everything to me.’ Hackneyed words but meant. ‘I can’t bear to think that you should be a part of this.’

  Stella drank some wine, sat up straight and said: ‘Let me be a clear and definite part, then.’ She opened the slim, silver envelope that was her new handbag, and pulled out a diary. ‘Now let me see, I have Friday free from rehearsal this week and I could have the weekend as well … What about your diary? That way, we would be married before your meeting. You could manage that?’

  He drew a breath, he hadn’t told her about Josephine’s daughter nor the strong suspicion of Josephine’s guilt, but he thought she could have told him things. Nor must he wonder what on earth he was doing on Friday, this was no time to hesitate. He let the breath out. ‘I don’t need a diary.’

  She pencilled a note in her diary. ‘Good. I’ll make the arrangements … I’ve always wanted to propose and be accepted. I take it that was an acceptance? … No, don’t answer. You might spoil it, you did it beautifully just now.’

  She went on: ‘In case you were wondering, Tony and I got a divorce over a year ago. No fuss, no publicity. Suited us both that way.’

  They looked at each other and began to laugh. ‘You get the special licence and I’ll arrange for the flowers,’ he said.

  ‘Right. Let’s start as we mean to go on.’

  The restaurant had become crowded, but they had a table by the window from which they could look down on the river. The water moved oily an
d dark but lights shone from boats in the marina and from the big apartment houses that now lined the river bank. A string of coloured lights stretched along the river’s edge so that emerald and ruby flashed and glittered in the water as it moved. A wind was getting up, pointing up waves.

  As they drank coffee, he told her what had come up about Josephine. The box, the newspaper cuttings, the dark thoughts.

  ‘But I think you knew this already?’

  ‘Not the details … a general idea.’

  Coffin sat looking at the water. If you stare too long at the darkness and the moving water, you begin to think dark thoughts. Monsters stir from out of the deep and surface, grinning and grimacing. He turned to Stella, determined to speak out. ‘Stella—’

  But before he could go on, he was interrupted by the head waiter. ‘A telephone call for you, sir. I can bring the telephone to the table.’

  ‘No, I’ll come.’ He stood up. ‘They always know where to find me,’ he said apologetically. ‘Have to.’

  At the desk in the manager’s office, all new wood and soft leather, he stood for a moment before picking up the phone. This had been quite a night, quite a day. ‘Yes?’

  He was not surprised to hear Archie Young’s voice, he was always first with the contact if he could manage it. ‘I thought you ought to know that we’ve taken in Rosa Maundy.’

  ‘For the attack on Martin Blackhall?’ How far away that seemed now, so many other crises piling in on top.

  ‘No, although that’s still there. She’s not charged, but we will be questioning her regarding the murder of Amy Dean. The forensics have finally come through with a match on the wood: it came from her father’s workshop. And we have a palm print on the coffin. Hers.’

  He added: ‘She didn’t do it alone though, sir.’

  So Josie was guilty after all of Amy’s death?

  He went back to Stella. ‘I have to go. I’ll put you in a taxi.’

  Stella looked thoughtful, but she stood up and assembled herself for departure.

  There was a taxi outside and she let herself be put inside it. Coffin held the door, and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘Sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. Start as we mean to go on, eh Stella?’