A Coffin for Charley

by Gwendoline Butler

  Her thoughts veered away to Caroline Royal. Caroline, the tenant upstairs, was someone she thought about often. As soon as Caroline had rented the flat, Annie had known she was going to be important in her life. There was something different about Caroline.

  Caroline’s flat at the top of Annie’s house was always beautifully in order but with an empty feeling to it, as if Caroline left nothing behind when she went out to work. It was hardly her home because she travelled so much. Perhaps Heathrow was where she really lived.

  Annie went up the outside staircase next day, the day after her conversation with Tom Ashworth. Didi was out doing whatever Didi did every day. She said she was working at Max’s Delicatessen near St Luke’s Theatre and much frequented by those acting at the theatre and their hopeful hangers-on who thought there might be an agent or a company scout drinking coffee and nibbling Max’s special almond brioches, but Annie doubted if she was there all the time.

  Annie had a key which she used so that she could see if any post was accumulating for Caroline. She had an address to which to send it and if she felt like it, she did so send it. Occasionally, if the place looked dusty she would give a quick flick round with a duster but she didn’t bother much. Caroline would not notice. One of the things that Annie had observed about Caroline was her relative in-difference to the appearance of where she lived and the freedom this gave her. Annie saluted her for all her freedoms.

  There was no post.

  Annie looked around. The flat felt empty but no one knew better than Annie that appearances were deceptive. She stood on the threshold and let the silence of the flat sink into her.

  ‘Caroline, Caroline,’ she murmured, half aloud. ‘Keep Charley tethered today. Don’t let him out.’

  Is Charley a dog, Annie said sadly to herself, as she locked the door behind her and went down the stairs, that I must talk about him so?

  Annie went back to her sitting-room where she settled herself at the table with her books to do her essay of the week on the Treaty of Vienna. She was a slow worker, but thorough.

  Didi came back at lunch-time. She was late and tired. ‘Had a rush,’ she complained. ‘I had to help at the counter as well as the tables and my feet ache.’ She kicked off her shoes. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Some coffee if you’re making it,’ said Annie, her head still bent over her notes.

  ‘Can do.’ Didi padded off to the kitchen. The sisters were fond of each other and happy in each other’s company most of the time.

  ‘Why didn’t you stay to eat at Max’s?’ Annie called after her.

  ‘Wanted to get away. More of a break.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Annie wondered sceptically if Didi had an arrangement to meet someone later that day and wanted to change her clothes. She had noticed the phenomenon before. Better not be the Creeley boy.

  Didi came back with two mugs of coffee.

  ‘I prefer a cup,’ said Annie.

  ‘You get more in a mug and mugs it is.’

  It was a generation thing again, thought Annie. She was the cup and saucer generation. When had the division arisen? The mugs of infancy now carried on for ever. Perhaps today’s adults or near-adults like Didi were trying to stay as children.

  Profound thought. She made a note of it to tell her tutor.

  Didi sipped some coffee and was ready to gossip. She had decided what she would change into for tonight. Red and black. Dramatic. ‘Miss Pinero had a wreath of roses left on her door.’ Stella had come in to Max’s for breakfast where she had chattered away to her sister-in-law who was also there. Didi had listened in without shame. Sometimes she thought she was meant to, those in The Profession like to be heard.

  ‘Well, lucky her.’

  ‘She didn’t think it was well meant. It sounded tatty. Chewed up. Plastic anyway. Didn’t Caroline have one like that? I seem to remember.’

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know.’ As it happened, Caroline had had such a wreath. ‘Didn’t know you went up there.’ Annie put her head down and tried to get back to her books.

  ‘Well, I don’t. Not now. But I went up there to help when Caroline first moved in. I liked her then … that was before …’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before she got so peculiar.’

  ‘She’s not peculiar.’

  ‘Well, away so much. I know you like her.’

  ‘Admire her,’ said Annie. ‘Career woman, good job. I’d like to be what she is.’

  Didi said: ‘I’m going to audition at St Luke’s tonight.’

  ‘Thought you’d done that.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But I was too modest. Only auditioned for a small part. Cough and a spit, you know. I’m going for a bigger part. So don’t worry if I’m late back. Lot to pack in.’

  Annie got up. ‘I’ve got to get the child from nursery school.’

  ‘Thought she stayed all day on Thursday,’ said Didi.

  ‘You manage your life and I’ll manage mine.’

  ‘All right, don’t be cross. I only said it, didn’t mean anything. I’ll collect her for you if you like.’

  Annie left her coffee unfinished and went off. ‘Sorry, mustn’t be late.’

  Didi waited until Annie banged the door behind her, then she took the mugs into the kitchen and left them in the sink. Then she changed her clothes as she had planned. Her face needed repair too, and she was slow about it. Her nails were beginning to grow but too many auditions and she might start chewing again.

  Finally, she closed the front door behind her carefully, you couldn’t be too careful in this district.

  She hoped Caroline upstairs was careful.

  While they were out, Caroline, if it was Caroline, came in. She couldn’t stay, she was in her usual hurry.

  The place was tidy, she always left it tidy and there was no need for Annie to come in and dust.

  She went into her bedroom, looked over her clothes. They were not many in number because she liked quality, and they were what she called ‘mood’ clothes. She stroked one or two pieces with a smile.

  I always look good in that. Lovely cloth. She held the jacket up against her. Mustn’t put on weight. Not much chance of that, the way she worked and kept on the move. It needs a press, though.

  Well, it could wait. She gathered up her hat, and her big despatch case which marked her out as a person who had important business to attend to every hour. This person is me, she said to herself, and sex doesn’t come into it.

  She was very conscious of that other presence, even if a quiet one. Asleep, must be asleep, she supposed. Not drunk, although she kept a bottle of whisky in the cupboard. All the same, accepting his sobriety as taken, sometimes more of the whisky was gone than she would have expected. Then she would replace the bottle without allowing herself to think too much about it.

  She went to the window. A lot of lunatics out there. There was a man who was building Stonehenge in his garden, and for all she knew he was putting up a pyramid in the back yard. Symbols, she supposed, of something or the other.

  Then there was the woman down at Spinnergate Tube Station who sold newspapers. She herself bought a paper there if the headlines looked interesting, although she tried to have the change always ready and be unobtrusive about it in case Mimsie noticed everything as she was reputed to do. Mimsie Marker always wore the same sort of flowered hat in summer and one with feathers in the winter, she kept loose change in a leather pouch like a kangaroo, and lived in a basement near the police station. And yet the story was she had a mansion in Epping and owned a Rolls. If that wasn’t mad, she didn’t know what sanity was.

  The police were out there too. As a protection, of course. But also as interfering, sceptical, unbelieving nosey-parkers.

  And murderers also walked.

  She was really undecided what to do for the best, but time was short. She could get him up, see if he was still alive. But she knew he was. Had to be. There is death and death, and she knew Charley was not dead. Better if he was, maybe.
She decided not to question the matter.

  As she left, she said: ‘Don’t move today, Charley. Better not, stay where you are. I’ve read your horoscope and I know it’s best for you. I have business to attend to.’

  Sadly she thought that this person that she was, that she had become, had to say that kind of thing.

  Napier Street led into Fedan Street and Fedan Street turned right into Dockland Road, the busy artery which had the headquarters of the Police Authority, where the Chief Commander had his offices at one end and Karnival, the transvestite club, stood at the other.

  John Coffin drove down Dockland Road early on the afternoon of that Thursday. He was on his way back to his own office after a boring morning on a dull but necessary committee. Not even any quarrels, which usually livened up the desert of three hours’ staring at an agenda on controlling London’s traffic when everyone knew that nothing could be done short of banning all traffic or knocking the capital down and starting again. You cannot control the uncontrollable and road traffic these days seemed to be a force of nature: always growing faster than you allowed for. His own district had its own particular problem of just one big artery in and out. Dockland Road joined this artery at an angle and then made its own way, as it had since Saxon times, out towards the Estuary.

  He remembered the road well with all its junctions and blockage points. He never minded going slowly because it made for thinking time, something he was seriously short of.

  As he drove, he was considering the death of Marianna and wondering what part, if any, the Karnival Club played in it. He had to pass where it was and might look in. Stella had been there too; he had a personal interest now.

  Dockland Road was long and winding, nothing straight about it. Karnival was in Leathergate, at the western end of his bailiwick. A little bit further west and Karnival would have been sitting in the lap of the Tower of London and been the responsibility of the City of London Police. As it was, it was for him.

  A narrow passage, Ladd’s Alley, turned off to the west; this cul-de-sac was where the club had been for the last twenty years. No name, no one needed a name. It was marked, however, in its own way. A big lavender-coloured urn stood in a recess above the door. At night a single light shone on it. This was how you knew it. ‘Going down the Lav,’ was how the frequenters put it. An old joke that no longer caused a giggle.

  The club was housed in what had been a garage and the cul-de-sac had been its cobbled forecourt. There was nothing smart about the Karnival but at night it looked cosy and friendly.

  Closed and shuttered as it was now, it looked depressing. He sat in his car surveying it from the road. Then he got out and walked down Ladd’s Alley. Presumably in the distant past it had been Ladd’s Garage.

  On the other side of the alley was another door, painted red with a legend curving round the top of the door: STAND UP AND SHOUT FOR JESUS. He wondered if there was much shouting and what Karnival thought about it and what happened when both clubs were in full shout. But Karnival had the reputation of being a quiet and well-behaved club.

  There was a car parked on the cobbles. In the gloom he could see a man sitting in it. Men sitting in parked cars in blind alleys arouse the instant interest if not downright suspicion of the police, and from long training John Coffin reacted.

  He went over, rapped on the window and stared inside at the man.

  Tom Ashworth rolled down the window. He recognized the Chief Commander at once, it was his job to know that sort of thing, and jumped out of the car. ‘Just taking a look.’

  Coffin said nothing.

  ‘As you are yourself,’ Ashworth added. ‘It’s closed. No one there. I’ve tried the bell.’

  He wasn’t nervous, Coffin thought, but self-conscious.

  ‘One of your clubs?’ he asked.

  ‘Only in the way of business. If I’ve got to watch someone.’

  There are people in this world you have to know but don’t want to go on knowing, and I think you’re one of them, Coffin decided.

  ‘Are you watching anyone at the moment?’

  Ashworth was silent, his eyes thoughtful. He looked across the road at the SHOUT FOR JESUS.

  ‘Wonder if they ever do?’ he said. ‘And if the Karnival crowd join in?’ He decided he would talk. ‘I’ve been looking over Job Titus. I didn’t come here to watch him the first time, another job altogether, but when I saw him here I was interested. Not that he did anything. He behaved himself, sat there drinking and talking, just like a constituency meeting, didn’t get up to dance or anything. Not with anyone or by himself, a few do that.’

  ‘No law against it.’

  Ashworth grinned. ‘No, but an awful lot of prejudice.’

  ‘In certain quarters,’ said Coffin in a neutral tone. He had nothing against anyone who danced with himself. Stella had taught him to be open-minded and generous in certain important ways. It was part of the gift of living that she had brought with her.

  But Job Titus, he did not like.

  ‘All over the front pages today, isn’t he? On some mercy mission, heaven help the poor sods who get him. I reckon you really know you’re in trouble when Titus flies in.’

  Coffin was aware that Job Titus had flown from Heathrow that morning, his departure and return had been quietly agreed upon. He’d be back tomorrow.

  ‘He knew the girl that was killed. I expect you know that? If you’re doing your job, you should.’ He took Coffin’s silence for assent. ‘Don’t know if he met her here or came here to see her. They were talking away.’ He added carefully, ‘Quarrelling, I think. Yes, I think you’d call it quarrelling. Not shouting or anything but bitching quietly.’

  His eyes went distant again. ‘You see some faces there all right, dressed in this and dressed in that, some you know, some you don’t. Anyway, now I’m watching him for a client, because he’s seeing someone I don’t care for very much. Scion of a murderous clan.’

  He talked like that sometimes.

  Creeley, thought Coffin. This is where our paths cross. And again he thought of Stella. Had Titus and Eddie Creeley seen her there? Creeley had been back from New Zealand by last summer.

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going back to the office. Follow me, let’s have a talk.’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment,’ said Ashworth hastily.

  Coffin ignored this. ‘And you can tell me why you are here now today.’

  ‘Watching,’ said Ashworth, as he got back into his car. ‘Looking around. Just like you.’

  Coffin sat him in a chair with a view of the river if you sat tall and had good long sight, and poured him a drink. ‘You look nervous,’ he said kindly.

  ‘You make me nervous.’

  ‘So what took you into Karnival? The first time?’

  ‘Another bit of business,’ said Tom vaguely. He wanted to keep his secrets.

  ‘And you saw Titus there with the girl? Well, we know about that. But you’ve also seen Titus with Edward Creeley? You get about a bit.’

  ‘I’m looking after things for Annie Briggs if you remember who she is.’

  ‘Oh, I remember all right.’

  ‘So she’s nervous, and she has this idea that young Creeley is out to get her. Revenge, you know, family honour. Of course, Auntie’s coming out, plus Uncle who’s not with us in the world any more, so perhaps he doesn’t mind too much about the honour, if he ever did.’

  ‘And you’ve been keeping an eye on him.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘And while doing that, you saw him drinking with Titus? Are you suggesting he was a hired killer.’

  Ashworth looked nervously around the room. ‘Is this being taped? That’d be slander or libel or something, wouldn’t it?’ He was acting more naïve than he really was. He saw Coffin’s sceptical look and decided to tone it down a bit. ‘It struck me as odd, that meeting. But Titus has interested himself in the Creeley case and may even have been responsible for getting Lizzie out.’

  ‘You’re well informed
.’ Coffin wasn’t quite so kind now.

  ‘I listen to things.

  ‘And what were you doing in the alley today? Apart from looking around, of course.’

  Tom Ashworth felt the scepticism in the Chief Commander’s voice and shifted uneasily.’

  ‘I had a contact there. Chap I knew. I was going to ask him if he’d seen the Creeley boy there.

  What a liar you are, thought Coffin. One day I’ll find out what the lie is. But he was half indulgent: he knew well that secrets are a private detective’s stock in trade.

  ‘With or without Job Titus, MP,’ Tom went on. ‘I was interested, it establishes character, doesn’t it? The sort they are. I wanted to know.’

  ‘And what sort is young Creeley?’

  ‘You don’t know him?’

  Coffin shook his head.

  ‘I’ve got a photograph.’ From an inner pocket, Tom took a coloured photograph which he handed over.

  He waited quietly while Coffin studied it. A tall, plumpish, fair-haired young man was leaning forward over a bar-room table talking to Job Titus. He had a pleasant boyish face without a lot of expression. Titus seemed to be doing the talking.

  ‘I don’t think he’s a killer,’ said Ashworth, ‘but I’m not sure.’

  ‘You’re doing our job for us.’ Coffin handed over the photograph. ‘Let me have a copy, will you?’

  ‘Sure.’ He reached inside his pocket. ‘Here’s another.’

  ‘You’re worrying me,’ said Coffin, as he reached across to take it. ‘What else is on offer?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  This time the photograph was of the same young man still wearing the expression of empty good humour as if he couldn’t take it off. He was seated at another table in another bar with a young woman. He had his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Who’s the girl?’

  ‘Didi, she’s the sister.’

  Coffin raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Annie Briggs’s sister. Years younger.’

  ‘She’s a beauty. Creeley’s seeing her?’

  ‘I think she’s in love with him. Could be. If she’s not in love with someone called Charley.’ He sounded thoughtful. ‘I can’t get clear on that.’