A Coffin for Charley
Page 23
‘I’ve come bloody home,’ said Letty, who never swore. ‘And with my rotten, lousy daughter.’
Stella was breathing deeply. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself … I think you two saved me from being incinerated.’
CHAPTER 21
The tide has turned
Stella sat in front of her dressing-table mirror examining her neck where a blue bruise was forming. The skin was torn where the buckle on the belt had bitten into her. There were patches of blisters, covered with dressing, lower down the neck, her hair had been singed and she needed a hairdresser, but on the whole, her condition several days later was not too bad. She had been scorched but not burnt.
Tash had gone up like a fireball and with eighty per cent burns had died within the day.
‘I shall need make-up on that,’ she said, looking at what she could see of her neck.’
Thank God her face was unmarked, thought Coffin. He had a tightness in his throat that would not go away.
‘Dark cream, I think,’ she went on, picking up a stick of make-up and beginning to pat on little blobs of colour. ‘I believe I like this tint. I last used it when I was in a Maugham play, I believe I came from somewhere south of Rangoon and was not quite a good woman . .. You know we hardly use make-up now, it’s all meant to be so natural. Of course, if you’re playing a corpse or an old man, you have to use slap.’
Her husband was sitting watching her. ‘You’re talking too much,’ he said in a fond voice. ‘Let her talk,’ the doctor had said.
‘I know, that’s because I’m feeling emotional. I smelt him burning, you know, I smelt burning hair and flesh.’
Coffin took her in his arms, but gently because her skin was tender.
‘I was nearly victim number five.’
‘Annie’s still with us,’ said Coffin. ‘So you would have been number four.’ He wasn’t joking, though, and he kept his eyes on her as if he could not let her out of his sight. ‘Annie’s palled up with Lizzie, of all things.’ You could hardly call it a friendship, but it was a relationship. Lizzie did the shopping for Annie while she was recovering, and they both watched television while Annie talked.
‘A complete waste, it would have been,’ Coffin went on. ‘I feel vengeful about that: I hadn’t read Didi’s notes about getting help in her acting from Tom Ashworth who had trained actors and knew how to audition.’
‘Had he?’
‘He might have done a bit of acting, he was blond as Tash, but in nature it seems he is dark-haired and wore spectacles. The strange thing was that he had run the Tash agency for one whole year, establishing his identity. Back in Coventry he had worked in an estate agency, which is presumably where he got the idea of the big way to make money.’
‘If you’d arrived a bit earlier, you could have rescued me and not Letty.’ But she had really saved herself with that last kick at the killer which threw him away. Still, Letty had wrapped Stella in her own coat, putting out her smouldering clothing. Yes, Letty had helped.
‘It’s time Letty did something.’ He was not feeling forgiving towards his darling sister. ‘She knew about Tom Ashworth, or guessed something.’ That was what she had meant about the box and what was inside being something different. ‘And she never spoke clearly. Never came out with it.’
‘She had her own worries,’ said Stella tolerantly, glad that the money bags were back. ‘Will Elissa and the boyfriend be charged?’
Coffin shrugged. ‘I’m not interfering. But yes, with several things, I expect, and so will the girl. He attacked a police officer, young thug, so there’s that for a start.’
He got up. ‘All right, I’ll mend fences with Letty, but the girl has to take what’s coming to her.’
‘You ought to be grateful to her. If you hadn’t gone to Birmingham you would have never have found the murderer’s identity.’
‘Letty was my excuse for going, not my reason. I was looking for what I found. I knew there had to be something like that behind the killings: money, I knew it the moment I saw that it had been intended that the first girl should be found and identified … she was in a site that was going to be excavated and she had her name tucked underneath her.’
‘What a great deal of detail he knew about places and people.’
‘Who better than a detective? Always had my eye on him, although I suspected the social worker for a bit. He seemed to fit.’
Stella dusted her neck with powder. ‘So the other two girls were just a cover-up? That’s horrible. Where did he get the idea?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Coffin. ‘Read it in a book, I expect. Agatha Christie. I dare say. I expect we will find a row of crime books on the shelves when we search where he lived.’
‘Where did he live? Apart from here as Tom Ashworth … Oh, he was good-looking,’ she said sadly.
‘He had a flat in Coventry.’ He had looked like a cigarette burned at both ends by the time he got to hospital. The gods do a thorough job once they start. On the other hand, he had been found to have a huge cancer inside him, so who knew what games the gods were playing?
‘Poor Didi,’ said Stella, ‘but she has people who grieve for her. Those other two girls, Marianna Manners and Mary Andrews, who grieves for them?’
‘I won’t forget,’ said Coffin. ‘And somehow, I think Annie will remember them all. She said she is going to pray for them. Lizzie with her, I expect. They seem to do things together now.’
Stella laughed. ‘Shall we give a party and ask them?’
‘Heaven forbid. She might come as Charley.’
But Charley had died, gone up in smoke.
Coffin looked at his wife. ‘Should I change my life? Should I retire?’
Stella put down the stick of Leichner. ‘You’re not serious? What would you do?’
‘I might put in an offer for Tash. I would be with you a lot more.’
‘Darling, I love you dearly, but I think we are both better working … Oh, by the way.’ She pulled a card from behind a bottle of scent. She held it out to Coffin. ‘Phœbe? Who is Phoebe?’
Her eyes were alight with amusement, and something else as well. Me and Job Titus, she was saying, so what about you?
‘Ah,’ said Coffin.
Attack was the best method of defence. ‘We’ve got Job Titus,’ he said. ‘He was picked up this evening … For kerb-crawling.’
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ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
THE COFFIN TREE
CRACKING OPEN A COFFIN
COFFIN ON MURDER STREET
COFFIN AND THE PAPER MAN
COFFIN IN THE BLACK MUSEUM
COFFIN UNDERGROUND
COFFIN IN FASHION
COFFIN ON THE WATER
A COFFIN FOR THE CANARY
A COFFIN FOR PANDORA
A COFFIN FROM THE PAST
COFFIN’S DARK NUMBER
COFFIN FOLLOWING
COFFIN IN MALTA
A NAMELESS COFFIN
COFFIN WAITING
A COFFIN FOR THE BABY
DEATH LIVES NEXT DOOR
THE INTERLOPER
THE MURDERING KIND
THE DULL DEAD
COFFIN IN OXFORD
RECEIPT FOR MURDER
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One evening in April, 1988, I sat in the Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, near to Dockland, listening to Dr David Owen (now Lord Owen) give that year’s Barnett Memorial Lecture. In it, he suggested the creation of a Second City of London, to be spun off from the first, to aid the economic and social regeneration of the Docklands.
The idea fascinated me and I have made use of it to create a world for detective John Coffin, to whom I gave the tricky task of keeping there the Queen’s Peace.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Gwendoline Butler is a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still has a tremendous affection. She was educated at Haberdashers and then read history at Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married the late Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She has one daughter.
Gwendoline Butler’s crime novels are very popular in Britain and the States, and her many awards include the CWA’s Silver Dagger.
When she isn’t writing, she spends her time travelling and looking at pictures, furniture and buildings.
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