‘Have it on the house!’ Vic scratched his neck as if he was embarrassed, fidgeting with his collar.
‘You sure, Vic?’ He knew Vic was bullied by his father, adored by his mother, and persecuted by his sisters.
‘The old man’s left me in charge.’
‘Stay and have a drink with us.’
‘No. I’m doing the cooking. I’m needed in the kitchen. We’re busy tonight.’
He moved away. Coffin’s gaze followed him. He wished he knew how things stood there.
‘Do you think we ought to let him give us this?’
‘No. But we had to.’ There were things you could not say to a man. It was a question of his pride, of which bullied Vic had plenty as Coffin very well knew. But you couldn’t expect Stella to understand.
She did, though. In her own way, slanted towards Stella. ‘It’s like me with Rachel. I know some people think I’m a kind of parasite on her; others think she’s blood-sucking me. Not true. I’ve taken a lot from her, but I’ve got a lot back. And what I’ve done I’ve been proud to do.’
It wasn’t quite Vic’s position, not the way Coffin, and Vic too, probably, saw it.
‘And what about Rachel? How does she feel about it?’ He was pushing her, wanted to see what she’d say.
‘She knows what I’ve done for her. She started to come back to life, proper, everyday life as soon as I came. I think that’s why Joan and Albie sent me there.’
‘I thought it was Eddie Kelly who suggested it.’
‘Joan meant it to happen. She’s quite a string-puller is Joanie. She saw it was time for Rachel to stop being the sleeping princess.’ Stella started another sentence, then checked herself. She wanted to say that she was frightened, her friends were frightened, that the women of Greenwich knew there was going to be another victim, and perhaps another. They sensed it.
She poured some wine. ‘We’re never going to finish all this bottle.’
A group from Bluebell’s party surged into the restaurant. Alex Rowley was there, wearing a cheerful grin and talking to Bluebell, who was giggling.
He came over to John Coffin. ‘And what are you up to?’
‘And what are you?’ He looked at Bluebell.
‘Drowning my sorrows.’
‘Sorrows? You?’ said Stella.
The two men looked at each other. It had been a bad few days. The relationship between them, instead of prospering, had become drier, harder, with each of them looking at the other with doubt.
I’m a good detective, thought Coffin. What’s he? I wish I knew.
I notice things about people he doesn’t, was the burden of Alex Rowley’s thoughts. See more, feel more. I’m a genius, I am. He did smile to himself at that.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Coffin.
‘Myself,’ said Alex. I don’t think he even likes me, he added to himself.
Stella saw Bluebell give a wave and disappear. She got up. ‘I’m going to powder my nose.’
The two girls met in the cloakroom. Stella said: ‘You were super as Prossy.’
‘Thanks.’ There was a moment’s pause while each girl perfected her lipstick. Then Bluebell looked down at her stocking. She smoothed an invisible wrinkle. Then she turned her head to study the seams. ‘Am I straight?’
‘Perfect.’
They looked down at their shoes, bright, pretty and new.
‘Where did you get those shoes?’ asked Bluebell.
Then they both giggled.
As they walked to the door she said: ‘So Vic came through?’
‘He did.’
‘What did you have to do to get them?’
‘Nothing much. Just go out a few times with him and let him hold my hand.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Seems to be all he wants.’
At the door Bluebell said: If you weren’t at the very top of your form as Candida, it’s just because you’re a very special kind of actress.’
‘You are a nice girl,’ said Stella, grateful.
The two of them left together, Bluebell going across to talk to friends and Stella returning to the table with John Coffin.
John Coffin and Alex Rowley were sitting talking over the wine, heads down, deep in discussion.
Stella looked at them, and decided. Two policemen talking together, that was right, normal, safe. She’d talk; she had something to say.
If she could get through to them. They both seemed deep in their own obsession: John Coffin could think of little but the dead girl from the river, while Alex, like his boss Tom Banbury, was absorbed with the missing Shepherd girl.
‘Boys,’ she said. ‘Listen.’ They did not. Their conversation continued.
‘Policeman talk, I suppose,’ said Stella. ‘One degree worse than man’s talk.’ She sounded aggressive.
‘No worse than theatre talk,’ said Coffin, giving her his attention. ‘If we seem hard to know, theatre folk are even harder, Stella. I never know how to take you. Sometimes you’re lovely about each other and somtimes so cruel.’
‘We’re none of us quite what we seem,’ said Stella sadly. ‘Not even our names are our own. I’m not called Pinero, Eddie Kelly isn’t Kelly, and even Chris took his father’s professional name instead of Brown.’
‘Come to that,’ said Alex, ‘I took my step-father’s name.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘He wanted it.’ He added, ‘And there was a kind of connection in our names. That made it easier.’
‘And I bet you were a Boy Scout too,’ said Stella admiringly, ‘and had a sheath-knife. In fact, I bet you’ve still got it.’
‘He has,’ said Coffin. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Shut up, you two.’ Across the room he had seen Bluebell; he gave her a little wave.
Bluebell sat down in the fourth chair. ‘I’m hungry. I want to eat.’
Bluebell was always hungry, happy or miserable, tired or full of energy, end of day or early morning, she was perpetually hungry. She was a dancer as well as an actress so there was a reason behind it. When she stopped dancing she was going to put on weight. It was the dancing that drew her and Alex together.
A crowd had come in from a local cinema, and suddenly The Padovani was crowded, with Shirley and Vic hurrying back and forth with trays. The Padovani was the only eating-place in the district that always seemed able to produce plenty of good food. So it had a large clientele, more than it could always hold. A queue was not unknown at The Padovani, especially at weekends.
‘Vic,’ called Bluebell. ‘Spaghetti, please.’
‘You’re going to be a fat old lady.’
‘I’m going to be a fat old lady,’ agreed Bluebell. ‘And perhaps even a fat young one, but not with rationing. I never get enough to eat.’
‘I’ll give you my sweet coupons if you give me …’ Stella paused to think. What did she want?
‘What have I got that you could possibly want?’
‘At the moment, the best notices, but you can’t trade those.’
‘I’m right out of Tampax.’ It was incredible the necessities of life that were suddenly not there.
Bluebell lowered her head. ‘Can you tell me where to get some?’
As the girls whispered, Alex said to John Coffin, ‘Tom Banbury’s sick with himself that he can’t find the Shepherd child’s body.’
‘You don’t even know she’s dead.’
‘Tom’s made out she is. She has to be. Where is she, if she’s not dead?’
‘He’s convinced you.’ It was a statement, not question. For himself, he was not so sure. ‘I can think of other possibilities. She does not have to be dead at all. Just lost.’
He was looking for someone himself and not doing very well at it.
‘A lost child would leave a trace as she moved. She’s got to eat. Sleep. Survive. She’s only a kid, remember, not a sort of free-ranging pirate. Alone, she’s going to show up.’
‘Then she will show. Give her time.’
‘Does Banbury tell you everything?’
Without pleasure, Alex said, ‘Not by a long chalk. A close bugger. Except with Dander. Talks to him all right. Plenty of talking there.’
‘What do you make of Dander?’
‘Not much. And I don’t think he likes me much. Looks at me as if he was measuring me for the drop.’
‘Oh, he does that to all of us.’
‘He pushed Banbury the way of the Shepherd case, you know. He had the say-so about the Yard and the Beezley death. He could have all of us as a team on it.’
It was the confident voice of the canteen speaking; Alex had picked up the gossip there.
‘On to the Shepherd case and off the Beezley murder.’ Alex adjusted his tie.
‘Same thing.’
Tom Banbury wanted the Shepherd case and Dander knew it. He’s got a thing about kids. Lost his own in the Blitz.’ So he’d heard: canteen gossip again.
‘Warwick doesn’t seem a bad chap.’ Coffin didn’t see much of him, just occasionally, like Cæsar with his cohorts, he was seen flashing past. Orders and directives there were, personal contact little. Warwick had his clansmen, but they were old associates, people he’d worked with before, or chaps he brought with him from the Yard. John Coffin was not one of these.
Still, he was grateful for the occasional comment: he got that now and again; the passing word thrown to him.
Like when he’d brought in the shoe.
On the other hand, sometimes he felt in quarantine.
‘Banbury ought to go by the evidence.’
‘He’s got a bit of evidence.’
‘Like the hand?’
‘No.’ Alex dropped his voice. The girls were talking. One thing about actresses, they never lacked for conversation. ‘A piece of clothing. A dress. It’s been identified as hers.’
‘May not mean much.’
‘It means something.’
A dress, a shoe, human artefacts pointed to the life or death of two different people. He believed the shoe was important, the dress might be.
‘What about you? Anything interesting?’ asked Alex.
‘Nothing special.’ He told Alex about the shoe, waiting to see how he reacted. There was no reaction. Alex thought about it, but apparently did not consider the discovery significant.
‘Have they got anything hard?’
Coffin shrugged. ‘Clutching at strands, I’d say. Still looking for a likely man, from her friends and lovers. Feeling is he was probably someone she knew.’
Lorna Beezley might only have known her killer slightly, he reflected, but enough to trust him.
‘He must be an attractive customer because she goes off with him into the night without a murmur. He’s got some neck.’
And by his neck he would hang when found, tried and condemned.
The hanging drop would be assessed according to his weight and height.
‘As far as is known.’
‘No one’s come forward to say they heard a struggle.’
‘At night – would they hear? From the river to the road is quite a stretch. Not many houses near.’
None in fact, but there might have been someone passing. London never slept.
‘It could be she didn’t hear her killer, that he just grabbed her.’
But that was a difficult picture to put together in Coffin’s opinion, because in a public place a struggle would have been witnessed. He did not believe, no one in the team on the case believed, that she had gone for a moonlight walk at a time of springtide all on her own. Girls didn’t do it.
No, Lorna had known her killer and trusted him. So they were not looking just for a face in a crowd.
I will say this for Warwick,’ he said to Alex, ‘he has no sacred cows. He’s put every man that Lorna could have had contact with through the machine. Her school, the theatre, this place here – ’he motioned to The Padovani – ’ even to the old chap with the cab at the station and the caretaker at the school. All checked.’
In addition to the soldiers at the nearby Woolwich Barracks and all the lightermen and watermen and dockers. Likewise the crews of docked ships. A big job.
‘And no leads?’
‘Or none he’s admitting to.’
There was a sound of loud voices from the kitchen as Shirley and then Vic emerged as if they had been quarrelling.
‘That Vic’ Shirley shook herself like a dog shaking off water. A vivid expression of her feeling.
‘Get your coat on and go.’ Vic was giving the orders.
‘What is it, Shirley?’ There had always been a certain chumminess between her women customers like Stella and Bluebell and Shirley, possibly they felt sorry for her, seeing more than the men.
‘I got to go home.’ She was buttoning her coat. ‘And Vic’s nagging. I’ve got to go home and look after the kids, Dad’s on night shift and doesn’t like them left.’
‘And Vic doesn’t want you to go?’ Stella gave Vic an indignant look.
John and Alex sat back to this, openly listening.
Vic growled something in Italian.
‘Damn no,’ said Shirley. ‘He wants me to go. I have to go, there’s the kids. I’d rather stay here. They make me sick.’
Vic said, ‘You’re a bad girl. You should love children.’
‘No, she’s not.’ Stella was indignant. ‘She’s got a life of her own.’
‘Her mother was killed in the Blitz.’
‘That’s silly talk, Vic’ Shirley’s face was red. ‘She was not killed in the Blitz; she went off with a Polish soldier while Dad was in North Africa. And Dad wouldn’t have her back when he came home. She’s not dead. She’s living over Wapping way.’
She spoke with all the true-born Londoner’s unconscious resentment and scorn for that part of London in which he does not live: Wapping was a nowhere place.
‘Meanwhile I’m little mother, damn them. One day I’ll cut away and go myself.’
‘You do that, Shirley, and you’ll be a loose girl.’
‘Oh, Vic!’ Shirley went to the door, opened it. ‘I’m off.’ The door banged behind her.
‘Shouldn’t someone go with her?’ asked Stella.
‘Girls like Shirley don’t come to harm,’ said Vic. He was angry.
Stella dropped her voice: ‘Vic’s upset, so Bluebell says, because he’s been questioned about the murder. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Natural. So have Eddie Kelly, and Chris as well. Albie, too, I expect.’
She looked at Coffin in question.
He stared down at the table. Not me. I didn’t. I wouldn’t enjoy questioning Vic. An old mate.
But for that matter I’ve been gone over myself, Stella love, although I have not mentioned it. So have Alex and a few other chaps at the station. Six months as detectives, and I’m under suspicion myself for a murder. Not what I expected.
But nothing’s come of it.
Zero.
Nix.
Nothing.
He stood up. ‘Come on, we’ll be off too.’ He held Stella’s coat for her.
He had picked up the real emotion in that quarrel between Shirley and Vic. People working together do get angry with each other. Shirley was an attractive girl, that probably made it worse.
As they walked into the street there was a glimpse of Shirley cycling away down the hill.
‘Where does she live?’
‘Somewhere down at Greenwich Hythe. Near the river. Bit slummy.’
Angel House loomed ahead, dignified and sombre in the summer night. There was a rising moon.
‘There’s something I was trying to get out this evening but couldn’t.’
He put his arm around her and they walked up and down outside Angel House. The praying angel seemed to offer them his best wishes, one eye, seen in profile, seeming to look their way.
‘It’s about Rachel Esthart and the murder?’ Only Rachel brought t
hat look to Stella’s face. He knew she never put it on for him.
‘Yes.’ Stella started to talk, slowly at first, then with more confidence. ‘I’ve said she is coming out of her withdrawal from the world stage. It started, as I’ve said, when I went to her. Either it had already begun or she was ready for it anyway. She was coming back into the world after her time out.’ Stella added thoughtfully: ‘But you don’t come out of a thing like that unscathed. Well, do you?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
One light was flicked on in Angel House. Probably Florrie’s room, high up under the eaves. He watched it. Lovely to have no blackout, no sirens, no bombs. There were a lot of things wrong in his world, but the war was over, he was full of hope. Without realizing it, he pressed closer to Stella.
‘Oh, love,’ she said. ‘Listen. Supposing her mind was affected. Bent. She’s an actress beyond anything else. She likes a dramatic moment.’
‘So? What are you suggesting?’
‘The letter: I wonder if she sent it to herself. There was something very theatrical about it. Artificial, almost.’ Stella’s voice faltered. ‘Also about her performance. That was an act, I swear.’ She looked at Coffin for reassurance. ‘I feel so disloyal saying this. I love the woman.’
‘No, you’re right to speak.’ He took command. ‘Let’s go on walking. We must have this out.’
They paced up and down the narrow pavement between the two lamp posts that marked the boundary of the Angel House garden wall. A small summer-house with a gilded roof marked one corner.
‘You’re right, Stella, there was – is – something contrived and wrong about that letter. I felt that myself without knowing why. I still don’t know why, and I still feel it. You’re a good girl, Stella. So you’ll tell me the truth.’
‘Yes. You know I will.’
‘Why do you think Rachel Esthart wrote the card herself?’
‘She had a packet of similar cards. They were on her desk. She was looking at them. She saw me, too.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Nothing. Just put the cards back in a drawer, and went away.’
“That doesn’t sound like guilt. There had to be something else.’
‘It’s just her. She’s changed. I’m frightened a bit. John – she couldn’t have killed the girl herself?’
‘She’d have to be very mad to do that.’
Coffin on the Water Page 11
