Coffin on the Water

by Gwendoline Butler

  Even if it led to something, he might never find out himself exactly what part the shoe had played.

  Nevertheless he would hand over the shoe and tell the tale. Somewhat edited, of course, not making too much of Eagle’s part. Nor could Eagle ever be told very much.

  He realized he was treating Eagle Scott just as his own superiors treated him.

  ‘You’re a good lad,’ he said. ‘Bike all right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And what will you say to your mother about your eye?’

  Paul Shanks at once emerged into view, a tired, grubby little boy; Eagle Scott had temporarily retired.

  ‘Don’t live with Mum. Mum’s dead. I live with Gran. She’s all I’ve got.’

  If true, it was something else they had in common. It must have been tough being a child in the war. He said as much. Paul looked surprised (he was all Paul at the moment). ‘Oh no, I liked it. Never been anything but war till now. I don’t remember anything else.’ The child of war added cheerfully: ‘I’m off, you coming?’

  Coffin looked through the back of the boy’s eyes to himself as a boy and saw that they were not the same person after all, their pasts had been different and their futures would be also.

  ‘No. I’m just going to look in at that butcher’s across the road. They might have something I want. And not meat.’

  Paul Shanks cycled off to his home. Coffin crossed the road to William Clarke, Butchers, which was still open.

  Ten minutes later Coffin took a tram and then another back to the police station in the old school. In his pocket he had the shoe. The heel was sticking out, pressing against his neighbour in the seat on the crowded tram, so that the man looked at him strangely. Coffin was glad to get off the tram.

  Warwick was still at work in the large, bare room which he had made his own. An assistant sat typing away at a table beside him. Warwick was staring into space as if he was thinking.

  He received the shoe without enthusiasm.

  ‘Another shoe. You a shoe man?’ He took it up, giving it a good hard look. ‘Still, it may be useful.’

  From him that was praise. Or almost.

  ‘You go off on your own like this much?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Your idea is that by following it up we make a connection with her murderer?’

  ‘Well, nothing else has.’

  ‘He’s one of the men we’ve talked to. One of the many. But which?’ Warwick balanced the shoe on his hand. ‘This may help. Thanks.’

  Praise at last.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I’m off duty, sir.’

  ‘Forget it …’ Warwick looked thoughtful. ‘It’s Saturday. Probably not much doing down in the Surrey Docks, but you can have a try. And here’s a list of names and addresses for you. Yes, others besides you have been doing some thinking. There’s a man in Birmingham who’s been shouting about a consignment of shoes he’s lost.’

  There went Saturday and unless he was lucky, Sunday and its dinner-party, too. But he felt very cheerful. This was real work.

  And in his pocket he had the Christian names, Willy Alfred, of a real live member of the Clarke family butchers. The Clarkes had sold out before the end of the war, but the family went on, war or not. Hope, he thought, that was what carried you forward. In spite of what his landlady had said, a member of the family survived.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Work of the Murderer’s Hands

  At The Padovani, they were shouting for Shirley; at the Theatre Royal they were shouting for Stella. Joan Delaney, sitting huddled over her accounts with Albie full of gloom by her side, heard the shouts.

  Stella soon shouted back. Yes, what the hell was all the noise about, she was just coming. She appeared, flushed and untidy, according to observers.

  Holding up her skirt, she ran to the wings to wait her cue. Albie was very strict about performers being there ready to walk on.

  At The Padovani, Shirley did not answer. She had not turned up for work that night, the busiest of the week, Saturday.

  If Stella had been missing for an hour everyone would have been out looking for her. At The Padovani, everyone shouted for Shirley, cursing because she was not there to work, but no one went looking.

  Coffin dropped in for a sandwich and a drink on his way home. He was tired, telephone talk tired, having been talking to Birmingham. He was also dejected because he had been to the address in Charlton, and a V2 rocket had got it in 1944 and the whole house had gone. The neighbours said other members of the Clarke family survived elsewhere in Charlton, but they did not know which address. So that was a dead end. Temporarily. There was always hope.

  Vic was being abused for not having checked Shirley was here, for being slack, for its being, somehow, his fault.

  He was calling out that he didn’t know where Shirley was, why should he? She was no girlfriend of his.

  ‘You’re up to every girl,’ said his sister Nina, pushing past with Coffin’s sandwich, to which she had attended personally, she had her eye on him. ‘I’ve seen you.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Vic stood at the kitchen door wearing his white apron, and handling his big carving knife like a weapon.

  ‘Victor!’

  Vic looked at Coffin in appeal. ‘I’ve been penned in the kitchen all day, how can I be everywhere?’ Save me, he was saying to Coffin.

  ‘And last night too, Victor?’ Nina put a glass of wine by Coffin’s right hand. Nice hands he had, she appreciated that. ‘Were you everywhere last night, too?’

  ‘Last night was my night off.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t see Shirley, so we assumed …’

  ‘Assumed, assumed. She asked for last night off because her father was ill. I was at the pictures. On my own.’

  Vic went into the kitchen, the door swung behind him to be followed by the sound of dishes crashing.

  In the matter of dramatic effects the Padovanis needed no teaching from the Theatre Royal.

  The next morning Coffin arrived by two trams and one bus, at the Surrey Docks. It was Sunday, but the river never closes down because the tide keeps coming in, and ships must load or unload their cargo according to the passage of the moon as it pulls at the waters. The Thames is a splendidly tidal river which, depending on the season, produces either a spring or a neap tide, the one very high, the other very low.

  Coffin knew where to go. He followed a path from the main road, through the main dock gates to the Convoy Walk.

  His path had been determined by his conclusions from among his series of telephone calls yesterday about the shoes. Some of the telephone calls had been fruitless, but some had yielded gold.

  Consignments of women’s fashion shoes, made in Birmingham, and destined for the North American export market (this earned dollars and pleased Sir Stafford Cripps) had been discovered to be short, by several hundreds of pairs, when they came to be loaded.

  At exactly which point the carefully packed shoes had been lifted was not clear. The boxes and crates remained, apparently undisturbed, but were empty.

  After bitter complaints from the Birmingham manufacturer and his agent in London at the time they were taking, it was established (as Birmingham had claimed all along) that the thefts were taking place on the dockside just before loading.

  The local police maintained an office and staff on the dock itself, and this office, working with the Deptford station and the Greenwich one, had arrived at a group of suspects.

  They thought they knew the small group of men, all casual labour at the docks, doing the actual thefts. These men were probably aided by the night-watchman.

  More important, they thought they could name the man who paid for the thefts to be done, received the shoes when stolen, and then passed them on to the men who would quietly sell them.

  It was a small neat operation, as a result of which quite a few feet in South London were going prettily shod.

  It was almost entirely a South London affair. Some black-mark
et shoes were to be seen on sale in Oxford Street, a few in Petticoat Lane, but in general this outlet was outside the scope of this small criminal. He didn’t want to go big; he knew his limitations. He kept it local.

  He was thought to be Joe Leopardo, a second-generation Italian immigrant living at New Cross, South London, above his jeweller’s shop.

  The lines of the murder case and the black-market investigation had crossed at this point.

  The local police did not see Joe Leopardo as a murderer; he was a small, devout man, with a loving wife.

  All the same, as Coffin walked on he felt he was closer to what was really going on in the investigation than he had been before. By luck, and aided by Eagle Scott, he got himself a perch on the inside circuit.

  As a kind of superstitious gesture of respect, he had bought the current issue of the Beano (‘The Scott’s Laddie’s Highland’s Chase’) and had it in his raincoat pocket with the News of the World.

  It was raining slightly. Down river, Stella was preparing to step on to a barge in a rehearsal of the Masque. She was the Lady arriving on the broad bosom of the Thames to meet Gloriana. She was getting very wet. At Mrs Lorimer’s, a piece of roast beef of sinewy disposition was being put into the oven for the lodgers’ Sunday lunch.

  Coffin thought happily that if he got things here over quickly he would be back in time for Sunday lunch, and then, if he was even luckier, he could stand on the river bank and watch Eddie Kelly make a fool of himself dancing a fandango to Chris Mackenzie’s music. He knew the evil rhythm that Chris had put into his music, since it had been hammered out under his feet for a month now. He was looking forward to Eddie’s plight and his hot meal.

  He was going to be late for both occasions.

  The men, the three of them he wanted to see, were bunched together, coat collars up against the wind, staring at the water. A string of half-loaded barges lined the wharfside. Convoy Wharf had survived the war with no more than a few pockmarks where shrapnel from the AA guns had pitted it. It was a solid testimony to the failure of the German blitz; ships had continued to load and unload throughout the war. Mainly now used for the unloading of paper, it occasionally saw the despatch of other cargoes.

  The three men turned round as one when he walked up, staring at him with weatherbeaten, expressionless faces. Only the eyes gave an indication that they were observing him sharply, taking him all in.

  No one would have guessed from their silent scrutiny that they had heard him coming, listened to his tread, and decided who he was and why he was there.

  Only his name was lacking, and that they proposed to get out of him before giving him their own.

  Coffin gave them no trouble here, he introduced himself at once.

  ‘Thought we’d seen the last of you lot.’ The speaker was a short, spare man with a forehead furrow set in a permanent frown.

  ‘Had a couple of you round last week.’ The second man was tall, thin and sad of face. His right hand was yellow with nicotine stains.

  The third man was silent, but a faint, sceptical smile lifted his lips.

  Coffin sighed, this was going to be slow. He got their names out of them. The first speaker was Jack Lash, the heavy smoker was Peter Peskett and the silent smiler was Paddy Flisker, and the smile was not a smile but a Celtic gesture of ambiguous intent.

  What he wanted to get from them was a list of all the men who might have stolen the shoes, or possibly bought them from the original thief to hand on.

  He had a list already, culled from the local police, but he wanted his own.

  Even in his limited experience one name often led to another.

  Between them, they produced a list of names in dribs and drabs. Quite soon he saw where it was heading.

  Someone mentioned Alfred Arnold, who was a name on his list of suspects, someone else said casually he was married to an Italian girl called Leopardo.

  Then someone else made a joke about Florrie the money-lender being a figure in their lives.

  Leopardo – Padovani. There was the link.

  They were all local men from Deptford and Rother-hithe, none from Greenwich, who might not realize the significance of what they were saying.

  Or perhaps they did. There was a look about them, they were not innocent men, but tough and worldly in their own way.

  John Coffin made careful notes, wrote down all the names and addresses, because he would have to make a report. But to him a clear signal had gone up.

  He didn’t know where it left him. How far could loyalty go?

  Just because you had served with a chap, felt a liking for him and a lot of sympathy, should it influence you? Your judgement it could not touch, a thought welled up whether you desired it or not – but your behaviour?

  The answer was no. But you could go slow. His present impulse was to go very slow indeed.

  Then he heard the sound of pounding feet. Someone was running their way.

  A man had come sprinting round the corner of Convoy Wharf, and he was shouting.

  Coffin couldn’t make out a word he was shouting, but understood all the same.

  As a very young actress Rachel Esthart had played in Sir James Barrie’s one-act thriller, Shall We Join the Ladies?

  The scene (there is but the one, and never a dénouement) is a dinner-party.

  Whether by accident or design, Rachel had reproduced the atmosphere of that first act.

  There they were, all the guests around the table, knowing that some doomful sentence was about to be pronounced upon them but not knowing yet what it was.

  A strange company, they thought, as they looked around the table, but they had something in common: murder.

  Inspectors Warwick and Banbury sat side by side. Chief Superintendent Dander was opposite. Wives had not been asked.

  ‘A typical Rachel Esthart party,’ Eddie Kelly had murmured. ‘More men than women.’

  He was across the table from Warwick and Banbury, and next to Chief Superintendent Dander.

  Stella was there, and at the head of the table, Rachel herself.

  On each side of her she had the two youngest men: Chris and Alex. Joan and Albie Delaney were at the foot of the table, side by side, seeking comfort from each other.

  There was one empty chair: the one for John Coffin.

  Florrie served the food, handing round the first course of ravioli, from the Padovani kitchen. Vic Padovani had brought it up himself and was in the kitchen finishing the rest of the meal; roast chicken with lemon sauce. His mood was not good. Every so often he surfaced to pour out the wine: Papa Padovani’s best vintage.

  At the head of the table Rachel appeared poised and calm. She was wearing a black and white silk print dress which Schiaparelli had made before the war.

  Stella, studying her patron and hostess, was amazed at the skill with which Rachel was pushing back the past and entering the present. She could guess at the age of the dress from the quality of the silk (nothing of ‘utility’ about it) but Rachel had tightened the belt and lowered the neckline. Stella suspected a sharp study of the latest issue of Vogue in which the new Paris fashions were forecast. A new look was coming over clothes, you could sense it coming; Rachel had merely anticipated.

  Suddenly, oddly, it was Rachel who was in tune with the times and Stella who felt out of touch.

  After the ravioli, and while Vic was carving the chicken, Rachel started to talk:

  ‘Dear friends.’ She smiled, almost a threatening smile Stella felt. A waft of Ma Griffe floated from her, outdoing the smell of roast chicken and red wine.

  No, not a threat in the smile, Stella decided, she’s not got the feel of her audience yet and she’s nervous.

  Even as she watched she saw Rachel become confident, project herself.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not friends. You are not here as friends; you are here because I have a confession to make and you have come to hear it.’

  Chief Superintendent Dander shifted on his chair.

  Rachel took a swi
g of wine, smiled, a tentative, more normal smile now, and said: ‘Well, to be honest, I thought I’d rather get it over in one throw. Tell you all at once.’

  She rose, putting one hand on the table. The man who murdered the girl is no son of mine. I disown him. I will not have him. I won’t let him contaminate the memory of the son I once had.’

  ‘Sit down, ma’am,’ said Dander kindly. ‘You’re overdoing yourself.’

  He got up and held her chair.

  Rachel hesitated for a moment, then sank down. Then she put out a hand, blindly seeking.

  Dander took it. He looked embarrassed, but he did it.

  Stella wanted to cheer. My God, she manages it still. What a performer. She’s feeding them their parts.

  ‘My child died years ago,’ said Rachel. ‘I know that now. I’ve known it for a long while in my heart, but I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face the world. I hid in the nightmare I’d made.’

  Dander relinquished her hand and went back to his seat. The look he exchanged with Warwick, alert, sharp, made Stella decide that he responded as a man but was on guard as a detective. He and Rachel were probably a match for one another.

  Tom Banbury sat looking at Rachel without a word. She’s learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, he thought, the silly cow. He was usually gentle in his thoughts but not now. His deeper mind was elsewhere. Tomorrow the trial of the murderer of Connie Shepherd would begin and end. The killer intended to plead guilty. Within the statutory time he would hang. Banbury could not get his mind out of the executioner’s cell.

  In a clear voice Rachel said: ‘I was never lying, never acting a lie. I want you to believe that. When I first came back to Angel House I felt my child was still alive. It wasn’t that I could not accept his death. To me it did not happen. He was still alive. I knew it.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Trauma, my psychiatrist called it. The result of shock.’

  Joan Delaney put on her spectacles, thus transforming herself into a formidable lady. ‘Now come on, Rachel. I know you, you’ve been coming round for some time now.’

  ‘Yes. The war did that.’ Rachel smiled wryly. ‘Even hidden in Angel House I knew about the war. We had our bombs, too. As you so neatly put it, Joan, I was coming back. The note, the letter, threw me for a time. Just till the body. Not after that. I’ve seen my psychiatrist again, accepted treatment. I’ll be ready to be out in the world again soon.’