His other missing person was different. The whole episode had been different from anything in his experience, and it was different, too, in the trouble it promised.
This missing person had been reported by his sister. She had really seemed worried, too. Coffin knew Mrs. Good; she was a small hard-working bird-like creature, dark and dusty like a perky Cockney sparrow, and with the same persistent courage. Until now he had not known she had a brother.
“My half-brother really,” she corrected him. “I brought him up. As much as anyone did. And though the rest of us had dropped apart we two have always kept together. He lived with me when he was home.”
Coffin raised an eyebrow, a query forming on his lips.
“Oh no, Inspector, he’s never been inside. Never even deserved it. No, he’s a photographer by trade, a nasty chancy business, but he fell into it when he was a young boy. I was always on at him to get a better job. It takes him away from home, down to the coast in summer or to some tourist centre. He’s in Oxford Street mostly in the winter.”
Coffin placed the brother then, thin-boned and sparrowy and anaemic like his sister but without her bounce. And he didn’t look good-tempered either.
“Seen him around,” he said.
“Not lately you haven’t. He’s been away six weeks. But I’ve heard regularly, cards and one letter. Every Tuesday I heard. Last Tuesday he told me he’d be home on Friday. I waited all day Friday but he didn’t come. And I haven’t heard since. It’s a week. I don’t like it.”
It didn’t seem very long to Coffin and he said so.
“It’s a long time when you’re waiting,” she said. “Something’s happened to him. I know it has.”
“I think you would have heard if he’d had an accident.”
“So I would. That’s why I’m worried.” She had something there, Coffin thought. No news was not always good news.
“You’d better tell me all you know, Mrs. Good.”
“He said he was going after his wife.” There was a pause while Mrs. Good gathered her thoughts; she did not find it easy to tell a coherent story. “He had a wife. Perhaps you didn’t know that. Not many do. She left him. Not that I know anything about it. I didn’t know he was married even till he came to me one day and said: ‘May, I was hitched last week, wish me luck.’ But he was back in a month or two to say she’d gone. And she took with her, just out of nastiness of mind, it couldn’t mean anything to her, a photograph he’d made that he hoped to win a competition with. He isn’t really a good photographer, poor old boy, but he does try.”
She told the story of the marriage. It had been a wartime wedding. In 1944, she thought, at a time when her brother had been working in a London factory and doing only what photography was possible under war-time conditions. A marriage contracted and then quickly broken.
“What was the wife like?”
“I don’t know, for I never saw her. But I bet I know what type she was because I know what type poor old Bert always did go for. Bright and noisy and out for fun.”
… Just the opposite of you, thought Coffin. Perhaps Albert hadn’t loved his sister as much as she’d loved him.
“Well, go on. You know a bit more.”
Mrs. Good hesitated. Then it came with a rush. “He saw his photograph in a trade-paper and it had won a prize. There was no name given, at least only a joke one: Fairy. But there was the town it came from, Oxford.”
Coffin was doubtful. “I don’t know if it’s my business to chase a grown man, Mrs. Good. He’s free to go off if he wants.”
“There’s something wrong.” Her lip set obstinately.
“You don’t know anything of your own knowledge,” Coffin pointed out. “Can’t take a husband’s word on his wife as gospel, Mrs. G. You know that.”
“Well, I don’t like the sound of the woman all the same,” she persisted stolidly. “Besides, I do know something of my own knowledge. I’m not one to leave a thing if I can do it myself. I went round to where they’d been living and had a look. It wasn’t the house of a proper woman. I’m not talking about dirt for there wasn’t, but it was funny there. And then she’d left everything. Just got up and walked out. Even left a tap running. That was how they found out she’d gone, when the water started flooding down into the landlady’s kitchen. And the landlady said. . .” She paused.
“Hearsay again, Mrs. G.”
“She said she heard her say, ‘I shall have to kill you, destroy you, do you in.’”
“Sharp ears she had, that landlady,” observed the sceptical Coffin. “Any other suggestion? Anything else to tell me about your brother?”
She looked round the room before speaking. Then she made up her mind to say what she had to say. “He did hate cats. Gentle as a lamb with anything else but he seemed to feel spiteful to cats. Yet they always made straight for him. I did wonder if perhaps he had harmed a cat in Oxford …” Her voice tailed away.
“Murdered by a cat-lover, eh?” said Coffin, reflecting that she had made her brother sound more and more unattractive with each sentence. A sadistic wife-loser was not his idea of a nice man. “Not likely, is it?”
“He’s my young brother. He’d never leave me so long without a card unless he was ill or,” her voice quavered, “or worse. I can’t just let him go off into the blue like that without making an effort.”
“He may not be in Oxford.”
“The postmark of his card said Oxford.” From her black handbag she produced a grubby bent picture postcard of Carfax, Oxford. There was nothing written on it but the words “Love to all, Bert.”
Coffin turned it over. “Well, I think you’re making a fuss about nothing. He’ll be back.”
“I don’t like it,” persisted Mrs. Good. “I tell you I’m reporting him missing.”
“I can get hold of Oxford, I suppose,” Coffin sighed. “But don’t expect anything to come of it.”
“I do so want him back,” she said, and her eyes met his. Coffin saw tears in their faded blue, set in her wrinkled, lined and far from clean little face. “He’s the only one I’ve got left.” Coffin realised then she was clinging to herself and her memories and the past as much as to her brother, that without him she would slip back into the sea of people without links, without family, who work through the day with no one to go back to, who get no letters and no love.
“I’ll do what I can for you, mother,” he said from the security of his known world.
“And he’s such a silly boy when I’m not with him,” she said almost peevishly.
When she had gone he wrote down what she had told him. Missing: Albert Montano, aged thirty-eight. Last seen in London, last heard of in Oxford.
He was unaware then that he was writing Albert’s obituary.
Coffin found himself still thinking of Mrs. Good and her troubles at the end of the day. He decided to visit the house where this strange couple had lodged. Detectives do not usually have time to indulge their curiosity but this house was not far from his way home, he had a few minutes to spare, and he was interested.
Fifteen years had passed since the whole episode had taken place and this odd little flitting had no doubt long been forgotten in the neighbourhood. It was not likely that the landlady could remember anything about the people even if she was still there.
But she did remember. The moment she opened the door of her house Coffin could see she was the sort who would remember everything that had happened. She was a little London magpie, retentive of everything, memories, grievances, affections, even of dirt. She was still quite young and must have been a very young landlady indeed fifteen years ago.
“Come in,” she said in a friendly way without waiting to know what he wanted. She moved a dog and a small boy out of the way. “Move along there, Stanley,” she said gently. “Don’t mind Stanley,” she went on. “He’s not quite bright, poor little fellow. I look after him for his mum. I haven’t none of my own, more’s the pity.”
“He looks all right.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, you wouldn’t know to look at him, but you’d find out if you saw much of him, Inspector. I’m getting him nice and clean, though. His mum just didn’t take the trouble.”
“You know who I am?”
“Yes.” She seemed surprised. “Don’t you know me?” As he shook his head she told him: “I’m Ted Springer’s missus. Sent him down for three years, you did.”
“Well I never. Don’t remember meeting you.”
“Oh, Ted always keeps me well away from business,” she said, shocked. “Very strait-laced my husband is.”
“Yes,” said Coffin, reflecting that Ted had gone down for robbing a bank. “Well, I haven’t come round about that. Must be nearly out now, mustn’t he? Expect he gets full remission of sentence.”
“Model prisoner,” she said proudly. “He’s taken up book-binding this time.” She saw that Coffin was looking round the room. “He’s left me very comfortable.”
Coffin grinned; he knew, and she knew, that the bank had never recovered its ten thousand pounds so that Ted’s three years were not without their profit.
He guessed that she would tell everything she knew provided always there was no connection with Ted Springer. She was surprised when she heard what he so wanted to know.
“Fancy you digging that up. I hadn’t been married long myself then and Ted was in the Eighth Army. I hardly ever saw him at all. He was out in Africa and then home in time to make D-Day. Never a scratch either, but he went bald, poor fellow. Of course I do remember them; they were a funny couple. She was a well-educated woman, though. You could tell it from the way she spoke sometimes. Just a turn of a phrase now and then, but it was there.”
He nodded and let her go on.
“Still, she wasn’t a lady. Not what I call one. Too loud in her dress and her ways. Of course he liked it. While he was liking it, that is. Later on they had some precious quarrels. I used to put the wireless on so I couldn’t hear.”
“That was decent of you,” commented Coffin, thinking of some landladies who would have turned it off so that they could hear.
“I could hear even with the wireless on,” admitted Nancy Springer. “I heard her talk about killing once.” Coffin nodded, remembering what Mrs. Good had said. “But I didn’t set much store on it then, although I wondered later when she went off. I don’t know if I can tell you much about them. They met in an air raid, so he told me. And it could have been true. Although the blitz was over by then.”
“Were they here long?”
She calculated. “About six months, I think. Together that is. He hung on a bit longer.”
“Time for you to get to know them?”
“Not really. I didn’t try. I was just married myself and a bit dreamy about Ted. I missed him, you see. And then I was out so much. I was a munitions girl. One of the fastest workers they had.” There was the echo of an old pride in her voice. “I felt as though I was working for Ted. So we hardly met. When they were happy they were quiet enough. They kept in their own two rooms. We did share the kitchen but you see what with eating in the canteen and being out so much I hardly cooked at all. I think she did a lot of cooking at first, like a kid playing at house, but later on she seemed to lose interest in being domestic, and I think he used to do what tidying up got done, and that wasn’t much. She sat around crying.”
Mrs. Springer shrugged. “I wondered if he used to beat her, but she had more muscle than him. He wasn’t as nice as he looked by a long chalk. Couldn’t expect him to be when you think of the district he came from. I know his sister.” It was apparent that there had been no love lost between Mrs. Good and Mrs. Springer.
“So do I,” admitted Coffin. “She seems all right.”
“You know anything about that house of hers in Grindley Road? No? Well, you ought to. Not respectable at all.”
“You sure?” said Coffin surprised and interested by this insight into the life of Mrs. Good; he had not suspected it, but now it seemed utterly reasonable. “It’s just out of my district, you know.”
“Anyway they hadn’t been here above six months when off she went. Just scarpered.” Mrs. Springer threw out her hands. “It’s my belief she was scared of the buzz bombs, they’d just started up. We had a lot round here, as you know. There was one at the end of the road that scared even me and I had my nerve in those days. Remember how we used to talk about ‘incidents’? Brings it back, that word, doesn’t it? That bomb fell the very day she left because I remember thinking she might have been hit by it. She’d just left the house you see to go shopping. But she was safe enough because she popped back to see if I was all right. She could be kind enough in her way.”
“The bomb dropped the day she disappeared?” queried Coffin. “You don’t think she was shocked or lost her memory?”
“She was shocked all right, we all were, but her memory hadn’t gone. She was quite herself when she went off again. ‘Bye-bye, Mrs. Springer,’ she said in her cocky way, ‘I’ll be out some time’. And my God, so she was. I never saw her again.”
“Did it never occur to you that she might have been killed by a bomb?”
“Of course it did. First thing we thought, but you see we got no word and although her husband inquired everywhere he never could hear of anyone that sounded like her. And then he saw her again. On a passing bus. Didn’t half give the poor little soul a turn. Perhaps he had made a mistake, but he believed it. He left soon after that. But, do you know, I’ve heard he is still looking for her.”
“That’s right,” said Coffin, “so he is.”
“Then he’s wasting his time. If she didn’t want him, he should leave her alone. I don’t know that I’d have wanted him myself, although mind you, he was quite a bit younger than she was. Five or six years, I’d guess.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He ought to know better. A woman like that, you can’t tell where she comes from or where she goes. It might even be dangerous to follow her.”
“Yes,” agreed Coffin. “Frankly, I think it was dangerous. He’s disappeared himself now. That’s why I’m round to see you.”
The woman went white.
She knows something she hasn’t told me, thought Coffin, and wondered what it could be.
He looked at her absently. “Did she leave anything behind?”
“Left everything behind her.” Stanley and the dog were scuffling round her feet and she bent down so that her face was hidden and Coffin could not see her expression. “He was still here, of course, it wasn’t any business of mine.”
“And then shortly after he went off? I suppose he took all his goods and chattels with him?”
She nodded.
“Got anything left?” He removed Stanley from her skirts.
She hesitated, then laughed. “What? After fifteen years? What do you expect? I’m not a good housekeeper, but I’m better than that!”
But Coffin noticed the hesitation … She’s got something, he decided, and wondered how he would get it out of her. Ted Springer’s missus must know all there was to know about keeping her mouth shut.
It would be necessary to soften her up in some way, but she had prudently got Stanley back to her skirts and the dog was licking her feet, and she was fussing them in a nice, gentle, feminine way that was impregnable. Also she was murmuring something about a cup of tea being what he wanted.
Coffin accepted defeat; there was no doing anything with a woman as nice as that. He quite saw why the ten thousand pounds had remained with the Springers.
“Put the kettle on, my dear,” he said. “I might just as well get something out of this visit. Not your fault, my dear. Don’t give it another thought.”
She made the tea, gave Stanley a drink of milk, mopped him up, fed the dog, and then sat down.
“Does Ted know?” asked Coffin suddenly.
She blushed. “You don’t think I’d keep anything from Ted, do you? Oh I don’t mind telling. It’s only that I’m a bit ashamed of what I did. Ted didn’t know anything about it until he got back and then he
took it off me. You could get better ones by then.”
“Get what?” Coffin sipped his tea.
“It was a wedding ring.” And then, seeing Coffin’s look of surprise, she went on. “She left it behind, and it was a twenty-two carat one. During the war you weren’t allowed more than eight carat and they didn’t look the same, more like brass. And my mum kept criticising mine as though it was my Ted’s fault.”
“Couldn’t your Ted get you one?” asked Coffin before he could stop himself.
She faced him reproachfully. “Ted was in the Army. He was a good soldier. Never touched a job for five years. He had his stripes and he was keen on the idea. He considered staying in as a Regular, but the pay wasn’t what he was used to.”
And Coffin who knew all about Sergeant Springer and his army career, which had indeed been distinguished in its way, nodded. All the energy and intelligence which made Springer outstanding at his chosen peace-time trade had been valuable in the army. For a moment he felt like sighing and saying what a pity he didn’t stay straight, and then he remembered the ten thousand and thought that perhaps there was something to be said for Ted’s point of view.
“So you took this ring?”
“Not took,” she corrected gently. “He left it behind when he went. I didn’t know how to get hold of him. He took everything else. Even her poor coats and dresses, not that she had many, she went in for those dirndl skirts and dresses. Peasant type. He offered to sell them to me, can you beat that? But I wasn’t quite so cold-blooded, besides being thinner.”
For a moment Coffin could see the woman who had disappeared—a peasant type, brightly made up, talking a lot, small and sturdy and not quite what she seemed. That was beginning to stand out.
“Got the ring now?”
She nodded. “I kept it. Ted told me to throw it out, but I couldn’t.”
No, of course you couldn’t, thought Coffin, you kept it. No woman could ever throw out a piece of gold.
“Can I see it?”
When it was produced Coffin studied it. It was nothing remarkable. A thick, plain gold ring, not much worn, but not new either. It was the sort of ring his mother had achieved in the nineteen-twenties, not like the eight-carat ring that Nancy had discarded for it, nor like the thin band with orange blossom carved on it that she was now wearing.
Death Lives Next Door Page 10
