Death Lives Next Door

by Gwendoline Butler

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time Ezra got to the house in Chancellor Hyde Street it was mid-morning of the next day, Wednesday. Rachel was better, he had seen her and talked to her. It was because of what she had murmured to him that he was on his way round now. He should have been earlier, that was what he kept muttering to himself, rather like the White Rabbit, but after leaving Rachel in the small hours of the morning and sending a telegram to her parents who characteristically had already flooded him with long and expensive telegrams of bewildering complexity, he had fallen asleep in his chair.

  There was a policeman standing outside the house, and as he stood staring, two more men came down the little path to the gate. It seemed incongruous that the cat Sammy should still be sitting there sunning himself on the gate-post. When Ezra saw the policemen he felt a sense of doom, as if he drunk the poison that Rachel and Mrs. Beaufort had shared. In a sense, he considered, so he had; you can take poison in different ways; through the mouth, like the two women, through the ear, like Hamlet’s father, and through the mind, as he had. All the same, he had not fully taken in all that Rachel in her confused and incoherent way had told him, as he was soon to discover. They knew by now that Rachel had been poisoned in Marion’s house, but Rachel seemed to show more fear for Marion than of her.

  But when he saw the policemen he knew that whatever had happened he had been too late.

  “You can’t go in,” said Coffin. “Indeed there’s no point.” And he added sadly, “We’ve got our murderer, poor soul.”

  Ezra was wrenched between a desire to know and a fear of what he must learn. “Dr. Manning?” he said hesitantly. “Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid she’s dead,” said Coffin simply, before his colleague, who clearly had something to say, could speak. “I hope, indeed I think, she was dead before the Major called us round. We were coming anyway.”

  The Major’s narrative was simple. He had been sitting quietly in his kitchen at work on his table silver when the noise started. He pointed out that it was because he was so quiet that he had heard the noise which was not then over-loud. He usually had the gramophone on when he polished the silver, as it gave him something to think about. But that evening he already had plenty to think about: he had been puzzled by the bonfire which both he and Coffin had observed. As far as he knew this was the first time his neighbour had shown any interest in the garden, let alone to burn up the weeds of which he would be the first to admit there were far too many. He had studied the bonfire and noticed that it was composed of a weed of one sort only, and not a very pretty weed either, nor one that he was readily able to identify. A little work with his Dictionary of British Herbs and Plants very soon enabled him to make a guess, though. One picture in the book had been particularly clear and helpful. Henbane as a poison is hardly any trouble to prepare. You can boil it up, if you like, or just sprinkle the seeds in any bit of cooking you happen to be doing, a pot of coffee, say, or a cup of tea. A couple of hundred seeds can kill a man, and the plant is prolific, so this quantity is no problem.

  Joyo had then burnt the weeds. But what she and the Major did not know was that the act of burning releases a powerful and intoxicating poison. The very smoke is deadly.

  The Major had put a hand unsteadily to his suddenly hot forehead. It was about henbane he was thinking when the noises began. Just at first he had thought, in his housewifely way, that someone next door was raking out the kitchen boiler. But he speedily recalled, as he had every reason to know from the mammoth piles of rubbish that appeared on dust-bin day, that next door had no kitchen boiler and heated their water by gas. Then the noises had altered their character and revealed themselves as more of a banging and a dragging than a scraping. This was a change which did not cheer him up at all. The Major was now thoroughly alarmed. He was sure he could hear furniture being moved and pictures being dragged roughly from walls. A vivid picture began to form before his eyes and one which he was to learn later was not far off the truth … “Looting and ravaging,” he thought reminiscently. “Parhadubad, 1947, that’s where I last heard noises like that.” He went on listening. For some reason his unconscious mind tossed up to him the ridiculous nursery rhyme of Humpty-Dumpty.

  “Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall,

  And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

  Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

  Once Humpty was shattered nothing and no one could put Humpty together again into one whole.

  Then the voice began. It started in low tones that he had difficulty in hearing, but soon it was shrieking. He walked up the stairs and went into his sitting-room where he pressed his ear to the wall; he couldn’t hear clearly or continuously, but he could hear in snatches. He could hear Dr. Manning’s name. “Marion, Marion,” the voice was shouting.

  He had no difficulty in identifying the voice as that of the strange painted woman he had sometimes seen around Dr. Manning’s house and at once summed up as no lady. Certainly no lady would carry on as she was doing now. She sounded drunk. He had some reason to believe she did drink because the grocer in Walton Street had hinted it, adding with a rum look that she had called herself Dr. Manning’s cousin. That was a He to start with, because Dr. Manning had flatly denied having one. They looked more like sisters.

  Then the voice changed again, and this time the Major had a terrifying thought of two women fighting; one of them shrieking with anger, and the other one, silent and terrified, fighting for her life.

  When all fell silent he became really frightened and telephoned the police.

  “I think there are two dead women next door,” he cried in alarm. He was not far from the truth.

  Coffin told all this to Ezra, adding that the police had been at work all night. He himself looked exhausted. As he was speaking, Ezra noticed activity at the door. Then he took in the significance of the long anonymous-looking van. They were taking Marion away.

  “I want to see Dr. Manning,” he said firmly. “I’m one of her oldest friends. I want to see her.”

  Perhaps he cherished some hope that there had been a mistake and that Marion, dear, kind, loving Marion, was not dead. Silently they led him into the house. It was in disorder enough, but Joyo, in the time allowed her, had not achieved all the destruction she had planned.

  “How did Marion die?” asked Ezra as they walked through the tiny hall. He had been nerving himself to ask this question for some time.

  Coffin hesitated. Then he said: “We think it was a heart attack. Her heart had probably been weakened by her bomb experiences in the war, and then, of course, she was drugged …”

  It was a relief to Ezra that she had not been brutally murdered, and he said so.

  Coffin just shook his head. He looked at the young man, not after all so much his junior, but years younger in experience of life, and said to himself: “You’ve got a lot to learn, young chap.”

  At the door to the sitting-room Coffin stood aside and let Ezra look in. There was a long silence. Then Ezra turned to Coffin.

  “But there’s only one woman there.”

  “Yes, said Coffin. “Only one woman there. Dr. Manning and her other self are united in the end.” He lifted up her left hand and fitted on it the wedding ring he had got from Mrs. Springer. “There it goes,” he said, “back where it came from, the ring from Dr. Manning’s first wedding.”

  Joyo and Marion were dead, as they had lived, in the same body.

  “I’ve settled in my mind to go to London,” said Ezra, who was talking to Rachel. She was leaning back against her pillows, recovered and, therefore, inclined to be ashamed of the private room and nurse, luxuries which her parents anxious, and extravagant as always, had showered on her upon their return. “I must get better soon,” worried Rachel. “What must all this be costing? Hope they can pay the bill,” she added doubtfully. But she had heard what Ezra said and laid her hand on his.

  “I’d see Marion everywhere. I couldn’t bear to stay. Besides, you w
ere right all the time. I shall be better away. More resolute.” And he squared his shoulders hopefully.

  Rachel nodded; she looked quite herself again, although thinner and paler. All the victims of the poison, now known to be a preparation of henbane, were getting on well. Of all of them, only Stanley in London had taken a really dangerous amount of the stuff, and even he was all right. He had solved it in his own way. “Sicked it all up,” said Mrs. Springer through her tears, “the dear clever little fellow.” This was the only time in his life that Stanley had yet earned the epithet. “It just shows doesn’t it, that nature gives a special protection to people like him. He just sicked it up like a little dog.” Good came out of this episode for Stanley: the doctor who saw him realised at once that his dullness was not a cross to be borne for the rest of his life but a simple case of thyroid deficiency and that Stanley, once treated, would be, if not clever, at any rate as normal as his parents.

  “I have two careers open to me, as far as I can see,” said Ezra, with grim amusement. “I can become a successful novelist. Or I can become a distinguished theatre critic. You choose.”

  “I shall leave it to you,” said Rachel. “I have complete faith in your judgement.”

  “Well, I’m glad you admit at last that I’ve got a mind,” said Ezra, much gratified; now he and Rachel might get somewhere.

  Rachel smiled and pressed his hand. The truth was that she loved him for quite other reasons, for the way he held his head, and the way he crossed a road, and even for his streaks of silliness.

  “Very true, my love,” she said, practising.

  “Don’t overdo it, Rachel,” murmured Ezra suspiciously. But they sat happily hand in hand for a few minutes. Ezra who had once been close enough to Marion to be thought to be her son (and not only by Joyo either) had now drawn away. He was changing, moving, growing closer to Rachel. It was inevitable and natural and Marion, had she been there to see, would have observed it with wry amusement.

  “It seems awful to let happiness come out of unhappiness,” said Rachel suddenly.

  Ezra nodded. “It’s even more awful to know that you’ve been completely in the dark about one aspect of someone very close to you. I thought of Marion as the soul of normality. Almost stolid, except that one knew that someone who had done the work she had could never be called that. And all the time she was two people. She had two selves, like the famous Miss Sally Beauchamp; Sally had three selves, I think, all completely different and distinct, and only one of them knowing about the other two. That’s awful, too, if you like to think about it; Marion herself had no idea about the other one, although Joyo knew all about her.”

  Rachel nodded. “I knew, too, by the end. I did see Joyo once or twice you know, and on that last day before I was ill I guessed. I saw her face to face; usually she was clever about people she knew, and avoided them. That’s why she tried to kill me.”

  “The doctors think it started on that expedition: that the shock caused by the death of her husband split Marion in two and a second personality peeled off.”

  “And not a nice one either,” said Rachel with a shudder. “That poor little second husband. Killed just because he put in his claim to her life.”

  “The second marriage dates from another bad patch: the bomb injury threw Marion right back. In between, the wound in her personality, if one can call it that, must have healed, although everyone who knew her agrees that she was never quite the same after the Central American trip,” Ezra sighed.

  “But Ezra, can one aspect of a person kill if the other part isn’t equally willing? Wouldn’t it be somehow like the response to hypnotism, that one wouldn’t, couldn’t do anything totally alien to the mind?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. But remember, we never saw the real Marion, the whole person. She died when her first husband was killed. We saw only one restricted character.” He added thoughtfully: “I don’t believe she was ever as good as we thought she was. We largely invented the character of Marion: we saw that she was spontaneous, amusing, clever, affectionate, and deduced from all this that she was good, too. Good to us, was all we really meant. But we had plenty of pointers the other way if we had seen them. The Professor warned us, he almost warned me against Marion once, and the Major knew, too, he was always very reserved about Marion. And there must be a doctor. I know she consulted a doctor, although heaven knows he seems to have done her no good.”

  (Poor Dr. Steiner had no luck, even his proposal to cure Marion by sending her to a special nursing home of which he had discovered the address got him no credit, no reward, and lost him his client.)

  “What about her first husband?” asked Rachel suddenly. “He died, too, you know. Had she something to do with that, do you suppose?”

  Then Ezra sat silent for a long time. “How can we know?” he asked. “How can we ever know?”

  So of all the people who had known and loved Marion only the Major who had overheard something of her last spoken words knew that Joyo had died, not in anger and hate, but because she knew in the end that she had loved what she had destroyed.

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  About the Author

  Gwendoline Butler, who died in 2013, was a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still had a tremendous affection, and where Coffin on the Water is set. She was educated at one of the Haberdasher’s Schools and then read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married Dr Lionel Butler. They had one daughter, Lucille.

  It was while her husband was Professor of Mediaeval History in the University of St Andrews that Gwendoline first began writing crime fiction. In her lifetime she wrote seventy-seven novels, thirty-four of which feature Detective John Coffin.

  Also by the Author

  John Coffin novels

  Receipt for Murder

  Dead in a Row

  The Dull Dead

  The Murdering Kind

  The Interloper

  Death Lives Next Door

  A Coffin for Baby

  Make Me a Murderer

  Coffin in Oxford

  Coffin Waiting

  Coffin in Malta

  A Nameless Coffin

  Coffin Following

  Coffin's Dark Number

  A Coffin from the Past

  A Coffin for Pandora

  A Coffin for the Canary

  Coffin On the Water

  Coffin in Fashion

  Coffin Underground

  Coffin in the Black Museum

  Coffin and the Paper Man

  Coffin on Murder Street

  Cracking Open a Coffin

  A Coffin For Charley

  The Coffin Tree

  A Dark Coffin

  A Double Coffin

  Coffin's Game

  A Grave Coffin

  Coffin's Ghost

  A Cold Coffin

  A Coffin for Christmas

  Coffin Knows the Answer

  Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny novels

  The King Cried Murder

  Dread Murder

  Standalone novels:

  Sarsen Place

  Olivia

  The Vesey Inheritance

  Meadowsweet

  The Red Staircase

  Albion Walk

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published 1960

  Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1960

  Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work
of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Source ISBN: 9780002322775

  Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007544660

  Version: 2014–05–07

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