‘Not going to be easy to find out if she was killed as Marjorie Wardy or Jaimie Layard.’
‘Or both.’
‘The pregnancy must be important. We ought to be able to find out who is the father … who she was close to, the blood groupings, opportunity.’
‘There is always opportunity,’ said Coffin.
‘She was only six weeks gone. I wonder if she knew herself.’
‘Sex comes into it, must do,’ said Coffin. ‘I saw her with Martin Marlowe and she was highly sexed and difficult with it. Did she know she was pregnant? Did he know?’
‘I haven’t asked him yet, he may say yes and he may say no, I am not relying on him telling the truth,’ said Darcy. ‘I’m not telling anyone. Holding it in reserve. I like to have a shock or two in hand, it can loosen things up.’
The fog was lifting but it was as cold as ever.
‘It’ll get out,’ said Coffin, ‘always does.’ He pulled Augustus forward. ‘Is that what you came to talk about?’
Darcy shivered. ‘Cold here, isn’t it? Is it much of a success as a park?’
‘Don’t think so,’ said Coffin, ‘the kids avoid it.’
‘Not surprised. I don’t like the feel of it.’
I suppose the dead haven’t quite walked away, thought Coffin. Not to mention that there might be another still here.
‘It will be crowded once the digging starts. Press as well, TV cameras, the lot,’ Darcy said. ‘But Phoebe Astley will be masterminding that exercise. And what we are looking for and why is something else that will get out. Do you think Lavender took that into account?’
‘No. He’s a bit out of the world, just sees what he wants to see now.’
‘He could not have killed the girl?’
‘No,’ said Coffin. ‘Not without a lot of help. Is that what you came to ask?’
‘No. I came to talk about the jacket that the girl was wearing. She was wearing an old felt hat that could have come from anywhere, a stall in the market, a charity shop, anywhere. It was old but in good condition.’ He considered: ‘I think a charity shop, it had that smell somehow; we might identify the shop and be no further forward. But the jacket …’ He paused. ‘I would like you to look at it.’
‘Now?’
‘If you could. I would really value your opinion, sir.’
Coffin looked down at Augustus. ‘I’ll just take him in. I will join you in the car.’
George Darcy sat waiting in his car for the Chief Commander to come back. He put the radio on as he waited. There was music, then the news, no mention of the murder in Spinnergate. Only a little, ordinary, unoriginal murder, after all.
Coffin planted Augustus in his basket, hurriedly fed the cat, and went to say goodbye to Stella, who was still in bed. He opened the window curtains to wake her up. She would be cross but grateful.
‘Thanks for nothing … Thought you’d gone,’ she said, stirring. ‘Will Martin be into work today?’
‘Yes, but keep an eye on him.’
‘Why?’
Coffin paused at the door. ‘You saw those cuts and scars on him. I am not sure what they mean now we know Jaimie was murdered, but I don’t like them.’
Stella sat up in bed and watched him go. She too was troubled about Martin Marlowe.
The two men went into the long low building which housed the forensic laboratories.
George Darcy led the way down the corridor to room F3. All the clothes that Jaimie had worn were spread on tables awaiting the attention of the scientists.
She had worn very few underclothes, but they were silky and expensive: a brassiere, white pants and tights. On top she had worn cotton jeans, and a thick cashmere sweater.
On a table by itself was the jacket: it was dark-brown tweed, it had a roundish collar and a belt and big pockets.
‘Worn originally by a big man,’ said Darcy.
Coffin studied the jacket. ‘He wore it hard, it’s threadbare. And stained.’ There were darker patches on the cloth, you could call them stains, almost of vegetable growth.
‘Something else too, sir.’ Darcy was watching his face.
Coffin looked at it thoughtfully. ‘It’s not new, and it was bought a long time ago. Jackets haven’t been made for men like that for a very long time.’
‘Old-fashioned,’ said Darcy. ‘Very. But that’s not all … smell it, sir.’
Coffin gave Darcy a sharp look, then bent down to smell. Slowly he straightened himself. ‘Smells …’ He hesitated. ‘It smells of damp earth. As if it had been buried.’
Buried a long age in the deep delved earth.
‘Would anyone bury a jacket?’ asked Darcy.
‘It might be on someone,’ said Coffin. Someone dead. Dead and then dug up. Or at least, uncovered. He could see Darcy frowning.
Mustn’t get into fantasy land. ‘The forensic report will be helpful,’ Coffin said. Scientists were not always helpful, while sometimes being prone to their own little fantasies, but you had to listen to them. ‘It’s odd, but all cases have oddities.’
‘Sometimes they are useful, they can be useful,’ said Darcy in a dogged way.
‘But sometimes you never discover what lies behind them.’ Coffin knew something of the ironies of life. He put his hand on the jacket. ‘It could have been bought anywhere, I suppose, and just draped over the body. If it leads us anywhere, I shall be grateful but surprised.’
The puzzle about the jacket on Jaimie’s body was passed on to Phoebe Astley, who was now preparing to dig up the rough ground in the old churchyard.
‘Take a chance,’ the Chief Commander had said. ‘I have walked over it and there could be an unofficial grave.’
‘I too have looked it over. I thought someone else had been there too, someone with heavy feet.’
So she had noticed as well. Coffin thought.
‘Could have been someone sleeping rough,’ he said. ‘Anyway, good luck. I will tell Richard Lavender. Ask him to keep quiet, of course. He knows about the dead girl. Darcy and his men have been to him. He’s confused, I think. It’s a mix-up, Phoebe.’
Good phrase, Phoebe thought. In her head she carried a litany of the women murdered in 1913: Mildred Bailey, Mary Jane Armour and Eliza Jones. There was a fourth woman, Isobel Haved, who had disappeared. There was not much mention of Haved, but she might have been a victim.
If the three women were victims of Father Lavender (as Phoebe had taken to calling him) then she might find the body of Isobel Haved, the missing woman.
If she existed, Phoebe thought, and if Father Lavender really was a killer. She found it hard to believe in him. As a parent, yes. Richard Lavender existed to prove this. A husband, and apparently an unhappy one, she had to accept that too. But as a serial killer … He seemed to melt into the shadows as he had done in real life.
His son thought he had joined up in the army in 1914 and been killed. Or missing.
He seemed a man bent on being missing. What on earth’s it really all about, Phoebe asked herself, trying to be practical. And if I find anyone what does it matter?
Wicked thought, really, since all human life was valuable, wasn’t it? An old man’s conscience had to be assuaged, that was it.
A shame that Edgar Wallace was dead because he might have been able to help her. Among the journalists working on the local papers in Spinnergate and East Hythe there must have been stories and speculation.
It took time to set up the digging, because as well as the diggers there would be men needed to guard the ground and keep out onlookers, journalists and TV cameras.
Perhaps it should be done at night. There was a streak of drama in Phoebe that made her like the idea of a night dig. Stella Pinero would have understood.
And, in fact, administrative difficulties slowed her down so the night looked like being the time after all.
‘It gets dark so early now,’ she told John Coffin on the telephone. (It was November the second.) ‘But we shall make a start. I thought you would want to know
. Will you be there?’
The answer had been: Yes, of course. It was a strange case, with a former Prime Minister at one end and a dead girl dressed as Guy Fawkes at the other. It made him feel out of normal space and time.
‘Do you ever read Edgar Wallace?’
‘No, not much – Sanders of the River when I was a boy.’
‘Pity, it might have helped. I think he knew a few answers.’
Coffin’s working day was long and boring – he found himself looking forward to the excavations. He came back from heading a tiresome committee to find a message from Dr Jack Bradshaw: Would he call on Richard Lavender at home?
Dick Lavender was seated in a big armchair by a blazing fire; he was wearing a dressing gown with a plaid wrapped round his knees. He looked frail but bright eyed. Could it be that he was enjoying the excitement?
Jack Bradshaw followed Coffin into the room where Janet Neptune was pouring out tea with a bottle of whisky on the table beside her; she handed a cup to Coffin. ‘You’ll need a drink, it’s cold out. And himself will,’ she nodded at Dick Lavender. ‘Helps him to keep his mind on the track.’
‘Mind your tongue, woman. And take your big feet away.’
She took no notice; she did have big feet, she knew it. ‘Now, Jack, have a cup too, you haven’t eaten or drunk all day … Nerves takes him that way,’ she said to Coffin.
Having provided this insight into the two men, she left the room, not without satisfaction. ‘Just getting some more hot water for the pot. Now drink up.’
Coffin sipped his tea. More whisky than tea here, he decided. ‘How are you, sir?’
Dick Lavender ignored this question. ‘I don’t suppose you are surprised that I should want to see you about this poor girl. I wasn’t questioned myself but Jack was, he’s under some suspicion, I understand. He’s a stupid fellow for not letting me know he had been seeing her. He’s had to admit to it.’
Coffin looked at Bradshaw. ‘I was in love with her,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Still am, I think. Can you be in love with someone who is dead?’
‘I think you need that drink with whisky in it,’ Coffin said kindly.
‘Janet has been telling me that all day.’
Dick Lavender said from his chair: ‘She came in for a few questions herself.’
‘Hardly knew the girl.’ Janet came through the door with the teapot. ‘But I could tell she was a little trollop. It was in her eyes.’
Dick Lavender ignored her. ‘Jack, you had better tell the Chief Commander about the girl. Do we call her Marjorie Wardy or Jessamond Layard?’
‘Either will do. Wardy was her writing name, but she was born Layard and christened Jessamond: her chosen name was Jaimie.’
Dick Lavender’s hands were shaking as he held his cup, he spilled some tea on his knees. He caught Coffin’s gaze and shrugged. I am old, his eyes said, I shake and spill my tea, I have to be helped to walk, but I still have a mind. ‘Go and get me some hot water and a towel for the stain, Janet.’
‘Messy thing,’ said Janet, but she departed. ‘I know you will talk about her when I’m out of the room … whatever you call her.’
Jack Bradshaw put his own cup down on a table. ‘She was Marjorie to me. I see now that she made up to me because of my friendship with Dick.’ He avoided looking at Richard Lavender, turning his face towards the window so that he presented a bony profile to Coffin.
Not a handsome man. Coffin thought, but certainly attractive, noticing too that both he and the former PM had noses like the Duke of Wellington: strong and arched. Roman noses, were they not called? If a woman inherited such a nose, it was no benefaction, but a man could be proud of it. Bradshaw probably was.
‘I found her very charming, interesting, she seemed interested in me.’
‘You were in love with her,’ said Dick Lavender, sipping some tea and whisky. He sounded amused.
‘I suppose I was. I thought she returned my feelings. I had every reason to think so.’
‘You mean you went to bed with her.’ Dick Lavender spoke with gusto, his hand might shake, but he still took a keen interest in the living.
Bradshaw did not answer.
Coffin looked at him. ‘Did you?’
‘Just once. In her flat near the Tower … I thought it was where she lived as well as worked. You may think we quarrelled when I found out she was working on Dick and meant to make a splash. But we didn’t quarrel. And if you can believe me, I didn’t kill her. I know I am under suspicion. But if I had killed her, do you think I am the sort of person who would dress her up as a guy and leave her in a car park?’ He looked at Coffin. ‘Oh, don’t answer, I know you can’t.’
Dick Lavender leaned forward. ‘Go and help Janet in the kitchen … I want to talk to the Chief Commander.’
Bradshaw took a deep breath, hesitated, but went without a word.
It’s interesting. Coffin thought, watching his silent departure, how the habit of power remains. Because men and women jumped to perform his wishes. Lavender still retains the power. I am obeying him, I came when he called. I ought to learn the trick myself.
‘I want to tell you something in confidence. It is about Jack Bradshaw. Have you noticed anything about him?’
‘What sort of thing,’ said Coffin cautiously.
‘A resemblance to anyone …’
‘He has your nose.’
‘Good, you have the eye. Yes, he is my son. I knew his mother.’
‘In the biblical sense, I suppose?’ said Coffin.
Lavender laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Good, good. Yes, just so. Not for long, but she had this child. It was a secret but I always kept in touch until she died. I helped with money, and it is why I chose him to write my life … It’s not the first one, of course, there have been several, including what people call the official autobiography … the Party paid for that to be published and very boring it was too.’
He added quickly: ‘Jack does not know, of course.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure,’ said the old man into the silence of the room.
Coffin sat thinking; he wondered if he believed this story, and whether the old man was having a fantasy.
‘What about the girl?’
Lavender smiled. ‘You are quick … Yes, I knew her family once. She was named Layard, a very well-known lot … And yes, I had a relationship with the girl’s grandmother. It would be interesting, wouldn’t it, if there was incest as well as murder.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘But no, no offspring from that union!’
I believe you would enjoy it. Coffin thought. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Have you missed an old tweed jacket?’
Dick Lavender sat in silence, and his heavy brows drew together. ‘No.’
‘You might not have seen it for some time,’ suggested Coffin.
Lavender shook his head. ‘No. You can ask Janet.’ He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. ‘You can go now, I am tired.’
The royal dismissal, the congé, Coffin thought, rising. Perhaps he sometimes thought he was Louis XIV of France, or Queen Victoria.
Obediently he left the room. No one was to be seen, not even Jack Bradshaw. Gone away to shoot himself, Coffin thought, and who to blame him? Might do the same myself in his position.
A row of coats hung on pegs in the hall by the door. He was quietly examining them, when he was aware that Janet Neptune was observing him.
‘Just looking,’ he said.
He opened the door. ‘Tell them that Chief Inspector Darcy will be back again to interview them. Or his sergeant.’
He took some satisfaction in the remark.
He drove straight back to St Luke’s and to his own home. He felt he needed to touch solid ground, and for him, these days that meant Stella. Maddening, elusive, loving, kind, Stella was always real.
He had hoped to find her in the living room, or the kitchen or even in her bedroom, changing for the evening, but she was nowhere to be seen. Augustus was gone as well, which he thought mea
nt she was in the theatre, in her office or prowling round observing and thinking. She was not performing at the moment, a long TV series had just finished and she was ‘resting’. Not that she ever did rest.
He looked at his watch. Too early for any performance to have started. He knew his way round backstage and so he crossed to the theatre and climbed the stairs to Stella’s office. She was there, he heard her voice, clear and carrying as he advanced.
She had a youngish man with her, he had a crop of dark-brown hair and a compact, well-muscled body. He was not handsome but Coffin recognized that he had an actor’s face and could assume good looks when the part demanded.
Stella waved at him from her desk: ‘This is Ric Rivers, who is joining us.’ She flashed him a radiant smile, her usual smile on the job, and got one back in return. ‘Our new recruit. Ric, this is my husband, John Coffin.’
Ric held up a hand in greeting. ‘Hi, I have heard of you, sir.’
Stella stood up. ‘That’s it then, Ric, we have done all the business part and you know your way around … I told Martin Marlowe you would be coming along … he’s in dressing room B12, he shares that with Aelred Cooper and you will be the third … you don’t mind sharing? We are a bit cramped here, but when money permits we plan to do some more building. This is a listed building, believe it or believe it not, so we are a bit constrained.’ It was her usual speech of explanation and Coffin had heard it many times before. It was more or less true; St Luke’s was listed as being of some historical interest to the district, but architecturally it was not valuable, few objections were raised to any expansion but Stella found it sounded more impressive than saying: Darling, we haven’t got a bean.
‘I’ll find my way around.’ Ric gave them both the smile that made him seem a tremendously sincere and straightforward fellow (with just a clever hint that maybe he wasn’t and wouldn’t it be fun to find out, both of us together, you know) and moved gracefully to the door.
‘He’s clever,’ said Coffin with conviction. ‘Bet he always knows his way.’
‘Always. He’s well known for it. But he is also a good actor with a wide range, very handy.’ She stood up, collecting her bag, gathering her coat over her shoulders. ‘Not a great actor, of course, although he has pretensions, but I often think a handy actor is the best sort to have around. He’s had rather a dry patch, poor love, so I was able to get my hands on him. Happens to all of us.’ Got him cheap on that account … Coffin could be puritanical about that sort of thing, he had not been liberated by a university education, or the rough and tumble of street life, she thought, half amused. She was talking on, wondering what had brought Coffin round to see her.
A Double Coffin Page 10
