The right way?
Quiet talk.
George Darcy rang the Chief Commander and told him what the situation was, how things had come about, and that they had a very short written record of Jaimie’s call at the desk but nothing more. As yet.
Coffin said: ‘Find out, if you can, how it was that when there was this great black hole at Blake Street, yet the Sentinel knew the facts.’
‘She told them herself, sir.’
‘But they knew to ask.’
It was strange and uncomfortable, thought Coffin, how one person’s tragedy, in this case Eric Casey’s, melded into a murder investigation.
Eric Casey himself, interviewed in George Darcy’s office, was quiet and willing to be helpful. If he could be. ‘The doc says I had a transient ischaemic shock … to the brain … knocked it out for a bit. A kind of line in the mind goes … I knew who I was and about Margaret but before … gone.’
‘Could you try to remember?’
‘I expect it’s all there inside.’ He was dignified but sad. ‘I suppose I don’t want to remember, sir.’
‘It might be important.’
‘Yes.’ He understood all that. ‘I am willing to try.’
Don’t give him another shock, the doctor had said, there’s always a chance, when under stress.
Darcy wondered whether to ring the Chief Commander again, thus transferring ultimate responsibility for anything that might happen to the top. But he looked in Casey’s eyes and wondered if it wasn’t better, maybe, to get it out, that memories left inside festered and poisoned a life.
And he did want this memory himself, very much. He was honest about that.
He looked at Eric Casey and he studied the faces of his two subordinates, and because he was English, he knew what to do next.
‘Jim,’ he said to Sergeant Foster, ‘pop down to the canteen and ask them to bring up a pot of tea.’
Very quietly, over the first cup of tea, hot and strong but with no sugar, he began his questioning. It had been bad weather the night that Jaimie came in, had it not? He knew that from his own checkings … wet and windy. Did Eric remember that?
He saw a flicker in Eric’s eyes: the wet-weather road had been partly the cause of the rolling, rollicking car that had hit Margaret. That and the poor brakes and the drunken driver.
‘Yes, I remember the rain.’
Darcy laid off the weather. ‘You were on duty in the evening?’
A dangerous corner here too because it had been late evening when the car crash happened.
Eric was silent for a space. Then he said, in a slow voice: ‘I believe so.’
‘It was a quiet evening.’ George Darcy made it a statement.
‘I believe so … bit of a blur.’ Then he said: ‘Yes, it was quiet and I was glad of it.’ He frowned and Darcy waited. ‘Now why was I glad of it? I like working … I like to be hard at it, still do.’
George Darcy kept quiet.
‘I think I had a headache … No, no I never have a headache, not even now. No, I was worried about my eyes …’ He looked straight at Darcy and then at Sergeant Foster. ‘I was frightened I wasn’t seeing as well as I might.’
That explains why your notes on the arrival of Jaimie Layard and her complaints look more like bird scratching and are no help to us at all.
‘Do you know, there’s no trouble with them now, it’s funny how stress can work on you … I was anxious because my wife hadn’t been at all well that day, she died later.’ He smiled at Darcy. ‘Don’t worry, I can talk about her, that’s official, but they had to kind of train me to do it … I’m supposed to let it all out, but it isn’t easy. The people who tell you that don’t know what it’s like.’
‘Can’t all just be strain with the eyes,’ said Darcy cautiously, more to push things along than because he knew one way or another.
‘No, I reckon I am a bit short-sighted. Managed to cover it up.’
There are layers here, thought Darcy. ‘A quiet night with you not seeing well, or thinking you didn’t, but there was a bit of business, wasn’t there, Eric?’
‘I think a woman came in with her dog …’
Darcy shook his head.
‘No? That’s the blank bit then, I did tell you.’
‘It’s all there though, hang on to the woman and forget the dog.’
Eric looked very serious. He opened his mouth to speak while Darcy waited. Eric shut it again. Then he said: ‘I think I’ll have another cup of tea.’
‘He is trying, sir,’ said Sergeant Foster in a low voice, as he poured the tea.
‘If I thought he wasn’t trying I’d shoot him,’ said Darcy in a gruff whisper.
‘A cup for you, sir? He heard that.’
But Eric had his head down, staring into the cup of tea. ‘Peter Pennyman subbed for me; I went down to the canteen for a quick cup of tea … Then I came back up and Peter went away. A girl came in, no dog, she said she’d been attacked … someone had followed her, grabbed her and hit her. You could see the bruise on her throat … he’d had a go … I think I took the details down, sir.’
So you did: in a way. Darcy nodded: ‘Go on.’
Eric picked up his cup and drained the tea. ‘I hope I’ve given you all you want, sir. I’m surprised that came out. It’s true though, she was a pretty young woman. Class.’
‘But she didn’t stay and speak to a CID officer?’ said Darcy carefully.
Eric took a deep breath. ‘No, I didn’t take it seriously, I remember that now … Of course, I put it to her, but she said: “No, leave it there, no charge.” I thought to myself: her boyfriend’s done it to her. It was what she thought too.’
‘Yeah.’ He looked down at his empty cup. ‘How funny I should forget all that.’ He frowned as if he knew that now the two halves of his memory had joined up, that there was no black hole, nowhere left to hide.
Darcy had one more question: ‘Did anyone else come in while she was telling you about the attack on her?’
Eric stared into the distance as if there he could see tiny figures acting out the scene on that baleful night. ‘There might have been … I seem to think … a young chap.’ He asked himself a question: ‘Could he have been a stringer from the local paper?’
‘He could indeed,’ said Darcy.
Coffin, who had waited patiently in his office, was told the news on the telephone.
‘It was the boyfriend, sir,’ said George Darcy. ‘Or she thought so, and she wasn’t charging him. I reckon they had a quarrel and he beat her up. That was then, and the next time, there always is a next time, he went too far and killed her.’
Coffin reflected. ‘She was violent, too.’ He remembered the deep scratches he had seen on Martin’s wrists and arms.
‘Makes it all the more likely, sir.’
Coffin had to admit that it did.
‘What about dressing her up as a guy and wheeling the body through the streets?’
‘He’s an actor, used to putting on a performance, it would come easy to him.’
‘And the name on the jacket?’
‘Perhaps it’s a stage prop and he added the name. Faked it.’
Coffin shrugged. ‘Could be, I will ask my wife if it could have come from the theatre.’ He shook his head. ‘He would have to be skilful indeed to get the name in position. And remember it was sort of hidden, had to be brought up by photography.’
‘He’s clever, very clever, I’d say. And there’s the sister, she’s a scientist. She wouldn’t want him charged with murder, she knows what that means.’
‘It’s thin, very thin.’ It was clear to him that Darcy was casting around for a solution. ‘See if you can get anything concrete.’
When George Darcy had rung off. Coffin sat looking at the papers on his desk: he was behind with them, that was one thing. He was tired from his disturbed night, and that was another. There had been an explosion down at the Nelson Docks, the exact origin of which was not yet clear, and a woman was being held hostag
e in a block of flats in East Hythe. In addition, he had to read the reports of several committees and must still chair one on staffing problems.
What he had wanted to do this day had been to call on Dick Lavender in order to see if he had an answer to the name written in the jacket used by the murderer of Jaimie Layard.
Now another question had arisen.
Absently he drew a scheme on the blotter in front of him: two arrows, one pointing one way and one the other.
11
Coffin went in search of his wife. He found Stella in her own office in the theatre. She looked well groomed, except for her hair which was fashionably confused and wild. It was a new style, done that day.
‘Doesn’t suit you,’ he said bluntly.
‘Thanks.’
‘You always look lovely, of course,’ he added in a hurry. ‘Nothing could touch that.’ This was true and belatedly he realized he was being the traditional male, admiring in his wife only what he had seen before. He didn’t like to tell her that the same style was sprouting in the ladies of the street who plied their trade in Beswick Square and thereabouts.
‘What is it you want? This has not been a good day.’ She turned to Eden who had just come through, bearing a pile of scripts. ‘Oh Apollo!’ Stella, who could swear with the best after her long years in the theatre, had lately decided that the Greek gods would serve her best to swear by. Naturally she relied on Apollo a lot. Sometimes she called him Phoebus but Apollo was easier and quicker to say. ‘Eden, have you got those scripts photocopied now?’
‘Yes, Miss Pinero.’
Eden was obliged to turn her hand to everything as needed, as the theatre was always understaffed and short of money. Nominally, she helped in the wardrobe, but in fact she could be found working anywhere, even in the box office. She had put on weight since the days she had managed a dress shop, the short period when she had been Phoebe’s landlady and when murder had touched her life. She was happy. Theatre turned out to be her real world. She was never going to be important, or a great figure, but she knew she would prove valuable. If that was an ambition, then she had it.
‘The photocopier wasn’t working as it should but I got it fixed.’
‘Oh, clever – how did you do that?’ The photocopier had been bought at a bargain price from a firm that was closing down, but it gave constant trouble.
‘Well, I’m a pal of the man delivering the paint for the designer, used to deliver for me when I had the shop and he has a friend who knows about photocopiers and he came round to see what he could do.’
‘That was good of him.’
‘Glad to do it. He’s an electronic engineer but he’s redundant.’
‘Can I talk?’ asked Coffin. He observed that Eden had the other current version of hairstyling: very, very short with little fronds falling down her ears. He had to admit it suited her, but Eden seemed to flourish on theatre street.
‘Of course you can talk.’ Stella was still concentrating on the papers on her desk, but she managed to look up and smile as she spoke.
‘Oh, thanks … well, what I want to know is: could a garment go missing from your wardrobe here?’
Both women burst into laughter. ‘Could it!’ said Eden, and it was not a question. ‘We lose things all the time, but they come back … people borrow what they fancy for a ball or a publicity shot or even a wedding.’
‘Not those sort of clothes.’ Coffin’s voice was sombre.
Stella frowned. ‘What’s this all about? What sort of clothes are you talking about?’
Coffin ignored the question. ‘Do you keep a catalogue of what you have in the wardrobe? Check things in and out?’
Stella and Eden looked at each other with guilty amusement. ‘Sort of,’ said Stella, ‘it may not be quite up to date.’
‘Oh, baby, baby.’ Eden kept a straight face.
Stella emerged from behind her desk. ‘If you are asking about a garment from our wardrobe here, about which I may say you are very vague, be more precise. It’s your professional voice. Of which I have been hearing rather a lot lately.’
‘Oh, surely not.’
Stella took no notice. ‘I know you when you won’t give a direct answer. There is one murder that we are all concerned with just now, the murder of Jaimie Layard, and we are anxious because of Martin. Somehow you are trying to tie in this jacket with Martin.’
‘Just asking.’
‘I cannot say with my hand on my heart that it did not come from here, but I don’t believe it did.’
‘Thank you,’ said Coffin humbly. ‘I will take your faith into account.’
Stella threw a script at him, which he caught. ‘I meant it, Stella, what you think does carry weight with me … but the fact is …’
‘Oh, you and your facts.’
Coffin laughed, and dropped the script on her table. ‘I am accepting your No. The jacket probably came from another home.’ Stella had planted her hand on the script but Coffin had seen the title. ‘The Case of the Frightened Lady … You going to put that on?’
‘Just thinking about it.’
‘Out of date, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a very good melodrama and might be just the thing to run after the Christmas pantomime; this is Edgar Wallace territory, you know … I’ll edit it a bit.’
‘Tart it up, you mean.’
‘I’ll ignore that … I can’t afford to be experimental here, you know. Not with your sister Letty on my back.’
‘I’d like to see Letty’s face if you take her to it.’
‘She might enjoy it.’
‘With Martin as the neurotic, mad young peer, I suppose.’ He knew Letty’s weakness for a beautiful male face.
‘No, I would not ask him to play it,’ said Stella with dignity. ‘And you know why.’
Eden said, ‘Oh, he’s a lovely man, I’ve got my eye on him.’
Their sparring put aside, Coffin and Stella looked at each other with sadness. Eden was never lucky and who knew what the future for Martin was?
Stella gave a sigh. ‘I admire him, looks and talent all there, but his life might be a bit of a wreck.’
‘I know what you are thinking, but I don’t believe he is a killer.’
Coffin said nothing and Stella looked down at her hands. ‘He was a child when his father was killed, we know that, but it happened. He touched blood then, Eden.’
‘I blame his sister. Perhaps she killed Jaimie; I reckon she could be jealous.’
Stella looked at Coffin, in his eyes and saw he shared that thought.
‘It’s too early to speculate.’
‘But everyone is in the frame? Of course, don’t bother to answer.’
‘It has to be so,’ he said softly.
Stella stood, tidied her desk, locked the drawers and announced she was going home.
‘Keep your feet on the ground,’ she advised Eden.
‘Oh trust me, Stella, remember the little creatures that crawled around the feet of the dinosaurs, who saw them die, and whose descendants are us … I am that little creature, I will crawl out from the wreck of Martin’s life and flourish.’
On the way home, Stella said: ‘She means it, you know. Determined woman is Eden. Unluckily, as far as I know she has always been determined about the wrong things and the wrong people.’
‘You like her, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and so does Phoebe, that’s how she got the job here. Why?’
‘I trust your judgement, Stella. When you say you like someone, then I look at them and think: there has to be something good there.’
At their front door in St Luke’s Tower, Stella paused: ‘I like Martin,’ she said.
The fire in the big upstairs living room was warm and comforting, outside another fog was assembling its forces, putting itself together in little strands which wove out of the trees and the damp gutters to join up in clouds which came even lower. Across the road in the old churchyard, all was shrouded and dark. But it was cordoned off from the roa
d still and one cold, solitary constable was on duty.
There was a smell of chicken casserole, which they ate in the kitchen attended by both animals.
‘I miss the old dog, don’t you?’ Coffin had felt sympathy with the old mongrel, a street dog if there ever was one.
‘He had a happy death.’ He had been a self-appointed guardian of Stella, whom he had once saved from death.
‘That’s true, he did.’ The old dog had been chasing an enemy down Spinnergate High Street when out shopping with Stella (who had not asked for his company, one never did, but found herself with it), he had caught his foe when his heart gave way and he died. Just like that.
Stella had made the chicken casserole, but Coffin made the coffee, between them they dealt with the domestic details. Occasionally, Stella longed for a cook and a chauffeur and a maid but those days were over. (Except that Letty Bingham, her much married and clever sister-in-law, seemed to maintain a high standard of living. A Rolls, last time, wasn’t it?)
‘I have to go back to the theatre,’ she said. ‘I am needed there tonight. Keep the fire in.’
‘I will.’
‘But you are going out yourself.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Telepathy … No, you didn’t hang your topcoat up, you threw it on the chair by the front door. Also, you didn’t lock the door behind you … So I knew you were not having an at-home evening.’ She smiled at him. ‘Don’t forget I am an actress, I look for those signs of intention. It might come in useful in building a character.’
Coffin watched her preparations for departure: the touch of lipstick, the hand through the hair, although to his eye it was dishevelled enough, the quick spray of that new scent.
I am not an actor, he thought sadly, but I am a detective and I too observe behaviour. And he did not think she was going back to the theatre to work. Not entirely.
Was it Martin? Or that new actor she had brought down from the north?
Damn, jealousy was an ignoble emotion, destructive to the spirit. Dangerous, too. Would he kill for Stella? No. Would she kill for him? Laughable.
You could be angry and miserable, however, and watchful. He allowed himself that much.
A Double Coffin Page 14
