‘Leave a note.’
‘I can’t do that.’
From the stairs another voice had joined Max’s, this one talking of chilled white wine.
‘That’s Harry,’ said Stella. ‘I know. Let’s all have dinner right here.’ And she darted towards the door, calling as she went.
I never learn, thought Coffin, she’s done it again. Another party is assembling here.
He reached out an arm and stopped her. ‘Wait a minute. I do take your alarms seriously, and I do mind very much the tensions that are building up. I’m doing what I can.’
Stella leaned forward and kissed him.
A soft voice from the open door, said: ‘Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a lot of food piling up on the stairs.’
Coffin drew away.
‘Bring it down here, please. Sir Harry. We’re eating here.’
Max and his youngest daughter, the one they called ‘The Beauty’ (and who had been very beautiful at fifteen but was steadily growing less beautiful with every year that passed, as is the way with some girls), carried in the heated containers. Max had but recently added this delivery-at-home service to his delicatessen, he was very anxious to make it a success because he hoped, when the big theatre was finally in operation, to do the catering for it. As it was, he provided sandwiches and quiches and cream layer cakes of great richness for the bar which was all the Theatre Workshop ran to at the moment.
He was extremely anxious to please Stella Pinero and John Coffin, both of them powerful figures in his world. From his point of view, Sir Harry was a joyful addition to his circle. A patron, indeed.
‘Put the tray of garlic bread on the side, Bella.’ Bella was the Beauty daughter. ‘The salad on the table.’ He rested a big covered dish on a tray on a side table. ‘I brought plates and cutlery, Miss Pinero, I didn’t know how you were placed for them … Shall I lay the table.’
‘No, I’ll do it.’ Stella was prancing around holding several bottles of white wine. She seemed enlivened by her quarrel with Coffin whereas he still felt bruised. He had noticed before that she always came out of an altercation in high spirits. Possibly it was all an act.
Stella was acting all the time. He had to consider that.
‘The wine is chilled, no more freezing, please, or it will spoil. The salad is organic. Miss Goldstone said to me that unless all my fruit and vegetables are organic she will no longer eat with me.’ He sighed. Life was difficult, the organic vegetables and salad did not look as neat, pretty and well matched as the old ones, but Lily Goldstone was another star in his heaven.
From the door, he said: ‘And the chicken is free-range. Miss Goldstone says I must.’
‘Why does everyone take so much notice of Lily Goldstone?’ asked Sir Harry, as Max got himself and Beauty out of the room and he himself opened a bottle of wine. His friend Dick had crept quietly into the room and was effacing himself against the wall.
‘Because she’s Lily,’ said Stella simply.
Lily Goldstone, a surpassing actress, an ardent lover (when the mood took her), and affectionate mother and daughter, was a keen campaigner for anything that took her eye. It might be anything. Naturally theatre matters got most of her attention, but other causes from battery chickens to mink coats and Mrs Thatcher might come the way of her attentions.
‘She might be looking in later,’ went on Stella. ‘We have things to talk about. She’s got a new name to put on The Black List and wants Equity to do something about it.’
The Black List was the tally of companies and producers who had let Equity members down. Usually by going bankrupt and not paying them. The list was long. It fluctuated. Names went on it, then came off, then went on again. There was a hard core of names that never seemed to get free, caught in a web of debt for ever. Everyone knew them. You cut your theatrical teeth on the names not to take work with. Didn’t mean you didn’t do it sometimes, though, in desperation and hope that this time it would be different.
‘She’s heard of a production company that engaged a whole cast, jugglers and all for a revival of Kismet, rehearsed for two weeks, played for another two at Bottingham Playhouse and never paid a penny … Second time it’s done it, too. Change of name, of course. Fiesta Productions the first time and Happy Days the second time round. It was Billericay the first time. JoJo Bell was the Equity dep … Naturally she’s indignant. She got on to Lily.’
‘Wasn’t it silly of JoJo to join up?’ Coffin knew JoJo Bell, she had played in an early production at the Theatre Workshop. JoJo had had a part in a long-running hospital series on TV and afterwards had seriously thought of taking a medical degree. She had fantasies about her medical prowess.
‘We all do silly things sometimes, and she’s found it hard to get work with that doctor—nurse image hanging over her. All she kept getting offered were medical parts or invalids, and not many of them. She needed the money, I expect.’
‘I’ve taken some good photographs of this lovely lady,’ said Sir Harry, who never minded praising himself, as he poured the wine. He seemed to have taken over as host, just as Stella was acting hostess, laying the table and telling everyone where they would sit. Tiddles, who had just come in through a roof window, looked morosely around. He didn’t like a crowd, but he did like chicken and had developed a depraved taste for garlic bread. ‘And also the Workshop’s new production of Cavalcade. Lovely crowd scenes. The Master would have been pleased.’ Stella looked gratified.
‘He is pleased,’ said Dick, who was a dogged and unusually open believer in the spirit world.
‘Don’t be a fool, Dick,’ said Sir Harry lovingly.
Coffin sat back and sipped some wine. Val was going to walk into the middle of a party, and although it might be good for her, as Stella had said, it would surely put her off talking. He wanted to know what she had to say in private. Val struck him as a private person.
‘When do you expect Val?’ Stella had read his thoughts. ‘Shall we wait? Shall I give her a ring?’
‘Any minute now. And No to the two other questions.’
Then the telephone rang. He carried his portable telephone to the window and turned his face to listen quietly. ‘Yes, of course. I quite understand. Tomorrow, then? Shall we say the morning?’ In my office. You know where to come?’
Val spoke again and Stella, observing him, thought his face changed, looked graver. ‘Right, don’t worry now. Tomorrow, then.’
‘Val,’ he said, turning back towards them. ‘Doesn’t feel up to coming tonight.’
Stella made a move towards the door. ‘I’m going round there.’
He stopped her. ‘Leave her.’
Chewing on a piece of Chicken Maryland, free-ranging and dead, he thought: A bit like Anna Mary Kinver, who had been free-ranging in her relationships and was now dead.
‘Sir Harry,’ he said. ‘You took some photographs of Rope Alley. For publicity purposes.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Where were they taken from?’
‘From the roof of the old Lead Works. I looked down on Rope Alley.’
‘Can I see them?’
‘Of course. Dick has a complete set of those photographs. Is it in connection with the murder of that girl?’
Coffin nodded. A piece of that free-range chicken had got stuck in his throat. He managed to cough it free. What a way to die, he thought, killed by a chunk of loose-living chicken.
‘They were nearly all taken several days before the murder,’ said Sir Harry gravely. ‘Except for one or two. Not the best.’
‘I know. I just want to see them. They might give me something.’
He had learnt from experience that you must take what chance offered you to start you thinking. These photographs might do that for him now.
After the meal the three of them walked round to the Lead Works Gallery while Stella went down stairs to her open apartment in St Luke’s Mansions to talk to Lily Goldstone about Black Lists. Dick took them into his office, which was a neat little
cubbyhole, very quiet and peaceful, and produced a folder.
Coffin concentrated on those taken on the day of the murder.
There were several photographs taken at different times of the day. One was clearly a bright morning, near noon, with well defined sharp shadows. A number of people had been caught walking in Rope Alley. Seen foreshortened as they were, not much detail could be made out. This wasn’t what Sir Harry had been after, he had wanted what he called a bit of urban landscape.
There was a woman with a shopping-bag. She was walking towards the camera. A man in the distance, seen from the back. Another man leaning against the wall. A few other shadowy figures including a boy on a bike. The Alley had been busy that morning.
Another photograph taken in the late afternoon with longer shadows was quieter. A trousered figure at the end of the alley, another one seen just in profile, and a young woman with a child.
A third photograph had been taken at night with a special lens. Only two figures this time: a man walking away from the camera and another leaning against the wall again.
The leaning man could be Solomon Wild, it had the look of him. Blown up, the photograph might yield a more positive indication.
But it was the image of the other man on which Coffin put his finger.
‘That one. I think he’s the same man in all three pictures. Something about the way he holds himself. He must have gone up and down Rope Alley a lot.’
He turned to Harry Beauchamp. ‘May I have these photographs, please? And the negatives?’
‘Of course. Glad to help, aren’t we, Dick?’ His friend nodded, he was a man of few words.
Later that night Coffin took a stroll round the whole complex of buildings about the old St Luke’s Church. He surveyed the work being done on the church itself where the big theatre would go. It was little more than a hole in the ground at the moment, and looked a highly expensive one. He had to hope that Letty was not wasting her money. But probably not. She was already calling it the National Theatre of the New City.
He walked over to the more makeshift buildings of the Theatre Workship where advance posters proclaimed the next production of Cavalcade.
He could see where slogans had been painted and then effaced by Stella. Faint shadows rested on the walls. Shadows of hostility.
He hated this reflection of the divisions in the population where he and his Force kept the peace. They were in the middle and the object of resentment and criticism from all sides and all ethnic groups.
From his upper windows in the tower he looked down upon the quiet streets with the river beyond. It looked so peaceful. He hoped it stayed that way.
Inside her ground-floor apartment in St Luke’s Mansions, Stella checked all the locks on her doors and windows. She listened for a moment. It’s a war, she thought.
But all was quiet. It was after midnight. Saturday.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Saturday night into Sunday, June 18
Stella lay in her bed and looked at the ceiling. It was a hot night, muggy and damp with a torrid feeling which only London in high summer with no wind can achieve. She was too nervous to have a window open. She must have a metal grille fixed.
She shifted uneasily, trying to get cool. Under the sheet she was wearing only a thin silk nightgown but even that felt too much. She slipped it off and tossed it to the ground. Somehow her body still felt hotter than the sheets. Perhaps she should have kept the gown on. It was amazing how warm and sticky bare skin could feel.
She wondered how John Coffin was doing upstairs. It was probably cooler in his tower.
She tossed around, restless and nervous.
In all her life, which had included two marriages and numerous other alliances, no physical violence had ever been used against her. Certainly not in sexual attack.
She wondered what it felt like. What she would do? Would she see it coming and try to evade it, run away? That was the sensible thing to try for. She was fleet of foot and could run fast if she got the chance. Everyone said that was the best thing to do. Shout and run fast. She’d be able to shout, she knew how to use her voice.
But there might be nowhere to run. Trapped in a room, a passage, a dark corner, then you couldn’t escape.
She’d fight, she knew herself well enough to know that as a truth. But she had never had to fight physically and would probably not be very good at it. She had to hope her teeth and nails would be sharp enough. She thought she could guarantee to leave a mark or two on her attacker.
But what would it really be like? This impact of one violent, hostile male body upon her own. The smell, there was bound to be a smell, all bodies had their own smell. There would be nothing pleasant about the attacker’s smell. Drink, drugs, sweat, urine.
Stop that, Stella, she thought. Leave it.
She couldn’t leave the subject. How would I feel if the worst happened?
She imagined the hands, the heat, the actual moment of penetration.
Unwelcome thoughts piled in.
And would you, in the end, enjoy it? Would your body simply say: This is what I was made for?
What a question to ask a woman, she thought, as she sat up in bed and piled the pillows behind her. You aren’t supposed to ask that sort of thing. I won’t answer.
But she did answer. No, she thought, the answer is No, because you’d be frightened, in pain, not ready.
But the body had its own rules, its own ideas. Nothing was certain.
I might cry if I go on thinking like this, she decided.
She went to the refrigerator and got herself some iced water, then carried it back to drink.
One thing was certain: if the worst happened, she would bear it better than one of the Feather Street ladies.
The moment she held that thought clearly in her head, she knew she was coming out of her bad mood, and feeling better.
You could always tell a Feather Street lady. They admitted it themselves. As well as Mary Anneck and Philippa Darbyshire, there was Alice Graham and Daisy Armour and Mrs Farmer (she had never got to know her first name, perhaps no one did) and Violetta Mason.
They all had the same walk, it was the way they put their feet down. Firmly and cleanly, as if they always knew the way. They didn’t wear the same sort of clothes, but they always looked the same somehow.
They all went to the one hairdresser. Or didn’t go at all. But it couldn’t be that on its own. No, it was that they all thought they had a right to know.
To know what? she asked herself. To know what was necessary, of course.
Leaning back on her pillows, she began to feel interested. Well, she’d got the female side of Feather Street weighed up, but what about the men, no one mentioned them? That meant something. Then she felt amused, and then sleepy.
‘Better now,’ she told herself. ‘All over.’
It was the sort of thing you said to a child after a bad dream, but it helped her.
She drifted off to sleep.
John Coffin was sleeping soundly in his tower. Night noises filtered up through the open window, but did not disturb him. He had his own private nightmares, but they were different from Stella’s and centred more on civil riot and disturbance.
But sometimes he had a dark dream in which Stella was at the centre of this rampaging crowd, that she was pinned there, calling for help. The crowd wanted a scapegoat, a victim, and although it should be him, somehow it was Stella they had caught. And in this dark dream he failed to rescue Stella. He had woken, sweating yet shivering, from this dream more than once.
A church clock struck the hour, a cat called hopefully to another feline, a late aeroplane muttered across the sky to Heathrow. A night silence is made up of all sorts of noises, his brain accepted them and was not troubled.
But with dawn, one noise did get through to him. He turned over restlessly. It seemed to him he heard a dog whining.
Yet it was pretty far away, and presently it stopped. He had hardly stirred in his sleep.
But
he remembered it when he woke up in full daylight, it was going to be another hot day, and he stood in his kitchen making a cup of that instant coffee that Stella so despised. She had bought him a special automatic coffee machine, but he never had time to use it.
And, as a matter of fact, he really liked this strong powdered sort he stirred up.
That dog in the night, what had it been upset about?
Death always distressed a dog if it was forced to notice it. Bob, the mongrel, had not noticed the death of Kay Zeman because he had been carefully sheltered from it by Val and Jim Marsh, both of whom, in their different ways, had seen that his life went on as normal. Which was all a dog asked of life really.
But Bob could be frightened, and that night he had been frightened. He had noticed death.
Feather Street awoke to the day slowly, and with care. They were usually stirred to life by the arrival of their milk, followed by the delivery of the newspapers and the post. When all three deliveries had been made, Feather Street got up and made breakfast.
Each household had its own favourite breakfast but there was a sort of similarity between them, as Stella would quickly have picked up. Milk was skimmed, but would have been unpasteurized if this had been procurable in London, bread was unbuttered, and fruit unsugared. Coffee, if taken, was carefully ground and filtered.
Being nearer to the whining Bob than John Coffin, the Feather Streeters had been more disturbed by him.
Leonard Zeman who was a heavy sleeper had heard nothing, but Felicity came down, fully dressed as always, and said: ‘I think you ought to go over to Val’s. There may be something wrong there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Didn’t you hear the dog in the night? No, obviously you didn’t. Well, there was a dog howling and I think it was Bob.’
They had a basement kitchen, always lit by artificial light and very clinical, so there was no looking out of the window, but it was what he wanted to do at that moment, to draw in some cool fresh air. He drank some chilled orange juice instead.
‘Wake up, Len,’ she said.
‘How do you know it was Bob?’
Coffin and the Paper Man Page 9
