‘Leonard Zeman may have something to say when he comes round.’
‘If he comes round … Funny, the wife not being there. I know she was on call and all that.’
‘You think she tried to kill them both?’
‘It bears thinking about. She might not have intended to kill them, just punish them a bit. Poisoning is a funny business and often a family affair. You know that as well as I do. I’m thinking hard about her, I can tell you.’
He added: ‘By the way, the man on the front door says he saw Fred Kinver hanging around. Knows him by sight. He must have got wind of trouble here. Like a vulture. Can’t blame him really, I suppose.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘The constable spoke to him and he went off. I’ve had reports that he’s been seen hanging around Feather Street on and off lately. There have been complaints. He doesn’t do anything apparently, just looks. Half crazed with grief, I suppose. I accept that but it won’t do. We’ll have to have a quiet word.’
On his own, Coffin went over the house from top to bottom. He saw at once that it was one of the nicest in Feather Street. It had been modernized in a discreet way without ruining the character of the Victorian house. Walls had not been knocked down, rooms had not been thrown together to produce long tunnels with windows at each end as had happened with the Annecks, nor great extensions tacked on at the end as Harold Darbyshire had so unwisely commissioned and now regretted because his rates were higher and his home filled with the children of his friends who brought nothing but trouble with them. Drugs, shop-lifting and murder haunted his respectable sleep. No, the Zeman house had new wiring and new plumbing, but the kitchen was still in the basement just as the original builder had placed it.
Coffin started there, saw the remains of a meal tidily stacked away ready to go in the dishwasher, and concluded that the family had eaten but had not got around to doing the washing-up. Perhaps they never did do so at night, or perhaps the two male Zemans had felt too ill. Dr Felicity, of course, had been called out to the hospital.
Had she eaten? Something to find out.
He walked up the stairs, enjoying the soft brown carpet and polished mahogany banisters on the stairs. The ground floor had been old Dr Zeman’s consulting rooms and had been left as they were by Leonard Zeman, who still saw a few private patients there. He had obviously been working in this room the night before because of the spread of papers on the old-fashioned roll-top desk. A chair was turned over, possibly he had already begun to feel ill, but otherwise the room was orderly.
In a smaller room across the way Dr Felicity was sitting in an armchair staring straight in front of her with dry eyes. Arthur was resting at her feet. Coffin left them both there.
Upstairs was a large room which still deserved the name drawing-room with soft pale furnishings, pictures on the walls and bowls of flowers everywhere.
On the next floor were bedrooms and bathrooms. In the big front room the bed was untouched, no one had slept here. Dr Zeman had got ready for bed, but had never got there. That gave a time indication of a sort.
In a back room the body of Timmy Zeman still lay.
He had been examined by the police surgeon, photographed and in a few minutes now would be removed to the police mortuary, where Anna Mary Kinver still rested, but for the moment he and Coffin were alone together.
He had been tidied up, and there were signs that he had vomited, but that apart, Timmy looked as if he had died in deep and peaceful sleep. It could be suicide, Coffin thought, but if so, why did Dad join in? Or was he dragged or fell?
Suicide, double suicide attempt, or accident, or murder? You could take your pick.
The bedroom was orderly enough, a boy’s room, with posters on the walls and magazines and books piled high on a table. There was a record-player, a transistor and TV set with a video recorder. Timmy Zeman lived up here, it was the centre of his life. Here, if anywhere, the mystery might be solved.
Coffin looked at the magazines. They were what you might expect of a boy with a range of interests. Radio and TV Times, current issues. The Scientific American, True Crimes, History Today, Private Eye.
He read a lot. A row of poetry books: the Oxford Book of English Verse, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and then more modern poets like Larkin and Hughes and Jennings.
At the bottom of the pile were two magazines called Apart. Coffin had met this monthly before. It was quite respectable, but not on general sale, it was put out by a private club. These two magazines had something to tell him about the lad.
He felt he had walked a little way with Timmy Zeman. ‘I too have lived in Arcadia,’ he thought. Tim had been looking for Arcadia, for poetry and love and happiness, but maybe in the wrong place. Probably a nice boy, after all. But even nice boys did terrible things.
Coffin went downstairs to the room where Felicity Zeman was sitting. She stood up as soon as she saw him. ‘I know you. You came to the opening of the new wing at the hospital. But you were in uniform.’
‘I do have a rather grand affair I wear on some public occasions. That was one of them.’
‘I want to go and see my husband,’ she said. ‘Timmy’s dead. I can’t help him. I might be able to help Leonard.’
‘Can I have a few words with you now? I won’t press you, but it would help.’
At first Felicity did not move, then she slowly retreated back to the chair. ‘Please sit down. This is still my house and I am still the hostess, I can still ask that.’
‘You mustn’t feel under threat, Mrs Zeman.’
‘Oh, but I do. My son is dead, my husband might be soon. That other policeman let me know I was under suspicion.’
‘I’m sure he did not mean to do that,’ said Coffin, deciding to have a word with Paul Lane.
‘Oh, but he did. He suspects me. So do you, probably. It’s your job to do so.’
‘We don’t know yet that a crime has been committed.’
‘One has,’ said Felicity Zeman with conviction. ‘I know it and you know it. Don’t let’s play games.’
There was a pause while the two parties regrouped. Then Coffin started again.
‘You were called out on duty last night, so I believe?’
‘Yes. In the middle of dinner. One crisis led to another. I stayed all night.’
‘That couldn’t have been predicted?’
She shrugged. ‘Not by me. But how can I prove that?’
‘My question wasn’t meant aggressively. So you didn’t eat the meal? What was it?’
‘Gazpacho soup. It was a hot night. Then chocolate pudding.’
‘Who cooked it?’
‘I did. If you can call it cooking. The soup you really just make from raw vegetables with bread and throw in ice-cubes at the last minute. The chocolate pudding was made weeks ago. I took it out of the freezer.’
‘Who made the pudding?’
‘I think Val did. It was her recipe.’
‘And you ate nothing of the meal?’
‘A mouthful of the soup, that was all I had time for.’
‘It tasted all right?’
She shrugged. ‘A bit crunchy, but then it always does.’
‘And you suffered no ill-effects?’
‘As you see, I am perfectly well. I quite see that very nearly proves my guilt …’
‘Please, Mrs Zeman.’
‘I am a doctor too,’ she said coldly. ‘And I expect you will say I killed Val as well. She was my husband’s mistress, as I imagine you know or will discover. That gives me a motive.’
‘Does it?’ he said gravely. ‘Did you think it did?’
‘There are some people who might think divorce better than killing someone, I might be one.’
‘But possession comes into it, doesn’t it, Dr Zeman?’
‘So you do think I poisoned them. Do you think I would poison my son?’
‘No, not on purpose.’
‘And not by accident.’
‘No, I give you that.’
‘Thanks,’ she said tartly, too exhausted to be angry.
They sat for a moment in silence. Then Coffin said: ‘Before Val Humberstone died she asked to see me. She said she had something to tell me about Timmy. I got the impression she believed it would clear him of suspicion of killing Anna Mary Kinver.’
‘In that case I would have a very good motive for keeping her alive, I assure you. At least long enough for her to tell you whatever it was. I loved my son.’
‘I know,’ said Coffin.
She stood up and went to the window, a tall, graceful figure, managing to retain a certain style even amid grief and tension after a night without sleep.
‘I think I know what Val would have told you about Tim. He wouldn’t have been grateful. Tim was not in love with Anna Mary. He may have experimented with sex with her, but it was because he was trying to work out his own sexuality.’ She shook her head. ‘He didn’t really go for girls. If he was in love with anyone it was not Anna Mary but a boy he met at a disco.’ She turned back to face him, and he saw tears in her eyes. ‘Poor girl, poor boy.’
‘You can go and see your husband if you wish, Dr Zeman.’
‘Thank you. I suppose there will be a policeman on guard?’
‘Yes. Don’t let that worry you.’
‘Anna Mary, Val and Timmy, it’s all one case, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ said Coffin. ‘All one case.’
She picked up Arthur and watched him go, stroking the dog and holding him close. Looking back at her, Coffin thought she was weeping freely. Just as well, he thought, she deserves a relief. He had to admit to a certain admiration for Dr Felicity Zeman. She was beautiful and clever.
He admitted to a weakness for beautiful and clever ladies.
As he walked through the hall, Coffin saw Archie Young. ‘How’s the ankle?’
Archie Young scowled. ‘Not too bad, but I’m going to get a tetanus injection.’
‘Don’t forget rabies as well,’ said Coffin as he passed through the front door.
He made for his car. Although it was still early morning, Feather Street was awake and taking observation. The curtains at the house next door only half hid the woman gazing out. Further down the road a man was cleaning his windows while staring at the Zeman house.
Across the road, a figure was hunched: Fred Kinver.
Coffin went across. ‘I think you should go home, Fred.’
‘Want to see what’s going on.’
‘Go home, or I’ll have someone take you home.’
‘They’re dead, aren’t they? Good. I’m glad. It’s what I wanted. You won’t get me for wanting that. I know you, I’ve gone into your career. Made it my business. Making a book on you. I know what you’ve done, what you can do and what you can’t do. And you’re just. Hard but just. They all say that. And justice for my girl was all I ever wanted. If you can’t get it, make it, that’s what I say.’
He’s mad, thought Coffin, temporarily perhaps, but for the moment quite crazed. King Lear must have looked like that.
‘Someone will drive you home,’ he said to Fred Kinver. ‘I think your wife must be worrying. And stay there, until I tell you to come out.’
For his own safety, for everyone’s safety, in the present emotional state of the area, he was better tethered.
That day, as on several days previously, without realizing it John Coffin had set eyes on the Paper Man.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sunday, June 25
One of the disadvantages of his position, contrary to what might have been expected, was that John Coffin was not always the first to know the news.
When Dr Angela Livingstone heard of the events in Feather Street, she felt alarmed, and even guilty. Was it her fault in any way? No, not so, surely not. She would like to have spoken to the Chief Commander John Coffin himself, as her spies told her that he was a nice man and eminently approachable. But protocol forbade it, the system had to be honoured even by one anxious to purge her soul. Even to a rebel who liked to stamp on the rules.
So she put aside any remaining hostility (and after all, the man had only made a pass at her, didn’t all policemen do it, one way or another?) and telephoned Superintendent Paul Lane at once.
His line was busy so she made a face at the telephone and got through to the hospital to find out how Leonard Zeman was.
‘Holding his own,’ she was told; she was well aware that this vague phrase might mean anything. You could be terminally ill and the ward sister would say this soothing nonsense.
But she knew one of the registrars there. ‘Can I speak to Dr Erskine? Say it’s Dr Angela Livingstone.’
‘Bleeping Dr Erskine,’ said the telephonist cheerfully. ‘He won’t be pleased, he was just going for a cup of coffee.’
Tough, thought Angela, and hung on. Very soon a sleepy voice said it had been up all night and what did Angela want?
‘Are you looking after Leonard Zeman?’
‘Not directly. Been observing the case.’ Leonard was a case, no longer a person. He would only become a person again if he recovered and left hospital, and not a fellow medical practitioner till he took up work again.
‘How is he? Really how is he?’
‘He is in a small side ward, with a policeman outside the door, and he is deeply comatose, but his blood pressure is rising. He may come out of it or he may not, your guess is as good as mine. Friend of yours?’
‘Only know him by name. What’s the diagnosis?’
‘Angel dear, did you drag me away from my coffee just to ask that?’
‘From the sound of it, you brought the coffee with you and are still drinking it.’
‘Up all night, dear. As to the diagnosis, you know my boss. Still sitting on the fence.’
‘Tell him to think about one of the glycosides.’
‘Good lord,’ said Perry Erskine. ‘You don’t say. I’ll pass it along. Get a Brownie point.’
‘Don’t quote me. But I feel guilty.’
‘Why! You didn’t give him an overdose, did you? Must have been a massive one, by the way.’
‘No, I didn’t, of course not, you fool.’
But maybe, she thought, as she put down the telephone, which was making noises about Why not dinner together, Angel, if I had been quicker in passing on the information about Val Humberstone, this need not have happened.
She was still young enough to think that somehow she could alter the course of events.
When she spoke to Superintendent Lane she was blunt: ‘If you have read my report on Val Humberstone, and I don’t know if you’ve had time yet, you will see I say she died from taking too much of one of the glycoside drugs.’
‘I have read the report, it’s on my desk now. Tell me what these glycosides are?’
‘They are given as a treatment for diseases of the cardiovascular system.’
‘Heart trouble, in other words?’
‘That’s right. In the quantity that I reckon the dead woman took them, they would produce heart failure, though.’
‘Just like that?’
‘No, probably not. She’d feel sleepy, begin to be unwell, the heart would become violently irregular, she would fall asleep and never wake up.’
‘I see. Not a common poison, is it?’
‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used before. You’d know more about that, perhaps. We might consult the Forensic Science people at Harrogate. They may know of other cases.’
‘I think I know of two others now,’ said Paul Lane. ‘You’d better have a look at Tim Zeman, and I think you’d better have a look at Mrs Kay Zeman. I’ll get an exhumation order.’
Without satisfaction, he contemplated the fact that he had a case of mass murder on his hands, a multiple poisoning, the wiping out of an entire family.
Paul Lane was an ambitious man who was keeping an anxious eye on the shape of his career: he had done well, but he wanted to do better. A badly run case at this stage in his professional life could
spoil everything. There were a lot of ways you could fall off the ladder in the police and he knew most of them. Had fallen off a rung himself in the past, then climbed back on again, had seen colleagues fall off and never get back. He did not want to be one of them.
He was only too aware that a bright and hungry generation was coming up behind him. Women too. In his heart he hated the idea of women in the police, but it didn’t do to say so. He liked women, in many ways he liked them very much, but he did not want to compete with a woman.
There were nasty aspects to this case that he was as aware of as John Coffin. The media were already paying a lot of attention to the murder of Anna Mary Kinver. Every day there was a paragraph or a TV interview about it. There was tension bubbling away just below the surface in Leathergate and Spinnergate. Any day now, for any cause, it could spill over. A multiple poison case involving a family already named in the Kinver murder, already the subject of hostile speculation, might just do it.
Rationally, it shouldn’t, because the Zemans now looked more like victims, but reason did not come into civil disturbance.
One Zeman, however, remained totally unharmed.
‘These tablets,’ he said. ‘Only a doctor could prescribe them?’
‘Yes,’ said Angela Livingstone. She was still keeping to herself one vital piece of information of which she had not seen the significance. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘I hate to think of a doctor doing a poisoning. Old-fashioned of me, but there it is. Of course, we know they do it.’
‘Not many of them.’
‘We don’t get to know about the successful ones,’ said Lane gloomily. ‘However, patients can save up tablets, I suppose, and use them. Suicides do it, so murderers could. Right, so we shall have to start looking among our suspects for someone with heart trouble who is taking … what did you call it?’
‘Glycosides. Trade name: Digoxin.’
Paul Lane felt they were almost on speaking terms as he put the receiver down. How would it be if he asked her for a drink? Ring up with some query about drugs, and heaven knows he would probably have one, consult her, and take it from there. She was a nice woman, and there might be, really, if one was lucky, a special relationship.
Coffin and the Paper Man Page 14
