Last night there had been a picture on the television news of Charlie Driscoll hurrying into the theatre, head down, looking furtive, and of Lily Goldstone staring defiantly at the camera and threatening to sue. JoJo had managed to smile, while putting her arm in a protective way around Bridie’s shoulders in a manner which succeeded in making the girl look terrified. Will just looked guilty.
Only Stella Pinero rose above it all. Years of publicity, some good, some bad, had given her a patina of protection. She smiled brilliantly, put on extra mascara and managed to see that every hair was perfectly in position. Coffin thought she was enjoying it, but on the telephone that morning she assured him she was not. ‘I had all I wanted of death years ago in Greenwich when you and I first met, and I was young then. But I am an actress and can put on a show.’ Which she certainly could. ‘But you don’t think I like the idea of that man’s head in my flat for weeks?’
‘We don’t know how long,’ observed Coffin mildly. ‘Possibly not weeks.’
Stella was still staying with Charlie Driscoll who had a large and comfortable flat in Covent Garden, the perfect actor’s home, he said, from which you could walk to almost any West End theatre if you happened to be lucky enough to be playing in one.
‘Better still if you are an opera singer or a ballet dancer,’ Stella had answered over their breakfast coffee. Charlie’s last boyfriend, now on tour and suspected of having changed his loyalties, had been a dancer. As it was, they both came and went on Charlie’s motorcycle, because the other thing he did not mention as a convenience of the Garden was that there was nowhere to park a car.
‘Well, we are under suspicion,’ she said as she returned from her telephone call with John Coffin. ‘I taxed him with it—I love that word taxed, don’t you, so descriptive—and he confirmed it. All the same, I don’t think it’s one of us, do you?’
‘If it is,’ said Charlie grumpily, ‘then the next to go will be that boy Billy. The whole world must have heard him saying he knew who did it.’
‘Oh, he’s only a boy, Charlie. He can’t know anything. Not really.’
‘I’ve been a boy,’ said Charlie. Which was news to Stella, as it was never clear what Charlie was or had been. He seemed able to be sexless or any sex, as all who had seen him in Waiting for Godot would testify. ‘And I think he can.’
Stella came out with what really interested her. ‘Then John Coffin asked me to lunch. At Green’s. Some family party.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I said No.’ Stella drank some more coffee. ‘But all the same, I think I shall move back into St Luke’s Mansions.’
An apparent non sequitur that made clear sense to Charlie, who said to himself that the Poor Chap hadn’t got a chance.
‘Thanks for having me, Charlie. But I’m better living on the job.’ Also the motorbike was chafing her legs and ruining her tights.
‘You don’t sound too miserable,’ said Charlie suspiciously.
‘Well, I am worried, and we are all under threat, and I felt it the more since it was my refrigerator and I had a key to that place, one of the policemen was quite sharp to me till I coaxed him round, but I’ve had a ’phone call from Letty Bingham and there might be good news on the way.’ Stella gave her secret smile. Good news meant good theatre news, they both knew that, there was no other sort of news that counted. Not even death and double murder.
Charlie, although he had a lot on his mind, decided to cheer up and bear it bravely. ‘This is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done,’ he murmured to himself.
If all concerned with the Theatre Workshop felt under threat, Tom Cowley in his Black Museum perceived he had some cause for relief. The heat was off him and his museum. The powers that be had other things on their mind. In a quiet way, he rejoiced. An interesting, newsworthy local murder, the sort that gets written up, discussed at the Detection Club, lectured on at a Crimewriters’ Conference and into the history books by way of a Notable British Trial, could do him nothing but good. An unsolved series of murders might prove to be an even greater attraction. Look at Jack the Ripper, never out of the paperback market; consider the Sydenham murders, some mileage there too, and there was even their own unsolved strangling whose relics he retained in the Black Museum. In due course he must manage, as curator, to lay his hands on a specimen piece of evidence from the case to mount on a display sheet and place in a glass cage. What about the head itself? Wasn’t display what it was meant for? He smiled.
A certain fanaticism was beginning to show itself in his defence of his museum, alarming his wife, who was only slowly recovering from a nasty little illness herself and wondered if he was going down with something too.
Nor was she the only victim. Tom telephoned John Coffin, catching him at home in St Luke’s Mansions on the very day of the family luncheon in Green’s.
‘You’ve heard about Dr Schlauffer? Yes, he’s really bad, poor chap. There seems to be some sign of paralysis now. He’s having trouble breathing. No, I’m better now. The wife’s not too good, though. There’s a nasty bug going round.’
‘Which hospital is he in?’
‘The Thameswater District. It’s the new one down by the Isle of Dogs.’
‘Are you all right yourself, Tom? You don’t sound quite yourself.’
‘Never felt better.’
But there was a brightness, a brassiness to his tone that Coffin did not like. He hoped old Tom wasn’t going to go over the top. Uneasily he remembered that it was because of an incident in earlier days that Tom had been deposited in the sinecure of the Black Museum.
Later that day he arrived in Green’s for the meeting he half dreaded. Letty was, as usual, late. But he had had no trouble recognizing his half-brother, they seemed to know each other without question.
‘Drink? Let’s start with champagne. After all, it’s an historic moment, this meeting.’ There was a Glasgow accent, slightly modified by Edinburgh, but more warmth than Coffin had expected.
He sat looking at his half-brother. William was younger than Coffin and older than Lætitia. But he could have been any age, he was ageless. There he sat, across the table, a tall, slender, sandy-haired man with spectacles, perfectly at his ease. Coffin tried to see something of his mother in William’s face and could not. He wished he remembered her better.
‘You were a surprise to me,’ he said.
‘It was a surprise to me, too. Although, of course, I knew I was adopted.’
‘I don’t understand how you ended up in Scotland.’
‘I was fostered first. With a butcher’s family in South London, so I understand.’
‘I’d heard something about that,’ said Coffin thoughtfully.
‘But he didn’t prosper. Or he died. I’ve never really been clear about that; I was only a few years old. Don’t remember anything of it. So I was sent to his wife’s sister in Glasgow. They were in a good way of business, but childless and they adopted me.’
Curiosity produced the next question. He must account for William somehow, he was so unlike both Lætitia and Coffin himself. His mother must have been a woman of catholic taste. But the father? What of the father? ‘We both know who your real mother was, but do you know who was your father? Or anything about him.’
William shook his head, ‘Nothing.’
‘Lætitia knows about hers. I believe he’s still alive.’
William looked thoughtful. ‘It might be worth asking him a few questions.’ A canny look came on his face, one that must have been familiar to his fellow Writers to the Signet in Edinburgh. ‘But there again, some stones are best left unturned. I’ve found that in my business, and you must have done too.’
‘I’m usually engaged in turning them over to see what crawls out,’ said Coffin. He drank some champagne, looking around at the crowded room. William followed his gaze.
‘I’m glad we came here. It was my wife’s idea; she’d heard of it and wanted to see what it was like.’
‘
You’ve got a wife?’
‘Of course.’ William sounded surprised. ‘Didn’t Letty tell you? She’s shopping in Harrods at the moment. She’ll join us later. I thought we’d have this first bit on our own.’
Letty arrived at this moment. ‘Sorry to be late. Business problems.’
‘Your theatre? I told you there would be problems.’ William was showing himself knowledgeable about this kin. ‘Champagne?’
‘Of course, and I’m going to eat lobster. You can eat salad on your own. Which of course, you never intended to do.’
‘Ach, there’s salad and salad,’ said William, making what Coffin realized was an Edinburgh joke. ‘When I said problems I did not think of murder, of course.’
‘Who would? However, that was not what held me up.’ Letty looked excited. ‘No, I was on the telephone talking to a donor who is going to put money into the theatre. The big one, not the Theatre Workshop. Work is about to begin.’
‘I thought I saw Ted Lupus in there this morning.’
‘I’m pushing ahead. Sooner, much sooner than I expected. My donor, who wants to be anonymous, but I can tell you he is a big name in industry, needs to see action. The money is coming to us in stages, as we show what we are doing. So we are starting to clear the ground. Literally, checking the foundations.’
‘From the bottom up? You’re not going to knock the church down?’
Letty laughed. ‘It’s not going to greatly change the church, it’s a listed building, just kind of put the auditorium and open stage into the body of the kirk. But there’s a lot of water underneath, we are near the Thames, after all, so we’re going down into the foundations. We don’t want the audience to go through the floor.’
‘I suppose it has to be open stage?’ Coffin was old-fashioned and enjoyed a stage with curtains and footlights. He wasn’t looking for realism, just magic.
‘I think so. But you’ll like it. I’ve got a first-class man, a real genius of a theatre architect, Johnny Dunlop. You’ve heard of him? But Ted Lupus’s outfit will be doing the construction. He was a bit surprised we were getting on so soon. I think he thought it would be years before we got the theatre proper going.’ She added, ‘I thought so myself at times.’
She leaned forward eagerly. ‘I’m going to involve Stella Pinero in all this. She’s such a magnetic person, such a draw. We shall need fund-raising shows, special performances, garden parties, the lot. I’ve already sounded her out. She’ll do it. She’s got a head on her shoulders.’ Then she realized what she’d said. ‘Oh dear, a black joke now, isn’t it?’
William showed he had read his newspapers. ‘And of hands, too.’
‘Right,’ said Coffin.
‘These hands and the head, they do belong to the same person?’
‘We think so.’ Coffin was surprised at the question.
‘Then the head and the hand must have some special significance. Only one hand with the head. And Miss Pinero had the other. That’s interesting, is it not?’
‘Oh very, and don’t think I haven’t put it to myself.’
‘Does someone not like Miss Pinero? Or is it you they are interested in? I think you will find that body, it does not matter to the murderer so he will not have worried too much where he put it.’
The arrival of the lobster salads prompted Letty to say, ‘What about your wife? Won’t we wait for her?’
‘She’ll mebbe not come if she’s shopping.’
‘Aren’t you afraid she’ll buy up Harrods?’
‘Ach no, she’s a sensible wee woman. And she thinks for many things Jenners is far better.’
Letty laughed. ‘I think you told her not to come.’
‘You’ll meet her later, I trust, but I’ll not deny I told her no to hurry. She’s a bit of sceptic is my Winnie, and there were things I wanted to say.’
After they had eaten, William said: ‘And now for the reason that I brought us here. You must have wondered when I would get to it.’
He drew out of his briefcase a leather-bound blue notebook. It was two or three inches thick. Not new.
‘Yes, that’s why I’m here. I found it in a case in the attic of the house in Glasgow. Must have been there for about twenty years. More, perhaps.’
‘What is it?’ asked Stella.
‘It’s a diary. Our mother’s diary.’
‘How did it get in the attic?’ asked Coffin.
‘I don’t know for sure, nor how nor why, but I learnt after she was dead that she kept up with my adopted mother secretly over the years. They’d known each other as children. I think she must have meant this diary to be seen, perhaps for us to find it, and read it. I think she wanted the story to come out.’
A determined look came on William’s face. ‘And although my Winnie thinks it’s pointless fuss and dead things should be left to lie, I think family loyalties count.’
It was sometime before John Coffin realized what a profoundly illuminating remark brother William had offered to him that day.
William laid the book on the table in front of him.
‘Which of you will take it first?’
CHAPTER 7
For twenty-four hours and more, the case seemed frozen, with much work going on underneath but nothing appearing on the surface. Such periods came with every investigation, as Coffin very well knew. It was annoying to the Press, who needed development to fill their papers, and unnerving to all those involved.
The cast had been interviewed one by one, and had assisted or impeded the interrogation according to their temperaments and political beliefs. JoJo Bell had offered to help with the questioning as well as answering what was put to her, and had been surprised when she was turned down. Lily Goldstone had admitted that Peter Tiler had tried a touch of blackmail. No, admitted was not quite the word for Lily; announced, proclaimed, was more her style, and although many policemen, including several now in Coffin’s new Force who had met Lily on various barricades and got the length of her tongue, would gladly have arrested her on the spot, there was no evidence to suggest she had killed Peter Tiler. Charlie and Stella had, more modestly, confessed to their brushes with the man, and hoped the matter had ended for them.
But in the Theatre Workshop, they had an added worry. The day after the lunch with brother William, Stella and Coffin met at the entrance to their respective front doors.
‘I’ve got permission from your lot to move back in. Although why I should need permission to live in my own home I don’t know.’ She had three suitcases on the floor and a number of little bundles suspended, yet with extreme elegance, about her person.
‘It’s the forensics,’ explained Coffin apologetically. ‘They like to go over things. And photographs, they are important too.’
‘See me in, will you? Just in case. I’m a bit nervous.’
In case what, Coffin wondered. ‘Why didn’t you hang on with Charlie for a bit longer? You didn’t quarrel, did you?’
‘Oh, he’s a sweet man. As bent as an eight-pound note, but sweet. No, we didn’t quarrel, but it doesn’t do to live with someone when you’re working with them. Not for long, anyway. And I wanted to get back to my own place, even if it is a bit scarey.’
Coffin picked up two of her cases, both very, very heavy, just as he had known they would be. ‘I don’t think there’ll be another body, Stella, or even a bit of one.’
‘It might smell.’ Stella left the other case for him to come back to and opened the door of her flat.
There was no smell but some disorder. Everything was slightly out of place and dusty.
‘Good job I didn’t have much furniture here. It will all need a thorough clean,’ said Stella severely, as if she was or ever had been a housewife. ‘That on top of everything else. Get the other case, will you?’
Coffin staggered under the weight of this one. ‘What have you got in it, Stella?’
‘Oh, just odds and ends,’ she said vaguely. ‘Not a body, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘Now, Ste
lla!’
She was taken with a sudden panic. ‘Oh my God, a body couldn’t have got in there without me knowing, could it? I left that case in the flat before I moved in.’
‘You’re acting, Stella.’
She had the case on the floor and was unlocking it. The lid sprang open, revealing domestic kitchen apparatus, like an electric kettle and a coffee pot, these representing as much of cookery as Stella aimed at these days. She began to take everything out, emptying the case until the floor all round her was littered with pots, pans, and a scrubbing brush which she looked at doubtfully. ‘A long time since I’ve seen one of those. I think it must be Charlie’s.’ Then she sat back on her heels. ‘Nothing dead. Thank God.’
‘I’ll clap, shall I? A good performance.’
She stood up, dusting her hands. ‘Well, you asked for it. I owed it you. You didn’t stay to watch our rehearsal.’
‘And you know why.’
‘Rosie Ascot’s body, poor girl. Is that supposed to cheer me up? I keep thinking Who Next.’
‘You’ll be the first to know when we find Peter Tiler’s body.’
‘As if murder wasn’t enough. It’s not my only problem, I can tell you.’ Stella was studying her face in a small pocket mirror. ‘Look at me, I’m a wreck.’
‘What else is there?’
‘I need a total facelift.’
‘Oh, come on, Stella, that’s not it.’
‘Perhaps it’s my neck.’ She was trying to pinch bits of flesh from under her chin. ‘Yes, that’s it. I could do with some of that cutting away.’
‘Stella, you’re still acting.’
She continued to study her face. ‘Perhaps it’s the chin. What do you think?’
‘Stella, I’m off.’
She stopped playing and came out with her real worry.
‘JoJo’s ill.’ She sounded exasperated. ‘This illness is going to run through the whole cast, I can tell. They’re working up for it.’
‘She’s got an understudy, hasn’t she?’
‘Oh, she’ll probably insist on dragging herself on stage. I know JoJo.’
‘Well then, you’ve got no problem.’
Coffin in the Black Museum Page 9