JoJo shrugged. ‘She might suspect Will. We’re all looking at each other sideways, aren’t we? I know I am.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, not you especially, Stella. I’ve known you for years. But I don’t know Will, although he’s lovely to look at, and Charlie’s a queer cuss.’
‘I’ve known Charlie for years,’ said Stella, in a weak voice.
‘Ah, but have you? Think about it,’ said JoJo, wagging her finger. ‘And then there’s poor Mrs Tiler, everyone seems to have forgotten about her, but she was killed too.’
‘Did you know her?’ asked Stella. ‘You grew up round here.’
‘No,’ said JoJo shortly, ‘I was just making a point.’
‘Open your mouth to the police round here and they’ll hang you,’ said Lily.
‘That’s not fair on the police,’ protested Stella.
‘If you happen to have been born here, or have family, then watch it, that’s my advice.’
Stella finished her coffee, paid her bill and prepared to depart before they quarrelled. ‘I’m going to get a paper. My copy of The Stage hasn’t come this week. I don’t know where I’ll get one this late.’
All of them relied on their weekly newspaper for the gossip of their craft.
‘I’ve heard they’re looking for a new Director at Chichester.’
‘Not again,’ said JoJo.’
‘Not that I’d apply, of course.’
‘Of course not,’ said JoJo loyally.
But a discreet word in the right ear, and one might be asked to put oneself forward.
‘So I want to see if it’s mentioned.’ Stella moved towards the door.
‘Pippa Barnes is leaving Sunlight and Starshine,’ announced JoJo suddenly. ‘Best job she’s had in years. Leaving. Saw that in The Stage. Didn’t see the Chichester thing.’
‘Why’s she leaving?’ asked Lily.
‘Ill health, it said. Drink, more like it. She threw a wine bottle at the conductor. You won’t find that in The Stage.’
‘All the same, I must get a copy.’
‘Try Mimsie.’
‘Go to Mimsie,’ called Stella. ‘She’ll give you all the dirt.’ International, national and local.
Mimsie produced a copy of The Stage, slightly crumpled as if she had read it herself first. But she made no charge, which Stella thought was fair, so she bought several copies of expensive and glossy magazines (one bearing a large portrait of a rival actress on the cover, which instantly she promised herself to deface) to level things up.
She did not have to introduce the subject of Bridie, because Mimsie started on it herself.
‘So you’re losing one of your youngsters?’
‘How do you know?’
‘Her mother told me. She’s all over the place. After asking God to fix it for her for years, now she’s upset that he has.’
‘The girl seems to feel she has to work out some sin,’ said Stella gloomily. ‘I think there’s a kind of sickness round here at the moment and it’s taking people different ways. This is her share.’
Mimsie cackled. ‘If there’s a sin, it’s further back in the family.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I can tell you what’s worrying her. If you knew more about the neighbourhood, you’d know yourself. Or if you had eyes in your head.’
Stella stared at her dumbly.
‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’ she asked after a bit.
‘Not that I know of, although she may be. No, haven’t you looked at her and young Will together?’
‘Well,’ began Stella, ‘I suppose I have …’
‘And don’t they look alike?’
‘They do, now you mention it. But you don’t mean …?’ She paused.
‘Same father. That’s the story, but I doubt it myself. Bridie’s mother would have told me. No, someone got a bit mixed up somewhere, I don’t doubt, but not that generation.’
‘Poor young things,’ said Stella, thinking that even if it wasn’t true, they believed it, especially if they’d been to bed together.
‘Personally, I’d tell them to forget it and get on with it.’
‘You’re a pagan, Mimsie.’
‘No, I’m not, I’m natural. Look at cats and doggies. My old Timmy mated with his sister and they had lovely little kittens. Seven of them, as healthy as could be.’
‘What did you do with them, Mimsie?’ asked Stella absently, folding up The Stage and still thinking about Bridie and Will.
‘Found them all good homes. I had him neutered afterwards, though, just to be on the safe side. We can’t have too much of a good thing, can we?’
Incest, thought Stella, all right for cats, but you didn’t really want it in the family. Supposing Bridie and Will were suddenly confronted with the tale by Peter Tiler, together with a threat of blackmail?
No, it was not good news for anyone who wanted to think Will innocent of murder.
When Stella had heard of the several bodies found in the crypt of St Luke’s, their deaths spread over a period of years, she had felt relief. This lets us out, she had thought. Now, however, it looked as though one of the deaths could be back as a personal problem.
But the head in the urn?’ Would Will do that? And if so, why? She found she could not believe in gentle, restrained (and oh so good-looking) Will chopping off Peter Tiler’s head and putting it in a pot.
Hands too, she told herself with a shudder, don’t forget the hands.
She left Mimsie’s stall, tucking The Stage under her arm. ‘Mimsie? If I live all through this, and sometimes, I think I won’t, a kind of feeling, you know, Mimsie, then can I have one of your kittens, if there’s one around?’
It would be nice to have a cat to come home to.
On the way home she decided to buy some food in Max’s delicatessen. She did not want to eat Chinese, or Indian, or any other of the ethnic variations available to her locally. She wanted to have a tray of food on her lap and watch something trivial on the television.
The shop was crowded when she got there so that she had to wait her turn, during which time she occupied herself reading The Stage. The copy provided by Mimsie had stains on it as if Mimsie had been drinking while she read. The smell that floated up to Stella in the warmth of the shop was delicately beery.
She gradually became aware of a familiar voice in the queue in front of her, saw a tall back, broad shoulders and a still thick head of hair, growing grey in a suitably distinguished way, and heard her friend, John Coffin, asking in diffident voice for ham cut thin, but not too thin.
As he passed her on the way out, bearing his parcel of ham and a long baton of bread, she breathed to him to wait for her and they could walk home together. He nodded, his face tired.
I could look after that man, thought Stella, but perhaps I shouldn’t bother.
People didn’t always want it, were not always grateful. As why should they be, when it might be something in you that was being satisfied and not their need? Knowing thoughts like this came with increasing frequency to Stella these days, mother of a daughter now on half-term holiday with her father before returning to the expensive school that kept Stella impoverished. Her child did not seem to miss her, or need her. Coffin might be her replacement, which he would probably resent.
Coffin nodded and walked out of the shop, to sit at one of Max’s tables and enjoy the evening sun. He was tired, Stella was right there, tired and anxious. Things weren’t going well in his command. He had inherited too many generals and too few soldiers of the line. It was always the same when a division was hastily cobbled together from those who had seen too many campaigns and not enough victories.
Stella got to the top of the queue to find Ted Lupus next to her negotiating for a bottle of brandy and some aspirins. Belatedly and thoughtfully, as if some food might not be a bad idea, he added some milk and a box of eggs.
‘It’s my wife,’ he said apologetically. ‘She’s lying down with a black bandage over her eyes. She say
s her eyes are going bad on her. Nerves, really.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Stella with sympathy. ‘It’s hunger with me. I always get hungry when I’m anxious.’
Clara came from the back of the shop with a bottle of aspirin. ‘Mother says to have these and she’s sorry Mrs Lupus is not well.’
‘How is your mother, Clara?’ said Stella. Max was wrapping a large slice of quiche for her, she would offer some to John Coffin, they might eat supper together.
‘Better, thank you.’ Clara’s hair was tied back in two short plaits, giving her a cheerful, businesslike air. ‘How is Billy?’ No one had told her how he was, she was worried for her friend.
‘Getting well,’ said Stella, looking at Ted Lupus, who gave a confirmatory nod. ‘Soon have him back again.’ She did not know if this was so, but it seemed the thing to say.
‘Close friend of yours, eh?’ said Ted Lupus. ‘Good thing. You could say where he was.’
‘Oh yes, we talk everything over,’ said Clara, blushing slightly. She met her father’s eye, and departed rapidly for the back room.
Stella gathered together her purchases, added a bottle of red wine, and went outside.
Coffin rose from his seat without a word, and they walked back to St Luke’s Mansions in companionable silence.
As they neared the church, Stella said: ‘How are things?’
‘Bad,’ Coffin said. ‘But I’ll survive.’ Then he added thoughtfully, ‘I think.’
He helped her inside the front door. ‘And you?’
‘About the same.’
She got her keys out of her bag. ‘Come and have supper with me? I’ve got some wine.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘You can open the bottle.’
Over the claret (Stella had bought a good bottle), she said: ‘What do you think about incest?’
Coffin frowned. ‘Professionally or personally?’
‘As a motive for murder.’
‘No.’ The frown did not lift. He took his wine to the window and stood silent for a moment, looking out. ‘I take it you mean in the context of our present baroque affair?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re talking about our little pair of performers, Bridie and Will.’
‘You know?’
He turned round. ‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘Can’t beat you, can I?’
‘Easily, Stella.’ Just give your mind to it, he thought. ‘But I’ve been in this business a long while. Almost all dark thoughts have crossed my mind in my time.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s true,’ said Stella, putting the quiche into the oven to warm and getting out the salad. ‘The incest thing.’
‘It very well could be, but I don’t think I’m going to dig it up.’
‘You amaze me sometimes.’ Stella was startled. ‘You sound exactly like Mimsie.’
‘Ah, she’s the one.’ He drank some more wine. ‘Tap all she knows, and we might have these murders solved.’
‘Do you think you ever will?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
He thought the case might be lined up in the Black Museum with all its artefacts of murder as one other of the unsolved mysteries of his new command.
‘Things do happen,’ said Stella, putting a consoling hand on his.
CHAPTER 13
One of the perils of his new position, as John Coffin had discovered, and was discovering again two days later (it always came to him with a fresh shock of surprise, he didn’t feel like the John Coffin he knew), was the number of public dinners he was obliged to attend. The stern gaze of his secretary as she handed the invitations to him ensured he accepted far more than he would have wished. Once he got to the dinner, he often enjoyed himself, but he was always depressed as he got ready.
Tonight was the dinner of the New City Medico-Legal Society, at which he was due to speak.
Another cause for depression.
His evening suit needed brushing, someone’s cat appeared to have moulted over it. Another cause for depression.
He brushed away at a deposit of white hairs. A bad case of mange here, he thought. Some hairs seemed to have a silvery tip, but all clung on to the jacket tenaciously.
He remembered now that after his last function he had given a lift home to the Senior Hospital Administrator of St Gervase’s Hospital, and the fur was off her white fox cape.
His jacket was clean of fur, but some tufts of white had mysteriously managed to get on his trousers now. He decided not to bother.
He had, however, prepared his speech with some care and even rehearsed it in front of the bathroom mirror where the acoustics aided voice production. It suited his style to have practised more than once, he was by no means a spontaneous speaker, but he knew himself to be capable of making some sensible observations if he had enough time. He could even manage a few jokes, but he had to think about them beforehand. He was modestly pleased when he got a laugh.
There wouldn’t be too many laughs today, he was talking on Crime in the Inner City area at a time when he had seven bodies of his own, as it were, to raise the murder statistics. The Press would certainly be there to ask questions if they got the chance, and he would have precious little he could say to them.
Not my investigation, but I have full confidence in my officers. Superintendent Paul Lane and Inspector Archie Young are in charge, that would be it and not enough.
There had been a report waiting for him when he got home. He had not yet had time to digest the contents but he could remember the sting in it.
Another blot on his evening was that his half-sister, Letty Bingham, was to be at the dinner. They were not on the best of terms just now. Between Letty and John Coffin stood the matter of his mother’s diary, which she was threatening not to let him see. ‘It’s so private, John. I honestly think only another woman should read it.’ And what she meant by that he was not quite sure, but whatever it was, he wasn’t going to stand for it. Letty ought to know him better than that.
She was representing The Society of Professional Women, and as such would be seated not far from him, and thus would have plenty of opportunity to comment on the murders and doubtless also much to say. She appeared to regard them as an attack on her property and his Force as failing in their duty in protecting that property.
For an educated woman Letty could be very naïve, but he had noticed before that where money was concerned even the sophisticated became silly.
He wondered how much Letty had gambled on this enterprise, and how much she stood to lose if it went wrong.
He didn’t want to sit across from Letty in the full splendour and glitter of her evening dress, probably wearing the topaz and diamond earrings (she said they were topaz, but he had more than a suspicion that they were ‘fancy’ yellow diamonds), and have her mutter about ‘budget cuts’. Or rent rises? After all, he was a tenant.
He wondered what she would say if she knew what he knew?
The identity of the fourth woman has been provisionally established as Veronica Peasden, known professionally as Vonnie Vanden, a club singer and stripper, Archie Lane had written. ‘We are trying to get in touch with next of kin to see if the handbag, watch and rings can be identified positively. This may present problems owing to the time span. Veronica Peasden has been on the missing Persons list for six years.’
She appeared to have been strangled with a ligature as with the other victims. A nylon stocking, possibly her own.
Veronica was the longest missing of all the women and therefore presumably the first to be killed.
Of that group.
Because the most menacing information came later in the report.
The papers of the report fluttered down from the table where he had placed them as he brushed his jacket. It began to sound like an ossary down there, he thought as he picked them up, a charnel house, a place in which bones are kept.
There were traces, so Archie Lane informed him, of more bones. The soil undern
eath the floor was being examined, and small bits of bone were turning up.
The age of the bones was not yet determined, but a preliminary glance had shown the pathologists that they were human and not animal as had been at first speculated.
Or hoped, Coffin thought, animal bones would have been so much more desirable. But no, they were human. Apparently, if you knew about bones you could tell at a glance.
Coffin finished dressing, and picked up the telephone. Inspector Young was on the point of going home, but he took the call.
‘Is it possible that St Luke’s was built on the site of an old burial ground?’ Coffin asked. ‘Is there anything in the local records?’
‘We considered that, sir. But there’s nothing in any old map or parish records to suggest it.’
‘A plague burial pit?’ suggested Coffin. ‘Probably wouldn’t be on any map.’
‘Quite true, sir, and we’ve been talking to a local historian from the Poly. He doesn’t know of anything, but is working on it.’
‘Roman bones?’ asked Coffin hopefully. ‘Vikings, Anglo-Saxons?’
‘The path man thinks they’re not that old. Until we know the age of the bone traces we can’t do much. They are just little bits of bones, sir. So that presents a difficulty. But there’s something else. Something I didn’t put in my report because I’ve only just heard myself.’ There was an odd note in his voice which Coffin picked up.
‘Well?’
‘I only have a verbal report on this. But I trust Ludbrook who is doing the work on the bones. I guess he’s right, unsavoury as it seems.’
One more disturbing, even sinister, suggestion had surfaced. The bones had been cooked. The flesh removed from them by heat. Probably boiled, Inspector Archie Young said, with detachment.
Coffin thought for a moment, then decided to ask. ‘Any sign of teeth marks on the bones?’
A cannibal in the area was just what he needed.
‘Ludbrook is working on that,’ said Young, still keeping his voice cool.
It might be, thought Coffin, that in digging up the dead women, they had really discovered the remains of someone’s larder.
The thought was more than enough to put him off his dinner.
Coffin in the Black Museum Page 16