Coffin's Dark Number

by Gwendoline Butler

  Because beneath the surface of his mind deep movements had been carrying buried memories upwards without his realizing it, it was a shock to Coffin when he suddenly found himself remembering one childhood game. But the shock was also that he should have forgotten. Somehow the psychologists would say he must have wanted to forget.

  He could even recall the girl’s name, Tissie. She couldn’t have been christened Tissie, but that was how he remembered her; Tissie Martin. They had been playing a game of hide and seek, and his motives in choosing hide and seek had not been entirely above suspicion nor hers in joining in. Looking back, perhaps it hadn’t been the first doubt he’d had, he’d had double feelings about the episode all these years. Because his response to Tissie’s uninhibited version of a children’s game had been vivid and physical to his alarm and delight.

  He looked at Cy. There but for the grace of God, he thought, and then, no. No. Everyone’s behaviour sprang from common impulses, but it didn’t have to end in murder. And with the normal person, it didn’t.

  Tissie Martin and Liddell and House, the shoe polish factory. It had been a slightly derelict affair even in those days and it was in their yard that he and Tissie had played stimulating games.

  He looked at the map that hung on the wall. Liddell and House lay between Belview Street and Peel Terrace. It fronted one and backed on the other. You could back a van in one set of doors and come out with it through another. He should have remembered before.

  ‘The Liddell and House factory is empty, isn’t it?’ he said aloud.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cy. ‘It’s going. All that land is due to be cleared.’

  ‘Not even a watchman around?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you know. That’s the sort of thing you know. You know you could back your van in that derelict yard and never have it seen. You could be near Belview Street when Grace Parker went and never be noticed. You could be around Peel Terrace and never be seen there either.’

  ‘You prove that,’ said Cy, and gave the ghost of a laugh.

  ‘I might be able to do that. All three children had been eating ice-cream.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s all imaginary. It didn’t happen.’ His voice gathered strength. ‘All you’ve got is a bit of vanilla. You can’t keep me here because of a trace of ice-cream.’

  He spoke with a kind of desperate cockiness.

  ‘You can’t make me say anything I don’t believe,’ he said. The lines in his face became hard and firm.

  Coffin understood what he read there. It was faith.

  He no longer thought Cy likely to be the murderer. For the first time he saw that of all people in the case, Tony Young, John Plowman, even himself, Cyrus Read was a man of faith. He believed he was in touch with other worlds.

  ‘And do you know why I believe?’ said Cy. ‘Because I’ve fought for my scientific achievements. I’ve had to fight hostility from the orthodox – those who get their education the straight way and go on believing what they’re taught. Well, I never was educated because my dear dad said I must get out and earn. So I’ve taught myself, and I came out the better for it.’ He gave Coffin a pale glare, but he wasn’t really looking at him, what he was glaring at was his past, in which his father had robbed him of an education, and his future, which was threatened by the conventional-minded. ‘I know I’m right: there are minds out there and they’re speaking to us.’ He threw out his arm. ‘How cheap it is that we don’t listen.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘I’m ahead of my time,’ said Cy. ‘Born before my time. Now’s the time to be born.’

  ‘Where were you born, Read?’ asked Coffin.

  ‘Honor Oak. Know where that is?’

  ‘I know,’ said Coffin. ‘When did you move here?’

  ‘When I married. I married too young. My dad still lives over there. And the reason he couldn’t let me get educated,’ said Cy, determined to take it back to the previous generation, ‘was because he’d got married young. It goes on and on.’

  ‘You fond of children?’ asked Coffin suddenly.

  ‘Not specially. And not other people’s children.’

  This was Coffin’s last question. After it, he let Cyrus Read go.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They had had Tony Young in as a suspect and had to let him go. They had had Cyrus Read in as a prime suspect and had to let him go, too.

  Dove was angry. He was looking for someone to blame. Coffin was to hand, but it was difficult to put this into words. He managed to get the feeling across, though.

  ‘I don’t trust either of them,’ he said. ‘They could be in it together.’

  ‘It’s an idea. I don’t think so, though.’ Coffin had his temper in control. But only just. Another few days of this and he and Dove would be in a fight of their own. It had been hanging over them for a long while now, nicely kept in check by the fact that they really liked and respected each other. Perhaps the tender flower of friendship couldn’t take deep root in police service but they had a decent relationship. Otherwise Dove was ambitious, unimaginative and sceptical of his superior’s longer flights of the imagination. They had worked together for too long now; it was time for a shake-up.

  ‘Your car all right since you got it back?’ he asked absently.

  ‘Yes. And I found out about a nice little racket.’

  ‘A new one?’

  ‘An old one with knobs on. A chap called Russell was buying wrecked cars, removing all identification plates; then he was going out and pinching other cars of the same make, switching plates and then making a sale. And then, if you please, he was re-stealing the cars, re-fixing the plates and leaving the car to find its way home to its original owner.’

  ‘But leaving the chap in the middle with no car at all?’

  ‘And none to find.’

  ‘That was how your car went?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dove looked thoughtful. ‘I shall never know who had my car.’

  ‘I should look for a kid that’s crying for a rubber duck,’ said Coffin. They looked at each other.

  ‘Dead end,’ said Dove.

  ‘There are certain things we can still do,’ said Coffin.

  ‘And I know just what you’re going to say,’ said Dove, getting up. ‘Routine, routine, routine.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one thing. It’s the way that pays off in the end. And the other is, watch Kim Simpson.’

  Routine, within minutes, brought them the news that the children whose bodies had been interred in Slippers’ Old Garage had died through suffocation. They had not been drugged.

  ‘Except with ice-cream and kisses,’ said Coffin with a groan.

  ‘Kisses?’

  ‘Yes,’ he pointed to a sentence in the report.

  It read: ‘Around the mouth and on the cheeks of Child A (Katherine Gable?) are small bruises. As there are also signs of red colouring matter and grease, probably lipstick, these marks may be kisses.’

  ‘A woman?’ said Dove, incredulous. ‘That would explain a lot.’

  ‘I think we ought to see Kim Simpson again,’ said Coffin, stretching out a hand for the telephone. With a few words he sent Joan Eames running.

  ‘There’s no woman in this case,’ said Dove. ‘Not close in.’

  ‘Aren’t there? I see two.’

  ‘A woman alone, do you think? Or two of them working together?’ Both Dove and Coffin were thinking aloud.

  ‘Jean Young and Cyrus Read’s wife. Friends and neighbours both.’

  ‘Does that mean anything?’

  ‘I’m just filling in the background.’

  ‘Do they say what colour the lipstick is?’

  ‘No. Just red. Probably not easy to tell. So we don’t know whether blonde or brunette.’

  A quick heavy tread down the passage acquainted him with bad news. That girl’s never going to get a husband unless she loses weight, he thought as he saw Joan Eames.

  ‘Kim Simpson’s not there and her mother does
n’t know where she is,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The kid just walked out and they didn’t know she’d gone.’

  ‘I knew she had something on her mind,’ said Coffin bitterly. Joan Eames got the classic reward for all bringers of bad news and his anger bounced on her head.

  ‘Go out and do something about it.’ Joan flushed and started to move. ‘No, wait.’ He was still irritable. ‘Think about it first.’

  ‘I am thinking about it,’ said Joan. She went out and very slightly banged the door.

  Dove laughed, not nicely. A quarrel was very near the surface.

  With a deliberate gesture, Coffin put out an arm and shoved everything on one side of his desk to the ground, clearing a space. So that measure of violence was out of his system and into the world.

  On the space that he had cleared, Coffin put the tape recorder. He put on the tape that Tony Young had given him. He played it.

  He listened carefully to the thoughts Tony had put on it. More and more Tony’s voice sounded the voice of innocence and his part that of victim.

  Unnoticing, guileless victim. And another figure began to walk around. Coffin was surprised how clear and yet how unobtrusive this figure was.

  And with the figure he began to see a place. The Liddell and House shoe polish factory. It seemed to keep appearing, through the clouds. He played the tape again, listening to Tony’s voice. A voice which tried to sound old and worldly and only achieved enthusiasm. Damn it, he was beginning to like the boy.

  Yes, Tony did tell him on the tape one thing he wanted to know about the factory. He picked up the telephone and spoke to Joan Eames.

  ‘No news, I haven’t got her yet,’ she said in a flurried way, as soon as she heard his voice.

  ‘I’m not worrying about Kim Simpson at the moment. This is something else.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want you to go round to the Anderson house and get the boy again. His mother can come too. I‘ll meet you there.’

  He was there outside the Anderson house, waiting, when Joan Eames emerged with the boy and his flushed mother. Jean was holding the boy’s hand and soothing the woman.

  ‘Now we’ll take this as if we were on an ordinary family walk. You bring the boy and I’ll walk along beside you. But I’m leading the way.’

  ‘Belle?’ began Mrs Anderson. But Coffin didn’t answer her; perhaps he didn’t hear her.

  He led the way to the old factory and stopped. ‘Liddell ‘n’ House?’ he said to the boy. ‘Little house?’

  ‘Little house,’ said the boy at once. He smiled and moved forward briskly, dragging Joan Eames with him. ‘Little house. Belle? Isobel?’

  Coffin patted him on the head. ‘Clever boy,’ he said absently. His eyes met Joan’s over the boy’s head. ‘Take him home.’

  He pushed against the battered old wooden doors which marked the entrance to the Liddell and House factory. Locked, of course. The doors would have to be forced.

  But set in the big double doors was a smaller door and this, when he pushed it, swung open.

  He watched Joan Eames lead the other two away before he walked in. He walked inside. He found himself in the cobbled passage with the high stone roof where the vans had waited for loading. Here he had played in the old days. He remembered it. Leading off it were a few small rooms and then the factory proper. ‘Great old barn of a place,’ hadn’t one woman worker called it? No one worked there now, and hadn’t for years.

  He went back to the door and looked out. On either hand were tall protective walls blocking the view of the houses beyond. Yes, if you took a risk you could come and go in here and not be seen. It would be a risk, but this murderer seemed to have had good luck.

  He looked at the lock on the big door and thought that although the door was dirty the lock looked clean, cleaner perhaps than it should.

  There was an oil stain on the cobbles just behind the door as if a van had stood there and leaked oil.

  Everything was very quiet, only his footsteps echoing under the vaulted roof. It was like being in a church. Or a tomb.

  In front of him was a door which led to what had been, as he remembered, a small office. He pushed it open.

  The room was pretty much as he remembered it in shape and size. You could even see that it had once been an office. But even as he looked around he knew the room had been used recently.

  There was a deal table and a couple of chairs. In a corner was a camp bed which might have been for the use of a night watchman. Surely there had been one here for a time? An old screen stood in one corner. Pipes suggested there was a wash-basin behind it.

  He walked round the room. Yes, this room had been used. Everything here would have to be tested for prints.

  He pushed aside the screen. Then he stopped and knelt down. There was a small bundle trussed up in white sheeting like an Egyptian mummy. From the bundle came a sickly smell.

  Coffin had met that smell before. He had no doubt he had found Belle Anderson.

  Everything was very quiet, but it seemed to him that all around he could hear the sound of children’s feet running.

  He lifted up the bundle and the head lolled out, the pale complexion dead white tinged with green, and the mouth broadly splashed with lipstick.

  The tape from Tony Young was running again. He let it play. It was time to let Tony start talking.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tony, at Last

  You couldn’t stop me talking. Limbo is the place they put you before you are really quite dead, when you’ve still got links with this world. You have to wait out your time there, till you know if you are going to be really dead or hang around as a ghost. This was where I had been ever since I last talked to the police. They didn’t put me there. I did that myself. I suppose as a sort of punishment to myself for being a fool.

  Well, I look like being a restless corpse. I’m coming back to life. And I have plenty to say.

  Tony, I said to myself, not only have you got to defend yourself, you have got to be seen to defend yourself. You owe that to your own dignity. I was back on my dignity. You can see how I’d recovered. I owed a lot to Judith.

  I knew about the discovery of Belle Anderson within minutes, probably, of it happening. That is definitely not the sort of news you can hide around here. Also, about Kim Simpson. I knew about the other girls, and the ice-cream and pretty well all there was to know. And I knew it left Cyrus Read and me jostling for the hot spot. As we always had been, of course.

  And I knew something I thought the police didn’t know yet. One of my earliest jobs, when I was still seeking to establish myself in the world, was as night watchman at Liddell and House. It had definite possibilities, that job. It was also the job that first made my sister Jean come half way to giving up her struggle over me. She really thought it was stupid. She didn’t entirely give up the struggle, though, and in fact she hasn’t given it up now. I was only there two weeks. Enough to get the key and leave plenty of fingerprints around everywhere. I was mad about that.

  I still had the key. And I have no doubt at all that Jean knew that I had that key. Her face was looking very peaky these days. She was standing the strain worse than me. If she ever does get to marry that policeman, I’m afraid her responsibilities towards me will prove a serious barrier to a happy married life. I ought to hope that she doesn’t marry the policeman. To begin with there’s Dad, whom we all tend to forget. Dad, even though a little withdrawn and hardly an ideal parent, has a right not to have to share his house with a copper. But I can’t evil-wish Jean. I want things to go right for her.

  There’s something you have to learn about me and my sister Jean. We are twin souls. Real twins have shared a common birth. I look younger than my years, retarded, you might say, and Jean looks older. She’s always had the responsibility of me, you see.

  When I started talking and John Coffin suggested I put it on the tape again, I supposed he thought he’d be getting a confession. I’m sure that snarly one, Dove, thought so. And f
at girl Eames. But I mustn’t let my tongue run away with me. After all, I’m the hero of this story, aren’t I? And I have to act like a hero and keep my dignity.

  Let me recapitulate what was worrying me: the girl children had all disappeared on nights when both Cyrus and I, owing to the society (now in abeyance) to which we both belonged, seemed to be out on our own. Opportunity for us, in other words.

  Then all the children had been taught by my sister Jean and were known to me. They were all friends of Cy’s children. Oh yes, I know that. And John Coffin told me it was one of the things he was careful to have Joan Eames establish. So that meant we had a contact. Those kids could have trusted us.

  Cy, in addition, had the ice-cream van. But I knew what they thought. I too might have had the ice-cream van. I knew, as well as he did, where he had it parked; round the back of John Plowman’s shop.

  ‘You’ll get no confession out of me,’ I said to Coffin when he brought my tape back, saying he’d got all he could from it and suggesting I start adding to it. Supposing, of course, that was what he meant.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. He had me in his office there talking to me, but once again he let me go. I was surprised about that. Now I think he was watching to see what I’d do.

  It’s funny, but you always think of the police as being a sort of machine and feeding in the right questions and getting out the right answers. I suppose there is an element of that too, but they’re men as well and sometimes what they put into the machine are more hopes and guesses, and then the answers don’t come out right. And even when they’ve got the right answer, and know it, like now, they have to prove it. I think Coffin was worried this was going to be one of the cases where they knew but couldn’t get a man to court. He let me go around to see if I’d pull the house down.

  I wonder how he knew I had that pull in me? But I suppose that’s what makes a good policeman: they can tell things about a person he hardly knows himself.

  When Judith, that’s my girl friend you may remember, gets to a bit in a play where she can’t remember lines she says impatiently that she just ad libs. This must be just in rehearsal. I can’t believe that beautiful and skilful though Judith is they let her write her plays as well as act them. I’m getting to the part where I can’t remember my lines so I’ll ad lib. Not everything that gets said on the tape from now on really got said, not all the dialogue was as told. But what you hear is what really happened, because that is what remains with me. And that, in the end, is the truth.