Coffin's Game

by Gwendoline Butler

  He whistled as he worked and went back to his own thoughts: Wish I wasn’t so tired. I did make a bit of a night of it, but a chap needs something to look forward to at the end of the day with the blood and the needle … I don’t think I’m cut out for surgery. Perhaps I might switch to psychiatry. Not doing a bad job here, nasty wounds.

  Aloud, he said: ‘Nearly done. I’ll give you some painkillers … How did you say it happened? Accident?’ Going silent again, he said to himself: Some accident.

  ‘You’ll have a scar there, I’m afraid.’ You don’t work in anything where looks count, I hope. He had the sense to keep that last comment to himself. ‘Fade with time, you know.’ He didn’t know, but you had to give hope: this was the most positive thing he had learnt as a doctor.

  He stood back to study his handiwork; it looked good. He observed also some scratches on the hands, which made him even more sceptical of the ‘accident’. Looks almost as if someone had taken a bite, he thought, more than one bite, but he said nothing. Not then. Have to see the police later on, though…

  The young doctor was not the only one interested in strange behaviour in odd men. Inspector Lodge got a telephone call from his vanishing ‘sleeper’.

  ‘Wondered where you were and what you were up to,’ Lodge said.

  ‘I’ve been taking an interest in Stella Pinero. I followed her; she went off in a car with a man – not willingly, I thought.’

  ‘Well? Is she of interest to us?’

  ‘Probably not. I tailed the car and traced them to a set of service flats. I couldn’t get any information from the owner, an old biddy called Jessimon, although I have good access to her. After a day or two there, Stella Pinero left. I had to decide whether to follow her or the man. I followed her. She went first to the house of a woman who works in the theatre, and then home.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Lodge urgently. ‘I want more.’

  But the caller was gone.

  Damn him, thought Lodge. Is he being straight with me? He would like to see me out and himself in, I know that much.

  Chapter 5

  The Stella Pinero Theatre missed Stella. The performers in the playhouse missed her, the Theatre Workshop (always more notional than real since the area was used for many other projects) and the tiny Experimental Theatre in the old church hall missed her even more. Without Stella the whole complex felt a void. She gave it life.

  ‘Not to mention money,’ said Letty, Coffin’s half-sister and a major contributor to the theatre’s funds. She had flown in, talked to Coffin on the telephone, heard a more or less uncensored version of events, told him to toughen up and be a man (which he had taken badly), and come round to the theatre.

  Now she was standing in Stella’s office where unanswered letters were piled on the desk. ‘Where the hell is Stella? Without her, I’m hurting.’ Financially, she meant. Coffin had long ago decided this was the only way Letty could be hurt, since three marriages and possibly many other alliances had left her undented. Even financially she seemed to have many ways of replenishing the coffers: a successful lawyer, a banker and player with big money targets, this was the love of her life.

  ‘We are very near the overdraft limit; it’s one of the reasons I flew back from New York.’

  New York this time, but it might have been Zürich or Johannesburg or Hamburg, wherever the money was moving.

  Coffin’s wandering, disappearing mother had deposited her children round the world like misplaced luggage. She had left Coffin in London, Lætitia in New York, and William in Scotland, where he, too, had gone into law. One way and another the law had claimed all three. It said something about their mother, Coffin thought: she had been beyond the law, so all her children had run for cover in it. Unconsciously, of course, not aware of their motivation, since their mother had never allowed them to know her. Disappearance was her theme. She had left her memoirs with Letty, perhaps trusting her business sense most. They were now with John Coffin, who struggled at intervals to make them into something that could be published. Such a life deserved fame, he had said to Letty, even if posthumous. Assuming his mother was in fact dead – nothing seemed certain about that lady.

  ‘Stella will be back,’ said Alice. Letty had seized on Alice, whom she did not know, as she arrived at the door of the theatre where a dress rehearsal of Aylmer’s End, the next play in line in the Experimental Theatre, was just beginning. Alice looked a commanding and somewhat enigmatic figure. Not one to appeal to Letty. On Alice’s side, Letty looked like a natural enemy.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’ Letty knew that since Alfreda Boxer, the theatre manager, had departed – to die quietly it was rumoured – there had been much shifting of management personnel.

  ‘Stella interviewed another manager before she went away,’ said Alice artlessly. ‘But I don’t know what decision she came to.’

  ‘So there’s no one?’

  ‘We all help out. And Debby Anglin has been coming in as a temp … she’s doing a degree at the university in business studies. And I’ve been helping as secretary, because since Jacky’s boyfriend won a prize in the lottery we haven’t seen her any more.’

  Letty rolled her eyes. ‘As I said: no one. Good job I’m here.’ Why did Alice give her the impression she might as well have been talking in a foreign language?

  Alice looked at her with envy: this year Letty’s hair was a soft blonde with a hint, just a hint, of silver here and there; she was wearing a brightly checked dress cut by a master’s hands; and she was thinner than anyone had a right to be. Alice almost hated her.

  Letty took from the desk all the papers she judged important, saying she would deal with them. There was a lot of her money in the theatre and she intended to save it. She gave Alice a questioning look. The plays? she was asking.

  ‘There’s always one on the stage and one in rehearsal and one on the go in the background – casting and that sort of thing,’ said Alice, in her usual neutral yet edgy manner.

  Letty patted her arm. ‘Cheer up. Don’t be nervous. Know what my first husband taught me? Never trust a man who is nervous. What has he got to hide? Applies to women, too. Act confident.’

  ‘I feel nervous.’

  ‘Stella will be back,’ said Letty. Maybe without an arm or a leg – why did that thought flash through her mind? – damaged in some way, but back.

  In the theatre bar, run by Max as she remembered, she saw a group sitting at a table drinking coffee. They looked up as she walked over.

  ‘Letty Bingham.’ She held out her hand. ‘Stella’s business partner.’ She did not recognize any of them from past performances, but she knew that Stella’s casts came and went. One of the girls had a face she had seen before, probably on television. They introduced themselves: Jane Gillam, Fanny Burt and a slightly older girl, Irene Bow. It was she whose face seemed familiar, and yes, Letty knew the name now, and she had been on television. Would be somehow, Irene had a televisual face if ever there was one. The two young men stood up politely.

  ‘Michael Guardian, and this is Tom Jenks … We are both in Noises Off.’

  ‘I am glad you’ve come,’ volunteered Jane. ‘We’ve felt a bit lost without Stella.’

  ‘You’re all doing fine.’ Irene Bow patted her arm.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Fanny said. ‘You’re only here for a few weeks or so of rehearsal time and then going off on tour, but we are going to be here for the next three months.’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the two young men. Letty felt they were all watching her to see what she would say. ‘I will keep an eye on things,’ she promised. It was about all she could say, and perhaps not too convincing, but they looked relieved. ‘I’ll keep the money side in order, that I can promise. There hasn’t been any special trouble?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Jane.

  ‘Except for my dresser buggering off,’ said Irene Bow.

  ‘Old Maisie? She really only works for Stella. She wanted to do you, Irene, because she admires you so
much,’ said Jane, who had obviously appointed herself peacemaker-in-chief.

  ‘Only she hasn’t.’

  ‘She sent a message saying she couldn’t come in. She probably felt ill.’

  Irene Bow laughed. ‘Oh, well, I’m used to roughing it. Good job it isn’t a costume drama, although some of the changes are quick.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Letty, as she moved away.

  On the way out, she stood for a moment watching the rehearsal of Aylmer’s End, the work of a local author, and seriously doubted if this particular play would do. But who could tell?

  The set was a sitting room with a fireplace, dead with no fire. A table with four chairs round it and three people mid stage. All wore blue jeans and identical checked shirts. One wore an apron, thus denoting sex.

  ‘This place is a cesspit,’ proclaimed the young actress who was centre stage; it was she who wore the apron. ‘A sexist cesspit.’ She took off the apron and threw it towards one of the men. ‘Here, you wear this.’

  ‘Shit,’ said the actor. He left the apron on the floor where it had fallen, moved towards the fireplace and began warming his hands, ‘I am not playing that game.’

  Lesser Albee, thought Letty, would-be Wesker, a touch of the Osbornes. Perhaps Alice was right to be nervous.

  She turned away. It was interesting, she thought, how quickly Stella and her company of players had been able to bring about that dusty, musty theatre smell of scenery and painted furniture in what had been not so long ago a church.

  As Letty walked across the courtyard to her brother’s dwelling in the church tower, she admitted that, absent though she might be, Stella was a professional and probably knew that everyone of the author’s friends, enemies and relations (who might be the same thing) would come to Aylmer’s End. She also noted with some respect for Stella’s acumen that the play ran for only three days, and no matinees – the afternoons being reserved for readings from Shakespeare: Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night. ‘Set texts for end-of-term exams,’ she told herself. Yes, Stella would get her money back, and probably pay for the next generation of young performers whom she would employ in later productions. She was not adventurous, but, as her business partner, Letty could not be critical. Indeed, she was grateful that Stella was not the sort of producer to have those mad, original, four-o’clock-in-the-morning ideas that lose money.

  All the same, she would have liked Stella to show up. Had she gone off on some sexual fling? No support from her brother for that theory; he would have none of it. With some irritation, Letty thought he would rather his wife were dead than unfaithful. Yet there was a lot he was not telling her. She did not count herself psychic, but she had much experience in lies and evasions – it was her job, after all. And Letty was convinced a man came in somewhere.

  She paused at the bottom of the tower where her brother lived, wondering if he was there. Then she heard the dog bark, so she pulled on the bell till it rang loud and long. She was aware that many security cameras and spyholes protected the tower, thus Coffin certainly knew who was ringing the bell. No doubt he was looking at her.

  She waited patiently till she heard Augustus bark again, from nearer this time, which heralded the approach of her brother.

  ‘Ah, so you are here. In hiding?’

  ‘Working at home.’ He looked tired and drawn, but was as neatly dressed as ever in well-cut trousers with a grey silk shirt.

  ‘Same thing,’ she said, pushing past him, patting Augustus on the head. ‘I preferred the old dog, really. I like a dog who looks as though he has lived and Gussy here is a bit bland, aren’t you, old boy? Right, right, you didn’t ask me, and the old dog died. This one will do.’ Augustus showed his teeth at her, not entirely amiably, as if he understood a judgement was being passed on him. ‘I have been to the theatre, had a look round. We certainly need Stella there. I can do the money, but she has the flair. There’s a play being rehearsed at the moment which will fall on its face if she isn’t there to pull it together. I didn’t get any clues as to why she had gone.’

  ‘Her dresser, Maisie, might be helpful,’ said Coffin, closing the door. ‘But she seems to have gone to ground, too.’

  ‘Not with Stella?’

  Coffin shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It seems she’s taken herself off for a little holiday. She prefers to work exclusively for Stella, you see, so if Stella is not playing, she’s free if she chooses – that’s the usual rule. I’ve put Phoebe Astley on to finding her … Come on up and have a drink.’

  Letty looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘No, I’m not on to the whisky. I will have tea, the Englishman’s ruin. You can drink what you like.’

  She followed him up the stairs to the kitchen, where there was a teapot; she touched it to check: hot. ‘I talked to a girl called Alice. She may have been keeping something back, I couldn’t be sure. I suppose they have all been questioned?’ She sat down opposite Coffin.

  ‘They don’t know where Stella is, or why she went off – I am sure of that. But Maisie may,’ said Coffin, adjusting his feet so that Augustus could settle there with comfort to them both. ‘Yes, she was close to Maisie.’ There was pain in his voice. He had thought that Stella was close to him. Would she tell things to Maisie that she would not tell him? The answer seemed to be: Yes.

  ‘I could go to see where Maisie lives, if you like?’

  ‘No, leave it to Phoebe Astley he said, his voice heavy. ‘It may need the official touch.

  In other words, thought Letty, you want it all kept under the official cover.

  She poured milk in her tea and drank it down, then got to her feet. ‘If I hear anything, in any way, of course I will let you know. Meanwhile, I must be off, usual address.’ Letty maintained a smart Docklands maisonette, part of an old factory. It was one of her many addresses around the world.

  ‘I know where to find you.’

  ‘Shake yourself up and get out into the world again, that’s my advice to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Letty.’ Coffin managed a smile. Letty always knew best.

  ‘I will keep an eye on the business side of things at the theatre. You can rely on me there.’

  He saw her down the stairs, with Augustus trotting behind. ‘Like me to take the dog for a run?’ she offered.

  ‘No, thanks, Letty. I will take him, he’s company.’ Coffin leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. It was a rare embrace between them.

  Letty walked round to where she had parked her car. She sat there for a minute, considering the Chief Commander’s state. He’s wretched. Damn Stella, what does she think she is about? She drove away angrily. Wait till I see her. If she ever did.

  By the time Coffin and his little acolyte got to the top of the stairs, the telephone was ringing. He picked it up in a mixture of hope and fear.

  ‘Phoebe Astley here. You on your own?’

  ‘Go ahead, Phoebe, I’m on my own. What is it?’

  ‘I thought you might have someone with you.’

  She must be sitting round the corner in her car, using the mobile.

  ‘My sister has just left.’

  ‘Saw her car. Didn’t know how things were between you two.’

  Yes, you do, Phoebe, Coffin said silently. What you mean is that you don’t like Letty, another female powerhouse like you are. How could you like each other?

  ‘I haven’t managed to see Maisie, and the neighbours weren’t much help, although one of them said they had seen a man sitting in a car watching the house. May mean nothing. Others say they haven’t seen her for some days, but they say she’s like that: pops off to see friends, doesn’t care about the garden, it can run wild for all she cares. They like her, though, a good sort if you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No,’ Phoebe sounded troubled. ‘She’s worth digging out … Eden says that Maisie has been worried about Stella for some days.’ Eden Brown worked in the theatre’s costume room (among other
tasks; she filled in where necessary and was happy to do it). She had once managed a dress shop in Calcutta Street in Spinnergate, and had fallen into trouble and been investigated by Phoebe Astley. Events had moved on and Eden had taken herself happily to work for Stella, whom she adored, and now shared a flat with Phoebe, both parties enjoying a cautious friendship. ‘I’d like to have another look round Maisie’s place. I might want to go in … check over the house.’

  ‘Have you any solid reason?’

  ‘No, just a feeling about Maisie. She might even know where Stella is.’ And why, she said to herself; a question from which she knew the Chief Commander flinched, and from the answer even more.

  ‘Before you do this, come up – I want a word.’

  ‘Right now? OK. If you lend me the dog, I can pretend I am taking him for a walk while I have a prowl round Gosterwoood Street.’ She took a breath. ‘Just got to make another call on my mobile. I’ll be up in a minute.’ She did not wish Coffin to hear her call.

  She made a call to Chief Superintendent Young: ‘We’re in action.’

  The Chief Superintendent, who had also had a call to something of the same effect from Letty Bingham, nodded to himself. ‘It’s always the women who work the trick with him,’ said Archie Young. He did not say it unkindly, for he liked the Chief Commander, but rather as one who states a fact.

  When Phoebe banged on his door, the Chief Commander was ready for her. ‘I’m coming with you, Augustus can stay here. I’ll drive.’ Don’t want you doing anything illegal, he thought. But he did not say so aloud.

  ‘OK, sir, if that suits you. You know where Gosterwood Street is?’

  ‘Of course I do: parallel with Calcutta Street where Eden had her shop.’

  Phoebe nodded.

  ‘Let’s go, then. Does she live there alone?’

  ‘I believe so. It was her mother’s house which she inherited.’

  ‘They are small, those houses,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘Pity the neighbours weren’t more help.’