Coffin in Fashion

by Gwendoline Butler

  They sat on for a while in silence. Steve obviously did not feel impelled to speak. Rose could have told them that at no time did he feel that obligation.

  Lovella Fraser stood up. ‘We can’t leave the matter here, Steve, Mrs Hilaire, I’m sure you see that. The police will want to go on questioning you, Steve, and Sergeant Gilmour will probably have to take you down to the police station.’

  —And you will be out of my hands and not under my direction to make you speak or not to speak. What she was doing was a failure of her responsibility to the boy, but a holding operation as regards her own career.

  Sergeant Joan Gilmour got up too. ‘Mrs Hilaire will have to come too. She must be there when we talk to her son.’ Her voice was not friendly. Rose, an old inhabitant of Paradise Street, who had heard that tone from the police before, at once felt three feet tall and aged five, and someone who had stolen a bar of chocolate. Stolen it, as she now recalled, not because she had no money but because chocolate was rationed.

  Rose stood up too, and as she did so brushed against the desk where the sports bag and its contents were laid out. The red boots slid to the floor.

  Not one of them wanted to touch the boots, that was suddenly obvious.

  And out of the boot rolled a small red object which moved a few feet across the floor with a funny little sideways motion like a crab.

  Rose recognized it at once as a little spool such as was sometimes used in her factory to wind off surplus silk from the machines. A lot of pure silk thread was used, too expensive to waste. This was bright red silk like blood. One of Gabriel’s designs had called for such silk. Rose knew it came from Belmodes, without another look.

  It brought her factory right into the affair. Something would have to be done about it, although she wasn’t sure what exactly.

  Steve had been quicker than she; his foot had shot out and covered the spool. Their eyes met. He was almost going to say something to her.

  ‘Raise your foot, Steve,’ said the woman detective.

  Rose took a deep breath. ‘We’ll come down to the station with you,’ not removing her eyes from Steve’s foot. ‘I’ll drive. I’ve got my car. We’ll go together.’

  It had got past denials and silence. She could see that even if Steve couldn’t.

  After all, Coffin had had a happy couple of days; he had telephoned his house at midday and one of the workmen had answered. So he knew they were there, and might even be at work. It was even probable they were, since he had taken the precaution of asking his former landlady, now retired, Mrs Lorimer, to look in. She had a way with the idle.

  Work, a dull but tricky investigation of an armed robbery, together with fraud and murder, had taken him out of his base all the afternoon, so that he almost missed an urgent personal telephone call. His work was undercover and it was best done discreetly. He was out of touch a good deal, that was policy. The whole area was experiencing a sharp uprise in crime, some small and petty, some violent, and Coffin was concerned about this. Another problem was drugs. A lot of hemp, a little heroin, and the new one to watch for, LSD 25, lysergic acid diethylamide, the hallucinatory drug, the so-called ‘Vision of Hell’ mixture.

  He might have missed the call altogether if he hadn’t dashed back to collect something; he had forgotten a lot of things lately and although it worried him he knew why: it was because he had one big thing he was remembering.

  ‘Listen, you’ve got to know this.’ It was Mary Lorimer speaking; she didn’t announce herself which was unusual for her. ‘They’ve found a dead body in your house.’ The line went dead, again unlike Mrs Lorimer, who could usually be relied on for a good spell. It was a mark of her disturbance. Afterwards he discovered it was because she felt sick, having seen the remains.

  It seemed the workmen had had a good day, Coffin’s house warm and sunny. They inspected the roof first, then decided that the first task should be the floor in the kitchen. Coffin was having most of the floorboards replaced with good new wood. They started taking them up …

  As Coffin walked down Mouncy Street, he saw a police car parked down the road. Outside his house. He started to hurry.

  A body? In his house. His first house with a big mortgage still on it. Well, he would have to stay, he could not afford to move out. It was the first time he had had such a thoroughly unprofessional reaction to a corpse.

  ‘I’m a first-time buyer,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m bound to feel bad.’ It was not what he had expected in home-owning. He followed into the house a small, dark young woman, carrying a medical bag: he knew her to be the new Home Office forensic pathologist seconded to this Division.

  He walked into the house. The front door opened into a small hall from which a small living-room opened to the right-hand side. Straight ahead was the old kitchen and behind the scullery. All these houses in Mouncy Street were the same.

  The floor was up in the kitchen, but it was possible to tread across it by means of the underpinnings to the scullery, which was where everyone seemed to be.

  The floor was up here too, but having been so rotten this was no surprise, nor was the stale smell in the air. He had smelt it every day since he had moved in and been told it was damp rot.

  He went up to the door and looked down. They hadn’t left it prone there for him to look at, they were waiting for the forensic team plus the photographers as he very well knew, but he felt a sense of possession about this poor sad object.

  The two uniformed policemen both knew him, and nodded. ‘Glad you got here. Been trying to get in touch.’

  ‘I was out on a job.’

  ‘Haven’t seen you since that Wimpy Bar murder. Not round here, anyway.’

  ‘Only just moved in. Well, not long anyway.’

  ‘How long, John?’

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘Well, you’re in luck there.’

  They both moved over side by side and looked down the hole from a better point. The sunlight through the window showed how dark and stained the bundle was, bursting through its paper wrapping. It was unmistakably human, and yet … ‘Been there some time,’ said Coffin.

  ‘I think so. Now, if you’d been living here for the last year …’

  ‘You’d be asking me questions.’ There was a grim humour in their interchange.

  They still stared. Coffin spoke first.

  ‘Small.’ It was small.

  ‘Might not all be there.’

  ‘Cut up, you mean?’

  ‘Well, in bits.’

  Joints in wrapping? No, it was a complete thing in itself.

  Coffin shook his head. ‘That’s not the way it looks to me.’ He turned away. ‘It’s a whole thing, whatever it is.’ He knew without realizing why that it was somehow worse than that.

  As he walked away he understood why: he had seen a tiny, tiny little finger protruding from one end of the bundle.

  It was a kid down there, a little shrivelled-up kid.

  Once before in his professional life, early on when he was just starting out, Coffin had been involved with a child case. Well, there had been others, but that first one had been the marker. That first child had turned up safe, as it happened.

  With a sigh, he could foretell all that was going to happen to him and his house now. They were going to be invaded. Uniformed policemen, plainclothes detectives, all together with forensic scientists and other laboratory workers would be made free of his house. The whole scene of the crime outfit would have a passport. As would the photographers, and possibly their partners if they could manage it. The only person who was likely to be kept out was John Coffin.

  ‘The place has been empty for nearly two years,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s why I got it cheap.’

  Now he knew what part of the price might be it did not seem so cheap. But he still wanted to live in it. Everyone had to have a home and this was going to be his.

  ‘Well, I’ll just go outside and have a smoke.’ There was a minute front garden with a red brick wall. He could
sit on the wall in the sun and make a public spectacle of himself. ‘Who’s coming down, do you know?’ He meant: which officer is going to head the investigation team? He knew most of the local men and had worked with some. With none was he specially friendly, they were a clannish lot round here.

  ‘Jim Pedler, I think.’

  He certainly knew Jim Pedler and had some respect for the Inspector. Or at any rate for his power of rising through the ranks. Whether he could see further into the wood than anyone else was another matter.

  ‘He knows how to use a team,’ he assessed.

  ‘He’s the boss,’ said the young policeman. His tone said: and one I have to live with.

  There was the sound of a car door banging and a brisk voice announced the arrival of Inspector Pedler and his associates. Coffin quietly withdrew.

  As he had planned, he sat on the wall in the sun and smoked a cigarette. He was experimenting with Turkish cigarettes, on the grounds that they represented a kind of luxury and he ought to know about luxury. He could not afford any other kind.

  ‘I’ll be around for a bit if you want me,’ he said as he left the house. ‘It’s my evening class tonight.’

  He got the baffled look of incomprehension he expected. This would have been intensified if he had said, not: Yes, it’s woodwork; but: Actually, it’s genealogy.

  To take his mind off the small body in the house behind him, he thought about his genealogy class and his reason for taking it.

  He had a good sound practical reason, or so he told himself, but it might have been self-deception, he might just have been indulging a private fantasy.

  Several years ago he had been searching for a long-lost sibling. About whom he had been told by an elderly relative. Another and younger child of his mother who had been put out to adoption. Or lost. Sometimes he thought deliberately lost. He had been on the hunt for this lost brother or sister. At one time he thought he had a good lead through a friendly butcher’s, one of whom might have adopted this child. But that had come to nothing. He had gone on with the search to no purpose.

  Now he had a new approach: he would dig back into the family history and see if something emerged that way. To teach him how to do this basic research he was attending classes on the subject at the local Adult Education Centre on Charlton Hill. Mrs Lorimer believed his real reason was that he fancied the class teacher.

  He did like the girl, it must be admitted, but his heart was still locked in a love-affair of long ago. Long to him, that is, a matter of six years, although when he worked on his genealogy it counted as but yesterday.

  As he sat there smoking, he looked down the road to where the Belmodes factory was just visible. Old inhabitants, of whom he was beginning to know a few, had told him that before it was Belmodes making clothes, it was a furniture factory that did not survive the war.

  One cigarette and then another. He took a stroll up the road and then back again, vaguely seeking entertainment. He could have thought about the case he was working on, but there had been three fruitless days on that and he wanted a change. He could have thought about his evening class, but even that did not attract at the moment.

  The working day was over at Belmodes, but there were still women about, popping in and out of the shops. He was bound to say that they looked cheerful and not toilworn. Whatever it was Belmodes was clearly not a sweatshop. A small crowd of onlookers was standing to stare curiously at his house with the sinister activity within. Somehow, they knew there was a body found.

  Walking on her own was a girl he recognized. He had seen her only that morning at the bus stop where he changed buses. As a matter of fact he saw her every morning. She was an exceedingly pretty girl and she wore the short skirts he liked. So this was where she came.

  He stood up, not without the hope of attracting her attention. As she drew level their eyes met. She looked first surprised, then pleased.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Gabriel blushed. ‘I’ve seen you at the bus stop.’

  ‘I know. I remember.’

  ‘Did you notice? I didn’t know … Do you live here?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Coffin grimly.

  Gabriel’s gaze flickered to the police car. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  She accepted the cautious reply for the dubious currency it was. A childhood in Paradise Street had accustomed her to both police cars and evasive replies.

  ‘The police is the police.’ She had her portfolio of photographed designs under her arm; she was already experiencing the first feelings of guilt about what she was doing to Rose. She gave Coffin a wave, then walked on. ‘One of them behind you wants you,’ she said over her shoulder.

  The uniformed man walked down the path to John Coffin and sat down on the wall.

  ‘You’re in luck.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘The body is only half yours. You share it with next door. The whole parcel is part under your floor, and part under next door. Looks as though it may have gone in that way.’

  ‘That house is lived in.’

  ‘A year ago it wasn’t.’

  ‘A year, eh? As long as that?’

  ‘The lady doc says so. And it’s upset her. A boy it is, young kid. And so she thought it might be the Humphreys boy. His red boots have turned up locally, so it all fitted in. But no: this one’s been in too long.’

  And yet Coffin had thought it might be even longer. The dried-up-looking parcel he had seen had looked as if more years than one had browned it. Done it to a turn.

  ‘Apparently there’s something in the soil round here that dries out tissue but also darkens. Too much of something or the other, the doc says.’ His tone was respectful.

  Dr Mary MacMiller was a newcomer, but one to be handled carefully; she had a sharp way with those who presumed on her sex and good looks.

  ‘Clue to identity?’

  The other policeman shook his head.

  ‘So now it’s Who, When, How?’

  ‘The usual three.’

  ‘Well, it’s your case,’ said Coffin cheerfully. ‘And not mine. I only live here.’

  Chapter Two

  When Gabriel saw the women workers going into Belmodes in the mornings, she marvelled at the work they turned out. In a time of full employment such as they were enjoying, Rose Hilaire had had to take what workers she could get. What she got were a few young girls and a group of middle-aged women coming back to work after years of running a home. The miracle was that Rose had welded them into a team, and one with a sense of responsibility as well as high standards. Looking at them as they streamed in and stamped their time cards and took off nylon headscarfs and tweed coats, she could hardly believe the delicacy and precision of the work they would presently produce. When she sat in the rest-room and watched them eat their sandwiches (Rose was planning a canteen, but had not built it yet), she was always pleasantly surprised that no crumbs and grease got on to the delicate fabrics. But they never did.

  ‘Gabriel – can I tell you something?’

  She took a long drink of hot black coffee and swallowed two aspirins. She had a bad headache and a worse case of bad conscience. A restless night’s sleep had not eased her mind at all. She had a small art room at Belmodes where she was meant to design, but in fact she wandered around restlessly when ideas ran short. She was at present in the rest-room.

  ‘What is it, Shirley?’

  Shirley was one of Rose’s best workers; she could cut a pattern like an angel, and get more dresses out of a given length of material than you would think possible. Rose, no mean exponent of that art, had trained her herself.

  Shirley had been born around the corner from Paradise Street but was busy easing herself out of its influence. She was ambitious. If Gabriel eyed Rose enviously, then Shirley was probably eyeing Gabriel. As far as Gabriel could see, she had enormous talent and style, but had no formal training in design. This might or might not matter, G
abriel was still marking time on this one. The two young women usually eyed each other warily.

  ‘It’s about Steve … well, and what happened yesterday. Should we say anything to Rose? You know, say how sorry we are. Or should we say nothing? You know her better than we do.’

  The whole muttered conversation in the workrooms that morning had been about the body found in Mouncy Street and the connection of the dead body with Steve Hilaire.

  Everyone knew how he had been taken down to the police station with his mother late yesterday afternoon. They also knew he had come back.

  ‘Not sure about that.’ Gabriel hesitated. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ persisted Shirley. ‘You work with her more. And we want to get it right. Do we say something or not?’

  Rumours had been flying around the workrooms all the morning, varying in intensity and accuracy with the character of the speaker. Rose was mostly liked and respected as an employer, but inevitably she had her critics. One of these, a stockroom assistant called Ted Tipper who had clashed more than once with Rose on union matters, had said that he had heard that Rose herself had been questioned about the finding of the red boots in Steve’s sports bag. The general reaction was that perhaps she had, perhaps she hadn’t. Ted was a man working in a factory run by women for women and he appeared to resent it. He had a harried existence.

  ‘Ask Dagmar.’ If anyone was close to Rose, it was Dagmar.

  ‘You know she won’t talk. It’s a fact of life that Dagmar will not talk about Rose. Whether that means she loves her or hates her, I’ve never felt sure.’

  Gabriel ignored that comment. In her opinion Dagmar Blond had total loyalty to her employer and love did not come into it. The roots were probably economic and historical.

  ‘Well, Steve’s back. He’s gone to school, as far as you know. It’s a nothing; I should ignore it.’

  ‘But they’ve found a dead body. And not far away from here.’

  ‘Not the body of the boy who is missing, though. Not the boy from Hook Road School. I mean, the body that’s been found had nothing to do with Steve or Rose.’