Coffin in Fashion

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Just about,’ said Jordan.

  ‘And you’re concentrating on three sites: Belmodes, Rose Hilaire’s flat, and my house in Mouncy Street?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘Not that I know.’

  Well, he had got Phil Jordan talking, and this was what he had got.

  ‘We shall go over the Belmodes factory from wall to wall.’

  Coffin wondered if, somehow, the story of Rose Hilaire’s nightmare had reached police ears. Not impossible.

  There is always a point in every case where direct evidence has to give way to circumstantial evidence. What would they call this fantasy of Rose’s?

  He thought it was the end of the conversation, but Jordan had a surprise for him.

  He offered it to Coffin, not as a prize, but more as an afterthought. He swirled the beer in his glass, staring at it as if it was tea and he was reading the leaves.

  ‘We found out a funny thing about the kids, lads really, they weren’t so young. In all the cases they’d had a violent experience in earlier childhood. Seen violence.’ He ticked them off like items in a catalogue. ‘Body Number One, the first buried, turns out to have been in a railway accident – the one at London Bridge, when he was four. Buried under debris for hours till he was got out. Said to remember nothing about it. That’s interesting, if you like.’

  ‘He must have remembered a bit.’

  ‘Didn’t want to. Got it inside him like a stomachache. The other boy, the first one found, your body.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Even in a joke he didn’t want it called his.

  ‘Well, that boy was rescued from a burning house. One his own father set alight, I may say, by falling asleep when drinking.’

  ‘And Ephraim Humphreys?’

  ‘Oh yes, him.’ Jordan frowned. ‘He fell off a cliff as a toddler. Fell or was pushed. There was some doubt whether another child had pushed him or not. All in the way of fun, of course. That wasn’t the end of it: Ephraim didn’t fall far, he got caught in a bush, but he saw the man who was trying to rescue him go all the way down.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  ‘I wonder if it mattered? We’ve all been through the war. Lot of violence in everyone’s past.’ Jordan, although a great picker-up of interesting details, as now, had no great love for psychological probes. ‘Another thing: not one of the victims has a proper father. One’s dead, one’s in prison, and the other is a sailor.’

  ‘Ephraim?’

  ‘His father is a wanderer.’ Jordan ruminated. ‘So each of the victims has a similar profile.’

  Sometimes he said good things as if by chance. Coffin envied him his knack.

  The same profile of violence, seen and endured; the same parental hole to be filled by someone or something.

  How did the victims’ profiles match with that of their killers? Perhaps they fitted together with the protuberances of one party fitting into the hollows of the other to make a perfect whole.

  Or, put another way, what one had to offer the other needed.

  His friend had one further shock for him. ‘There’s one thing the scientific boys have put forward as a speculation. They’re not sure, but they think it looks as if all three bodies were trussed up like parcels. When newly dead, and before rigor mortis had set in. They detect marks. Almost as if they were going to be posted. Parcel post.’

  He had a rotten sense of humour. What he had to say made Coffin feel sick.

  ‘Wonder who the postman was?’

  Chapter Eleven

  The talk at the Red Anchor had gone on longer than he had expected, and he still had to tell Gabriel and Rose, who must be sitting somewhere waiting anxiously.

  He found them in a melancholy group, joined by Charley, in Cat’s Coffee Shop.

  ‘How did you know where to find us?’

  ‘I used my deductive, detective powers. I rang both homes and got no answer. And then I saw Rose’s car.’

  ‘Can’t miss it, can you?’ Rose was half proud, half disconcerted. ‘Everyone knows my car.’

  He sat down beside them. Cat, unasked, produced a cheese sandwich and a cup of frothing coffee. He decided to eat the sandwich and ignore the coffee. He was old enough to remember coffee that did not have a collection of bubbles on top.

  Over the sandwich, he gave them a suitably edited version of what he had learned. He did not tell them that the bodies had been dealt with like parcels. Nor of the detritus found upon them.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Rose. ‘They have a good idea who they are after and now they are looking for evidence to back it up.’ Life in Paradise Street had made her cynical about police work. ‘We might as well go home and watch.’

  ‘Will they let us?’ Gabriel took over John Coffin’s neglected cup and began to drink it in anxious little sips.

  ‘They’re all over my place too,’ said Charley. ‘The studio, all the store-rooms. The darkroom, even. I had to give them the keys. Just because I’m your tenant, Rose.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, blame Gabriel. She got me in.’ He laughed, as if the idea amused him.

  ‘If you’re worried,’ Coffin reminded him, ‘remember, I’m in there with you. It’s my house in Mouncy Street.’

  ‘Oh, no one suspects you. Not really.’ Gabriel put down the cup, a little line of froth on her upper lip like a moustache. She looked pretty but pale, for once not concerned for her appearance but for her friends.

  ‘Policemen have been killers before now.’

  Rose said: ‘Gabriel, if I’m arrested, you must take over. You will be in charge of Belmodes. Don’t let Dagmar get control; I fear that above anything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gabriel, both excited and frightened at the prospect. ‘I think I can manage Dagmar.’

  ‘As for the shops, let Lesley Jones who runs Beau-champ Place shop be in charge of the whole chain. She’s got a head on her shoulders. But keeps her hands out of the till.’

  Gabriel nodded solemnly. ‘You can trust me.’

  Coffin finished his sandwich. This was a side of both women he had never seen, although Charley could have enlightened him.

  He felt sad. Rose’s kingdom was being divided up. He wanted to say, ‘Don’t do it. Remember King Lear. You’ll never get it back.’ He chewed the dry crust without speaking. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps Gabriel was to be trusted. But he felt instinctively that in matters of this sort, she was not. ‘Can I finish my coffee, please? If there’s any left. This bread is rather dry.’

  Masculine intuition, he thought; these two, perhaps you shouldn’t trust it, but these two between them could stitch me up.

  ‘It’s a horrible business.’ Rose sounded deeply troubled. ‘These poor boys. I wonder what else they will discover.’ She got up to go. ‘I’ll pay for everyone, Cat. My party.’

  ‘Won’t the police still be in your place?’

  ‘Yes. I gave them the keys. But they can’t keep me out of my own house, can they?’ She looked at Coffin with inquiry.

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘I have to collect Steve. I left instructions he was not to go home on his own. Ever. Don’t want him going missing.’

  ‘You’ll find that difficult to keep up,’ observed Charley. ‘Where is he now, for instance?’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Well after school hours, I’d say.’

  ‘Tonight he goes swimming with the PT teacher in charge. I collect him from the swimming pool. Now.’

  Coffin rose with her. ‘Can you give me a ride back to Mrs Lorimer’s?’

  Rose was silent in the car, but she drove in her usual manner only rather faster. In fact, very fast.

  ‘Worried about Steve?’ Coffin hung on to the side of the car door as it swerved round a cyclist.

  ‘A bit. But he’ll wait for me.’

  ‘So what’s worrying you?’

  ‘After all we’ve been talking about? Obvious, I should think.’

  ‘I saw your face half way through the talk.
What did that expression mean?’

  Rose drove silently for a few minutes. Up the hill, across the Heath to Lorimer’s, newly painted battleship grey, Mrs Lorimer’s favourite colour.

  ‘You know my nightmare – that I am seeing a dead boy (whom I never recognize) on the ground at my feet. Sometimes I seem to be floating above it all, and sometimes I am so much inside I can smell the boy.’

  Coffin kept silent.

  ‘This time as I talked I felt the ground move. It moves, I thought. My feet feel movement.’

  She turned to look at him, taking her eyes dangerously off the road. ‘You believe me? Supposing I killed them? Can you do it and not know? A kind of automatic killing in sleep?’

  Cautiously he said, ‘In certain circumstances, yes. Not you, though.’

  Rose kept her eyes on him. ‘No?’

  ‘No. I never believed you didn’t know something more real in your mind. In the beginning, yes, it was a kind of dream. But little by little you’ve remembered. If remembered is the word.’

  Her eyes dropped.

  ‘One day you are going to tell me just a little bit more of this experience of yours.’

  Through stiff lips, she said. ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rose leaned across to open the door on his side. ‘You get out here.’

  Rose drove home, collecting Steve, who was waiting for her, in company with Jim Gordon, the games and swimming specialist from Hook Road. Mr Gordon also taught woodwork and gardening, the educational powers-that-be liking to get value for money. Only religious instruction was denied him. He was also the driver of the school mini-bus which was Hook Road’s current pride. Mr Gordon let no one else touch it.

  Rose and Jim Gordon were old acquaintances and enemies. Steve had had many a brush with Gordon long before the matter of Ephraim’s boots in his sports bag. Steve had always been a natural upsetter of any apple-cart his foot came near, whereas Jim Gordon was a sheriff at heart. He was a tall, burly man, in whose company, it always seemed to Rose, Steve looked like a prisoner.

  They were standing side by side now, and came forward together to the car, and although Jim Gordon had not got his hand on Steve’s shoulder, Rose got the distinct impression he might have had.

  As they drove away, Rose said, ‘Are you on bad terms with that man?’

  ‘No.’ Monosyllabic with her as ever, Steve could get feeling into one word.

  ‘But you don’t like each other?’

  ‘He’s a teacher.’

  For Steve, that was communication.

  Rose drove on home. She knew for certain now, in the way that mothers can, that Steve was protecting someone, probably a man, possibly a teacher, but someone who had authority over him. Someone he both respected and feared.

  As it might be you, she told herself ironically.

  At the door of the flat, Rose said, ‘I’ve made shepherd’s pie for your supper, your favourite.’

  ‘You didn’t make it. Mrs Hodges made it.’ Steve was talking to her that much. Mrs Hodges was Rose’s daily house-cleaner and occasional cook.

  ‘I did the essential part,’ said Rose. ‘I ordered it.’ Laugh, damn you, she thought; I’ve made a joke. Not a good one, a very small one, but in the circumstances I deserve a laugh.

  The savoury smell greeted them as they went through the door.

  A woman detective whose face she recognized was standing waiting for her.

  ‘Mrs Hilaire? We’re just about finished. I’m Joan Gilmour.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Rose was polite. ‘We met at Hook Road School.’

  ‘That’s right. ’Evening, Steve.’ She gave the boy a smile.

  Steve did not smile back. ‘Why are they here, Mum?’

  For the first time he sounded a boy.

  ‘Thanks for letting us have the keys.’ Joan Gilmour ignored him. Two could play at his game. ‘We’ve had a survey. I stayed behind to say so. We may be back.’

  Rose nodded. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I hope we haven’t marked your lovely floor. Well, I’ll be off. Your supper smells good.’

  Rose closed the door behind Joan Gilmour, then followed her son into the kitchen. ‘It would be nice not to have to talk about this, Steve, but we have to.’ As she spoke she was laying him a place at the kitchen table, and serving him his meal. She got a salad, already prepared, out of the refrigerator and laid it on the table. Too much lettuce and not enough cucumber as usual, Mrs Hodges would never learn. Not a bit of pepper, either, unless that green thing lurking under a leaf was one. Mrs Hodges had never mastered the idea of colour in a salad, she seemed to think what you needed was a match. ‘The police were searching this flat for certain sorts of evidence.’ She did not go into details. ‘We have to hope they did not find any.’

  Steve started to eat; swimming makes you hungry, and it was his favourite supper.

  An irrational anger swept over Rose, so that, although she had planned his favourite food and was anxious for him to enjoy it, she now wanted to strike the fork from his lips.

  She did the next best thing. ‘Steve, do you miss Ephraim?’

  He paused, fork in hand.

  ‘You must miss Ephraim.’ She stared him out. ‘Come on now. You know what I mean, you know what I’m getting at.’

  He lowered his eyes. ‘Yes, I miss him. We did play together, but I wasn’t with him the time he disappeared. It was the day you took me to the Beatles.’

  Rose nodded; so it had been.

  ‘You went to the house in Mouncy Street together?’

  ‘You know that. But not after it was sold.’ He looked down at his plate. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Who did you meet there?’

  He shook his head. Did he mutter no one?

  ‘You wouldn’t lie to me? No, silence is your thing.’

  So it was. Steve had developed silence creatively.

  ‘There’s a question I should have asked before this, Steve.’ Only I was frightened. ‘What sort of games did you and Ephraim get up to?’

  No answer.

  Leaving him to his meal, she went into the sitting-room.

  The highly polished wooden floor was marked here and there with chalk rings, like an infection. She knelt down to look. Inside each ring was one of those pitted scratches where Steve’s boots had marked the oak. Almost certainly one or two scars had had a little extra sliver of wood removed. She sat back on her heels; from the kitchen she could hear the sound of music. Steve had the TV on. ‘Ready, Steady, Go’, she thought.

  She reached out for the telephone and dialled a well-remembered number. ‘Joe? No, we haven’t seen each other lately. I sort of noticed, Joe, how you’ve been absent since things started popping round here. In fact, I’d say you cleared off pretty smartly.’ All the time she was keeping an ear on Steve in the kitchen. ‘No, Joe, don’t think that; I’m grateful. You did the right thing. Wait a minute, hang on, will you?’

  For a moment, she stopped to listen, but a burst of music from the next room reassured her.

  ‘There is a question I ought to have asked you before, Joe.’ The words came handily. She should have used them before, only she didn’t care to. ‘What sort of games did you get up to?’

  He couldn’t use silence, she knew that very well, you had to be born to it, like Steve, but he had his ways, nothing nasty but cold and dry. You could kill a dream with a voice like that.

  ‘I’m talking about that night I blacked out. The night I can’t remember, the night you say I quarrelled with you and walked away.’

  She listened. ‘No, Joe, I was not drunk. I only had that one drink. That’s what I’m worrying about. Did you put anything in that drink? I know you, Joe.’

  One short sentence answered her. Not to her pleasure. ‘What a pig you are, Joe. But you’ve answered me. Thank you. I don’t know what drug you used, dear Joe, but I’m sure now you used something. And Joe, don’t think I’ll leave it there.’

  She put the telephone down on his voice, bef
ore she heard what he said.

  Still she sat there on the floor, sunk on her heels.

  How rotten men could be. Some men, all men? She might consider joining Ellie Niven’s women’s group which met once a week to promote the interests of their sex. She would not give up her bra, however, or dress ugly. Not in her business.

  Just for a moment she had a vision of a brilliant new line of clothes called Uglies. Stylish ugly, of course, beautiful ugly, and expensive ugly. If it was very, very expensive, then her clients would buy it. Her vision faded: Gabriel could create such a collection, she could not.

  Suddenly she felt old and out of date. A whole exciting new scene was being born all about her and pushing her out of the way.

  ‘I’m a hag.’ She got up and went into the kitchen. ‘An unfashionable old hag.’ The sense of humour, of the joke being on her, that was never far from Rose’s spirit, made her laugh.

  Steve had finished eating and looked up. ‘What’s the joke?’

  ‘I’m not sure if it is one, but if it is I don’t think you’d laugh.’ She sat down to study him across the table. ‘Steve, one of the reasons you’ve been quiet with me lately – ’ more than quiet, she thought, stone-cold, dead to me ‘ – one of the reasons has been Joe, hasn’t it? You don’t like him, and you don’t like me knowing him.’

  Steve looked down at the tablecloth, tracing a pattern with one finger.

  ‘No, don’t answer. A direct statement might be too much for you. It was one of the reasons.’

  ‘Mum, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.’

  ‘I want to believe that. I want to believe you are wholly innocent of those boys’ deaths. I want to believe you never played about with drugs or silly games.’

  In short, I want to believe you are a victim.

  ‘It was a good shepherd’s pie,’ said Steve.

  ‘Thanks.’ Rose smiled at him. Yes, and thank you can come in many different forms. If her son was a liar and a deceiver, then he knew how to sound a sincere one.

  Besides, kids don’t kill kids, do they? Not even in Paradise Street had Rose met that phenomenon.

  As she cleaned away the dishes she wondered what those wooden scrapings from her floor would tell the forensic scientists. The police team had gone from her house, she had managed to avoid seeing them at work by her long session with Gabriel and John Coffin in Cat’s Coffee Shop.