Coffin in Fashion
Page 17
Still, she was troubled. He was a bad influence without doing anything. Also, he had committed such a very savage and ruthless attack on Charley. No one asked the matron if she thought the boy might have done this to silence Charley rather than avenge his mother. If they had asked, she might have said Yes. When Rose recovered, Steve would be returned to his mother’s care, and the matron, for one, would not mind. ‘He frightens me, that child. I wouldn’t like to be alone with him.’
In her hospital room, Rose said, ‘I get out of here tomorrow. Thanks for all you’ve done.’ She relinquished Coffin’s hand. In her heart she knew that their relationship had reached its peak; they had had what was best, from now on they would come apart. She felt sad and hoped he felt the same. ‘Goodbye.’
‘Back to work,’ said Coffin. What was work? He had plenty of routine, and a new one that looked as if it might be interesting: the murder of a whole family in a bright new Span house in Blackheath. Mother, father and two children, even the dog was dead, and they didn’t know who killed them. So when he said murder, even that was not sure, but it was going to be a relief to be investigating a crime in which he had no personal connection and of which he could not be suspected. ‘I’ll telephone when you get home.’
Rose was going back to her flat. She had had all the locks changed. With the old keys Charley had penetrated even to her bedroom. They had found his fingerprints everywhere. It was possible he had been hoping to frighten Steve, but his exact motives were unknown. Perhaps the cat knew.
Once the police got into the van, they found plenty of evidence to connect Charley with the murders. The forensic team crawled all over it, picking up scraps of wood fragments, traces of Ephraim’s clothes on the floor, even some of his blood. So they had enough.
But there was no glass. There never was any glass.
Coffin wondered what a defence counsel would have made of that lack if the case had ever come to trial. It never came to trial, since Charley died soon after Rose went home.
Just about this time he put his hand into his jacket pocket and found the two bills from Mouncy Street. With them was the letter he had not opened. He did so now, read it, and was so disturbed that he had to drop into Cat’s Coffee Shop to sit down.
It was a brief letter from an address in Chelsea, telling him that the writer had heard he was looking for a sibling, affirming that the writer of the letter was probably that person, and suggesting a meeting.
The letter was nicely typed, on good paper, and signed L. Pendragon.
With a trembling hand he set about dialling the telephone number.
Cat looked on with sympathy, observing the tremor. ‘Don’t say he’s on speed, too.’ The murders in Mouncy Street with boys, drugs, sadism had been thoroughly fashionable crime, really Sixties, and had interested him very much.
Two days later, Coffin kept his appointment in the restaurant in the King’s Road. He would have preferred a pub, but somehow that writing-paper had intimidated him so he had agreed to a restaurant.
If the truth was to be told, he was still intimidated.
‘You’re not what I expected.’
He looked: a fall of shining dark hair, a pale coffee-cream skin, a delicate profile. A woman.
He had a sister. Not a brother, but a sister. He was still taking it in. Letitia.
‘You’re very beautiful.’
Younger too. She looked so young. He was frantically doing sums in his head.
‘I was born in 1944. My father was in the US army over here.’ Her voice, cultivated and rich, was beautiful too. ‘I’m illegit, of course, but he’s a good bloke and he kept in touch. Saw me looked after; and educated over here. Then he got me to Bryn Mawr. He’s a lawyer. So am I.’
‘I thought you’d be older.’ Different, too.
‘To be honest, you’re not what I expected, either.’
‘I thought you’d be about thirty or more,’ he said lamely.
In a kindly voice (for which, later, he felt like smacking her), she said, ‘I think you are mixing me up with the child our mother had in the late 1930s.’
‘Good Lord. You mean there are three of us?’
They stared at each other, amazement in one face, amusement in the other.
‘I’m afraid so. I have the records. My mother left them for me, although you realize I hardly knew her. She died.’
Coffin struggled for composure. ‘How did you find out about me, and my search?’
‘A friend of mine knows the tutor in your history class. Simple.’
Everything is simple when you know the answer.
‘And the Pendragon bit? Is it your father’s name?’
‘No, I married, but alas it has been a failure. I am divorced.’
The family luck, he thought, now I know you are one of us.
He had expected her to drift away, but of all the people connected with that unhappy time in his life, she was the one who stayed.
Gaby went to work in New York, Rose emigrated to Australia, taking Steve (who had a spell in a Children’s Psychiatric Unit as a kind of punishment for killing Charley and who knew what else) with her. Cards at Christmas was how it went.
But Letitia stayed in touch, and together, sadly as it turned out, they had found family member Number Three. But of that, later.
He had one of her well-typed missives in his pocket the day he went back on his nostalgia crawl to Mouncy Street and Decimus Street and Paradise Street. She knew he had gone to Mrs Lorimer’s funeral and that he would be unhappy; Letitia was a good sister. But her letter had its own little shock. She was marrying again. Was it the third time or the fourth? As soon as he got used to a brother-in-law, he went, and another took his place. This time she was marrying a millionaire, and it had better last.
He was glad to see the old area before it crashed to the ground; there was not much left as it was. He had sold the Mouncy Street house long ago to a newly arrived West Indian family, and good luck to them.
He recognized the chemist’s, that was still where it had been. Parked at the kerb was a smart new van in pale blue. Sadly, it already had a dented side with a broken window. It brought back so much of the past; Gabriel, Rose and Steve, Charley, the whole 1960s scene.
He needed some toothpaste so he went into the chemists.
Inside it looked a bit old-fashioned, as if the style had been set by the Festival of Britain and never changed.
A tall man stood behind the counter; he was wearing a neat white coat.
He seemed buttoned into everything a shade too tightly. The old-fashioned word natty came into Coffin’s mind. Neat, self-contained and a bit too pleased with himself.
‘Toothpaste, please.’ He named the brand.
‘Here you are, sir.’ He had a deep, sweet voice.
Memories began to roll, like a film you’d forgotten but remembered better with every frame.
‘Weren’t you a friend of Charley’s?’
‘Charley? Charley who?’
Something in the way he said it made Coffin sure he was right.
‘He had a place at the back of Belmodes.’
The man licked his lips as if they were dry. ‘I remember Belmodes, of course. That’s been gone a long time now. But not your friend. Charley, did you say?’
Liar, thought Coffin.
From above an old woman’s voice called. ‘Son, son, I want my tea.’
Coffin said, ‘Your mother? If she’s the lady I remember, she must be about a hundred now.’ The old lady who had seen something from her window, all those years ago.
‘So she is, isn’t she, Mr Harry, sir?’
A young lad had come into the shop. He looked clean, childish and very taking. Vulnerable. Coffin wanted to say, Run away, laddie, this is dangerous territory.
‘Anything you want me to do, Mr Harry? For your mother or anything? I’m ready. Otherwise I’ll go straight out with the deliveries.’
‘Thank you, Ron. Nothing special just now.’
‘See you kn
ocked the van. You are hopeless, Mr Harry. No car’s safe with you.’
The voice from upstairs came again. ‘Son, son, I want you.’
‘Coming, Mother.’ Harry Lindsay pushed some coins across the counter. ‘Your change, sir. Sorry I could not help about your friend.’ He turned and walked upstairs.
Coffin took his toothpaste and walked out of the shop.
Drugs, glass, a chemist, and, whatever he said, a friend of Charley’s. Didn’t it all make you think?
‘I always knew there were two of them in it,’ he said aloud.
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About the Author
Gwendoline Butler, who died in 2013, was a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still had a tremendous affection, and where Coffin on the Water is set. She was educated at one of the Haberdasher’s Schools and then read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married Dr Lionel Butler. They had one daughter, Lucille.
It was while her husband was Professor of Mediaeval History in the University of St Andrews that Gwendoline first began writing crime fiction. In her lifetime she wrote seventy-seven novels, thirty-four of which feature Detective John Coffin.
Also by the Author
John Coffin novels
Receipt for Murder
Dead in a Row
The Dull Dead
The Murdering Kind
The Interloper
Death Lives Next Door
A Coffin for Baby
Make Me a Murderer
Coffin in Oxford
Coffin Waiting
Coffin in Malta
A Nameless Coffin
Coffin Following
Coffin's Dark Number
A Coffin from the Past
A Coffin for Pandora
A Coffin for the Canary
Coffin On the Water
Coffin in Fashion
Coffin Underground
Coffin in the Black Museum
Coffin and the Paper Man
Coffin on Murder Street
Cracking Open a Coffin
A Coffin For Charley
The Coffin Tree
A Dark Coffin
A Double Coffin
Coffin's Game
A Grave Coffin
Coffin's Ghost
A Cold Coffin
A Coffin for Christmas
Coffin Knows the Answer
Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny novels
The King Cried Murder
Dread Murder
Standalone novels:
Sarsen Place
Olivia
The Vesey Inheritance
Meadowsweet
The Red Staircase
Albion Walk
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by Fontana 1992
First published in Great Britain by Fontana 1990
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1987
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006178187
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007545469
Version: 2014–05–07
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