Cracking Open a Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  In a little while their critical faculties would revive and they would begin to pick holes in the story as outlined. Then they would fill in the holes with forensic evidence, the words of witnesses as to character, behaviour and movements. If they were lucky, then the picture would set and be varnished, ready to send off to the Crown Prosecutors. Who might, or might not, approve it.

  It was hardly a triumph, their handling of this case, and there would certainly be criticisms from Jim Dean and Sir Thomas Blackhall. Rumblings had already reached them. In a way, the file on Amy Dean would never be closed.

  Josephine was dead, of course, and not to be prosecuted, but they would get Rosa Maundy for something, and gradually the story would come out, a book would be written about it which would be serialized in a leading Sunday newspaper, and possibly turned into a television programme. A major film seemed unlikely.

  But Josephine was certainly a character. Archie Young said to his wife: ‘I don’t think we will ever know what went on in her life, and as for her mind, how can you fathom a woman like that? I mean, women don’t do things like that.’ His wife said she didn’t know whether to be shocked or pleased that he should separate women off in that manner. Then she added thoughtfully that it had started with Josephine’s own child. ‘What do you mean by that?’ Archie had said sharply. She had answered that she did not know, but it was a point. It struck her as a woman. Young had the uneasy feeling that the first hole to be plugged was appearing. And when you thought about it, it was a worrying point. Perhaps she thought of them all as her daughter?

  Science fiction land, he told himself. Stop thinking about it.

  Paul Lane accepted the oddness of human behaviour. Long years of investigating what went on had almost deprived him of the ability to be surprised. He could be shocked, as about Josephine he had been, but he was hard put to know precisely what shocked him. Was it what she had done, or how she had died? Or something deeper? But there was an element deeply disturbing about this case. It reflected on the human race. ‘Knew it from the beginning,’ he told himself. ‘Knew it would be a stinker even if I didn’t say so. It’s a fearsome business.’ Like a hideous face staring at you out of the darkness. He was not an imaginative man, so he claimed, but he had the sensation of other faces queuing up behind to be seen in their turn. In spite of himself, his mind, slow-moving but methodical, became engaged with the problem. ‘I just don’t see it,’ he said to himself, ‘I just don’t see it.’

  John Coffin, for once the least imaginative, was the most grieved. He had liked what he had known of Josephine. She had seemed a woman of style. Such a woman was hard to accept as a serial killer.

  Meanwhile, other issues pressed upon them all. An armed break-in at a small factory down by Lower Greendock Street involved Archie Young, while the Chief Superintendent was being briefed by a man from the Home Office on the impact of Chinese Triads on the local drug-dealers. Paul Lane kept nodding politely and looking out of the window. Two late nights did not suit him; also the civil servant was a bore. He could have written it all down and not bothered to call; he had written it all down, there was a report on the table and now he was relaying it again. He caught the eye of his uniformed colleague opposite, who was also being briefed, and a silent yawn passed between them.

  And John Coffin was gearing himself up for his own crisis.

  Stella Pinero had her problems too. She had achieved the miracle of bringing St Luke’s Theatre and the related Workshop Theatre under control; she had just appointed a young female assistant which left her free to take on acting roles as she fancied. Money was tight, but they were managing, and she had hung on to the TV part.

  And her private life was a pleasure. She smiled as she did her face before going out. This time they would manage and not savage each other emotionally at intervals.

  But she was concerned about the Wagner production which was taking up valuable rehearsal rooms and, what was more, demanding use of the main auditorium. Politics came in here, as so many of those involved in the opera were strong supporters of St Luke’s Theatre. They had given money and hard work and now wanted something back.

  All right, Stella was willing, fair was fair, but they were impeding the work of the professional company and she was getting complaints. Her own office had been invaded by Lydia Tulloch, Philippa Darbyshire and Marcus Deit, the conductor, for what they called a conference but had sounded more like a quarrel. More, her telephone line had been tied up for an hour by Turnwall Taylor protesting to Philippa about his costume.

  But this was not it. Her problem was a small suitcase which contained all the possessions of Josephine Day that she had stored in her locker in Star Court House, and which the police had not taken away.

  Maisie Rolt had handed them over. ‘I want you to keep them. They might not be safe here. You know how things disappear, and there’s a chance I might have to go off to hospital.’ She knew it was more than a chance, and dicey whether she would ever come out. Stella knew this too. ‘I suppose Rosa ought to have them as she claims to be Josie’s executor, but I can’t get at her. Just do what you can with them. I don’t feel I can handle them.’ Josephine had been a kind of icon, and if she was not what she had seemed but infinitely worse, then something had crumbled in Maisie’s world. She would carry on at Star Court House as well as possible, but for the moment the lights were dimmed for her.

  Stella understood her. It was all going to be a horrible business.

  The suitcase sat on the table and she tried to ignore it.

  ‘You know what?’ she said aloud, suddenly surprising herself with the truth. ‘I am troubled: I cannot believe any of this.’

  What Stella Pinero, actress, sometimes film star, occasional TV performer, believed or disbelieved, might not have been important, but fate had given her a card to play.

  She opened the suitcase to take a quick look inside. A few clothes, a pair of tights, some paper tissues, a sweet smell of iris and lavender all mixed, the powdery scent she associated with Josephine. It was all so personal, she could neither bury not lose the suitcase and its contents.

  She would hand the suitcase over to John Coffin and he would know what to do with it.

  That day, Professor Lincoln, the head of the Docklands Forensic and Pathology Institute, which was jointly funded by the Home Office and the university and which the Second City police had access to, recovered from the ’flu that had swept through his laboratories and decimated the staff, and came back to work. He would have been back before but his wife had been sicker than he was, and blamed it on him. ‘All those nasty bugs you work with.’ He had tried in vain to tell her of the precautions that were taken, but she had refused to hear and had hidden herself away behind her sneezes. He was glad to get back to his office.

  He read through his letters and papers, he prided himself on keeping his eye on everything. That done and a cup of coffee drunk, he telephoned John Coffin. He knew the position he was in and intended to show support.

  ‘What about lunch at my club?’ He had recently joined the Athenæum, and although he called himself ‘not a clubby man’, he liked to pop in occasionally just to show them he was alive.

  Coffin murmured something. It must have sounded like a Yes.

  ‘Good, good, get your diary out and we’ll fix a date.’ Then he remembered what else he had to say. ‘This’ll interest you, but you may have had the report already: the beautiful Josephine … not suicide, after all. She was murdered … Signs of pressure on the neck and shoulders, and she was dead or moribund when the wrists were cut. She didn’t do that herself.’

  So that’s why there was so little blood in the bath, thought Coffin, remembering the paleness of the water. I knew there was something wrong. He found himself nodding down the telephone as if Lincoln could see him doing it.

  So he knew the worst when visited in a hurry by a perturbed Chief Inspector Archie Young. The news broke into their conviction that they knew who the killer of Amy Dean was, even if the motive
was still a puzzler. They had a confession.

  Or they had thought so. But now the sanctity of the confessional was broken. Nothing was quite what it seemed. Perhaps it never had been. For a man like Archie Young, strong in convictions, honest-minded if not subtle, this was hard to bear.

  If Josephine was a murder victim herself, her death was no longer a confession.

  The Chief Commander went back to St Luke’s Mansions and waited for Stella to arrive. He had left a message for her; he guessed she would call as soon as she could.

  She let herself in with own key and hurried up the stairs. She came in, bright-eyed and cheerful, the day had gone really well and her new make-up was pretty, and it was lovely to have a message from John and she was happy to be here, and then he told her the news. ‘She was murdered.’

  Stella took a deep breath and began to cry. Her tears were angry. ‘Shouldn’t have happened,’ she muttered. ‘I knew she was in a state, Maisie knew, you knew and we didn’t help her.’ She rounded on him: ‘Who did it?’

  Coffin shook his head without answering.

  Stella banged on the table angrily. ‘I need a drink. Whisky, I think.’

  The Chief Commander said: ‘If it’s any comfort to you, I think she would have gone soon, anyway. If someone hadn’t killed her, she would have taken her own life. There was much truth in what we thought. She was tired of life. And a little frightened, I think.’

  ‘It’s no comfort. Can I have that whisky?’

  He got her one, not as strong as it might have been, he hated it when Stella drank, he knew what she could be like. He took nothing himself, he found no comfort in it these days.

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  He told her why.

  ‘No comfort in it. No comfort anywhere, by the way you look.’

  ‘Except in you.’

  ‘And not even me always?’ She put down the drink. ‘You’re right. Doing no good at all. Will you get who did it?’

  He put his arms round her and she rested herself against him. Warmth and comfort given and received.

  ‘I promise, Stella, I promise to do my best.’

  She remembered then. ‘I’ve got something for you. Her case, Josie’s case with a few things in it that she left at Star Court House. They were not taken by your people. Maisie handed the case over to me.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I left it in the hall. I was going to bring it over to you.’

  ‘Josephine seems to have kept more of her possessions in Star Court House than in her own home.’

  ‘It was a habit she’d got into after she was robbed twice. She thought it was safer. George Eliot House was always being vandalized or broken into. Especially before Rosa came on the scene.’

  The case was sitting by the front door and Tiddles was sitting on it. Might be nothing in it that would help but you could hope. ‘Hop it, Tiddles.’

  Upstairs, he opened it. As Stella had said, it contained nothing but the sort of clothes you might need if you were staying overnight. Tights, underthings, a nightdress. The clothes were old but of good quality, silk and soft lace, carefully darned with mismatching cotton in clumsy stitches. Oddly, piercingly touching.

  He felt like crying himself.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘No.’ Stella sat and watched. ‘Nice bra and pants, but very old. Mousseline de soie … can’t get that now, the silkworms have gone on strike.’

  Coffin slipped his hand into a pocket in the lid. Papers. He drew them out.

  A few folded pages from a newspaper. One printed on good shiny paper. He unfolded it. The student newspaper from the university. Not an old copy but from last year.

  On the front page was a large photograph of a university function: a ball following a meeting of the Senate and a Degree-giving.

  Sir Thomas and his wife, his son Martin with a pretty girl. That must be Amy Dean, there she was in a low-cut dress, smiling. Behind her was her father, also smiling and holding a champagne glass. Angela was there too.

  He studied the background figures. That surely was Harry Coleridge in a black tie and dinner jacket with his arm round his wife, gaunt and anxious in an over-fussy dress? And he couldn’t be sure … but that pair looked like the pair of students, Beenie and Mick.

  There they all were, all the star players.

  CHAPTER 20

  The last days

  Stella stared over his shoulder. ‘I went to that ball myself.’

  ‘They asked me, I think,’ said Coffin, abstracted by what he saw. ‘But I didn’t go.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ But she uttered the words kindly.

  Now he wished he had. He stared thoughtfully at Harry Coleridge’s face. Wish I’d known he was there, I’ll need to talk to him.

  ‘Whom did you go with?’ he said to Stella.

  ‘Perry Dalloway.’

  ‘Ah.’ That was all right. Everyone knew about Perry Dalloway. ‘Was Josephine there?’

  Stella considered. ‘Yes, I think she was.’

  And Harry Coleridge. Stella wouldn’t know him, of course. Josephine would have known Betsy Coleridge.

  ‘Do you know Mrs Coleridge?’

  Knowledge flooded into her eyes. ‘By name, poor lady … You wouldn’t think a policeman would do that, would you?’

  ‘In some ways,’ he said, ‘we must count among the most violent of men. It’s in our life and it must shape us.’

  Stella stared at him as if she didn’t understand.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. He was moved by a strong sense of urgency. He reckoned he had less than a day or two now in which to see this complex web of interlocking cases cleared up.

  Or anyway set the investigation on the right course from which it could not be deflected. After that, his own position might be such that he had no power. He would be pushed to the sideline by his own resignation.

  True, he might then be heading for a happy private life with Stella, but he would have no power. Possibly not much money either. Perhaps he could work for sister Letty. And there were his mother’s memoirs to edit.

  ‘I’m going to act,’ he said aloud.

  ‘You usually do, don’t you?’ But she could see he was looking through her and not at her, and that he had not heard what she said.

  She touched his arm gently. ‘I’m here.’

  Next day was wet and stormy, neatly echoing his mood. He cleared all the urgent matters on his desk, then ordered in every relevant file on the death of Amy Dean and Josephine Day. Also what there was on the earlier murder of Virginia Scott and what could be obtained on the even earlier death of Josephine’s daughter. What they had, he said.

  ‘Précised?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘No, the lot, in full.’ He turned towards his young assistant. ‘You can stay, Andrew, I will want your help.’

  ‘Mine too, I should think,’ said Fiona under her breath, having some idea of what was coming.

  It took time to get all that he wanted, and he could imagine that some comment was passing around, not all of it friendly, especially from Paul Lane and Archie Young, the two most closely concerned.

  And Harry Coleridge. But he let his mind pass over that name for the moment.

  Not quite a roomful, he thought, as the trolleys of documentation arrived, but certainly several deskfuls.

  And how many days’ work? he asked himself. Well, he hadn’t got the time. He would keep at it all night if he had to, and Andrew too. He handed out his instructions, and settled down.

  He worked fast and efficiently, already he had seen a lot of the material and knew his way around it. There were certain facts he was looking for.

  Noreen Day, Josephine’s child, father unnamed. Was her birth and the absence of her father the first crisis trigger in Josephine’s life? He had Noreen’s picture and she had been bonny. Dark-haired, plump, and with an air of soft vulnerability that must have been very attractive to men. Perhaps Josephine had looked like that once, before she thinned herself down to beco
me a model and before age, drugs and drink had taken their toll.

  Noreen had been strangled and her body left in Pickerskill Wood. Before this, she and her mother had been heard to quarrel violently. Josephine was already on the bottle and probably drugs as well, her behaviour had been erratic and unpredictable. Violence from her could not be ruled out. A neighbour, one Sergeant Harry Coleridge, had spoken of a fight between mother and daughter. About a man, he had thought, the girl had only just started work and was finding her feet in the world. Josephine seemed to have been unable to accept the girl’s desire for freedom, hence the quarrels. They might have had a fight. Bruises on the girl could be related to this. But there had been no hard evidence. No fingerprints or body traces could be found. The killer had worn gloves, that much was clear, there was at least one mark on her throat which looked like a gloved hand. The case was left on the record. The investigating officers had been Inspector Tim Taylor and Sergeant Wendy Lotham.

  Virginia Scott: a mass of forensic evidence that had got them nowhere. She had been strangled, her body left on the university campus, on a deserted area near to the car park but hidden from observation by a belt of trees and shrubs planted by the landscape gardener to hide the cars from the Senate and Library buildings. It was not overlooked. The girl’s body had been found by the security guards and it was conjectured that the killer had been planning to move the body but had been hindered by workmen arriving to clear away a marquee used for a ball the night before. She had had old bruises on her arms and body. Her handbag was nearby, but it had no fingerprints on it except her own. A smudge of mud where the killer might have handled it with gloved hands. Students had been interviewed, the teaching and administrative staff gone over, but nothing definite had come out of it. Virginia had friends but was close to no one. She had worked hard, and done a variety of welfare work both on the campus and in the local community.