A Coffin for Charley

by Gwendoline Butler

  At the back was a list of addresses and telephone numbers which included her own. The girl got around, she saw with surprise.

  She would visit Annie, tell her what she had, but not give anything to her, not the shoes, nor the woolly sweater, nor the comb and lipstick, she knew these ought to go to the investigating team. At the same time, she felt a sympathy for Annie.

  Keep away from Annie, Coffin had said, she may be wicked.

  Annie had realized that what she called Didi’s ‘little book’ was missing. She had tidied Didi’s room when the police unsealed it, cleaned away all the mess they had left, and arranged Didi’s books and papers. Stanislavsky and a book on Edith Evans were there but the little notebook was not.

  There were several programmes from St Luke’s Theatre, even more from the Theatre Workshop which Didi had attended regularly, like a church; there was the prospectus of the Drama School, and several photographs of Didi’s favourite performers which included one of Stella Pinero.

  Annie now had mixed feelings about Stella. She loved her still but was fearful. Love was a dangerous commodity, dangerous to the giver, dangerous to her who received it.

  She had given up wearing her masculine clothing but she knew she was still the same inside. What’s on the outside, is not what I am inside, she told herself. I am packaged one way, but exist in another. This made her fractious, difficult and unpredictable, with something wilder underneath: what Coffin had called wicked.

  She was puzzled that Didi’s notebook, which had been such a prominent part of her life (carried everywhere, always in use: ‘I must write it down’ being daily words with her), was not around where she might have expected to find it. Silly to mind, but she did, because it was part of Didi that was missing.

  Had the police taken it?

  She had the nerve to ring them up and ask them. No, they hadn’t.

  She was alone in the house, her daughter still with her grandparents. The police had stopped visiting, but the neighbours had been kind, calling with messages of help, although showing caution: after all, a woman whom murder had touched twice was dangerous company and better kept at a distance.

  It was sad having no friends, she knew she had none, although she had several enemies and was herself an enemy to some: the Creeleys being the most prominent, and who-soever had killed Didi.

  She had one professional friend: Tom Ashworth, Tash, and him she called daily, because you had to talk to someone. He was not always at the end of his telephone, but he had an answering machine and he was good about calling back. Annie wanted to ring him now to tell him she was puzzled about Didi’s notebook, but she teased herself by not dialling, like not eating a cream bun when your mouth is watering. He was her luxury.

  But she did ring.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he said, sounding uninterested, ‘it can’t be lost. It’ll turn up.’

  ‘I don’t know where.’

  ‘Want me to come and look?’

  ‘No.’ Another day perhaps. You had to stagger luxuries, take little bites.

  ‘Let me know if it turns up.’

  ‘She wrote everything in it.’

  ‘Did she? Dangerous girl.’

  Annie was silent. Cream buns were not meant to bite back, cream buns were for comfort.

  Didi wasn’t killed because she had secrets, she was killed because she was my sister, Eddie Creeley killed her. She stuck to that thought, certainly Eddie had done it.

  Creeley. Saying the name always gave her a thrill, it was like sex.

  When she saw the Creeleys in her mind, two dead old people had shuffled behind, wrapped in bandages, earth-stained. Now when she thought of them, Didi walked behind them.

  She was seeing the trio as she listened to Tash.

  ‘I really hate what you are doing to yourself, Annie,’ he said, his voice sounding warm and sympathetic, which is exactly what Didi always said he was and Annie never quite believed, because there must always be a bill.

  What was she doing to herself? Still holding the telephone she looked at her face in a wall mirror. She had lost weight, and she hadn’t washed her hair lately, so it must be that what she was doing was not eating and not washing.

  When she returned her attention to the telephone, Tash had stopped speaking and gone away, the line was dead. It was early evening; she went into the kitchen to make some tea, or coffee, they both tasted the same to her now. Didi had been dead and unburied for days, the police still retaining her body, for what services she dare not think. There had been an inquest which had been adjourned.

  She believed the same was true for Marianna Manners, who was just camouflage, poor soul. Didi was the real victim. Didi was the only victim, the other poor girl was just trimming.

  For some reason this reminded her of the Karnival Club and she smiled, she had liked that place, it was friendly and no one questioned you. She would miss it. Might go back, they didn’t judge you there.

  While she was drinking what appeared to be from the colour of it weak tea, the phone rang again. She picked it up with a smile.

  ‘I knew you’d ring back.’ After all, he had her name on his bill.

  ‘Hello,’ said Stella, her voice husky. ‘It’s Stella Pinero. I expect you are surprised to hear me.’

  ‘Yes.’ Annie managed to get the words out. ‘How could you? Can’t you leave me alone?’

  Stella felt breathless, but she kept control. ‘I have some possessions belonging to Didi to give you. Some shoes, odds and ends, a notebook.’

  Annie’s aggression and anger melted. ‘I was looking for that book. I wondered where it was.’

  ‘Didi left it with the stage manager.’ Stella added: ‘It must go to the police, so should the other things, but I thought I ought to tell you.’

  ‘I want it.’

  ‘No … I suppose you could look,’ said Stella with reluctance.

  ‘I’ll come and collect it. Now, tonight. Tell me where to come. And I am sorry if I shouted just now. I was upset. I love you really, admire you so much, you know that. Where shall I come? St Luke’s Mansions? I know the place.’

  Naturally you do, you ought to, you’ve stood looking at it often enough. ‘No, don’t come here.’ Stella was alone in Coffin’s tower, she was standing by the bookcase in the sitting-room, looking out at the view he loved, in a room he had been happy to create with rugs, pictures, and books. She had the clear idea he would not want Annie to set foot in it. ‘I will come to you.’

  Annie might be wicked. As well to remember what her husband had said.

  Stella called the taxi service that the theatre always used. It was a comfort to be greeted by one of the drivers she knew best: old Bert.

  She gave him the address. ‘Napier Street, and wait outside for me. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Wait for you for ever, Miss Pinero,’ said old Bert with a smile, settling back in the seat. He was a fan. He watched her walk to the front door. ‘Lovely lady.’

  Stella had had a long day, she was tired, she was worried about her husband, worried about Letty, worried about her own working life, but long training had ensured that she was well groomed, and if her clothes were casual, jeans and tweed jacket, she wore them with style.

  Annie, on the other hand, was a wreck. Her hair was stringy and lank, and her eyes were puffy as if she had been crying. She was wearing grey flannel trousers and a flowery silk blouse so both sides of her persona were showing.

  ‘Come in.’ Annie stood back to let Stella pass. She led the way to the kitchen which was tidy except for the sink filled with unwashed china. It looked as though it had been there for some time and might start growing things soon.

  Stella had Didi’s possessions in a carrier bag. ‘I just brought them to show you before I take them to the police.’ She could tell Annie was displeased. She opened the bag. ‘Here, you can look.’

  ‘Yes, all that belonged to Didi, I recognize it. Leave it with me.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Stella, thinking sh
e shouldn’t be here. ‘But I thought you had a right to know.’

  ‘Thank you … You know about me, what I was doing? It was serious, not a game.’

  ‘It didn’t feel like a game to me,’ said Stella with some feeling.

  ‘I wanted to be … like you, be you.’ Annie stared at Stella hungrily. She put her hand on Stella’s arm. ‘Don’t be nervous with me.’

  ‘I don’t like being touched.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a serious fault,’ said Annie. ‘But I never got very close, did I? You never felt I would hurt you.’ She was looking hard at the bag.

  ‘I wasn’t sure.’ Now she could study this thin, tense woman, Stella felt only sympathy. Annie became not a thing, but another human being. She wanted to say: ‘I understand, don’t hate yourself so much. We all want to change our sex occasionally, put on another one like a new overcoat, I have myself. I’ve been to the Karnival Club myself and enjoyed it.’

  While she was thinking this, Annie grabbed the book and picked up a knife.

  ‘Now get out. If you think I won’t cut you, then you’re wrong.’

  If the chap is bigger than you and has a weapon, don’t be brave, Coffin had told Stella.

  The look in Annie’s face told her not to be brave, Annie meant it. ‘I shall have to tell my husband.’

  ‘Tell him and good luck to you.’ Annie opened the door. ‘You go now and don’t come back.’

  The cab-driver gave Stella a curious look as she got in. ‘You all right, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Only I’m a fool. So she went back in her cab, leaving the notebook with Annie, feeling that in doing so she had betrayed her husband.

  Annie watched the cab drive away, then she opened the notebook, spreading the pages wide and giving them a shake.

  A photograph of Eddie Creeley fell out. ‘Love, Eddie,’ he had written.

  ‘Love, Eddie,’ said Annie loudly. ‘I’ll give you love, Eddie Creeley, my sort of love. Events don’t stop, just because you stop thinking about them, or hide your eyes. No, there is a pattern to be worked out. I am still working it out. It’s called revenge.’

  It was hard luck being Eddie Creeley, although the patients seemed to like him well enough at the hospital where he worked.

  The amazing thing was that he was getting fond of Lizzie. For her sake he had turned into a home-maker. Before his parents died, he had left it all to them, or to his mother, not a man’s job. Now he saw that sex did not come into it, that you had to make people comfortable, it was a right thing to do. It satisfied something deep inside him that was neither male nor female but a mixture of both. A well-dusted table, the window-panes polished till they shone, the old leather sofa and armchair repaired, the smell of cooking in the kitchen, these things were good in themselves and you were glad to be where they were.

  Lizzie was very glad.

  She looked out of the window every day about the time when he could be expected home, waiting for him. She looked forward to Eddie coming home.

  He knew she did and although he had resented it at first, now he liked it. He brought her little presents, the sort of present a father or a grandfather would bring home to a child: a packet of sweets, a coloured magazine, or a plant in a pot.

  Deep down he knew that this would not last, that one day he would walk away from Lizzie. He would recover from Didi, fall in love again, marry and be an ordinary man, but he would always be grateful to Lizzie, because she had taught him to be kind.

  ‘Lizzie,’ he said, that same evening when John Coffin was in Birmingham and Stella was visiting Annie who was meditating revenge, and the tide of events was dropping bits of evidence about the murders all over the place, ‘Lizzie, when I have saved up a bit of money we will have a new suite of furniture.’ He was sitting on a spring on the old sofa.

  ‘Yes, please.’ She was enthusiastic. ‘Made of that lovely soft velvety stuff.’

  ‘Dralon, it’s called.

  ‘Is it? And pink, let’s have it in pink. I saw a pink chair in a window.’ She did a great deal of window-shopping, creeping silently and slowly past shop after shop, taking it all in, clothes, furnishings, make-up. If she had the good luck to live long, she would be very knowledgeable about what to wear and what to sit on.

  ‘I prefer red.’

  ‘Not blood red.’

  Impossible not to know what she was thinking. ‘No, not blood red. Say ruby.’

  ‘About the murders, Eddie … they won’t get you for them?’

  ‘They’ve had a try.’

  She nodded. ‘They’ll try again. I know how it goes.’

  As she did indeed, thought Eddie. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You’d say that anyway. We did.’

  He allowed her these lapses from the usual cant, she had earned that right.

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘In a way, we didn’t either.’

  Tell me which way, Auntie, but he did not say this aloud. He did not allow to himself some of the ways of speech that were licensed in Lizzie. He was a man, had not been to prison, was young.

  ‘In a way, you never do,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s an accident or self-defence or execution …’ She paused in her murderer’s apologia and watched his face.

  ‘Come on, Auntie, don’t leave it there.’

  ‘We did an execution, it was deserved. The old man, well, he abused me.’ She blinked. ‘You know, did things, nasty things, and she laughed. She only laughed, his wife did, that was worse, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. You’ve shocked me.’

  ‘So that’s why we did it. Only way, only to stop him.’ She nodded her head up and down. ‘It was a good thing we did, ’cause he might have done it to others. I expect he had.’

  ‘But did you tell anyone? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that, couldn’t say, couldn’t mention it … and no one would have believed me.’

  ‘Oh, they would have done.’

  ‘No, no, you’re wrong, Eddie. The old man said he would say it was all me, it was what I wanted, that I made him. Can you make men do that?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Eddie. ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘And his wife said she’d say so too, that I was a wicked girl.’ Her eyes, a blue now faded almost into whiteness, filled with tears. She began to sob. ‘I wasn’t a wicked girl.’

  Eddie put his arm round her. So you are a member of the human race, after all, you poor old thing. ‘Long ago, Auntie,’ he said. ‘Long ago. Let’s have some of that sherry you like so much.’

  Lizzie leaned against him gratefully. ‘You’re so clever, Eddie.’

  ‘No, I’m not clever, but I can see how things join up. The old man abused you, you killed him, Annie saw you, and now it’s got to Didi.’ Where did it start. And where would it end?

  ‘You’ve got an enemy, Eddie.’

  ‘Yes, Annie herself.’

  Perhaps he was to be the end, punished, killed somehow, and that would be it, the long chain of horror would be over. It seemed unfair on him.

  ‘No, I’m not clever, or I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘But you’re good.’ She nestled against him, comforted.

  ‘Not even that, Auntie.’ I’ll probably let you down in the end, he thought. Pity, but true.

  ‘Not many people are clever and good,’ went on Lizzie, pursuing her own train of thought. ‘There was one in prison, she was clever and good.’

  ‘What was she in for, Auntie?’

  ‘Fraud, I think.’

  It seemed right. ‘At least you’ve known one.’

  ‘I think that policeman is good and clever.’

  ‘Oh, go on, which one?’ His mind rejected the group he had met.

  ‘The one who arrested us all those years ago, he was young then, older now, but I’ve seen him, I know his face.’

  John Coffin, she meant. Eddie found he could accept that. One good fraud merchant and one good copper in the great pattern of life.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER 18

  The river gives up its dead

  John Coffin slept uneasily in his rented bed; he missed Stella, he even missed the cat who usually rested heavily on his feet. It was strange already to be alone in your bed. The room was very small with an even smaller bathroom attached, everything was lined with a pale plastic oak that felt as thin as cardboard. The door shivered as you opened it, but the bedclothes and towels were clean, even if the duvet was thin and synthetic. The telephone, as it turned out, did not work.

  He made himself some tea from the tray provided while he considered the day.

  Letty first, he must check what went on there. Phœbe had offered to be the go-between, she had promised to find out and pass it all on.

  Then he would be off on his own particular mission for which he could afford only one day. Downey was a good man, no doubt, but he did not trust him to see what was not obvious.

  He drank some more tea while he planned his operation. Drive to No. 7 Larch Court where the girl Mary had lived, walk around the house, talk to the neighbours, and stand looking and thinking. Contemplation had helped him before, and might do so again.

  The tea was lukewarm, it had not been very good in the beginning, the teabags were weak and stale, the little carton of milk too long away from the cow and the victim of heat treatment, but it was certainly providing no uplift now. There was a packet of sweet biscuits, so he chewed one while he finished dressing. No great surge of energy followed but he went on chewing.

  Anxious to be on with the day, he tried the telephone. Not working yesterday, it was still dead today.

  Damn.

  Was it worth it, he asked himself, to give yourself an uncomfortable night just to poke around investigating a case that you not only could leave to others but ought to do so.’

  This is not your job.

  The accusing faces of Walter Watson, of Archie Young and even of Sergeant Downey moved in front of him, each one saying KEEP OUT and LEAVE IT TO US.

  So why was he doing it? He had the answer: I enjoy it and I do it better than anyone else; I see further into the picture. Call it intuition or call it long experience, but it happens.