Coffin on the Water

by Gwendoline Butler

  It was one point where, he suspected, he parted company with the team from the Yard. He thought he could see the join.

  ‘Mrs Lorimer?’

  No harm in talking to Mrs Lorimer, she was as near as nothing to a magistrate, wasn’t she?

  ‘You know you’re the only person who’s mentioned the son as a child. Admitted to knowing him.’

  ‘We all knew him. That was the tragedy. We were on her side. Nicholas Esthart was a bully and a lot else beside. But when they went, when the child disappeared and then was found drowned – well, there was a lot of hostility shown to her. We understood when she withdrew.’ With surprising tolerance she said: ‘Of course she went too far. That’s the theatrical side of Rachel. But she was getting better, cutting down the drink. That is, until she got the card supposed to be from the boy.’

  ‘Must have been a nasty moment. No chance she sent it to herself?’

  ‘Never. If that’s what you think, you’re mad. It was a shock to her all right. I saw her and I know. I told her to laugh it off, but she couldn’t. Well, could you?’

  If it was genuine, no.

  I think she’s thought it over,’ he said carefully, ‘and decided it’s her way out.’

  So in Rachel Esthart’s story the card was playing a part the writer of it could not have expected. Why had it seemed a good idea to the murderer to send one card, then to attach another one to the murdered girl?

  He wanted to get another look at that card now reposing in the forensic science laboratory across South London. A way would have to be found. If possible without Banbury or Warwick knowing. Or anyone else.

  ‘You saw the dead girl, didn’t you.’

  He nodded.

  ‘There wasn’t a lot of detail in the papers.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘Very bad, was it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Makes you wonder what sort of a person could do a thing like that.’

  A man with strong, clumsy, wicked hands, thought Coffin.

  Strong because they had strangled the girl.

  Clumsy because the buttons on her cardigan had been put on the wrong holes.

  Wicked because these hands killed.

  A man with a confident stance, a man with an assured walk, a man whose feet stepped out secretly.

  He was getting quite a picture of the murderer; he just had to fix on a face.

  ‘That shoe you found, Paul Shanks said it was a very pretty shoe. Red, he said.’

  ‘I wonder he didn’t give an interview to the press.’

  He did,’ said Mrs Lorimer seriously. ‘But his grandmother whacked him and took the money away.’

  He’ll go far, that boy.’

  ‘Yes, they do, that family. They’re very good at making money. But they can’t seem to keep their hands on it.’

  Paul was obviously running true to form.

  ‘He’s a nice boy. He delivered our papers, you know.’ Then she added: ‘He would like to speak to you.’

  ‘OK.’ Coffin was into his kipper where he had suddenly found a tough area. ‘Any time.’ He envisaged Paul Shanks dropping in one evening.

  ‘Oh, good.’ She opened the dining-room door. ‘Come in, Paul.’

  He came in, a scruffy, even shabby figure in old blazer and grey shorts. He wore, eccentrically, a Wolf Cub’s cap on his head.

  He swept it off as he entered the room and put it in his pocket. Carefully, as if it was a treasured object.

  Thus quietly does fate introduce a major figure in your life.

  Coffin stopped chewing. ‘Hello, Paul.’

  No answer. There was a deep frown on the boy’s face.

  He tried again. ‘Paul?’

  ‘Mister. Sir-Sergeant.’

  ‘Call me Coffin.’

  ‘You can call me Eagle. I am Paul. But my professional name will be Eagle Scott. Or Scott Eagle; I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Professional?’

  ‘As a detective. I’m going to help you. Get you the news from the street. Stuff you could never get. I have my helpers.’

  Coffin thought about it: he too had his fantasies, had had more when he was Paul’s age; ‘I can’t use you publicly. The police don’t work like that. You understand?’

  ‘Oh no. A private arrangement.’ Then he added hastily, ‘No charge; I do it for free.’

  ‘Ah. Good.’

  ‘At first.’

  Coffin said, ‘Ah,’ again. Then he said, ‘Thanks Eagle. Or Scott. I’m grateful. I’ve got to be off now.’ He looked around for Mrs Lorimer, who had tactfully withdrawn.

  ‘You think I can’t help you. But I can. You’ll find out. The shoe you found. Pretty, wasn’t it. Won’t find shoes like that everywhere. You look in a shoe shop.’

  Carefully Coffin said: ‘Where will you find them?’

  ‘Ah. I’m working on it.’ He paused for effect, then relented. ‘Try Woolwich Market.’

  Coffin remembered the vegetable stalls, the fish stalls, all grouped in a cluster on one side of the tramway tracks with the cheap clothes stalls and the second-hand bookstalls across the way with trams clanging down the middle. The most proletarian working-class of markets with none of the flashy glamour of Petticoat Lane.

  ‘On a stall?’

  ‘Might be a barrer – or the kerb or a suitcase. Haven’t seen, just guessing.’

  ‘You’ve seen something, or I’m not going.’

  ‘Thought I did. From the top of a tram by the Arsenal.’

  Coffin got up to go. ‘I might pop down for a look.’ He felt in his pocket, slipped a coin into a hand which did not refuse it.

  Not a bad idea, he thought, bright boy, but he’d keep it to himself. Information from Eagle Scott was not something you passed on lightly.

  And he did have a letter. Mrs Lorimer had left his post in the hall for him to pick up as he passed.

  There was only one, a letter with handwritten address. The envelope was square and thick, splendid handmade paper. The writing on it was bold, and noble. He had to say it: noble. The curves were wide, round, the loops gracious. The writer of that letter had to be good.

  He opened the letter: it was from Rachel Esthart.

  In fact, it was not a letter, but an invitation. He was invited to dinner and a ‘reception’ at Angel House in three days’ time.

  Not black tie, it said, which was fortunate because Coffin did not have, and so could not have worn, anything except his best demob suit. No thing of beauty in itself, but wearable.

  Three days was short notice but he would go. He could see from another envelope on the hall table that Alex had a similar invitation. No doubt there were others in circulation. Would Lady Olivia be there? Stella would be, that was sure. The dinner was on Sunday, there had to be a reason for that.

  What was Rachel Esthart up to?

  In the sort of crime book he read in his spare time, like Ellery Queen or Anthony Berkeley, there was nearly always a ‘confrontation’ scene with all suspects present.

  In those fictional cases it was usually the detective who arranged it, and the plot was about five pages from its end.

  Rachel Esthart’s party looked similar. But different, which was what you would expect from life, which so often follows art but never exactly.

  Coffin did not put it quite like that; instead, he said to himself, tucking the letter away in a pocket: ‘Stella was right then, she was planning something.’

  A curious fact about the missive worried him.

  He pulled the invitation out of his pocket to check what worried him.

  Yes, he was quite right. Whether by accident or design, Rachel Esthart had written her invitation to dinner on a card of the same type that the killer had used. But she had omitted the red stain. Or life had.

  Down the hill he saw Paul Shanks, alias Eagle Scott, alias Scott Eagle, cycling away, occasionally stopping to push a newspaper through a door, Angel House included. The papers (The Times by the look of it, together
with the Daily Mirror for Florrie) would be late there today. Coffin set out behind him, observing the active figure. He thought:

  I gave that boy a coin and a hearing because he reminds me of myself when young. Not that I wanted to be a policeman, I didn’t know life had that in store for me, I think I wanted to be a cricketer.

  He thought about that boy who had run about the back streets, who had chalked a wicket against an old brick wall and bowled googlies. When he wasn’t pretending to be Len Hutton hitting a six over the boundary.

  Presumably at about the same time Alex had been trying on his dancing-shoes. Or had he used plimsolls like Coffin, letting imagination do the rest?

  Paul Shanks cycled on, still being Eagle Scott, but with the figure of Paul Shanks rising from his back seat to murmur anxiously about being late for school. Eagle pushed him back, but this time he would not go under, he emerged briskly from the underside and reminded Paul there was fried bread for breakfast.

  The pair sped off. They passed the murderer, also yoked to his double persona, only not enjoying it so much.

  ‘’Morning,’ said Paul Shanks, now firmly in the saddle.

  The two knew each other, but the murderer did not answer.

  Coffin got into the police laboratory to peek at the card found on the dead girl. They were keeping it under specially humid conditions so that it would not dry out. He confirmed his memory of the stain. He asked a question.

  The technicians said it was a vegetable stain. They thought he came with Inspector Warwick’s knowledge. It could be beetroot, they said. They thought it was amusing. There was quite a lot of beetroot wine around in London at the moment, some very nicely bottled with good labels. Also damson wine, and they had heard also carrot.

  Coffin took the laboratory worker he knew best out for a drink; he wanted to see if he could get some more specific information on that stain, rather than a joke.

  Over a drink his friend offered what he had.

  The stain? Vegetable, as he had said earlier, but that was just an informed guess because he had seen other vegetable stains. Experience was what he was offered, and when Coffin pressed for more exactitude he laughed. ‘In twenty years’ time with better techniques and finer instruments I might be able to tell you exactly what ingredients went into the stain. Here and now I can just call it vegetable.’

  And Coffin had to remember that the Thames water had soaked it, too, he added. Coffin did remember.

  But his friend, over yet another drink, offered the information that scattered over the girl’s clothing, still clinging to her in spite of her immersion, were small fragments of brickdust and cement. These were also to be found in and around the points of entry of her wounds, suggesting the knife, and hence the murderer’s clothing, had been in contact with a re-building site.

  ‘That’s most of London,’ observed Coffin. But it was worth thinking about.

  Over the next few days he collected a tally of the guests at Rachel Esthart’s coming dinner-party. Stella was going to be there, as were Albie and Joan. (Can’t really spare the time, darling, ought to be getting on with learning my lines, but can’t let Rachel down.) Alex had accepted, and said he’d heard that Chief Superintendent Dander had been asked, but could not confirm this. Certain it was that Edward Kelly and Chris Mackenzie had invitations.

  ‘New friends and old lovers,’ was how the Greenroom gossip labelled it. All who were going were envied, all who were not going said they would not have been able to go if asked.

  An invitation to Buckingham Palace would have been nothing to it.

  Stella, grimly working away at As You Like It which was to follow Candida, while at the same time rehearsing the Masque in any spare moments, said she had no idea what the party was about, except that the food would be good and Vic was coming in to serve. The Padovani closed on Sundays.

  Behind these few days was a background of hard work on what the papers were calling the riverside murder! As reports that might contain a gem of crucial information filtered through they had to be checked over.

  Like the woman living in Rodney Row, which ran parallel to the river, who said she had heard a scream on the night in question. There might be something in it, or there might not, but it had to be investigated.

  As it turned out, the scream that lady had heard had been her own and led to a rape inquiry. This had been her way of starting the complaint off. Women did sometimes take a circuitous route to a complaint of rape, rather like going to a doctor because of insomnia when what you thought you had was cancer.

  Coffin was not responsible for investigating this story, although he heard about it, but he did trudge around calling on the man who wished to confess that he was the murderer, but who had already been placed under sedation by his doctor when Coffin arrived. He did, however, manage to confirm from the man’s sister that her brother had been in bed with a high temperature on the night of the murder and quite unable to walk at all.

  Coffin also checked shops, flats and houses, asking questions and getting not much in the way of answers. He made careful reports to Inspector Warwick.

  At the same time Tom Banbury and Alex Rowley were in Birmingham and Charlton respectively, where sightings of the Shepherd girl had been reported. She was not there. But she was somewhere, because Tom said so and, alive or dead, she had to be. Alex thought they might find her; Coffin thought not. He smelt death. No words passed on the subject: it was possible to convey information like that without comment.

  They were aware, both of them, that there was a close liaison between Tom Banbury and Chief Superintendent Dander, and that there was more information around than they were privy to.

  At intervals the paths of John Coffin and Alex passed when they looked at each other with question and concern. A scrutiny rather than a friendship.

  Coffin longed desperately for friendship. It wasn’t coming.

  It was a two-tram ride with a change on the way to Woolwich: Coffin surveyed the scene from his chosen seat at the top.

  He looked down on the stalls surrounded by crowds, each barrow having its own little cluster of customers, some standing to look, others moving on so that the groups formed and then dispersed. From the top of his tram he could trace one red-coated woman’s progress from stall to stall. By the kerb he saw a man crouching over an opened suitcase.

  He was happily staring down when he saw a small cycle speeding through the traffic parallel with the tramlines. The coppernob was recognizable at once. Paul Shanks, wearing the persona of Eagle Scott, was speeding to his assistance.

  Then his tram moved on, and he got out just around the corner from the Royal Arsenal.

  It was late on Saturday afternoon, his first chance to come here.

  He walked across the pavement to stare into the window of The Pioneer Bookshop. The window was full of a scholarly-looking book on the history of the working-class: Volume one, The Industrial Proletariat; volume two, The Rise of the Union.

  Eagle parked his cycle on the kerb against a lamp post and padlocked it.

  ‘How did you get here? How did you know I was coming?’

  ‘Been keeping an eye out. You nearly gave me the slip, though, because you came straight from work.’ He grinned. ‘But I got word. Had someone on the alert. You need me.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘The man who sells the shoes is here. I saw him.’

  ‘I think I did.’ There had been that flash of something interesting at the kerb by the funeral parlour in Powis Street.

  ‘He’ll know you’re a policeman.’

  ‘I’d thought of that.’

  ‘He’ll run.’

  ‘I’d thought of that, too.’

  ‘He’ll be gone before you get there. He has men watching. Out-men, they call them. They’ll signal as you pass.’

  ‘I expect I’ll manage.’ He started to walk away.

  He took a side path up through the stalls towards where the man with the suitcase had been.

  The boy
hung back; Coffin felt bad about the brush-off, but it was all for the best.

  He passed between two rows of fish stalls, and came up to where the street trader crouched over three suitcases on the opposite pavement. He saw the man clearly. They were shoes he was selling. A bus and a horse-drawn dray passed down the road between them.

  When he looked again the pavement was clear. ‘Damn.’ He did see the man, suitcase in hand, departing round the corner of Powis Street, past a jeweller’s shop. Behind the man a small figure of roller-skates sped in pursuit.

  Eagle was on the job.

  He shot ahead of the man, turned back, then deliberately ran into him. They both fell, the suitcase burst open.

  From behind two other men and a woman appeared, and closed in on the pair.

  Coffin started to run.

  He got there in time to lift Eagle to his feet. He had the beginnings of a black eye. The man and his friends, together with the suitcase were disappearing in the crowd.

  ‘Poor kid,’ said a woman.

  ‘What good did that do, now?’ said Coffin.

  Eagle looked up at him and grinned. From beneath his jacket he produced a shoe.

  It was twin to the one found in the river.

  Next door to The Pioneer Bookshop was what had been a milk-bar before the war, when milk was unrationed and cream was to be had. Coffin had almost forgotten what cream was, but one day it would be back, together with ice-cream. He remembered the days of the Wall’s Ice-cream man pedalling his little frozen cart. ‘Stop me and buy one.’ But he had always been an Eldorado man himself.

  Eagle had lemonade; he drank coffee, pale and thick with dried milk incorrectly mixed.

  Eagle was jubilant. ‘I did well, didn’t I? Will the shoe help?’

  John Coffin placed it on the table in front of him. ‘Yes. Probably it will. I can’t say for sure.’

  ‘Was he the murderer?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Will you catch him?’

  ‘The shoe merchant? Yes, probably. And find out where he’s getting the shoes.’

  Then perhaps fix a connection between the murdered girl and the supplier of black market shoes. And then, in the end, that connection might have nothing to do with her murder.