A Double Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘I shall ignore that, and as it happens, we don’t just discuss women’s issues, but we are a support group. And if you think I didn’t need one when I joined the Second City Force, then you are wrong.’

  Women had so many ways of making you feel humble. Coffin thought; this was not Stella’s style, she went for the straightforward stinging comment, but Phoebe’s was just as powerful. Also, in Phoebe’s case, it annoyed him because he knew that in the background of her life there was always a man giving her support in one way or another.

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ he said. ‘You weren’t harried in any way, were you?’

  ‘Nothing overt, or I’d have cut their balls off.’

  Coffin winced. He was old-fashioned about words.

  ‘They knew I was under your protection.’

  Coffin winced again; he wondered if Phoebe was doing this on purpose. She and Stella could circle around each other like suspicious cats, and this might be a circling.

  He moved the conversation back to the library. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘The two lives, as I have said, but then I started in on the files of newspapers. They keep The Times, and all the local papers back to the Boer War as far as I could see. Possibly further. Probably got the obituary of John Evelyn in the London Gazette for 1600 or so. When did he die?’

  Coffin shook his head. ‘After the Great Fire of London, I think. He had Peter the Great of Russia to stay with him to learn shipbuilding.’

  ‘It’s all interesting reading … they had a female serial killer there in the 1920s.’

  Coffin raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No, not a Mrs Lavender. She was a nurse, she suffocated her victims … I suppose her craft made that easy for her. Seven, she did in, and three more suspected. All old men who left her what they had. Not a lot, they were not rich, but their families took it badly and that was what got her in the end. She was hanged, of course, they did use the rope and the drop then.’ Phoebe spoke with a certain gusto.

  I needn’t worry about her having a soft heart, decided Coffin. ‘Don’t waste your time reading papers of the twenties, these deaths were just before the 1914–1918 war.’

  ‘I am getting the feel of the area, though, and that counts. When I started I must own I could not believe the tale, somehow it sounds more credible now. You get the feeling that it was a place where anything could happen.’

  ‘Still is,’ said Coffin.

  ‘One woman produced four babies at a birth – sensation. They all died, of course, one after the other, but she was so upset that she would not admit the last one, a boy, was dead and pushed him around in a pram for days and days until she was stopped. And then a man claimed he had a talking dog, people queued up to hear the dog talk. They knew it couldn’t and didn’t and that it was him, but it made them laugh to see him struggle to get the voice out and move the dog’s jaws. The interesting thing was the man-dog voice used to predict the future if you paid enough, and it seems often got it right. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Yes, I have to admit that I did think that the dog was a bright reporter trying to get a good story. Especially when it was by-lined E. Wallace.’

  It could have been the young Edgar Wallace, Coffin thought, he was a Londoner and knew the Docklands. Greenwich and Deptford was where he grew up. Also, a Ripper murder was just what would attract him. ‘He was an established writer at the time,’ he said. ‘He’d been a war correspondent in South Africa. I think he might have been short of money, he had family responsibilities … he was writing anything he could turn his hand to … ghostwrote the life of Evelyn Thaw whose husband murdered her lover in New York, and any number of articles and short stories.’

  ‘When I have tracked down the names of women found murdered in Spinnergate or Swinehouse, then I will try to find out all the details I can. I will also be going through the police records. Unfortunately, the Records Room, which was in the old Headquarters, was bombed by a zeppelin in the First World War and in the Blitz in the Second. Fire bombs did most damage, there are great gaps. If you take my advice …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You won’t expect too much.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘And you might get one of those keen young archivists from Oxford or Cambridge to go over the early records and see what they can salvage.’

  ‘Can’t afford it,’ said Coffin in a detached voice. Across the room, he could see Martin sitting with a group from the theatre. Although with them, he was apart.

  ‘Excuse me a moment.’ He went across to Martin, who was staring into a cup of coffee. The lad looked up as he came over. He looked surprised, then he smiled.

  ‘How did the rehearsal go?’ asked Coffin, although Stella had spoken about Martin on her mobile from the airport, and had already reported that the boy was steadier.

  ‘Better.’ Again that charming smile. ‘I just pushed everything aside and got on with it.’

  Coffin nodded. The boy must have had plenty of practice at that sort of thing. Pushing the horrors aside and getting on with it. But the trouble was that they festered inside.

  ‘And Jaimie?’ He wanted to know about her, because she touched his life and this matter of Dick Lavender. Where she had gone, he might send Phoebe.

  Martin looked at his coffee, he shook his head. ‘Not back with me. I went to her flat in the City where she works. I don’t know if she was there, but she did not answer. I don’t believe she was there. I know she is angry with me, but she has never kept it up, always comes back.’ He added slowly: ‘It may be this other story she was working on – I don’t mean me and Clara. It excited her, she is very ambitious.’

  ‘Let me know what happens.’ Coffin patted him on the shoulder, then returned to his table.

  ‘What’s up with that young man?’ Phoebe had been watching. ‘He looks hag ridden.’

  ‘You think it’s serious?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So do I.’

  The first course of their meal, one of Max’s famous cold fish mousses, was waiting for them. Phoebe picked up her fork. ‘I know who he is, of course.’

  ‘Sure you do.’ Coffin tasted the mousse. ‘I had better tell you, he has had a row with his girlfriend, she’s cleared out.’

  ‘He’s looking for her, I suppose.’

  ‘She is a journalist, it seems likely that under her pseudonym she is the young woman working on the Lavender story.’

  Phoebe nodded. ‘I may have met her then. One of my best friends works for the Daily Shout’ – this being the name given by all to a bestselling daily – ‘and I went to a party there. Is she fair, pretty and tall? Well, perhaps there are a lot of them around, but this one was a bit drunk and talking about the story she was going to sell.’

  She added: ‘I believe she wears a dark wig sometimes.’

  ‘She is also working on a story about Martin and his sister Clara,’ said Coffin in a level voice.

  Phoebe blinked. ‘Loyalty to a lover doesn’t come into it, does it?’

  ‘The boy has come to the conclusion that he was only her lover so she could get the full details.’

  ‘I think it wise of her to go missing; if I was her I think I’d stay away permanently,’ said Phoebe, turning to look at Martin. ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he? But perhaps not too safe to know.’

  ‘He didn’t kill his father, he helped his sister but he was only a child. He remembers, of course.’

  ‘A bad memory to grow up with.’

  ‘For them both, I think.’

  Neither of them were eating very much, the fish mousse had been replaced by a chicken dish. Presently, Phoebe produced a file of papers. ‘I have more to show you than I said: I got a print-out of some of the pages in the local newspaper. There were some articles on three deaths. I did go back to 1912 and 1913, almost up to the beginning of the war, in fact.’

  She produced a selection of print-outs. ‘
Look, three articles. Not signed, probably was not allowed, but initialled as by E.W., and there is a photograph.’

  It was a thin, young face, with dark hair sleeked back and shining. As yet you did not see the familiar heavy spectacles of the adult and famous Edgar Wallace. He had probably needed the spectacles even then but perhaps had not wanted to be photographed in them. We all have our vanities.

  She pointed. ‘He did one article on the first murder, that terrible photograph is of the dead woman Mildred Bailey, but two on the second – I suppose it was more sensational. The first was in January 1913, and the second, Mary Jane Armour, in April of that year. There was a third, a woman called Eliza Jones, in May 1913. There may have been at least one other death, Isobel Haved, who just disappeared, probably dead – he mentions her. Made it more of a story, I suppose, but she may have been one of a series of murders by one man.’

  Coffin reached out for the papers to study them. ‘You’ve done well, I think you are on to something.’

  ‘Now I have got a start, I shall go backwards through the newspapers to see what details I can find … Pity the police records went up with the bombs, but I will poke around and ask questions. There might be a response.’ Especially when they know you are involved, she told herself.

  Coffin was reading what she had already. ‘All three strangled, but savaged in other ways … two of them, anyway. Not too much detail there, he doesn’t give too much about it, wouldn’t do at the time, I suppose … All the bodies found tucked away, one in an alley, another in a gutter and one in a park … Killed elsewhere, though, it was thought.’ In the Lavenders’ family home or thereabouts, if Dick Lavender had it right.

  And soon after the first Great War in Europe had started and the young journalist, as well as the rest of England, had had other deaths to think about.

  ‘If I go through the newspapers, I will probably get more on the killings. Also, I may read that the murderer of these women was found, in which case, it cannot be the deaths that worried Mrs Lavender and son.’

  ‘Unless he is having a fantasy,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘And he and his mother never got up to any high jinks at all. Just an imagining of an old man.’

  ‘Worth thinking about.’ Phoebe frowned. ‘But I don’t believe it, though. Did he give you that impression?’

  ‘No.’ Coffin drank some wine. ‘Something hard to understand in that household, though. It puzzled me. Didn’t seem natural.’

  ‘Old age can be like that,’ said Phoebe tolerantly. ‘My grandmother used to tell me how she fought, in uniform, in the Great War. In fact, she had still been at school. In a way, she knew it, but she just managed to live on two streams … Lavender may be doing the same.’

  ‘Giving me some work,’ grunted Coffin.

  ‘He’s a former Prime Minister. There’s the ghost of power still there.’

  ‘No need to remind me.’ He was looking across the room. There was someone pushing through the glass doors of Max’s restaurant. ‘There’s Dr Bradshaw. What’s he doing here?’

  Phoebe looked across, she also looked pleased, and it struck Coffin again that Jack Bradshaw did please women.

  ‘He’s looking for you, of course.’

  Jack Bradshaw was weaving his way through the tables to where they sat. With unashamed lack of style, which somehow became him, he was carrying a bag from a well-known grocery store. ‘Chief Commander, there you are … your wife said you would be here.’

  ‘She’s back, is she?’

  ‘She drove me here.’ He looked at Phoebe. ‘Now, we have met, haven’t we? Forgive me if I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Phoebe Astley,’ she said, holding out her hand and smiling. If Jack Bradshaw pleased women, then in Phoebe he had met an experienced connoisseur. ‘I came to one of your lectures.’

  ‘You sat in the front row, and asked a question. I knew I had seen you before.’ Then he turned back to Coffin, placing his carrier bag on the table; he drew out some papers.

  ‘I thought these might interest and might even be of use.’

  Coffin reached out to take them. ‘I should tell you that Chief Inspector Astley is helping me with this enquiry.’

  Across the room, he saw that Stella had just entered. She was wearing a pale-pink pleated skirt with a darker pink shirt, all new to him, and he had a good memory for Stella’s clothes, while being grateful that she paid for them herself. She smiled at him and gave him a little wave before going to speak to Max. A rush of happiness rushed through Coffin at the sight of her.

  ‘I think I guessed,’ said Jack Bradshaw. ‘I am glad. I think a woman might see through more than a man would.’

  Coffin put the contents of the carrier in front of him on the table. ‘Have a drink, Bradshaw, while I look at these.’ He motioned to their waiter, who was studying them with interest anyway. He had every intention of writing a crime novel and meant to put Coffin in it. (Max’s staff were almost entirely recruited from out-of-work actors and hopeful writers.)

  On the table in front of him were three photographs, one in a silver frame, the other two loose, all yellowing with age.

  He picked up the one in the frame first to see a fine-looking young woman in bustle and feathery toque. ‘Mrs Lavender?’

  Bradshaw nodded. ‘In her Sunday best, so her son assures me, he just remembers her dressed like it. Probably the same hat and skirt and jacket; I doubt if she had many choices, they were poor enough by all accounts. May even have been her wedding clothes.’

  The unframed photographs were of a young boy and a man. Lavender and son. Coffin guessed.

  He picked up the boy’s photograph first. An earnest, intelligent face stared out at him. Not handsome, the older Lavender had grown into good looks. No, he corrected himself, life had made him look distinguished. History had made his face: this was the man who had worked through two wars, managed the British army, created an export drive, been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and finally Prime Minister. A man who had retired at the height of his powers.

  Dick Lavender must have taken after his mother, or possibly an earlier forbear, because he did not look like his father. Edward Lavender senior had a pinched, nervous face, lined and thin as if no one had ever fed him enough. He was photographed wearing a jacket and tie and cloth cap. Perhaps he had been on a works day out. What had he worked at, Coffin wondered, looking at this slice of Docklands history.

  ‘What did he do?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t look strong enough to be a docker.’

  ‘He wasn’t. No, he was a tally man, sold goods by instalments. Never a popular figure, of course, since people fell into debt so easily. Brought him in touch with the women, which he must have enjoyed.’

  You don’t like him, yet you have a touch of him yourself, thought Coffin as he pulled more papers out of the carrier bag. Some very old newspapers fell out before him. The first was the original of which Phoebe had a copy, the second was from another local paper, the East Hythe Chronicle, with a story about the murders in Spinnergate. Possibly by the young Edgar Wallace too, decided Coffin, but no photograph and no by-line.

  ‘I’ve got a copy of the first of those articles,’ Phoebe, who had been watching, told them. ‘Not the second, but I would have found it in time.’

  ‘I thought they might help,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Send you in the right direction.’

  ‘They will …’ Phoebe smiled. ‘I’m just finding my feet. Historical research has not been my thing.’

  Stella arrived at their table. ‘I’ve ordered some more wine … No, no food, darling. I ate on the plane … the usual sort of wooden food, but it stops hunger pretty effectually.’ She sounded cheerful. ‘I got my man and I think he will be a winner as Jerry in Albee’s Zoo Story, and I got him cheap.’ She nodded. ‘Well, cheapish; when he thinks it over he will be cross.’ She smiled. ‘Only two characters, too.’

  ‘But will people come?’ asked Phoebe, who admired Stella, but felt a little brush at times did no harm.

  Stella igno
red her and waved to the waiter to pour the wine. They drank a glass while Phoebe and Jack talked over what they were doing, and Coffin sat thoughtfully looking at his wife. She was up to something and he would like to know what. Max came over and murmured quietly in Coffin’s ear that he was wanted on the telephone.

  When the Chief Commander came back, he apologized, but he had to call in on his office. Nothing important, foreign affairs, but he must go.

  Phoebe said: ‘I’ve got some stuff in my office that might interest you, Jack. Let’s go too.’

  ‘We’ll all go.’ Stella stood up. ‘I will drive and then sit and wait for you, John.’

  As they drove through the streets the short distance to the Headquarters of the Second City Police, they passed a boy running towards a constable on the beat. The boy clutched at the policeman and started to talk. Words were pouring out and the policeman was trying to calm him down.

  ‘Stop please, Stella,’ said Coffin. ‘I want to see what is going on.’ He got out of the car.

  ‘He can’t keep his hands off,’ observed Stella sadly to Phoebe, ‘but I expect you know that.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to notice,’ said Phoebe.

  The boy, his face blotched with red and white patches, was shouting at the constable: ‘I’m not playing a game, and I am not being silly. We’ve got a body, it’s dressed up as a guy, but it’s a person.’ As Coffin came up, he said, almost in despair: ‘It’s in the car park round the corner.’

  Coffin put a steadying hand on the boy while acknowledging the constable’s salute. ‘You’re out late with your guy.’

  ‘We’ve got permission.’ Tom controlled himself; he realized he had been on the point of tears. He was glad to talk about something else other than a deader in a box. ‘It’s for charity, see. Leukaemia research. We do it for them. Just keep back our expenses,’ he explained.

  ‘Of course,’ said Coffin. ‘Well, let’s go and look and see what you’ve got.’ He had a son once, long ago and long since dead.