He went downstairs, put on his coat, and walked out into the night. The white Pekingese did not try to follow him, unlike the previous incumbent, who, always game for a walk, would have been at the door before he was. He turned towards the river and then took the long, bleak road that led through the tower blocks of Spinnergate towards where Dick Lavender lived.
It was dark, foggy, a London winter night, the Second City was not rich London – here was no Knightsbridge, no Mayfair; Buckingham Palace and the House of Commons were the other side of the river, but the shop windows were bright, and the big supermarket in the High Street was lit up and its car park was busy.
Coffin walked on. St Luke’s, created by Stella, out of enthusiasm, professionalism and hard words and hard work, was the only theatre in the Second City, but there were cinemas and a public house called the Lion at Bay where rock groups played. There was life and mirth here as there always had been through the centuries, native British, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and now the polyglot population that would have interested Shakespeare. What an audience to play for, he would have said.
When he got near the river, close to Lavender’s flat, he stood looking out at Jericho Docks where ships had once loaded for the East Indies. Quiet now, with berths for private yachts.
Two crimes to be investigated, divided by eighty-odd years, but strangely linked. A coat with a dead man’s name in it, a man whom his son called a multiple murderer of women, his coat wrapped round another murdered woman. A grave with an empty coffin, a woman with a child inside her, and the bones of another man, shallow in the earth.
He sighed. It would need the dark voice of John Webster to write this up. Shakespeare was too humane.
The lights were on in Lavender’s flat, and the old white van was parked outside among a cluster of smarter vehicles. Perhaps the bicycle padlocked to the railings belonged to Janet Neptune.
He took the lift, rang the doorbell and waited. He had to wait, then the door was opened by Jack Bradshaw, who looked surprised to see him. He hesitated, then: ‘Do come in. Chief Commander.’
Coffin could see Dick Lavender himself in the room beyond, supported by pillows in his big armchair. He gave a small dignified wave of the hand. Sitting beside him, sewing in her lap, was Janet Neptune. On the floor beside her was a workbox full of cottons, silks and scraps of materials, she was obviously an accomplished seamstress. She looked bright and cheerful but Dick Lavender seemed tired. Well, that was his privilege, Coffin thought.
Jack Bradshaw hesitated at the door.
‘Do come in, Jack,’ said Janet. ‘And shut the door, you are making us all cold.’
The room, in fact, was very hot, but the very old do feel the cold and Dick Lavender was wearing a thick dressing gown with a rug over his knees. Coffin had thought him immaculate and well groomed on his last visit, not so today: his hair was ruffled, he could have done with a shave and there were food spots on his dressing gown.
Old age has its degradations. Coffin thought. Didn’t even the fierce old man Bernard Shaw have marks on his jacket and trousers in extreme old age?
She stood up. ‘I expect you want to talk to these two alone.’
‘No need to go.’
‘Oh, we always have a cup of tea or coffee about this time.’ She walked to the door. ‘Jack, I will give you a shout when I want help with the tray.’
‘She’s a good girl,’ said Dick Lavender, ‘but a mite bossy.’ He sounded tired.
Jack Bradshaw sighed. ‘She’s what she always was, only more so. You need her though, sir.’ He turned to Coffin. ‘I told all I knew about Marjorie to your colleague Chief Inspector Darcy. He saw me more than once. I don’t think he was satisfied with what I told him. Suspects me, I suppose. Poor Marjorie … I think of her as that still, but I know now it was only a name she used for writing.’
Dick Lavender reached out to pat his hand. ‘She was a liar, that girl, but we all fall in love with a wrong ‘un sometimes. Don’t blame yourself.’
‘Thanks, Dick, but I do, of course. And don’t be hard on her, she was trying to do a job. Maybe it killed her, I hope not, I would like to think her death was nothing to do with me.’ He turned to Coffin. ‘Is there any news? Anything you can tell me?’
‘I am not always up to date with the news myself,’ said Coffin evasively. ‘I do get the reports, of course, but sometimes they are slow to filter through.’
From the tilt of the old Prime Minister’s left eyebrow. Coffin saw that he knew an evasion when he heard one.
‘So, is there anything for me, if you prefer not to talk about the other business … You came here for something.’ Old age had not taken away his sharpness.
‘The skeleton of a woman has been found.’
‘I told you it would be,’ said Dick Lavender, his voice testy. ‘I sent you there. So what now?’
‘Nothing for the moment. Forensic tests, that sort of thing.’
Evasion again, said Dick Lavender’s eloquent eyebrow. In the old days, his cabinet must have got to know that look and prepared to take cover.
‘You are not telling me everything.’
‘No,’ said Coffin in a level voice. ‘No.’
‘Will you ever?’
Coffin considered: how much power and influence did the old man still wield? ‘Probably not.’ Then he added: ‘But I have told you what I can at the moment; I thought you had a right to know about the skeleton.’
‘You have told me something else already: that there is more to tell.’
Round one to you, old fellow, on points, thought Coffin. But I know what I know: the woman had a baby inside her and next to her, in his shallow grave, lay a man. And by them both, an empty box.
Connected, those two bodies, or not? If he is an air-raid victim, we will find out.
He and Dick Lavender exchanged glances of mutual respect. He is my real protagonist, thought Coffin, age or not, and he too knows more than he is saying. I will have to consider that, I am not being his servant.
He saw the old man’s hands, plaiting and weaving the rug on his lap. Yes, something there all right.
A call from the kitchen summoned Bradshaw to carry the tray. He seemed to have shrunk in stature since the discovery of Jaimie’s body, and probably ranked lowest of all in pecking order in this household.
Janet poured coffee. ‘Here you are, Uncle.’
‘I am not your uncle,’ he growled.
‘Great Unke, cousin, be what you like.’ She handed a cup to Coffin.
The coffee was good. Angry, tough lady, as he was beginning to see her, she made a good cup of coffee. As they sat drinking he looked at her sewing basket from which a fold of soft pink chiffon spilled.
‘Lovely silk,’ he said. ‘I like the silk, lovely colour.’ Soft, very pretty, expensive, it would suit Stella. Or a bride.
She sipped her coffee and gave the basket a little push with her foot. ‘Yes … I was making myself some undies, but I couldn’t seem to get on … I expect I’ll finish it one day.’
‘Pity to waste it.’
‘Oh, there’s always waste, isn’t there?’ She stood up. ‘Like Uncle with his coffee there. Now look out, Nunky, you’re slopping it.’
Jack Bradshaw went across to Dick Lavender. ‘Had enough, sir?’
‘Yes, take the cup away.’ Command came back into his voice. ‘Sit down, girl, and stop fussing.’ He turned to Coffin. ‘So why are you here today? What is it you want?’
‘I thought you had asked once already. Uncle,’ said Janet.
‘I always knew you listened at the door, woman.’
Coffin produced a photograph which he passed across to the former Prime Minister. ‘Do you recognize this jacket.’
The jacket was pinned against a sheet on a table, arms wide, unbuttoned. It was in colour, the dusty mid-brown tweed clearly to be seen.
A card covered the spot where the name Edward Lavender showed up.
Dick Lavender studied it without picking the photograph up. He shook hi
s head. ‘No. Where did you get it?’
Coffin ignored the question and looked towards Janet. She picked it up, giving it a long careful consideration.
‘Take a look,’ he said in a quiet voice.
‘That’s police talk … I watch the soaps … take a look, they say.’
‘I could say something else,’ he said, his voice mild, but anyone who had worked with Coffin, and knew him, would have walked carefully.
Janet turned to stare. ‘I know you, I’m local, you see. So’s he, sitting in his big chair, but he lives in a rarefied atmosphere. I know you are straight, that you sometimes play friends.’
Coffin drew his breath in.
‘Nothing dishonest but you have your favourites, but on the whole, I say on the whole, you are trusted to be clean.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I thought you would say that. Well, don’t flash photographs at us.’ She subsided, sinking into her chair.
‘Have you ever seen this jacket?’
‘Not that I know.’
Coffin looked at Jack Bradshaw who said: ‘Just a jacket.’ He paused: ‘The dead girl was wearing it, I think – is that it?’
‘It might be useful evidence.’
‘That’s saying nothing again,’ put in Janet. ‘Police talk, police talk … it might be this or it might be that … never mind it helps us cut your throat.’
Dick Lavender sat up. ‘Hold your tongue, woman.’
‘Someone’s got to have one.’
Coffin took the photograph back, giving it another look himself.
‘So it was never in this house, anyway?’
Dick Lavender said, ‘Not as far as I know.’
‘It looks the sort of jacket you might pick up at a charity shop or a church fete,’ said Jack Bradshaw.
‘I went to enough of those in my time,’ said the old man, ‘and bought stuff, you had to, and came home and threw it in the attic. I had a row of old trunks. Full of papers, books, old clothes.’
‘Still got them,’ said Janet. She shook the coffee pot and then poured herself another cup.
‘You’ve been taking an interest in them, haven’t you. Jack? Digging around for archive material?’
‘Yes, you have two trunks full of paper – letters, drafts of documents and speeches …’
‘Some Cabinet papers, I daresay, which I ought not to have’ – the old man gave a laugh – ‘but I doubt they’ll put me in the Tower now, although in my time many would have liked to.’
Janet was chewing a biscuit. ‘You took a trunk of old clothes and books down to the church sale. Jack, didn’t you? I suppose the jacket could have come from them.’
‘Yes, I remember that trip, the church down by the tube station, St George’s, I don’t know what was in them, though.’
Janet bit into the biscuit with decision. ‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘If the jacket came from here at all,’ said Dick Lavender, turning upon Coffin. ‘But I suppose you have reason for thinking it did.’
‘Yes, I have reason.’
Dick Lavender struggled to stand up, failed and fell back into his chair. ‘I would like to look into your face, I can’t see it clearly from here. Come over.’
Coffin obeyed the command without a word. He stood before the old man to be studied.
Lavender drew back and sighed, ‘You are a good man, I think. I used to be able to tell, to trust my judgement, but people have changed. Or I have. Tell me, is this jacket anything to do with the story I have asked you to investigate?’
‘I can’t answer that now. There may be connections.’ He hesitated, then said: ‘Do you have any knowledge of any other body there?’
Lavender breathed deeply. ‘No. Is that what you have found? No, I know nothing.’
The old man closed his eyes. ‘You had better go now, I am tired. Call again when you can tell me more. Stuff I can believe. Remember you are talking to a politician, even if an old one. I learnt to listen what lay underneath words … I don’t like what I hear underneath yours.’
Janet led the way out, with Coffin carrying the loaded tray into the kitchen while Jack Bradshaw tended to the old man.
‘He needs some looking after, I can tell you … but Jack is a help, there are some things you need a man for … Put the tray down here.’
The kitchen was clearly her province, and a door leading off it was her sitting room and bedroom too. Through the open door, he could see photographs on the wall above the bed. She liked photographs, there were even photographs on one wall in the kitchen.
It was a kind of picturama of the former Prime Minister. She saw him looking. ‘Well, I am proud of the connection; I think he is a great-great-uncle, but I don’t dig into it too much because not everyone married who they should and some of the children don’t quite fit into the family tree … We were that sort of family.’
She pointed: ‘That’s Uncle when he first got into the House of Commons … handsome, wasn’t he? You can tell how young he was by his ears, young men always seem to have bigger ears. There he is later, and much later, that’s when he resigned. Far away and long ago; I don’t remember it myself.’
There were groups on the wall. Richard Lavender with a group of political figures, Richard Lavender with King George, Richard Lavender with his wife. A recent snap of Lavender with Jack Bradshaw and Janet. Janet and Jack Bradshaw.
There was a wedding party on the top of the small refrigerator. She saw him looking at it. ‘Friend of mine – a lovely dress, isn’t it?’
‘Beautiful.’ Although, in fact, he thought it fussy and frilly. ‘So is the bride.’ As she was, lovely.
The telephone fixed on the wall rang and he took his chance to go. ‘I’ll be off.’ He observed that she was one of those who scribbled their telephone numbers on a pad stuck on the wall. She saw him looking. ‘I do have a life outside of Uncle, you know. I belong to a few local organizations. Chair of two. I have got Lavender blood.’
‘Take care. Miss Neptune,’ Coffin said soberly.
She laughed. ‘I am not in any danger.’
‘We are all in danger sometimes, Miss Neptune,’ Coffin said. He ran down the stairs, ignoring the lift. Outside, the fog seemed to be clearing, he could see the sky; he stood there breathing in the air and assembling his thoughts. Plenty to think about.
Jack Bradshaw came out. ‘Just off home. Don’t stay here all the time. I have a place across the river, just a room, I live in Oxford when I can. Your lot have my address. I suppose they will be back to see us here, Darcy and Co?’
‘I am afraid so, yes. They will want to talk to you all again, you and Janet and Lavender himself. It’s the way it goes with an investigation of this type.’
‘I didn’t kill her … I loved her. Even if I had killed her, I couldn’t dress her body like that. Only a special sort of killer could do that. A mad person or someone who hated her.’
‘Sometimes love can turn to hate,’ said Coffin.
Jack Bradshaw took this for what it was: a show of scepticism. ‘And what about the old man’s gadget … Dad the Ripper?’
‘Don’t you believe it?’
Bradshaw shrugged. ‘Half and half.’
There might be something in it,’ Coffin offered cautiously.
‘My, you do give a lot away.’ Bradshaw turned his head. ‘I have to get off.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Quite a ride home for you.’
‘Not too bad. I go through the Greenwich tunnel. I like the ride.’
‘Easier than a car?’ An accident vehicle, as he recalled.
‘Not better than the Rolls,’ he smiled. ‘That’s Dick Lavender’s. Yes, a bike can be quicker. A bit dangerous though.’
Coffin looked round the parking area. ‘That old white van is nothing to do with you then?’
‘No. Janet drives that. All over the place, she’s a good driver.’ He began to wheel his bike away. Both men turned to look at the lighted windows on the top floor. One light went out.
&nbs
p; Bradshaw shrugged. ‘I’m off duty now.’
‘Will they be all right up there?’
‘They won’t kill each other, if that’s what you mean. Janet is a bit of a bully but it’s more for show. I think they are better on their own.’ He got on his bike. ‘He’s been a great man … just lived too long, that’s his tragedy.’
And Janet’s too? Coffin asked himself.
He walked home through the fog, now reduced to wisps by a light wind.
What to make of a house with pink chiffon and pictures of brides where a distinguished old man sat in a dressing gown spotted with spilt food?
Stella was not in, so he sat in the kitchen and drank some wine. Must be careful about what he drank, he had gone that way once before and it was to be avoided. The cat jumped on the table to study his face. ‘Want something to drink?’ Apparently not. ‘What do you make of pink chiffon, puss?’ Pink chiffon and that square solid little figure – there was sadness in the thought. Puss had no answer to give, which meant there might not be one.
When Stella came in, lateish but looking happy and unruffled – he was glad about the unruffled bit, surely a woman who had been made love to by someone other than her husband would look ruffled – he said: ‘What do you make of pink chiffon lingerie?’
‘A love affair, and a first one,’ said Stella promptly. ‘With a bit of experience you forget about the pink chiffon.’ She met his eyes and began to laugh.
‘You are a devil, Stella,’ he said fondly.
12
The new day was a kind of celebration day for the Second City Force.
After months, no years, of committees, discussions, representations and despairs, the new police baton was to be issued. Displacing the old copper’s truncheon, which had been in use more or less since Sir Robert Peel invented the Peelers and with them the modern police force, there was now to be the Asp, a friction-lock, expandable baton. Coffin was told it was well thought of in the sergeants’ room, a crucial judgement.
Coffin himself had seen one first in operation in one of the tougher areas of New York, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where a police lieutenant had showed him the speed and force with which it worked. Later, Coffin had tried one out himself, and now, on this special day, presented one to the first man to use one. He was the uniformed officer with the longest service. He was due to retire within the month so his use of the expandable baton was likely to be limited.
A Double Coffin Page 15