A Double Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  The door of Janet’s room opened at once, an angry face with a shock of red hair with a white cap on it demanded silence.

  Coffin braved the storm. He identified himself and asked to see Miss Neptune.

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the red-headed nurse irritably. ‘You gave me a medal about two years ago when you handed out awards at the Nursing College. Sister Bardy, not that you’d remember that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Coffin had been studying her face. ‘You got the medal because you went into a collapsing house, an airplane had landed near it, and you went in to give painkilling injections to a boy of ten while he waited to be cut free. You deserved that medal and more.’

  ‘You’ve silenced me,’ said Sister Bardy, showing no signs of actually being mute. ‘Smooth talk, smooth talk, I noticed it then.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No thanks needed. A mere courtesy.’ Both parties were enjoying the sparring. ‘I suppose you have come to see my patient. I’m not sure if I ought to let you in.’ She managed to notice George Darcy, to whom she gave a wide smile which he returned sheepishly.

  ‘But you will?’

  ‘I will have to ring through to the doctor.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Not too bad, not bad at all. The blow to the head was nothing, probably did it herself falling against the wall, but the body wound although not deep made her lose blood … If she had been discovered earlier it would have been nothing much.’

  ‘I think she was meant to be found earlier,’ said Coffin.

  ‘Oh well, if you think so, you’d know.’

  ‘Is she conscious?’

  ‘Oh my, yes. Talking and complaining.’

  While she was talking. Sister Bardy had quietly opened the door behind her. ‘Five minutes and no more.’

  Janet Neptune was propped on several pillows, a stretch of plaster ran across her left temple, her hair was cut back at that point, the left eye was bruised, and the cheek below it. She was wearing a white hospital shift with the hint of bandages around her waist.

  She stared at the two men with no friendly expression. ‘Now you see what has been done to me. I was attacked.’

  She looked at John Coffin and he answered her: ‘Can you remember what happened?’

  ‘I have already told what I could to that sergeant.’

  ‘I am afraid you may have to go through it all several times. Can you remember?’

  ‘More or less.’ She put her hand to her head. ‘You don’t remember all the details when you’ve been hit on the head …’ She frowned with the effort of remembering. ‘It started when I heard noises … like someone banging around the flat … I went out into the hall, it was all dark, and there was a sound like an animal growling.’

  She stopped.

  ‘Don’t go on if it hurts you.’

  ‘I think I ran to the door to get out because I was frightened; I didn’t want to be inside with whatever there was. Then something hit me on the head … I don’t remember much else, except a sharp pain just below my ribs … that was when the knife went in. I must have become unconscious soon after.’

  ‘You were found in the garage.’

  ‘I must have got down the stairs, I suppose … or perhaps I was dragged. I may have fallen. I don’t know about the garage, I must have been dragged or carried in.’

  ‘The state of your clothes will give us some help,’ said Coffin.

  She looked around vaguely. ‘I don’t know where they are. I don’t remember what I had on.’

  ‘We will find out,’ said Coffin soothingly.

  ‘I might have told them to throw them away.’

  ‘I don’t think they will have done; they know the rules in cases of violent attack.’

  ‘I ought to have been found sooner, I was there for hours,’ said Janet angrily. ‘I almost died. I was meant to die. He did it, you know, the old man. He’s mad.’

  Coffin was silent. Then: ‘I did warn you.’

  Janet did not answer; instead she closed her eyes.

  Sister Bardy put her head round the door. ‘Five minutes are up and the doctor is coming here fast.’

  From under closed lids, Janet said: ‘Take your running mate with you.’

  Coffin took the silent Darcy by the arm. ‘We’ll go.’ At the door, he paused, and turned back. ‘Janet, what became of the pink chiffon?’

  Still with eyes shut, she said: ‘I am going to have it dyed black.’

  As they walked to the car, Darcy asked what was it about the pink chiffon.

  ‘I just wanted to put the question,’ said Coffin. ‘See what she said.’

  In the car, George Darcy said: ‘Was it attempted murder?’

  ‘In a way, yes, I think so, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘I think the forensics on the clothes and blood will be helpful.’

  ‘Yes, sure. And was her attacker also the killer of Jaimie Layard?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Coffin. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  No. I can’t, you enigmatic bastard, thought Darcy. It seemed a long time since that Egg and Bacon supper at which, now he came to think about it, he had had nothing to eat and very little to drink.

  16

  Once they were in the car, Coffin fell silent, but the chief inspector meant to have it out.

  ‘I don’t know if I have got this right or not,’ said George Darcy, now filled with an irrational anger, and feeling there were secrets here that he was not being told. ‘But Janet Neptune is accusing the old man of attacking her with a view to killing her.’

  Coffin nodded. ‘That’s right, she was certainly doing that.’ Among other things.

  ‘And Richard Lavender, OM, former Prime Minister, is accusing himself.’

  ‘He is indeed.’

  ‘What a bloody mess. I suppose’ – he couldn’t stop his fury showing in his voice – ‘I suppose it has some connection with the business that is keeping Phoebe Astley so busy?’

  ‘It is connected, but not as directly as all that, Darcy.’

  ‘I knew the woman Jaimie was working on the background of Richard Lavender’s life, I knew that Phoebe was digging up something to do with his past. We do communicate. Word gets around and Phoebe isn’t the closest with the latest.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But the dead woman was also investigating the story of Martin Marlowe’s murder of his father. It seemed to me, and I thought you took the same view, sir, that she had got to know him because of this, he had found out, they had quarrelled, he had beaten her up and later killed her. That story fitted the facts until that jacket on the dead girl, part of her transvestite I-am-a-guy get-up was discovered to have belonged to Richard Lavender’s father.’

  Coffin said apologetically that he had operated on a need-to-know basis with old Lavender; the old man was a former Prime Minister after all, he still had heavy guns behind if he chose to use them, and he had requested silence. ‘Silence, of course, was never going to last. I suspect he knew it.’

  ‘The tom-toms do work, sir.’ They were nearing the Central Police Station, the night air was heavy with rain with the hint of mist as well. The Egg and Bacon supper must be long over. What Darcy wanted now was to get home to his wife, and have a meal and a drink, but first he might shoot the Chief Commander dead in the head.

  Verbally, of course.

  ‘We knew a lot, sir. Word passed round the canteens and the senior officers’ room, but there was a hole in the middle: what we didn’t know. That old Lavender might by now be a dangerous senile murderer. I suspect you did know, sir.’

  There, he’d had a shot at the Chief Commander’s head, and lived to tell the tale.

  ‘Not as straightforward as that, George, but yes, I do wonder about Lavender’s state of mind. He is guilty, he wants to show his guilt, and I think that is why I was called in.’

  Darcy ground his teeth. Still talking in riddles, he thought.

  The car was drawing into t
he front of the main block where Coffin had his office. It was late enough for the building to have quietened down.

  ‘Come into my office, everyone will have gone, and have a drink and I will talk.’

  Paul Masters was leaving as they walked in. He raised an eyebrow at the Chief Commander. ‘I am just off, sir.’

  ‘Right. The Egg and Bacon go well?’

  ‘Chaps seemed to enjoy it, sir. You missed the main celebrity, Lennie Chickenfeed.’ Lennie was a comedian who lived locally and did a lot for charity.

  ‘Sorry about that, but I was called away.’

  ‘He understood. I think you may find yourself figuring in his next joke, though, sir. I could see him working on it.’

  ‘It’s what I have to suffer,’ said Coffin with good humour. Paul Masters greeted the chief inspector and said goodbye in the same sentence before collecting his briefcase and going out of the door.

  ‘Good man,’ said Coffin absently. ‘He’s clever without being too clever, he’ll go right to the top.’ Whatever would count as the top then. ‘Whisky?’ He was already pouring out two good doses.

  ‘Thank you.’ Darcy was uneasily aware that his stomach needed a lining of food before it got whisky poured on it.

  ‘I was recruited,’ began Coffin, ‘yes, I use that word. I was recruited by the old man who has lost none of his wiles, a politician through and through, and I did not know what I was really being recruited for. I am beginning to realize now.’

  Darcy could feel the heat of the whisky hitting his brain. Certainly he felt more cheerful.

  ‘Old Lavender sent Jack Bradshaw, who was writing his official life, round to see me. He had a secret to tell me: his father had been a serial killer of women in the years before the Great War.’

  Darcy nodded. ‘A word of that has been going the rounds. Seems fantastic.’

  ‘He said that he, then a young boy, and his mother buried the last victim. They buried her in the nearest they could get to holy ground: the rough land at the edge of the old churchyard of St Luke’s. In other words, opposite where I live. I suppose that may be why I got the job. He wanted me to find her body, and, I suppose, see she got a proper burial. I don’t know if he thought I could pop out to do it myself, perhaps he did.’

  ‘You gave the job to Phoebe Astley.’

  ‘I did, because there was more to it than just finding a body. He had his burden of guilt to clear, he wanted to find out who his father had killed. He wanted it brought out, Bradshaw could write about it under his control, but he did not want it to be written up by the young journalist who called herself Marjorie Wardy, who had been interviewing him. She seemed to have learnt about this deadly saga.’

  ‘How did she do that?’

  ‘I can guess who told her, and that knowledge was the death of her …’ Coffin drank some whisky and poured some more. ‘Stella doesn’t like me to drink this stuff … so I don’t, much, but I keep a bottle because there are times when it is the only drink –’ He stopped saying: the only way out.

  ‘There was, as they say, a subtext. Lavender did not tell me that he had this nightmare that he could be a killer.’

  ‘You can’t inherit murder,’ said Darcy, on whom the whisky was working.

  ‘I suppose you can inherit the genes, the character. He was a ruthless politician, so they say, but I never heard that he killed anyone. So we come to today: when Janet Neptune accuses him of the attack on her, and the murder of Jaimie Layard, and when he accuses himself of attacking Janet Neptune.’

  Coffin drained his glass, recognizing as he did so that it was probably time to get home to Stella.

  Darcy frowned and put his glass down. ‘She thinks she was attacked by the murderer of Layard.’

  ‘I think she was,’ said Coffin.

  ‘And she accused old Lavender.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘So what is your advice, sir,’ asked Darcy, aware that he was in charge of the investigation into Jaimie’s death. ‘Does that mean Bradshaw and Marlowe are out of it? It seems to me there is still reason to suspect both of them and that this episode doesn’t change that.’

  Coffin stood up. ‘My advice is to keep a watch on both Richard Lavender and Janet Neptune, even in hospital. And trust that a thorough forensic survey will give you some help.’ He tidied away the whisky bottle and put the glasses on the table by the door. ‘You can keep an eye on Bradshaw and Marlowe as well, if you like. Let’s get off home, both of us.’

  Darcy followed Coffin out of the building, noticing that the Chief Commander turned off the lights in his office as he left and locked all the doors.

  ‘You know who the murderer of Layard and the Neptune woman’s attacker is, don’t you, sir?’

  Coffin said nothing until he had reached his car. ‘Want a lift home?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir, got my own car here.’ Thank goodness he had not drunk any more whisky.

  ‘And the answer to your question is. Yes, I do think I know, and I believe you do by now. It’s your case, your team that will have to do the dog work to prove the killer guilty. It may be one of those cases where guilt can never be proved, but my advice is to remember the old nursery advice from mother: to trust the doctor.’

  Darcy gave him a long hard look. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘I thought you would. Push them, and let me know what you get. Meanwhile, I have a feeling that Phoebe Astley is about to go in for surgery on her own account.’

  When he got home, Stella was awake, in the kitchen drinking tea in company with the cat and dog, both occupied with their own food bowls.

  Stella poured herself some more tea. ‘You look the tiniest bit drunk,’ she said to her husband.

  ‘Only with worry and misery,’ he answered.

  ‘You can take Augustus out for his late-night walk, that should settle you.’

  ‘Can I have some tea first?’

  Stella poured him a cup of the good rich Indian brew they both preferred. ‘The worry I allow you, but what’s the misery about?’

  ‘I think I may have to let a killer walk free.’

  Stella stood up. ‘I will make you a sandwich, I reckon you are hungry as well as miserable. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Come to think of it, no.’

  ‘A sandwich and a cup of tea and a walk with Augustus will sober you down; you have a small dose of the whisky blues.’

  The sandwich arrived on a plate with a blue napkin; he realized he was hungry. ‘What’s in this?’ he asked with bite two.

  ‘Smoked salmon and cream cheese.’

  He ate it quickly, drank two cups of tea, then looked at Augustus. ‘I suppose he does want to go out? It’s a dirty night.’

  For answer, Stella attached the lead to the dog’s collar. ‘Drag him.’

  Coffin walked round the tower in which he lived, leaving behind him the three theatres: the Stella Pinero and the much smaller Experimental Theatre, opposite to the Theatre Workshop. He had to hand it to Stella, who had put every inch of the old St Luke’s Church to use and to profit.

  The rain had stopped, the mist was clearing, not such a bad night after all. Augustus plunged forward eagerly, night smells were rich and good.

  They walked the narrow stretch which bordered the pavement; across the road was the old churchyard. No one was on duty protecting it, but the site where the skeleton had been found had been wired off.

  He could see that someone else was there, moving among the trees of the old churchyard. ‘Come on, Augustus, let’s take a look.’

  A tall, dark raincoated figure swung round as he came up. Augustus leapt forward with a fusillade of cheerful barks.

  ‘Phoebe, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Mooching round, thinking.’ He could see her troubled face in the light from a streetlamp. ‘I didn’t stay long at the E and B supper after you left … I know why, the word got around, and of course I was interested. Not my case, but it touches what I am doing, what I have done. So I went back to work. I told
you I had got on to something … one of the local newspapers of December 1914, spoke of a man being arrested for the murders. I wanted to see if I could find anything more.’

  Coffin let Augustus off his lead. ‘Yes?’

  Phoebe took a deep breath. ‘In December 1914, a man called Henry Phillips was arrested for three murders: those of Armour, Bailey and Jones. He denied knowing anything about Haved but confessed to the others. He was brought before the magistrates and committed for trial at the Old Bailey. They were quick about things then – he was tried and found guilty soon afterwards, and hanged. He was not Richard Lavender’s father.’

  She looked at Coffin, her face full of fury. ‘Where does that leave us? Did he believe it ever? Was he lying all the time? What is he?’ Her voice was full of feeling. ‘I liked what I was doing. I believed in it … but now … What is he, some kind of monster?’

  ‘I think he may be,’ said Coffin sadly.

  Chief Inspector Darcy was on the telephone early next day. ‘Medical report,’ he said briskly. ‘Dick Lavender is coming round nicely. The doctors say he has good muscle tone … that means he can get around and do pretty well what he likes, not frail at all for his age. He probably had a sedative dose on the night of the attack, made him dopey.’

  ‘You had better find out where that came from.’

  ‘We will,’ said Darcy with conviction. ‘He had some painkiller for arthritis in his knee … could have been that. Janet Neptune is recovering well, the blood loss well made up. The wound itself not dangerous, she was unlucky in not being found earlier … Should have been, we had police check up on the area as you know, but there was a fight in the High Street … delayed the constable. Shouldn’t have.’ Darcy added tersely: ‘I’ve dealt with that.’

  ‘Right,’ said Coffin thoughtfully. ‘Not quite enough evidence for you to move.’

  ‘No, I am waiting for the forensics. Told them to get a move on.’