‘See the two are kept apart.’
‘They have both had a visit from Dr Bradshaw … that is, he tried but he was told no visitors. He says he will come back.’ Before he could say anything else, there was an interruption, and he came back to Coffin: ‘Sorry about that, a message on the other phone: it’s too late, they’ve already met. They met in the corridor, the old man was in a wheelchair, he was going to have a bath … he leapt out and attacked her. I’m going to the hospital.’
‘See you there,’ said Coffin.
As he drove himself to the hospital, he thought: How power corrupts … even after all these years, the old man still feels it.
George Darcy met him. ‘Strong as a horse,’ he said gloomily. ‘They say he could have killed her if they hadn’t stopped him.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t know why he didn’t.’
‘I know why,’ said Coffin, ‘and so do you. Wasn’t what he was after.’
‘The doctor said he might have a heart attack or a stroke … they’ve put him out, given him something. We can’t talk to him.’
‘And Janet?’ Coffin was marching down the corridor towards the lift.
‘Oh, we can see her.’
Janet Neptune was sitting in an armchair by the window. Her face was still swollen, but her eyes were bright and fierce. ‘Well, well, now are you going to arrest him … ? You know who the murderer is.’ She was looking at Coffin.
‘Yes, I know who the murderer is.’
‘I should think you do. Well, are you going to arrest him?’
Coffin drew up a chair to face her. Darcy stood by the door. ‘No, I am not going to arrest him. And you know why.’
Janet moved her head to stare at Darcy. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘It is Chief Inspector Darcy’s investigation, he is in charge, he has some important medical evidence.’
Janet snorted. ‘Doctors!’
‘I am not going to arrest Richard Lavender for the murder of Jessamond Layard –’
‘Jaimie,’ interrupted Janet. ‘Don’t be pompous, we called her Jaimie. Or Marjorie.’
‘I am not going to arrest Richard Lavender because he did not kill her. You did.’
The colour went out of Janet’s face, leaving the bruises on cheek and eye socket, livid and stark. She said nothing.
‘I always suspected you …’
He saw her swallow.
‘You were holding back, I could sense the emotion. You were the one who knew where that old jacket was and used it to incriminate Lavender. You killed her and dressed her up as a guy because you hated her … Your van is being gone over now, Janet, and I am sure we will find fragments of clothing there, scraps of this and that to prove the body travelled to the car park in that van. I think you killed her in the garage here. They are looking there this very minute.’
‘I really ought to laugh,’ said Janet. ‘I hardly knew her.’
‘You knew her; I saw Jaimie’s telephone number on the wall of your bedroom. After I saw that number, I warned you to be careful, but you don’t take warnings, do you? So what you did was to try and break in to Jaimie’s workplace because you knew she had a disc with all the private notes on it, you knew you would figure on that. And when you couldn’t get in, you fabricated an attack on yourself, incriminating the old man.’
‘I was attacked.’
‘No, the doctors say that your wounds could have been, and probably were, self-inflicted. You gave the old man a sleeping tablet to keep him quiet and then performed on yourself.’
‘I nearly died.’ She was shaking, her whole body vibrating so the table by her shook too.
‘Only because the policeman who should have checked the area was late.’
George Darcy tried to interrupt. ‘Enough questions, sir?’
Coffin shook his head. ‘Why did you do it, Janet? I think it was jealousy … You were in love with Jack Bradshaw. What about the pink chiffon, Janet?’
Darcy tried again. ‘You are going at this very hard, sir.’
‘I want it out,’ said Coffin. ‘Come on, Janet, that was the motive, what lay behind this brutal killing. You loved Jack Bradshaw and he dropped you for her.’
He had found the key. Janet began to cry. ‘No, not him, I didn’t care for him. It was Jaimie – you wouldn’t understand how I felt but I loved her. Every way you can love, I loved her.’
Coffin sat back in his chair. ‘Did you? Is that how she got the information about the old man’s past? You were family, families always know more than they pretend. You knew the murder story.’
‘Old pig, I never liked him, he treated me like his slave … But I was working on him, I sent him letters and horrible flowers … I was going to punish him.’
She’s not quite sane, Coffin thought. ‘Why did you kill Jaimie?’
‘I thought she loved me,’ said Janet in a harsh whisper. ‘You might as well know now. I was planning, I won’t tell you what I was planning … I showed her the pink chiffon … “For us,” I said, “you’ll like me in this. Or you can wear it and I will kill you in it.”’
Darcy made an inarticulate noise, but Coffin was quiet.
‘And then she laughed at me.’ A note of vicious anger came into Janet’s voice. ‘She laughed at me. “Pink chiffon,” she said, “do you think I am going to make love in pink chiffon?” Then she laughed, and she said to me that if I knew anything at all about making love I would know that pink chiffon just got in the way and that bare skin was what you wanted. “You old virgin,” she said, “pink chiffon, bare legs in a bed is best.”’
‘That wasn’t a nice thing to say.’
‘I hated her then but I didn’t show it. I waited, I waited, I gave myself one treat. I got into her work flat and broke things up, made a mess. She blamed Martin. So when I had killed her, I dropped him in a bundle of her bloodstained hair as a treat. She was pregnant, you know, I could tell it in her face. There’s a look in the eyes.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes.’ A nod. ‘And then she needed one more bit of help; she knew about the jacket I had found in a trunk, she wanted to see it. “Come and have a look,” I said. She said: “I’ll see I have a quarrel with my young man and come down to you.” He was just a toy, you see, it would have been a real relationship with me. It was night, a dark November night, no one saw her. “Meet me downstairs,” I said, “that’s where the trunk is.” When she came, I was all ready, and I killed her.’ The tears were flowing. ‘Killing isn’t easy, you know, don’t think it is; I tried once before … came up behind her when she was walking one night … got my hands on her … but I couldn’t do it then, she didn’t know it was me, blamed him. And when I did do it, kill her, I mean, well, I suffered. I walked the streets in the dark ever so often afterwards, looking at the car park … going to where your lot were digging up other bodies … It was all death, all around me.’
‘And dressing her up?’ asked Coffin. ‘And the car park? Why the car park?’
‘Well, it was near Guy Fawkes night, wasn’t it,’ said Janet simply, her tears drying. ‘And I couldn’t just leave her around.’
‘You were hard then, sir,’ said George Darcy as they left later. Janet was in her room in the charge of the medical staff with a uniformed constable inside the room and another outside.
‘I felt hard. I was angry at the name handed out to the murdered woman: My dead dolly, and I suppose a little of it rubbed off on her killer.’
‘Dead dolly? You heard about that?’
‘Of course I did. Someone always tells me that sort of thing.’
‘What about Richard Lavender, sir?’
‘There is still something to come out there. He has his own explaining to do.’
Coffin knew that Stella was attending a performance in the Workshop Theatre that night, so after tidying his desk, and receiving a message from Phoebe Astley that tomorrow was ‘archaeological dig day’, he tucked himself in the seat beside Stella.
She looked up at him. ‘Here you
are,’ she said with a smile.
‘What’s the play?’
For answer she pushed a programme at him. ‘You won’t know the name, or the author, but I think it is good.’
Coffin said: ‘Is Martin Marlowe in it?’
‘No, he’s not in this. Do you want him?’ She was alarmed.
‘It’s all right, don’t worry, Martin is clear; we have a confession from the killer of Jaimie Layard … But I have a question to ask him.’
‘You can do it in the interval, he’s over there.’ She nodded her head. ‘A row back.’
Coffin tried to watch the play, which was a translation from a Czech original, a comedy, but he found he could not laugh, his mind kept seeing Janet’s face.
In the interval, he went to the bar with Stella where he got her a drink, then walked across to where Martin stood with his sister Clara. He looked alarmed when he saw the Chief Commander.
‘It’s all right,’ said Coffin, ‘I’m not coming for you; you are in the clear. We have Jaimie’s killer, and a confession.’
Martin said in a nervous voice: ‘Anyone I know?’
Coffin nodded.
‘Jack Bradshaw? No? Then it’s Janet Neptune.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’m right? She’s the only other one who had a real relationship with Jaimie … I always knew, it was part of our quarrel.’
‘I wish you had told me before,’ said Coffin with feeling. ‘But I have a question to put to you: do you have a disc from Jaimie’s PC with her notes on it? Perhaps even a synopsis.’
Martin shook his head but he looked towards his sister.
‘So Clara has it?’
‘Yes, she went to collect it the night I quarrelled with Jaimie … one of our quarrels, the big one … Jaimie had stuff in it about me and Clara. She had a key, I think she had it cut herself … she got there before Jaimie could remove it.’
‘But Jaimie was already dead,’ said Coffin. You haven’t grieved for her so very long, he thought with some sadness for the girl. But then you were only her toy. Did you know that? ‘You and your sister bring the disc to me tomorrow. In my office.’
Afterwards, he said to himself: That’s where I went that day in November, back into 1917. I walked into it. 1917, because that was the date the German bomb fell on the row of houses, destroying the top two floors but leaving the basement kitchen of one house untouched.
I was glad to take that walk in the past.
A dusty walk it was too. The basement had been covered over by a warehouse that was hurriedly put over the top in a shoddy, get-on-with-it-quick kind of way. Wartime conditions, it is to be supposed. The warehouse itself survived another war and more bombs before being knocked down to make a row of houses. History going in a circle.
‘It often does that,’ Coffin said to Phoebe as they parked his car a short distance from Flemish Dock towards Flanders Street where the warehouse was already down. ‘I have noticed that myself in my lifetime … Sometimes you feel you are back where you started.’
‘For once the past has come up with some answers for the present,’ said Phoebe. ‘What I have found is very, very helpful.’ Then she said: ‘I am glad you got a confession from Janet Neptune.’
‘We need the forensic evidence from her clothes, the van and the knife … she used the same knife to stab herself as she attacked Jaimie Layard with, but yes, I think it will stand up in court. I don’t think she will argue.’
‘She nearly got old Lavender,’ said Phoebe. ‘What a family. Talking of history, we don’t know all the history there, but we are about to learn some.’
The developers of the area whose board announced a row of executive houses with access to the docks with berths for yachts had agreed to suspend operations while the Archaeology Department from the university did a quick survey.
Rosemary Earlie was waiting for them. ‘It’s dusty down there,’ she said apologetically. She was wearing a thick smock-like garment over jeans and a sweater with her hair covered in a scarf.
‘I can bear it,’ said Coffin. ‘How do we get down?’
‘Climb.’ She indicated a ladder down a hole. An electric line ran down it with a lamp at the end. ‘Phoebe has already been down.’ She grinned at the Chief Inspector. ‘Never thought I’d be taking a copper down here, not to mention the top brass.’
Coffin descended first, feeling his way carefully. He stood at the bottom on what had been the old kitchen floor of the house; it was paved with stone squares. The walls had once been whitewashed and were now dark brown with dirt.
‘They’ve had rats,’ he said, looking at the droppings on the floor.
‘Oh yes,’ said Rosemary cheerfully. ‘Generations of them. Probably been here longer than anyone else. You expected it in those days near the docks … ships, you see. The rats came ashore with the crew.’
Phoebe stood beside Coffin. ‘Look around.’
A big wooden dresser lined one wall, the doors had fallen off so that the tins and bits of china could be seen. The bomb had done some damage, but had not destroyed everything breakable. Coffin could see a large china mug with PRESENT FROM MARGATE written across it. He picked it up and as he did so, the handle fell away. Rosemary caught both bits skilfully as he dropped them. ‘Artefacts,’ she said. ‘Got to preserve it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all been photographed and now I am doing maps and naming and numbering everything. We would like to keep it as it is and it may be possible. We are negotiating with the developers; they have been very helpful so far.’
In one corner was a stone sink with one brass tap above. ‘Probably the only water in the house,’ said Rosemary.
A wooden kitchen table filled the middle of the room. It looked as if the rats had been living on it and off it since the bomb dropped.
‘No windows,’ said Coffin.
Rosemary shook her head. ‘No, a true basement, very common it was when this house was built, in about 1820. Tapers and candles at first, oil lamps and then gas.’ She nodded towards the sink. ‘A fishtail gas jet.’ There was even a box of British Bulldog matches on a shelf next to it.
A dusty black oven with an open fire beside it lined the third wall. A kettle still stood on the top of the oven.
‘Probably going to make a cup of tea when the bomb dropped,’ said Phoebe.
‘Were the people of the house killed?’ asked Coffin.
Rosemary shrugged. She didn’t know, perhaps did not care very much. It was artefacts that she treasured. ‘Leave you to it,’ she said. ‘Come up when you are ready.’
Coffin stood in the middle of the room and felt the past sweep over him. There had been poverty here, but also he had a sense of happiness and love. A decent working-class family house this had been and he did not want to take away from its dignity.
Phoebe pulled open a drawer in the kitchen table. Inside he could see a dusty litter of papers.
‘Letters,’ said Phoebe. ‘This is what we came for. Postcard first.’
The card was postmarked Blackpool, June 1917. It was addressed to Mrs Pershore, 5 Flanders Street, Spinnergate.
Having a happy holiday and riding on the donkeys. That is not me on the Big Dipper. Alice.
There was a picture of the beach at Blackpool with a view of the Big Wheel in the Pleasure Gardens behind.
Coffin read it, and placed it carefully on the table.
‘Alice wrote again; I guess she went on holiday with a soldier.’
She held out another card, a plain postcard, dated August 1917; it had been posted in Woolwich, S.E. London.
I need help, Edie, you know what I mean. What’s the address you know for that woman? Please write.
Coffin read it and raised an eyebrow. ‘Does she mean what I think she means?’
‘I am sure she did.’ Phoebe handed over a page of a letter, neat pencilled handwriting covered it.
You are in a pickle, Alice, fancy getting yourself in trouble with Ted in the trenches. I
don’t know about that address, Mrs L. hasn’t been seen around lately. I don’t think she liked the zeps. If I can find out where she went, then I will let you know … but Alice, she did have accidents. I know one woman was left very poorly, and Mrs O’Hanaran said that she never saw her nice lodger again after she went to Mrs L. with her trouble. She thinks Miss H. is dead …
There was no more to the letter. The bomb had fallen before it could be finished and posted.
‘I reckon Alice was lucky not to end up with Mrs L.,’ said Phoebe, taking the page away. ‘Or she might have got buried next to Miss H. in St Luke’s churchyard.’
‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions too readily,’ said Coffin.
‘Oh, come on.’
Coffin picked up the letter again. ‘I wish we could talk to Edie.’
‘Sounds all right, doesn’t she? A nice, kind woman. But she knew what she was talking about and she has told us.’
‘So Mrs Lavender was an abortionist. And she had her casualties.’
‘They all did then,’ said Phoebe. ‘Tough times. Knitting needle or wash out with Lysol. You were lucky to come through that still walking and talking. And those that did probably still had the baby as well, not all abortions worked but a lot of damaged babies popped out into the world.’
Coffin felt as if he could not breathe down here. ‘Let’s go up.’ Once in the cold winter air, he thanked Rosemary, asked if he could have copies of the postcard and letters, then walked off to his car.
‘You realize what Mrs Lavender did? She would rather let her son think his father was a multiple murderer than admit to being an abortionist herself.’
‘Will you tell him?’ asked Phoebe.
‘Of course. He asked me to find out and between us, we have,’ said Coffin grimly. ‘Besides, don’t forget: there was another body in that patch of ground. There was the body of a soldier.’
His last words to Phoebe were to get a short report typed and sent over to him quickly. Today.
When he got back to his office, it was to find that Paul Masters was talking to Clara Henley.
He stood up when Coffin came in. ‘You know Dr Henley, of course. She says you asked her to come in.’
A Double Coffin Page 22