Coffin and the Paper Man

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘I didn’t do it, Mother.’

  ‘Of course, not. You don’t have to tell me.’

  I’d believe you even if you had done it, she thought. Mothers always do. My son is innocent, that’s what they always said, didn’t they? He is a nice boy. That was the other thing they said.

  ‘About the poems—they didn’t mean anything. You understand, Mum, don’t you? It was just a kind of experiment, the sort of thing you have to do.’

  ‘Of course.’ She’d said it again, she really must find a different way of expressing herself. And she was driving much too fast, she’d nearly shaved that cyclist off his wheels.

  ‘And we never did anything much, Anna and I, if you get me. And if we had, would it have mattered?’

  No, it wouldn’t have mattered. Anna had not been a virgin anyway at the time of her death. Some sexual experience, the medical grapevine said, and why not? Who expected otherwise? …

  ‘Why didn’t you get me out before? Why did I have to stay in there all night? It was foul.’

  ‘The police had a right to question you, Tim. You aren’t a minor any more.’

  In fact, she had wanted to try to get him home last night, to go round there and make a fuss. But Leonard wouldn’t do it.

  ‘Let him stay. After all, he has something to answer. He knew the girl. Wrote her poetry.’ That’s what he had said.

  Sometimes, I feel like killing you, Dr Zeman, she thought. Quite possibly you feel the same about me, and being doctors we both have the means to do it efficiently.

  Now she negotiated the turn into Feather Street, drove past the dairy, hit the kerb but then parked the car with some neatness.

  ‘I’ve made some coffee,’ she said, ‘and I’ll cook you breakfast. I’ve taken the day off from my clinic.’

  The home which Felicity Zeman had created in Feather Street was warm and buoyant and full of light. It rested on the hill like a ship, quite unlike the solid household of Kay Zeman with its heavy antiques and dark curtains.

  The family lived on the first floor, leaving the lower rooms for Dr Zeman’s consulting rooms.

  The small white peke Arthur emerged to greet them with a fury of enthusiastic barks.

  ‘You’re home now, love,’ Felicity said, putting her arm round her son’s shoulders. ‘It’s over.’

  Or that bit was.

  Leonard Zeman heard their voices and came up from his consulting room below. ‘Glad you’re back, Tim. You got him all right then, Fe?’ He poured himself some coffee and took a piece of the toast she had made. ‘Any press around? Any photographers?’ He was holding on to his son’s arm as if he didn’t want to let go.

  ‘Some. But I drove past them fast.’

  They had got a picture through the car window, though, of her furious, intent face and Tim staring straight ahead. Tomorrow it would be in some newspaper.

  ‘Any here?’

  ‘No. All clear.’

  He hung around, wanting to stay with them to offer love and reassurance but not finding the words, as alas, he so often did with his patients whom he treated and sometimes cured, but could not love. Of course, you weren’t obliged to love your patients, only work for them. Better not to love, in fact, but family you were obliged to love. Damn it, he did love them. He took another piece of toast and shared it with Tim.

  Felicity became irritated, tried to hold it back and failed. ‘Haven’t you got any patients?’

  ‘A queue of them.’ Some of them ill, others there to view the father of the Zeman boy, so that they could say, ‘I was in there yesterday and he looked all right, you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong.’

  Funny thing, family, he reflected. Tim whom I love, Felicity whom I also love, and Val whom I actually want. Want quite a lot.

  ‘I think I’ll have a bath,’ said Tim. ‘Wash the smell a way. Then I suppose I’d better get down to some work. Catch up with things. I’ve got an exam coming up.’

  ‘Use my bathroom,’ said his mother. ‘It’s looking rather good at the moment. There’s a bowl of lily of the valley that just matches the curtains.’ Things mattered to her, helped her if necessary. Her spirits could be raised by a nicely arranged breakfast table with the right china.

  ‘Lily of the valley bath oil, too?’ asked Tim, trying to get up a smile.

  ‘Of course,’ said Felicity, hoping not to show that she thought him pathetic and brave.

  The telephone rang, the private line, as Tim went upstairs.

  ‘Wonder who that is?’ said Leonard Zeman.

  Felicity made no move to answer the bell. ‘At a guess, Val.’

  The Zeman family were all getting back to normal. Or trying to, well aware that it was not going to be easy, but trying to pretend otherwise.

  Soon the news spread around that Tim was back home. When Val heard she told her aunt. Soon Harold and Phil Darbyshire knew, and the Annecks, all of them even the dog, and the dog-walker, Jim Marsh.

  They were all trying to hang on to normality in very difficult circumstances. Working, watching television, going to bed. Cooking meals, even eating them. Hanging on.

  Harder for some than others.

  Fred Kinver had retired to his home after his interview with John Coffin, where his wife watched him nervously, and waited for results. He was confident. There would be an arrest.

  None came. Presently, he realized that it was never going to come. The police were not going to arrest Tim Zeman.

  They had no evidence.

  Fred Kinver sat crying, watched anxiously by his wife, who cried inside herself only.

  In the neighbourhood feelings began to run high. It was known that a man was still in detention. He now had a name: Solomon Wild, and a medical history but no police record. Word about this seeped out. Why was he not being charged? With something, with anything?

  The questioning of Tim Zeman and then his release had provoked angry comment in certain quarters. Too middle-class to get charged, was the feeling.

  This police inaction speedily produced another outburst from the Paper Man. He was soon to give himself this name.

  Two identically phrased letters went off this time, one to John Coffin’s office and another to his home in St Luke’s Mansions. The Paper Man was making doubly sure his message got through.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Thursday, June 8

  Fred Kinver would have found it hard to believe that John Coffin could stop thinking about the murder of Anna Mary (Kinver couldn’t do so himself), but the truth was that Coffin had learnt to put different bits of his life into different compartments. He hadn’t exactly forgotten about the murder, that wasn’t how it went, it was part of his job, but he had other and possibly more pressing things to think about.

  Nevertheless, when DI Archie Young had met him just as he was getting into his car to drive home, he had a bit of information to pass on. In fact, two pieces.

  ‘Got an ID on the man we’re holding, sir. He’s Solomon Wild, seems to be his real name too. He’s missing from a clinic where he was having treatment.’

  ‘Thought there’d be a background of that sort.’

  ‘Yes, looked likely. We’re holding him, though, because there’s a charge of arson hanging over him. He set fire to the clinic before he left. And that suits us, because he knows something about the Kinver killing. Either he saw it himself or someone told him about it.’

  You take your pick, Coffin thought.

  But Archie Young was still talking.

  ‘And we’ve got something else, sir. I had a bright idea, thought we should have another look round the girl’s room. So I started another search of the cupboards and drawers. She had a lot of stuff. Spent money on clothes and shoes. Got a woman detective to go in and look, see what she saw. Woman’s eye and all that.’

  Coffin waited, car key in hand.

  ‘She came back with the info that several of the girl’s shoes were missing. One out of several pairs was gone. Same like the silver slipper. The mother couldn’t expl
ain it. Interesting, isn’t it?’

  Young looked bright-eyed and expectant.

  ‘It was the left silver shoe that went, wasn’t it? What about the other shoes? Always the left?’

  Young shook his head. ‘Right shoe, left shoe. She liked shoes. One gone out of each of four pairs. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  That someone was faking it? To make it look as though the killer knew her well enough to have taken other shoes? Would her father do that to provide evidence against Tim Zeman?

  ‘No one knew that we would be coming in for another search,’ said Young, half answering his unspoken query. ‘I suddenly decided to do it.’

  So supposing it was real? In which case, someone, somewhere had a collection of shoes.

  ‘It makes me think I don’t know what to think,’ said Coffin. It would be as well to establish when the shoes went. ‘Fine out,’ he said. ‘If you can. What about the mother? How did she react? Was she surprised?’

  ‘Surprised,’ said Young. ‘And frightened.’

  Coffin drove back to St Luke’s Mansions. He also had a life to enjoy. At the moment he was having a drink in his own sitting-room with Stella Pinero and Sir Harry. He was enjoying himself.

  The Paper Man, who was to prove a shrewd psychologist, no doubt reckoned on all this.

  Hence the two letters.

  ‘I love the view from your windows,’ said Stella. ‘Roofs and tree-tops and just a hint of the river beyond.’ She was leaning out of the open window. An empty glass on the table beside her. ‘I mean, you can smell it.’

  ‘I think that smell’s from a canal,’ said Coffin, pouring some wine into her glass.

  ‘You ought to photograph this view, Harry,’ she went on.

  ‘Done a few local street scenes for Dick to use in the gallery. He’s got three blown up to put on the wall as you go in. You must see them. But faces are more my thing, you know. I’d like to do one of you, Stella, if you’d allow.’

  ‘Love it,’ said Stella. ‘Only let me get my hair done.’ She ran a hand through her hair which she was growing for her part in Cavalcade.

  ‘Not your best face, Stella,’ said Sir Harry. ‘I want to take you when you are completely off guard. No make-up, nothing. Looking your worst.’

  ‘Oh thanks.’

  ‘It will only be what you call your worst,’ he continued gravely. ‘In fact, you will be perfectly beautiful.’

  Stella considered the offer. She was not going to refuse. To be photographed by Harry Beauchamp, made-up or unmade-up, represented a great prize. But she did not wish to go down to history looking like the Witch of Endor.

  ‘I’d like to do you too, sir, if I could,’ said Sir Harry, looking at Coffin.

  The hand pouring him some more chilled white wine wavered. Sir, he called me sir. He’s older than I am. Then Coffin decided to take it as a tribute to his rank and authority. Also, Sir Harry was a notable prankster and, come to think of it, was having a good time at both his expense and Stella’s. His hand steadied.

  ‘Sounds a good idea. Want me in uniform? I have a rather grand one I wear on special occasions like meeting the Queen.’

  ‘Just head and shoulders, I thought,’ said Sir Harry. ‘Against a blank wall.’

  ‘Ah yes, a mug shot.’

  ‘Do you know, I think that may have been at the back of my mind,’ said Sir Harry with an air of surprise.

  ‘Lay off them, Harry,’ said his friend Dick, from near the door where he was talking to Raina Morgan, the youngest, newest and prettiest recruit to Stella’s team in the Theatre Workshop. She had trained in the Drama Department of the new University and had been brought in to help direct the production after Cavalcade, the play closest (at that moment) to Stella’s changeable heart. Although she was constant enough in theatre matters, only with men was she fickle. The play was The Madras House. There was a fair turnover in the Theatre Workshop company, people came in for a time, for the fun of it, then moved on. Everyone agreed it was a marvellous experience, but you did need more money.

  It suited Stella to run this changing team, it was what she was good at. Stella herself drifted away at times doing a film, a TV series, or a short London run, but all the while leaving a suitable stand-in in charge. She and Coffin’s sister Letty had a kind of unspoken arrangement (Letty shrank frugally and sensibly away from long-term contracts) that Stella should direct the Theatre Workshop’s operations while, and only while, it suited her. There were advantages on both sides: Letty got a first-class theatrical brain at a bargain price, and Stella got a base, which to an actress of her age and standing was of inestimable value. She had been around long enough to know the worth to her of St Luke’s Theatre Workshop. And what was more, she was in pole position to win the race to direct the main theatre when built.

  ‘You can photograph me any way you like, Harry,’ said Stella quickly. ‘It’s a compliment to be asked.’ She was already visualizing the big blown-up version she would use in the foyer of the new theatre, when built, and the article in Vogue which would precede it.

  Footsteps sounded on his stairs and three other people, whom their host vaguely recognized, came into the room. One of them was carrying a bottle and wearing a hopeful smile.

  Coffin suddenly felt tired. He detected the signs of a party assembling itself. He had not invited anyone except Stella, who had said could she bring Sir Harry to see the lovely views. With Sir Harry had come Dick, who somehow had Raina with him because she was interested in an artist he was exhibiting, and the rest had just come.

  Even after all these years of knowing Stella Pinero he was amazed how easily a party with drinks could set itself up around her. She was at the door now, ushering people in and laughing.

  Why not in her own place?

  ‘Don’t be sour, dear,’ she said, coming up.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. I can see it in your face.’ Stella sighed. ‘I’m miserable anyway, my poor Mrs Kinver is ill and I’m not surprised. Make them get on with that murder. Clearing it up, I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean all right.’

  Lily Goldstone put her face round the door. ‘Hello, is it a party?’

  ‘Lily, welcome. I didn’t know you were visiting.’ He was pleased to see her, she was one of his favourite people in spite of her well-known and radical views on the police, their behaviour and people’s rights. ‘In fact, I didn’t know you were back.’

  Lily had been in New York. ‘My play collapsed,’ she said in disgust. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Stella knows. Delighted, weren’t you, love, you told me it would.’

  ‘Not delighted,’ said Stella. ‘But I didn’t think it would do. Too English.’

  ‘Loved me, hated the play.’ Lily, descendant of a long line of players, one of whom had been a royal mistress, so that Lily claimed royal as well as revolutionary blood, was a great ornament to the European theatre but a very poor judge of a good play. ‘I had money in it too, damn it.’

  ‘Come and work for me,’ said Stella.

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that, I could do something good for you, not Cavalcade, of course, that’s not for me, but something really worthy of me. You must pay me a bit better than last time. Or, I tell you what, let’s do a deal. Play and film.’

  It was what she had come for, Stella concluded.

  ‘Let’s talk about it,’ she said cautiously.

  Lily had something in her hand which she now handed over to her host. ‘Found this on the floor downstairs. The door was open.’

  There was no name on the envelope, just the command: Open.

  Inside was a message built up from roughly cut out letters, none of which matched in colour or style. It said: You are getting it all wrong still. If you won’t act then I will.

  This time there was a kind of signature. Not hand-written, but planted across the page in more carefully cut letters, matching in size if not in colour, as if the name mattered to the communicator.

  From The
Paper Man, it said.

  Lily and Stella were deep in conversation, still talking plays and films and TV percentages. The word residuals seemed to worry them greatly, so that they were not noticing anything, he thought. He put the letter in his pocket.

  Stella swung round at once. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a lunatic letter. I get them sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ said Lily, who actually had sent one or two in her time. For political purposes, naturally.

  ‘Come on,’ said Stella, ‘don’t let it spoil the party.’

  But the Paper Man had already done that.

  Coffin looked out of his open window. He could just see the gardens of Feather Street, and he could hear a dog barking. Then another joined in. He thought he could hear a distant bell ringing.

  By now he was enough of a local to know that meant that Jim Marsh was about to take one of the battling Jack Russells out for a walk.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Friday, June 9, through to Saturday evening

  Jim Marsh had given himself a few days off from the Poly, where he was, anyway, an unpredictable student, not given to taking his work too seriously. He was clever, good at chemistry, physics, and biology as well as being a proficient mathematician, these being the subjects he was required to study if he hoped to get into veterinary school.

  He’d manage it, he could cope with the theory, no sweat. But he was more interested in people and animals, his mother’s son after all. She had been passionately interested in people in the mass, especially if abandoned in India or starving in Africa, but somewhat more negligent of those close at hand. Jim hadn’t really minded, he’d understood her dreams. Even her nightmares, and certainly her suicide. If she’d killed his father, as seemed likely at one time, he’d have understood that too.

  He couldn’t forgive old Kinver for the names he had called his mother. One name in particular. Whatever his mother was, she hadn’t been that. Never another man in her life except his father as far as Jim knew, well, possibly one or two, but nothing to count, she just had mad ideas and shouted them out. Scared people like old Kinver who felt frightened, anyway. He was a pig. Mrs Kinver was all right, but Anna Mary had deserved a better father than that one.