A Grave Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

  Coffin sat back in his armchair, which gave beneath him as if it had had a long and wearing life. The old gentleman who had been reading The Times seemed now to be tearing it up. Here and there with his teeth. Coffin shifted again in his chair, which poked him in the back, while across the room the reader had torn out one piece from the newspaper and was now engaged with a second.

  ‘Haven’t got a pair of scissors on you, sir, have you?’ he called across. ‘Desperate to cut this article out. No? Bad luck.’ And he went to work with his incisors, which even at this distance Coffin could see were too blunt for the job and probably false.

  Coffin reflected that he could think of more comfortable conditions in which to be suborned by a handsome young woman. If that was what she was doing.

  According to Saxon, Harry Seton had his doubts about Margaret Grayle, and she certainly seemed questionable. Anyway, her behaviour did.

  ‘Harry must have got some right answers to those questions,’ said Coffin.

  ‘It was the questions that killed him, not the answers,’ she said fiercely. ‘If you can’t see that, you are nowhere and will be the next to go.’

  Well, she had offered him her own answer to the four-horned question he had put to himself.

  ‘Would you mind amplifying that?’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s a statement.’

  ‘And there was me thinking it was a threat.’

  They were not getting anywhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ Coffin said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Of course you weren’t threatening me.’

  Across the room, the man, having finished destroying The Times, had gone to get another drink and another paper to devour. He was massaging his front teeth with his tongue as if they ached.

  ‘I liked Harry, he had the will to win and a lot of good that did him. A lot of women find that quality attractive. I did. But he looked at my clothes, and because they looked good and I had some nice pearls, he thought I was suspicious. I might be making money out of trading information, as and when I got it, mark you.’

  ‘And are you?’ Nothing like a direct question on occasion.

  ‘No. I’ve got a rich uncle.’

  Ask a direct question, get a direct lie.

  She leaned forward. ‘That chap across the room keeps looking at you.’

  ‘Yes, he wants some scissors.’

  ‘But you told him you hadn’t got any.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to stop him.’

  And indeed, the man had risen and was coming towards them.

  ‘He’s mad.’

  ‘No.’ Coffin had recognized him now, no one he knew, but someone who was famous enough to have a face you knew. ‘He’s a distinguished scholar on the loose.’ A Nobel-prize winner, a philosopher, he thought, this was Oxford after all.

  But it was Margaret Grayle he wanted. ‘Have you got a safety pin to spare, my dear? Ladies often have.’

  Silently, Margaret produced a small golden safety pin. The man’s face fell. ‘Oh, nothing bigger? I have all these pieces of paper to pin together.’ He had indeed a handful of newsprint, a little damp, but legible. ‘I am afraid I may lose them if I don’t bind them fast.’

  He spoke in beautiful, lucid tones, and thus explained, his behaviour seemed explained. Unusual, but understandable.

  Coffin had no scissors and no safety pin, but he produced a small paperclip from his pocket. ‘Any good to you?’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ He retreated, binding up his papers as he went straight out. The room seemed the lesser for him somehow, Coffin thought. It was almost as if the great Sphinx had been there with them.

  He expressed his feeling: ‘I think philosophers are often maddish.’

  ‘Not a philosopher, a chemist,’ Margaret said quickly. And then, ‘Oh damn.’

  Many things which seem mysterious have a rational explanation, Coffin thought.

  ‘You knew him,’ said Coffin. ‘And he knew you.’

  ‘How could I possibly know a Nobel-prize winner?’ she said coldly. ‘I worked where he worked at one time, but in a very humble capacity.’

  Coffin said nothing, just waited to see what she said next. Let her fall into her own hole.

  ‘You can’t suspect a Nobel-prize winner,’ she said.

  ‘I can suspect anyone.’ He added slowly: ‘Everyone needs money.’

  Margaret stood up. ‘I’ve done what I can. I have told you, now it’s up to you.’ She draped her coat over her shoulders. ‘Goodbye. Remember to watch out for the knife between your shoulders.’

  She swept out. It was a fair description of her exit as her coat moved the air. Coffin knew about clothes through Stella, and that coat was couture.

  Coffin ordered himself another drink, while reflecting that she had meant it literally. Not a bad hand with a knife herself. He gave a sigh. The barman looked at him with interest. ‘Here for the day?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘A lot to see in Oxford.’

  ‘Who was the old gentleman in the corner?’ Coffin asked. ‘I know his face.’

  The barman was pleased to be asked. ‘Sir Jessimond Fraser? We call him Sir Jess. Comes in here every day. Did you see his hands? Crippled. Arthritis. Small stroke as well, poor chap.’

  There is often a rational explanation for many things which seem extraordinary, Coffin reminded himself once more.

  ‘Marvellous son. His hands, as you might say. Sir Jess’s got a lab around the corner, in Canal Road, doesn’t do much now – retired.’

  ‘It’s a university lab, is it?’

  ‘UnivLab? I am sure they’d let him have one. But he’s got a private one. Don’t think he does much, to tell you the truth, but it keeps him in touch with his world. I think the son has a job elsewhere now.’

  Coffin finished his drink, and went in search of Peter Chard, who was said to be in charge of the Wessex group, whatever that meant in this strange organization. ‘Ed Saxon,’ he said to himself, ‘you have always been a devious bloke, and now I need to read you aright.’ He was not sure he had done this yet.

  He ran over the names he had been given: Peter Chard in Wessex; Anglia, Felicity Fox; in Deira or Newcastle, Joe Weir.

  He had been given addresses in Oxford, Cambridge and Newcastle for the names on this list.

  No address for Susy Miller who ‘shot around’.

  He recited the names in a sad litany as he walked towards the Banbury Road, where Peter Chard had his office.

  Narrowly escaping death at the junction of Beaumont Street and St Giles as he stepped out into the traffic to move towards the Banbury Road, he walked briskly northward. Coffin enjoyed the walk up the road, looking at the prosperous Edwardian houses, now mostly divided into flats, he marvelled once again that the row of shops called North Parade should be so far south of South Parade. No wonder Lewis Carroll was a product of this city.

  Chard’s office was above a shop. Nothing marked it out as his, anonymity had been preserved, so Coffin rang the bell and waited.

  A tall, lean figure appeared, and nodded at him unsurprised. ‘Found your way here, then? I thought you’d be here. I expected you. Expected you before this, as a matter of fact. Come on up.’

  He was led up a neat carpeted staircase to a room at the top. ‘I don’t have all the rooms.’ Chard nodded towards the room opposite. ‘That one is a milliner … private customers, a lot of dons’ wives wear hats, it seems – College functions, university big days, that kind of thing, he makes them. He thinks I am a typing bureau. And I wonder if it is really just hats he is doing there, but that’s my suspicious nature.’

  ‘What else could be going on?’ Coffin had long sight and could read the name: Elysium.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, something where lots of pretty young things are needed. Ladies by the hour, drugs … he’s probably equally suspicious of me.’ Chard pushed open the door. ‘Come in, come in. That’s what brings you here, isn’t it, suspicion? We are honoured to have such a high-ranking inquisitor.’

&
nbsp; Coffin reflected that Ed Saxon had certainly chosen articulate characters.

  Chard pushed a chair forward, then sat down himself. There were only two chairs, but the desk was provided with all the electronic equipment to be wished for: computer, modem, fax and answerphone.

  Chard saw him looking. ‘I prefer a notebook, but we have to impress.’

  Coffin found himself liking this tall, talkative fellow. His conversational style was wry with a hint of mockery behind it.

  ‘To tell you the truth, when we were set up, under Ed Saxon, whom you may know better than I do.’

  Coffin shook his head.

  ‘You refuse the honour? Well, in spite of what he said about how important this investigation was, our mission, he may even have called it, I thought we were just a bunch of has-beens farmed out before culling … I couldn’t see it as that important, but as things went on and we never succeeded in eliminating the source of the counterfeit drugs … that is, we did, often, but then a mushroom growth would spring up elsewhere, drugs on wheels, it was. Then I began to take it more seriously, where there’s big money, you do.’ He looked in appeal.

  ‘You do,’ agreed Coffin.

  ‘Then Harry Seton arrived trying to search out which of us was in the game there, taking our profit in return for information. I found that hard to accept too … I’m just a sceptic, I guess.’

  ‘And then Harry was killed, so you took it seriously?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Did you know Harry well?’

  ‘Better than I know Ed Saxon. Bit of a paper man, that one, I think.’ Peter Chard got up and began to move around the room. ‘Sorry, I have to keep moving, my leg stiffens up.’

  Coffin saw then that he limped with his right leg.

  ‘We don’t use ranks here, but I’m Sergeant Chard and I was on special duties till I got myself shot in the leg.’

  ‘You caught the chap?’ He was beginning to remember Chard’s distinguished career.

  ‘Chapess, actually. A bitch of a woman, but fortunately not a good shot. She’ll be out soon and I will still be limping around.’ There was no bitterness in his voice.

  ‘We had our little successes all right, at the beginning, but gradually we were losing the war. It may be our fault, we may not have a traitor in our midst as Ed thought; I thought that way at first, now I don’t know what to think.’ He looked at Coffin. ‘I suppose Harry could have been killed for some other reason, or just chance, he got in the way or walked where he shouldn’t have done. It happens.’

  ‘Inspector Davenport is investigating Harry Seton’s death,’ said Coffin cautiously.

  ‘I know that. Davy’s had his men down here poking round. Didn’t come himself. I was a suspect myself when it was found out that my daughter is a chemist and worked with Sir Jess for a bit … Ah, you’ve had a meet with our Ms Grayle, of course, she was in here yesterday saying she was going to get at you. I expect she showed you where Sir Jess hangs out?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coffin simply. ‘She said she doesn’t know him.’

  ‘Not to say know, you couldn’t call it knowing, but she was secretary in his department once, which was more or less what she was here, just helping out one way and another, but these great scientists don’t remember secretaries.’

  ‘I’d call her pretty memorable.’

  ‘Oh, she is, she is, and several people have good cause to remember her. Not me, I hasten to add. I don’t know what is on her mind but she is one anxious lady.’

  ‘I got that impression. She advised me to stop asking questions.’

  ‘Ah, she would do. She thinks she is a suspect, you see. In spite of what I am saying we are all pretty twitchy. Harry gave me a going-over just because I own a small farm in Devon, as well as the daughter I told you about who once worked with Sir Jess. Mercifully for me, the farm was inherited and is very small and a bit of a black hole as far as money is concerned.’

  ‘And your daughter?’

  ‘She has been working in Australia for the last two years.’

  Well, thought Coffin, you have got out all you want to get across to me. Was it rehearsed?

  He then took Peter Chard through the same list of questions on career, money, and contacts as he had done in Coventry with the two there and had notably failed to do with Margaret Grayle. He included Pennyfeather and got the denial he was coming to expect.

  At the end, Chard said: ‘I went through all this with Harry.’

  ‘Just trawling,’ said Coffin peaceably. ‘No doubt I would find all this in Harry’s computer records.’ Only most have been deleted from the word processor or burnt. John Armstrong’s silence must mean he’d had no luck in retrieving the deleted files.

  ‘Let me have a copy of all your relevant addresses … chemist’s shops, centres from which the drugs were being sent out, and which you located and broke up. Even manufacturing sites.’

  Chard shook his head. ‘We never found those.’

  Don’t look, won’t find, Coffin thought. He was beginning to be deeply sceptical of the whole operation. He held out his hand. ‘What you’ve got then.’

  Chard hesitated, then reluctantly opened a drawer, took out what was in it, and handed over a pile of blue folders.

  ‘Thank you. What about computer records?’

  ‘All printed out and in what you’ve got there.’

  Coffin nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘I hope you are getting somewhere.’

  ‘Do you know, I think I am,’ said Coffin.

  Coffin walked back down the Banbury Road to his appointed rendezvous with Stella in the University Parks.

  ‘They were gun parks once,’ he told Stella when he found her sitting on a bench near one of the gates. ‘In the Civil War the cannons, royal cannons they must have been as Oxford was for the king, were parked there. That is why the area is called Parks and not Park.’

  ‘What’s that parcel you are clutching?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘Useful information?’

  ‘Probably not.’ He turned to face her. ‘So what did you do? Find any old admirers?’

  Stella laughed. ‘Didn’t even try. Found a lovely dress in Annabelinda … Fancy, she’s still here, such a delight, and it has to be altered round the waist. I am too thin,’ she ended smugly. ‘Then Gus and I went for a walk round the market, and then we came here. I think Gus is tired.’

  Coffin remembered that a stall in Coventry market had sold doubtful pharmaceuticals. Someone else, was it Kelso or the woman, had mentioned a market. ‘I’d like to look at the market. If you haven’t eaten yet, why don’t we have a late lunch there?’

  ‘You will have to carry Gus.’

  Gus and Coffin eyed each other warily. ‘Make yourself light, Gus,’ advised Coffin. ‘You know you can do it, turn into a dead weight and you can walk.’

  The covered market was crowded, but there was a pleasant mixed smell of fresh vegetables, fish and flowers. Coffin walked round it with Gus lolling in his arms, enjoying the view. Man and dog could tell at once that this was not the sort of market where you sold drugs or counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

  You might meet people there, who did, of course.

  There was an eating place on one corner. ‘Was this where Ma Brown’s was?’ asked Stella. ‘I can’t remember. Looks the same. The same but a bit different. Let’s go in, have some coffee and a sandwich.’

  ‘Will they let the dog in?’

  ‘Just carry him in and see.’

  Stella stood in the doorway and looked around. ‘We used to come in here for coffee in between rehearsals … John, Peter, Alix and Susy … I kept in touch for a long while but I haven’t seen them for an age. Read about them in The Stage sometimes.’

  That was the way of the theatre, while you were playing together you were friends, lovers, but when the run ended you drifted apart. Still friends, but you just didn’t meet.

  And Stella had been much the most successful. She was a Name. That separated you from ol
d friends.

  Also, she was married to a high-ranking policeman and that made for a division too.

  ‘Let’s take it away, coffee and sandwiches, and something for the dog, and drive away. Into the country.’

  He had in his mind to drive to one of the country addresses, say Bicester or Banbury or Aylesbury, where drugs had been sold to a clutch of chemist’s, and see what he could make of it. Pick up the spoor of the so-called traitor.

  Stella was amenable, she could already sense that she had grown away from the girl who had drunk coffee with friends in a place like this, perhaps even this very place, and that there was no going back.

  ‘Yes, let’s. I’ll choose the sandwiches.’ She accepted the death of the past; Stella was good about putting things behind her and getting on with the present. Even the future.

  ‘Are there any more markets in Oxford?’ He heard his own voice doing the asking, so it was clear he was not giving up on markets.

  ‘You’re the one who’s supposed to know that sort of thing. Yes, I remember one up the Cowley Road. Don’t think it was there every day.’

  There was no longer a market where Stella had remembered it up the Cowley Road, instead a large supermarket stood there. They ate their sandwiches in the car; Gus had his share – then took a stroll up and down the road, stopping at several trees, each of which bore a sign asking him not to use it for his convenience.

  Then they drove home, Coffin still thinking of markets. Nothing obvious in Banbury, but as they went through Aylesbury there was a yellow notice pointing to ‘The Market: 8a.m. to 5p.m.’.

  Stella was incredulous: ‘I don’t believe it, it’s a fantasy, just for you.’

  ‘In time too,’ said Coffin.

  He found a parking slot and raised an eyebrow at Stella. ‘Coming, or will you sit in the Car?’

  ‘Gus and I are coming, we are going to inspect the market.’

  ‘Don’t let Gus get into a fight, there are powerful looking dogs around here and I daresay they don’t like white Pekingese.’

  ‘Snobs, that’s colour prejudice.’ They both knew that it was Gus that started the fights, he found Alsatians, particularly if in couples, and Dalmatians, especially riling.