Buch lesen: «A Dark Coffin»

GWENDOLINE BUTLER

A DARK COFFIN

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995

Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1995

Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006497103

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545438

Version: 2014-07-08

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

1

It’s all very well, all this sympathy with Jekyll, but what do you think it’s like being Hyde – shut up inside all the time and only let out, escaping, when you can? And knowing all the time that you are fertile, and may breed worse than yourself.

Jekyll and Hyde and another Hydelet, eh? Well, think about it. And Hyde doesn’t like Hyde’s face any better than the world does. Hyde has eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Hyde sometimes lacks is a voice to speak.

All theatres have their own histories, their heroic moments, their tragedies, and their own ghosts. It is what gives them their colour, their character.

St Luke’s Theatre in the New, the Second City of London, had a short history as a theatre, with not much chance to build up stories and ghosts. It was the creation of Stella Pinero, the actress wife of John Coffin, distinguished policeman, Keeper of the Queen’s Peace in the Second City. Stella had had the idea of making a theatre here in her husband’s bailiwick, and it had prospered. She had seen it grow from a small outfit to one which now had a main theatre, a smaller theatre workshop where more experimental productions could be mounted, and a fledgling drama school which worked in conjunction with one of the newest universities in the Second City. And soon, her theatre would have its own festival for two weeks in the summer. (After Ascot and Wimbledon and just as the schools broke up for their holidays.) The first festival was being organized and Stella was hopeful for a royal patron. Maybe a Princess?

But if St Luke’s Theatre was new, it was housed in an old building. Stella had made use of an old church, bombed and fallen into disuse. She had rescued it from a future as a Bingo Hall. In the tower of the converted church, she and her husband had an apartment of great attractions with a splendid view towards the river, and perhaps less convenience if you lived up a winding staircase with rooms on every floor and a cat and a dog asking to be let out.

Coffin had received a quiet, unofficial backroom hint that the next Honours List could see him with a knighthood, but even if it was a life peerage, they would never move. It was so convenient being next to the theatre. You could almost say their marriage was founded on it.

St Luke’s was a grey stone building, solidly constructed by its Victorian builder, who had been his own architect, with plenty of marble and decorative fretwork; it was not beautiful but it had charm. It had been built upon an older church, which had itself rested upon an Anglo-Saxon foundation. People said that a Roman temple had been the original holy spot whose dangerous powers had been exorcized by the planting of a church there by the early fathers of the English Church.

It was a workmanlike building, sitting upon the ground with some heaviness.

‘It has such a comfortable, good feel, hasn’t it?’ enthused Stella. ‘You feel so safe here.’ She looked happily towards the stage which stretched out towards the audience with no sub-barrier. Stella belonged to the theatrical generation which had found the abolition of the proscenium arch exciting, so inevitably, when she had a theatre to plan, it had had to have a great apron stage stretching out into the audience which camped out all round it. Owing to the architecture of the church, two great pillars stood one each side or the roof would have fallen in, so there were created two boxes looking curiously royal. They were dark, and not much used as the sight lines were bad, and represented a problem. No one liked them. But Stella had seen to it that the seats in them were comfortable and were protected behind by a fretted screen. She called one the Royal Box, although no Queen had so far sat in it. The other box she called the Author’s Box and there was a bust of Shakespeare in it, to prove it.

There was something about an empty stage which always excited Stella. ‘Theatres can be spiritual places, can’t they? We mustn’t forget the origin of drama in religion. And this place was a church, after all. No wonder I feel St Luke’s is good.’

If places could be good.

She was standing in the middle of the auditorium with her husband, John Coffin, beside her, and the theatre’s general manager, Alfreda Boxer, on her right hand.

Stella looked taller and thinner since her recent session at a health farm where she had dieted and exercised. A film contract for a tall, thin lady with reddish hair was under discussion and Stella meant to have the part. Her husband found himself getting thinner out of sympathy; he was a tall, slender man in any case with bright blue eyes and hair now greying in a neat way. He was a neat man altogether who managed to make his clothes look good on him.

‘Are places spiritual?’ he asked now. ‘A church must lay claim to it. I suppose.’

Alfreda looked thoughtful and said nothing. She thought St Luke’s was hard work and might be a good place and might not. On that subject she was neutral. She thought places were neutral too, they were what you made them. This one paid her wages.

‘That’s why it’s got no ghosts,’ Stella went on.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Alfreda. ‘Are you sure you do. Miss Pinero?’ She always called her employer Miss Pinero, this being her stage name, although Alfreda well knew she was Mrs Coffin. She could have called her Stella, since the actress was not stuffy about that sort of thing and the theatre was more and more informal, but Alfreda herself felt more at ease with a bit of formality. It protected you somehow.

She kept her distance from John Coffin, because to her own alarm, she found him attractive. That way lay trouble.

Not that the Chief Commander had ever given any indication that he fancied her, or that his affections had wandered from his wife. But they did say … but that was all in the past. Before Stella.

‘How’s the boy shaping?’ he now asked in a jovial voice. He was finding that he dropped into a kind of false joviality with Alfreda which alarmed him. Why was he doing this? What was there about her? She was very attractive, certainly, and he was susceptible, but he had Stella now whom he loved.

‘Fine, he’s very happy.’ Alfreda’s son had graduated from drama school and was now an assistant stage manager at St Luke’s. He was one of the reasons that Alfreda had taken the job of general manager for which she was, in some ways, overqualified. But keeping an eye on her offspring was a way of life with her. ‘Well, I love him,’ she used to say defensively, if she picked up any criticism on the lines of mother’s apron strings, ‘and I don’t hang on to him.’

Coffin hesitated, as if he had forgotten the lad’s name.

‘Barney, plain Barney,’ she said.

There it was again, that jesting, jousting tone, as if inviting battle. Inviting something, anyway.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever make an actor but he might produce, or even write. He’s dead keen on the theatre.’

Stella stopped admiring the stage (which she felt was her own creation), and turned her attention to Alfreda. ‘Rubbish, don’t downgrade him, I think he might make a very good character actor, he’ll grow into it. Perhaps not do anything much until he’s over thirty and then find his feet.’

‘May I live to see it,’ said his mother.

‘I’ve seen it happen. And there’s money in it.’

Coffin stirred with a touch of restlessness, unusual in him, but he had a lot on his mind, some problems, and he had been reluctant to take this tour round the theatre.

Stella picked up his mood. Understood it and sympathized, but he really must not brood. ‘Let’s take a walk.’ They had been redecorating St Luke’s and she wanted to see it. ‘Decorators out?’

‘Just.’

‘They promised the end of last week.’

‘Oh, you know how it goes. But they are good workmen.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Stella was striding forward into the passage that led backstage. It was gleaming with new white paint. ‘For what they charged.’

‘We had a little bit of a flood where one of them left a tap running, no one admitted to it, but it must have been one of the painters.’ There had been several little accidents lately, but she did not dwell on them. Accidents happen.

‘They can pay,’ said Stella firmly. ‘No fire, or anything like that?’

‘No fire. You’d have been told.’

‘I think we would have smelt it,’ said Coffin in a mild voice. His worry was eating inside him but he didn’t want to show it. ‘I sometimes think we can smell the greasepaint up in our tower.’

‘No one uses greasepaint now … not much slap at all, it’s all meant to look so natural.’ Stella touched the paint. ‘Not quite dry. Better be dry by the time we open.’

Alfreda followed Stella at a distance, letting Coffin get ahead of her. She had her own thoughts. In spite of Stella’s words about this safe and comfortable old building, one or two of the girls had started to say things about not wanting to go through the corridors on their own, and not liking all the dark corners. There were a lot of dark comers. Getting darker by the day, some of them; the lights seemed to malfunction more than usual.

Coffin followed his wife in a dutiful fashion. Yesterday afternoon, a girl of eight had been knocked down and badly injured by a police car which was chasing a stolen van. Swinehouse was always a volatile and irritable district, so no one was surprised that a crowd had gathered quickly outside the Swinehouse police station. The mood had looked nasty, but a shower of rain had dispersed them before they got beyond shouts and threats. But he knew that the medical reports on the girl were bad, she might be permanently crippled if she survived at all. Since she was a popular little girl and her father was a local footballer, there would be more trouble when this got out. He had heard before coming out with Stella that the signs of trouble on the streets were there already in Swinehouse and could spread to other districts.

It was how the mood went, the report said.

In addition, the girl was reported to have a sweet singing voice which made her a local star. She might now have no voice at all.

He also had a slight problem with his wife. But he hoped he was more aware of that than she was. Imagination came into it. And there was one other ulcer gnawing away at his vitals.

Alfreda, striding by the side of Stella, decided that it would be better not to say anything about nervous actresses to her. Anyway, it was entirely possible she had picked up the stories too, she usually knew everything, and this was just her way of calming things down.

This is your day to be anxious and miserable, Alfreda told herself, take it, and cherish it and perhaps good will come of it. That was her philosophy of life at the moment, and it served.

She took a deep breath and walked on behind Stella. She wanted to be in a good mood because Barney would be home for supper tonight and her cooking depended on her mood, as she had discovered to her cost. Bad mood, burnt steak. Barney liked his food. Not a natural mother, she thought sadly, a natural mother would always cook well, no matter what her mood.

Behind them, in the Royal Box, the electrician was at work, testing the lighting in there. The bulbs in what he called ‘that fucking box’ seemed to burn out more than they should. Lately it always seemed to be darkness in that box.

He couldn’t find anything wrong, so once again he replaced the light bulb.

Stella was on the stage itself now, where she always felt at home, and her husband was standing on the floor below, looking up at her.

‘All right?’ he said. ‘Looks good to me.’

‘Yes, I am really pleased with all the redecoration. It was generous of Letty to finance it.’

Letty was her sister-in-law. Coffin’s half-sister, daughter of their much-married, mysterious, long-dead (one hoped) mother with a taste for moving on and finding different spouses. Although whether she married them all no one knew. Coffin hoped not, because if so bigamy must have come into it somewhere.

Letty Bingham, also much married, was younger and richer than her half-brother. Very much richer at the moment (her capital wealth did vary from time to time, and crisis to crisis), having climbed back after a time of disaster during which Coffin had feared the worst.

‘Least she could do.’

Letty had invested in the theatre and was a member of the Theatre Trust over which Stella presided.

Coffin followed the two women with as much patience as he could, while they continued the tour, inspecting the workroom where the scenery was prepared. He was always amazed how brilliantly the audience was conned into believing that bits of old wood repainted and rearranged from production to production, were a bit of the Roman senate, Hamlet’s mother’s bedroom, or Lady Windermere’s drawing room. Or even, for that matter, the kitchen in Look Back in Anger.

The two moved on, inspecting the designs for the play currently on line: Oh What a Lovely War, which would be preceded, just to get the mood right, by a scene from Journey’s End. He had thought himself that Macbeth might be a better play with which to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the last war, but Stella had let her new young producer, Monty Roland, and his Young Theatre Group, have the choice.

‘Just a quick look at the dressing rooms. I hope everyone is happy with them.’

‘Oh, very pleased, Miss Pinero. And of course, having showers and hot water makes a big difference to them all.’

‘So it should. I can remember having to change in a kind of barn, no water, not even cold, and walk across an open courtyard from the dressing rooms to the stage. Why do I say dressing rooms, we had but one, the sexes were separated by a curtain, which pulled across or didn’t as the mood took us. But that was in Scotland and it was an old cowshed.’

And a long while ago, thought Coffin, but knew better than to say so.

He had come to support Stella and be part of her audience, but now he would like to get home.

Stella had nearly finished her inspection, by which she had been pleased. ‘Came today just at this time on purpose,’ she said. ‘Not to get in anyone’s way.’

Tomorrow the last frantic rehearsals began, today was a day off. Not that the theatre was empty, theatres rarely are, except in the small hours, and perhaps not then if the ghosts are out. Someone always seems to be around.

The wardrobe mistress was checking the garments for the dress rehearsal tomorrow and her assistant, Deborah, was ironing a shirt.

She rolled her eyes at Stella. ‘The clothes those Tommies wore … I don’t know what they felt like on, but they are bloody.’

‘Don’t swear,’ said May Renier, automatically. Her face was flushed.

Deborah went on with her ironing. ‘That wasn’t swearing. And there is blood on this shirt … meant to be. It’s the one the chap gets killed in.’

She held it up for Stella to see. ‘Look, Miss Pinero, bloody, isn’t it?’

But Stella had seen stage blood before, worn it once or twice, and was more interested in soothing her wardrobe mistress who was known to become a near hysteric (while pretending to be cucumber-cool) around final dress rehearsal time.

‘How’s it going, dear?’

‘I believe we shall get through all right. Something will happen, of course, something always does, but we shall get through.’

You could almost hear May’s teeth grinding. Coffin wanted to offer her a glass of water.

‘We all know you suffer. May,’ said Alfreda, without a great deal of sympathy.

‘Your boy is looking for you,’ May came back with, knowing where to strike.

‘Where is he?’

‘Looking for a knife, I think. He thought you might have one.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, not to kill himself or you, although I wouldn’t blame him.’

Alfreda burst out laughing. ‘What for?’ She looked at Stella – Don’t take any notice of us, just our game, and it helps May let off steam.

‘He was going to cut a cake that Deb brought in.’ She nodded towards a table in the corner on which a large white iced cake sat.

‘Is it your birthday, Deborah?’ asked Stella.

‘Well, she isn’t going to be christened or married, so yes,’ said May.

‘Where’s he looking for the knife?’

May shrugged. ‘On your desk, I expect, you seem to have everything else there, so we thought there might be a knife.’

‘He won’t find one there.’ Alfreda went to the door and shouted down the corridor. ‘Look in my handbag.’

‘Knew you’d have one,’ said May.

Coffin looked at Stella. They can keep this up for ever, his gaze said, and if we aren’t lucky we shall have to stay and eat some of that cake.

Stella did the right thing, as she always did when it suited her. ‘There’s a bottle of champagne in my office. In the fridge. Send Tom for it and you three have it, with my love. Bless you all.’

She swept out, in her new blue and white Jean Muir, and Coffin followed.

In the corridor they passed Barney, plain Barney, who pressed himself against the wall politely so they could pass.

I think his mother beats him, thought Coffin, he always has a kind of bruised look.

‘Rubbish, he’s just young and nervous and in his first job,’ said Stella, as if he had spoken aloud. Well, not quite his first job, he had worked on that stall that sold sandwiches and hot dogs, but that was just to earn money as any student might.

‘What did I say?’ Coffin asked. ‘Did I speak?’

‘You said poor devil.’

‘Would you want Alfreda for a mother?’

‘She’s devoted to him. You can see it. As he is to her.’

‘I don’t know about mother love, it never came my way.’ Coffin’s parent had dumped him early in life to be brought up by a woman he called his aunt, although their exact relationship continued to worry him. His memory let him down and the evidence was perplexing. Sometimes he told one story about himself, sometimes another. Meanwhile his mother had gone gallivanting off with numerous romantic encounters to her credit. If you could believe her own diary, discovered well after her death. If she was dead. The one truth about his mother was that you could not believe everything you heard.

No, he hadn’t known much about mother love.

‘And he has me as a guv’nor,’ Stella finished triumphantly. ‘He couldn’t do better.’

She took him by the arm. ‘Come on, they are not the only ones in need of comfort, you are. And there is some more champagne in our tower.’ She looked in his face. ‘Or you can have whisky or a hot cup of tea.’

‘Do I look as bad as that?’

‘Pretty well, love.’ She put her arm round him. ‘I know you are in trouble … Come on, let me bind your wounds.’

They walked the few yards to their tower.

‘It’s not just the child, although that’s bad enough, nor worry about the riot – they probably have a right to kick up a stir,’ said Coffin awkwardly, after a pause.

‘No?’

He didn’t say anything more, but took a deep breath.

‘You want to answer or not?’

‘I usually tell you everything.’ Usually, but not quite always. I am not, for instance, going to tell you that I am sick inside about the man you met in Rome, Rome for romance, and who telephones you all the time. ‘In the end.’ It was a lame, doubtful finish.

‘So not yet?’

‘I think that’s about it. Not yet.’

Too powerful, too horrible. Too much his. Not to be spoken of too soon.

‘You’re glum, that’s what you are,’ said Stella lightly, opening their front door, and stepping up the stairs. Right you are, her back said; her elegant swaying step said, I accept silence. Only not for ever. ‘Glum and tense.’

‘Not cross.’

‘Very, very angry inside. I can feel it … Never mind, I don’t mind a bit of tension in a relationship, it shows it’s alive.’

She gave him a sharp look as if she might have doubted it otherwise. He did not respond.

Their living room smelt stuffy and hot, so Stella threw open the big sash window. The big tabby cat jumped on to the windowsill from the high branch of an overhanging tree and purred at her. ‘You’ll kill yourself one day doing that jump, cat. You’ll get it wrong and fall.’

The cat ignored this, which he knew could never happen. Not to him. To the dog, possibly, or to another cat, but not to a brave cat. He knew that jump as well as he knew his name, and the certainty that, any minute, his mistress was going to give him his supper.

Coffin walked over to his desk. Amongst all the other communications, there was a message on his answerphone from the office.

‘Harry Trent called from Greenwich. Inspector Trent. He will call again. He said it was personal.’

Stella, having fed Tiddles and also the dog, had returned. ‘Shall we eat in or go out?’

He looked at her without seeing her.

‘Answer, please.’

In a very little while, Stella’s quick temper would show itself and that tension which she claimed to like in a relationship would prove itself very alive and very active. Boiling oil might come into it somewhere.

‘Out.’ Then he thought about Harry Trent trying to reach him on the telephone on some personal matter. ‘No, here.’ And then, to hell with Harry Trent, out would be better. He liked Harry Trent, no question about that, a good man, and he had enjoyed working with him, but he was a man after whom trouble came trailing. Perhaps he was always so anxious himself. ‘No, let’s go to Max’s.’

Over the years, the simple café with which Max had started out had flourished and altered its name from Max’s to Maxi’s and was now Maximilian’s. Still Max’s to Coffin, though.

‘I’ll just go and change, then.’ Stella was cheerful at once. She loved changing her clothes, being in the theatre, putting on costume, taking it off, changing make-up was no hardship to her.

‘Be quick then.’ Or Harry Trent might slip in his call before they escaped. He wanted to escape.

‘You could do with a fresh shirt yourself.’ There was gentle but loving reproof in her voice, that rich voice that could express anything she wished it to.

But Harry Trent got in while he was still halfway clothed; he heard the bell and hoped she had not.

‘Don’t answer that,’ he called to Stella. But she already had.

‘It’s for you.’ And she handed him the telephone.

‘Harry? Thought it might be you.’

‘Is this a good time to talk?’

Coffin caught his wife’s eyes, buttoning his shirt with one hand as he did so. ‘Not too good.’ But this was Harry, a man he had worked with and trusted. ‘Make it quick.’ But that sounded rough. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Difficult to talk on the phone. I need your help. Can we meet and talk?’

Coffin thought. ‘Later maybe, I’ll have to think. Things are complicated.’

‘You mean about Swinehouse? I might be able to help you there.’

Coffin felt his eyebrows shoot up. What was Swinehouse to Harry Trent? And it shouldn’t be. He was surprised, resentful and possessive. He hated the riot, at the moment, he hated Swinehouse, but it was his. What was Harry doing on his territory. ‘Where are you?’

‘Quite close. I’m having a meal at a place near you. Maximilian’s, it’s called.’

‘Ah.’ Ah, indeed. What was Stella going to say? ‘I know the place. Hang on, will you?’ He covered the phone while he spoke to Stella.

She was surprisingly understanding, and possibly even interested in Harry. Anyway, she made no opposition to meeting him.

‘He can sit and watch while we eat, I suppose. And you can talk and I won’t listen … there’s bound to be someone there I know, there always is.’ A good proportion of the floating population of performers working or rehearsing or just about in St Luke’s Theatre ate in Max’s. ‘What’s he in trouble about?’

‘Don’t know. But he seems to think it’s one I can share in.’ Or was it that Harry thought he could pass it on to Coffin?

‘How well do you know him?’

‘We worked together on and off on various cases when I was in Greenwich. He’s much younger than I am and was a very junior officer. I got to know him a bit, not well, perhaps, but he was quiet about himself. Reserved, I suppose, didn’t talk about himself.’ He didn’t really want to talk about Harry; he added thoughtfully: ‘Not a happy man, but then he got married and that seemed to cheer him up. Or for a bit. But it didn’t mean he talked more, he said almost nothing about himself and his wife. Unlike some.’ But Coffin hadn’t been a talker himself, so he understood that side of Trent. In a company of men, it was really better to keep a still tongue. Who said men were not gossips? Coffin knew better. ‘But I liked him and trusted him. Yes, we were friends, but I was senior-ranking officer and that drew a line.’