A Dark Coffin Read online

  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.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  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.

&nb
sp; 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 s
tage. 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.’