A Double Coffin Read online

  ‘Right.’ Coffin stood up.

  She bent her head towards him and said in a confidential way: ‘Just one thing, I expect you will be calling on him again, but don’t let him give you anything to eat or drink.’

  After a moment of stunned silence. Coffin said: ‘He won’t poison me, will he?’

  She put her head on one side. ‘Not poison, no, we don’t let him get his hands on anything really dangerous. He’s on a few medications but we keep those out of his way. No, but sometimes he thinks it’s funny to load a drink with a laxative or some such. Once he gave Jack here a gin loaded with hydrogen peroxide, didn’t he. Jack?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Didn’t half fizz; ’course it tasted terrible.’

  ‘No worse than some drinks I’ve had,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘It’s a very Edwardian-house-party sort of joke.’ Janet put her face near Coffin’s. ‘You can imagine … not his world, of course, but some of the ladies he went with later …’ She shrugged. ‘Upper class … Lady this and the Honourable that … they found him attractive, he was an attractive man, and he picked up a few of their ways.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’

  ‘We’d better go in.’ Bradshaw stood up.

  ‘Yes,’ Janet nodded. ‘Finish your cup, sir, and we’ll go on in. He’ll be getting impatient. If you haven’t got many years left you want to get on with things.’

  She led the way out of the dining room, shutting the door carefully behind her. Across the hall, the door to another room stood half open.

  Even half a glance showed Coffin that this room was a museum piece, crowded as it was with heavy, dark, ornate furniture. One wall was covered with a great bookcase in which the leatherbound books looked unread and unloved. The past was strong in this place.

  Inside the room, the old man sat in a large armchair. His head, with its cockade of white hair, was supported by cushions so that he was upright and commanding. He wore a soft cashmere jacket with a tartan shawl draped over his legs. He looked old, elegant and in control. No loss of substance there, you felt at once. He might tire quickly, he probably did, but while he was functioning he would be acute.

  Coffin was surprised how well he remembered the face. Likewise the strong head of hair seemingly so untouched by time that Coffin wondered cynically if it was a wig. But surely not, the old man’s watchword had always been honesty and integrity, although exactly what that meant in political circles might be doubted.

  And after all, many people had wigs. His own wife had several, which she said were essential to her professional life.

  He fixed Coffin with a commanding blue eye. ‘Good of you to come, sir. With all your responsibilities it cannot have been easy. I appreciate your courtesy.’ It was a rich deep voice, but age had introduced streaks of lighter tones.

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘I keep up to date, sir.’

  So you do. Coffin thought, noticing a small television set on a table by the chair. Shelves underneath the table were stacked with more modern books, and magazines. The present did get a look in then.

  Janet fussed forward, adjusting his shawl. ‘Of course you do, Uncle.’

  He ignored her. ‘Helped by my good friend, Bradshaw.’

  ‘You pay me, sir,’ said Bradshaw, somewhat sourly.

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘Probably not enough, but I am bearing it.’

  The old man chuckled. ‘Other things make it bearable, eh? You enjoy working with me, and we will both make money out of my autobiography.’

  ‘So you hope.’

  This sparring is in fun, they like each other. Coffin thought. But even this might be wrong, you had to remember that one at least of them was a politician, used to wearing a false smile, dissembling. Lying, in short.

  ‘Nice collection of books you have there, sir. Dickens and a complete Thackeray.’ Not many other houses in Spinnergate had a library like it, he guessed.

  ‘My mother ordered me to buy them. Said it was what I should have, but I never opened them. I was a Shaw and a Gissing man, myself. She didn’t read them either, not what she liked; Ethel M. Dell and Ruby M. Ayres, they were her goddesses. I don’t think anyone has ever opened those books there. But they look good, don’t they? Nice covers.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘You’re just making conversation, lad,’ said the old man with a sudden shift of character from nostalgic son to old headmaster talking to a former pupil.

  What a politician he must have been, thought Coffin, able to change his stance as it suited him. ‘I have been wondering what you wanted from me.’

  ‘And when I was going to get down to it?’ He looked at Janet, who drew chairs forward for Coffin and Bradshaw, then retired quietly from the room. ‘And you can shut the door, Janet,’ he called out. ‘She listens at the door, you know,’ he said to Coffin in no soft voice. ‘I know you are still there, Janet, I can tell.’

  Bradshaw clicked his teeth. ‘You’re hard on Janet; you wouldn’t find it easy to get anyone else to do what she does.’

  ‘She doesn’t like me, you know.’

  ‘Do you want me to leave as well?’ asked John Bradshaw with a show of irritation.

  ‘You can stay.’ The old man looked down at his hand. ‘I’m dead in a way, dead to a lot of people, you probably thought I was dead, been off the scene a long while, a bit of old history,’ he said to Coffin.

  ‘English history, sir.’

  ‘And that’s how I want to stay. I want to be remembered for the good things I did for English society, what I opened up, what I swept away.’

  ‘That’s how it will be,’ said Coffin, wondering what was coming.

  ‘I was born round here … Different world then.’

  ‘Born not so far away myself, sir.’

  ‘Much later, you are a younger man. A different world even so and even then.’ He got up and walked slowly to the window. ‘All changed out there. New buildings, and an empty river. Different sort of people live here. When I was a kid, there was a tenement block here, dozens of families all crammed in with a lavatory and pump in the yard outside. I remember the stink.’

  ‘We all have memories like that, sir. I remember when there were big ships on the river here, and barges.’

  ‘And men at the dock gates, fighting for work, with the guv’nors coming out and picking and choosing … I remember that too … I helped put that away. Made a start.’

  Still looking out of the window, he went on: ‘At night, it’s bright with lights, they shine across the water. Keep me awake sometimes.’ He turned round: ‘It was gaslight on the cobbled walks then, and not much light at all anywhere. Pools of light under the lamps and then blackness. A dark world. I want you to remember that.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Coffin began to feel like Alice through the Looking Glass. Not going into another world, but back in time. He looked at Jack Bradshaw who gave him a faint sympathetic smile. He lives like this all the time. Coffin thought, walking in and out of the past.

  ‘The streets were different too, narrower as well as worse lit, not so much traffic and a lot of it still horse driven. Courtyards with little houses round them. Broken windows with old clothes stuffed in them to keep the draughts out, unlocked doors – with so many souls under one roof, families crammed into one room, you couldn’t keep the front door locked much. A thieves’ paradise, and worse …’

  Bradshaw met Coffin’s eye and gave a small nod. He’ll be out with it soon, the nod said. He has to work up to what’s coming.

  ‘We had a very hot summer the year I was thirteen,’ Lavender went on, ‘followed by a bad, foggy winter. I remember how the fog hung over the street we lived in and seemed to creep slyly into every crack of the little house. My school was just around the corner and I spent as much time there as I could. There was a little library, I could get into that and sit reading, it was warmer than home … quieter too. My mother used to take in washing, it was a common way then to e
arn some money, the washing was collected and taken home to be washed. Rubbed up and down a dolly board. We had a boiler in the kitchen with a coal fire beneath. I used to help my mother by delivering the clean washing in an old pram … I had a younger brother, but he died …’

  ‘I used to do errands, delivering messages, collecting shopping, to earn a bit of pocket money,’ said Coffin, dredging up a memory, long forgotten. Did he say it aloud? If so, the old man took no notice, but went on:

  ‘So I was out and about the streets at all hours, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes late at night. I saw all things … there wasn’t much I didn’t know about the ways of men and women and of men with women. Stood me in good stead, I can tell you, when I went out into the world … But even so …’ He paused. ‘There was a lot of violence on the streets that winter … the fogs, I suppose, being particularly bad made it easier for attackers to get away. Four women were killed in Spinnergate and East Hythe that winter and spring.’

  ‘You remember exactly?’

  ‘I remember; there was a lot of talk and boys listen to that sort of thing … One woman was found dead in a gutter, another in a park, another up an alley. And I have cause to remember.’

  ‘Four, you said?’

  ‘Yes, all strangled, just one killer for the lot. What we now call a serial killer. Monsters, was the word then, that last winter before the First World War.’

  Lavender stopped, his voice had been tiring.

  ‘You could do with a drink,’ said Bradshaw, standing up. ‘You should have let me tell all this.’ He went to the door. ‘Janet, bring a glass of water.’

  Janet must have been at the door, she was in so quick, holding out a glass. ‘Here you are, I dropped some whisky in it.’

  More than a drop, thought Coffin, observing the colour. Still, she knew the old man and what he could take.

  Dick Lavender took a sip. ‘I came home one day of a deep fog, I’d been delivering the washing to a local pub: the Rock of Gibraltar … the Gib, we called it.’

  ‘Still there,’ said Coffin.

  ‘I know … When I got home, my mother called me into the kitchen … I’d been meaning to sneak upstairs to read, I had a good book on the go … My mother was shaking and there was blood on her apron … She was a little woman and she was not drunk, she did not drink. She took me into the kitchen and told me that my father was the multiple killer and that he had killed one more woman and her body was in our back yard.’

  The words fell into the room like little weapons, sharp and heavy. Are you sure about this. Coffin wanted to say. Not a kid’s fantasy, remembered now for real? But he did not say it.

  There was only one question to ask and Coffin asked it: ‘Where was your father?’

  ‘Gone.’

  Then Coffin did say, he had to ask it: ‘Are you sure this is real?’ Later, he might take Bradshaw aside, and say: Is the old man mad?

  ‘Oh, I am sure. My mother asked me to come with her to bury the body … I helped her put the woman in the pram, and I pushed it through the streets, and then I helped Mother bury her.’

  Janet came in with the bottle of whisky, and handed drinks all round, taking one herself. She then withdrew, no doubt to listen at the door again.

  Coffin received his drink gratefully, downing it in one long gulp. He felt steadier then, and able to move on.

  ‘So where do I come in?’

  Dick Lavender said gravely: ‘I have had this on my conscience this long while.’

  Did it worry your mother? Coffin wanted to ask, but he felt the answer would be that it hadn’t. She had died happy and content.

  ‘I want you to find out the names of the murdered women. It will be in the police records. I can give you the years.’

  ‘It’s been a long while, sir,’ said Coffin gently. ‘Why not leave it?’

  Lavender went on, as if Coffin had not spoken: ‘All the deaths were in Spinnergate or East Hythe, that should help you. The police investigation got nowhere, I can remember my mother worrying, but time went on and nothing happened.’

  ‘You mean your father was never named?’ Coffin was blunt.

  This too was ignored. ‘If you could find out the names and if there are any living relatives of the dead women, then I would try to do something by way of reparation. Anonymously, of course.’

  I was right, I am going to be a time wanderer. Coffin thought, feeling dazed. Wandering around in the past. If I am not careful I shall never get out.

  ‘And I would like the woman my mother and I buried to be dug up and given a proper funeral.’

  Coffin was silent. ‘Let me think this over, sir. I can see difficulties.’ Finding the grave, digging up the corpse, the holding of an inquest … the press would be there like vultures.

  ‘I can tell you where we buried her. I remember very clearly.’ Dick Lavender nodded at Bradshaw. ‘Get us the map. Jack.’

  ‘He knows all about it?’ Coffin looked at Bradshaw’s retreating back.

  ‘Of course, I trust him. He is writing my life, but he will only put in what I tell him to.’

  I wonder. Coffin thought.

  ‘And Janet?’ Who listens at doors.

  ‘She won’t get a penny from my will unless she has been discreet.’

  ‘And you trust me?’

  Dick Lavender gave him the famous smile, the one that had ravished the hearts of those beauties long ago. ‘I do.’ He bent his head in a kind of noble obeisance.

  Oh, you charmer, you, thought Coffin. But what is it really all about? He had the distinct feeling of being led into a maze.

  ‘I can’t guarantee either success or complete secrecy. Just not on, sir.’

  Bradshaw appeared with a map of the district, which he handed to his employer.

  ‘You may remember where you and your mother buried the body all those years ago, but there has been a war and a lot of rebuilding … the spot may have a tower block sitting on it, or a factory.’

  ‘We think not,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It was open ground then, and it still is so.’

  ‘It was the old churchyard, even then unused, hard by St Luke’s Church.’ Dick Lavender smiled again. ‘You will know it.’

  ‘Oh, I do, I do.’ One by one, facts were slotting into place. Not only was he Chief Commander of the police of the Second City, and thus in the first position to investigate a series of murders long ago, even if the investigation came to no resolution, but he also lived in the tower of the old St Luke’s Church. Former St Luke’s Church, he corrected himself. ‘It is a small public park now, over the road.’ The road, he supposed, was relatively new but before his time.

  ‘I have seen your wife act,’ said Dick Lavender. ‘Not recently, of course. I no longer go out. A beautiful lady.’

  ‘I think so …’ Coffin gathered himself together. ‘Sir, as I said before, all this was a long time ago … Why not let it rest?’

  Dick Lavender looked at Bradshaw, and gave a small nod.

  Jack sighed. ‘A young woman, a freelance journalist has been around, asking questions … she may have flushed something up … If so, she will certainly publish.’

  ‘I must be there first,’ said Dick Lavender. ‘I value what reputation I have.’ He read the expression on Coffin’s face accurately. ‘But it is mostly conscience. I have enough in my life to regret. Of this particular crime, I want to be relieved.’

  ‘Your father and your mother are dead … they were the guilty ones, you were young, not to be blamed.’

  ‘I do blame myself,’ said the old man simply. ‘Guilt grows on you with age like a mould. You will find that out for yourself one day. I do not want to die covered in mould.’

  Coffin stood up. ‘I will think about it, sir, and come back to you when I have made up my mind.’

  Dick Lavender bowed his head again, in dignified acceptance. ‘Please let me know.’ He leaned back in his big chair, closing his eyes. ‘Jack, show the Chief Commander out … I thank you for coming.’

  Br
adshaw took Coffin to the door, avoiding Janet who was hovering, then took the lift down with him.

  As soon as they were in the lift. Coffin said: ‘Is this all serious?’

  ‘You know it is.’

  Coffin was silent till they came to the ground floor and the lift door opened. He walked out into the air, taking in deep breaths. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

  He turned to Bradshaw. ‘Is he mad, or senile?’

  ‘No, not mad …’ He gave a slight smile. ‘He always remembers he was PM, but sometimes I have thought he believed he was Mr Gladstone, going out to save fallen women … the story he told you has some relevance there. And once he seemed to act as if he was Pitt the Younger, taking on Napoleon Bonaparte.’

  Coffin digested the comment, half satirically meant and the more interesting for that. ‘This young journalist … she really exists?’

  ‘She does. No one invented her.’

  ‘Then let me have her name and any address you have.’

  Bradshaw nodded. ‘I will send round all I have. There isn’t much. Marjorie Wardy was the name she used when she came round, may be a pseudonym.’

  ‘Let me have what you’ve got. I will let you know what I decide.’

  Jack Bradshaw hesitated. ‘There’s one other thing … it has certainly been on the old man’s mind, may have motivated him to call you in. He has had two letters threatening him …’

  Coffin gave him a quick look.

  ‘He knew I would tell you,’ said Jack Bradshaw. ‘Meant me to. It has made him nervous. He thinks it may be something from his past.’

  Once again. Coffin had this feeling of being caught up in a maze. Every time he felt he was on solid ground, the ground was moved.

  ‘Send me all the information you have, including the letters, and I will say where we go from there.’

  2

  Coffin went home to his wife, Stella, whom he found lying across the bed, wearing a red satin trouser suit, and painting her nails in a very delicate shade of pink. He liked her in red, but it made him nervous. It betokened what he thought of as her flighty mood. This was a mood which he loved but feared because you never knew how it would take her.