Coffin's Ghost (9 page)

She knew the Serena Seddon Refuge to which she had donated money. When it was setting up, the St Luke’s Theatre Company had given a special performance of Michael Frayn’s
Noises Off (always
a crowd-puller) to help raise money. Stella herself had performed in it.

On this occasion she had met Mary Arden and thought her pretty and gentle, possibly too gentle for the disturbed and distressed women she would have to live with. Not to mention the husbands who would certainly be both disturbing and probably violent.

I’d be better at it, she had thought. I mean, when you have coped with a cast of performers all rampantly enjoying one form of sex or another (she was thinking of the cast of
Major Barbara
which she had just produced . . . It was surprising how sexy Shaw was when you came up against him), then you can cope with almost everything.

Mary Arden’s assistant she knew better because Evelyn’s husband worked in the theatre, a nice brawny lad with curly hair. A bit younger than his wife, Stella assessed.

He had found an opportunity to talk to her about the limbs deposited on the Serena Seddon Refuge. His wife was upset, he said, and all the present residents were, as he put it ‘on the twitch’.

‘Must be a woman with some connection with the house, you see, Miss Pinero, and that makes them nervous. For themselves, each and every one having a close experience of violence. Her now, one of us next, that’s how they reason. And I’ve had the kid, Alice Gilchrist, she used that name, working for me. A nice girl, if simple, she’s off. It’s worrying. You can understand it.’

Stella agreed that you could, but put in the proviso that the police would be watching the house and protecting the women in it.

The warden thinks the limbs belong to a girl who used to live there . . . Helped run the place, I think, not a battered wife. French girl, Henriette. Etta, they called her. Supposed to have gone back home, but did she?’

‘Has she told the police?’

Peter was vague, he didn’t know, might have mentioned it.

‘Why does Miss Arden think it’s this girl Etta?’

‘She hasn’t heard from her and she believes she would have done. Or ought to have done. But someone else was saying that she’d seen Etta around the town, and with a rough crowd.’

Stella gave the firm advice that either Miss Arden or his wife ought to tell all this to the police if they were really worried.

She walked away, thinking that gossip must be all over the town. A juicy case.

Some houses attracted violence, she thought. Wasn’t there a local story that Jack the Ripper had lived there? It wasn’t a place she had liked during the short time it had been the Chief Commander’s living quarters.

She had kept out of it as much as she could do, leaving him alone there. Looking back, he must have been lonely.

She tidied up her office in the theatre, taking some work back with her to the tower so that she could let in Arthur and Dave, and then stay while they did their two-hour stint. Stella felt she did not yet know them well enough to hand over the keys and tell them how the security worked.

They were just arriving as she got to the door so they all went in together. Stella worked in the sitting room while they cleaned upstairs, then, when they were ready to dust and polish the sitting room, she moved up to her bedroom.

She could hear them talking as they worked, it seemed to be Dave doing most of the talking. As she came down to the kitchen to get a drink of water, she met him polishing the taps.

He looked at her with a smile. He seemed to wear a light layer of dust over his face and his hair, greying him down like a statue that had been kept in the attic.

A good-looking man underneath it all, with those interesting grooves on his face.

‘You don’t remember me, Miss Pinero.’

She did remember him, memories can go and then come back.

‘I was with you when you were just setting up the theatre . . . I was only a general kind of dogsbody, not surprising you don’t remember me. I hoped I might get a foothold on the acting side. I played young middle age then, but it didn’t work out.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I get by. Do a bit of TV as it comes along. Play older types now,
The Bill
and
Carrie
and the odd documentary. If they want a real street figure or an old market man, they call on me.’

‘Or a dustman,’ Stella thought. ‘What about your colleague?’

‘Arthur? Oh, he has his ups and downs like all of us. Went up for a part, good one too, in a radio soap . . . he does a beautiful kid’s voice, you should hear his baby crying . . . lost it, though, because he wouldn’t do a baby screaming . . . said he daren’t, it might ruin his voice.’

Stella wasn’t sure if she believed Dave. Behind the dust, it was possible there was a laugh.

Arthur appeared at the door. ‘Finished the kitchen, Dave?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but started to check his cleaning equipment – part Stella’s, part they brought with them. ‘Let’s be off then. Morning, Miss Pinero.’

It was his beautiful voice that had persuaded Stella to hire the cleaning team, although their prices were high.

‘Look after your voice,’ she called as they prepared to depart. He gave her a surprised look. ‘I’m working on it, Miss Pinero, trying to deepen the tones, get more richness.’ He smiled. ‘Covent Garden, here I come.’

Soon she heard them leaving, dustman and hopeful opera singer, climbing into the van, with Dave still talking and Arthur listening. He was wearing a hat now, a dark felt with a big brim.

‘Did you tell her about the new murder?’

Dave shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘She doesn’t collect murders. Nor do we. Besides, you don’t know the woman was dead.’

‘I bet she was,’ said Arthur. ‘She dropped like a stone.
Dead gone, sure of it. You couldn’t see. I was in the van. You weren’t. Where the hell were you? That was a long shit!’

‘And what were
you
doing? Didn’t let the police know.’

‘I was parked illegally,’ said Arthur. ‘Besides, the man in the PO Telephone van rushed to do it. Not my business.’

Arthur took his hands off the wheel to adjust the hat in the car mirror and wave to Stella. There was no doubt, she thought, that a touch of madness helped in the entertainment world.

Perhaps that was what was the matter with her and Coffin: they were not mad enough.

But no, she knew that wasn’t the trouble, there was an unease between them at the moment which she couldn’t account for.

Not my fault, she thought.

‘Do you want to go alone, sir, or shall I come with you?’ asked Phoebe Astley.

‘I’m not a child, this isn’t a trip to the park,’ said Coffin irritably.

The chief inspector took this for a kind of backhanded permission, which suited her as she intended to go with the Chief Commander anyway. He was the boss figure and entitled to look in at whatever he chose, but it was her case too. In the end, she would be responsible for what happened or didn’t happen. She admired and respected Coffin, but she had her own career to consider.

The limbs were in the care, if you could call it that, of the Pathology Department of the Second City University Hospital.

‘Slung in a refrigerator and waiting for Dennis Garden to give tongue,’ as Archie Young had said sardonically. He was no friend of Professor Garden. Socially and intellectually, they lived in different worlds. Archie did not admire the carefully chosen blue and pink shirts from Jermyn Street with matching ties, nor the equally carefully chosen band of young men with whom he consorted. The professor’s technical skills he respected.

But the new laboratories for which Garden had fought
several successful wars in favour of dead persons getting the best, Archie Young, no mean fender-off of cutbacks, did admire. The Second City Police Forensic Unit was first class, Coffin had seen to that, and it maintained a small pathology group, but for anything major then it called on the University Hospital and Dennis Garden.

‘Been in here, sir, since it was rebuilt?’ asked Phoebe as she led the way into the gleaming, sterile, antiseptic new laboratories.

Coffin had to admit that he had not. ‘Was invited to the grand opening but I couldn’t go. Stella went and said that there was more champagne than seemed decent in the presence of so many dead.’

Phoebe had been there herself – one of our best customers, Garden had said – and had heard Stella Pinero say something on the lines Coffin reported, and had heard Garden say: ‘Not all dead, I have a few bits and pieces of people who are just dying.’ You couldn’t best Garden, Phoebe had thought.

The great man was not to be seen, having been drawn away to an important committee in London, but his assistant Dr Driver was on hand.

He was talking to a tall, pretty woman who held herself very straight.

‘That’s Mary Arden,’ said Phoebe Astley. ‘Now why is she here?’

‘Pretty obvious. To see the limbs. To identify them. Did you ask her to come?’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘Certainly not. She wouldn’t be on her own, I’d have sent someone with her. I was thinking of getting her in, but Davley was off on something else.’ Which had seemed more urgent.

‘What’s Sergeant Davley doing?’

‘Checking the local doctors . . . as far as we can without a name, but the owner of the limbs must have been on someone’s list.’

‘Is there any chance Mary Arden could make an identification?’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘Who knows? She was worried that the
limbs belonged to a girl who worked in the house. Etta, she called her. But those legs belonged to no girl.’

Coffin was watching Mary Arden, who was shaking the doctor’s hand and turning towards the door. ‘She’s leaving. Better talk to her.’

‘She’s seen us,’ said Phoebe. ‘And doesn’t want to talk. I’ll get her though.’

This she did, walking towards Mary Arden with the question on her lips.

‘It wasn’t Etta, was it?’

‘He wouldn’t let me see the legs and arms. Just showed me a photograph.’

‘That was good enough, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know . . . the real flesh . . .’ She shook her head. ‘One might get a different impression . . . Colour, feeling.’ Mary Arden seemed genuinely anxious.

Phoebe reassured her. ‘Can’t be Etta, wrong age.’ Even as she said it, she thought, this girl Etta might just fit the younger age estimate, girls do get into trouble, disappear, or worse, but she persevered: ‘Wrong life history from what one can tell. I think it’s brave of you to want to see those limbs. You are really worried, aren’t you?’

‘They were left on the doorstep of the house I live in and run as a refuge for women who are sheltering with me from violence. Of course I am worried, I am worried about Etta. She left, she has never been in touch with me as she promised and she has been seen around the town.’

‘I’d get off home if I were you.’

‘Home? The Serena Seddon Refuge? Do you know what it is like now? My poor residents whom I am supposed to be helping are worried because of what turned up on the doorstep. Each and every one thinks they will be next.’

Her eyes flicked across to where Coffin stood talking to the young doctor.

‘Who’s that with you?’

Phoebe did not answer.

‘Another policeman? He’s got the look.’ Mary began to move away. ‘Who is he? I fancy I have seen him before.’

Again Phoebe did not answer.

‘Or are you arresting him? Could be, he has that drawn look about the eyes. Rather attractive.’

Still no answer, and Phoebe could see that Coffin, although still talking politely to the doctor, was growing restive.

‘Oh, you’re right,’ said Mary Arden. ‘I did have a very strong vodka and tonic – that’s the chosen tipple in the Serena establishment – before leaving home . . . to strengthen me to look at the legs but much good it did me . . . I will go home.’ She was gone, with a brave wave of the hand.

‘What was all that about?’ Coffin asked as Phoebe came back.

Do you say to your boss: She thinks you look haggard but attractive? Also a likely criminal. Phoebe thought not.

‘She wanted to view the limbs, she was shown a photograph which failed to click with her.’

‘That was a long talk about nothing.’

Can he lip read? Phoebe asked herself. ‘She’s upset.’

The young doctor had disappeared through one of the shining glass and chrome doors. The old pathology rooms had been dark brown with dim unpolished floors. Coffin, an occasional visitor, had thought it suitable for death, polite and quiet, but the new atmosphere was bright and brash and highly sterile, which he had to admit, the old place probably had not been, although it had always smelt strongly of disinfectants which yet failed to mask other deeper, darker, more intimidating smells.

All gone now, there were even pictures on the walls of the corridor down which Phoebe was leading him. Although to be fair to Professor Garden, they were photographs of interesting autopsies and specially selected corpses, with here and there a greatly enlarged mordant eye or a scrap of malignant tissue.

Lessons in mortality all the way along, thought Coffin. A learning experience every step of the corridor with a desiccated adult body placed next to a tiny, mummified foetus. Even just a hint of Garden’s sense of humour.

Once out of the corridor, through the anteroom and into the working area, the atmosphere changed.

Here inside was all clinical with almost an industrial feel to the tables, with running water draining down into large
chrome apertures, and wall cabinets with their freezing drawers.

Coffin nodded to the white-coated pathologist standing by the cabinets.

A figure clad from head to foot in white, booted in white and wearing gloves, came up to him. He was carrying a neat camera.

‘DC Rodders, sir. I’m here on orders from the chief super to get some photographs.’

Why? thought Coffin with irritation. Archie Young could be a nuisance sometimes. Photographs, photographs.

The irritation came out. ‘Why the hell are you gowned up like that?’

‘Against infection, sir,’ said a pained voice behind the masking.

‘She didn’t die of AIDS, you fool.’