Cracking Open a Coffin

‘Is she all right there? Any trouble?’

‘She did have a bit at first, got mugged, and her TV stolen, but she made powerful friends and they look after her now.’

Ah yes, Our General again. ‘Protection?’

‘You could call it that, but not for payment. But you didn’t come to talk about Jo.’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘There’s a story there, and one day I might tell you, or she might.’

‘Or it might come out.’

‘Things do come out in the end,’ agreed Maisie Rolt.

‘I thought you would be glad to know that a solid investigation into Amy’s disappearance is under way.’

‘I am. She hasn’t just gone off, she wouldn’t do that. She was very regular in coming here. We didn’t count on her; help is always useful but we can manage; but it was just not in her character for her to drop out. She’d arranged to take a party to the swimming pool, the kids were all ready, she would never have let them down.’

‘Yes, I see that.’ He hadn’t known about the swimming pool trip, and it did carry some weight with him, although with students, he thought, you can never be sure. ‘So you had no warning she might not turn up?’

She shook her head. ‘No message, nothing, just silence. I found that disturbing. It upset the whole household. And I take that seriously. If some of the women here think it’s bad, then it is bad.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They learn to smell trouble.’

‘You don’t ask me if I have any news.’

‘Because I know you haven’t, you would have said straight off, you’re that sort. Besides—’ she smiled—‘I have my own sources, I know there’s nothing.’

Ah yes, Our General, he thought, and possibly Mimsie Marker down at the Tube Station, she was the great communicator.

The door swung open and a small child appeared, a boy probably, although it was hard to be sure, his or her outfit was unisex: longish hair and a kind of kilt with pants.

‘Hop it, Darren,’ said Maisie. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

‘The soup’s boiling over.’

‘Tell Jo, or your mother, or anyone you can find. On no account touch it yourself.’

‘If it is boiling over,’ she said as the door closed. ‘Just wanted a look at you, I expect. His mother probably sent him in, she has fantasies about what goes in this room.’ Maisie gave a hoot of ironic but friendly laughter. ‘And so would I if I’d had her life. Ask no questions because I’m not telling you.’

‘What can you tell?’ He was beginning to see what Archie Young had meant. Not so much difficult as baffling.

‘I never tell much about anyone really, that’s what I’m good at, keeping quiet. It helps here. Essential. If I was a gossip I’d have been killed by now and this place would have gone up in flames … But it was the two of them, Virginia and now Amy. I talked it over with Josephine and she felt the same.’

Coffin kept quiet.

‘I didn’t want to think it was our fault.’

‘How could it be?’

‘You don’t know, do you? You never know when one thing leads to another until it’s too late. But the girl came to us here, said it was part of her course. I checked, and it was, so all right, but she did more than she need have done, and so did Virginia.’

‘Just kindness of heart?’

‘Could be, but it worried me then and it does now. They didn’t come together, but they knew each other. I don’t like coincidences that end in disappearance and death. Was it something they got into because of coming here? I don’t know. We’re clean here, no drugs, nothing of that sort. I watch for it. I didn’t ask them why they came, beyond the first query, which is standard. I mean, I have to look out, we do have some dubious characters whose motives are not very nice. I can suss them out. These girls were not like that. I’m glad of help and I don’t dig into people. I’d go mad if I did. We have enough trouble here as it is.’

It was quite a speech and he wondered what emotions lay behind it.

‘We had a man round here asking questions. No, not one of your lot, I can always tell them.’

‘A nuisance, was he?’

Mrs Rolt smiled. ‘He was seen off. We had a couple of guardian angels who dealt with him … Debagged, I think it was called once. Anyway, he left without his trousers and he hasn’t been back.’

Powerful ladies, Coffin thought.

‘How often did Amy come here?’

‘Once a week regularly, and other times as we needed more help. She did office work, typed letters, filed them, kept an eye on the accounts. Talked to anyone who wanted to be talked to, some don’t. She seemed to know by instinct. She was good. Good at what she did and a good girl.’

‘Did the boy, Martin, come down here?’

‘Once or twice but we didn’t encourage it. He was awkward.’

‘We are still trying to form a picture of what might have happened. You know Martin is missing too? His wallet was found in Amy’s car.’

‘She loved that car.’ It was not an answer but he concluded she had known about Martin, and possibly that was part of her alarm. Did she think he was guilty of violence?

‘In confidence—’ he almost stopped there, no question of confidence, soon it would be known everywhere—‘I can tell you that a sweater that has been identified as Amy’s has been found. There was a handkerchief inside it, and with it a bus ticket. A ticket on the route that runs at the bottom of this road.’

‘I don’t think she ever used a bus,’ said Maisie. ‘Always came in the car.’

‘Someone bought that ticket. And on the day she disappeared. It was wedged beneath a handkerchief.’

‘She never used a handkerchief, always bits of tissue crammed into her pocket.’

‘It was clean. Might have been just decoration.’

‘I don’t think so. I’d say it wasn’t hers.’

‘Her pocket in her sweater,’ he persisted.

Mrs Rolt shrugged. ‘You asked me.’

Darren put his head round the door. ‘There’s ever such a smell of burning in the kitchen.’

‘I’d better get back,’ said Maisie Rolt. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t helped. Just pushed your questions back at you.’

‘At the beginning of an investigation like this, questions are as valuable as answers.’