A Double Coffin

‘Just started, we are the first to use it. Max suggested it to me. If it’s a success, he will build it up.’

‘We are an experiment then. He’s trying it out on us.’ Coffin liked Max and appreciated his food, but he also saw that Max aimed his arrows at Stella. Celebrated, fashionable, much-photographed Stella who brought in the smart customers.

‘Well, you know Max, he’s very adventurous.’

Some years ago now, when Coffin had first come to live in St Luke’s and Stella had only just started the theatre in the old church, before they were married, in fact. Max had opened his first eating place. He and his daughters, the Beauty one and the Clever one and the Married one, had run it between them. Since then he had prospered and taken on the catering in the theatre. Max’s restaurant was now a smart place to eat in the Second City, which was not famous for good food.

‘He ought to pay us,’ he protested.

‘This meal is a present,’ said Stella, showing that she too had a business head. She had learnt a lot from Coffin’s half-sister, Letty, who always knew where a bargain was to be negotiated. She was at present in Hong Kong, where she was doing business. Letty was a backer of the theatre, for which Stella was grateful. She was expected back in London soon, which gave Stella another reason for gratitude since the season was not doing too well and she was pressed financially; Letty would see her through, she hoped.

She was fussing round the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and then closing them again. ‘Oh, you’ve fed the animals.’

Coffin said he had.

‘What sort of a day?’ she asked.

‘Oh, this and that. What about you?’

‘Trouble with Twelfth Night. Martin came in with a black eye, nothing much, just a mark under one eye, but someone gave it to him – the love of his life, I suppose – and a bruise right down the side of his face. That wouldn’t matter, make-up could deal with it, but his wits seem to have gone too. The rehearsal was bad, very bad, and mostly due to Malvolio – the part is quite as crucial as Sir Toby, you know, and he buggered the whole thing up … I don’t think I can get away tomorrow. Must stay around and steady their nerves.’

‘You’re not directing though?’

‘No, I brought Archie Tree in for three productions of which this is the first. It’s his nerves I must steady.’

‘Won’t it be a pity not to see the boy in Edinburgh or wherever?’ asked Coffin, thinking of his dinner with Phoebe.

‘St Andrews … no, I’ve seen a tape he sent me, and I saw him at Chichester in a Pinter play. I’ll get him, I think. He’s not a name.’ So she would get him cheap. He would be a name, and she would have got in early, and that was all to the good. ‘You know, I’m beginning to wish you hadn’t got into this weird hunt for a dead woman. There’s something odd about it. I don’t like it.’

‘I feel the same, but I think I have to do it. Not in person – I’ve put Phoebe Astley in charge.’

‘Oh.’

‘She’s good,’ said Coffin defensively.

‘I wish she dressed better, but among all you men it’s probably as well not to.’

‘We’re not that bad.’

‘Yes, you are, a lot of chauvinist pigs.’ Stella had had a role recently in a police series on TV and said she had learnt a lot, not from her fellow performers but from the police expert checking the show.

‘It’s not all like television,’ protested her husband. ‘I’m changing things. Anyway, Phoebe dresses to suit herself.’

Beneath the words they were throwing at each other there was amusement and affection. It was an argument, not even a discussion, they were enjoying each other’s company.

One of your better moments. Coffin decided as he got out a bottle of wine.

They ate the casserole in companionable ease at the kitchen table.

They had finished when the bell rang below.

‘I’m not going to look out of the window,’ said Stella, covering her eyes, although she knew that she could not see their front door from the kitchen, ‘but something tells me that it is Martin.’

‘I’m afraid you are right,’ said Coffin, going over to the window. ‘He is invisible … although still ringing the bell … but there is the old bike you say he goes about on propped up against the wall.’ He looked at the TV viewer fixed on his porch as a security aid. Yes, there was Martin; no one was really invisible.

He went down the stairs.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Martin, as he came into the kitchen. ‘I came to apologize for my behaviour today.’ The bruise under his left eye was a dark evil streak, while on the other side of his face a long bruise stretched from cheekbone to jaw. He looked pale and thin.