Coffin Underground

It hadn’t been the way it was, and she thought he knew it, but she could sympathize with his anger. Compared with the Pitts, what did he have?

‘Nona was only a kid,’ was all she said.

He was silent. Then he said: ‘That chap you’re doing the washing for is a policeman.’

‘I know.’

It was the only thing she had against him.

John Coffin, policeman, was not someone she wanted to work for. Why couldn’t he be a dustman or a bank clerk?

There was a telephone call for John Coffin when he got home from work that night. He was early, for once, and the telephone sounded within minutes of his arrival, as if it had been ringing at intervals hoping to get him.

‘John? Bernard here.’ The sergeant’s voice was urgent. ‘There’s been a body found. You’ll hear about this through channels, but I’m telling you now. I don’t know how you’ll get the message but take it seriously. If I were you I’d get down there now and see what they’ve got. Go through the Wolsey Road entrance to the Park.’ And he rang off.

A green and wooded hill stretches down Greenwich Park towards the river. The ground is uneven with many little dips and hollows. The body of Malcolm Kincaid, the suicide, had been found in one such. John Coffin had walked home that way after parking his car in the garage he rented. He enjoyed the walk but felt alone on it, undressed. Every other walker seemed to have either a dog or a child. Perhaps he might get a dog. Except for his sister Lætitia, his life was empty of close personal relations at the moment. Lætitia, a long-lost sister who had come back into his life some years ago, was a joy. But she was rarely in the same country he was or indeed in any country for long. As well as a rich and itinerant husband, she had a successful career as a lawyer which seemed to involve a great deal of travelling.

There was their other sibling, of course, related by half blood through their mother to them both. But at the moment he or she was more hypothetical than real because they had not managed to track him down. Or her. It was strange to think that his mother had given birth to yet another child about whom he had known hardly anything until Lætitia had told him. But she had their mother’s word for it. ‘Born between you and me and given for adoption,’ Lætitia had said.

Their mother seemed to shed children like lost parcels.

As he walked down the hill towards Church Row he had seen a police car speeding up the hill. Trouble somewhere, he had thought, dragging his feet free from a patch of wet tarmac that lay across the pavement. Now he knew what it meant and where to go.

In through the gate, along the path towards the chestnut walk, always the ground rising. A small crowd of people standing watching from a distance, barriers being put into position and the whole area corded off.

Yes, he was here in good time.

He was known; his rank and his position smoothed the way.

Among the trees was a thicket of shrubs with a small path which led to a tiny brick pavilion with a bench in it.

Crouching against the bench as if he was praying was the figure of a man. His back was towards Coffin.

He walked right up to him and stared in the dead face. Eyes open, mouth twisted.

‘Good Lord.’ Not the face he had expected.

‘Know him, sir, do you?’

Oh yes, I know him, and you know I know him.

‘It’s Billy Egan.’ William Howard Egan, who had come out of prison eager to revenge himself on those who put him there. His son-in-law first and then John Coffin. Or possibly the other way round; on that point one had never been quite sure.

And now he was dead himself. Only a few weeks out of prison and murdered.

He looked as though he had been garrotted: there was blood in his mouth and coming out of his ears. Even bloody tears around his eyes.

But in addition, he had been stabbed many times. Cut and slashed as by a madman.

‘I suppose we ought to start looking for Terry Place,’ said Coffin.

On his way home he saw that the steps of No. 22 had been newly washed. Mrs Brocklebank at it again, he thought.

Chapter Two (#ulink_00e12a01-fb17-5185-9862-b63013b52d77)

Terence Place was certainly to be looked for, but he was nowhere to be found. The police investigation into the death of Billy Egan slithered around, not taking hold anywhere. Egan had been first strangled with a tight cord, then stabbed repeatedly. The knife had not been found. But one peculiar fact emerged from a study of Egan’s clothes. He had mouse droppings in his jacket pocket.

Meanwhile the Pitt family held its Welcome Us Back party to which everyone who was invited went and quite a few who were not.

John Coffin attended, but he was among those asked. For years afterwards he regarded it as one of the best parties he had ever been to. Even taking into the account all the things he later perceived as springing from it. The reason he found it such a good party was that no one there, apart from his host and hostess (but with one exception), knew that he was a policeman. There was no denying that if you were known to be a policeman the conversation became stilted and full of boring jokes, all of which he had heard many times before. He resolved to be anonymous ever after. The other reason was that there he came across his half-sister Lætitia; she was the exception, of course. She came into the room in company with a well-known back-bencher MP.

He ought not to have been surprised to see her, after all the Pitts were part of the world she moved in. He knew she’d been living in New York. He was not at all surprised not to see her husband with her. Marriage was a movable feast to his sister.

‘Nice to see you,’ he said, giving her a kiss. ‘But surprised.’

‘I came because I hoped you’d be here.’ A kiss from her in return and a breath of what he guessed to be the newest scent. ‘You know Chris Court?’

‘By name, of course.’ He might have said by reputation, because he thought he knew something of that too. Christopher Court was a clever and energetic man who was known to be ambitious to lead his party. His friends said he might do it, if he could keep clear of scandals. He had fallen into minor trouble once or twice.

‘I’m kind of a gatecrasher here. Chris was coming anyway and I asked him to bring me along.’ She spoke with the supreme confidence of one who had never been unwelcome anywhere. ‘But I knew Eddie and Irene in New York, of course.’

The Pitts occupied the whole of No. 22, all three floors, whereas most of the other houses in Church Row had now been subdivided into flats such as that into which John Coffin had now settled. The party was being held in a large ground-floor room which opened into the garden, where a few guests were already strolling.

Lætitia’s confidence was justified. She was received with a cry of delight from her hostess, who pointed out where Edward Pitt was and said he would ‘just love to see you’. Lætitia looked as if she knew it. She was wearing a cream silk pleated dress with a long rope of pearls; Irene was floating in chiffon of ivory and ice-cream colours; the two women matched, as if somehow they were meant to stand together and be photographed. But Irene moved away with Christopher Court while Lætitia stayed talking with her brother.

‘Come into the garden?’

‘Too cold. Damp as well. I’m not as English as you are, John. English gardens are all right to look at, but not to take a drink in.’

‘I call it quite warm tonight.’

‘Exactly what I mean.’

They were standing by a great gilt wall mirror in which all the room was reflected. The room was part library with one wall entirely covered with books. An ebony stand with a cascade of flowers filled one corner, and in another corner was a bronze head of Irene on a similar stand. Through an open door into another room he could see Mrs Brocklebank carrying a platter of food towards a table. The boy helping her and the tall young creature behind, also carrying food, must be the Pitt son and daughter.

Chris Court and Irene were standing at the door to the garden, poised as if they might walk out. Irene always looked gracefully ready for movement, like the dancer she might have been; she had a natural elegance, with her sculptured profile and creamy skin, which she had groomed and refined to a beauty it might not otherwise have possessed. Above all, she looked intelligent and alert.

They were talking softly, but audibly.

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Three years. What I promised Edward.’

‘I kept my word. Didn’t try to see you. Although I wanted to. By God, I wanted to. Now Edward’s retired and the bargain is called in. We’re free.’

Irene did not answer. She was staring into the garden. Then she turned to Christopher. ‘Anything to tell me on that business of the student that I asked you to find out about?’

‘Not yet. There will be. I’ve put my chap on to it. I can’t see why you are worried, though.’