Coffin’s Ghost

He looked bored and cold. A colleague who had been examining the ground around the house joined him.

‘You knew one of the women here, didn’t you, Ron?’ he asked PC Ryman-Lawson, whose double-barrelled name, itself the subject of jokes, got reduced to Ron.

‘Yeah. She worked here.’ Henriette Duval. Long-legged, and very pretty. She had come over to learn and she had certainly learnt it. ‘We went around for a bit. Then she dropped me. Said I was too young and she liked older men better.’

‘Not usually that way.’

‘I think she meant I didn’t have enough money to spend on her.’

‘Ah, that figures. A bit of a goer?’

Ryman-Lawson did not commit himself. ‘Bloody cold here.’

‘What’s become of her?’

Ryman-Lawson shrugged; the rain was running down his collar. ‘Gone back home, I expect.’

Barrow Street not being a place to ignore anything exciting was providing an audience even though it was raining and not warm. Barrow Street knew a good thing when it saw one and was making the press welcome also. There was lively expectation of a TV van. You might see your own face on the screen in your own living room.

‘Always trouble there,’ pointed out a sturdy woman as she pushed her bike past on the way to work. ‘Trouble House or my name’s not Mona Jackson. Shouldn’t be here in a respectable street. Police, we don’t want them.’

She achieved a small triumph by running her bike over the toes of an approaching police constable, who leapt back. ‘Watch it, missus.’ He added something under his breath.

‘Mrs Jackson to you, sonny,’ and she passed on in splendour. ‘And don’t think I don’t know you, Tad Blenkinsop, and I could report you for that language.’

Not everyone thought Barrow Street so respectable, and by his expression, he was one of them.

‘I suppose we might be more popular if we were a nunnery,’ said Mary Arden, warden of the Serena Seddon Refuge, a hint of a wail in her voice. Mary had a distinguished record with a degree in social studies from a famous college in the University of London, a period nursing in a hospital, and another time working as an assistant in a care centre. ‘Although goodness knows, no community could be more off sex than we are here. Had too much of it.’

‘Cheer up,’ advised her fellow worker and assistant. Eve Jones was also a nurse and often needed in that capacity.

‘I could call myself Mother Mary.’ She was making some coffee. ‘Have a cup? It’s the real stuff, extravagant, I know, but I need it today.’

‘I don’t fancy being Sister Evelyn.’

‘You’ve been called worse.’

‘True. But being a nun means not just being off sex but also a vow of chastity. Don’t see most of our lodgers taking that one.’

The police were already in the house, moving from room to room, trying to be tactful as they questioned the residents. Mary and Evelyn had already been interviewed. But they knew more would be coming their way.

Mary had handed over her records to be studied.

They were in Mary’s small office and sitting room – they were too pressed for space for even the warden to know much privacy. Her comfort, too, was modestly allowed for, with one cupboard for clothes, and a divan bed. There were two bathrooms in the house and Mary took her turn with everyone else. ‘At least it means I know if there is hot water and the bath is clean.’

Ready hot water, clean linen and a little, a very little, privacy, was the best she could do for her guests. It helped some more than others.

The residents helped to keep the house tidy and clean, but Mary employed a pair of contract cleaners once a week as well.

Her one luxury was a small flat of her own which she used when she had time off. She did not grudge herself this because she had to have somewhere to retire to if she ever reached that haven.

Evelyn did not live in, she was married, to a man who worked backstage in the St Luke’s Theatre Complex, and she went home at night. A night assistant came in then to be on duty till morning. The Serena Seddon House was not one in which nights were necessarily peaceful. There was a telephone line straight through to the local police station in Pelly Row for emergency use.

Evelyn took two lumps of sugar to give her strength, while wishing that she still smoked. ‘I suppose we shall have the police all over the place for days.’

She had been the first to find the bundles when she arrived for work that morning. ‘As soon as I picked one up, I guessed what it was. It just felt dead and heavy. Thank God, I didn’t do more than pick it up and put it down.’ She went to the window to look out. ‘Gone now.’

Mary pushed a tin towards her. ‘Have a biscuit. Fortnum’s best … it’s all right, a present from my mother.’ Her mother always chose the best she could afford. And this went for clothes and scents. Her mother thought she was mad to work where she did, while saying fondly that she admired her for it.

Mary chose a biscuit with nuts in it. ‘I suppose the forensic lot will be in and looking us over. Depends what they find in the bundles.’

‘Two legs, two arms. We know that.’

It was just guesswork, no one had told them, but Evelyn was an experienced nurse. ‘Didn’t have to be human,’ she said, ‘but I guess they are. Right shape, right weight, right feel.’ She shook her head. ‘I think I felt a finger.’

‘Phoebe Astley made it clear she thought it was one of our former lodgers, poor soul. I hope she was dead when it was done to her.’

‘Mary.’ Evelyn gave a shudder.

‘You can’t count on it, the men some of the women here attract. I’m not joking.’

‘And I’m not laughing.’

‘There was something written across the packets – did you read it?’

‘Didn’t you?’

Mary was silent. She answered after a pause. ‘Yes.’

‘Make anything of it?’

‘No.’ The best thing, the easiest thing to say. ‘Some things you don’t, do you?’ Again the easy answer. ‘Phoebe Astley will tell us something, perhaps. She’s a decent sort. More coffee?’

Evelyn held her cup out. ‘You ought to go in for mugs, they hold more. She a friend?’

‘We belong to the same club.’

Evelyn waited, and eventually asked, ‘Which club is that?’ She did not have a club herself, not being clubbable. I suppose I have a husband instead, she told herself.

‘The University Club in Lomas Street. Not the same university, she was Birmingham, and I was St Andrews, but the same club.’

‘I always knew you were more of an intellectual than I am. I knew it when I heard your mother crying about your hair.’

‘No, she didn’t.’ Mary shook her unshorn locks indignantly.

‘Yes, she did. Implored you to go to her hairdresser.’

‘So I would if I could afford it.’