A Double Coffin

GWENDOLINE BUTLER

A DOUBLE COFFIN

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1996

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006497745

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545445

Version: 2014–07–07

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Keep Reading

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police

John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died.

After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain-clothes branch as a detective.

He became a sergeant and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent and then chief superintendent.

There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died.

From this dark period he was resurrected by a spell in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when the Second City of London was being formed and he became Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, an old love, Stella Pinero, who is herself a very successful actress. He has also discovered two siblings, a much younger sister and brother.

1

John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London, sat in the sunlight at the desk in his office and allowed himself to feel surprise as the message came through. ‘A Mr Bradshaw wants to see me? And urgently?’

He had been listening to Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, and reading a travel brochure, while at his feet lay the new family dog, a white peke called Augustus. His old dog had succumbed to great years and an eventful life, both of which had done his heart in. The record player in the office and the presence there of Augustus were the work of his wife who had decreed that there must be a show of more civilization in the workplace. And what could be more civilized than Mozart (a dose to be taken once a day at least) and a Pekingese of impeccable breeding if of uncertain temper.

He had been content on this sunny October day. Content was now shattered.

‘Richard Lavender wants to see me? Dick Lavender?’

His visitor nodded; he was a tall, thin man with crest of crisp hair just going grey. His eyes were an odd mixture between green and blue, attractive, Coffin thought.

‘He does. Soon, if you please. Perhaps a first visit this morning?’

John Albert Bradshaw had come with an introduction from the Home Secretary and had laid his card on the table as soon as he arrived. Dr J. A. Bradshaw. Not a medical doctor, he had said at once – political science, Edinburgh. Coffin had the notion that this information was proffered to establish status. I am an important person in my own right, Dr Bradshaw was saying.

Coffin was interested, intrigued even, at what amounted to a royal command, from a great old man, but he played for time.

‘I have a lot on hand at the moment, and I was thinking of going away on holiday.’ Coffin did not take many holidays, too few, his wife Stella said, and they were going to have these few days on the Italian lakes. Or were they? Would he get away?

‘You’ll get away, he’s thoughtful about that sort of thing. He goes away himself sometimes, he has a cottage in Fife.’

The Thane of Fife had a wife, but where is she now? recited Coffin to himself. Why did I think of that? And why this sudden quick wince of foreboding? And why do I think of his wife? Damn Macbeth. Shakespeare and Macbeth get everywhere. Aloud he said: ‘I didn’t know he was still alive.’

That got a reprimand. ‘Indeed you did.’

‘Yes, yes …’ He did, of course, it was his business to know if the distinguished and important inhabitants living in his Second City of London were alive or dead. He was responsible for their safety.

Part of the job. He had taken on the task of policing the Second City of London some years ago now and had made a success of it. He had melded together the lively and criminous districts of Swinehouse, East Hythe and Spinnergate, with violent histories that went back before William the Norman, and helped them to live, not only with each other but with the new, up-and-coming areas like Evelyn Fields and Tower Hills. He had been a success, been acknowledged as a success, had a happy marriage with a well-known actress and had come through the threat of a serious illness. But nature had nudged him on the shoulder and said, in that sly, familiar way it had: OK, so you survived, but you may not come through next time.

It was a rough old world out there, the denizens of which had in their times troubled the Romans, the Normans and all rulers from the Plantagenets to the House of Hanover.

‘You are quite right, I did know … but I never expected to meet him. And he wants to see me?’ This was a surprise. He had made some good friends in his years as Chief Commander, and collected a few enemies. Which was the old man? They had never met, but Coffin knew you can make enemies without meeting them.

‘Most anxious.’

He heard himself ask: ‘Has he got a wife?’

‘Widowed. Married twice, widowed twice.’

Coffin stood up and went to the window. ‘I did see him once, I was only a kid, and he came through Greenwich … Election night, it was. The last big one he fought. Was he PM? I was too young to know. He looked like a film star.’

His visitor nodded. ‘Remember it myself.’

‘So what is it about?’

His visitor rose. ‘He will tell you himself. Shall we go?’

Coffin stood up, his dog stood up too. ‘Can he come?’ He looked doubtfully at Augustus. ‘He’s no trouble, well behaved.’ This was not true, but he had agreed with his wife Stella to offer this lie.

His visitor had a car waiting, he held the door open for Coffin and Augustus to get in. The car was an antique, a Rolls built in a style not used for many decades. Upright and sturdy with huge wheels and great windows, Coffin felt as if he was entering a hearse. Inside, the seats were covered in dark-grey brocade with a small silver flower holder by each seat. There were no flowers. On the air was a very faint smell of lavender and dust.

Coffin sat down, removed Augustus from the seat to which he had leapt, and stared at the glass barrier that separated him from his companion who was doing the driving. The car, old though it was, started without fuss and glided forward with an ease which was a testimony to the engineering which had produced it.

As a passenger. Coffin found you had to be prepared for the rolling motion which came with the steady regal progress through the streets. It was a bit like being on board a great liner; you could be travel sick. He also had to bite back a strong impulse to wave at the passers-by as he was driven along. Against his will, he found himself bending forward from the waist. Damn it, he was bowing.

He felt archaic, he was living in the past. Was the old man living in the past? Well, I wondered if he was dead. Coffin reminded himself, so perhaps he is.

But he had been practical and shrewd enough in his day, or so the political memoirs said. Feared too, a magnificent, mesmeric figure. And a great drinker. Other pleasures as well, if all that was told was true.

Now he was a memory, but alive. Alive, and still enough of a power in the land to call in the likes of John Coffin when he needed help.

The car carried him through one of the more pleasant districts of his Second City to the riverside, where a modest block of flats overlooked the Thames. He had been here only once before, so the view was fresh to him. He could see across the water to an area of trees through which a large building just showed its roof. He did not recognize this either, but he decided it was a public park with a municipal building inside it, perhaps a museum or a picture gallery or one of the new universities. It did not look industrial, although it was true that many commercial enterprises were moving out of central London and establishing themselves in something as near a great country estate as they could achieve.

The car stopped and he stepped out into the chill, sunlight air. He nodded across the river. ‘Do you know what that building is?’

‘The Central Bank of Arabia,’ said his companion briefly. ‘Lovely building. Empty though, of course, since the bank went broke.’

Sign of the times, Coffin thought, banks created wonderful buildings for themselves, then could not pay their bills and went out of business.

‘It was built as a prison in 1850 by Victorian reformers. Out of use as a prison a hundred years later, that is when the bank bought it.’ He added without a smile: ‘Himself admires the view, but I am never sure if he remembers it is no longer a prison.’

Not great on memory, then. Coffin thought. ‘Does he remember who he is himself?’ Better to establish that fact at once.

‘He remembers who he was,’ said his companion tersely.

‘An old Prime Minister.’

‘A former Prime Minister,’ corrected Dr Bradshaw tartly.

Significant difference. Coffin thought, as he approached the flats’ entrance. I am being taught my lines.

I’ll have to leave the dog in the car … Stay, Augustus.’ The dog looked at him thoughtfully, seemingly content to stay where he was in the great car.

A small white van was parked nearby. ‘Belongs to the old man’s niece,’ said Jack Bradshaw shortly. ‘Uses it for shopping. Ferries himself in his chair sometimes.’

As he walked into the entrance lobby Coffin was remembering what he knew of the origin of this block of flats: they had been built by a housing association to provide pleasant, medium-priced homes for retired professionals. The rents were not high, nor meant to be.

The entrance hall was in line with what you might expect from this policy, being plain, with stone-coloured walls and tiling floor. There was a lift in one corner.

Surely former Prime Ministers could afford better than this? There was a pension, wasn’t there?

‘Hard up, is he?’ Coffin asked. When you were nearly ninety (or over it, more likely) money might have dried up. Money had that way with it, sometimes seeming of organic growth, and a plant capable of drying up mysteriously and almost malevolently. Coffin had had this happen himself in his younger days and knew it could happen again. You had to watch money and water it with your attentions.

‘No, or as to that, it’s not my business to know, I don’t touch his financial affairs, but I should say not. No, he lives here because he likes it. He was born here. Before they were bombed to bits in the last war, there was a tenement block here and in one of them he was born. The eldest son of Edward and Ada Lavender …’

‘Yes, I know that bit – Dick Lavender,’ said Coffin. ‘It’s in all the books. But I did not know this was his birthplace.’ He wondered if it was true really. Even old Prime Ministers, sorry, former Prime Ministers, could have fantasies. Even tell lies. ‘Do we take the lift or walk up?’

‘Lift, he’s on the top floor … that was the only thing he asked for. Otherwise no favours, he took what he was offered.’

Took what was offered but took the best; the view from the top floor across the river must be splendid.

The lift delivered them to a plain lobby, the mirror image of the one below. There were two front doors.

One other person lives up here then?’

‘Yes,’ said John Bradshaw, in his usual Jovian style. ‘A tiresome person.’ He did not add to the statement.

He rang the bell on the door nearest, and they waited.

‘Lives alone, does he?’

‘No, a niece lives with him. Runs the domestic side.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Coffin. ‘Tell me a bit about why I am wanted. You do know, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I know,’ admitted Bradshaw stiffly. ‘You are wanted because you have the resources; it’s a police matter. Of course, the Special Branch keep a watchful eye, but this isn’t one for them.’

‘I guessed that. Any connection with the tiresome neighbour?’

‘No.’ Bradshaw sounded surprised. ‘None.’

‘But it’s a serious business?’

‘Serious enough,’ said Bradshaw, as the door opened. ‘Death always is.’

The door was opened by a short, plump woman with a froth of white hair cut short, she wore bright-pink lipstick and blue-rimmed spectacles, a lively and cheerful figure. ‘Oh hello. Jack, you’ve made good time, you’re back sooner than I expected. Uncle’s still dressing … Good morning, sir.’ She turned to Coffin. ‘I’m Janet Neptune … silly name, isn’t it, but my own. Tell you about it some day if you ask … He’s dressing but he’s been up and about for some time.’

She too, knew why he had been summoned. Coffin was convinced of that, knew it was about death but was not letting it get her down. ‘Miss Neptune or Mrs?’ he asked politely.

‘Miss, miss, I am not married. Asked for once or twice but never took on. It doesn’t suit everyone, you know. Not to be expected, is it? I mean, nature is prodigal and various in its arrangements.’

‘I can see you and I have much the same notion of nature,’ said Coffin.

‘It’s common sense, isn’t it? Now come into the dining room the two of you and have a cup of something while Uncle is getting ready, we don’t hurry him, sir, not at his age … Jack, he’s turned up another great pile of letters, you’ll never get that life of him written at this rate.’

‘Is that what you are doing?’ Coffin was interested. ‘Writing his life?’

‘Ghostwriting,’ said Bradshaw without much expression in his voice. ‘It’ll come out in his name. Who but himself could write his life?’

A rhetorical question, needing no answer.

‘It’s not my only job; I have others.’

The room into which Coffin had been led was a step into the past. He felt he had been moved back in time by a hundred years. It was a small room made smaller by massive furniture in a style favoured by the merchant classes of Victorian England. In the middle of the wall facing the door was a large square looking glass of gilded wood, the sides fretted with little shelves for china pots and photographs. Coffin thought it must have been the devil to dust. Another wall was covered by a monument in dark wood with another mirror set in a nest of shelves and drawers. From his memory he dredged up the word chiffonier. An oval table of mahogany ranged around with chairs, the seats covered in red plush, filled the centre of the room. Underfoot was a dark Turkish carpet.

Janet Neptune saw Coffin looking around him as she came in with cups of coffee. ‘He bought the furniture for his mother when he started to earn well, it was her taste. Made her feel a lady, he said. I think he likes it himself because he’s never got rid of it.’

‘What about his wives? How did they take it?’

‘Oh well, I don’t suppose they liked it, but the furniture lasted and they didn’t.’

She was handing round the coffee, which was strong and good.

Janet Neptune said: ‘I can hear noises, he’s ready to receive company, I know that cough he gives.’

Several generations of MPs had known that cough too in the House of Commons before an important speech.

‘Right.’ Coffin stood up.

She bent her head towards him and said in a confidential way: ‘Just one thing, I expect you will be calling on him again, but don’t let him give you anything to eat or drink.’

After a moment of stunned silence. Coffin said: ‘He won’t poison me, will he?’

She put her head on one side. ‘Not poison, no, we don’t let him get his hands on anything really dangerous. He’s on a few medications but we keep those out of his way. No, but sometimes he thinks it’s funny to load a drink with a laxative or some such. Once he gave Jack here a gin loaded with hydrogen peroxide, didn’t he. Jack?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Didn’t half fizz; ’course it tasted terrible.’

‘No worse than some drinks I’ve had,’ said Bradshaw.

‘It’s a very Edwardian-house-party sort of joke.’ Janet put her face near Coffin’s. ‘You can imagine … not his world, of course, but some of the ladies he went with later …’ She shrugged. ‘Upper class … Lady this and the Honourable that … they found him attractive, he was an attractive man, and he picked up a few of their ways.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’

‘We’d better go in.’ Bradshaw stood up.

‘Yes,’ Janet nodded. ‘Finish your cup, sir, and we’ll go on in. He’ll be getting impatient. If you haven’t got many years left you want to get on with things.’

She led the way out of the dining room, shutting the door carefully behind her. Across the hall, the door to another room stood half open.

Even half a glance showed Coffin that this room was a museum piece, crowded as it was with heavy, dark, ornate furniture. One wall was covered with a great bookcase in which the leatherbound books looked unread and unloved. The past was strong in this place.

Inside the room, the old man sat in a large armchair. His head, with its cockade of white hair, was supported by cushions so that he was upright and commanding. He wore a soft cashmere jacket with a tartan shawl draped over his legs. He looked old, elegant and in control. No loss of substance there, you felt at once. He might tire quickly, he probably did, but while he was functioning he would be acute.

Coffin was surprised how well he remembered the face. Likewise the strong head of hair seemingly so untouched by time that Coffin wondered cynically if it was a wig. But surely not, the old man’s watchword had always been honesty and integrity, although exactly what that meant in political circles might be doubted.

And after all, many people had wigs. His own wife had several, which she said were essential to her professional life.

He fixed Coffin with a commanding blue eye. ‘Good of you to come, sir. With all your responsibilities it cannot have been easy. I appreciate your courtesy.’ It was a rich deep voice, but age had introduced streaks of lighter tones.

‘You know who I am?’

‘I keep up to date, sir.’

So you do. Coffin thought, noticing a small television set on a table by the chair. Shelves underneath the table were stacked with more modern books, and magazines. The present did get a look in then.

Janet fussed forward, adjusting his shawl. ‘Of course you do, Uncle.’

He ignored her. ‘Helped by my good friend, Bradshaw.’

‘You pay me, sir,’ said Bradshaw, somewhat sourly.

‘Not enough.’

‘Probably not enough, but I am bearing it.’

The old man chuckled. ‘Other things make it bearable, eh? You enjoy working with me, and we will both make money out of my autobiography.’

‘So you hope.’

This sparring is in fun, they like each other. Coffin thought. But even this might be wrong, you had to remember that one at least of them was a politician, used to wearing a false smile, dissembling. Lying, in short.

‘Nice collection of books you have there, sir. Dickens and a complete Thackeray.’ Not many other houses in Spinnergate had a library like it, he guessed.

‘My mother ordered me to buy them. Said it was what I should have, but I never opened them. I was a Shaw and a Gissing man, myself. She didn’t read them either, not what she liked; Ethel M. Dell and Ruby M. Ayres, they were her goddesses. I don’t think anyone has ever opened those books there. But they look good, don’t they? Nice covers.’

‘Very nice.’

‘You’re just making conversation, lad,’ said the old man with a sudden shift of character from nostalgic son to old headmaster talking to a former pupil.

What a politician he must have been, thought Coffin, able to change his stance as it suited him. ‘I have been wondering what you wanted from me.’

‘And when I was going to get down to it?’ He looked at Janet, who drew chairs forward for Coffin and Bradshaw, then retired quietly from the room. ‘And you can shut the door, Janet,’ he called out. ‘She listens at the door, you know,’ he said to Coffin in no soft voice. ‘I know you are still there, Janet, I can tell.’

Bradshaw clicked his teeth. ‘You’re hard on Janet; you wouldn’t find it easy to get anyone else to do what she does.’

‘She doesn’t like me, you know.’

‘Do you want me to leave as well?’ asked John Bradshaw with a show of irritation.

‘You can stay.’ The old man looked down at his hand. ‘I’m dead in a way, dead to a lot of people, you probably thought I was dead, been off the scene a long while, a bit of old history,’ he said to Coffin.