A Cold Coffin. Gwendoline Butler
a long while ago.’
‘I’m not sure how much that ought to count,’ said Coffin thoughtfully.
Stella did not answer. She knew he was still grieving for the death of his young assistant, DI Charlie Young, the son, the only son at that, of the Chief Superintendent with whom Coffin had worked for years. Worked gratefully, because Archie Young was hard-working and efficient. And a good man; you could trust his integrity. Archie Young had recently moved to become Chief Constable of Filham in Essex, just north of the Second City.
Charlie had died while dealing with an armed robbery in Spinnergate. He had taken a shot right in the face and never came round. His wife, Sally, was also a policewoman, a CID officer. They had recently found out she was expecting their first child. Not a good time to lose your husband.
Stella too had liked Charlie. She looked with sympathy at her husband, but decided that silence was best.
The room they were using in the tower where they lived, the oldest part of the former St Luke’s Church, was a beautiful, calm place. Usually it worked its magic on Coffin, but tonight it was not doing the job. Stella believed that Coffin was quite unconscious of how the room affected him in this way: he thought he had no aesthetic sensibilities. ‘Blue’s blue and yellow’s yellow. How could they make a difference?’ She answered that it was a good job he wasn’t a surgeon; he’d know the difference between red blood and no blood. Not the right thing to say to a copper – he’d seen plenty of blood in his time. She gave him an affectionate smile. She was softer on him these days.
‘And then there is the later skull in there with them. Dr Murray says that it is many hundred years old, but I am not so sure.’
‘Oh, she’d know.’
‘Would she? Yes, if she’d examined it carefully, but as far as I know she hasn’t done that yet: just had a look.’
‘You’ve got enough to worry about, love, as well as dwelling on the dead of hundreds of years ago.’
‘I don’t think that skull is so old. It worries me. I want to find out more.’
‘No one is in a better position than you to do so.’
He nodded. He felt better already. ‘I’ll set Phoebe Astley on it. She’ll sort it out if anyone can.’
This was true. Phoebe was like a terrier searching for a rat when she started into anything.
‘If this skull is recent, modern in fact, yet placed there with the other skulls, then someone must have known the Neanderthals were there already.’
‘Yes, I’ve thought of that. It’s a puzzle. The site was being prepared for our new building when one of the workmen, just a lad, caught a sight of the top of the pit, a layer of stones and earth. It looked different to him, clever lad, and he told the foreman. The foreman took advice and got the area cleared. Work was stopped when they saw what they’d got, it’s still stopped. The archaeologists have taken photographs.’
‘Observant, that workman.’
Coffin nodded. ‘Turned out he was a student earning a bit of money. And interested in the past. He got more than he expected. But he says he isn’t going to waste it . . . going to write it up.’ He poured himself a drink. ‘I had a talk with the lad himself, asked to see him.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Says he knows you.’
‘No! What’s his name?’
‘Eddy Buck.’
Stella raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes, I know him . . . Or I know his mother, she works in our wardrobe. She’s clever too. He’s done some holiday work there too. I believe he can’t make up his mind whether to be a doctor or an actor.’
He could tell she liked him. Well, he was a good-looking, taking lad.
Stella studied her husband’s face. He looked tired. ‘You miss Archie Young.’
Archie had been gone about six months.
Coffin smiled. ‘I’m glad he got the promotion he deserved. I wanted him to have it.’
‘Nice man,’ said Stella reflectively. ‘Tough, though.’
‘We had to be,’ said Coffin.
‘I know that. I was alive then, too, remember.’
‘And I don’t know that times have changed, either. May have got worse.’ He looked towards Stella. ‘I might need your help through this, Stella. You will help me, won’t you?’
She nodded. ‘It’s the child, isn’t it?’
Coffin nodded. ‘All the children, but that later one especially.’ He stood up. ‘Something terrible lies behind that head, and it didn’t happen thousands of years ago, either.’
‘That’s just a guess.’
‘I’m a good guesser. It comes with experience.’
Stella watched him carefully for a moment. ‘Dearest . . .’
Coffin stirred. She wasn’t great at endearments. The love was there, but she didn’t put it into speech. He thought that acting had cured her of showing love with words. Real love, not the stage variety.
‘Dearest, this couldn’t have anything to do with the Minden Street murders. They were too recent.’
Slowly Coffin said, ‘I’ve always thought, I’ve known, there was another generation of death behind Minden Street.’
Stella, no cook – after all, you can’t be a performer and a cook, and I am, she said to herself, a performer – had ordered in from their favoured restaurant a fine meal of roast duck, green peas and salad.
‘Let’s eat.’
They went through to the small dining room, whose window overlooked the theatre. Three theatres in fact, one of which was dark at present. The other two had big successes and royalty was coming to one for charity. Tickets were sold out.
This was an agreeable room, with white walls and golden curtains. Stella studied herself in the large looking-glass on the wall opposite, where she could see that her latest extravagance, a silk trouser suit from a tailor who had worked at Prada, was probably a success. You had to be cautious, because you had to grow into clothes. The important thing, after a certain age, possibly any age, was to control waist and bottom. The bust didn’t matter, because a good bra controlled it. Good meant expensive, she meditated. Her gaze flicked towards her husband, sitting there, face caught in a frown. Husbands had a risk factor too: waists were the trouble there. Fortunately, owing to the stresses of his life. Coffin lost weight rather than put it on, lucky thing.
There was a pucker on his mouth now.
‘Wine all right?’ she asked a little nervously. The wine was a claret; Coffin always said he was just a London copper who knew nothing about wine and had no palate, but he could be very testy if the wine did not come up to some invisible standard he had set for himself.
‘Not bad at all.’
‘I wondered about boiling it,’ said Stella.
‘Good idea,’ said Coffin absently.
Stella started to laugh.
Coffin apologized. ‘Sorry. The wine is splendid although perhaps better not boiled . . . I’m worried.’
‘That much I had grasped.’
‘I am sure I saw blood. Or a trace of it.’ He got up.
‘You’re not going to look,’ she protested.
He shook his head, taking out his mobile phone which he kept in his pocket; he liked to feel it was close. A neurosis? Probably. His responsibilities did weigh on him.
Stella shook her head. ‘I never know if that thing is a good thing or a curse.’ It sometimes seemed almost an extension of his body.
‘You