A Double Coffin. Gwendoline Butler
shifted his mind away from this dialogue with Phoebe to consider Eden. Phoebe had shared a flat with Eden in her first weeks in the Second City. Eden had then managed a shop selling expensive fashion clothes; when it folded she had taken a job in the theatre in the costume department. ‘Oh, doing well, as far as I know.’
Eden was small and very pretty. The theatre gossip was that she was in love with Martin. Not difficult to believe.
‘She’s happy working in the theatre. Did you know her name was really Edith?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Phoebe. ‘I met her mother once and she did not look the sort of woman to call her daughter Eden. Come to think of it, I heard her call her daughter Edie. Of course, I thought it was short for Eden.
‘Has it occurred to you that you yourself might be at risk? That you have been drawn into this investigation to drag you into trouble?’
‘Yes, it has occurred to me,’ Coffin said soberly. ‘I always look for things like that. A suspicious nature after years on the job.’
‘So?’
‘I am going ahead.’
‘I thought you would say that.’ Phoebe hitched her shoulder bag over her right arm and gathered up her document case with her left. It was raining outside so there was a raincoat as well. ‘And you want me to make a start? Not sure where I do that, never done this sort of case before. You could call it historical research.’
‘I hope we can continue to think of it that way …’
‘I might enjoy it. I have always liked thinking about the past.’
‘Think of it as writing one chapter on “Death in the Old East End of London before the first Great War” … Begin with the written records.’
‘Death certificates?’
‘And the old local newspapers … Most of them have folded, so see what the Second City Public Library can do for you.’
‘You need a scholar not a police detective,’ said Phoebe, giving her bag another hitch, she seemed to be treating it like a weapon.
‘Pretend to be one.’
‘I can’t give all my time to it. I have plenty of other work on hand.’
‘Wouldn’t expect you to. I’d call it important but hopeless … You may never get anywhere.’
‘As long as you know.’ They eyed each other. ‘I will make a start.’
He handed over his folder with all the notes he had made. He did not say to her that he had identified the woman journalist who was on the prowl as Jaimie, a girlfriend of a promising young actor, partly because he wanted to think about that and partly because he wanted her to make the identification for herself.
‘Come and have dinner with us tomorrow night, tell me what you’ve got.’
‘Will Stella like that?’ Phoebe had no illusions of how and why Stella was not too fond of her; she liked Stella, admired her, but had no desire to get closer.
‘She will.’
Stella would not be there, though, he knew very well she would be in the north, seeing a possible new production and that he would take Phoebe to Max’s restaurant and talk to her there. To make sure, he rang up and booked a corner table for tomorrow night. Less easy to be overheard in a corner. Also, Max understood about corners and he had some nice private ones where you could hardly be seen at all.
It was nothing to do with him and Phoebe in the past, or any possible relationship now, there was none, but he did not want any questions about this piece of investigation floating around the Second City.
Once again, he found himself thinking about the girl Jaimie, she struck him as a clever, pushy young woman.
After leaving Coffin and Stella the evening before, Jaimie and Martin had quarrelled, or rather, let the anger surge up again. It was one of their better quarrels in as much as after a certain amount of pummelling and throwing of china, accompanied by the shouts that sooner or later one of them would kill the other, they ended up in bed. But the resentments between them were still there.
‘You knocked me over,’ said Jaimie, examining her bruises.
‘You fell,’ said Martin in a tired voice. He was not unscarred himself. He put his arm round her and nuzzled her head. He was all for peace now, spent, worn out.
Jaimie rolled over on her back and looked at the ceiling.
‘Every time you touch me, I feel as though you are touching your mother.’
Martin shot away, his skin tingling. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn.’
Although it was in the small hours, he got up and banged out of the flat.
‘Goodbye, Jaimie, or whatever you call yourself.’ He shouted it out over his shoulder.
‘It’s true,’ she shouted after him. ‘True, true, you think about your mother when you make love to me. Run away if you like, you always run away.’
‘I’ll come back and kill you,’ he shouted back at her. Then he slammed the door and walked through the rain to his sister.
His sister lived in part of a house near the hospital where she worked which she shared with another doctor. She had the ground floor and a dark basement which led on to a tiny garden where she grew plants in pots. Her rooms were painted white and sparsely furnished, there was no untidiness; you got the impression that every object had been chosen with great care. She said herself it was the only way to live after her years in a controlled world. Another sort of person might have burst out into wildness, but she had come to like the idea of smallness of choice. It was not without significance that she specialized in microscopic surgery. Knives hardly came into it.
Clara was as tall as her brother, as blonde as he was and almost as tall. She was always beautifully if casually dressed, with her hair cropped short. She remembered her parents and knew that she looked like both of them.
She came to the door to let her brother in. ‘I knew it was you. Only you, Martin, could ring the bell at three in the morning … I am on call, so if I have to leave, you are on your own. What’s the trouble now? But need I ask?’
He came in, shaking the rain off his hair like a dog.
Clara tossed him a towel. ‘Here, dry yourself.’
‘One of our worst rows … Jaimie really is the end. It’s terrible to love someone you cannot stand.’
Clara kept silent. She remembered her mother and wondered what else you could inherit besides hair colouring and blue eyes. Was there a gene for loving the wrong person?
‘She thinks I want to kill her,’ said Martin, rubbing his hair.
‘And do you?’
‘No, consciously, no. What do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know, my dear,’ said Clara, sitting down and looking at him. ‘I don’t know what either of us are.’
‘Oh Clar, darling, don’t go all philosophical on me. I just need a bit of home comfort.’ He had finished drying himself. ‘She brings out the worst in me, that’s all. I’ll get over it. Can I stay the night?’
‘Just for one night … I don’t want you staying here. I have enough watchful looks to contend with without them adding incest to the list.’
She did not hide her identity from those who wished to know, but she had changed her name, thinking, and rightly, that here patients might not care for a surgeon so handy with a knife. She was Miss Clara Henley, FRCS. Henley had been her maternal grandmother’s name. She was training herself to speak freely.
‘Don’t,’ said Martin, flushing, remembering what Jaimie had said about his mother. ‘Clar, there’s something I ought to