Coffin’s Ghost. Gwendoline Butler

it all out. Although there might be one or two rattling nests I haven’t got to yet.

      He remembered that he had thought of those few weeks as a pleasant interlude, helping him through a bad time, and he had been grateful to Anna and those regular meetings in Barrow Street.

      A nice easy relationship, not meaning too much to either party. No guilt involved, later he might tell Stella all about it and she would be humane and understanding. ‘My dear,’ she would say, ‘life is like a war, you are entitled to your comfort.’

      Stella, in fact, would never talk like that, her dialogue, honed through years of the best playwrights, was sharper.

      Or more likely, he thought, taking another drink of coffee, she would have given me a swift blow and stalked out of the room. Not forever, his behaviour would not have rated that high in the range of life’s misdemeanours, she would have been back.

      Anyway, he hadn’t told her. Or not yet. He trusted that the initials J.C. and the terrible offering on the steps of the house in Barrow Street were not a preview of what was to come.

      He remembered the last time he had seen Anna.

      She had called at the house in Barrow Street, spontaneously, unasked, when he was working. He had gone down to open the door himself, there was no one else, he had no servants. The house was kept clean by a commercial firm with whom he had not much contact.

      An image of that last time came sweeping back from beneath the careful stones he had buried it under. Not a memory to keep on display.

      She swayed through the door; she had long legs, and skirts were minimal that year, and tight as well.

      Tucked under her arm, she had something long and thin, wrapped in silk. A very pretty pink and blue printed silk, Italian silk for sure.

      ‘What have you got there?’

      Without a word, Anna slowly unwrapped the silk. Inside was a whip.

      ‘I thought policemen liked a touch of violence.’

      Coffin was silent. Then he said – he remembered the words so clearly – ‘That’s been your experience, has it?’

      She just smiled.

      Coldly, he said: ‘I don’t think it would be an aphrodisiac for me. I doubt if it would bring me to the desired consummation.’

      Anna looked at him for a long minute, with no expression on her face. Then, in a soft, gentle voice, she said:

      ‘Pompous git.’

      She swung round and made her exit, wrapping up the whip as she went.

      ‘You’re not worth a flick,’ she threw over her shoulder as she closed the door behind her.

      They never met again. He made cautious enquiries about her and knew that she had left her post on the local paper … or been sacked, stories varied, and disappeared. She might be around still, if so he did not know where. Just as well.

      She couldn’t come walking out of the past without her legs, he thought dryly.

      He took another drink of coffee, which was still hot, so he could not have been far away in another world, another time, for long. Then he opened the file that Phoebe Astley had handed him and studied the medical report on the limbs found in Barrow Street.

      You should go to your grave with all your limbs attached, he thought. But many didn’t.

      Sex: Female

      Colour. White

      Age: Between 25 yrs and 45 yrs

      A bit of guesswork there, he thought.

      Height: 5’ 8”

      Weight. Nine stone

       Shoe size: 7

      Hair on legs and arms: Light brown to ginger

      Fingernails: bitten

      A tall thin woman, probably a redhead, and large feet.

      Anna had been tall but not thin; still, women changed, lost weight. A woman heading to the sort of death this woman had had, yes, she might well have lost weight.

      She hadn’t bitten her nails, nor dyed her hair, but who could tell what time and trouble did for you.

      Identifying marks: 1. Scars on left wrist, possibly the result of

      a suicide attempt

      2. Damaged bone on left ankle

      3. Scarring on the right leg

      Blood Group: O

      He hadn’t known what blood group Anna was, but O was about the most common.

      Drugs in blood: Desmethyl-Diazepam traces were found which is a drug breakdown product from several tranquillizers such as Cloraazepate (found in Tramene) or Chlordiazpaxide (found in Librium and Tropium) and Diazepam (found in Valium)

      Anna might have been on drugs even then. These were all sedative-type drugs. Some of the details matched with Anna, but without the face, how could you be sure?

      Neither of them had made any attempt to keep in touch. Coffin knew danger when he saw it and he had seen it then in Anna.

      It was possible that the remains left on the steps in Barrow Street were those of Anna.

      One of the three telephones on his desk rang, this was what he called his private line and was the only one which Stella used. She was careful, scrupulous even, about breaking into his working life.

      Stella wasted no time. ‘Darling

      That meant business, it was the theatrical darling, meaning nothing, except here I come and I have a request to make.

      ‘Yes?’ Coffin was cautious.

      ‘Robbie’s very worried about his daughter. His stepdaughter, really, but he loves her and she took his name.’

      ‘I gathered that last night.’ Was it last night? No, it was a bit longer ago than that. He had been so deep in the past, that the present was hard to hold on to.

      ‘Yes, but more worried … She’s missing, really missing, not just playing. She hasn’t got a very high IQ. Learning difficulties, they call it, don’t they? She’s lovely to look at, by the way, a beautiful girl, but a simple soul. I had her working in the theatre, in the wardrobe and so on, that side of things, she did well enough while they kept it simple. Then she went off without a word. She’s an innocent and he thinks she’s in real trouble.’

      ‘He can tell, can he?’

      ‘He thinks so. He’d like your advice.’

      ‘Well,’ began Coffin.

      ‘He’s important to me.’ She didn’t say darling again, but it was there in her voice. ‘And the limbs found on the house in Barrow Street … well, he’s wondering if they could be his stepdaughter, Alice. That’s her name … her mother married George Freedom next … not with him now.’

      What a lot, Coffin thought. ‘Where does the girl live and how long has she been missing?’

      ‘She lives in a room her mother found for her in the Second City. She works three times a week. I gave her the job here. She is seventeen, and innocent.’ Stella hesitated. “That’s one reason for worry, she may not be able to protect herself.’

      ‘Stella, that unlucky woman was older and more battered than the young Gilchrist girl. It cannot be her.’ Not if she was young and lovely.

      ‘But, if there’s a killer out there –’

      He interrupted her.

      ‘What is it you want?’

      ‘Could you meet us for a drink in Max’s, about six? We might eat there afterwards if you feel like