A Coffin for Charley (13 page)

‘Shut up,' he said savagely and was glad to see her flinch. Prison had taught her something, anyway.

She was glad to be home. ‘The old place hasn't changed,' she said looking around. And this was true of the family home whose decorations and furniture had remained the same for some decades. The tenants had not treated it well, they had been people with troubles of their own, but Eddie had touched up the paint and repaired broken chairs in the weeks since he got home while he looked for a paying job. But he had to admit it probably hadn't changed all that much, although he was glad to say he could hardly remember.

But the world outside had changed. There were more cars, and fewer of the old red doubledecker buses that once quartered London. More crime, more violence, some rich people in the Second City, and the old poor … And a new police force.

This was the Second City and in it the Creeley clan were no longer important. He wasn't sure if she understood this.

She knew that Eddie's only sister wasn't there, she had gone to stay with relations in Yorkshire the moment she heard Lizzie was coming out. And his father had died from a heart attack just before they left New Zealand. He and Lizzie were the only ones left, apart from Will.

Lizzie had kept up with the news. ‘I was allowed a transistor. I heard about the Marianna Manners murder.' She had taken an interest in that. ‘Friend of Job Titus.' She leered. ‘We all know what that means. But he's entitled to his pleasures. He helped me. Got in touch with the parole board. I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for him.'

‘I've met him. He called.'

‘What did he want?' Lizzie's thoughts were centred about Job Titus.

‘I don't know.' But this wasn't true. To himself Eddie said: I think he wanted me to be grateful. But he had another feeling as well; he had had the feeling that Titus
had wanted him to do something. Kill someone perhaps, he thought morosely.

‘He owed the Creeleys something, Job Titus,' said Lizzie with an evil smile. ‘He was born round here, and I know and he knows I know what his family was like. Illegit, he was.'

‘That's nothing these days,' said Eddie.

‘'Tis if your mother is the daughter of your father. That was quite the thing in that family. Oh, I know all about Job Titus,' said Lizzie. ‘Incest, that is.'

Goodness knows if it was true, but it was the way she talked and the way he responded that irked him. He had to get out of the house.

‘I'm going out.'

Lizzie was content to stay in and she watched him go. She had no desire to go out into the streets of Spinnergate where enemies spied and lurked.

‘You're forgotten, Lizzie,' Eddie wanted to say. ‘Outside of a small circle you are nothing. And no one knows what you look like.' He could hardly remember from the past but now she had put on weight and gone grey. She dyed her hair herself but that didn't mean it looked natural.

However, he said nothing to her. Her murderous reputation was all she had, let her keep it.

He walked the streets, making up his mind what he should do. A turn to the left, then the next. He knew the way well enough, could see the very tree where he had stood waiting for Didi to come.

‘She thinks you're watching her,' Didi had said. ‘I told her it was me. Poor Annie.'

Annie's house looked the same, it had always been a closed-up house and being a place of mourning hadn't changed it. Caroline's flat up above looked shuttered too.

He rang the bell and waited. A tall, grey-haired man answered the door. ‘Can I speak to Annie, to Mrs Briggs?' He hesitated. ‘It's Alex Edwards, isn't it? I'm Eddie Creeley.' He swallowed. ‘Didi introduced us once.'
And afterwards she said you were a creep and always hanging round Annie. And I see you still are.

‘I wanted to say .. .' Eddie suddenly didn't know what he had wanted to say and wished he had brought flowers. ‘It's just I'm so sorry.'

Edwards was already closing the door. ‘She is resting with friends.'

He was probably a nice man, Eddie thought, seeing Alex's red-rimmed eyes, and knowing well that Didi's judgement was not to be relied upon. Yes, an all right man, but also piss pompous, a prat.

There was only one star in Didi's life and that was the theatre, and that meant St Luke's Drama School and Stella Pinero.

Inside her house, Annie was talking to Stella Pinero.

Stella had come out of the genuine concern and kindness of her own heart, and also because her husband had asked her to. ‘I'm worried about Annie Briggs. Go and see her for me. I can't go myself—it would alarm her.'

Stella had brought with her a small pot of early freesias, she put them on the table without a word. Their fragrance seeped into the room, lightening the frowsty, lived-in smell where it seemed as if no one had been to bed or opened a window.

About right, Stella thought, looking at Annie's face which frightened her. She didn't like the smell of Annie's house, it smelt of female fear and sweat.

‘I don't suppose you know who I am,' she began.

‘Oh, I do.' Annie started off. ‘I saw you as Ophelia in the old Theatre Royal in Swinehouse … Knocked down now and there's a shopping precinct where it used to be.'

‘Yes, I was.'
And I was on the old side for Ophelia even then, but I've always made up young. I suppose now I'd have to be Queen Gertrude … a good role, though.
And Stella's mind divided: one part talking to Annie and the other roving off towards a new production of
Hamlet.

While Eddie Creeley was still walking Napier Street trying to find the courage to ring Annie's bell, Stella Pinero was inside deciding she had been wrong to come. Alex
Edwards was there and doing better at offering comfort than she was. He knew how to manage Annie.

‘I'm so sorry about Didi,' Stella was saying in a gentle voice. ‘I was hoping she would be one of our first students.'

‘She wanted to, it was what she wanted most in the world,' said Annie. ‘But I was against it. I knew it would come to no good. Nor has it.'

‘Oh, I hope not,' said Stella. I shouldn't have been there, she was to tell her husband later, I was the wrong person. I'm sure I made things worse.

She had seen many a mask of fury and tragedy in her time, especially when she had performed in a cycle of Greek plays, seen Medea face to face, but Annie beat all. There was a kind of energy, almost a sexual light, in her eyes.

‘I don't think what's happened had anything to do with her acting.' Alex spoke hastily. ‘You mustn't think so, Annie.'

‘I know who did it, of course. I told the police sergeant so. Eddie Creeley. Has to be.'

The bell rang, twice.

‘Someone at the door.' Annie made no sign of moving. ‘They won't let me see Didi, you know. Perhaps it isn't her that's dead. Perhaps that's her come back.'

Stella and Alex exchanged glances. ‘I'll do the door,' he said quickly.

This is the woman, Stella thought, who saw murder done as a child and has now had her sister killed violently. And she does not like me; she will not take her eyes off me.

Alex returned. ‘Just someone,' he said vaguely; he was not going to say it had been Eddie Creeley. Eddie, as always, had got his timing wrong.

Almost as if she had not stopped speaking, Annie said: ‘And of course, he killed Marianna Manners too. I've got my own detective to call upon. He'll find out the truth.'

‘You shouldn't have anything to do with that Tom Ashworth. Keep away from him.'

‘You're just jealous.' She put her head on one side. ‘I asked him to check on the Eddie Creeley and Marianna Manners link.'

‘I don't think Eddie knew Marianna,' said Alex Edwards.
His face was flushed and he looked as tense and unhappy as Annie herself. He took her hand and patted it. She drew it away without looking at him.

‘How do you know?' was all she said.

‘I knew Marianna. As a youngster she had a bit of trouble and was one of my cases. I kept in touch.'

‘Like with me.'

‘No, not like with you.' He was patient.

Annie took hold of the pot of freesias, she put it on her lap, almost nursing it. ‘You're very beautiful,' she said to Stella. ‘Close to, you are more beautiful than I knew.'

‘I take a lot of trouble,' said Stella.

Once again she exchanged glances with Alex Edwards. She stood up. ‘I'd better go.'

‘I think so,' he murmured. ‘She's not herself. But thanks for coming. I'll stay with her.'

As the front door closed behind her, Stella leaned against it, taking a deep breath.
I shouldn't have come. I've made things worse.

She got into her car and drove back to the theatre, hoping she would find a message from Letty there. Or even Letty herself. Letty remained obstinately missing, and although you couldn't associate danger and death with someone like Letty, she was worried.

The atmosphere round here was so full of violence and fear that it felt as though anything could happen.

As she drove down Napier Street and took a right turn, she saw a young man whom she did not know being stopped by a police car.

Chief Inspector Young had visited the Creeley home himself. He had found only Lizzie Creeley there. She hid when he rang the bell, thinking she was going to be arrested again.

When a detective-sergeant and woman police officer pushed open the back door which was unlocked and let the Chief Inspector in, they found Lizzie hiding under a bed.

She did not recognize Archie Young although he knew her, he had seen recent photographs which gave him the advantage.

When Lizzie was calmed down and restored to this world, all she could say was that Eddie was out.

The woman detective-constable made Lizzie a cup of tea which Archie Young drank with her while the sergeant searched the house.

‘Two lumps,' said Lizzie, holding out her mug for sugar, ‘and you haven't given me a spoon.'

In spite of the fact that she was a murderer who had never repented, it was Lizzie who was acting the victim now and Young who felt guilty. They were living proof that the division between criminal and policeman was thin, you could see it in their faces: they were both so clearly from the same tribe.

Lizzie announced her intention of calling on Job Titus for protection.

Detective-Sergeant Hill reappeared and reported that Eddie Creeley was not in the house.

‘But there's blood in his room.'

‘What?' Young stood up.

‘Yes, blood. Traces of blood.'

Eddie Creeley was picked up by a patrol car and taken to police headquarters while a swarm of police technicians descended like hungry fleas upon his bloody chamber.

Eddie was held for questioning and an interview which the Chief Commander sat in on. ‘Hold on until I get there,' he had ordered. ‘I want to be in on this.'

Coffin had met Stella and heard what she had to say about Annie Briggs, which did not make him feel better about the part he had played in Annie's earlier life. ‘That girl's had too much to bear,' Stella had said. ‘She thinks Eddie Creeley killed her sister and she believes he killed Marianna Manners.'

‘Does she suggest why? What motive he would have?'

Stella had looked back at Annie's ravaged face, and because she was an actress her own features fell into the same expression so that Coffin saw a frightened woman who had known terrible things.

If any man hurts Stella, I shall kill him, he thought.

And then Stella's face cleared, and the resilient, familiar, lovely Stella came back and was with him again. She spoke with the voice of reason.

‘Didi died instead of her, that's what Annie thinks. As for Marianna, I don't know. Perhaps for practice. Are people that wicked?'

‘Some are. Or mercenary. Some killers work for money, possibly Creeley did.'

‘Is that what you think?'

‘It's an idea being handed round. I don't say I accept it.'

Truth, black truth, had many layers, like an onion, and he did not expect any easy answers.

Now he watched Eddie Creeley as Archie Young questioned him. Eddie had tears streaming down his face. Was this too much emotion? Was it real?

‘I didn't kill Didi, I loved her.'

‘People do kill those they love.'

Eddie turned wild eyes on John Coffin. ‘I didn't kill her, I didn't kill.'

‘Your name is heard on a tape found near her body. Was she talking to you?'

‘I don't know anything about a tape.'

‘Did you know Marianna Manners?'

‘I did not. You're not going to get me for that.'

There was, as Coffin knew and Young knew, no scrap of forensic evidence to connect Eddie Creeley with Marianna's death.

Someone had come into her life, into her room and into her death.

The same was true of Didi. They were still searching the ground around where her body had been found, asking questions of motorists and anyone who might have witnessed something. But nothing so far. A man had come into her life and taken hers away with him.

‘Titus did that. Everyone say so. I'm not standing in for him just because he's rich and an MP.'

‘Do you know Job Titus?'

‘He asked me for a drink once.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘I can't remember. This and that. Auntie, I expect.'

‘Did he make any suggestions to you?'

‘He's not queer if that's what you think, and neither am I.'

‘There are other sorts of suggestion,' said Coffin.

‘I don't remember. Ask him yourself.'

‘I will.' And get no for an answer. I was just talking to a man whose aunt I had helped to get out of prison, Titus would say. I was interested.

‘Do you know the Karnival Club?'

Eddie frowned. ‘I've heard of it,' he said without enthusiasm. ‘Local place for transvestites, isn't it?'