LITMIR.BIZ

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away.

      Harry watched them go. Get things moving, he thought, wouldn’t it be better to get everything stopped? He groaned inside himself. Too late, far too late.

      I cannot believe what I am seeing, he told himself. I can’t believe my own eyes.

      The squad car arrived with a uniformed man and woman, to whom Coffin spoke.

      ‘Where is that police surgeon?’ he demanded. ‘I want these bodies moved.’

      So did Alfreda who had returned to hover in the background, anxious and pale. Stella stood by her with Monty, who was silent and angry. How could anyone die on his first night?

      ‘Who is the surgeon?’

      ‘Dr Mason, sir,’ the policewoman answered. ‘Dr Margery Mason.’

      Coffin nodded; he knew Marge; she did a good job, sometimes in unpleasant circumstances on odorous and difficult corpses but always behaved with gentleness to the dead, long dead although they sometimes might be.

      Tonight would be a comparative treat for her, he thought. When she arrived. If she had a fault, and he recognized it was a small one, she was tardy.

      ‘She’s on her way, though, sir,’ said the policewoman, who also knew Dr Mason and perhaps guessed his thoughts. ‘She already had a floater down at Craven Creek but she called in to say she was coming. The creek’s not far, sir.’

      Dr Mason was wearing a smart evening dress when she arrived, but she showed no anger at having been called away from her dinner party by two incidents on the same night.

      She looked surprised to see the Chief Commander there, this was top brass indeed, but she acknowledged to herself that this was his wife’s theatre and did not allow his presence to break her composure as she knelt to make her inspection.

      ‘Well, they are dead. I can certify that. Exact cause as yet to be established. If there’s a suicide note, I will make a guess at a drug of some sort.’ She rose to her feet, giving Joe and Josie a thoughtful look. ‘They seem peaceful enough, but you can’t tell. Perhaps a faint look of surprise on the man’s face. The postmortem will tell more.’

      She would not be doing that. ‘I suppose Dennis Garden will fall for this … he’s just back from a holiday in Spain.’

      ‘He ought to be in an easy mood then.’ Coffin was not an admirer of Mr Garden, too bossy by half, a man of self-importance, but he admitted the man was the total professional.

      ‘He’s very good,’ said Marge Mason loyally, picking up her bag.

      They both knew she hated his guts. Dedicated and determined homosexual as he was, he had made a single-minded play for her boyfriend.

      She shouldered her bag and made for the door. Geoff was loyal, thank goodness, no doubt about that, but all the same …

      She turned back for a look again at Joe and Josie. Something was worrying her. ‘Who are they? Have you got a name?’

      ‘Macintosh.’

      She frowned. ‘I feel as though I know the faces. Of both of them.’

      ‘I expect you do, if you ever bought a hamburger or an ice-cream from their stall,’ said Coffin.

      ‘Leave you to it then, sir.’

      ‘Be off myself as soon as the CID team turn up.’

      In the ordinary way Sergeant Davis and DC Armitage might not have hurried themselves to a suicide, but a suicide in the Pinero Theatre and the presence there of the Chief Commander and his wife meant that they were walking in even before Marge Mason had left, and were perhaps a little put out that she had got there first.

      ‘Better try wings next time, boys,’ she murmured quietly as she walked past. ‘I’ll be sending in a report, looks like double suicide. The boss knows all and is waiting for you. Good luck.’

      ‘Come on,’ said Coffin wearily to Stella, after a few words with Davis. ‘Let them get on with it, not my job, and they don’t want me here.’ It had been his job once, which the two CID officers knew, just as they knew what his reputation for efficiency and flair had been.

      ‘All right, love, just let me have a word with Alfreda.’

      She turned towards Harry Trent who was standing there in silence, looking white. ‘This can’t be good for you, you knew them.’ He muttered something wordlessly about it being a long while ago. ‘Forgive,’ she said, with one of her famous smiles. ‘Back soon.’

      To Alfreda she said: ‘Sorry to leave you to it. Monty can’t have his party. It wouldn’t be tactful. The bodies are still here.’

      ‘He wants it, of course. Says all this is nothing to do with him, and the food will go off.’

      ‘He’s got no judgement. Tell him he can have it tomorrow and bother the food, Max can do some more.’ As, for a price, he would. ‘I’m afraid you are going to have to hang around until the police go. Take your line from them.’

      Alfreda nodded. ‘Barney will stay with me.’

      ‘Good lad,’ said Stella, once again distributing her famous smile.

      With knobs on, as Barney said cynically to himself, even as it warmed him. ‘I’ll stay with Mum, of course I will.’ He had to admit to himself that it was interesting and that he was enjoying himself.

      He placed himself protectively by his mother. He was a lanky lad, as tall as she was, with bright blue eyes and a crest of reddish hair. Otherwise they were not alike, and he prided himself on taking after his dead father. If he was dead, he cherished the idea that what Alfreda had told him of the death in an accident was a lie, and that Dad would turn up, rich and famous. He had to be both or need not bother acting Lazarus.

      ‘Remember what old Albie said about feeling there was someone around who shouldn’t be?’

      ‘The nightwatchman? He talks too much, I’ve thought so before,’ said Alfreda gloomily. ‘I ought to sack him but I can’t bring myself to do it.’

      ‘Think he’ll tell the police?’

      ‘Bound to. If he gets the chance.’ Alfreda was keeping her eyes on the police pair, she couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they didn’t seem too anxious. A death was a death, this didn’t look too important to them. ‘I think we will be on our way soon. I think the police will let us go quickly, we aren’t important. I’ll tell Monty about his party, but I must have a drink first, he can wait. He’s stalking about like a cross cat as it is; let him stalk.’

      ‘Think we ought to stop Albie talking?’

      ‘Can’t be done. If he wants to, he will.’ She yawned. ‘No one takes him seriously. That pair won’t. You can tell by the way they are going about things that they like routine up and down and all the time, and no trouble.’

      ‘We ought to let him,’ persisted Barnabas, he felt a slight touch of the Barnabas syndrome coming on, but he was trying hard not to let it happen. Disgrace is thy name, Barnabas boy. ‘Only decent.’

      ‘Decent? What a word, I’m having none of it.’ She yawned. ‘Bloody awful evening it’s been, hasn’t it? And Monty’s production wasn’t that good either. Come on, we’ll go round the theatre and check up, then see if we can slip away home.’

      She stalked off with what Barnabas called her Lady Macbeth walk. I am always Barnabas when she is like that.

      Barnabas followed, wondering: If you opened up my mother, if you could, and called Come out, come out, I wonder what would come out?

      Death was so close and she wasn’t giving it due dignity.

      He said to her back: ‘There wasn’t any blood, was there? I didn’t see any blood.’

      ‘No blood,’ said Alfreda. ‘Not that I looked.’

      The

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