LITMIR.BIZ

      Coffin went home to his wife, Stella, whom he found lying across the bed, wearing a red satin trouser suit, and painting her nails in a very delicate shade of pink. He liked her in red, but it made him nervous. It betokened what he thought of as her flighty mood. This was a mood which he loved but feared because you never knew how it would take her.

      ‘My darling,’ he said. ‘How glad I am that I am married to you.’

      Stella sat up. ‘So am I, my dearest. It is very nice for me.’ She sounded slightly surprised. But she was a generous woman who liked to return praise for praise. Even if it was not strictly true, since they had their ups and downs and she could not deny that she sometimes found her husband tiresome. It was part of the function of being a husband, perhaps a necessary one.

      ‘I love you, darling.’ She held out her arms for a kiss.

      They had hitherto conducted their marital conversations rather in what she called the ‘Noel Coward style’. In other words, relaxed, amused and detached. Except when they were quarrelling, when there were no holds barred. Stella enjoyed the quarrels, she said they gave her scope. As a dramatic actress, she needed scope.

      It occurred to her to say: Mind my nail varnish, but this would have been both unkind and bad manners, so she enjoyed the embrace, only turning her eyes for a quick glance as she emerged. All well, no smudging.

      ‘What’s up?’

      ‘Why should anything be up?’

      How to put this tactfully? ‘That was kind of a desperate kiss.’

      ‘You certainly know how to cut a fellow down to size,’ said Coffin, rolling over on his elbows on the bed, but he was more amused than angry. ‘Not desperate, just bewildered.’

      ‘That isn’t like you.’ Stella rescued the bottle of nail varnish, and put it away tidily in a case. It was true, her husband was usually in control of himself and the scene: sometimes angry, sometimes depressed, but always sure he knew where he stood. Or that was how she saw him.

      ‘I have just listened to the most extraordinary tale and I don’t know whether I believe it or not.’ He stood up, and walked to the window. There just in view was the old churchyard. A woman was pushing a pram round it, and there were two dogs behaving the way dogs do. An old man was sitting on a bench, apparently asleep. It was not going to be an easy area to excavate. If he decided to do it.

      ‘I suppose it is one of those cases you can’t talk about,’ said the experienced Stella.

      ‘I am going to talk about it to you.’

      ‘Oh, thank you.’ Stella appreciated the compliment.

      ‘You’re sensible.’

      Ah, the compliment shrank a little.

      ‘So I am,’ she said, getting up, wrapping the silk jacket – which the warm embrace had disarranged a little – more closely round. ‘What are you looking at out there?’

      ‘The old churchyard.’

      Death again, she thought, there’s always death in our life. My husband’s career has been largely built on the deaths of men, women, and children.

      ‘It figures in what I am asked to do: I am asked to investigate a serial killer who did the deeds over eighty years ago (only they were not called that then but monsters), and find the grave of one of his victims.’

      ‘It’s a joke?’

      Coffin shook his head. ‘No, it wouldn’t be funny if it was, but it isn’t.’

      ‘You can ignore it, say you are too busy to investigate deaths so long ago.’

      ‘I’m too busy all right,’ said Coffin gloomily.

      ‘Who is it who is asking you to do such a thing?’

      Coffin took a deep breath. ‘Richard Lavender, former Prime Minister.’

      ‘I thought he was dead. No, that is not true, I didn’t think about him at all. Past history.’

      ‘Go on,’ said Coffin, still gloomily. ‘You aren’t cheering me up, but it’s what I thought myself. More or less. He is not dead, very old, but alive and articulate. Also, it seems, the possessor of a conscience that must be assuaged.’

      ‘He didn’t do the killings? Don’t tell me he was the mass murderer! What a play it would make.’

      ‘It would take a Shakespeare to do it justice … but no, he said it was his father who did the killing. He and his mother did the burying. At least, if we can believe him.’

      She caught the note of doubt in his voice. ‘You don’t believe him?’

      ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. Come on, what do you think, you’re outside it, what do you think?’

      ‘Be sensible, you mean.’ Stella sat down at her dressing table, and studied her face. She drew her mouth down in an ageing but sensible expression. ‘Well, why should he lie?’

      ‘That’s it. What is the motivation? I can’t make it out. He says he wants to die with a clear conscience.’

      ‘We all want that, I suppose, but it hasn’t worried him all these years.’ A thought struck her. ‘He must have been very young, you can’t blame a child.’

      ‘Not quite a child. A very clever one, too. And then all those years in power, controlling London. Why didn’t he do something then?’

      ‘He does believe it?’

      ‘Mm, mm. I think so … but I feel he might be under the influence of the people he lives with … A man called Jack Bradshaw.’

      ‘Oh, him,’ said Stella.

      ‘You know him?’

      ‘Comes to the theatre, belongs to the Theatre Club, even does the odd review for the local paper. Yes, I know him.’

      ‘What do you make of him?’

      ‘I like him, I think he’s got a sense of humour.’

      ‘Perhaps this is his joke,’ said Coffin, gloomily again.

      ‘He may not be kind,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I would count on him to do the kind thing. It might not be a kind joke.’

      ‘It wouldn’t be, but unkind to whom to rig this up? Apart from me, of course. He’d have to hate the old man to manipulate him in that way. He could do it, I suppose, he’s writing his life. Perhaps old Lavender is senile.’

      ‘Does he look it?’

      ‘No, but it might need a trained observer.’

      ‘Aren’t you one?’

      ‘In a way, yes … This conversation isn’t getting anywhere. Give me a new start.’

      ‘Does he live alone? Is there anyone else?’

      ‘He may have more of a circle than I know. I could find out, and there is the niece. Great-niece, but she is just a domestic character.’

      Stella shook her head. Women are never just domestic characters. Inside they are plotting another world like everyone else. Probably even animals did it in their own way. Cats certainly did, she thought, looking down at her own cat, former lost cat, ex-warrior of the streets, now an aged domestic retainer in a livery of tabby.

      ‘Do you think he is mad?’

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