‘Right.’ He returned the photograph. ‘Hang on to that. Thanks for showing me. You staying here now?’
‘As from tomorrow. But just now I am going over to the Workshop for a run through.’
Together they left Stella’s flat.
The door to the main church stood open.
‘Let’s take a look,’ said Coffin. He pushed the door further open. ‘Smells a bit.’
Stella wrinkled her nose. ‘Earthy. And damp.’
‘Coming from the crypt. The builder has started work, digging up the floor.’ He took a step forward. ‘Does it seem sinister in here to you? Any bad feel?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Only the smell.’
It was quite strong, an earthy decaying smell.
Stella kissed his cheek and walked on to the Theatre Workshop where a strong-minded group, such as Lily Gold-stone and Charlie Driscoll, did not believe in any ghosts other than the one that walked on Friday, and the one that hung over the ‘Scottish play’ whose name one must not speak.
Later that day, when he was at home again, he took a call from his sister Lætitia Bingham.
‘I’ve heard from William. Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Oh well, you will. He’s coming to London on the shuttle and wants us to meet him for lunch. He’ll go back that night.’
‘Really?’ William had a more than usual economical turn of mind. If he was spending money it boded no good. ‘Where?’
‘He’s leaving it to me to say. I shall say the White Tower, I like it there.’
Coffin decided not to interfere. He had an idea that William was perhaps, as they say in Scotland, the ‘warmest’ of the three of them. ‘What’s it about?’
‘He says that he has been investigating the family archives and has found something we ought to see.’
‘Family archives? What’s he mean by that? I didn’t know we had any.’
‘Oh, that’s just the way he talks. Whatever it is, we shall find out. Next week. Tuesday.’
No sooner had he put the telephone down than it rang again. This time it was Superintendent Paul Lane, a man he had worked with before and who had transferred to the new Force with him.
‘Got a bit of news. You know that head you found?’
It was a rhetorical question which Coffin did not answer.
‘It’s the head of a man.’
‘I thought so.’ Not Rosie, then. Had he ever really thought it was?
‘The funeral parlour deny that it is anything to do with them. Never saw him, don’t know anything about him. The urn is not one they would ever use, probably came from a garden centre, they say. And as for the label, there are always some around in the office to put on flowers or some such. Anyone could have taken one.’
‘Not much further forward, then.’ He was wondering about Rosie Ascot.
Lane was triumphant. ‘We are. It’s been identified. A chap in the office here recognized the face.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘Yes, but he saw the hair, apparently the way it grew reminded him and he thought about it, took another look and decided it was. The chap used to be the caretaker in St Luke’s.’ He paused. ‘Where you are now.’
Letty had said that the caretaker had left. For ever, apparently.
‘So that was where he went.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing. Name?’
‘Peter Tiler. Usually called Pete. In his forties.’
‘Any record?’
‘No record.’
No help there, then. An ordinary man.
‘He’s been dead a bit. Could have been kept under refrigeration.’
‘Ah. That’s the suggestion, is it? Not just your idea?’
‘The pathologist thinks so. You can tell, apparently.’
Coffin had a passing thought for his own small freezer. Yes, it was just about head-sized. He hoped the late caretaker had not rested there.
‘But that’s not all. Underneath the head … I don’t suppose you looked?’
‘I did not.’
‘There was a hand. Just one. The right one. Wacky, isn’t it?’
Later still that day, Stella went back to her new apartment, she was expecting to entertain a few friends and made for the refrigerator to investigate the chances of ice-cubes. She took a look in the freezing compartment.
She gave a scream at what she found there, and fainted.
Coffin did not hear the scream in his high tower since several doors and a winding staircase insulated him from it, but he was alerted by a hammering on his door and the pealing of the front-door bell. It was the old-fashioned kind of bell that you pulled, the architect thought it more in keeping with St Luke’s Mansions than anything electric and had gone to considerable trouble to find an antique apparatus. The noise it made was a tribute to its long dead makers, and was one that Coffin was never able to ignore. Generations of servants must have hurried to answer it as he did now.
The bell rang back and forth, sounding its tocsin. It was still ringing as Coffin opened the door.
‘What is it?’
He saw a small, plump man, with a rolling mop of curly fair hair. He had bright hazel eyes, very lightly outlined in pencil and with just a touch of mascara on the lashes.
‘I’m Charlie Driscoll. From the Workshop. You don’t know me, but I know you. Can you come? It’s Stella. In her place. She’s found something.’
The words were bubbling out, not easy to comprehend, but the urgency was clear.
He was still talking as Coffin followed him.
‘Poor Stella, I mean, there she is, innocently looking into her freezer. She’d asked us all up to her new place for a drink. And did we need one after the disasters we’ve had with the set and everyone drying! So she left the door on the latch and JoJo and I marched in and there she was on the floor. Quite out, poor love, and who shall blame her.’ He paused momentarily for breath. ‘I feel sick myself and I assure you I gave the object the merest glance. Hardly a twinkle. Shut the door, Stella, I said, there’s no need to lie staring at it. She was flat on the floor … I’ve left JoJo with her.’
Stella was still on the floor, but fully conscious. A tall, bustless, blonde girl was kneeling by her side, one hand firmly on Stella’s chest, the other gripping her wrist. She appeared to be holding her down.
‘Stay where you are, Stella, you’re in shock. I advise you not to move till I’ve finished taking your pulse. Charlie, water, please.’
‘Water nothing. Get off me, JoJo.’
‘Charlie, help, please, she’s struggling.’
JoJo Bell had had a long-running role in a TV medical soap as Dr Freda Berry, since when she had taken on the honorary role of medical adviser to any company she played with. Her ministrations were greatly feared. JoJo was also Equity rep to the company, usually a job hard to fill, but JoJo, who had