Coffin and the Paper Man. Gwendoline Butler

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      They walked on. Beyond St Luke’s Mansions where Coffin lived and the theatre was rising, past the new police building, down the slope of Feather Street where the Zemans and the Annecks and the Darbyshires lived and where the small dairy, home to Jim Marsh and his father, clung to the bottom of the slope.

      ‘That’s where he lives,’ whispered Mrs Kinver, ‘the boy who found Anny.’

      ‘That tart’s son,’ said Fred Kinver mechanically. He strode on.

      I am vengeance, thought Fred Kinver, and I will have my way.

      Jim Marsh looking down from his high window saw the two of them and picked up what Fred Kinver was feeling. Something about the hunch of Fred’s shoulder and the way his head was thrust forward. Vengeance personified, he thought, and his own imagination caught fire.

CHAPTER TWO

       Tuesday morning through to evening, May 30, to Wednesday, May 31

      Five, nearly six days after the finding of the body in Rope Alley felt like three months in Leathergate and the neighbouring area of Spinnergate, for unease spread over here too. Murderers came from anywhere, this one could be far away by now, but he could be local. Was most likely local, everyone said, because of knowing about Rope Alley, dark even in sunlight and with several hiding places in it as well as a quick exit at each end.

      ‘I think it’s as bad about the boy as anything I’ve ever heard. I mean … him finding her. After his mother.’ The elder Mrs Zeman spoke to her niece. They were sitting over the tea-table, Mrs Zeman favoured a strong blend of Darjeeling, procured at her own special shop in Brook Street. She sipped her tea which was piping hot, just how she liked it. ‘His mother,’ she repeated, between sips. ‘It must have reminded him.’

      ‘She killed herself, Aunt Kay.’

      Her niece had her own small pot of Earl Grey; as with so much of their life together there were carefully defined boundaries. Tea was one of them. Coffee, decaffeinated or not, was another.

      Aunt Kay Zeman sniffed. ‘She always was unreliable.’

      ‘She managed that all right.’

      Mrs Zeman did not relent. ‘I’ve always thought it was an accident.’

      ‘And he didn’t find her. No one did.’

      Not for several months anyway, until the river finally delivered her on a muddy bank down the estuary. But of course they knew where she’d gone and where she’d gone in: she left plenty of evidence around. It had never been Clare Marsh’s idea not to punish someone. The only thing was, reflected the niece, she had punished plenty of people who didn’t deserve it.

      ‘Not entirely the husband’s fault,’ said Mrs Zeman judicially.

      ‘I should think not indeed.’

      ‘All the same, he’s trouble. Not really suitable to be your lover.’

      ‘He is not my lover.’

      It was Mrs Zeman’s idea that her niece did have a lover somewhere, but she had not so far been able to get positive proof of the victim’s identity although she had her ideas. She thought of him as a victim. In her experience, lovers were victims, as well as victors, torments, and objects of delight.

      She said no more, contenting herself with this probe. Her niece, child of her younger sister, long dead, was called Valerie, which Mrs Zeman regarded as an awkward, unlucky name. Valerie had certainly been some witness to the truth of this belief since she had been a failure as an artist (she had a wooden studio in Aunt Kay’s garden, rent: looking after her aunt), and as a woman with a string of abandoned relationships behind her.

      ‘You must try and attract someone, Val, hold on, instead of being always a failure.’

      ‘A lucky failure,’ she retorted at once to this probing sally of Aunt Kay’s, ‘because I’ve ended up happier than you by a long shot.’

      Katherine Zeman did not believe this: in her eyes no woman was happy without a settled marriage and at least one son.

      ‘Happiness is not what an adult expects,’ she replied. ‘A woman should hold on to her man. I held on to mine. You did not. You are a bad chooser.’

      ‘Someone will kill you one day, Aunt Kay,’ said Val, ‘and it just might be me.’

      Mrs Zeman poured another cup of tea. Milk first, she always said, otherwise it stains the cups. Her son had told her that her tea, dark and strong, had long since stained her gullet and stomach deep brown. She did not believe him. Her body would naturally not allow such liberties. She and Val, both strong characters, enjoyed, in fact, a happy relationship in which their sharp differences of opinion were not only allowed but pleasurable. Each knew the frontiers over which not to step and if Mrs Zeman sometimes, as now, strayed too far over them, then she felt it allowed to her as an old woman. It was one of the taxes she levied on Val’s good humour, part of her rent.

      ‘The girl wasn’t one of Leonard’s patients, was she?’

      Valerie occasionally acted as Dr Leonard Zeman’s receptionist and secretary, keeping his records in her fine clear handwriting, so she knew who was on his list.

      ‘No, I believe she’s with the Elmgate practice.’ The Elmgate Health Centre was a large group of some six doctors near to the Spinnergate Tube station, and was popular with all the company at the St Luke’s Workshop theatre. Dr Greer was the company physician. ‘But Tim knew her, of course.’

      ‘Sweet on her, was he?’

      ‘I don’t know, Auntie. She was very pretty.’

      ‘Wouldn’t be surprised, then.’ In fact, surprised if not. Tim Zeman had an eye for the girls, thought his grandmother complacently. She knew less about Tim than Val did. ‘Well, he wasn’t with us that day.’

      ‘No, Auntie.’ In fact, they hadn’t seen him for some time. Old Mrs Zeman minded, although she hated to admit it. ‘I believe he was with some friends in Kent.’ The young Edens, Angus Eden had been at school with Tim. He had an even younger and prettier wife.

      ‘Have you seen him since?’

      ‘No, he’s been keeping himself to himself.’

      ‘Upset, I expect.’

      ‘I think he’s just working for his exams, Aunt Kay.’

      ‘Certainly what he ought to be doing. Pour some more tea, dear.’

      Another cup of dark liquid went down to join the buttered tea-bun and the toasted tea-cake. Yet she was not fat, as Valerie, who put on weight quickly, noticed and thought unfair.

      ‘Anyway, it’s not Tim, I’m worried about.’

      ‘I didn’t know you were worried.’

      ‘I am always СКАЧАТЬ