Coffin in the Black Museum. Gwendoline Butler

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      While she sipped it she stared out of the window. From another window she could see the main road. She stared.

      There was a police car, with lights flashing and a party was being loaded into it. She could see a small boy, and two women wearing flowery hats, while a fourth figure seemed to be explaining that he could not leave his cleaning cart.

      Good actor, that man, I like his mime, thought Stella, watching the moving figure. I must find out what is going on.

      She went into the hall, flinging open her front door with a flourish, but clutching her wine.

      She walked straight into John Coffin. They stared at each other.

      ‘What’s happening?’

      He did not answer at once.

      ‘No, don’t tell me. Who’s dead?’

      He still didn’t answer.

      Stella shrugged and held out her hand. ‘Well. It’s a way to meet.’ She was half amused, half cross. It was so like their whole career together, which had stretched over many years and endured many ups and downs.

      ‘I have seen you around. I thought you were avoiding me.’

      ‘Yes and no.’ Stella showed her glass. ‘Come in and have a drink. Your sister left me a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator as a coming-in present.’

      ‘More than she did for me.’ But come to think of it, perhaps she had; he hadn’t opened the refrigerator since he moved in, he must take a look.

      He followed Stella into the bare living-room. At least he had carpets down and pictures on the wall, he was one step ahead of her.

      ‘You don’t mind a toothglass?’ Letty’s interior decorator had provided two, one each side of the basin. The basin looked like pale green marble but probably was not. ‘You’re in the tower, aren’t you? What’s it like?’

      ‘Fine,’ said Coffin, adding cautiously, ‘so far.’

      ‘And what was all that commotion about?’

      ‘Nothing that need concern us here.’

      ‘I hope you are right. I haven’t moved into a murder den, have I? With dead bodies hidden under the floorboards?’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘So what was it?’

      He remembered she never gave up. And then he thought that word would soon get around about the head. Mimsie would see to that, not to mention the road-sweeper and the boy.

      ‘I suppose I might as well tell you, but keep quiet about it. It was a head. In an urn. And it somehow got mislaid.’ He did not believe that to be true for a minute.

      ‘And turned up where?’

      ‘In the gutter and was brought to me here.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It seemed to be addressed to here. To the church.’ Stella drank some champagne. ‘Your sister told me that no bodies had been buried here for a long while.’

      ‘That’s quite true.’

      Stella poured them both some more champagne. ‘Drink up, it doesn’t keep. So did you recognize the face?’

      He shook his head. ‘No.’ Hard to distinguish the features in that swollen face. He hadn’t tried very hard. But no, he didn’t think he knew him. Or her.

      ‘Well, someone out there has lost a head.’

      ‘Can we stop talking about the head?’

      Stella moved a step away, placing herself with unconscious artistry in mid-scene and where the spotlight of the sun fell upon her. ‘I ought to congratulate you on your big success, what you’ve done, where you’ve got to.’

      ‘Consider it said. What about you?’

      ‘Up and down. You know how it is in this business.’

      ‘Letty says you are going to have a big success with your production of Hedda Gabler.’

      ‘We’ll have to wait and see. Letty has put in a very good actor-manager. Do you know him? Charlie Driscoll.’ Coffin shook his head. ‘He’s formed a theatre club and got Peter Pond to find the money to put on four plays. I’m doing one of them, the Ibsen. Charlie will be Judge Brack.’

      ‘Not acting any more?’

      ‘Not given it up, don’t think that. I might do something with Peter later. Something modern … What will happen to the head and the little party that were carrying it away?’

      ‘They will be taken to the local station, where the head will be deposited. Then they will give statements, after which they will be driven home. Why are you so interested?’

      ‘I believe I know the boy. He hangs around the theatre, I think he’s stage-struck.’

      ‘How old is he?’

      ‘Older than he looks, like all of us pro’s.’

      ‘You aren’t suggesting he knows anything about the head?’ It was, after all, a highly theatrical discovery.

      ‘No, of course not. But I can’t think of anyone who will get more out of it than he will.’ Stella picked up the bottle. ‘Let’s finish the champagne.’

      Theatricals have a notoriously strong tolerance for drink, and so do policemen, it goes with the job, but what with not having eaten and the closeness of Stella, John Coffin began to feel as if he was floating.

      Stella started again.

      ‘And what about the head? Where will that go?’

      ‘An inquiry will start to establish whose head and where it came from. I expect they will begin by asking questions at the funeral parlour.’

      ‘I don’t like it. The poor chap who’s lost his head! Was he dead when it was cut off?’

      She had a point there.

      ‘That will be one of the questions asked. I think it was probably cut off after death.’

      Either way it was nasty.

      Stella shivered. ‘Well, I hope it’s no one I know.’

      ‘That’s not likely, is it?’

      ‘No, none of my friends are missing,’ Stella agreed. ‘But some of them would have to be gone a very long time before I noticed … And then, where is the rest of him?’

      ‘I expect we will find him,’ said Coffin. Bodies had a way of turning up.

      ‘Supposing you found СКАЧАТЬ