Cracking Open a Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ the door, he turned and said: ‘While I am singing Wagner, look after yourself, Angie. Wagner, here I come.’

      The Friends of St Luke’s Theatre, a group of local ladies important in Coffin’s life for all sorts of reasons, who put on an amateur performance once a year, were attempting an opera. Not the whole opera, just a scene or two. The choice bits, as they said. They had considered Rosenkavalier, The Marriage of Figaro, and La Bohème (a strong lobby for this last opera), but they were long-time supporters of the rights of women and the Ride of the Valkyries seemed just to fill the bill.

      There was an added motive: they had a vibrant dramatic soprano among their ranks, Lydia Tullock, and Lydia was also rich. Others among them had good voices. So they had joined up with the Spinnergate Choral Society and the very strong Music Department of the local university, the University of the Second City, to launch their production.

      Mrs Darbyshire was the designer for costumes and sets for this ambitious enterprise; in her youth she had been an assistant to Motley and then gone on to work for Douglas Duguid. She had retired to marry Harold and bring up her family in their Victorian house in Feather Street, but now in middle age she had gone back to work, and had been hired by the Friends of St Luke’s. Of course, she was a Friend herself, but she was a professional, as she pointed out fiercely when they suggested she should do the job for nothing, and women must be paid. She would have done it for nothing, she loved her work, but standards had to be maintained. Also, Lydia was rich and could afford anything and Philippa was poor, but she had her problems and was being vocal about them.

      ‘Our Siegfried now, Turnwall Taylor, he’s a lovely man, I have nothing against him personally, but he is frankly fat. Imagine dressing him up in brown leather togs and getting him to woo Brunnhilde. She’s outsize too, and every one of the Valkyries has a weight problem.’

      She sighed heavily. ‘You never get everything. I remember saying to Larry once what a lovely Wotan, King of the Gods, he would make. He had the majesty, you see, but he hadn’t the voice.’

      She probably had known Lord Olivier, Coffin thought, or at least met him. Philippa did not lie, but she had the trick, familiar to him from his theatrical friends, of slight exaggeration.

      ‘He’d have brought in the customers. Bums on seats, we need that, money is so short, and opera costs. I hoped to get more out of the university, but …’ She shook her head.

      ‘Money’s short all round,’ said John Coffin. He had budget problems himself. In the few years that he had been Head of the Force in the Second City of London, he had never had enough resources to do all that was required in the turbulent area for which he was responsible. The old villages of Spinnergate, Swinehouse, Leathergate and Easthythe that were bound together in his Second City were expensive to police.

      ‘But they have been very generous with help, the Drama Department there, so vital, isn’t it? And such a vigorous Music Department.’ The Music Department was providing the orchestra, musical director and conductor as well as a few singers to audition. Philippa Darbyshire was half in love with the conductor, a beautiful young man, some sixteen years her junior and none the worse for that, she thought.

      My goodness, she said to her inner self, how times have changed. My mother wouldn’t have dreamt of letting herself be attracted to a man so much younger than herself, wouldn’t have admitted the possibility, but I’m not only admitting it, I’m enjoying it.

      She even enjoyed the fact it was not reciprocated. It might have been awkward indeed if it had been, for Harold might not have liked it. Well, wouldn’t have done. Harold was her husband. Once a banker, now enjoying early retirement, he was doing a course at the nearby university. Not in drama or anything dangerous like that, thank goodness, she thought (she was the one allowed temptation, not Harold), but in fine art.

      The university had been put together out of a Polytechnic and College of Advanced Technology, when it was decreed that the new Second City of London must have its own university.

      This Second City had several great hospitals, one of which had a history going back to a monastic foundation of the thirteenth century, three museums, two art galleries and an assortment of old and new industries. It was represented in the House of Commons by two MPs and in the House of Lords had one recently ennobled peer who bravely called himself Lord Brown of Swinehouse.

      Many of the old warehouses of the former docklands had been converted into smart apartment blocks, but old streets and grimy old housing estates still supported the old poor who eyed their new rich neighbours without love.

      It was no easy area to police, with violence never far below the surface and always threatening to break out. A large garage attacked only yesterday. A few days ago a robbery with savage violence in a shop in the Tube station in Spinnergate, two badly injured, a crime that was still being investigated, no leads.

      On the two large housing estates which were separated by a railway line and a belt of expensive upper-class apartments, gangs formed, fought each other, and the police too if they could, then melted away as fresh and younger outfits took their place. The Dreamers, once the most powerful group, had gone into decline when several members had been sent to prison and another couple had married, which as far as active gang life went came to the same thing. This had left the field to their rivals, who called themselves The Planters after the Planter estate where most of them lived. But somehow, without the competition, The Planters too had gone into decline. With no one to fight, what was the point to being? There was a short-lived revival of Dreamers Two, but it failed to inspire. Either the police were getting quicker to stamp out trouble-makers or the gangs were getting weaker. Who could say?

      At the moment there were no big gangs, but Coffin had heard stories of a new one forming itself around a female leader. He believed it.

      He had not met her yet, but no doubt he would if she became powerful enough. He had heard she was called Our General.

      Such was the Second City where John Coffin held the Queen’s Peace and in which he lived.

      ‘You can’t think,’ said Philippa, ‘how hard it is to find women warriors who can sing.’

      Wonder if I should suggest she tries Our General, thought Coffin.

      ‘I’m not sure if I like the Valkyrie concept anyway,’ said Philippa. Under the influence of the Drama Department, whether she admitted it or not, she had started to intellectualize her reactions to plots and story lines. ‘I mean, I don’t know any.’

      They exist, thought Coffin.

      Philippa finished her coffee, looked regretfully at a plate of chocolate croissants, but she mustn’t, she really mustn’t, that last inch on her hips since she had given up being a vegetarian was one inch too many, and got to her feet. ‘I must be off. Got an appointment with the Head of Drama at the university, he’s going to help me find some extra Nibelungs. I could do with some really short, dwarflike men with good voices.’ The Head of Drama was a handsome man too, she was looking forward to the half-hour together. She picked up her bags, Philippa always travelled with a full complement of shoulder-bags, clutch bags and the odd plastic carrier. Her mood was good in spite of the difficulties with the Valkyries. She would see her beautiful young musician, he had promised to be there, bringing a few young male singers to audition. It was wonderful how a family growing up and leaving home emancipated you. I am a New Woman, she announced to herself.

      ‘I’ll hang on a bit longer,’ said Coffin. He watched her departure with indulgence and a touch of sympathy; he could guess her motives. There was one thing about being a policeman: you often knew more about СКАЧАТЬ