A Grave Coffin. Gwendoline Butler

looked sad at the choice of claret with brill, an expensive Montrachet would have been better, but he sped away to serve the fish.

      ‘The chef has poached it with a little basil,’ he confided as he offered it to the Chief Commander.

      Coffin ate the brill, thinking wistfully of the days when fish was fried and served with chips. You could still get such meals in the right places, but not where the Maxes of this world ruled the menu. He wondered what Stella was eating in Los Angeles, or if she was eating at all, since she might now be under the surgeon’s knife. She had refused to let him know when the operation was to take place because she didn’t want him to worry.

      Strange idea of worry she must have, he decided, since I am worrying about her all the time. Not the nose, Stella, he said again over a mouthful of salad, nor the mouth: I love both of them.

      As he ate, he mulled over the two big problems on his mind: the pharmaceutical affair which Ed Saxon had delivered to him, and the missing boys. Since one had been found dead, he had to assume the others also were.

      What was the list

      Charles Rick, missing since mid-May, the second boy to go and not yet found.

      Dick Neville, a fortnight earlier, he was the first, and he went the first week in May. May Day, in fact. Was that important?

      Archie Chinner, the last week in June, the last to go and the first to be found.

      Matthew Baker, last week in May. A month before the next boy went. Was that important?

      Who knows, he thought to himself, with some anger. You never know until it is too late.

      Across the room he could see a table of the cast of the play now in rehearsal at the Stella Pinero Theatre in the St Luke’s complex of the theatres. This was the main theatre, created out of the old church, but in addition there was now the much smaller Experimental Theatre and the Theatre Workshop. The last two theatres received grants from the local university in return for allowing its drama department to use both theatres.

      He knew from Stella that the play under rehearsal was one of Pinter’s: The Homecoming. She had had it in mind for a long while, but had handed the production over to a friend, Alec Macgregor, always known as Mac. Mac was at the table too, and waved to Coffin, whom he had got to know well over the years. He was a tall, slim man with a mop of grey hair and bright, dark eyes. A fond parent had left him a pleasant fortune, so it was likely that he was paying for the dinner, and not the cast who probably could not have afforded it, since Max’s prices had risen with his success. Coffin knew that Stella was not a lavish payer, although Equity rules did not allow too much stinginess.

      As he waved back, he saw that Mac was getting up and coming over to him.

      ‘How are things going? Heard from Stella since you got back?’

      ‘She rang up and I spoke to her yesterday.’ He thought it was yesterday, with all the pressures on him events began to run together. He was beginning to worry about his memory. Could you get Alzheimer’s through stress? No, it was congenital, wasn’t it, and the one thing he knew about his mother was that she was both long-lived and articulate. About his father he knew much less, and that was down to his mother too, since she had never been quite definite about who his father was. Give birth and move on, had been the name of her game. ‘Stella’s enjoying herself, going to the theatre every night.’ That was more or less true. ‘How are you and the production?’