seems to be the memories that are the trouble.’
Coffin went to the window to look down on what he could see of the former church below, now part of the St Luke’s Theatre Complex, and then beyond to what had been the old churchyard, with the aged tombstones ranged around it like dead teeth.
The church was a solid Victorian building which had survived two world wars, much bombing, only to fall victim to the decline in churchgoing. The church had been deconsecrated, and converted into a dwelling in the tower, into which Coffin had moved, while the church itself had been turned into a theatre, and a theatre workshop and an experimental theatre.
‘It was a different world outside there then, when he was a boy. The London of his childhood was rougher and nastier and poorer in so many ways. Dark streets, and cramped, crowded living places.’
‘Oh come on. Dickens was dead, you know.’
But Coffin would not be stopped. ‘As a boy, he must have heard all about the murdered women, read about them in news sheets. Talked about it. Perhaps he buried it in his memory through the years as he became rich and successful. Now he has let the memory out, and he has taken on the guilt.’
Stella said: ‘I must think about that … perhaps there was something in those days that he had guilt about and he has transferred it … Make a good play.’
‘Jack the Ripper was not so far off in the past. Still a terrible name to conjure with. Talked about at the time … People would have been reminded of him. It would have been in his mind.’
‘Perhaps his father was Jack the Ripper,’ said Stella lightly. ‘Come back for a second go.’
‘That would be something, to identify the Ripper after all this time,’ said Coffin, ‘and to have him father a Prime Minister.’
It was not quite a joke.
As he looked out of the window, he saw a tall figure going into the old churchyard; Coffin watched as the young man threw himself full length under a tree and buried his face in his hands.
An actor, of course. Only an actor walked with that air of ease and elegance, and then behaved with so much emotion. Unless he was a duke.
‘Who is that beautiful young man who crossed the road with such consummate grace and then fell on his face?’
Stella got up to look. ‘Oh, that’s Martin. Martin Marlowe. He’s just joined the company. He is lovely, isn’t he?’ There was frank appreciation in her voice: no one liked a beautiful young man more than Stella. Usually it went no further than detached admiration, but possibly not always.
Coffin looked at her and shook his head. ‘Not for you, darling.’
‘I wouldn’t think of it.’
‘You may think. Look but don’t touch.’
Stella laughed. ‘You are a pig. Or you can be. But bless you, I promise you that boy has enough emotion in his life without me joining in.’
‘I thought that from the way he fell upon the grass. Hamlet himself.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Stella was appraising. ‘I see him more as Romeo. Romeo after he’s lost Juliet.’
‘Has he lost his Juliet?’
‘Not yet, but he’s well on the way. He’s had a noisy row with his girlfriend, everyone heard, he was most articulate. So was she, come to that.’ She didn’t sound too miserable at the thought. ‘It will give depth to his acting, of course.’
Coffin was still looking out of the window. ‘That must be why he is beating the grass with his fist. Is that sorrow? I am bound to say it looks more like anger.’
Stella came to look. ‘I expect he is just rehearsing his part.’
‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Martin Marlowe.’
Coffin was thoughtful. ‘Real name or just for acting?’
Stella said slowly, ‘His real name.’
‘Ah.’
There was a pause, then she said: ‘You know who he is?’
Coffin said slowly but without emphasis: ‘I know.’
‘I suppose you usually get to know things like that.’
‘It’s part of the job. As you say, I get told that sort of thing.’
‘He doesn’t talk about it a lot, but he understands that people know and do. He doesn’t hide it, I call that brave.’
‘I didn’t know he was in a cast here.’
‘He’s only just joined. I went down to Bristol to see him act there, liked what I saw and offered him a part. He’s very young still …’
‘I could see that.’ It had been a very young man who had flung himself on the grass, and then to hammer it with his fists. An emotional young man. He did not accept Stella’s comment that he was rehearsing his part.
‘He did well at RADA, didn’t win any prizes, but we all know that prizewinners don’t necessarily have the most brilliant careers.’ Stella herself had never won a prize as a young actress, but her career afterwards had brought her several; she was up for a BAFTA award now. ‘But he has a way of getting straight at the audience that will stand him in good stead.’ She added: ‘Of course, he knows some people remember what took place and will talk about it. He accepts it. He told me that he doesn’t remember much …’
‘Do you believe him?’
‘He was only eight.’
‘You can remember a lot of what happened to you at eight,’ said Coffin. ‘And death … murder … your own father.’
‘But that is just what would block it.’
‘What about the sister?’ The sister had been much older, about sixteen.
‘She is a surgeon in a hospital in East Hythe.’
‘Isn’t it unwise to let a young woman so well acquainted with a knife become a surgeon?’
Stella was angry. ‘That is very unkind. And not like you.’
‘Yes, perhaps it is in bad taste.’
She is a different person from the girl who stabbed her father.’
But Coffin had read the official reports on the murder, had read the pathologist’s notes and seen the photographs of the victim. None of these had been seen by Stella.
Fourteen years earlier a family tragedy had been played out across the river in Chelsea. Henry Arthur Marlowe, a reasonably successful barrister, but a heavy drinker who became violent when drunk, was stabbed to death by his two children: a son, Martin, aged eight and a daughter, Clara, then sixteen. They stabbed him to protect their mother whom her husband treated savagely when drunk. Within a few weeks, the mother killed herself. In spite of everything, she had loved her husband. The girl Clara was in deep shock, inarticulate, not able to talk freely; not willing to, either.
The sitting room in the house in Vernon Gardens was full of blood, there was blood on the stairs, blood in the bathroom and blood in the bedroom where Averil Marlowe lay deeply asleep; she had taken a sedative.
The victim was lying, his body half across the doorway into the hall. He had been stabbed several times. Each wound penetrating deeply. This had been no quick killing.
The girl had let her mother have her sleep out before waking her with a cup of tea to tell what they had done. She herself telephoned the police, confessing to the killing.
When the police got there, the boy was found, asleep with the knife clasped to his chest. Both he and the girl were covered in blood which they had not washed off.
From prints on the knife the boy had