A Double Coffin
John Coffin is left reeling after the former Prime Minister makes a shocking confession. A dark and gripping crime novel from one of the most appraised English mystery writers, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.A visit to the riverside apartment of the long retired former prime minister, Richard Lavender, is to have startling consequences for John Coffin. For it transpires that the old man, nearing the end of his life, has a confession to make: he is the son of a serial killer. He tells Coffin how, as a boy, he helped to bury one of his father’s victims. Feeling death is near, he wants to repair and reclaim the past – with Coffin’s help.Unsure whether Lavender is caught up in fantasy or telling the truth, Coffin agrees to investigate and appoints Chief Inspector Phoebe Astley to the task. But then a young woman is found murdered on a foggy November night, and all too soon the sins of the past and present come together in a terrifying denouement.
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GWENDOLINE BUTLER
A DOUBLE COFFIN
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1996
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780006497745
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545445
Version: 2014–07–07
Contents
A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police
John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died.
After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain-clothes branch as a detective.
He became a sergeant and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent and then chief superintendent.
There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died.
From this dark period he was resurrected by a spell in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when the Second City of London was being formed and he became Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, an old love, Stella Pinero, who is herself a very successful actress. He has also discovered two siblings, a much younger sister and brother.
John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London, sat in the sunlight at the desk in his office and allowed himself to feel surprise as the message came through. ‘A Mr Bradshaw wants to see me? And urgently?’
He had been listening to Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, and reading a travel brochure, while at his feet lay the new family dog, a white peke called Augustus. His old dog had succumbed to great years and an eventful life, both of which had done his heart in. The record player in the office and the presence there of Augustus were the work of his wife who had decreed that there must be a show of more civilization in the workplace. And what could be more civilized than Mozart (a dose to be taken once a day at least) and a Pekingese of impeccable breeding if of uncertain temper.
He had been content on this sunny October day. Content was now shattered.
‘Richard Lavender wants to see me? Dick Lavender?’
His visitor nodded; he was a tall, thin man with crest of crisp hair just going grey. His eyes were an odd mixture between green and blue, attractive, Coffin thought.
‘He does. Soon, if you please. Perhaps a first visit this morning?’
John Albert Bradshaw had come with an introduction from the Home Secretary and had laid his card on the table as soon as he arrived. Dr J. A. Bradshaw. Not a medical doctor, he had said at once – political science, Edinburgh. Coffin had the notion that this information was proffered to establish status. I am an important person in my own right, Dr Bradshaw was saying.
