Coffin on the Water
Detective Constable John Coffin investigates the murder of a young woman, whose body is found floating in the Thames with a sinister note attached to her. A gripping crime novel from one of the most universally praised English mystery writers, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.In 1946, newly promoted detective-constable John Coffin arrives in Greenwich to take up his post. Soon after, the body of a young woman floats down the Thames to South London.It quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary murder: the victim has been strangled, stabbed and mutilated. Attached to the body is a note reading "Present for my mother," a reference to former actress Rachel Esthart, whose son drowned under mysterious circumstances 17 years previously, and who has just received a postcard promising an imminent gift from the boy, whose death she has never acknowledged.Then two other bodies are found in the river, murdered in the same brutal way, and Coffin has a multiple murder case on his hands…
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GWENDOLINE BUTLER
Coffin on the Water
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.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1986
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1986
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
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Source ISBN: 9780006176305
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007544646 Version: 2017-04-25
To J.K.M.
Contents
Chapter 2: The Shape of the Murderer
Chapter 3: The Stance of the Murderer
Chapter 4: The Feet of the Murderer
Chapter 5: Following the Feet of the Murderer
Chapter 6: The Neck of the Murderer
Chapter 7: The Neck Feels the Rope
Chapter 8: The Hands of the Murderer
Chapter 9: The Work of the Murderer’s Hands
Chapter 10: A Sight of the Murderer’s Hands
Chapter 11: The Way the Murderer Walked
The Delivery
It was the biggest feast since the feeding of the five thousand, or so it was felt locally in Greenwich, and their outliers, the Hythe and the Wick. In the spring of 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations was entertained to a banquet in the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College. Premier Attlee welcomed them. The feast was austere, in tune with the rationed times: a soup, game, and a pudding, but the wines were good.
Present, in a purely professional capacity and not eating, were Chief Superintendent Dander, and Inspectors Warwich and Banbury. Also there were a troupe of young detectives-in-training, and among them John Coffin and Alex Rowley.
Also present was a murderer-to-be, like a bridegroom in waiting.
The bodies came later.
The bodies came drifting in, delivered by the river, bearing a greeting card as if they were a birthday present. The river is a part of this story; the river supported the bodies, carrying them on the tide to their appointed destination. A body dropped on a rising tide in the river somewhere as yet unknown, between Deptford and Greenwich, to be carried up river, then back by the ebbing water towards Fidder’s Reach where it will be deposited on the mud on schedule. Or so the killer thought.
Looked at later, as through the eyes of John Coffin, young detective still on probation, it was a hell of a journey they made for the hell of a purpose.
What a case to test the nerve. He was on the edge of things in that first big case and he knew it. Yet the fact that he was so, helped in the end. Indeed, led to its solution. If you can call a solution what was so terrible a resolution.
At that time he had a world to discover and a life: his own. Once in June 1944, he thought he had lost it, and once nearly had, but the shell from the Ruhr didn’t quite do it. He came back from the dead, as we do occasionally. Now he had to find out what that life was worth and make something of it. The world was London, 1946. He joined the police.
Why the police? He wasn’t widely known among his pals as an idealist or a law enforcer, but he must have had something there. One of his fellow police-cadets had wanted to be a ballet dancer. You could never tell where your feet will lead you. Give him ten years or so and he might know the answer. And when he did, would it be the diary of his years?
Around the first body the dark, oily water moved sluggishly, heavy with all the filth it bore. The body was not its only burden. Nor the first body, nor to be the last. Ships, tugs, barges had passed through it for decades, each generation depositing its own share of muck, coal dust and oil. Here at Greenwich the river was lined with docks and wharves so that the water lapped upon stone, not grass. Factories and warehouses shoved themselves up to the banks with their own unpromising war-stained profiles, nose to nose. Here and there a bomb-broken nose showed itself but the essential face of the docks and the river was unchanged, which might have surprised the bombers. Across one wall someone had written: ‘Down with Adolf’, making his mark on one warehouse. The rain was washing it away: Hitler’s was a name from the past already, one you didn’t bother with, and a wag had written underneath: ‘Down with Stafford Cripps’.
