Gwendoline Butler - Coffin on Murder Street

And what about that story of travelling by car from Glasgow to Edinburgh with a man who told her when they arrived in Morningside that he had his dead wife in the boot, and had left her mother in the cellar back home. He could believe that one, reflected Coffin. People could behave that way.

Drama, fantasy, and lies, mixed with a modicum of truth, that was the cocktail his mother had mixed.

Publication of Ma’s memoirs was a joke, of course. Letty’s idea: she had arranged the typing of the diaries. Private publication, she said, and then we will try for TV and film rights. Make a mini-series, the material is there, but we must first establish our copyright. Surely Letty could not be serious? What did her husband think of the idea? Did she still have a husband? Coffin had his doubts, Letty had not said anything, but he could read her lovely face.

He put aside the typescript, removed his spectacles (a recent and regretted addition to his life), and went on to his next task. Stella Pinero had persuaded him to a little amateur acting.

The Friends of the Theatre Workshop, an association of energetic local ladies, had started a playreading group. Once a year a public performance was put on. As always, they were short of men. Coffin had no illusions about why Stella had enlisted him. He had been drafted, he was a conscript. Lately another man had joined, a quiet character who seemed willing to stay in the background and indeed had not attended the group lately, but Coffin was hopeful that the shortage of men was on the way out, although perhaps not with that one.

To his chagrin, he discovered in himself a faint sense of rivalry. He should be ashamed of himself. ‘I don’t care for the fellow, that’s what it is, not jealousy as such.’

With surprise, he had discovered he was enjoying the acting experience. Drama obviously was in the blood. Ran in the family.

No great part had been allotted to him, Stella was not going to push him too hard.

They were doing The Circle. Somerset Maugham was having a comeback. He was the butler.

‘Luncheon is served, sir,’ he said. He tried it another way. ‘Luncheon—’ deep breath—‘is served, sir.’

That was his best line. He had another: ‘Lady Catherine Champion-Cheney—Lord Porteous.’

You couldn’t do much with that, the important thing was not to get tied up in the names and fall over your feet. But he had a bit of business with a tea-tray later on that he thought he could work up nicely.

It could have been worse, he could have been the footman. All the footman said was, ‘Yes, sir.’

They had eliminated the footman. It didn’t seem to matter to the plot, speeded it up a bit. Coffin reflected that only in the low wage, pre-Equity days of the 1920s when The Circle had first been produced could a writer have allowed himself both a butler and a footman on stage.

He went to the door of his sitting-room, opened it, and gave a bow: Luncheon is served, sir.

Letty Bingham and Stella Pinero, the famous actress, now installed as Director Elect of the new theatre (as yet only half built) and Acting Director of the Theatre Workshop were running a Festival Month. It would raise money; money was always tight. It would bring publicity; publicity was always valuable. Things were rolling forward, with four plays now in preparation, the casts engaged. Life was hotting up.

The four plays were The Cherry Orchard. The early Rattigan: French Without Tears. Arthur Miller would be represented by Death of a Salesman , because Miller, like Maugham, was having a renaissance, and Ben Travers came forward with Rookery Nook. She was also doing short runs of plays with small casts. Stella had cast the plays with cunning and some shrewdness, hoping to cater for all tastes and entrap the favour of the critics. The favour of critics was like a wary beast that you had to lure to you and then entice to your bosom.

If only half the famous names signed up by Stella arrived in due course to play their parts, and attracted all the tourists that were hoped for, then all the sneak thieves, dips, confidence men and petty criminals from outside the Second City and as far as Hong Kong and Australia would swarm in to join the native criminal population.

A few miles up river, over Waterloo Bridge, up the Strand and turn left, you were into Virginia Square. This square of tall dusty houses now converted into offices was small, blocked off at one end by the back of a large chain store, and lined on one side with coaches setting off on various tours round London. Tickets could be bought from itinerant sellers carrying small boards which displayed the names and prices of the various tours, and covered with advertisements themselves on caps, shirts and jackets. One or two of them had been mugged for the money they carried, it was a job not without hazard.

A Tour of Westminster Abbey and the City Churches; See Harrods and Visit The Tower; A Mystery Ride round London; A Total Terror Tour. See the Most Evil Places in London. Guaranteed Trembles. The Ultimate in Fear.

The coach firm which ran the Terror Tour was called Trembles Ltd, and you might joke that the coaches were owner-occupied because the two brothers Tremble who owned the firm were also the drivers. One brother did the Mystery Tour and the other the Horror. The classy tour of Westminster and Harrods was advertised but did not actually exist. Anyone who asked for it was persuaded to take one of the others. Horror or Mystery, it didn’t matter which, the itinerary was more or less the same, the Horror being the more popular.

The Trembles had thought of this particular tour because of their name being what it was. Before this they had run tours to Spain, but you could have enough of Spain and sun and they had, and also of passengers who got drunk and run in by the local police and they were fed up with this too. A change was as good as a rest. The Horror Tour was never likely, they thought, to bring in the police. Also, the coaches were getting old and no longer up to the long runs. It was a modest business, always teetering between profit and disaster.

In fact, this tour was very popular with foreign visitors. It did most business in the evenings when customers were young, noisy and happy. Sometimes a little drunk and amorous, but always very willing to be frightened. But not too disappointed, in fact, if they were not, and the tour was, to tell the truth, not very terrifying. There was a coffee-bar at the back of the bus with a big Thermos and people helped themselves, but the tour usually ended up at a pub renamed not long before as the Ripper and Victim, known locally as the Rip and Vic, before a swift ride back.

The Terror Tour bus was small, because it is easier to arouse terror in a small group than in a large one. It was painted a sombre dull black and the windows were shaded green. So were the lights inside.

Not crowded tonight, thought the driver as he collected the tickets, and rather an elderly group. So much the better, he might get home early. On the other hand, more bodies, more money, and he was hard up. He sighed. The horses had not been running well lately. Those that could fall down had fallen down, those that should have finished first had finished last. It was Friday, a spring evening in early March.

He had much on his mind. He was, he felt bound to admit, a man who liked to oblige his pals. Perhaps it was a weakness, but there you were. He had an old friend, known to him all his life, they had been at school together and their fathers had worked side by side in the Docks. He liked him, but what a talker!

Tremble thought back to the young Tremble who had been led into all sorts of trouble by this same persuasive friend. Like the time they’d caught a Russian spy. Except he hadn’t been. Poor chap, a survivor of Hitler’s camps and then caught by two kids and locked up in a broom cupboard. Dad had tanned his backside for that exploit.