Gwendoline Butler - Cracking Open a Coffin

In the first place he liked the wall, in the crevices of which yellow and white weeds flowered in the autumn, and secondly there was a smell to it that reminded him of his childhood.

It was communicating something to him, that smell. Opening up a window through which he could peer at the past.

He had grown up by the river. This river, just as dirty and travelworn by the centuries, but winding through a different part of London. South, where the river takes a deep curve and looks up to the hills of Kent.

It had not been a happy childhood. More or less orphaned (although mother, as it turned out, was still alive but missing), brought up first by a grandmother and an aunt, and then by the aunt alone, and finally fostered out to one family after another.

There were a lot of memories of that childhood that were thrashing around in his mind, some he was busily engaged in repressing but others were getting through.

He remembered sitting by the river, aged ten. He was fishing with a bit of string, a hook, and a tin can for the fish. But inside he was dreaming of himself in an open motorcar with a princess beside him. She was faceless but definitely royal.

The beginning of sex, he supposed. Late, by current standards.

Well, he eventually got the motorcar, although not the bright red open speedster of his dream, but never the princess. Although he had had several shots at it.

And that brought him back to Stella. Darling, beloved, infuriating Stella to whom he had never been totally faithful nor totally unfaithful either.

Which was where you had to think about it, because Stella was angry with him. She had opened her eyes wide and said: ‘To hell with you.’

They hadn’t met for a few days now. They would meet again and things would be patched up, neither was prepared for a decisive break.

There was another aspect to the problem of Stella, and he had a letter in his pocket, highly personal and very unwelcome, and one which caused him fury but which would have to be addressed.

And all the time he was thinking about Stella and the golden pair of students, he was conscious of dry bones moving at the back of his mind. So that of all the people presently concerned with the murders, he was the least surprised.

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