Death Lives Next Door by Gwendoline Butler

Author:Gwendoline Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Inspector Coffin came into the case because of a missing person. Otherwise there was no reason in the world that should bring a detective from south of the river in London to Oxford. He came in search of evidence of his own.

Coffin was a young man for his position as Divisional Detective Inspector even although his Division was small and dingy and unfashionably south of the river. But it was not dingy in his eyes, to him it was a wonderful place full of vigour and entertainment, offering him rich promise for his ambitions; he loved every side street and dirty little alley.

His district had produced one or two original and interesting crimes which had received fair publicity. There was the missing girl from Courcy Street, the Nursery School crime, and already, although Coffin was not to know it yet, there was beginning the stream of events that was to cause the troubled but fascinating crime of The Lottery.

Coffin was a Londoner by birth, from a real old London family, not one of the new ones, come there perhaps from Wales or the Midlands of Scotland in the last generation, but one that had lived in the same district, in much the same way, marrying into the same group of families, since the Great Harry was building in Deptford Dockyard. Such families are as tough, close-knit and localised as village families. They produce people like Coffin: a modern Sam Weller who might have said, in the spirit of his distinguished predecessor, Education: the World; University: Life.

As a detective, Coffin’s assets were two: insatiable curiosity and strong common-sense. His life was complicated by a deep liking for people; cautious, hostile, suspicious as a tom-cat at a first meeting, with him to know was in the end to like.

The same river Thames which ran so greenly not far from the Oxford police station at St. Aldates, also lapped, dark and oily and full of dirt, under the windows of Coffin’s office in his Division not far from Southwark. Coffin was not thinking of Oxford, but to a certain extent he was under its influence. He was slowly and thoughtfully going through the Catalogue issued with the Teach Yourself Everything Series. (He was doing this in his lunch hour, being a hard-working and conscientious officer.) “Chinese,” he said, turning over a page. “Russian, I’ve tried that but it didn’t do. History, can’t see the point; Gardening, too frivolous; supposing I try Anthropology? Learning about people, bound to be a help to me. Give me something to talk about.” Not that Coffin ever lacked anything to talk about, he was naturally a non-stop talker, but the subjects which came most readily to him, such as Association Football and Crime, were not always the most suited to the varied audiences he had to meet. He studied the information about anthropology.

Reluctantly he put it aside to get on with the work on hand. He had two missing people reported in his district; one was a woman, and the other a man.

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