The Coffin Tree — Gwendoline Butler

That summer when the old Docklands of London sweltered in the great heat... was the summer when John Coffin walked his Second City of London and felt that life was unraveling about him... Something had to be done and it was for him to do it. Two of Coffin's young detectives had died - deaths that were said to be accidental. In Coffin's view, however, two accidents are two too many. Commander John Coffin is not a fanciful man, but somehow the half-dead tree, its top killed by lightning, standing in a sad patch of rough earth, seems to him to epitomize his problems. Why did the two policemen die? How did one dead police officer's wife come to die a grisly death herself at the foot of the coffin tree? Coffin can't believe that it was suicide. Beyond these concerns, Coffin is uneasy about his relationship with the mercurial actress, Stella Pinero, whom he married after a long on-and-off romance. It is when Stella, whose art has taught her to look deep into the human psyche, sets things right between them that Coffin is able to seek the answers he knows are there.