Drama | Comedy | Coffin | England | Fiction
The Mystery of the Coffin
An English mystery.
You know what it’s like when the only reason to get out of bed is to go to work. I’d been on vacation for two weeks, so it was especially painful, and it would be for a couple of days until I got back into the routine.
I was up at 6:15 as usual, ate breakfast, and was out the front door by 6:45.
The old terraced house once belonged to Mum — the same house I grew up in — front door opening directly onto the street.
Before closing the door, I left the house, checked the contents of my rucksack, made sure I had my thermos flask and sandwiches, locked the door, turned to walk away, and there it was, sitting on the pavement, a coffin!
Where the bloody hell had it come from? It wasn’t terribly ornate, with pine handles. I glanced up and down the street, on a slight incline, and wondered for a moment if the coffin might have fallen from a hearse, something stupid like that. Obviously, it had not. There was no damage.
I don’t have a car; I sold it a year after my wife died. So there was no obstruction.
I checked my watch. I couldn’t stand around waiting for someone to claim the coffin; I own the house, not the pavement. Not my responsibility. I went for the bus.
When I got to the factory, all hell had broken loose: during the night a
water main had burst on Fore Street, and the water had flowed through
the back railings and across the yard and almost completely flooded the
boiler-house. Of course, as a maintenance engineer, I got roped into
the cleanup operation. I forgot all about the coffin until 4:45 when I got home to find it sitting there.
Anyway, some bright spark had tacked a sign to the coffin that read:
‘Vacant’. Iris, the old girl next door, looked out the window, opened it and asked if it was my coffin. I told her I wasn’t planning to have a use for one just yet, and then, foolishly, I asked her how her husband was. I hadn’t seen Joe for three or four weeks. He’d been quite ill throughout the winter. She told me he was quite well, thank you very much, and shut the window.
It took a half-hour for a copper to show up after I called it in. I
was out of the shower, though I hadn’t quite finished shaving. He examined the coffin and made a few notes. I suggested he call the local funeral directors. He thought that a good idea then got on the radio. I made us both a cup of tea. Another hour went by, and two more coppers arrived with the undertaker.
Albert Gribble, that was his name. He had a small tool-kit and quick as a flash, the lid was off, and the five of us stood staring down into it.
This is where I slow things down a bit. It becomes unbelievable. So, the story is all the more alarming for what I’m about to tell you. In fact, grandfather comes into the story. He’d died during the war, and, according to Gran, he was to be buried in the parish cemetery.
As the coffin was being carried from the house, an air-raid siren sounded. The coffin was set down on the pavement, and everyone scurried off to a shelter at the corner of the street.
So you see this odd connection. Weird, right?
Anyway, as I stood beside the police officers and looked into the
coffin, there was no doubt in my mind about what I was seeing: it was
Granddad. He was dressed in his Sunday best, his hair neatly
trimmed and parted, looking as he must on the day of his disappearance over sixty years ago.
Anyway, imagine the shock. I passed out.
When I came around, I was lying on my back outside my front door with Iris leaning over me, asking me if I was alright. I asked what time it
was. 6:50. When I asked what had happened to the coffin, Iris looked at me as though I was nuts.
Before I’d gotten myself up, an ambulance arrived. I felt fine. For sure, I did. I couldn’t figure out why the sandwiches I’d eaten at lunchtime were still in my rucksack and a full-to-the-brim thermos flask.
The clock in the ward said 07:58, Tuesday, April 16. It dawned on me that it was still Tuesday morning. I checked out. All good. Sent home.
That afternoon and evening, I sat at home in a daze, unable to
comprehend what had happened. I searched the house and the
dustbin, looking for empty bottles. None. If I’d been drinking, I’d have known. But, physically, I felt fine.
So I watched TV — confirming it was still Tuesday — and then, at 10:30, after I’d watched the news, I set my alarm and went to bed. In the morning, I got up and checked out the window. No coffin. Had breakfast. Went to work.
“You missed a right day, yesterday,” Dave told me. “A water-main burst
and flooded the boiler-house. We had a hell of a job cleaning up
the mess.”
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Thanks for reading.
