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GWENDOLINE BUTLER
Coffin’s Ghost
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1999
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006513612
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007553914 Version: 2016–12–19
I wish to record my thanks to Dr Barker, Dr Fink, and John Kennedy Melling for the help given me with this book.
Contents
A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police.
John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died.
After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain-clothes branch as a detective.
He became a sergeant and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent
