Last Rights (13 page)

‘What with?’

‘Murder.’

‘Murder?’

‘What else? We’ve only got Pearl’s word she was at Dot Harris’s place that night and a lot of people, local, like, said Pearl
made threats against her husband’s life. Not just the Dooleys saying it, see.’

I felt sick. ‘Yes, well, people have been known to make threats when other people are beating them senseless,’ I said.

‘Well, yes, that can happen,’ Fred said. ‘But whatever the circumstances she made threats to him that were heard by others
and, given her background and the fact we don’t know where she was . . .’

‘But what about Velma?’ I said. ‘She confirmed her mother’s story.’

‘Well, of course she did,’ Fred replied. ‘She’s Pearl’s daughter. Anyway there was blood in Pearl’s room, on her, you know,
her underclothes—’

‘Yes!’ I shouted – agitated by what seemed to me the casualness of this arrest. ‘I told you about it. She’d had an abortion,
Fred!’

‘So she says,’ Fred said darkly. ‘And that’s a crime in itself . . .’

‘So why admit to it?’ I said. ‘If she had killed Kevin and then needed to make something up for an alibi, why choose something
illegal?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe to account for that blood, which could, you know, Mr H, be her husband’s.’

‘Possibly. But to say she’d had an abortion when she hadn’t still doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘She could’ve said that the
blood on her clothes was her, you know, her . . . when she has the painters in, like once a month . . . And, anyway, Pearl
loved Kevin. He beat and abused her, she shouted at him – you know what those docks couples are like – but she still loved
him.’

‘How do you know she loved him?’

‘Because she told me.’

Fred laughed. ‘Gawd help us, Mr H. That don’t mean nothing. This woman’s mother loved the bloke she done too. Went to the
bleedin’ gallows begging his forgiveness, she did, so they say.’

‘Do they?’

‘Oh, yes, very much so.’

But how was I to know without finding out more about Victorine Reynolds and the death of Neilson? It was all news to me.

‘Anyway, she’s been took over to Holloway now so it’s for the judge and jury when she comes to trial,’ Fred said.

‘So that’s that, is it?’ I said angrily, at what seemed to me to be Fred’s lack of concern.

‘Looks like it, Mr H.’

‘You don’t think you ought to look at other possibilities? You know, just in case someone else might be involved.’

‘I don’t see the need,’ Fred said, with one of his irritatingly self-satisfied smiles.

‘Christ!’ I shook my head despairingly, and then I said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve found young Velma yet?’ We certainly hadn’t
seen her in or around the shop.

‘No, not yet,’ Fred said, as he left to go about his business. ‘But I’m sure she’ll turn up some time.’

‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ I snapped back at him. But Fred only laughed at my sharpness, which he is far too dull
to take seriously.

With a heavy heart and a troubled mind I walked back into the shop where Doris was just finishing off talking to a bereaved
relative.

‘Poor geezer’s lost his old dad,’ she said, once the man had gone. ‘Sounds like a bit of a tyrant to me, but he loved him,
poor bugger. No rhyme or reason to who we choose to love, is there? Here, Mr H . . .’

‘Yes . . .’ I said it absently, my mind still concerned with Pearl and what might be happening to her now she was inside the
grim walls of Holloway Prison – the place where I, with the best of intentions, had put her. The Government, I knew, kept
traitors and spies in prisons, these days . . .

‘You know you was after some paper-and-string man lived with a shikseh the other day?’ Doris said.

‘Yes.’ Now she had my attention. ‘Well?’

‘You know some bloke who used to sell paper and string was murdered a couple of weeks back?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Shlomo Kaplan.’

‘That’s it,’ Doris said. ‘Old bloke, retired a while back, well before he died. Now his son Gerald does the same business
out of somewhere in Bethnal Green. Well, anyway, I heard that he lived with a shikseh – not Gerald, the old bloke.’

‘Yes, Doris,’ I said. ‘We did actually find that out when I went over with Mrs Dooley. But the housekeeper, Mrs Dooley’s sister,
had gone.’

‘So you know the coppers think she done him in, then? The housekeeper?’

‘Yes. Although why she would do so is unclear,’ I said. ‘It would seem that Mr Kaplan was very generous to her.’

Doris frowned. ‘Who told you that, Mr H?’

‘Well, Mr Kaplan’s neighbour, a Mrs Stern . . .’

‘Bessie the matchmaker?’ Doris laughed. ‘Wouldn’t say nothing off-colour about Yiddisher people to no goy, that fat old frummer
wouldn’t! Yiddisher could murder all his neighbours and their kids and she’d swear blind he was a proper mensch. No, Mr H,
old Kaplan treated that housekeeper like a dog, take it from me.’

‘How do you know?’ I said. As far as I had been aware, Doris’s knowledge of paper-and-string men had been limited.

‘I’ve asked around,’ she said. ‘I know you didn’t say nothing when you come back from Spitalfields, and I
know it’s none of my business, but I’ll always keep me ear to the ground for you when I can, Mr H.’

I smiled. She’s a good girl, our Doris, very loyal. Her Alfie once told me that she’s just so grateful for the work. ‘She
could be doing bloody awful stuff and she knows it,’ he’d said. ‘Her sister Ida works in munitions, twelve-hour shifts, comes
’ome sometimes with her skin the colour of jaundice.’

Some of the girls work in terrible places. Even our Aggie down at Tate & Lyle’s isn’t so badly off as some of them. She moans,
of course, about the sugar dust getting into her eyes and making her throat dry, but it isn’t like munitions. I don’t either
know or understand what they put into bombs, these days, but if it’s anything like the stuff they used in my day, it’s evil
in every sense of the word.

‘Er, there is something else too,’ Doris said, interrupting what to her must have looked like me simply gawping into space.

‘What’s that?’ I asked. Doris’s face was unusually grave, which gave me cause for concern. ‘Well?’

She moved a little closer to me and said, ‘You know in Jewish places people talk? Everybody knows everybody . . .’

‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Doris?’

She waved a hand in a flustered way across her face. ‘Well, I heard you was with a woman, Hannah Jacobs, not been seen down
our way for years.’

At this point I didn’t know what to think. That Hannah had been recognised didn’t surprise me – after all, she had grown up
in Spitalfields. But what her old friends and neighbours knew about her life subsequent to that, I
didn’t know. Although from Doris’s nervous tone I didn’t imagine it could be anything good.

‘She’s an acquaintance,’ I said lightly. ‘Why?’

‘Well,’ Doris said, ‘it’s just that if you’re going to visit real frummers, like Bessie Stern, Hannah Jacobs ain’t the best
person to take along with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of what she done,’ Doris said. And then, seeing the complete lack of recognition on my face, she continued, ‘Hannah
Jacobs’s parents are frummers. Hassidics – you know, with the hats and locks and wigs, like Bessie Stern. Their kids don’t
go to the Jewish Free School, they’re all too bloody religious to do what everyone else does. But anyway, years ago Hannah
Jacobs, frummers’ daughter, ups and says she wants to marry this Christian boy. Well, they’re not having none of that so they
tell her it’s this bloke or them and she chooses the boy. So they chuck her out. Her father puts his face to the wall, says
she’s dead . . .’

‘Says
she
’s dead?’ As far as I was concerned Hannah’s parents were dead, or so she had told me. ‘So did she marry . . .’ I felt my
heart thump as my voice gave up on the question I didn’t know I really wanted answered. Hannah had lied to me.

‘No,’ Doris said, ‘his family wouldn’t have her at the finish. I don’t think they ever would. Probably just using her, if
you know what I mean. Never knew what happened to Hannah Jacobs. Not until you turned up with her causing a scandal, Mr H.
How do you know—’

‘A friend of Hannah, Miss Jacobs, died some years ago and I . . .’

‘Oh, you arranged the funeral. I see.’

‘Yes.’

Another girl who had lived, briefly, and then died beneath Dot Harris’s roof. Another one with a Jewish name and no family
beyond the other girls she worked the streets alongside – or, rather, no family that wanted to acknowledge her existence.
Why hadn’t Hannah told me? Even knowing, as I do, how strict the Hassidic Jews can be, I felt hurt that she hadn’t seen fit
to tell me about this. I’d always liked to think that I was more than just a customer to Hannah. And maybe I was. After all,
she had taken a risk, albeit one I didn’t know about at the time, in going with Pearl, Velma and me to Spitalfields. She must
have known that people, especially Bessie Stern, would be hostile to her and yet she’d done it anyway. I liked to think it
was for me.

‘Look, all I’m saying is,’ Doris said, ‘if you go there again it might be best to take someone other than Hannah Jacobs. All
right?’

‘Yes . . .’ Not that I felt I was really, but I thanked Doris for what she’d said and then, looking at my watch, I realised
I needed to get over to East Ham pretty smartish.

One of my dad’s old mates had been killed by an incendiary over there and Hancock’s were honouring a long-ago-given promise
to do right by old Eddie Smith buckshee. However, things didn’t start very promisingly, which was made worse by the fact that
I was now troubled and upset by what Doris had just told me. I’d always
hoped that Hannah and I had honesty between us if nothing else.

I didn’t even have to see my driver Walter Bridges: Arthur’s terrified face said it all.

‘I’m afraid Walter’s not very well, Mr H,’ the boy said nervously, as I walked into the yard. The hearse was clean, prepared,
and the horses were dressed and ready and everything would have been fine had not Walter been lying unconscious on the ground
in front of me. The smell coming off him was a mixture of beer and urine. He’d done a right job on himself this time.

‘Well, I’ll have to drive then, won’t I?’ I said, through clenched teeth.

‘But you’re conducting, Mr H, you always—’

‘Well, this time I’ll not be able to conduct, will I?’ I said. ‘This time I’ll have to bloody well drive!’

I thought about taking Walter home quickly on my way out, then thought better of it and flung him into the stable. Except
when a raid is on, most of the time I just get on with things. Life’s hard for everyone these days – the food’s ‘rotten’,
there isn’t always water, everything’s filthy, you never know whether you or any of those you love are going to live till
morning . . . But you take it and you take it and then something like Hannah’s, to me, pointless lies, or someone like bleeding
Walter Bridges and his sodding milk stout, comes along and suddenly you go absolutely barmy.

‘If I didn’t have no choice but to employ someone like Walter Bridges then he’d be out!’ I said to Arthur, as we drove slowly
down the Barking Road.

‘Yes, Mr H.’

Hunched men with hands like my mother’s took off their flat caps out of respect as we passed. Old dockers, their bodies wrecked
by work and damp, wondering when the hearse would be coming for them. But although I noticed, I wasn’t touched by this as
I can be. I was far too angry for that.

‘I’m not paying him for today,’ I said, ‘so it’s his loss. Won’t get a brass farthing from me, Arthur, I tell you!’

‘No . . .’

How Arthur and me got through poor old Eddie’s funeral with any degree of dignity I will never know. I couldn’t conduct, my
mind was boiling with anger, and we, just the two of us, looked a shambles. But when we got back to the shop a smartly dressed
stranger was waiting to see me and all but took my mind off my other troubles.

‘M
r Hancock, my name is Blatt,’ the man said. He gave me a card with his name and business address in gold lettering on it.
It was somewhere in Knightsbridge. He was, so this card declared, a solicitor. Older than me, by a few years I should imagine,
he was also immaculately groomed and obviously wealthy. What Mr Blatt might want with an East End undertaker was, as yet,
a mystery.

‘How can I help you, Mr Blatt?’ I said.

Doris, who had already apparently made this man several cups of tea, went to make another for both of us. As she passed me
she said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr H, I’ll use the same leaves as before.’

‘Thank you, Doris.’

She left me with this dark, unsmiling man.

‘I am Pearl Dooley’s solicitor,’ Blatt said. ‘I understand you’ve had some involvement with Mrs Dooley, Mr Hancock.’

‘I went with her to try to help her find her sister,’ I said.
‘When her husband died, her mother-in-law threw her out. I was sorry for her, and tried to do what I could to put her in contact
with her relatives.’

‘And did you find this sister?’

‘No.’

He looked down at the floor, then up again. ‘Mr Hancock, I need to speak to Mrs Dooley’s daughter, Velma.’

‘Well, she isn’t here,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about her, really. I’ve asked the police to look for her.’

‘The police told me she’d been staying here.’

‘She was, yes,’ I said, ‘but, as I’m sure they must’ve told you, after she’d given her statement to the police she just took
off. I don’t know where she’s gone.’

‘What about family?’

‘The Dooleys chucked both her and her mother out,’ I said. ‘And beyond Mrs Dooley’s sister Ruby in Spitalfields, the one we
couldn’t find, I don’t know.’

‘No other relatives living locally?’

‘I know she’s got two other sisters,’ I said. ‘They’ve all got names of precious stones, those girls. I think one was called
Amber. If you don’t mind my asking, Mr Blatt, how come you’re working for Mrs Dooley? I mean, it isn’t every day that a woman
from Canning Town gets herself a Knightsbridge solicitor.’

He smiled, which made him look even more spare and hawk-like than he already was. ‘I gather from the police that you are aware
of some of the details regarding Pearl Dooley’s background,’ he said. ‘Specifically her mother and who she was.’