Last Rights (17 page)

‘Look, Hannah,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry I was angry. I’m sorry – maybe I presumed too much. But I do feel . . . things for you
. . .’

‘Yeah, all right. Don’t go on. You going to the synagogue or not?’

‘Yes. Well, I’ll go after I’ve finished here,’ I said. ‘I’ll make it the first thing I do.’

‘Good.’

‘Right.’

In the long silence that followed, I finished what was left of my beer, threw the crust of the Gala pie at the bantams and
lit a fag. Eventually it was Hannah, still bitter and tearful, who broke the silence.

‘She was a good girl, Cherry,’ she said sadly. ‘If only she’d kept her head down in raids. Silly cow! Even when she was with
a customer she had to know what was going on outside all the time. Bit like you, Mr H. Always got to know what’s happening
and who’s doing what. Got to know the truth. Dangerous. Least, it was for Cherry . . .’

My heart in my mouth now, I said, ‘Are you trying to tell me something, Hannah?’

She looked away. ‘I’m only saying that Spitalfields ain’t your manor, Mr H. You don’t understand the rules.’ She turned back
to me again. Her face was drawn with what looked like anxiety. ‘Just be careful is what I say, Mr H. Remember that you ain’t
among your own and some people might not like that. I mean, look at Ruby Reynolds, out of her own place. She’s come to grief.’

Dad had always found the Jews of Spitalfields very friendly. But I’m not Tom Hancock. I’m not even the same colour as he’d
been, and things have moved on since Dad died. Since Mosley’s Black Shirts, views in the East End have become entrenched.
Although we’re at war with Germany, there’s still people about who favour fascism. The Jews tend to be of a socialistic mind,
which is something I broadly support myself. But that view has its problems too and a lot of people don’t trust those, like
Albert Cox, they call the ‘Commies’. The ‘Commies’ in their turn, and those who live among them, are not very open about what
they do so any stranger in their area is suspect, as Pearl, Velma and I had found out when Hannah first took us over.

I left Hannah after that and went to speak to Mrs Hazlitt and her other daughter, Joan. I knew my girl needed to be alone
for a bit. What I hadn’t reckoned on was that she’d leave the wake without saying another word to anyone.

A horse-drawn hearse does tend to draw attention to itself and its occupants. But after we’d finished at the Hazlitts’ house,
and especially after my difficult conversation with Hannah, I didn’t feel that inclined to walk to Spitalfields and getting
a bus, or even a tram, is always a problem. Depending on bomb damage you can’t be sure where your transport’s going to start
off or finish.

Young Arthur had some reservations. He thought the sight of the hearse might upset people, but he agreed to drive for me anyway.
I said we’d park up on Commercial Street rather than going down into Spitalfields proper. I couldn’t see any problem for him
to park over by the Ten Bells or even in front of Christ Church. Besides, I had a feeling I should be discreet about going
to Princelet Street. I left the boy and set off alone.

Number nineteen Princelet Street has had quite a history. Dad told me that, like a lot of the buildings in Spitalfields, the
‘Princelet Synagogue’, as he called it, had been built by the Huguenots. Being young at the time, I didn’t know a Huguenot
from a poke in the eye, but Dad soon told me that they were Protestant French people who’d come to London a long time ago
to escape persecution. They really set the tone for the place, as it happened, the Huguenots, and after they went the Irish
came and lodged in the building, escaping from the famine back at home. And when the Irish left, in came the Jews, escaping
persecution in Russia and Poland and more lately in Germany too. The old Princelet Synagogue is a place well used to people
hiding in its many rooms and cupboards.

As I entered the street, I did keep an eye open for the ample figure of Bessie Stern who, I knew, lived at number five. But
she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

They’re impressive buildings, the old Huguenot places in Spitalfields. At least three storeys high plus a cellar, many also
have wooden attics built up on the roofs. In their day they were elegant old places because the Huguenots, although they were
refugees from their country, were wealthy. But in common with a lot of the houses, number nineteen, although in constant use
as a synagogue, looked a bit run-down from the outside. I’d never been inside before, of course, and didn’t know what I might
expect. But the picture was somewhat different when I finally crossed the threshold.

The door to number nineteen was shut when I arrived so I knocked. I waited a long time for an answer, but when someone finally
opened it it was done slowly and only wide enough for me to be able to see a nose and a pair of very blue eyes.

‘Vass?’

I moved closer to the door so that I could keep my voice down. There was, I could just make out, very dim light, probably
from gas, inside.

‘My name’s Hancock,’ I said. ‘I’ve been asked to—’

‘Wait here.’

Almost a minute of unlocking noises happened before the boy, no more than sixteen at the most, opened the door and let me
in. As I entered I saw, even through the yellowing gloom in the corridor, that he had the most
startling red hair I had ever seen, and that included Alfie Rosen’s shining mop.

‘Come with me,’ he said and, without turning to look back at me, he disappeared down a dark flight of stairs into what I imagined
had to be the basement.

I followed, past a grimy little sink on the wall and past the entrance to the synagogue, which sticks out the back of the
house in what I’ve been told since was once a garden. Unlike the corridor, the synagogue was far from gloomy, being lit by
several large, ornate chandeliers. These fittings, which were fashioned in the shape of double-headed eagles, threw a lot
of clean and clear light on to the many rows of pews on the ground. Plain like all synagogues, apart from a cupboard where
they keep their holy scrolls, it nevertheless had a wonderful stained-glass roof, which I stopped to stare at for probably
longer than I should.

‘Come on,’ I heard the young man say, so I ran down to catch him up, smiling as I went. But he wasn’t too amused either by
me or my probably unwelcome curiosity.

Down below street level now, on the dark little landing I shared with the boy, I could see three doors. As he pushed open
the one directly at the bottom of the stairs, the boy said, ‘I’ve got to go and put the blackout up now. Some of the comrades
are meeting here tonight, so you’ll have to be quick.’

‘I came as soon as I—’

But he’d gone now so I walked into the room and looked around. It was, I reckoned, some sort of social area for the synagogue.
In one corner there was a sink with a
big tea urn beside it as well as a load of cheap white cups and saucers like the ones I’d seen on my infrequent visits to
Church events. Cups and saucers for the masses, be they religious groups or the ‘comrades’ my young friend had spoken about
earlier. Quite a lot of the Jews are Communists these days, except the really religious, the Frummers, like Hannah’s people.
They don’t do much beyond study their books, pray and get rid of their kids if they don’t do as they’re told. Not that I could
afford to think about Hannah and my problems with her now.

Opposite the corner with the sink, across from the chimney-breast, stood a woman probably in her late thirties. Thin, she
had long, dark hair, which, on closer inspection was a very dense black wig. She was unknown to me.

‘You Mr Hancock the undertaker?’ she said. Her voice was rough, smoke-dried.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You . . .’

‘My name’s Ruby Reynolds,’ the woman said. ‘Bessie tells me you’ve been helping our Pearl out.’

As soon as she and Bessie Stern had found Shlomo Kaplan’s body, Ruby had decided that it would be best to make herself scarce.

‘I was frightened. Coppers can’t be done with having to look for criminals with this war on,’ she said breathlessly. ‘And
with my background . . . Shlomo and me was in on our own all that day. He never went out because he was tired. So it was only
me saw him before he died. I could’ve killed him. I didn’t but I could’ve. Bessie and this lot
here,’ she said, as she flicked one hand around the room, ‘they believe I never hurt him.’

‘Bessie Stern knew about your mother?’

‘Yeah. But not Shlomo. I couldn’t tell him. This rabbi here, Numan, he’s a political type and him and some of the boys in
the Party know too. Bessie, although she’s not one of them, she knows them all. They let me be here because they don’t trust
coppers no more than I do.’

I was, I admit, genuinely surprised. The old match-maker had played the part of someone who knows nothing very well.

‘Which is why, I suppose, you’re allowed to be here,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ She had little of the almost delicate beauty of her sister Pearl but, as I had been told, the Reynolds sisters all
had different fathers.

‘So why have you asked to see me, Miss Reynolds?’ I said. ‘I’m really no one and—’

‘When we first found Shlomo dead, I knew it had nothing to do with me. I knew the coppers’d probably come and ask all of us
lots of questions. But then when I got to thinking about who I am . . . I thought they might take me in. As I’ve said, I’ve
no alibi. I was terrified so I hid. I shouldn’t have maybe, but . . . But then when Bessie come and told me about Pearl too,
well, I wondered. Two Reynolds girls, two murders . . . I know Gerald, Shlomo’s son, don’t like me and what I was to his dad
. . .’

‘What were you to his dad, Ruby?’

She looked down at her hands in her lap and said,
‘Once I’d done everything to convert properly, we was going to get married.’

‘Which Gerald didn’t like?’

‘No. Shlomo, like Bessie and a lot of other people around here, was frum. Hassids. They, we, go to the big synagogue up on
Brick Lane. Some people, Gerald I know, feel you can’t become one, feel you have to be born to it. Also he was worried about
what money he was going to get if his dad died and left me a widow. Started spreading all sorts of horrible rumours about
me being a money-grabber and a tart and everything, and when that didn’t work he started on his own dad. Told the coppers
Shlomo beat me up, he did. I know some people round here believed it too! But he never so much as touched me, Mr Hancock.
Bessie’ll tell you.’

Although, according to Doris, Bessie Stern was a less than reliable source when it came to bad things done by Jewish people,
I was inclined to believe her in this instance. In a sense Ruby was Hannah’s opposite, an outsider becoming a Hassidic woman.
Wearing a wig like the rest of them, not a scrap of makeup on her face. She had to believe it all and be dedicated to her
future husband to put up with it. Not daft, I felt sure that Ruby wouldn’t do such extreme things for someone who was a brute.

‘Harold Neilson, the bloke my mum . . .’ She looked down again into the hands. ‘He had a sister, Phyllis. She used to come
round before it all happened. But I only saw her once – after Neilson died. She looked at us little girls like the devil was
in her mind. She’d loved Harold, see.
Mum’s defence even said she’d loved him more than a sister should.’

‘And did she?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘I dunno. All I remember of that time is the beatings Mum used to get off Harold.’ She looked away again. ‘We
was all out, Pearl, Amber and me, when Mum – when Harold died.’ She looked back again. ‘Mr Hancock, I need someone as can
find out what’s happening here. I get a feeling as if there could be something going on. Me and Pearl, we’re being, somehow,
pushed into positions what make us both guilty. I don’t know who could be doing it, not really.’

‘And you thought of me.’

‘Bessie said you was helping Pearl.’

‘But Pearl has been arrested.’

‘Yes, I know. As I said, as soon as Bessie heard about it she come and told me,’ she said. It was then that I told Ruby exactly
how Pearl’s husband had died and watched her face turn white as she listened to the details. ‘Well, that makes it even more
important someone gets to the truth. Somebody has to know about our past to do something like that. Pearl’s no killer. She’s
the gentlest of all of us.’

Pearl, of course, was thinking along similar lines and I told Ruby so. I also told her about her fears for Amber in particular
and how Velma was going to try to find her. ‘It does seem quite odd to me that none of you kept in touch,’ I said. ‘I mean
because your younger sister was adopted, perhaps that was a problem, but the rest of you . . . Apparently Pearl told Velma
that your mother wanted you all to stay together.’

‘Yeah, she did. But we thought it was for the best that we didn’t,’ Ruby said. ‘Considering.’

‘Considering what?’

She looked away yet again. ‘Well, considering what happened. On your own you’re a smaller target, like,’ she said. ‘If your
mum or your dad kills someone then there’ll always be people more curious about you than they should be. You never get free
of something like that, you know. Murdered people have friends, family, people.’

‘People like this Phyllis Neilson?’

Ruby shrugged again. ‘Maybe.’

‘So are there others, besides this woman?’ I asked.

Ruby closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I dunno,’ she said.

‘Well, are there any other names you can—’

‘No.’ She opened her eyes again and looked me straight in the face. ‘Point is, I don’t know who might have it in for us. Might
not even be someone who knew Neilson. People get funny about relatives of killers. That’s why I’m asking you to help. All
I know is that just before that raid started, the one when Shlomo died, Bessie and me saw some woman we couldn’t recognise
hanging about at the end of the road.’

‘Could you see—’

‘What? Whether it could be Phyllis Neilson or not? No. She was quite a way off.’

‘Did Bessie tell the police about this woman?’ I asked.

Ruby smiled. It was a weird, crooked affair. ‘Yeah, course,’ she said. ‘But they reckoned it could’ve been anyone and they
might be right at that. But, like the
comrades say, they want it to be me and I know that an’ all. It’s easy if it’s me.’