From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  I smiled and dipped my head in some embarrassment. ‘That’s very kind of him,’ I mumbled.

  Miss Lawler put her head to one side. ‘Yes, he is kind,’ she said, almost musingly. ‘Even though his manner would perhaps suggest otherwise.’ She looked at me. ‘I had rather thought that perhaps…’ her voice trailed away and she raised one eyebrow enquiringly.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said more brusquely than I had perhaps intended. ‘Absolutely not.’

  She sighed and gave a tiny shrug. ‘Ah well.’

  I followed her into the classroom, which was bright with the sunlight which streamed through the skylights and tall windows that lined one of the walls and took a deep breath of the once familiar scent of freshly laundered clothes, chalk dust and female sweat. The usual soft murmur of chatter came to an abrupt end as I stepped inside and I felt my cheeks redden then pale with embarrassment as every pair of eyes turned curiously towards me. ‘Long time, no see,’ one of the girls, Cassie, a diminutive redhead with a cheeky smile, called out with a wink. ‘We thought we’d seen the last of you, Miss.’

  I smiled and dipped my head. ‘Oh no, you’ll have to try harder to get rid of me.’ I turned to Miss Lawler and took her hand. ‘I mean it,’ I whispered. ‘I mean to do real good here once this is all over.’

  She frowned. ‘When what is all over?’ she said but I merely shook my head and moved across the room to where a small group of girls were sitting together reading, their gleaming heads, each wrapped with a neatly coiled plait, bent over their red cloth bound books. ’Still carrying on with The Pilgrim’s Progress then?’ I said brightly as I approached them and they looked up with the smiles of welcome that I had not even realised that I missed but now made my heart give a small sad pang of mingled happiness and sorrow. ‘Let’s see how you are doing.’

  It was several hours before I was able to slip away and after making my excuses to Miss Lawler, I tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs to the hall, which as usual was completely deserted. Mrs Lightfoot had been making pot pourri in the cavernous kitchen downstairs and a huge fresh blue and white bowl of it stood on the table in the centre of the room, filling the air with the soft, spicy scent of roses, geraniums and carnations.

  ‘Miss Redmayne,’ Mr Mercier’s voice made me jump guiltily before I recovered myself and slowly turned to face him. ‘How nice to see you here again.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said, feeling distinctly awkward.

  He took a step towards me and I lowered my eyes beneath the weight of his gaze, the confused anguish of his expression. ‘I thought you were never coming back,’ he whispered reaching out to take my hand, which I quickly withdrew before making a big drama out of putting my blue kid leather gloves back on. ‘What did I do?’

  I looked at him then and shook my head. ‘You didn’t do anything,’ I said in a low voice. ‘It was all my doing and I am sorry for it. I should never have behaved as I did, with such shocking impropriety and such thoughtlessness.’

  ‘Impropriety?’ He gave a harsh little laugh. ‘Now there’s something that I would never thought to hear you trouble yourself about.’

  I looked away. ‘I can’t blame you for being angry with me,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Don’t presume to know me though. All that you have ever seen of me is a side that I didn’t think I even possessed and, furthermore, attributes that belong entirely to your own imagination. You don’t really know me at all, Mr Mercier.’

  He stared at me then for a long moment then gave one small, cold, clipped nod of agreement. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps I don’t after all.’

  I inclined my head in farewell then passed as calmly as I could past him and out of the house, pausing only to bestow a coin on a ragged little urchin that had taken up a station on the worn front steps before closing the door behind me and turning left up Lamb Street.

  It was late afternoon and the sun was hanging low over the rooftops as I turned left again up Commercial Street and walked away from the market towards the police station. The street was busy as always, packed with men, women and children of all races and ages, either milling together in small groups or walking as purposefully as I did towards their destinations.

  As I walked, I wondered what the Brennans and their friends would make of the scene that unfolded around me as I made my way down the road past the shops, warehouses and tall forbidding houses, all with pitted, smoke blackened walls. Children hurtled everywhere underfoot, howling, screaming and laughing as they went and thumbing their noses rudely at the adults who threatened them with a clip around the ear. Miserable faced women stood outside the pubs, all dressed in plain dark dresses, their eyes fixed on their pints of beer as they swapped the latest salacious snippet of street gossip. Some of them had babies crying or sleeping in their arms and occasionally would glance down at the blanket wrapped little bundles with a look of exhausted resignation.

  Men, grimy, surly and smoking pipes, their caps worn low on their brows stood on the street corners or sat forlorn and forgotten on the front steps, reading tattered newspapers or greedily devouring pies wrapped in greasy brown paper. Cats and dogs ran free, snapping and snarling at the children, stealing scraps of pies and slinking into the dank, menacing looking alleyways.

  I smiled to myself as I drew closer to the police station, almost enjoying the cacophony of sounds, the barking, shouting, train whistles, crying and rumbling, that surrounded me and wondering how I could ever have thought it discordant and exhausting. Even the smell of the air was like champagne to me that day although really it stank as always of smoke, dung, rotten vegetables, meat pies and poverty. It was filthy, yes, and mostly unpleasant but at that moment, I don’t think I had ever felt more alive, more a part of the beating inner heart of the city that I had called home for all of my life.

  ‘Can I help you, Miss?’ The policeman behind the desk was young and fresh faced, which had the absurd effect of making me feel incredibly old even though he must have been a few years my senior. ‘Have you come to report a crime?’ His expression plainly showed that he thought I looked out of place in Whitechapel and had, in his opinion, probably come either to report being robbed or to make some sort of trouble.

  I smiled at him. ‘My name is Miss Alice Redmayne and I’ve come to see a young girl who lives here at the station,’ I said in a low voice, well aware of the lack of privacy in the lobby where groups of rough looking men and women loitered while waiting to be summoned for questioning. ‘I believe that her name is Cora?’

  He looked surprised and gave a nervous look back over his shoulder. ‘I believe that I know who you mean, Miss Redmayne’ he said cautiously, running his fingers nervously through his clipped short hair. ‘Although I can’t imagine what you’d want with her.’

  ‘It is a personal matter,’ I said, ‘pertaining to a piece of work she did for me a few months ago.’ Mr Mercier had told me a long time before that Cora worked as a seamstress so I trusted that this would be a believable ruse.

  He hesitated for a moment then gave a nod as if I had passed some arcane test. ‘I see,’ he said, with the smidgeon of a smile. ‘She lives upstairs as you no doubt already know and if she already knows you then I’m sure she won’t mind it if you go up to her.’ He lifted the top of the desk and came out to stand beside me. ‘If you go through that door there then follow the passage to the end, there is a set of stairs. The Lee family live at the very top.’ He smiled again, more warmly this time. ‘First door on the left.’

  I thanked him and after a moment’s hesitation made my way to the door that he indicated, pausing in the doorway to look just once back over my shoulder at the crowded, busy lobby where my place at the front desk had already been taken up by a blowsy, drunk looking young woman in a rusty looking black silk dress, the skirt hanging baggy and awkward at the back due to a lack of bustle cage. She was leaning across the counter and collaring the young policeman with a mittened hand, tightening her grip as he tried to struggle away. ‘Now you listen
here, you young bastard,’ she cooed in a distinct but slurred Irish accent as the door closed behind me. ‘I’m afearing for my life, so I am and what are you going to do about it?’

  I made my way slowly down the passage, which had damp peeling walls then, after a second’s hesitation, went up the staircase, which someone had long ago painted a cheerful apple green, all worn away now by thousands of footsteps. As I slowly ascended, I listened to the sounds that floated into the stairwells from behind closed doors - children’s laughter, a badly played violin, someone singing a popular music hall song. There was no noise from behind the Lee family’s door though, although I stood for a moment and listened, trying to guess what awaited me beyond the white painted wood before I made the decision to knock and have it all over and done with.

  There was a flurry of noise from within, a cough, the whisper of skirts and the sound of a chair being pushed back so that it rattled against wooden floorboards. ‘Who is it?’ a girlish voice called out and then when I did not dare reply, the door was opened a crack and I caught my first sight of her, small, pale and redheaded with wide hazel eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said as she looked at me and her eyes widened even more with recognition and what I knew to be fear.

  ‘Can I come in?’ I said cordially, putting out a hand to prevent her from closing the door in my face. ‘I think that we have much to talk about, don’t you?’

  She hesitated, her cheeks pink then gave a nod and opened the door enough for me to be able to enter the room before putting her head out to make sure that no one had seen then closing it carefully behind us. ‘My brothers and sister are all out,’ she said, going over to the stove where a kettle was whistling and steaming. ‘Would you like some tea? I have cake too, freshly made this morning.’

  ‘That would be most welcome,’ I said, standing awkwardly beside the scrubbed table and looking about myself with interest, taking in the cheerful red curtains at the window, the tangle of small boy boots against the wall, the cold pie on the table waiting to be put into the oven and the pile of books and newspapers that lay on one of the chairs beside the stove. ‘What a very comfortable home you have,’ I said appreciatively, sitting down.

  Cora smiled. ‘We do our best,’ she said, busying herself making tea then slicing pieces of moist cake. ‘I suppose that it must seem very strange to you that we should live somewhere like this and not a proper house.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, it’s not strange at all,’ I said. ‘I think it is wonderful.’ I glanced down at my hands then smiled up at her as she handed me my tea in a lightly cracked flower patterned cup. ‘It would be very dull indeed if we all lived in the exact same way.’ I took a sip of the tea, which was strong and sweet as people here seemed to like it.

  ‘I suppose that it would,’ Cora said quietly, putting the plate with cake slices on the table then pulling a chair over so that she could sit opposite me. ‘I’ve seen your house, of course,’ she said awkwardly, cradling her cup between her hands and staring down into the brown depths of her tea. ‘I hope that you don’t mind.’

  I shook my head, feeling a little startled. ‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ I said, taking another restorative sip of the tea. ‘I am glad that you came. I only wish that you had stayed long enough to let me speak to you.’

  She sighed and went pink at the ears. ‘I was afraid,’ she said with the ghost of a smile. ‘I saw the way your butler treated your last visitor and didn’t fancy receiving the same treatment or worse.’

  I frowned, trying to remember that morning so many weeks before. ‘Oh, Mrs Snaith!’ I cried. ‘Oh yes, she is a very tiresome woman but Swift would never have treated you in the same way. He really is incredibly kind despite his ferocious looks.’

  ‘Will you have some fruit cake, Miss Redmayne?’ Cora said, pushing the plate towards me with her fingertips, which I noticed were chewed and ragged. She gave a nod of satisfaction as I took a piece then picked up a child’s white linen dress that lay on the table and began to sew. ‘I’ve almost finished this piece of work,’ she said apologetically. ‘It’s due to be delivered tomorrow morning.’

  I watched her for a moment, admiring the way her thin fingers deftly plied the needle. ‘You sew beautifully,’ I said, a little wistfully. ‘I’ve always been so sadly ham fisted with a needle. My aunt used to despair of me when I was being taught embroidery as a child. She said that her pet spaniels could do better.’

  The other girl laughed. ‘Are they unusually clever animals then, Miss Redmayne?’ she asked. Her accent was Cockney, as might be expected, but had its own soft cadence that was very appealing.

  I laughed too. ‘Not particularly,’ I said, ‘and please, call me Alice. That is what my friends do.’

  She looked at me over her sewing. ‘Are we to be friends then?’ she asked softly.

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I believe that we are,’ I said before taking a bite from my own slice of cake. ‘This is delicious. Is there no end to your talents? I know that Mr Mercier always speaks very highly about you.’ I could feel my cheeks go pink as I said his name but this was as nothing to the closed and stony expression that spread across the other girl’s face at the mention of him.

  ‘Does he?’ she said, bending her head lower over her work. ‘That’s very kind of him, I’m sure.’

  I inclined my head to the side, even managed a smile. ‘He’s a kind man,’ I murmured.

  She looked up at me then. ‘I thought you were sweet on him,’ she said at last, pausing her needle.

  I felt oddly flustered beneath her gaze. ‘Oh no, not that,’ I said at first, putting the cake back on its plate and reaching for my teacup. ‘Never that.’ She leaned back in her chair, still looking at me in that steady way as I prattled nervously on. ‘I admit that I cared for him at first but it was doomed from the very start.’

  She laughed then. ‘It sounds just like a play,’ she said.

  ‘A very bad play,’ I agreed, laughing too. ‘He is terribly handsome isn’t he but it would never have worked out between us, I’m afraid.’

  She sighed and dropped her work on to her knees. ‘Did you kiss him?’ she asked in a whisper.

  I looked at her for a moment, gauging what would be the right answer or at least the one least likely to cause upset. ‘I did,’ I admitted at last. ‘Just once.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked down at the dress spread across her lap and fiddled a little with the collar, which was prettily embroidered with bluebells. ‘Was it nice?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said boldly, my cheeks hot with embarrassment. ‘It was very nice indeed but could only ever happen once. We were not at all suited really.’

  She frowned. ‘I suppose he is rather beneath you,’ she said flatly, picking up her needle again. ‘Socially, I mean.’

  I shook my head as she resumed her sewing. ‘No, it wasn’t down to anything like that. I am not concerned with such things and am fairly certain that my father wouldn’t mind either so long as I was in love with the person.’ I took a comforting sip of my tea. ‘The truth of the matter is that I realised that someone else would suit me better.’ I smiled, thinking of Patrick. ‘Has always suited me better in fact, only I was far too blind and wilful to see it.’

  A silence fell between us as I thought of Patrick and she quietly got on with her sewing, keeping her secrets to herself but no doubt bracing herself for what must inevitably be said. ‘You know why I am here of course,’ I said gently. ‘I know that it was you who put the envelope through my door.’ She gave me one frightened quick look from those huge eyes but carried on sewing as if I had not spoken. ‘I am not angry, Cora. I just want to know the truth. I just want to know how the envelope came into your possession.’

  She looked at me then, her eyes round with fear. ‘I can’t…’ she whispered. ‘I can’t tell anyone what happened and especially not you. Oh, please, Miss Alice, please don’t make me.’

  I leaned across the table and put my hand on her arm. ‘I must,’ I gently said. ‘I’m sorry but I must.’

/>   Her gaze faltered and dropped away. ‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ she said frantically. ‘I couldn’t bear that. Not on top of everything else.’ She looked at me again and I was astounded by the sheer panic in her expression. What on earth had been happening? What had I stumbled into? ‘You don’t know what it’s been like.’

  ’Then tell me,’ I said as calmly as I could manage. ‘Tell me everything and I will shoulder it with you.’

  What followed was a garbled tale, tearfully and falteringly told of her visit to the Whitechapel mortuary to look at the face of a murdered woman. ‘You can’t imagine what she looked like,’ she whispered with a shudder of sheer revulsion. ‘It was terrible and I wished that I hadn’t gone.’

  I stared at her as she spoke, hardly able to comprehend what I was hearing, that my sister’s pendant had fallen into the possession of a woman of the streets, a woman furthermore who had been murdered in the most savage and public manner. ‘How could such a thing be possible?’ I murmured, thinking that this tale made Beatrice seem even further away than ever. ‘How did she get the locket?’

  Cora looked away. ‘Well, as to that…’ She fell silent and twisted her hands in her lap. The dress had already been laid aside and I could tell that she wished that she had some way to occupy her hands as she spoke. ‘There is another girl, Emma, who knows more about that than I do.’

  ‘Emma…’ I murmured, remembering the thin girl with dyed brassy blonde hair who had rushed out of the sitting room at the Mission. ‘I thought that she must have something to do with it.’ I sighed. ‘I went to find her at her lodgings more than once but she was always one step ahead of me, it seems.’

  Cora nodded. ‘She lives above the Britannia on Commercial Street now,’ she said. ‘She’s safe there.’

  I stared at her. ‘Safe?’ I felt the cold hands of fear clutch at my heart. ‘What is there to be safe from?’ I thought of the Tabram woman who had had possession of my sister’s locket for such a short time and of the other women slaughtered on these streets. ‘Tell me.’ She shook her head, trembling now with fear. ‘This is about more than the necklace, isn’t it?’