‘Yes, well,’ Fernanda said sulkily, ‘I couldn’t say nothing in front of your mother, could I? And anyway, raking up all that White Feather business, that upset my old man. Had a right hard time with him about it when we got home.’
‘I said I was sorry,’ I heard Nancy say.
Aggie looked daggers at her sister, probably because she felt that Nan was being weak. ‘Yeah,’ she said to Fernanda, ‘didn’t have to make her cry, though, did you? Didn’t have to say you never wanted to see her again.’
‘But I don’t want to see her again,’ Fernanda Abrahams said, yet again very calmly. ‘You’ve warned Ed and me that someone out there might want to harm me, so we can take care of ourselves now. Nancy and I were never friends. We don’t need each other.’
This did make me angry. ‘Now look here,’ I said, ‘my sister didn’t have to invite you and your husband back here yesterday. Although I think your husband was rather grateful after what happened up at Claybury. Mrs Abrahams, Nancy got you back here specifically so that I could warn you about the danger you may be in. She didn’t want any harm to come to you.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ She was still infuriatingly unconcerned.
I wanted to ask her straight out whether her dislike of Nancy was connected to the colour of my sister’s skin. I knew that it probably was, but I just couldn’t get myself together to say it. In the end, I didn’t have to.
‘You know, Fernanda,’ Nancy said gently, ‘just because when you look at me you see everything that you hate about yourself, that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. As my brother said, I did what I did because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’
There was a long silence. Even Aggie shut up then. Aggie like me had tears in her eyes. Neither of us had ever seen Nan stand up for herself with anyone outside the family before. Again it was Nan who changed the atmosphere in that little room when she finally looked at me and said, ‘Frank, we must get on now. Mr Compton needs burying.’
Later, when Herbert Compton had finally been laid to rest, Nan said to me, ‘You know, of all of us it was Fernanda who was the least bothered about giving out white feathers. Not that I think she thought it was wrong at the time. Margaret I think did – not Fernanda, though. But the rest of us, though far from posh, came from much better-off families than she did. Just knowing she came from Canning Town told you that. I think she got in with us because she wanted to better herself. Which of course she did with Marie’s cousin Edward. Calculating is what Fernanda is. I never told anyone, but she always gave me a shudder.’
Mrs Darling had told me something not dissimilar to this when we’d first spoken about Fernanda. There was something about her that got people’s backs up.
Bella, one of the other old girls who lived with Hannah in Dot Harris’s house, had spent more time than she liked at Canning Town police station.
‘Some copper called Hartley,’ she said in her deep, smoke-dried voice. ‘Constable Hartley. He took me in. I said, “Get your sergeant here. I won’t talk to no one apart from him.” Mama! What a fuss! I said, “If you want me to talk about some man I may have entertained, then I need to talk to the organ-grinder, not the monkey!”’
Not a day under fifty, Bella is Italian on her father’s side and is therefore as expressive and expansive as those people do tend to be. I only know this, however, because Hannah has told me. Italian people don’t tend to draw attention to themselves these days.
I’d gone over to Hannah’s just to see her and had found my girl having tea with Bella in front of her range. The two women were talking about Neville Robinson and the fact that he had been one of Bella’s regulars. Neville had apparently been identified by his clothes, something Bella knew quite a bit about.
‘Tartan socks he always wore, I told Sergeant Raymond,’ she said. ‘Tartan socks, horrible dark green suspenders, and he always had a packet of du Maurier fags in his jacket – his old lady wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, can you imagine? There was always some saucy postcard he’d want me to look at too. Don’t know where he got those.’
Bella had known me for years, and so my presence and my questions were not any sort of problem for her.
‘’Course, it weren’t just his clothes what helped to identify him,’ Bella said as she picked a tiny piece of tobacco off her wrinkled red lips. ‘I always had to call him Nevvie. Weren’t hard to know what his real name was. Then when I told Sergeant Raymond that Nevvie liked to play at being a copper, well that clinched it!’
Neville Robinson had been a policeman in Islington in the First Lot. That, apparently, had left a lasting impression upon him, or rather on his intimate life.
‘Bella,’ I said as I took the cup of tea that Hannah gave me, ‘I know that Sergeant Raymond probably asked you this already, but did you see anyone about when Neville left the night that he died?’
‘What, on the street? No. Only girls out for business,’ Bella said.
‘Girls that you recognised?’
She shrugged. ‘I dunno, Frank. Girls!’ She shrugged again. ‘I was tired. Nevvie was hard work.’ She looked briefly over at Hannah, who said, ‘Bella, just tell him. It’s Frank! He knows what’s what.’
‘Nevvie hadn’t had anything intimate with his wife since just after they got married,’ Bella said. ‘She didn’t like it, apparently. But he did, ’cept he only liked it if he pretended he was arresting me. Like being in a fucking play, it was!’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘As I said, Frank, it took it out of me!’ Bella said. ‘I’m not as young as I was.’
‘Who is?’ Hannah put in gloomily.
‘Once we’d finished, I took Nevvie down to the front door and waved him off as he walked in the direction of the Barking Road,’ Bella said. ‘There were some girls about but I didn’t look at any of them because I was tired and wanted to get some kip. Anyway, the youngsters out on the street don’t talk to us old-timers.’
‘Were they all young girls out on the street then, Bella?’ I asked.
‘Well I can’t swear to it because I never looked at them, Frank. But they usually are just bits of kids, ain’t they?’
Hannah nodded in agreement.
‘No men?’
‘Not that I could see, although men would have been about at some time because of the girls,’ Bella said. She lit up a fag and leaned towards me. ‘Frank, Nevvie always come to me once a week, same time, same day. Told his wife he went to some retired coppers affair.’
‘So he was very predictable,’ I said.
‘Nevvie,’ Bella said, ‘was always the same. Hard work, punctual to the second and probably the most boring bleeder in the world.’
I looked through the open hatch at the small fire inside Hannah’s range and thought about all the other victims and how no one in any of those cases had ever seen anything. I included the case of Violet Dickens in this because although her husband was, according to my mate Sergeant Hill, to be sent to trial for her murder, I didn’t believe that Fred was or could be guilty. Somehow whoever was killing these people was blending in with whatever was around the victim. People saw this person, but because of where he was or what was happening, no one really saw him. He had to be safe, not threatening in any way, to achieve what I was beginning to feel was a kind of invisibility. In my head I made a list – coppers, nuns, women . . . A copper in Rathbone Street would have stuck out like a sore thumb. But a woman? Aggie had seen nothing wrong with the idea of a woman killing and mutilating bodies. But I still drew back from it. After all, why would a woman want to kill a group of old White Feather girls? All that had happened a long time ago and no women, to my knowledge, had been harmed by it. In fact most women at the time, as I recalled now, had rather approved of what the White Feather movement had done.
Chapter Eighteen
Ever since Dolly O’Dowd’s funeral, none of the so-called Ripper victims had had flowers with horrible messages placed upon their graves. However, as I looked through the small bunches o
f blooms that had been delivered for Neville Robinson, I was prepared. But there was nothing, and so we all, including Arthur once again now, set off with the hearse and Walter (God help me!) at the wheel of the car. When we arrived at Claybury, we found the coffin already in the corridor outside the mortuary, waiting to be taken away. Apparently, due to the outbreak of dysentery on some of the wards, Claybury had too many bodies of its own to store now. We could have taken off then, but strangely neither Esme, Mrs Darling or Cissy were anywhere to be seen.
‘Well it is a bit odd having the cortège run from a hospital,’ Nan said as she looked around anxiously. ‘You sure this was what Esme wanted, Frank?’
‘Yes.’
Walter, in the car, said, ‘Well it’s a good job it ain’t summer. Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, the corpse stinking like . . .’
‘Yes, thank you for that, Walter,’ I said. Walter doesn’t do well outside of West Ham. He believes, I think, that anywhere beyond the borough is hostile land. In reply he muttered something about being sorry for saying what he had in front of a lady. But neither Nan, Arthur or myself responded. Personally I was just grateful that he was sober.
‘I should have arranged to pick the ladies up from Mrs Darling’s house,’ I said as I scanned the area just beyond the front gates of the hospital. ‘I don’t even know how they were going to get here. I hope nothing’s wrong.’
But as the minutes began to mount up I became more and more alarmed. This wasn’t helped by the fact that people – staff and even, I think, a few patients too – began to stare at us. Walter tried to deal with this in his usual manner by taking out his hip flask. But I told him to put it away on pain of death. Sober, he’s not the best driver in the world; drunk, he’s bloody awful.
I had, I admit, just started to imagine what the coppers were going to find at Mrs Darling’s house when the lady herself and Esme Robinson came puffing up the long gravel path. Their faces, red from the effort of walking fast or running, were in stark contrast to their deep black mourning.
‘Oh, Mr Hancock, we are so sorry!’ Mrs Darling said as she came over and put a gloved hand on my arm. ‘We were waiting for Cissy! Waited and waited but the silly girl never turned up! Can’t think why!’
I was so relieved just to see them, I smiled. After all, Cissy, wherever she was, hadn’t been a White Feather girl and so was probably quite safe. I ushered the ladies into the car and then climbed up on to the box behind the horses with Nancy and Arthur.
Once we were moving, my sister said to me, ‘Esme Harper didn’t even acknowledge me then, you know, Frank.’
‘I expect,’ I said, ‘Mrs Robinson has other things on her mind.’
Neville Robinson’s wake took place at the house he’d shared with his wife on Hampton Road, Forest Gate. Although backing on to the railway line from Liverpool Street to Southend-on-Sea, the house was big and detached and had a considerable coach house to one side. Apparently it had belonged to Esme’s parents who, like their relatives the Martins, had made their money in the greengrocery trade. As I looked around what was a very fine building, I wondered about how much more money the family had taken with them when they went to Canada.
Mrs Darling, reading my thoughts, said, ‘Esme’s mother had means. Her people was in jewellery. Jews, some say, although not now of course.’
I thought about Neville as I sipped from the little glass of sherry Esme had given me. I thought about his strange sexual life and felt that I now knew why he had put up with his wife’s rejection of him. When Neville had met Esme, he had clearly landed on his feet.
There weren’t many at the wake, just really friends from Mrs Darling’s seances. No one, I noticed, came from Islington or any other police force. As usual all of my workers were invited, including Nancy, who was nevertheless very uncomfortable.
‘I remember coming here years ago,’ she said to me as we moved from the drawing room into what appeared to be a small library. ‘Esme and Rosemary were well off. I felt so bad here then.’
‘About not being well off?’ I said.
‘That and . . .’ She didn’t finish her sentence; she didn’t have to. I knew. ‘Frank, I don’t think I can stay,’ she continued. ‘I’d like to go home. I’ll catch a bus or . . .’
‘Someone needs to take the horses back soon,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Arthur to drive you home.’
‘Will you come back in the car?’
‘I should stay for a little bit longer,’ I said. ‘Just to make sure the ladies are all right. I’ll stick Walter in the car later and drive him home.’
‘You know, Esme still hasn’t spoken to me,’ Nan said sadly as I led her out of the library and towards the front door.
Not believing for a moment what I was saying, I said, ‘She probably doesn’t recognise you, love. Not now you’re a gorgeous working lady.’
Nan and Arthur left, and then about ten minutes later, another guest arrived. Esme Robinson answered the door. It was Cissy.
‘Oh, Esme,’ she said as she nervously twittered outside the front door. ‘I am so, so sorry. I was taken bad in the night and . . . Something I ate, I think. I am so very sorry.’
She did look pale, even for her. Esme Robinson took her friend into her arms, and stroking Cissy’s hair, she finally broke down and wept.
‘Oh well,’ Mrs Darling said as she looked at the scene unfolding on the doorstep, ‘at least the silly ha’p’orth didn’t go to the wrong place.’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘Here, Mr Hancock, did you have any joy with finding Fernanda Mascarenhas?’
I hadn’t had a chance to tell her. Now I did. Mrs Darling frowned. ‘That sounds like her,’ she said. ‘Does as she pleases, always has done. Nothing ever gets in the way of Fernanda’s life, so if your Nancy popped up to remind her husband about what she once was . . .’
‘Mr Abrahams was clearly not as forgiving of his wife as Neville Robinson,’ I said.
‘Well, if he’s had to live with Fernanda all these years, there’s few as can fault him for that,’ the medium said. ‘I’m glad you’ve found her and she’s safe, but Fernanda Mascarenhas always was and probably still is a right mare!’
Fernanda Mascarenhas clearly still evoked very strong opinions in all those that knew her. Not long after my conversation with Mrs Darling, we all left. Esme Robinson was going to stay in her own house from now on, and it soon became apparent that she needed some time by herself. Three times Mrs Darling asked her whether she was sure about this, and three times the bereaved woman said that she was. Just because it worked out that way, I was actually the last person to leave. As I bade her farewell in the elegant hall of her elegant house, Esme Robinson took one of my hands in hers and said, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hancock. You have been very, very kind.’
The drive back to the shop was long and bleak and depressing. Although Forest Gate itself had sustained little bomb damage, as we went further south, the scars of war began to multiply fast. First one, then two and then countless sites that had once been houses and shops reduced to piles of bricks and burnt mortar. Odd remnants of lives either gone or relocated: curtains, teapots, washing bowls scattered across the debris like lost thoughts. The closer we got towards home the more it all reminded me of Flanders, and as a consequence, the more I began to wonder how I was enduring it. Back in 1918, just before I left the continent, I remember looking around at the churned-up land, the flattened towns and villages, and knowing that the world would never, ever be the one I had known before the Great War. And I was quite right. Driving down from Forest Gate to Plaistow, I had that feeling all over again. What is being done now will never be undone. Buildings may be patched up or made over again, but what the sight of those devastated homes and churches will do to the people who loved them, I don’t know. I wonder sometimes whether everyone will not just end up like me. Mad and sad and really, at the core of my soul, quite alone.
Walter, asleep and snoring in the back of the car, didn’t see a thing. But then alcohol can be a very merciful
substance. Driving on, my thoughts shifted to the notion of what whoever might be killing the White Feather girls might be like. I had in mind a fellow not entirely unlike myself. Someone whose insides had been scarred beyond all recognition by the sights and sounds of the First World War. A chap who volunteered – unlike me, who was a silly kid at the time – for the sake of form and against his better judgement. A man, in short, bullied into destroying his own life. The more I thought about this theoretical man, the more I, in a sense, sympathised with him. And yet what I couldn’t shift out of my mind, the question I’d been puzzling over since the beginning of these killings, was why now? Why leave it twenty-three years? If the rage he felt against these women was so great as to make him literally rip their bodies apart, then surely it was no fiercer now than it had been just after the Great War ended?
Something clearly had to have happened. If the killer had suppressed his anger for all those years, then an event must have taken place that made or allowed that fury to come out. But what? I thought that maybe the killer had recently been released from either a prison or an asylum. Not that either of those things could cover all the possibilities that had to exist under the title of ‘Things Happening’ to people. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, sickness of all and any sort . . . The possibilities were endless and there was no chance that I could even start to think about them all. But I would, I decided, tell Sergeant Hill what my thoughts on the matter were about someone coming out of prison or an asylum. Even if he didn’t do anything, Sergeant Hill always listened.
For the moment, I took my mind quite away from the victims.
Chapter Nineteen
Everything was ready. She’d pulled the blackout curtains and put a freshly washed counterpane on the bed, and now she lit a candle on her bedside table. She could have had more than one really, she could easily afford it, but Esme didn’t need a lot of light to do what she was about to do. She’d already poured the filthy green liquid from the can in the shed into an empty Ribena bottle. There was still a faint smell around the bottle but she’d just have to put up with that.
Sure and Certain Death Page 17