Last Rights

by Barbara Nadel

  I waited around for a good hour, but then I had to go. As well as all the usual jobs that go with the business, I had to go out with a coffin up to Plashet Grove again. As gently as I could I was going to place it round the shell with a baby called William in it. The mother had been raving mad with grief when she’d come to the shop, which had been while I was out in Spitalfields. Doris had done her best, but I wasn’t expecting an easy time either now or at the funeral, which would hopefully take place some time in the next few days. Jerries permitting. We don’t charge for babies’ funerals, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hope for decent conditions and all the usual niceties that should go with such a solemn occasion.

  Velma, I imagined and hoped, would eventually return to the shop. If, that is, the police didn’t think she had been involved in Kevin’s death.

  As it happened, Velma gave a statement to the police supporting her mother. The coppers then asked her some questions and later on they let her go. But she didn’t come back to us. Fred Bryant told me later that some of the Dooleys, Kevin’s brothers and a sister-in-law, had been hanging around the station and shouted and swore at her as she left. So Velma just ran.

  I asked Fred why he didn’t stop her and bring her over to us, but he just said, ‘Moved too quick for me, she did.’

  ‘Well, you could’ve told the Dooleys to leave her alone at least!’ I said. ‘What were they swearing and shouting at a child for anyway? I know the old woman doesn’t like the girl and her mother but . . .’

  But Fred just shrugged, as he does when he doesn’t know what to say. The truth was, of course, that having got what they wanted out of Velma, the coppers weren’t concerned about what happened afterwards. If I hadn’t asked them to keep a look-out for her, I don’t know if they would have bothered at all. ‘There is a war on, you know,’ is what they say. But eventually Fred Bryant did say he’d look for her, which, for what it was worth, I think he did.

  Where Velma did run to, however, was a mystery to me for some time. But even though it bothered me and it fretted the Duchess something rotten, I accepted that there wasn’t much I could do about it for the time being. So I just waited to see what the police decided about Pearl and got on with my work for the next two days. At that point, to be honest, I was feeling too guilty about what I’d done to Pearl and Velma to want to think properly about it. In trying to get at the truth about what happened to Kevin, had I done nothing more than just bring trouble to people who may not deserve it? I didn’t know, so I didn’t think too much about it until Fred Bryant turned up with something that had once been a woman called Cherry Hazlitt.

  ‘It’s best the family don’t have her at home, not in that state,’ Fred said, as he and a couple of younger coppers put something large and bloodied into the shell I’d prepared for it.

  ‘There’s not many undertakers as can have corpses on the premises, which is why I recommended you to the mother,’ Fred went on. ‘Well, if I can put a bit of business your way . . .’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Fred.’

  If he was expecting some sort of backhander from this, he was going to be sorely disappointed. But, then, perhaps what he had in mind was more in the way of a discount on possible future services. After all, we none of us know what will happen to us or our loved ones, these days, and Fred has a very big family.

  ‘We charged that Pearl Dooley,’ Fred said, once the younger policemen had gone.

  ‘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.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Mr 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.’