It wasn’t Arthur who walked up our stairs after Doris had gone but Inspector Richards.
‘Well, Mr Hancock,’ Inspector Richards put his trilby hat on his lap as he sat down in the chair at the side of my bed, ‘what can I say?’
There was an edge to his manner that I didn’t remember him having when he’d seen me up at Whipps Cross. Maybe I was only noticing it now that I was so much better. Or maybe it was new, and if it was, what lay behind it?
‘Mr Richards?’
‘I have succeeded in discovering the bodies of the Gypsy Lee family, Horatio Smith and some other character no one seems to want to talk about,’ Richards said. ‘They were in an area of the forest known as Woodford Wells. Apparently, the Gypsies had already found them.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The Gypsies found me there. That’s why I’m alive.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied. ‘Some Gypsy kid brought you in to Whipps Cross. The Gypsies didn’t try to hide the site from us. Didn’t exactly tell us about it either, though.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you in the hospital,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t think straight then and, anyway, I had no real idea about where I was at the time. Woodford Wells is news to me. But the Gypsies didn’t tell you?’
‘No, the poor bloody coppers had to work it out for theirselves yet again.’ He shook his head. ‘Gyppos – I’d already asked them to tell us what they knew and they’d shook their heads like they was all Mutt and Jeff. Then when the bodies were found, there are the selfsame Gyppos sitting around looking at them!’ His speech was much more London than it had been before. ‘Would you credit it?’
I explained, as far as I could, the Gypsies’ views about dead bodies and how greatly they feared them.
When I’d finished Richards said, ‘The Gyppos, they say, know nothing about what happened to the Lees and the others. I asked them about this Stojka fella you told me about and they all said they didn’t know what I was talking about.’
‘The unknown body is Stojka,’ I said. ‘The MPs were looking for him in the forest. Ask what’s left of Mansard’s group.’
‘Oh, I’ve already done that so I’m in no doubt that the body is Stojka’s. It was obvious the Gyppos were lying. But there are some other problems, Mr Hancock. I’d be telling an untruth to you if I said that there weren’t.’
He offered me a fag from his packet of Players Weights, which I took.
‘You see, you are the only person who’s said anything to us about this mysterious Nail of Christ article. You’re also one of only two people who survived whatever happened up there in the forest.’
‘Yes, Han—Miss Jacobs survived,’ I said.
‘Yes, and Miss Jacobs has told us how brave you were, Mr Hancock, in trying to stop Mansard and his men arresting Stojka. How you prevented the MPs keeping the Gypsies, who were hiding him, at bay. She didn’t put it like that, of course.’ He leaned towards me and said something that came as a shock to me, ‘Mansard was doing his duty. Stojka was a Nazi.’
‘No! No, he can’t have been! That’s not right.’
‘Sergeant Williams came and told you about Martin Stojka and why he was wanted by the authorities.’
‘Sergeant Williams was killed by Captain Mansard. That other sergeant of Mansard’s told me. Williams found out that Mansard and his sergeant were Nazi sympathisers and went to see Lily Lee to tell her to be on her guard and not let on about Stojka’s whereabouts to Mansard. Williams was going to come to you, the police, but before he could do that Mansard and his men killed Williams and Lily to silence them. Mansard put the knife into Williams’s dead hand to make it look as if he had killed Lily Lee.’
‘Did he? Dr Craig – I believe you’ve met him – has given his opinion that the killer of Lily Lee had to be Williams. He wanted relations with the girl, she wouldn’t have it, so he killed her. Then he killed himself.’
‘No . . . No. Dr Craig needs to look at his evidence again and in the light of what that sergeant told me.’
Richards shrugged. ‘Maybe he does, although the doctor is certain Williams killed the girl, Mr Hancock. That’s what’s written down in black and white for all to see. Dr Craig even thinks that Captain Mansard was trying to protect Sergeant Williams – or, rather, his memory. The captain himself seemed to think, or wanted to think, that one of the Gypsies had killed the girl.’
I was feeling shaky now, so as soon as I’d put out the fag he had given me, I immediately took one of my own. The story of what had happened in the forest, what had been said and believed, was changing in front of my eyes. It made me wonder whether I had got all my facts right, whether I had had any handle on what had been real and what hadn’t.
‘Mr Hancock, I think you’ve been taken in by these Gyppos,’ Richards said. ‘Miss Jacobs has told us there was a lot of talk about some superstitious rubbish between you and the Gypsies. She says you weren’t completely took in, in her opinion, and to your credit. She saw Stojka attack Mansard and one of his boys shoot the Gypsy in his defence.’
‘Mansard’s boys shot the Lees,’ I said. That absolutely was and had to be true. ‘They executed those people!’
Richards was beginning to give me the kind of look people gave our Stella just after her house was bombed out. ‘No, no, Mr Hancock,’ he said. ‘The Gypsies were threatening the Military Police. There was no execution. Dr Craig has inspected the site and the bodies, and he is convinced that the Gypsies were killed with just cause. The MPs had no choice.’
My heart was pounding. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I said. ‘The Gypsies were unarmed! How could they have hurt anyone? I was there! Is Dr Craig mad or—’
‘Mr Hancock, Military Policemen have been murdered!’
‘Gypsies have been murdered!’
‘How many more times?’ he shouted. ‘The Gypsies were hiding a Nazi! These people killed our boys – some of them in your car!’
‘Does Miss Jacobs, who was in the car, after all, say that the Gypsies killed the MPs?’ I asked. Hannah had asked me not to talk about any Gypsies going out to pursue or intercept my car when I was back in the hospital. I wondered, with good reason, what she was saying about it now.
Richards was brought up short by this, or so it seemed. He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. Then he said, ‘Well, no, no, she didn’t say anything about Gypsies. She ran away before anything happened. I think she knows it was wrong now.’
‘Why?’
‘The MPs were only trying to help her.’
‘No, they weren’t,’ I said. ‘I told you, they took her captive!’
‘We believe they took your car to go and get help for you.’
‘They tried to kill me. Miss Jacobs knows. Ask her!’
He didn’t answer. Whatever Hannah may or may not have said, I knew she had to have told the coppers she’d been taken against her will by the MPs.
‘They shot me, those “boys”,’ I said. ‘And that is something that can’t be argued with.’
‘Can’t it?’
I stopped breathing temporarily. Now I was frightened. I knew what he was going to say next and it terrified me.
‘You aren’t always aware of what’s going on, Mr Hancock,’ Inspector Richards said. ‘Not that I’m criticising. I was in the Great War myself and I saw a lot of men go through . . . what you go through. It’s . . .’
‘I’m not mad, Inspector Richards,’ I said, as calmly as I could. I was gazing at the statues of the saints on top of the tallboy in the corner of the room now to distract myself from the copper.
‘No one is saying you are, Mr Hancock,’ he replied. ‘But you know that accusing our boys of anything treasonable is a serious business. We have to be very sure.’
‘And you’re not sure, are you?’
I heard him sigh. ‘Mr Hancock, I am only anticipating what others will say. Your story, you have to admit, is fantastic, and that you and Miss Jacobs are telling it, well . . .’
A madman and a whore. No it didn’t
look promising, and in our new world of censorship in the name of morale, I could see his point. After all, how reporters on the Daily Sketch would tell the country about Nazis in the King’s armed forces I didn’t know. But the point, of course, was that they wouldn’t, because they, like the rest of the country, would never know.
‘Don’t you want to find out who killed the four MPs?’ I asked.
‘Well, of course I do,’ Richards said. ‘I’m not giving up on those Gypsies, you know.’
‘But why would they kill the MPs, eh?’
‘Because, like it or not, we have to accept that one of the MPs, Williams, killed the Lee family’s daughter. And, anyway, we’ve witnesses saw some Gypsies in Whipps Cross Road.’
‘Yes, but Hannah said she didn’t see any Gypsies on Whipps Cross Road, didn’t she? And she was in my hearse.’
‘Well, either she’s lying or the Gypsies came along after she had gone. I’d ask her again if I knew where she was.’
Now I looked at him.
‘Miss Jacobs left her digs in Mrs Harris’s house in Canning Town yesterday afternoon,’ Richards said. ‘According to Mrs Harris, she left no forwarding address. We’re searching for her now.’
I felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Why would I lie?’ he replied. ‘She paid all her rent up to yesterday, then left. She took a suitcase with her. She didn’t tell Mrs Harris where she was going, except that she was staying outside London.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘No, that’s impossible.’ Hannah didn’t know anyone outside London. Beyond Dot Harris and the other ‘old girls’, as she calls them, in the house in Rathbone Street there was only myself and her family. But she didn’t get on with her parents so she couldn’t be with them. I was panicking now and couldn’t think straight to imagine where she might be.
‘You’ll have to give us a proper statement soon, you know, Mr Hancock, especially if Miss Jacobs doesn’t reappear, so I’d think carefully about what really happened that night,’ Richards said, as he rose to leave. ‘We all need to pull together for the good of the war effort, don’t we? Can’t have no frightening stories – might make people nervy. Anyway, I’d best let you rest now.’
He left, and I stared into the fire once again. I suppose I was looking for comfort. But I didn’t find any. Hannah had gone and I didn’t know why, not for certain. Gypsies had to be involved somewhere because she’d been so insistent that I fail to mention them to the coppers. They’d had a hand in the deaths of Sarge and the others, but not for the reason that Richards thought. The Gypsies were not Nazi sympathisers – that was ridiculous. Unless I was wrong. I did, I admit, begin to wonder about what I had seen and done in the forest. I know I don’t always see and hear what others do, yet the fact remained that Sarge and the others had talked about that Nail, they had shot me and taken my motor car. However much Richards wanted the ‘boys’ to be innocent, they weren’t. And as for making people ‘nervy’, surely if Nazis were active either in London or on the coast people needed to know. Well, I thought so anyway, even though I knew that the government view was probably quite different. What people know, even now, is laughable. It’s just like the first lot in that respect. ‘Careless talk costs lives’ but so does no talk at all. Not talking means not knowing and that can be very dangerous.
For a while I racked my brains for any friends Hannah might have that I knew little about. But there was only the magician, David Green, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be with him. But, then, even if I had known where she was I couldn’t have gone after her in my condition. Every movement still gave me pain and I was very weak.
There was a knock then, and Arthur popped his smiling head around my door.
Chapter Eighteen
Inspector Richards didn’t hang about. The following morning he was back on my doorstep, demanding that statement of his. He wasn’t unpleasant about it but Doris, who’d told me how impatient he’d been to see me on the previous day, wasn’t inclined to hurry him into the parlour, which was where I’d chosen to be that morning. With Nan and Walter’s help I’d got out of bed and was now talking to Arthur about his new temporary job as a fully fledged undertaker.
‘The important thing,’ I said to him, ‘is to maintain the dignity of the occasion. If you slip over or fall into a hole left by an incendiary, then that doesn’t matter and you just carry on as if nothing has happened. Letting go of the coffin, however, war or no war, is very bad. The deceased and his or her family don’t deserve that, so you watch what the bearers are doing and if they look as though they might be in trouble, you go and help them yourself.’
‘Yes, Mr H.’ Arthur has always looked like a stick of liquorice in his mourning suit and topper. But in the past, of course, he’s always been at the back of the cortège. Now he was about to be right at the front, all six foot God knows what of him, looking like an overgrown, badly dressed infant. Spots and boils are not what you usually associate with a funeral director but that was what the funeral of Queenie Ramm was going to be treated to and that was that. Or so I thought.
Aggie had slipped into the parlour without my noticing her. When I did, though, unusually, she was smiling. She also seemed to have something hidden behind her back.
‘Well, Arthur,’ she said, ‘what a day, eh? Conducting a funeral and you not even twenty-one.’
I saw the boy’s face whiten.
‘Younger than you were, Frank,’ she said to me, and she was right. I hadn’t conducted a funeral until I was into my thirties, when Dad’s malaria got too bad for him to carry on. ‘And so,’ Aggie continued, ‘because we love you and because my brother is a very superstitious man, I’ve come to give you this.’
She whipped one of her hands around and held up a long cane, topped with an ornate, familiar silver handle.
‘It’s your wand,’ she said, as she pressed it into my hands. ‘Well, it’s the top of it. Nan gave it to me. She said you was so upset and wondered if I knew anyone as could help. There’s this bloke down the Abbey Arms, owes me a favour . . .’
I grinned.
‘So give it over to Arthur, then,’ Aggie said, in the sharp way she’s always had with her. And then, smiling at the boy, she said, ‘You’ll be all right, Arthur, now you’ve got the wand.’
‘I know,’ he said, and in spite of his lack of belief in superstition I felt he meant it. Some things, whether you believe in their ‘power’ or not, are just important.
I gave Arthur my wand, then waved him off to his first shot at the ‘top job’. ‘I won’t let you down, Mr H,’ he said, as he left.
Once I was alone with my sister, I gave her a cuddle. ‘So, who’s this fella down the pub owes you a favour, then, Ag?’ I asked. I was curious to know who had fitted the handle of the old wand, which itself had been damaged in the blast, so well on to the new cane.
‘Someone with a girlfriend who has a sweet tooth,’ Aggie replied, with a wink. Working as she does at Tate & Lyle’s sugar factory, I knew not to ask any more. All sorts of deals are done in pubs, always have been, and our local is one of the only places Aggie can get any sort of relief from her long shifts at Tate’s and her not-always-happy time at home with the rest of us. She’s still quite young and pretty, in spite of the shortages we have to put up with – as well as the hard conditions down at Tate’s – and I’ve lived in hope for some time that she might meet a nice bloke who’d really look after her. But there’s been no luck on that score so far.
‘Frank.’ She came and sat down beside me, looking serious.
‘Yes?’
‘Look, I know you’re still not well enough to do much but . . . there’s a horrible smell out the back, in the room where . . . Frank, Lily Lee’s still down there and I don’t know what to do with her.’
My jaw dropped. I’d forgotten all about her. There had been so much death and I’d been so ill that she had entirely slipped my mind.
‘Oh, Christ, she needs burying,’ I said. ‘But
her family . . .’
‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ Aggie said. ‘From what you’ve told us they’re dead, aren’t they?’
They were mostly, although I knew that when the parents had disappeared into the forest to escape from the MPs and aid Martin Stojka they had left their young daughters at the Eagle Pond camp. Lily still had family of sorts, and there was her sister Rosie’s grave, which could be reopened to take her.
‘Ag, are you doing anything?’ I asked. ‘Because if you’re not could you go and see Ernie Sutton and tell him I need to talk to him? I’d do it myself but . . .’
‘Oh, don’t be daft, the telephones are down. Of course I’ll do it,’ Aggie said. ‘Can’t have that stink, Frank, not for much longer.’
She stood as if to go. ‘There’s that copper of yours downstairs with Doris, the one who says he’s from Scotland Yard,’ she said. ‘Doris has kept him out so you could speak to Arthur, but I suppose you’d better talk to him now. He’s been downstairs so long he’s even started chatting to Stella.’
‘Yes . . .’ She’d talked of Richards oddly, I thought. ‘What do you mean he “says he’s from Scotland Yard”, Ag? He is from Scotland Yard.’
‘Yeah, I know, but he gives me the heebie-jeebies. I complained to Sergeant Hill at our station about him when you was in hospital. I was afraid all his questions’d make you ill, and they did. Anyway, I just don’t like him.’
‘What? Because he’s a proper copper? Not a sort of a mate like Sergeant Hill?’
‘Some mate!’ She laughed. Aggie has more than a few friends who buy and sell things they shouldn’t. ‘But you’re right – I probably don’t like Richards ’cause he’s “proper”.’
But she still seemed puzzled. I thought at the time that maybe she was angry with Richards – perhaps because he’d made a pass at her. A lot of blokes do and she’s rarely flattered by it. But when she showed him up, there didn’t seem to be any atmosphere between them so I just got on and gave him my account of what had happened in the forest again, this time in a formal statement. He told me that I could have the Lancia back the next day. I was pleased, but I’d already decided that, car or no car, I was going to get out of the shop sooner than that. I couldn’t take another night in that Anderson – it was a flipping leaky box just waiting to become my coffin. I hoped that Ernie Sutton would do as I was going to ask him.
After the Mourning Page 20