by BK Duncan
Title Page
FOUL TRADE
BK Duncan
Publisher Information
This edition published in 2014 by
Oak Tree Press
www.oaktreepress.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2014 BK Duncan
The right of BK Duncan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone who has held my hand throughout my writing career. I truly wouldn’t have got this far without you. Particular thanks go to Paula Bouwer for providing a multitude of ledge lectures over the years and Steve Konya for picking me up and dusting me off when it really mattered. My Arvon cohort has always been there when I’ve called for help and from day one with this book I’ve been lucky enough to have Elaine Warden’s direction, Sarah Ramsay’s research leads, restorative lunches with Lesley Mace, and good advice from Helen Giltrow. Emma Hill was my sounding-board throughout. Andrea Welland, Helen Ringer, Jo Smith, Fen Oswin and Eric Edwards have all been remarkably forthcoming with practical and emotional support. A loud cheer goes to my agent, Caroline Montgomery of Rupert Crew Ltd. And a sustained shout to Val McDermid for being an invaluable guide and mentor.
Historical Note
The history that happened not so very long ago is often the least cherished. Although, fortunately, relatively easy to research. In the writing of this book I have called on contemporary inquest reports, newspaper articles, and medical journals; the memoirs of celebrated London coroners, and some excellent on-line resources. The most vibrant and inspiring material has always come from written accounts, and oral history collections: I have done my very best to honour the memories they left for us.
I have deliberately brought forward two events into 1920 that, in reality, didn’t occur until later: the introduction into the UK of the stage act set to be the finale of the show, and the documented exploits of BC (which I have also altered for purposes of story). Any other distortions of the truth are genuine mistakes.
If you’d like to follow some of the same research paths you can find route maps on my website: www.bkduncan.com. But if you want to immerse yourself in what it might have been like to have lived and worked on those streets then visit the Museum of London Docklands; I would live there if I could.
Dedication
For Oscar Kirk (1904 - 1980)
Quote
It is a coroner’s statutory duty to hold inquests when there is reasonable cause to suspect a violent or unnatural death; but a coroner cannot act unless he is informed.
John Troutbeck, Westminster and
South-Western London Coroner
(letter to The Times June 10th 1908).
Chapter One
March 1920
May pressed the carriage return. The inquest report was finished but she couldn’t let the coroner’s concluding remarks be the last words the parents read; the mother had been present at the accident and the implication that she had been careless would haunt her long after she had accepted the loss of her child.
May re-read the previous paragraph and then starting typing. After eighteen months of working with him she knew Colonel Tindal’s turn of phrase. If she chose her words carefully then he might not realise that he didn’t actually say them. In the absence of any medical evidence to the contrary, it is safe to assume that the amount of noxious smoke present would have rendered the baby dead before the flames reached him.
She pulled the piece of paper out of the machine and placed it on top of the rest. Now she had to get the coroner to sign it. She pushed her chair back and slid through the gap between the desk and the filing cabinets. Poplar Coroner’s Court had been purpose built to the latest designs but the architects certainly hadn’t given any thought to the comfort of those who worked there - with the exception of the coroner. He had an antechamber behind the courtroom but the caretaker faced a cliff of a staircase to his room in the eaves, and May had to roast in the summer and freeze in the winter in a tiny space beside a window that barely held back the fumes and noise from the High Street.
Her sturdy heels echoed in the short corridor to the coroner’s room. She hoped she hadn’t over-egged it. She’d often changed some of his stuffy sentences for something an ordinary person like her would understand, but adding something she was sure he wouldn’t have wanted to express in the first place was entirely different. If he noticed then he might demote her back to clerk. He’d appointed her temporary coroner’s officer when Mr Philby had signed up. Now the poor man would be forever under French soil, the position was hers to lose. It was taxing taking on both roles but she was holding her own; no one could say she didn’t work hard and hadn’t fully repaid Colonel Tindal’s faith in her. Well, faith was probably going a little too far; in truth she didn’t think her elevation had occupied his mind for longer than it took to realise he would be spared the effort of finding someone else. This pragmatism also went some way to explaining why he tolerated a woman in the role. So here she was: May Louise Keaps, a twenty-two-year-old, one-time cigarette factory worker, holding down a position of responsibility in the community. She’d never achieved top marks in night school at the commercial college but she had proved to be a natural coroner’s officer with a nose for the truth and the tenacity to seek it out.
She rapped on the oak panelled door and waited for permission to enter. Colonel Tindal was a stickler for protocol and liked to remind everyone of his status by letting at least two minutes pass before calling out ‘come’. It took slightly longer on this occasion. One look at his flushed face and May was reminded of the time she’d found him asleep at his desk after a Coroner’s Society luncheon. Except now it was only mid-morning. She placed the report on the blotter. Colonel Tindal uncapped his fountain pen and signed the end page without even asking whose inquest it had been. He pushed the slim sheaf of papers back at her and stood up.
‘I’ll be in my club if anyone wants me.’
She had got away with it: this time.
He was following her down the corridor when May heard the street door open and close. Colonel Tindal said something under his breath she thought it as well she didn’t catch. PC Collier, the constable assigned to the coroner’s court, was standing by her desk. Eager and fidgety, in a uniform she assumed had been issued with an assurance that he’d grow into it, he filled the small room with the distinctive odour of the glue factory. That meant he’d come from Poplar Hospital. Having been born and brought up within walking distance of the busiest docks in the world, May could always tell which street someone had just been in by the smells clinging to their clothes and hair.
PC Collier shot her a smile of greeting before adopting what she knew to be his most serious expression. But it couldn’t eclipse the puppyish excitement he always exhibited in her company. She might even have felt flattered by his crush if she thought he’d started shaving.
‘It has been my sad duty to accompany a deceased perso
n to the mortuary.’ He pulled his notebook from his pocket and flipped over the pages. ‘One Clarice Gem. I was called to her lodgings last night being Sunday 29th February in...’ He cast his eyes down quickly. ‘Robinhood Lane. The house of a Mrs...’ again a glance sneaked at his notes as if to read them openly might lead to an accusation of cheating. ‘Harrison. Dr Swan attended and had the body sent to the hospital first off out of consideration for the lateness of the hour and your caretaker’s gout. All the known facts point to a drugs overdose.’
May winced. He’d been doing so well up until then; using the sort of official language they both knew the coroner liked death to be couched in. A wheeze at her shoulder told her Colonel Tindal wasn’t going to let it go.
‘Whilst in my court I would prefer that flat-footed lesser servants of the Crown kept their ill-informed opinions to themselves and preserved their scant wits for the undoubted demands of keeping louts from stoning cats.’ He tugged out his fob watch and tapped the dial. ‘This had better not take long.’
May tried to restore PC Collier’s spirits with a raise of her eyebrows as she followed Colonel Tindal from the room.
***
The mortuary was out at the back, down a covered walkway. Tucked away so that the bereaved didn’t have to pass it when attending an inquest, it was devoid of the pomp of the mullioned windows, leaded lights and stone dressing of the main building. Totally functional in character it squatted in the bowels of the site behind head-height perimeter walls. Bodies were delivered via an entrance at the end of a passage off Cottage Street, the gruesome business of post-mortems taking place in the adjoining laboratory.
May held the door open for Colonel Tindal and then walked in behind him. The smell was always the first thing she noticed, even when it was free of occupants; the cleanliness had an edge to it that scratched at the back of her throat. She flicked the light switch and the bulbs in their wide white-glass shades flung out spots of brightness reminiscent of one of the better class of variety theatres. But there was going to be no curtain call for poor Clarice Gem. She was lying on the furthest of the marble plinths used for viewing, her modesty and a modicum of dignity preserved under a mortuary sheet. How May wished it could remain that way but she knew once the inquest process started Clarice would be thoroughly exposed until there were no secrets of her life and death left. May felt as though she should apologise in advance.
They walked down the short flight of steps and along the length of the room. Colonel Tindal made a guttural noise. The moment before the sheet was drawn back was the one time May felt a deep empathy for him. Facing sudden and traumatic death was something you never got used to; it reminded you too much of your own slender grip on mortality. And that of those you loved.
He cleared his throat again. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
She was young. Ridiculously young. Not much older than Alice.
‘Female. White. Seventeen or eighteen. Body fits with description in police report.’
May noted down his comments. The coroner’s viewing was nothing more than a formality but it was a legal requirement. Colonel Tindal turned his back and began his ritual of taking a pinch of snuff. Although it was hardly necessary in this case; there was no odour of blood or disease. May couldn’t help remembering the bodies that had been fished from the river or discovered in advanced states of decomposition. Clarice Gem was neat and tidy in death. May wondered if she’d been the sort of person to whom that would have mattered. Her own mother had admonished her from a very early age to not show her up in public; to do nothing unbecoming; never make a mess for others to clear up. Such a pointless waste of energy when it only ever ended up like this. But if Clarice had cared about such things then she wouldn’t have liked the fact that her hair - which was thick and curly - had become matted on one side. Presumably from how she’d been lying before her removal to the hospital. May reached out her hand and gently swept the tangles back. There was a bruise on the girl’s temple. Or rather a series of small ones that coalesced into a deep stain like that of squashed cherries.
‘Colonel Tindal, will you take a look at this?’
He had begun walking towards the door.
‘She might have been the victim of violence.’
‘When the decline of my faculties requires the intervention of my coroner’s officer, that will be the day I resign office.’
May had expected a rebuke but it was her duty to uncover everything she could about the circumstances of a death in order to help the coroner direct the jury. No. That was her job. Her duty was to ensure that no one’s death remained as enigmatic as their life. But Colonel Tindal did come back to stand beside her.
‘Contusions to the side of the head. You may note that down. This is clearly another in the long line we’ve had recently. Immoral girls who sell themselves on the streets should expect the manners of foreign sailors.’
May held her breath to stop from responding. Not every woman found dead in Poplar was a prostitute. And even if Clarice Gem had been, there was no excuse for dismissing what may have happened in her final hours so cavalierly. Colonel Tindal held values forged in the crucible of another age which included the unshakable belief that women received no better at the hands of men than they deserved. May felt a fleeting pang of pity for his wife, and thanked the Lord he had no daughters. Then she remembered his son and was sorry; the terrain on top of the moral high ground was always slippery and strewn with half-hidden rocks. She had no right to judge him, as he was in no place to judge Clarice Gem. Not yet anyway. He would in the courtroom, and then heaven help her reputation.
‘If there is nothing else to which you wish to draw my attention?’
May shook her head. She pulled the sheet back up.
‘Then you are to issue warrants summoning the family, and anyone else the police have already spoken to. Instruct Dr Swan to perform a post-mortem. I will hold the preliminary inquest the day after tomorrow. Make it morning.’
May noted down his instructions as he began to puff up the stairs.
‘Jury list three.’
The suicide list. When she had first taken on the coroner’s officer role, Colonel Tindal had handed her various rotas of names to be summonsed. Although not strictly in the spirit of the law it was perfectly acceptable practice; all inquests needed a jury and panels of local men standing by was the only way they could be held promptly. But list three. May knew it hadn’t been a random selection. Colonel Tindal liked to have a verdict reached that coincided with his own views. And he had evidently already made up his mind about what had happened to Clarice Gem. He must’ve taken more notice of PC Collier’s remark than she’d realised: drug taking was always an act of slow self-murder as far as he was concerned.
May watched his shoulders heaving as he held onto the stair rail and fought to catch his breath. She couldn’t help wondering if he ever saw his own face staring into the bottom of a brandy glass in the same way.
Chapter Two
The working day finally drew to a close. May slipped her arms into her coat and pulled on her green felt hat. It had been something of an extravagance at the time but had served her well. There was a bit of moth under the grosgrain band but it still looked reasonably smart. She held her gloves in her hand as she went around making sure all the lights were switched off. Alf Dent, the caretaker, was another beneficiary of Colonel Tindal’s lax approach to hiring and firing. The only duties the old man could be trusted to perform were to take care of the mortuary, keep it secure, and to receive bodies - although PC Collier had on more than one occasion to fetch him from the public bar of the White Horse in order to do just that. May locked the street door behind her, dropping the ring of keys into her messenger-boy style shoulder bag before heading up Cottage Street. It had been Alice’s seventeenth birthday at the weekend and they were going to pick out material for the dress that was to be her present.
May threw her a wave as she crossed the road. Alice detached herself, her broad grin showing sparkly-white teeth. She arrived at May’s side and linked arms.
‘You’ll never guess what happened today.’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Don’t be a spoilsport. Come on, guess.’
‘A lion escaped from one of the acts and ate the manager.’
Alice chortled. ‘That would’ve been such a scream. He’s such an old woman, coming down every hour and getting me to recite the programme from beginning to end to check I know what’s on. It’s a wonder I’ve any voice left.’
‘Now that would be remarkable; ever since you learned to talk I’ve never known you stop chattering.’
Alice punched her lightly on the arm. ‘But you’re nearly right. Except it’s about elephants. Stinky Sid came in at lunchtime-’
‘Don’t be unkind.’
‘Well he does smell.’
‘So would you if you had seven brothers and sisters and no running water.’
‘We manage to get to the bathhouse and he lives closer than we do.’