by BK Duncan
May was puffing slightly by the time she’d groped her way up the last flight to the top of the house. She hoped that after such a climb her search wouldn’t prove as fruitless as PC Collier’s. He hadn’t even turned up the glass Clarice drunk her powders from. Although that was hardly surprising, it had probably been washed and put away before she took her last breath; people close to the docks were too used to having the police demand to search for stolen goods to leave anything around that might come under the heading of evidence of wrongdoing. Would such an act mean Mrs Harrison knew Clarice had been taking illegal drugs? May remembered the look on Anne Harrison’s face when she’d recounted Clarice’s impatience to be alone and thought she’d known - or guessed. Had lodger and landlady’s daughter indulged in the habit together? Stranger alliances had been formed. Why hadn’t Colonel Tindal asked if either of the women had taken any of the powders themselves - headache or no?
She twisted the handle and pushed open the door. A strong smell of carbolic hit her, and underneath it, the reek of vomit... and worse. She walked across to the small sash window and threw it up. Clarice had rented one large room with no water or cooking facilities. There was a battered and threadbare chair, lopsided wardrobe, mirrored dressing table, and washstand. The bed had been stripped and the mattress rolled up. May wondered how long it would be before Mrs Harrison moved someone else in. She remembered her latest read from the library, a gothic tale of a house where a priest had been walled up only for his spirit to make its presence felt in the brick and plasterwork. Would the new incumbent of this room be able to sense that Clarice’s short life had ended in terrible pain and indignity?
May pulled open the wardrobe door. If it wasn’t for the surroundings she’d have thought she’d wandered into a flapper’s boudoir. There wasn’t a dress that could be worn anywhere but to a nightclub. The sequins on a red shift winked at her as if in mockery. She had the uncharitable thought that maybe Anne Harrison had sorted through and taken what might fit her. In fact, she must’ve done, because there weren’t any shoes and, as a dancer, Clarice would have had a number of pairs.
May flicked through the hangers and stopped at a low-backed green dress. There were the ragged edges of a large stain on the skirt. It could have been coffee. Or a spilt cocktail. Or blood. Did cocaine give you nosebleeds? The dress was unwearable so had Clarice kept it for sentimental reasons? Perhaps it had been her lover’s favourite; she would’ve looked striking in it with her dark hair and slim figure. A deceased’s effects always hid more of the small secrets of life than they revealed.
Her head was beginning to reel a little in the foetid atmosphere. May perched on the edge of the lumpy easy chair. What was the truth of what had gone on in here after Clarice had closed the door on Anne Harrison? Had the young girl merely been fed up and reached for her usual pick-me-up only to absentmindedly tip two of the packets into her glass instead of one? Or had her mood been more one of despair and she’d intentionally taken the overdose? May looked over at the washstand. She could almost see Clarice standing there, picking up the jug she’d filled that morning from the tap in the yard and wrinkling her nose at the scum of dirt that settled on everything left to stand too long in Poplar. She’d have poured the water into the glass anyway and what...? Walked over to the window for one last glimpse of the ships in the docks that, had she had the money, could’ve taken her away from all this? Or did she sit in this chair, the glass on her floor by her side, and weep a little more over whatever injustice she felt had been dealt her?
But very shortly it wouldn’t have mattered whether the two packets had been by accident or design. Clarice’s body would have begun its death dance just the same. Dr Swan had said her arms and legs would’ve flailed around, she’d have had fits, and her heart would be trying to burst from her chest. Which would she have felt first? How long was it before the explosions in her head had started? Worse than anything she’d ever felt before, the only relief she’d be able to think to give herself was to try to get the pain on the outside. May remembered when she’d been in the mortuary and first discovered the bruises. She almost wished now that Colonel Tindal had been right and Clarice had been turning tricks and been beaten by a sailor; at least then she’d have known it couldn’t have gone on forever. Just when had her stomach tried to expel the poison, and her bowels loosen? Mrs Harrison hadn’t mentioned Clarice soiling herself - and she was undoubtedly the sort of woman who would - so maybe it hadn’t happened until Clarice got into bed. May hoped that humiliation wouldn’t have been the last emotion she’d felt on this earth. Not that it mattered to Clarice any longer; but it did to her.
May stood up and began to pace, keeping her gaze turned away from the bed. Why? In cases like these it was the question always left to haunt the living. One for which there would never be a satisfactory answer. She used to think that suicides always wrote a note but now knew that not everyone took the time or trouble. She’d searched the house high and low after her father had been fished out of the dock basin. Why had he done it? Why that night? He’d had over a year to reconcile himself to the shock of Albert’s death, terrible as it was, smashed to pieces in the troop train on his way home on leave. Cruel deaths always hit hardest. Her immediate response had been to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment who sent her to France to do what she could for other women’s brothers; his had been to bury his grief in fighting even more fervently for the Trade Union cause. Alice had been sent for the summer to Aunt Bella in Southend and was said to have barely reacted at all. And just when she was back at school in Poplar being cared for by the local mothers who rallied around in May’s absence was when her father had chosen to make a mockery of every hardship and sacrifice demanded by the Great War. The most pointless of the lot.
May swiped away a tear. She should be thinking about Clarice, not him. She brought her pacing to a halt in front of the dressing table. There was a set of green glass pots with lids, and a matching curved tray like the letter C for trinkets. In it was a matchbook, the cover printed with a brown and cream stylised picture of a couple dancing. Her heart squeezed at the thought that was how Clarice probably once saw herself. Amongst the jars of cold cream and emery boards was a cheap brush snarled with hair. May opened the slim drawer to slip it in and spare Mrs Gem the pathetic sight when she came to collect Clarice’s belongings. Lying on top of the stockings, scarves, and pink silk camiknickers was a pocket diary - the sort that could be picked up in Chrisp Street market for a couple of pennies. May flicked to the date of Clarice’s death. Billy was written in pencil with a childish hand. The person she had gone out that night to meet? She would mention the name in the newspaper announcement.
May took one last sad look around the room and left, the unwholesome streets of Poplar beckoning with every stair she descended as if they were a rose garden.
***
The offices of the East End News were in the High Street opposite Wade Place. The twice-daily newspaper was put together in a maze of offices, corridors, and cubicles but May arrived at the sub-editor’s desk with only having to backtrack once. Andy Taylor wasn’t in yet. A notoriously late riser he sailed as close to the deadline as he dared, somehow always managing to smooth out glitches and chaos to get the newspaper out on time. And he was a very good journalist who wasn’t afraid to risk making powerful enemies. He’d once filled the front page for a week with his coverage of landlords profiteering from the peace with their sky-high rents, criminal overcrowding, and heartless evictions. May liked him. He and her brother had been members of the same motorbike club. He’d been devastated when told - belatedly on his own return from France - what had happened to his friend. She’d gone for a drink with him once; Sally had meant well in engineering it but the memories they’d shared had only made her miss Albert even more. Not to mention Henry. To avoid Andy had been one of the reasons she had come in so early.
May took the announcement she’d typed from her bag and read it through
again for errors. The newspaper room was beginning to come alive around her; the clack of a typewriter or two, a few coarse shouts. The unmistakable smell of a bacon sandwich made her mouth water. She found a red pencil, inserted a line that the coroner’s office was particularly anxious for Billy - or anyone who knew of his whereabouts - to come forward, and then wrote a note at the bottom of the page to Andy requesting it should go into tonight’s newspaper and every subsequent edition until further notice. She popped it into the wire in-tray and hoped that he looked there first.
May was threading her way back to the glass panelled doors at the end of the room when her way was blocked by a pile of boxes with a pair of legs. She tried to skirt around this moving obstacle but whichever way she went, the man mirrored.
‘Hold on there. If you’d wanted to dance you only had to say so.’
The voice was Irish. But educated, not like the ones spilling out of the Resolute Tavern every Friday night.
‘I’m sorry. If you stand still then I’ll slip past.’
But he stood in her way again. This time on purpose. She couldn’t see his face behind the boxes but could feel him smiling.
‘I’m in a hurry, even if you’re not.’
‘No call to be snippy with me, now.’
He set his burden down on a trestle table to his right and May was confronted with a tweed jacket in the most livid check imaginable, and the broad features of a man close to her age with too long hair and the skin around his eyes so deeply crinkled he appeared to be squinting.
‘Jack Cahill’s the name. Junior reporter - for now anyway - on this fine organ.’ He held his hand out. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are...’
‘Busy.’
May made to continue walking but he sidestepped again.
‘Let’s just start again, shall we? I apologise for getting in your way, and I further apologise for detaining you on your urgent business. But I’m not sorry we’ve met. Yours is the friendliest face I’ve seen since I arrived from Dublin.’
‘You must have made a lot of enemies then.’ She noticed the telltale bulge of a spectacles’ case in his top pocket. Not only could he not see her properly, he was vain as well.
‘Come on, do me a favour. Be nice. It won’t cost you.’
May had to smile at that; however short a time he’d been off the boat, he’d picked up what mattered most to East Enders.
‘I really do have to be going.’
‘Live round here do you?’
Now he was being fresh. ‘I’m the Poplar Coroner’s Officer.’
He didn’t raise an eyebrow, not one. Or give her the shifty up and down look that was usually followed by expressing surprise at her sex.
‘Well done you, I say. Can’t be many as young able to hold down a responsible position like that.’
He was either genuinely impressed, or a very quick thinker. May suspected a little of both. She started for the door again. Jack fell in step beside her.
‘The reason I ask is that I’m on the look-out for somewhere to stay. So I can sleep closer to the job you might say. Bunking in Hampstead with an elderly relative at the moment.’ He hunched his shoulders and hobbled as if using a walking stick.
She wouldn’t laugh... she wouldn’t... but she did. He held the door open then jumped to her side again before putting his glasses on. They were horn-rimmed and made him look a little silly, like a boy playing dressing up. So she’d been wrong about the vanity; she really was having a hard time judging him. They were out on the street now. Was he going to accompany her all the way back if she didn’t answer? She’d soon see if he wasn’t just trying a line; Kitty Loader was an old friend of her mother’s and was looking for lodgers who weren’t going to up sticks without paying the rent whenever a ship docked wanting a crew.
‘I trust you’re unusual for a newspaperman and can be relied on?’
‘Cross my heart.’ And he did. ‘I give you my word which, after all, is sacred to any journalist who wants to be trusted on his own patch.’
‘On my own head be it, but I believe you. There a room going in Brabazon Street. It’s nothing fancy and it’s a bus ride or a good walk from here. Oh, and it’s in the same road as the Belvedere Fish Guano Company.’
He didn’t even flinch.
‘And the oakum works is nearby. Their smell is quite localised of course but when the wind’s in the right direction you’re also treated to the varnish and paint factories on Limehouse Cut.’
‘What’s good enough for the fine working man - and woman - of Poplar, is good enough for me. I can see you’re itching to rush off but perhaps we could meet after work for a drink and you could introduce me to the landlady and vouch that I’m not any old Irishman: I’m an Irishman with a job with prospects.’
‘That won’t be necessary. One look at that jacket and she’ll know you’re not about to run off to sea. Mrs Loader, 41 Brabazon Street. Fork right at the top of Chrisp Street into Morris Street, go by St Gabriel’s church, and it’s the second turning on the left. You can’t miss it. Follow your nose.’
‘I’ll say you sent me, shall I?’
‘You do that. Goodbye, Mr Cahill, it was certainly a different experience meeting you.’ And May nipped across the road in front of a slowing tram.
Chapter Six
Throughout the next week, whenever the street door banged May expected it to be Jack come to renew that offer a drink. But it wasn’t. She probably wouldn’t have gone anyway. She’d been working late. Clarice Gem’s death wasn’t the only one requiring investigation; there’d been four others since she’d first been admitted to the mortuary. Not that she was there any longer. Colonel Tindal had signed the warrants for the death certificate to be issued, and the body released for burial.
The rain was pattering on the window, adding to May’s mood of despondency. It was only eleven thirty and already she was wishing the day over. Not because it was Friday and she couldn’t wait for the weekend to start, but because of what she could no longer put off doing. Typing bored her at the best of times and her concentration levels weren’t helped when she had to reproduce words she’d rather not have in her head for even the shortest period of time. However often she was called upon to do it, her fingers still hovered over the keys before she typed in the age of a child under five.
The telephone rang. May welcomed the interruption and lunged across the desk to pick up the receiver. As she heard the voice on the other end, she wished she hadn’t. It was the secretary to the Home Office Pathologist with the news that he was off with influenza and the post-mortem on an ex-soldier found with a bullet in his stomach would not be performed by the date specified. May ended the call and wondered how irritated Colonel Tindal would be; he only requested the intervention of Bernard Spilsbury when he had no other choice and this delay would strengthen his opinion that medical men made unreliable witnesses. May suspected it was simply that the coroner hadn’t caught up with the recent improvements in forensic science but it could equally be that he disliked his theories being challenged in public by someone with greater knowledge. Well, there was nothing for it, she’d have to go through and tell him.
She knocked on door to the coroner’s chambers but forgot to wait for permission before entering. Colonel Tindal was in the act of slamming his desk drawer shut. May heard something clunk as it hit the back with the violence of the movement.
‘I will not tolerate insubordination, Miss Keaps. It is no longer 1918 and there are now plenty of young men out there well versed in obeying the simplest orders.’
May took a small step across the threshold. She could smell best brandy.
‘I’m very sorry, Colonel Tindal, I didn’t mean to be discourteous. I was simply anxious to get this sorted as quickly as possible.’
‘And you think five seconds of your time too precious to be s
pent standing waiting?’
‘Of course not. It is your time I am concerned with. I am having to reschedule an inquest,’ she elected not to tell him the reason why, ‘and wondered if you could see your way to making yourself available for another day and allowing me to book one then.’
‘I resent the implication that I am not engaged on the Lord Chancellor’s business every day of the week.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that, I know you are, it’s just that with all the commitments that keep you away from the courtroom it’s difficult for me to fit everything in when I only know for certain I can expect you on Tuesdays.’
‘Is it or is it not part of your duties to maintain the courtroom diary, Miss Keaps?’ He glared at her. ‘I will take your silence as affirmative and therefore suggest you occupy yourself in re-juggling my existing engagements instead of coming in here to criticise the fact I am not in permanent residence.’
May had to stare at the lines on the shorthand pad in her hand to stop from retorting that he was barely in four hours a week.
‘Or do you expect me to do that for you? Perhaps I should remind you that the London County Council does not pay the coroner to do the job of his officer. I preside over inquests. I decide what is, or is not, pertinent evidence. I direct juries. I attend official luncheons. Am called upon to give speeches. My name appears on the list to present prizes at all the Inns of Court. Are any of those things within your capabilities, Miss Keaps?’