by BK Duncan
‘What’s changed?’
‘See him over there?’ Liza gestured in the direction of the man in the battered trilby May had seen cutting a deal. ‘He ain’t been here five minutes. Word is he was moved in from Whitechapel. Most of the old faces, their mothers would be hard pushed to recognise.’
‘Beaten up, you mean?’
‘Before maybe. But that ain’t the half of it. They was all topped.’
‘That must be street rumour, Liza, because we haven’t had any inquests recently fitting that description.’
‘That’s because no one’s found what’s left of them. Dumped at sea, like as not.’
‘Do you know any of the names of those involved?’
‘More than my life’s worth to tell you if I did. Don’t like to ask but could you see your way to standing me a bun or summat? I’m starving.’
May felt her cheeks flush. She should have offered in the first place. She signalled to the waitress who shuffled over with bad grace, and asked for two toasted teacakes and another pot of tea. While they waited Liza smoked and gazed past May’s shoulder. Something she saw made her tighten her lips until they were fringed with white. May swivelled in her seat to look. A man with broad shoulders was engaging the second of the dope-runners in conversation. They both laughed at something and then the new arrival turned and stared straight at the café window. Liza jumped back in her chair as if she’d been scalded.
‘Bleeding hell. Now I’m for it. Think he saw me? Jesus, I hope he don’t know who you are.’
But he did. It was the man from Miles Elliott’s inquest. Richard someone-or-other. The brother of the ex-fiancée. May saw the shadow of an expression cross his face before he looked away. What was he doing here? He lived in Epping and as far as she remembered had said he’d never visited Limehouse. But here he was as comfortable as if he knew his companion of old, and the dope-runner was exhibiting a deference which she thought due to more than being in the company of a respectable suit. Could this Richard be in the business himself? To cover his own involvement would be a good reason to deny in court any knowledge about Miles taking drugs. What if it had gone further and he had been the supplier? It would explain his acquaintance with Miles. And his anger when he’d been talking about the broken engagement. He would’ve been torn between wanting his sister’s happiness and the social shame of having a hop-head as a brother-in-law. What if Miles had also felt a twinge of divided loyalty and had taken the decision to start buying his drugs elsewhere? That would all add up to a pretty solid motive for revenge - an inappropriate relationship; a not inconsiderable drop in income given the amount of opium Dr Swan said Miles was smoking; and a heart-broken sister at the end of it all.
May leaned across the table and grabbed Liza’s hand. ‘What do you know about him? It’s very important. I won’t say you told me, I promise. You don’t have to come to court. I’ll say I just found it out on the street. Please, this could be what I need to save my job.’
Liza snatched away from her grasp. ‘You ain’t got the foggiest, have you? Coming down here and getting yourself up to pass as one of us like it’s some sort of game?’
She bent her head over the table and lifted her hair from the back of her neck. May was appalled to see a livid scar, thin and clean as if it had been done with a razor.
‘That’s what I got the last time I got fingered and they thought I was squealing.’
‘From him?’
‘Him, them, they’re all the same. There ain’t no one ’round here not in the pay or the know, or on the nod, of the drug gangs - word will be out you was here before your feet hit Pennyfields. And your beefy bloke’s down here so regular he has to be in the thick. The geezer who keeps the dope-runners on their toes - putting the willies up them so they don’t go snorting all the profits - he did this. On account of nothing. He runs some of the girls down Ratcliffe Highway. Acts like that gives him rights to go having any of us he fancies without paying. Well I wasn’t having none of that, so I gave him the sharp edge of my tongue. And he gave it right on back, only in steel. But where it won’t show of course. Reckon he thought he didn’t want to be damaging goods he might one day move in to own himself.’
May didn’t know what to say. She had never felt so ashamed. To even consider her need to impress Braxton Clarke worth the trade. Liza had finished her teacake and was on her feet.
‘Don’t take on so. Weren’t you it happened to and I’ve had worse. Least it didn’t hurt none.’
May fumbled in her shoulder bag for her purse. She reached out to take Liza’s hand again but this time pressed a florin into her palm. Sunday’s leftovers would just have to stretch a little further. ‘For your boy’s medicine.’
‘Ta very much. I ain’t too proud to take what’s offered. Never get far in my game elsewise. But I’ll not see you getting nothing in return. You want to know what goes on down here? Man keeps that dope-runner supplied has snow parties for the posh what like to come to Limehouse to slum it. What’s the date next Friday?’
‘The sixteenth, I think.’
‘That’ll be it then: third of every month. House two down from the Chink herbalist on the Causeway. Top floor. Dress smart. Go early. Before supper’s best. Say Sadie sent you; she won’t mind.’
May squeezed Liza’s fingers then watched her leave. She’d sit here a while longer so no one on the street would put them together. For all the big talk of the slicing not hurting, Liza’s animal fear when she’d thought she’d been spotted had been chilling.
***
‘... I don’t know what to do, Sal.’
May was perched on a hard chair in her friend’s workroom while she fitted a floaty dress on a mannequin.
‘If she’s on the game then she knows well enough what to expect.’
May had never known her friend to be so intolerant. It came to her that, as she held marriage in such high esteem, Sally might in some way deem prostitutes responsible for so many turning out to be less than happy ever after.
‘But if something does happen to her then it will be my fault.’
‘If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water. Give up on your feeling you are responsible for all life’s ills; God does not think you so important.’
Her voice had a hard edge to it and May watched as she stabbed a pin viciously into the material. She realised that Sally was probably angry at her. Because everything she’d said had centred on her guilt and Sally carried so much for being a crippled spinster that she despised the emotion. Or thought she cornered the market in it.
May decided to approach the situation from a different angle. One more suited to the role of coroner’s officer. She might be focusing her energies in the wrong direction with the drugs connection but she couldn’t be sure until she’d eliminated all the other possibilities.
‘I’m no nearer finding the person who murdered Miles Elliott - and it seems pretty clear now that manslaughter’s out of the question - but maybe if I concentrated on why someone would kill another then it might give me some clues. You’ve got such a sharp mind, Sal, I’d value your opinion...’
She only received a grunt in response but thought that was the most she was going to get given the mood Sally was in.
‘First up, there’s greed. But, as far as I can work out, Miles had nothing anyone could profit from. What little he earned must’ve been spent on opium. He would’ve inherited the business of course but his father isn’t so old and, anyway, it would surely only be a partner who could gain from the both of them being dead. And I know there wasn’t one of those.’
Except there could’ve been a partner in the drug smuggling business if Miles had been involved in doing such a thing. But she was in danger of climbing back on her hobbyhorse again.
‘According to lurid accounts in the newspapers, jealousy’s always a st
rong motive - a love affair gone wrong or a rival on the scene. I don’t see that in this case; Miles was engaged but it was broken off ages ago. Besides, his fiancée’s sick with nerves and seeking a health cure in Italy. It seems very unlikely she’d fill him full of cocaine in any event. Her brother, on the other hand, might. So maybe I’ll keep that one on the list.’
This was really helping. Voicing her thoughts was sorting out the jumble in her head, and distracting her from how she might’ve compromised Liza. But Richard Weatherby had been the man they’d seen in the street; she needed to move on again fast.
‘Getting rid of someone because they are an inconvenience or seen as a danger in some way-’
‘Enough!’ Sally’s eyes were poisonous. ‘Death is not some puzzle set out for you to solve so you can feel clever. You want to know why people slaughter? How they can treat another as if they are no more than animals whose blood must be let to purify a world they are deemed too filthy to inhabit?’
May couldn’t stop herself from cowering at the venom in Sally’s words.
‘I’ll tell you... Because from envy grows hate... Because a powerful man sees what he can do not what he should not do... Because a weapon honed on the whetstone of right itches in the hand... Because God can be made to speak the words most sweet to the ear...’
She had started stabbing pins into the mannequin again.
‘Whole villages - blind bubbas, red-cheeked babies, beautiful girls on their wedding night - can you give me a good reason why they are now dust in the rich Russian earth?’
The pogroms. Sally’s pain and anger made May think of Albert and Henry, and the countless other sons, brothers, lovers and husbands who now forever lay beside them. Perhaps, in the end, it came down to something as simple to name - and impossible to understand - as evil.
‘So, are you going to that opium orgy of yours or not?’
That Sally wanted to change the subject was clear enough, but May wasn’t nearly so practised at turning away from raw emotion and had to close her eyes for a moment to dispel the images in her head.
‘I think so. There’ll be people there who’ve never heard of the East End code of keeping your nose clean and other people’s secrets to yourself. Except I’ve nothing suitable to blend in. Liza said to dress smart.’
Sally snorted. ‘And how would she know what that was?’
‘Don’t be so unkind, Sal. She’s just a woman fallen on hard times. We all have to find some way to eat - and she’s got a little boy.’
‘That he should ever learn the things she does to put bread in his mouth. The Poor Law Guardians exist for a reason and it is to them she should be going, not to the sailors in the docks.’
May decided to let it rest. ‘Do you think, if I promise to take care of it, I could borrow something?’
‘You mean a dress that has made my fingers bleed for a rich client who herself will only wear it once before announcing it not à la mode?’
She shouldn’t have asked; Sally was getting more irritated with her by the second.
‘I’ll leave you to get on. I’m sorry I interrupted your work but I had to tell someone what happened this morning.’
‘Go to the cupboard over there and fetch out the purple evening dress with the black beads. She is about the same size. There is a cocktail bag to match; the sort you wear on your wrist. That will be in the box on the shelf above. Underwear you will have to find for yourself. Or go without. The lines will be better that way. You can change behind the screen. I want to see you are doing it justice before I agree to it going out of here.’
May wanted to kiss her but, given her prickly stiffness, didn’t dare. She hung the dress on the back of the screen and stripped off. It felt strange to be standing in her camiknickers and stockings about to appropriate another woman’s vision of loveliness. The dress fell down over her body under the weight of the beaded skirt as she slipped it over her head, the silk under-bodice caressing her breasts and hips.
‘Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.’
Standing in the centre of the room, May felt, for the first time in Sally’s company, embarrassed. As if she was exposing an inner self she’d much rather remained hidden. Her friend eyed her up and down, gave a little suck of her teeth, then made her turn slowly on the spot.
‘You’ll do. There’s a mirror over there; take a look at yourself.’
Her reflection was beyond what she could’ve possibly imagined. She was draped in an asymmetric sheath of glistening purple, the low v-shaped neckline revealing a glimpse of the black silk bodice. A swathe of material from one shoulder to the opposite hip was held at the waist by a clip to create a fabric waterfall that fell to below the hemline. The ankle-length straight skirt was covered in thousands and thousands of black glass beads.
‘Oh, Sally, it’s beautiful.’
‘The dress is a dress. It is you who are beautiful in it. I’m only sorry you’ll be wasting it on those too busy chasing the dragon to notice the workmanship; every bead placed just right so you appear bathed in frosty moonlight when you walk.’ Sally sighed heavily. ‘But I know, and you know, and that is all that matters.’
She turned back to the waiting mannequin and picked up her box of pins.
‘A reason to silence another can be because they know something they should not. You are like the sister I never had and in my selfishness I beg you to be careful.’
In the spring sunshine flooding through the attic window, May rubbed at the goose-pimples on her arms.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
During the next two days May felt tired and low in spirits. There were no new bodies in the mortuary so she was denied the routine of setting up an inquest to dilute her worry over Liza’s safety. Even one of Colonel Tindal’s tirades would be preferable to being left alone to wallow in her sense of failure. Braxton Clarke hadn’t been in touch and she was beginning not to like shouldering the entire responsibility for the activities of the Poplar Coroner’s Office. It was scant consolation to know that Sunday would bring the ramble out at Debden Green and the possibility of following up a lead into what had happened to Miles Elliott.
***
Her mood was considerably brighter once she was finally under the wide skies of Essex. She had met Jack at the train station as arranged and they had travelled out together. She’d let him do all the talking as she’d looked out of the window and tracked their progress away from London by the increasingly peaceful emptiness of the countryside.
Walking up to the signpost at the start of the footpath she was pleased to see all the rambling group regulars had turned up. May greeted them in turn, giving Jack an airy introduction in the process: Sybil Overton, a retired schoolteacher but still as sprightly as when she used to catch little boys by the collar to give them a cuff around the ear; Clive Parks who had lost a leg below the knee in the War and came walking as therapy; the Murther twins who were hard to tell apart, impossible to understand when talking together in broad Glaswegian; Mr and Mrs Flower, married last year and still at the stage of gazing into each other’s eyes. Plus, of course, Roger Barker - thin, stooped, and plagued by asthma. Laces tied, and knapsacks hoisted, they trooped in formation towards the nearest stile.
May was chatting to Sybil Overton as they skirted a cornfield, the scars in the ancient wood ahead testament to the previous half-decade’s insatiable demand for trench props and duckboards. She glanced around for Jack. Lagging at the back, he was looking hot and uncomfortable already. She smirked; he was a city man through and through in that ridiculous heavy tweed jacket, and shoes she’d raised her eyebrows at when they’d met at the railway station - more suited to an evening out than negotiating the ruts of ploughed fields, she fully expected to witness him falling flat on his face before long. She had thick-soled boots she’d got at the pawnshop, a short-sleeved blouse, shorts and long woollen socks. A windch
eater jacket was scrunched into her knapsack. She began to lengthen her stride as her lethargy left her and the smells of the hedgerows, sun-warmed grass, and the clean sharp tang of soil pushed the odour of the docks from her lungs. Roger caught up with her.
‘There’s said to be a lost village beyond that ridge over there. It’s not on the OS map though. Did I tell you I’m thinking of taking my holiday in Lewes this year? I’m planning to walk the South Downs Way.’
‘All of it?’
‘Well, no.’
Roger was a stickler for the truth.
‘But from Alfrison to Ditchling Beacon at least. I won’t be able to get the time off to go the whole hog to Seven Sisters.’
‘Maybe next year, then.’
‘It would be infinitely more pleasurable to journey with a companion. If you, perhaps, one day...’ He dissolved into a fit of wheezing.
May thought of a future when Alice would be out in the world on her own. Roger was knowledgeable about history in the landscape as well as native flora and fauna, and he wasn’t over-fond of the sound of his own voice - unlike some she could name. She took another look back at Jack. He had taken off one shoe and was shaking something out. It would be restful to spend some time with someone like Roger in the undulating chalkland of Sussex; they could camp on farms and stop off in pretty villages for tea.
‘Who’s that you’ve brought with you? He seems a bit of a queer fish. Wouldn’t have thought he was your type at all.’
May resisted the temptation to snap back. Why was it people always assumed she was desperate to have a man in tow? There was such a thing as ordinary friendship wasn’t there? Except she was reluctant to put Jack in that category either. Friends were people you could trust and did right by you, and she’d seen precious little evidence of either of those things with him. But she had to give Roger some reason why she’d brought him with her.