The Esther & Jack Enright Box Set

by David Field

  Having given the workmen their orders, Helen had — rather huffily, in Esther’s opinion — kept well out of the way of the alterations, sitting upstairs in the kitchen to conduct her correspondence and open the day’s incoming mail. She had left Esther in charge of answering any questions that the men might have and it had been a matter of pride to Esther that she hadn’t once had to call Helen down into the main room, where she’d done her best to keep working.

  Apart from the noise there were other irritations, not the least being the dreadful personal habits of Bert Freeman. Not content with singing, in a loud voice, the latest music hall ditties, some of which were a bit ‘risqué’, and yelling instructions to his men that could have been delivered at a normal voice level, he would from time to time stop, extract some sort of small silver box from his waistcoat pocket, take a pinch of whatever was inside it up his nose, then sneeze violently.

  Esther was familiar enough with the disgusting habit of snuff-taking, but she had never been exposed to it in such an enclosed space for such a lengthy period of time and the smell of it tended to give her a headache if she got too close to it. As a consequence, she had diplomatically left the front door open, but that then allowed in the noise of the carriages clattering up and down Lamb Street. Ordinarily she would have complained about the smell of horse dung that occasionally wafted in as well, but it was somehow preferable to Bert’s snuff.

  ‘I’m afraid yer’ll need ter move that desk, Miss,’ Bert advised her as he talked to her bosom as usual. ‘We need ter come straight through where yer sittin’.’

  Esther had been expecting this, so wasn’t entirely surprised, but it was annoying, with the register almost completed.

  ‘Very well, I’ll go for a walk. How long will you be?’

  ‘The rest o’ the day, I’m afraid, and maybe tomorrer an’ all. Don’t worry, we’ll move yer desk for yer an’ put it back inside the little room we’re makin’ fer yer. It’ll be nice an’ cosy in there when we’re done, but enough room fer a friend an’ all, if yer get me meanin’.’

  Not sure that she wanted to get his meaning, Esther left her desk as it was and walked upstairs for her handbag. She popped her head round the kitchen door to where Helen appeared to be frowning over a heap of correspondence on her desk.

  ‘The workmen need me to move out of where I was working,’ Esther announced, ‘so if it’s alright with you, I’ll just nip down Commercial Street and do some shopping.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Helen agreed. ‘I really need to carry on working on all these letters, so tell the foreman that if they want anything I’ll be up here. And if you’re going down Commercial Street, could you call in at the printing and stationery shop and ask them to print off another ream of Alliance letter paper?’

  Esther gave the requested instruction to Bert Freeman, then set off with a light heart and a determined stride towards the drapery shops whose windows she’d often gazed into during her poorer days, when she had dreamed of buying a length of material and making her own wedding dress. She’d always regarded it as some sort of fairy-tale, but now that she was what Jack chose to call an ‘heiress’, the dream had become a reality.

  When she returned almost two hours later, with a roll of white cotton and a dress pattern, the building was empty. Helen had left a brief note on the kitchen table, Esther’s desk was over in a corner on the ground floor, and all the workmen had left. She could either spend the evening at the kitchen table, cutting out the dress from the pattern, or she could finish the members’ register.

  But the decision was taken out of her hands when she discovered that her provisional members’ list was missing from the table.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘It was a very unpleasant attack and definitely one of a sexual nature,’ Percy advised Chief Inspector Modley the following morning, ‘but I couldn’t really say that it was linked in any way to the business rivalry between her employer and the other hotel company.’

  ‘What sort of sexual nature?’

  ‘Indecent assault and removal of an undergarment that the assailant took away with him. What you might call a specialised sort of offence. I’ve come across that sort before, although usually they steal from washing lines.’

  The Chief Inspector sat back in his chair and thought for a few moments before responding, which he did with a disapproving frown.

  ‘All the same, we need to ensure that the women of this city are protected from that sort of behaviour. And, as you say, it seems to bear the hallmark of a petty pervert. But current thinking is that pathetic idiots like that can often become emboldened into doing worse, so perhaps you’d better liaise with our colleagues in Burglary and see if they can match it with other reports of a like nature. Best to nip this in the bud before it escalates.’

  ‘Why not the Sex Crimes Division, sir? Surely it’s more in their line of work.’

  ‘Partly because I’m telling you and partly because Burglary seem to have a promising new technique for solving their caseload. I was at a quarterly meeting for senior officers only a couple of weeks ago, when Chief Superintendent Morton was explaining how the officers under his command now regularly exchange case files and talk among themselves. It’s not long before similarities appear in techniques — methods of entry, items stolen and so on — so that one man can be detailed to investigate more fully a series of break-ins that seem to have a common link. Apparently burglars and suchlike work to a definite pattern and all but leave their calling card at the scene of the crime. There was one bloke, for example, who always stole cheap cameo brooches, leaving behind far more valuable items. When some undercover men went down to the Sunday Market in Petticoat Lane, they found their man flogging them from a stall and had him buckled before the majority of the prospective purchasers had arrived.’

  ‘So you think our man may be selling second-hand underwear from a market stall somewhere?’ Percy enquired.

  The Chief Inspector snorted. ‘I’ll assume that was intended as a joke and not a totally asinine suggestion. What I’m instructing you to do is go down the hallway to Burglary and see if they’ve got anything similar.’

  ‘Anyone in particular in Burglary that I should speak to, sir?’

  ‘Yes — anyone who can supply you with details of similar incidents. Use your initiative and get on with it.’

  Jack sat at the long desk in the Burglary end of the Second Floor, trying to cheer himself up by listening to the distant sound of the Christmas Carol singers who were collecting for charity among the shoppers in Whitehall immediately below the long window at the end of the room. He was reminded that he and Esther had agreed to meet for a midday meal ahead of going shopping for Christmas presents and that cheered him a little more, until he also remembered that his mother had insisted on them attending, not only for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which involved an overnight stay, but also the New Year celebrations that had in the past been known to drag on for days.

  God alone knew that he needed cheering up after the depressing series of interviews that he’d spent three days conducting. Three days and three separate victims, although his immediate supervisor Inspector Grady had been correct in his provisional assessment that one man might be behind all three. But for all the additional information that Jack had been able to glean, that was about as close as they would ever be likely to get in the search for a very unpleasant sort of burglar.

  First of all Annie Cudsworth, in her cramped Shoreditch third floor hovel, complaining bitterly about the loss of two items of underwear from her laundry basket while she’d been out at work. The additional warning written on her wall was a puzzle and somehow took any possible humour out of the matter. The paper had printed, in the very centre and in large capital letters, the message ‘Don’t join up’ and when Jack had asked her what she took the message to mean, she wasn’t able to help beyond a vague suggestion that she’d been asked by someone to get colleagues in her workplace to group together and pay fourpence a week towards some sort
of Friendly Society.

  Then there was Clarrie Posnett, a fish gutter from Wapping, who’d also come home late that same afternoon to the sight of all her underwear in a pile on her bed, with a letter lying on her pillow with the same typewritten message: ‘Don’t join up’. Again, the victim was unable to supply any real clue as to what it might mean, other than the fact that someone at her place of work had received a letter inviting them all to meet together one evening in a local park to discuss the possibility of seeking a higher price per pound for the gutting work they did.

  Finally, and perhaps the most chilling of all, Martha Pinkney, who’d awoken from sleep in her room in a Golders Green lodging house to see the vague outline of a man rifling through her clothing drawer and throwing items silently around the room. Her canary had been squawking out a warning from its cage in the corner and Martha had barely managed to suppress a scream as she lay there fearfully in her bed while the man walked towards the cage. But instead of reaching in and strangling the bird, as Martha had feared, he’d simply stuck a piece of paper to the cage and when Martha finally summoned up the courage to slip out from under the covers, she’d retrieved the note and called the police. The note read ‘Don’t join if you want to live’. Nothing had been stolen, but Martha was only able to advise Jack that a week previously she’d been visited by some woman who wanted her to organise her fellow employees in the metal works where she was a machine hand into some sort of organisation.

  Jack sighed heavily and tried to apply his recent training to the task of identifying and listing the obvious common factors. All women. All single. All living in humble accommodation. Always an almost meaningless note and an interest in women’s undergarments. And, in every case, a report of a strong chemical sort of smell, although each victim described it in different ways — peppermint, carbolic soap and smelling salts. No sign of any break in, which was unusual, given that these doss house doors normally yielded to a sharp kick, as had been demonstrated on many of the raids to which Jack had been a mere observer until the door was in. Then again, he reasoned, cracking even a rotting wooden door frame in a crowded rooming house was bound to create a noise and bring observers to their doors on the cramped landings. And in any case, whoever this offender was — and Jack was all but convinced that it was the same one, and a man — they clearly had a more subtle way of gaining entry.

  Down the hallway, the desk sergeant was dealing with two people at once, although they seemed to know each other.

  ‘Hello Uncle Percy!’ Esther enthused as she leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Are you here to join Jack and myself for a meat pie, before we go Christmas shopping?’

  ‘No, just dropping this file off, then I’m going home to rehearse for a trial that starts tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be over by Christmas, when we all have to celebrate not only the birth of Christ, but also the recent triumphs at bridge of your future mother-in-law.’

  Esther giggled and wagged her finger admonishingly at him.

  ‘I’ll tell her you said that, then you’ll wish you’d never accepted her invitation.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Percy grimaced. ‘Beattie accepted for both of us, but at least we’ll be doing humanity a favour by not allowing my good lady to set fire to yet another turkey. My gastric system may even survive until the New Year, when I’m advised that we have to return to do it all over again.’

  ‘Have you got much in the way of holidays due to you?’ Esher enquired.

  ‘Just the three public holidays, but I’ve put in for January 2nd as well, in the happy expectation that my hangover will last until then.’

  ‘Jack’s got an entire week and we’re hoping to start looking for houses.’

  ‘This is all very fascinating,’ the desk sergeant observed from behind his half-open window, ‘but do you think you could take your family reunion somewhere else? Was there something you wanted, Sergeant, or was this just a convenient place to put this file down?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, the file’s for you lot. Would you see that this gets to the right person, please?’

  The desk sergeant took another look at the name of the officer in charge of the file.

  ‘Enright. You related to Jack Enright?’

  ‘I’m his uncle.’

  ‘He’s in the room down the end of the hall there, if you’d like me to go and get him.’

  ‘No thank you,’ Percy replied. ‘I’ll get to see quite enough of him over Christmas and the New Year. But this beautiful young lady’s his fiancée and I’m reliably informed that she wants to take him out for dinner.’

  Later that afternoon, Esther and Helen were sitting together in the kitchen going through Alliance correspondence. Helen tutted loudly as she read the letter she had just opened and took a mouthful of the tea that Esther had poured into her cup. Then she grimaced and put the cup down.

  ‘Forgot the tea and sugar, sorry. But I was distracted by this. It’s the third resignation from the Alliance this week.’

  ‘But we did get six more members last week,’ Esther reminded her.

  ‘Yes, but this one was important,’ Helen replied. ‘Lillian Beckwith, from Holborn. Apart from the fact that we have very few members from the wealthier parts of town, I had high hopes for this one. She works for a hotel group and as you probably know there are a high proportion of women working in the catering trades. They aren’t of any interest to the men’s unions, so they’re a potential source of a considerable number of members for the Alliance. I went to the trouble of meeting with over twenty of them when they left work one afternoon and Lillian was so enthusiastic that she offered to organise the others for me and collect their membership subscriptions every week. Now it seems that she’s changed her mind.’

  ‘Did she give any reason?’ Esther enquired.

  ‘None that makes any sense. She claims to have been attacked by a man in her room who warned her off joining a union.’

  ‘Was she badly injured?’

  ‘More shocked than anything, I’d imagine. Apparently the man took off with her undergarments.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Esther was not sure whether to laugh or not.

  ‘Apparently he stole her underwear. The things she was wearing at the time, according to this letter.’

  ‘How horrible!’ Esther exclaimed as she put down her toast.

  ‘Anyway, it was horrible enough for her to ask that her membership application be removed from the file and that she be excused from paying any more membership dues, or collecting them from her fellow workers.’

  ‘That’s understandable, I suppose,’ Esther thought out loud, ‘after a dreadful experience like that. But she’s sure that the threat that led to her resignation is connected with the theft of her — her underwear?’

  ‘Quite sure, in her own mind. But then something like that can lead to severe shock and perhaps she confused the two. I’ll have to take a trip up there and speak to her more closely, but I can well understand how horrible it must have been. Something like that happened to me the day before I first met you. That had to do with my underwear and there was a note telling me that only I could stop it happening again, although it didn’t specify how.’

  Her hand had begun to tremble and she put down the cup. Esther reached out and placed her hand over hers.

  ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

  ‘Definitely not. Let’s keep this businesslike, shall we? This resignation will have to be recorded. Did you record the others?’

  ‘Yes, of course, although it made the relevant register pages look a bit messy. Actually, I was going to speak to you about that. While I was in the stationers’ shop the other day I was looking at a new sort of filing system. At least, it’s one that I’ve never seen before. It’s very simple, but very effective — just a series of cards that you keep in a box. You place each entry on a separate card, then you file them in the box in alphabetical order. It means that we can add to them as we go along, then when something like today’s resig
nation comes along, we simply remove the card. The starting box and cards cost just under a pound, but then you can buy more packets of cards as you need them, for less than two shillings a packet. We’ll need more than one box, obviously, but what do you think?’

  ‘Just go ahead and do it,’ Helen replied absently, her mind still preoccupied with something or other. ‘Have you completed the original membership register yet?’

  ‘Almost. I’d nearly finished when the workmen needed me to move my desk to make way for the room divider. Then the rough draft of the membership list that I’d painstakingly drawn up went missing for a day or so, but I found it lying on the floor after the men had finished their work. It must have fallen off my desk when they moved it.’

  ‘They have completely finished, haven’t they?’ Helen enquired, almost fearfully.

  ‘As far as I know,’ Esther assured her. ‘It’s been a lot quieter down there this week, anyway. And not so smelly, with no disrespect to Bert Freeman.’

  ‘That smell,’ Helen enquired with wide eyes and a slight quiver to her lips, ‘did it remind you of anything?’

  ‘If you mean the stink from that dreadful snuff that Bert was always sticking up his nose, it reminded me of the cough medicine that my mother would insist that I swallow when I took my usual winter colds when I was little. “Camphor”, I believe it’s called — why?’

  ‘I’d rather not say,’ Helen replied evasively with a slight shudder. ‘But if it’s still wafting around down there when you go downstairs, leave the front door open, would you?’