by David Field
‘For her rejected suitor?’ Percy enquired with a sceptical raised eyebrow. ‘And if she was the real target, why follow her all the way to Luton? Why not just lie in wait for her in a dark street here in London, or simply break into her house? Mathewson had a spare key, remember?’
‘He did until we took it off him,’ Jack reminded him. ‘By Saturday, he was in Whitechapel Gaol.’
‘But before Saturday?’ Percy reminded him. ‘The plan to follow Helen was devised before Saturday, obviously, so if whoever murdered her just wanted her dead, why not send in Mathewson earlier, making use of his spare key?’
‘I’m confused,’ Jack admitted dejectedly.
‘And I’m frightened,’ Esther added. ‘If Hemmingsworths are behind this, they have a spare key to this place.’
‘Didn’t those locksmiths come round as instructed, to fit new ones?’ Percy enquired.
Esther nodded. ‘They did, but in accordance with the terms of the lease, we gave a set of the new keys to Hemmingsworths. Fortunately Helen left the main set with me, since I live here at present, but if Hemmingsworths really are involved in all this, then they can still get in at all hours of day or night.’
‘Time you went to stay with Lucy,’ Jack insisted. ‘At least until we can establish whether the link lies with Hemmingsworths or this union.’
‘Any ideas?’ Percy asked.
Esther nodded again. ‘I’ll probably regret saying this the minute the two of you are out of the door down there, but I’m now officially unemployed, correct?’
‘Yes, but so what?’ Jack enquired. ‘When I get to take those days off I’m due, we can get back to the wallpapering.’
Percy looked meaningfully at Esther and smiled. ‘The union?’
‘The union,’ Esther replied with a nod to reinforce her words. ‘They may just be interested in employing a young lady with recent union clerical experience.’
‘No!’ Jack said firmly.
Esther looked round at him defiantly as she removed her hand from his. ‘“No” to the idea that the union may be looking for an experienced employee? Or “no” to the suggestion that I do it? Am I being undervalued as a mere female yet again?’
‘No,’ Jack replied uncertainly. ‘It’s just ... well ... yes, I don’t want you exposed to any danger.’
‘And I’m sick to my back teeth of sitting here writing one identical letter after another,’ Esther insisted. ‘It’s either wallpapering or I go down to the union and ask for a job.’
‘We can get back to the wallpapering on Wednesday,’ Jack promised.
‘Good,’ Esther replied with sickly-sweet sarcasm, ‘then I can go job-hunting tomorrow.’
‘You’re one Hell of a lady,’ Percy whispered admiringly as he kissed her on the cheek in the front doorway in the half light and nodded back inside. ‘Just don’t let Jack talk you out of it.’
Chapter Twenty-three
Esther tried to ignore the fact that she was back in Wapping, that dreadful collection of slums on the north bank of the Thames where she’d met Tilly Chalmers, bumped into Wally Mathewson, then assisted in his arrest a week later. This time she was standing halfway down Cable Street, outside the front door of the Union of Allied Woodworkers and Turners, twisting the handles of her handbag nervously and wondering what on earth had possessed her to volunteer for this. But her pride wouldn’t let her back out now, so she pushed open the front door and walked briskly in as if she had a legitimate reason for being a mere woman in what was presumably a male domain.
There was a moderately sized open area, on the far side of which was a counter of some sort that appeared to be unattended. Around the walls were various notices relating to the union that occupied the ground floor, along with various others that appeared to be copies of newspaper articles about unions that had been photographed, then ‘blown up’, as the expression went, to a larger and readable size for anyone standing in front of them and looking up.
Esther was in the process of looking for some sort of bell on the front counter when a door opened behind it and a rough looking workman walked out of an office behind the rear wall. He seemed slightly taken aback when he saw Esther there in all her finery and after looking her up and down for a moment in a manner that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable, he was the first to speak.
‘Can I ’elp yer, Miss?’
‘I’m looking for a Mr George Manners.’
‘In there.’ The man gestured with his head to the office he had just come out of, then walked from behind the counter and made his way back out into Cable Street. Esther walked round to the door in question and knocked twice, only hearing the somewhat feeble response on the second occasion. With an increasing heart beat she pulled on the doorhandle and walked in.
The smell of cheap pomade hit her almost like a smack in the face. She recognised it from her days in Spitalfields, when the men who lived in the same lodging house as her would drown themselves in it, in the belief that it somehow eliminated their other body odours. It had also been one of the stock in trade items peddled on street corners by her former neighbour Martha Turner and her ‘husband’. It had been Martha’s murder that had first launched Esher into the search for her killer that had led to her meeting Jack, then a beat constable stationed in Whitechapel, and their subsequent joint enquiries had culminated the infamous ‘Jack the Ripper’ being put out of circulation. Somehow the powerful pomade smell brought back memories, but she had no time for idle reflection as she stood in the doorway and prepared to do her sales pitch.
‘Who are you and what can I do for you?’ the man behind the desk enquired in a cultured voice with a hint of femininity about it. His wing collar seemed to be strangling his scrawny neck and the cravat that he was wearing, despite the fact that they were rapidly going out of fashion, was so floral in pattern that he seemed to be talking to her from over the rim of a vase.
‘My name’s Esther Jacobs and I’m looking for work.’
‘I take it that the exquisitely small hands that are no doubt snuggled inside those delightful calfskin gloves have never handled a hammer or saw?’
‘No. I’m not a woodworker.’
‘Then why are you seeking work through a union whose days are dedicated to securing employment for those who are?’
‘I was working for a union until last week, but unfortunately my employer died.’
‘Cancer? Bronchitis? Pneumonia?’
‘She was murdered.’
‘Helen Trenchard?’
‘Yes,’ Esther replied, somewhat taken aback. ‘I had no idea that the news had travelled this far already.’
‘Luton’s hardly the ends of the earth, young lady,’ Manners replied. ‘Anyway, please take a seat on the chair you can see in front of you.’
In the centre of the extensive room was a large table whose primary function was probably as a resting place for tea things and there were four comfortable looking seats distributed around it. Esther took the nearest and George Manners got up from behind his desk and walked over to take the seat opposite hers.
‘So what was your precise function with Miss Trenchard?’
‘I was a general clerk,’ Esther explained. ‘I handled the filing of correspondence, the maintenance of membership records and the compiling of the accounts.’
‘How many members?’
‘Just under a thousand,’ Esther lied, hoping that Manners would betray some knowledge of the fact that the membership levels had recently taken a fall due to the activities of Wally Mathewson, who may have been employed by the man who was now undressing her with his eyes.
‘We have almost three times that number,’ Manners advised her. ‘It just so happens, as you may have noticed, that there’s no-one on the front counter in the morning, due to the fact that the lady who occupies it in the afternoons — my fiancée, incidentally — has another morning job. This is a mere temporary arrangement, until such time as the union can afford her services fulltime and she no longer requires to s
upplement her income from other sources. Now tell me, what would be logically inappropriate were I to employ you in the mornings?’
Esther smiled sweetly as she replied. ‘If you can’t afford to employ her in the mornings, how could you afford to pay me?’
Manners smiled in what he no doubt regarded as a seductive way.
‘Clever as well as beautiful. So my next obvious question is how little I would need to pay you.’
‘I’m more interested in being employed than I am in being wealthy,’ Esther replied, smiling back, reasonably confident that she had Manners’ full attention. ‘A pound a week would be sufficient at present, since it would more than cover my modest living expenses and my bus fares up and down Commercial Street.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘In the former Alliance offices in Lamb Street.’
‘That converted tailors’ workshop?’
‘That’s the one.’ Esther smiled again, concealing her suspicions regarding the extent of the man’s knowledge of the former Alliance. ‘But only until June, then I shall be married and living in Clerkenwell.’
‘May I take it that your intended is a man of considerable wealth who can afford the luxury of such a beautiful bride?’
‘I’m not for sale,’ Esther assured him, stung by the inference, but hoping that she hadn’t gone too far. Fortunately Manners was still smiling.
‘So what does this lucky man do?’
‘He’s a painter and decorator,’ Esther lied, trying not to giggle at the mere thought.
‘Well.’ Manners leered as he looked down suggestively at the petticoats that were peeping out from under Esther’s best grey costume. ‘Your outstanding beauty might well be another handicap to your employment here. Those who call in here on business are working men, likely to be distracted by such a display of pulchritude on the front counter. More to the point, they might well begin to clog up the outer office area in order to admire it.’
‘I’ve never found my looks to be a disadvantage,’ Esther insisted, ‘but I was rather hoping that a discerning employer would be more interested in my abilities.’
‘Touché,’ Manners replied in an almost girlish fashion as he clapped his hands lightly. ‘You have spirit as well as beauty and might well be able to hold your own with men who would prefer you to hold theirs.’
Esther’s blush was genuine and she only just suppressed the strong urge to lean across the table and smack the disgusting fop across the face. Instead she feigned a giggle of appreciation and Manners was sold.
‘I’m prepared to give you a trial this morning,’ he said, smiling, ‘for which you will of course be paid. All I require of you is to enquire of any who come to your counter regarding the nature of their business, then come in here and advise me. The sight of you sashaying in here every few minutes will be well worth the experiment, but so far as concerns any more sustained employment, I’ll need to speak to my fiancée, who is also a foundation officer of this union we have established between us. It is she who commands the front counter in the afternoons, as I already mentioned, and should you be employed more permanently, she will introduce you to the unfathomable mysteries of her records and her mastery of the telephone that you may have noticed on the front counter. For the present, if it rings, just pick it up with your delicate digits and say “Yes?”. In my experience, the rest will follow naturally.’
Ten minutes later, Esther was installed on a high stool behind the front counter and soon grew accustomed to the brazen leers of the men who came in from time to time on business with George Manners. As she sat there, trying not to feel like the statue of Queen Victoria that sat proudly outside the hospital in Lambeth, she was able to organise her thoughts following her first conversation with her temporary employer.
First of all, he was everything that Helen Trenchard had described — an effeminate, arrogant, wet cheesecloth of a man who clearly regarded himself as a great catch for any lady. His languid and confident use of the English language betrayed a superior education somewhere well outside the narrow confines of Wapping and its largely illiterate residents, which in turn raised an important question regarding his interest in the growing trade union movement, unless he was one of those armchair Socialists who had begun to emerge, masking their naked political ambition behind a pretended concern for the working man. Helen had warned Esther against such people and Esther could now well understand why.
But of far greater significance was his apparent intimate knowledge of the Alliance and the premises it had occupied. So far as Esther could remember, the man had never been near the Lamb Street building and from what Helen had told her, her former employer’s only connection with George Manners had been to hold him at arm’s length and gently rebuff his amorous advances.
Of considerable concern to Esther right at this moment was the man’s obvious knowledge of the fact that Helen had been murdered and where. It was unlikely that any London newspaper would have carried any account of a murder in distant Luton, an insignificant little place many miles to its north, so far as Esther knew, since she’d never been there. And even if the account of the murder had appeared in a small paragraph on an inside page, it was unlikely to have revealed the name of the victim.
On the other hand, Esther reasoned, one union might well take a keen interest in the affairs of another, not that the Alliance had been in any sense a rival to the one that George Manners and his fiancée had established. Esther smiled to herself as she tried to envisage the sort of woman who might find the man sufficiently attractive to want to marry him. Three hours later she no longer needed to employ her imagination.
She’d been idly reading one of the brochures that lay on the front counter, extolling the many benefits and advantages of being a member of the Woodworkers and Turners Union, when the street door flew open as if propelled by a siege catapult and a lady of formidable size and facial expression bore down on Esther as if she were a domestic caught in the act of stealing cutlery.
‘Who the Hell are you?’ the woman demanded.
‘My name’s Esther Jacobs,’ Esther replied politely but firmly. ‘Are you here to see Mr Manners?’
‘You could say that,’ the woman replied down her nose. ‘I’m Margaret Templeton. On the assumption that you’ve already spoken with my fiancé and didn’t just plomp your backside down behind the counter while resting between music hall engagements, did he get around to telling you that he was engaged to be married?’
‘He did indeed,’ Esther said, smiling back through gritted teeth, ‘and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.’
‘My brief acquaintance,’ Margaret insisted with seeming confidence. ‘As George may also have got round to advising you, you’re sitting where I normally sit.’
‘In the afternoons, or so I was informed,’ Esther replied sweetly, earning herself a snort of disagreement.
‘Also in the mornings, with effect from the end of next month. You certainly won’t be needed beyond that date, if indeed you’re even required in the interim. You can go about your normal business once I’ve spoken with George. Any questions?’
‘Yes.’ Esther continued to smile. ‘Is there a ladies’ room?’
‘Down to the left there.’ Margaret nodded. ‘Don’t leave it in a mess.’
After making grateful use of the facilities, Esther tiptoed back out to the front entrance area, then slid back behind the front counter as she heard angry raised voices from Manners’ office. She couldn’t catch it all, but words such as ‘trollop’, ‘hussy’, ‘shameless’ and ‘vacuous’ were clearly audible and Esther was in no doubt that they were in reference to her, since they were coming from Margaret Templeton.
A few minutes later, a red faced Margaret flounced out of the inner office and glared at Esther.
‘Three weeks and that’s all. Is that understood?’
‘Of course,’ Esther replied, wondering within herself if she could tolerate three more weeks of this, before the penny dropped that s
he would only be there when Margaret wasn’t.
‘And keep your big dark eyes off my fiancé — is that also understood?’
‘Perfectly,’ Esther assured her meekly, suppressing the urge to burst out laughing at the mere suggestion.
‘Right then, that’s enough for today, so clear off. You’ll only be getting ten shillings a week, so if you don’t turn up tomorrow we’ll quite understand.’
As the horse bus clomped its way northwards through the early afternoon traffic of Commercial Street, Esther looked briefly into Thrawl Street and up to the corner of George Street, where she’d once lived in a common lodging house, taking in sewing. Not even in those days would she have welcomed the attentions of anyone as crawlingly repulsive as George Manners, so Margaret Templeton had nothing to fear from her. As for George Manners, he might well come to regret being seduced by Esther’s physical attraction into giving away something vital that could result in him finishing up dangling lifelessly on the end of a rope, like the piece of wet haddock that he resembled.
As she alighted from the bus and looked across Lamb Street towards her humble abode, she caught sight of Jack waiting by the front door. Excitedly she dodged through the traffic and threw her arms around him, planting a warm kiss on his lips and announcing with considerable pride, ‘I got the job!’
To her considerable disappointment, his face fell.
‘Ah. I came all the way down here to tell you that I’ve got tomorrow and Wednesday off in lieu of the days I lost last week. They’ve let me add this Thursday and Friday to them, so I’ve got four clear days to get on with the wallpapering and I was hoping that you’d be able to join me. Damn!’
Esther giggled at the sight of Jack so flustered and kissed him again.
‘I’m only working in the mornings, so I can join you every day for dinner and then we can keep working all afternoon until the light fails. But from memory you’ve still got to strip off that first lot and burn it in the garden. That’ll keep you going until dinner time tomorrow, then we can go and choose the new stuff.’