Last Rights (10 page)

There was a lot as could be inferred from what he’d said but principal among all of it was that I wasn’t quite the ticket.
Only a few years older than me, the warden had probably been in the first lot too. There was indeed a small light of understanding
in his eyes. As Albert Cox sometimes says, ‘When you’re in business round these parts there ain’t too many places to hide.’
There’s no such thing as an invisible undertaker. A mad one, maybe. But that is unusual enough for news of it to travel across
all of London’s eastern villages.

The warden took one more look at me, then headed off back towards the Commercial Road. Dealing with the dying is one thing
– there might just be some sort of hope – but talking to those already dead is pointless.

‘I lost them as we was leaving,’ Hannah said miserably. ‘All these women flying up the stairs with all their kids and blankets
and food and whatever, I couldn’t keep on them.’

‘That’s all right, love,’ I said, as I put an arm round her shoulders.

‘There’s something fishy about that Pearl, ain’t there?’ Hannah said. ‘About that name, Reynolds, and . . .’

‘Turns out she and, she says, Velma, were out the night
her old man died,’ I said, with a yawn. ‘She was cagy about where she was.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘So sorry I lost them, H.’

But it was as much my fault as Hannah’s that we’d managed to lose Pearl and Velma. Once the raid was over, which was just
before dawn, I’d fallen asleep. When Hannah, all panicked over Pearl and Velma, had found me and then woken me I’d been dreaming
about George Pepper’s first communion. He’d done it, in my dream, at age twenty-one in full battle-dress and kit.

I had to be home by ten because we were burying some collection of human pieces the coppers had chosen to call the late Reginald
Burman. A bachelor who lived with his sister, Cissie, Reg had left the Anderson behind his house on Plashet Grove to go to
the privy during a raid. Neither Reg nor the privy had been there in the morning. So now poor old Cissie was on her own in
that house with a shell full of bits that had probably never been anywhere near her brother. But I had to go out and do the
honourable thing for her sake and, rather than talk much more to Hannah about the previous night’s events, I hurried home.

Before she even asked me where I’d been half the previous day and all night, Nan said, ‘Water’s off.’

‘Christ!’

‘Francis!’

I looked at Nan and smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry, Nan,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I’m filthy.’

‘Yes, I can see,’ she said.

Nan and the Duchess are always good with water. When we’ve got it, they put some aside in the kettle and
in a barrel out in the yard. But this time the barrel had caught some blast so a small cup for shaving was all I managed to
persuade Nan to pour out of the kettle for me. I went through the motions of changing my clothes, but those I took off were
only a bit dirtier than those I put on. I thought of Dad and laughed as it occurred to me how disgusted he’d have been with
my appearance. Tom Hancock was always immaculate, even when he was dying. It was his belief that to be smart and clean was
one of the few real things a person could do to show respect for the dead. More important, he always felt, than the quality
of the coffin or the size and elaborateness of the monument.

Once I’d sorted myself out I went down to the shop. Doris, all plump and exotic-looking in a tightly fitted green dress, was
sitting having a cup of tea with Fred Bryant. He was out of uniform, but just seeing him made me ask Doris if we could have
a moment or two on our own. Fred, true to form, watched Doris go with a little smile of regret. How long was he going to hold
a torch for the poor girl?

‘Fred,’ I said, once Doris had gone and I’d taken one of his fags, ‘do you know anything about the murder of an old Jewish
bloke up Spitalfields?’

‘When?’

‘Two, three weeks ago,’ I said. ‘Paper-and-string merchant.’

‘Oh. Oh, yes, yes, I do. Course.’

‘What?’

Fred is really too much of a gossip to be a copper. In my
line of work you have to have discretion, so it never goes any further. But I do sometimes wonder who else Fred tells and
what.

Fred moved in as close as one bloke would consider doing to another. ‘Well, they don’t know who done it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve
heard tell that it’s the housekeeper they’re looking for.’

Nothing so far that I didn’t know already.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. What you want to know for, Mr H?’

‘I was up those parts yesterday,’ I said. ‘Heard a few stories, you know.’

‘Right.’

I didn’t say anything else then. Fred usually, once you’ve shown that you’re interested, carries on without any further help.
On this occasion, he was true to form.

‘There’s a sergeant up Shoreditch I know,’ he said. ‘No names, no pack drill. But anyway, he says this housekeeper, apparently
she’s the daughter of that woman hung for murder some years ago.’

‘What woman?’

‘Something foreign,’ Fred said. ‘I dunno. But anyway, she was a “woman of the night”, if you know what I mean. Up West it
was somewhere.’

That all made sense. The horrible Vi Dooley had said Pearl had come from ‘up West’ and if Ruby’s and her mother really had
been a murderess it would explain why Pearl hadn’t wanted to reveal her real name. Not that either ‘Reynolds’ or ‘House’ was
foreign in any way that I could see. There was also the connection with
prostitution. Vi Dooley had said that Pearl was on the game at one time, but perhaps she was just tarring the daughter with
the same brush as the mother. That the police were pursuing Ruby despite, as far as I could tell, no evidence to show she’d
killed Shlomo Kaplan, seemed like another example of this. But perhaps they knew something that I didn’t. In fact, almost
certainly they knew something that I didn’t.

‘This woman they’re looking for,’ Fred continued, ‘her mother killed her fella.’

‘What?’

‘Some geezer she was involved with, she killed him,’ Fred said.

I felt my skin go very cold. ‘How? What did she do?’

‘Stabbed him through the heart.’ Fred said, and then added darkly, ‘With a dirty great hatpin, so they say. Apparently the
body was soaked with blood.’

‘Fred,’ I said, as I put one fag out, then instantly lit another, ‘I think we should go and see Albert Cox now.’

The policeman, obviously confused, frowned. ‘Why’s that, Mr H?’

I told him of what my suspicions had been right from the start on the way down to Canning Town. This time, instead of going
on about what Dr Cockburn had and had not said, Fred listened.

When we arrived at Cox’s shop, Albert told us that Pearl Dooley had left after viewing her husband’s body about half an hour
before. She’d come not only to see him but to find out when his funeral was going to take place. It was scheduled for the
next day, so I knew we’d have to act fast
if we were to have Kevin’s body examined again before the ceremony. Fred called his sergeant who, after what we were told
was a lot of persuasive talking, eventually managed to get Marcus Cockburn out to Cox’s shop that night. As bombs fell all
around us Dr Cockburn, reeking of whisky and cigars, nevertheless came to a rather different cause of death for Kevin Dooley
than the one he had originally given.

Why I’d treated Kevin as I had – like a nutter, the same way people treat me – on the night he died, I didn’t know. But the
guilt was terrible then. The world was descending into madness again and, just as I’d done in the first lot, I was simply
letting it happen. Which, after all, is more unforgivable? To kill a man on the orders of a so-called superior or to let a
man obviously not well or in his right mind run off to meet his own destruction? My mates hadn’t let me desert: they’d taken
care of this nutter and saved my life. I should have tried to save poor Kevin’s.

T
he Dooleys were a huge family. As well as the old mother and all of Kevin’s kids there were at least five adults who looked
similar to the deceased. Brothers and sisters, I guessed, many with husbands, wives and kids in tow. Although none had come
out in yellow, there wasn’t a lot of mourning wear to be seen. But it isn’t cheap as I’d be the first to admit. What doesn’t
cost, however, is dignity and although the mother was obviously upset, there was precious little grief beyond that. Dodgy
blokes wearing trilbies smoking fags, sometimes laughing, sometimes swearing angrily, blokes young enough I would have imagined
to be in the services. No, the only real sorrow I could see was shown by Kevin Dooley’s wife.

She came alone, still in her ratty old coat but with a hat she’d got from somewhere on her head. It had a bit of a veil, which
she’d pulled down over her face that, with the trees she was standing among, concealed her from all but the most keen observer.
That was me. I watched her cry
for some time before I went over. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I had to do next. But no one had known where she was
so it had seemed the best, if not the right, thing to do to all involved.

‘Mr Cox and his boys have done your husband proud,’ I said, as I watched Albert walk towards the graveside ahead of the coffin.
It was one of those dank afternoons where the half-bare trees look like ragged skeletons against the battleship grey of the
sky.

As soon as she saw me, Pearl Dooley’s tears stopped and something that looked like fear came into her eyes. ‘I loved him,
you know,’ she said, ‘my Kevin.’

‘But he hit you,’ I said. ‘You had nipper after nipper for him and he still . . .’

‘I loved him!’ she said. ‘He gave me my life, he did. I know it can’t make much sense to anyone else, but he took me in and
he protected me. He was a hard man, yes, but . . . Anyway, what’s it to do with you?’

In contrast to how humble she’d been with me when she and Velma had first turned up at the shop she was now openly hostile.
As far as I could tell, Spitalfields, and what had been discovered there, had changed her.

‘Did your mother love her bloke?’ I said. ‘The one she finished with her hatpin?’ I turned to look down at her and found a
face bursting with both grief and anger. ‘You know I saw your husband on the night that he died, Mrs Dooley,’ I said. ‘He
told me he’d been stabbed.’

She shook her head. ‘He died from the blast. The coppers’ doctor said so.’

‘There was a little hole, just under his breastbone,’ I
said. ‘It could’ve been where a long pin stabbed into him, maybe from a lady’s hat. Where were you and Velma the night that
Kevin died, Pearl?’

Her mouth opened and her eyes, even through the veil I could see, filled with tears.

‘No, it’s not possible!’ she hissed rather than shouted. Father Burton, at the head of the grave, cleared his throat prior
to beginning his committal. ‘You think I killed him? Just because my mum—’

‘You know, some of the Shoreditch coppers reckon that your Ruby could’ve killed old Mr Kaplan,’ I said. ‘Bessie Stern didn’t
see him alive before that raid. Ruby was the last person to see him, as you know. Some people believe murder’s in the blood.’

I didn’t add that I had doubts about that. Although the way Kevin had met his end was uncomfortably like the way Pearl’s mother
had killed her fellow, it was more Pearl’s whereabouts on the night that Dooley had died that bothered both me and the police,
who wanted to speak to her and the rest of Kevin’s family. This was now, after all, a murder, which meant that everyone connected
in any way to it would be questioned.

‘So you think that I . . .’ Fearing, I imagined, that someone might hear her, Pearl moved in closer to me and dropped her
voice. ‘I never killed Kevin and I can prove it!’ she said.

‘Can you? You weren’t too clear when I asked you . . .’

‘Yes, I can!’ she said. ‘Ask your girlfriend’s landlady if you don’t believe me.’

‘What?’

‘I never killed Kevin. I wouldn’t. Why don’t you believe me?’

‘It’s not that I don’t believe you,’ I said, ‘but your story about where you were that night, with friends, just doesn’t ring
true. You told me yourself you don’t have any friends.’

‘If you’re thinking of calling the coppers . . .’

‘No.’

She stared at me. ‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re already here, love,’ a deep voice said behind her.

Fred Bryant’s guv’nor, Sergeant Hill, gave the order for the funeral to be stopped. Albert Cox duly went over to Father Burton
and had a word in his ear. The Dooleys started hollering and swearing almost immediately.

I looked at the chaos around me with fear. The police were taking a destitute, weeping woman away with them – something I’d
had a hand in. If only I’d taken Kevin Dooley seriously that night! If only I’d asked him who ‘she’ was and why she’d done
what she had to him.

Because she’d managed to get Father Burton to perform Kevin’s funeral so quickly, Vi Dooley had wanted her son’s body to stay
over at Cox’s. Maybe, in part, she’d thought that Pearl might want to see him too – although I didn’t suppose that was much
of a consideration for her. But whatever the reason, Kevin being at Albert’s shop had allowed Marcus Cockburn to re-examine
the body, if reluctantly, in something approaching peace. His new conclusion about the cause of death was a lot different
from his first attempt. Kevin Dooley’s heart had been
punctured by a long, sharp instrument that had caused him to bleed to death inside his own body. Like him or not, Kevin Dooley
had suffered a painful death that, with or without evidence from that night to back it up, had to have been murder. No one
does that to themselves, however barmy.

Dr Cockburn’s first thought had been to stop the funeral. But now that I’d told the coppers everything I knew about Pearl,
they were keen to speak to her – if they could find her. None of us knew where she might be so it was decided to let something
that looked like a funeral go ahead. It was almost a dead cert she’d turn up, and even though Father Burton wasn’t happy about
performing a funeral for an empty coffin and was, to make things even worse, without the bereaved family’s knowledge, he agreed
to do it anyway.