Last Rights (16 page)

‘Anyway,’ Fred said, after a pause, ‘we’ve got Pearl in custody. She ain’t going nowhere so we got plenty of time to get all
the evidence we need. There’s a war on but we’ll do it.’

I shook my head gloomily. What Fred had said put me in mind of Ken’s comments about the coppers having Pearl tried and hung
already.

But then Doris arrived and, briefly, we all talked together about other things until she finally went upstairs to get the
company books. We’d had a bit of money from one of our customers and Doris wanted to make a proper record of it. She’s very
meticulous like that, which is just as well because I’m not. I do the funerals, I’m down there with the dead, as it should
be.

Once I was on my own with him again, I said to Fred, ‘So, what do you want then, Fred? You must’ve come over here for some
reason.’

‘Oh, yes, I did,’ the policeman said, as he put his hand into one of his pockets. ‘I come to give you this.’

It was a small piece of paper, folded in half.

‘It’s from your mate Pearl Dooley,’ Fred said. ‘But it’s all right. Guv’nor up Holloway’s seen it and my guv’nor down the
station. Ain’t nothing bad.’

He left out that he and I both knew that Fred had read it too, but I let that pass and just said, ‘Well, that’s all right,
then, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

Irony is something that is easily lost on Fred Bryant. So I let him witter on until he got bored with waiting for me to open
Pearl’s letter and left. I occasionally punish his nosiness with just small acts of cruelty like this. As soon as he was out,
I read it.

It said the following:

Dear Mr Hancock,

I’m writing to you because although I’ve got Mr Blatt now I think I can trust you. The coppers let me see Velma for a minute
and she told me she told you everything. I know you put me in here but I think it’s only because you want what’s right. So
do I. Because Ruby is in trouble as well as me I wonder if it’s anything to do with our mum and what she done. I wonder if
someone knew where I went the night Kev died and killed him in a way so it looks like it could have been
me. I don’t know who but I’m afraid it might be someone who knows who the Reynolds sisters are and wishes us and those close
to us harm. I’m worried now about my sister Amber. I haven’t seen my other sister Opal since the coppers took her away when
they come to get Mum. She was little and was adopted. Amber come with me and Ruby to the Nazareth Sisters Orphanage in Southend.
She left there after me and I left in 1920. I don’t know what she did then, but the Sisters might know. Could you please try
and find out where she is and tell her what’s happening? I know I’ve got a nerve, but I’m afraid for her.

Regards, Pearl Therese Dooley.

The letter read as if Pearl was afraid that someone, probably someone with a grudge, was setting up her and her sisters as
murderers. To me, notwithstanding the way Kevin had died, it all seemed rather far-fetched that someone should do such a thing
to innocent women after so many years had passed. But I showed it to Velma who, after asking who Mr Blatt was and what his
connection to her mother might be, said, ‘Well, if he’s her lawyer then really he should look for Amber. You ain’t got time
to go gallivanting down to Southend, have you, Mr Hancock?’

‘You know that Mr Blatt wants to talk to you, Velma,’ I said. ‘About your mum.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think she trusts him,’ Velma said darkly, as she looked down at the paper again. ‘The letter sort of says
it, really.’ Which, in the sense of what it didn’t say, was true. ‘She certainly don’t trust him like she trusts
you.’ Then she asked, ‘Why do you care so much, Mr Hancock, about Mum and me?’

‘I’ve been puzzling over that one,’ Nan said acidly, as she came in and sat down at the kitchen table, a dirty chamois leather
fresh from the front parlour windows still in her hands.

It wasn’t an easy question to answer – not because I couldn’t, more that I was afraid they wouldn’t understand.

But I gave it a go anyway. ‘Well, first, I don’t think it’s right to kill people,’ I said. ‘And when I cleaned your step-father’s
body and saw that mark on his chest I knew someone had taken his life. Even if I hadn’t met him that night and spoken to him,
I think I would’ve known that something was wrong.’

‘How?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My old dad used to have a name for it when a body comes in you don’t feel right about. He called
it the Undertaker’s Third Eye.’

‘Third eye?’

‘It means seeing beyond to what really happened to that person,’ Nan said. ‘It’s a gift that allowed my father to raise the
alarm with the police over more than one murdered soul.’

‘But all that aside,’ I said, ‘the point is, I think that if the law or the army or whoever want to kill people for committing
crimes then they have to be very sure about who they’re condemning. It’s murder, to me, to shoot or hang a person who hasn’t
committed a crime. I don’t care if it’s a mistake or not. That’s no excuse. It doesn’t matter
if there’s a war on or not. You can’t just execute people and—’

‘Frank!’

Nan had heard a lot of this before, when I’d tried to tell her and the Duchess about what had really happened out there in
the mud of Flanders. But she hadn’t wanted to listen then any more than she did now. Most people don’t, especially when your
eyes, those of a grown man, fill with tears.

‘Not in front of the kid, Frank!’

I turned away from my sister, towards Velma, and tried a smile. ‘So we always look for the truth, is what I’m saying, love.’
I wiped my eyes with my fingers and continued, ‘So, suppose the good old Essex seaside—’

‘But you ain’t got time to go to Southend!’ Velma said. ‘That could take all day.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I am busy in the next few days. But you could go, couldn’t you, Velma? I’m sure you’re quite able to ask
about your aunt at the convent. Nuns are, after all, good people. They’ll help you if they can. You could even take Miss Nancy
with you, if she’ll go.’

Nan looked up sharply. ‘What?’

‘How do you fancy a day out in Southend visiting some Nazareth nuns?’ I said to my sister. ‘I’ll pay your train fare and—’

‘You know the trains get stopped every five minutes now, don’t you, Frank?’ Nan said. ‘They’re packed too. And there’s no
buffet.’

‘Well, take sandwiches and a Thermos,’ I said. ‘I’ll make it up myself for you if you like.’

‘Oh, I think I can make a sandwich or two, Frank. That’s not the problem. But what about Mum?’

‘Well, if you go tomorrow, Aggie’ll be off shift and she can look after the Duchess,’ I said. ‘All you have to do is ask the
nuns about Pearl’s sister and then . . .’

‘Well?’

‘If she’s still in Southend, go and visit her, if you can. Take your mum’s letter,’ I said to Velma. ‘Show it to her.’

‘And if this Amber isn’t in Southend, if she’s gone somewhere else?’ Nan asked.

I sighed. ‘Then you come home,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could buy a pint of whelks for tea.’

‘Frank!’

Velma laughed and then, obviously happy about the prospect of a trip out, she left the room. Alone with my sister now, I said,
‘It’ll also get her away from here and out of the reach of those Dooley brothers for a bit.’

Nan, for whom all this trouble over a dead stranger was just that – trouble – said she’d do it anyway – for me.

Hannah said she was going to have to come and see me whether she went to Cherry Hazlitt’s funeral or not. I didn’t even know
that she was there until we took the mourners back for the wake to old Mrs Hazlitt’s house in Jedburgh Road.

‘Roof come off last Thursday,’ the old woman said, as she pointed one black-gloved hand at the shattered top half of her house.
‘I’ve shut up the bedrooms. I ain’t ready to be bombed out yet, not so long as the range works and
I’ve still got coal. You coming in for a glass of stout, are you, Mr Hancock?’

When I first heard that there were going to be a lot of women at Cherry’s funeral, I imagined that they were going to be members
of her family. A lot of funerals are only attended by women these days, on account of the call-up. But only the mum and a
sister were related to the dead woman. The rest, like Hannah, were friends. Like Hannah too, the friends wore rather more
makeup than the average girl and their language, even in the face of death, was ‘colourful’.

‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Hazlitt.’

‘What about your lads? They want to come in for a drop and a ham sandwich?’

I looked at Arthur’s face and then at Walter’s anxious mug licking its lips in anticipation of a drink.

‘No, thank you, Mrs Hazlitt,’ I said. ‘The lads have to look after the horses.’

I didn’t look back at either of them as I went inside the house. I didn’t dare.

All those girls were a bit much for me so I made a quick dash out into the yard, beer in one hand, a piece of Gala pie in
the other. It was here that I saw Hannah. She was leaning against the Hazlitts’ Anderson, smoking a fag and looking up at
the shattered windows of one of the houses next door. I hadn’t expected to see her so soon and, in view of what I’d so recently
learned about her, her presence came as a shock.

‘Cherry’s brother Archie used to live there,’ she said, as she pointed upwards with her fag. ‘His wife and baby died
from the blast in that house. Lucky he never come back from Dunkirk or he’d’ve been devastated. Fucking war!’

There were tears at the corners of her eyes, but I ignored them for the time being. I had to say what I needed to say so I
just launched in with both feet, so to speak.

‘So that pair of old frummers you took us to see in Spitalfields, they your parents, are they?’ I asked, brutally, I knew.

Hannah turned to look at me, her face blasted as if by a lightning bolt.

‘I know they’re still alive, Hannah,’ I continued. ‘I know you left them for a Christian boy. I know it didn’t work out. What
I don’t know is why you never told me.’

Hannah took a deep drag on her fag, then swallowed hard. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Just answer my question,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘What? You mean apart from the fact that you’re only a customer?’ Hannah said haughtily.

I reached out and pulled her roughly towards me. ‘You know that’s not true!’ I said.

‘It might be! For me!’ Hannah hurled back violently. But then, as quickly as she’d lost her temper, she dissolved into tears.
‘Why do you think I do what I do?’ she said, as she sobbed against the buttons of my waistcoat. ‘You think I can’t do no better
than selling my body?’

‘Hannah . . .’

‘Those people, those ones we met, were my parents long ago. But I shamed them,’ Hannah said. ‘I let that goy
use me, I turned my back on my people and, when it all come to nothing, I went to the one place I could.’ She looked up into
my eyes. ‘The street. They never ask you to leave on the street.’

I put my arms round her now. I bent down to kiss her. ‘But you can trust
me
,’ I said gently.

Mindful that others could come into the garden and see us at any moment – or, rather, that was how I read it then – Hannah
pushed herself away from me. ‘My family are Hassidic Jews,’ she said. ‘Do you know what that means, Mr H?’

‘Not really.’

She looked down at the ground to where two of the Hazlitts’ bantams pecked mindlessly around her feet. ‘My father’s a religious
teacher,’ she said. ‘All Hassidic men are scholars. They devote themselves to study of the Torah while the women raise children
to wait, as we all do, for the coming of the Messiah. Hassidic women, H, are religious, chaste, they wear wigs to cover their
natural hair – vanity, see. And . . . Bessie Stern . . .’

‘Yes, I know she’s Hassidic,’ I said.

‘Well, she doesn’t like me because of what I done,’ Hannah said. ‘You must’ve noticed how she didn’t like me.’

‘I could see that something wasn’t right,’ I said. By this time I was beginning to wish I’d never brought the subject up.
Poor Hannah looked so sad. ‘Look, love,’ I said, ‘I know it must’ve been very hard for you to take us to your parents. I’m
sorry I got cross, but I just—’

‘Bessie Stern the matchmaker come to see me this morning,’ Hannah interrupted harshly.

Taken by surprise at the sudden change of subject and tone, I said, ‘What? How did she know where to find you?’

‘One Yiddisher leads to another. Give a man or a woman a name they understand, they can find that person. Whatever Yiddisher
told you about my past will know that,’ Hannah said bitterly.

I turned my head away, not wanting to mention the name Doris or even hint at her existence.

‘So what did Bessie Stern come to see you about, Hannah?’ I said after a pause.

‘You,’ Hannah said. ‘She wanted to contact you.’

‘So why didn’t she? She knows my name. Knows I’ve got a shop.’

‘Yes, but she don’t
know
you, do she?’ Hannah said. ‘I mean, you ain’t from our manor, are you? You’re a goy. I may be a tart and one that she hates
too, but that’s still better than what you are in Bessie’s eyes. And, anyway, at her size it was probably as much as she could
do to get to Canning Town, much less schlep all the way over to Plaistow.’

I didn’t like the harsh way she was speaking now. But partly because I’d caused it myself, I was trying to ignore it. ‘So
do you know what she wanted, then?’ I said. ‘With me?’

‘She told me to tell you to go to the synagogue at nineteen Princelet Street, near to where she lives, as soon as you can.’

‘Why? What for?’

‘So you can find out more about Ruby Reynolds,’ Hannah said. ‘Maybe you’ll learn why all the frummers
seem to like her so much. She’s a goy, like you, I don’t understand it.’

I put out a hand to her, but Hannah flinched away. ‘Maybe things have changed . . .’

‘Yeah, and maybe Hitler’s a friend of Churchill. Maybe my parents chucking me out never happened!’ Hannah snapped back viciously.

‘Hannah.’ I reached out towards her again and, once again, she pulled away from me.

‘I need to be on me own for a bit now,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ve told you what Bessie said, but now I need you to go.’