Chapter Eighteen
E
ver since Dolly O’Dowd’s funeral, none of the so-called Ripper victims had had flowers with horrible messages placed upon their graves. However, as I looked through the small bunches of blooms that had been delivered for Neville Robinson, I was prepared. But there was nothing, and so we all, including Arthur once again now, set off with the hearse and Walter (God help me!) at the wheel of the car. When we arrived at Claybury, we found the coffin already in the corridor outside the mortuary, waiting to be taken away. Apparently, due to the outbreak of dysentery on some of the wards, Claybury had too many bodies of its own to store now. We could have taken off then, but strangely neither Esme, Mrs Darling or Cissy were anywhere to be seen.
‘Well it is a bit odd having the cortège run from a hospital,’ Nan said as she looked around anxiously. ‘You sure this was what Esme wanted, Frank?’
‘Yes.’
Walter, in the car, said, ‘Well it’s a good job it ain’t summer. Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, the corpse stinking like . . .’
‘Yes, thank you for that, Walter,’ I said. Walter doesn’t do well outside of West Ham. He believes, I think, that anywhere beyond the borough is hostile land. In reply he muttered something about being sorry for saying what he had in front of a lady. But neither Nan, Arthur or myself responded. Personally I was just grateful that he was sober.
‘I should have arranged to pick the ladies up from Mrs Darling’s house,’ I said as I scanned the area just beyond the front gates of the hospital. ‘I don’t even know how they were going to get here. I hope nothing’s wrong.’
But as the minutes began to mount up I became more and more alarmed. This wasn’t helped by the fact that people – staff and even, I think, a few patients too – began to stare at us. Walter tried to deal with this in his usual manner by taking out his hip flask. But I told him to put it away on pain of death. Sober, he’s not the best driver in the world; drunk, he’s bloody awful.
I had, I admit, just started to imagine what the coppers were going to find at Mrs Darling’s house when the lady herself and Esme Robinson came puffing up the long gravel path. Their faces, red from the effort of walking fast or running, were in stark contrast to their deep black mourning.
‘Oh, Mr Hancock, we are so sorry!’ Mrs Darling said as she came over and put a gloved hand on my arm. ‘We were waiting for Cissy! Waited and waited but the silly girl never turned up! Can’t think why!’
I was so relieved just to see them, I smiled. After all, Cissy, wherever she was, hadn’t been a White Feather girl and so was probably quite safe. I ushered the ladies into the car and then climbed up on to the box behind the horses with Nancy and Arthur.
Once we were moving, my sister said to me, ‘Esme Harper didn’t even acknowledge me then, you know, Frank.’
‘I expect,’ I said, ‘Mrs Robinson has other things on her mind.’
Neville Robinson’s wake took place at the house he’d shared with his wife on Hampton Road, Forest Gate. Although backing on to the railway line from Liverpool Street to Southend-on-Sea, the house was big and detached and had a considerable coach house to one side. Apparently it had belonged to Esme’s parents who, like their relatives the Martins, had made their money in the greengrocery trade. As I looked around what was a very fine building, I wondered about how much more money the family had taken with them when they went to Canada.
Mrs Darling, reading my thoughts, said, ‘Esme’s mother had means. Her people was in jewellery. Jews, some say, although not now of course.’
I thought about Neville as I sipped from the little glass of sherry Esme had given me. I thought about his strange sexual life and felt that I now knew why he had put up with his wife’s rejection of him. When Neville had met Esme, he had clearly landed on his feet.
There weren’t many at the wake, just really friends from Mrs Darling’s seances. No one, I noticed, came from Islington or any other police force. As usual all of my workers were invited, including Nancy, who was nevertheless very uncomfortable.
‘I remember coming here years ago,’ she said to me as we moved from the drawing room into what appeared to be a small library. ‘Esme and Rosemary were well off. I felt so bad here then.’
‘About not being well off?’ I said.
‘That and . . .’ She didn’t finish her sentence; she didn’t have to. I knew. ‘Frank, I don’t think I can stay,’ she continued. ‘I’d like to go home. I’ll catch a bus or . . .’
‘Someone needs to take the horses back soon,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Arthur to drive you home.’
‘Will you come back in the car?’
‘I should stay for a little bit longer,’ I said. ‘Just to make sure the ladies are all right. I’ll stick Walter in the car later and drive him home.’
‘You know, Esme still hasn’t spoken to me,’ Nan said sadly as I led her out of the library and towards the front door.
Not believing for a moment what I was saying, I said, ‘She probably doesn’t recognise you, love. Not now you’re a gorgeous working lady.’
Nan and Arthur left, and then about ten minutes later, another guest arrived. Esme Robinson answered the door. It was Cissy.
‘Oh, Esme,’ she said as she nervously twittered outside the front door. ‘I am so, so sorry. I was taken bad in the night and . . . Something I ate, I think. I am so very sorry.’
She did look pale, even for her. Esme Robinson took her friend into her arms, and stroking Cissy’s hair, she finally broke down and wept.
‘Oh well,’ Mrs Darling said as she looked at the scene unfolding on the doorstep, ‘at least the silly ha’p’orth didn’t go to the wrong place.’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘Here, Mr Hancock, did you have any joy with finding Fernanda Mascarenhas?’
I hadn’t had a chance to tell her. Now I did. Mrs Darling frowned. ‘That sounds like her,’ she said. ‘Does as she pleases, always has done. Nothing ever gets in the way of Fernanda’s life, so if your Nancy popped up to remind her husband about what she once was . . .’
‘Mr Abrahams was clearly not as forgiving of his wife as Neville Robinson,’ I said.
‘Well, if he’s had to live with Fernanda all these years, there’s few as can fault him for that,’ the medium said. ‘I’m glad you’ve found her and she’s safe, but Fernanda Mascarenhas always was and probably still is a right mare!’
Fernanda Mascarenhas clearly still evoked very strong opinions in all those that knew her. Not long after my conversation with Mrs Darling, we all left. Esme Robinson was going to stay in her own house from now on, and it soon became apparent that she needed some time by herself. Three times Mrs Darling asked her whether she was sure about this, and three times the bereaved woman said that she was. Just because it worked out that way, I was actually the last person to leave. As I bade her farewell in the elegant hall of her elegant house, Esme Robinson took one of my hands in hers and said, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hancock. You have been very, very kind.’
The drive back to the shop was long and bleak and depressing. Although Forest Gate itself had sustained little bomb damage, as we went further south, the scars of war began to multiply fast. First one, then two and then countless sites that had once been houses and shops reduced to piles of bricks and burnt mortar. Odd remnants of lives either gone or relocated: curtains, teapots, washing bowls scattered across the debris like lost thoughts. The closer we got towards home the more it all reminded me of Flanders, and as a consequence, the more I began to wonder how I was enduring it. Back in 1918, just before I left the continent, I remember looking around at the churned-up land, the flattened towns and villages, and knowing that the world would never, ever be the one I had known before the Great War. And I was quite right. Driving down from Forest Gate to Plaistow, I had that feeling all over again. What is being done now will never be undone. Buildings may be patched up or made over again, but what the sight of those devastated homes and churches will do to the people who loved them, I don’t know. I wonder sometimes whether everyone will not just end up like me. Mad and sad and really, at the core of my soul, quite alone.
Walter, asleep and snoring in the back of the car, didn’t see a thing. But then alcohol can be a very merciful substance. Driving on, my thoughts shifted to the notion of what whoever might be killing the White Feather girls might be like. I had in mind a fellow not entirely unlike myself. Someone whose insides had been scarred beyond all recognition by the sights and sounds of the First World War. A chap who volunteered – unlike me, who was a silly kid at the time – for the sake of form and against his better judgement. A man, in short, bullied into destroying his own life. The more I thought about this theoretical man, the more I, in a sense, sympathised with him. And yet what I couldn’t shift out of my mind, the question I’d been puzzling over since the beginning of these killings, was why now? Why leave it twenty-three years? If the rage he felt against these women was so great as to make him literally rip their bodies apart, then surely it was no fiercer now than it had been just after the Great War ended?
Something clearly had to have happened. If the killer had suppressed his anger for all those years, then an event must have taken place that made or allowed that fury to come out. But what? I thought that maybe the killer had recently been released from either a prison or an asylum. Not that either of those things could cover all the possibilities that had to exist under the title of ‘Things Happening’ to people. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, sickness of all and any sort . . . The possibilities were endless and there was no chance that I could even start to think about them all. But I would, I decided, tell Sergeant Hill what my thoughts on the matter were about someone coming out of prison or an asylum. Even if he didn’t do anything, Sergeant Hill always listened.
For the moment, I took my mind quite away from the victims.
Chapter Nineteen
E
verything was ready. She’d pulled the blackout curtains and put a freshly washed counterpane on the bed, and now she lit a candle on her bedside table. She could have had more than one really, she could easily afford it, but Esme didn’t need a lot of light to do what she was about to do. She’d already poured the filthy green liquid from the can in the shed into an empty Ribena bottle. There was still a faint smell around the bottle but she’d just have to put up with that.
Esme lay down on her bed and thought about Neville. In all the ways that were important to her, he’d been a good husband. He’d always supported her, had done generally whatever she asked and had maintained a respectable façade with their neighbours, family and friends. He couldn’t really help it if he liked that dirty stuff. Men generally did. And although it was distasteful that he should do that with cheap, common street women, that was far better than if he’d had an actual mistress. Neville had never brought any of that into their marriage. Esme need never have even known. But no one could possibly attend so many retired police officers’ meetings, and one night she’d paid to have him followed. He’d gone to a known bawdy house in Canning Town to visit, apparently, a prostitute who was no longer young. Eventually, around that rough and distasteful company, Neville had met his death. Esme sighed. If only her husband could have been content with kisses! If only he could have settled himself to his real retired police officers’ meetings, and the circles at Margaret Darling’s place in East Ham of course. Poor Margaret! She’d tried so hard to look after Esme in the wake of Neville’s death. Esme was really going to disappoint her. But she couldn’t go on without Neville, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be one of those burdensome single women that people always pitied! And besides, every time she thought about carrying on without Neville she got a pain in her chest so harsh and severe it completely took her breath away. Esme propped herself up on her pillows and took the lid off the Ribena bottle. The smell of the disinfectant made her gag. But there was no point in delaying things. She’d made up her mind. It was now or never.
Esme poured the rank green liquid into her mouth and began to cough immediately. Coughing and gagging again now, she fought to swallow what she could feel was burning a hole in her throat. Somehow she got some down, even though she spat what looked like most of it out over her nice clean counterpane. Eyes watering and bulging with the strain and the pain, Esme’s mind raced as she thought about what to do next. The pain and just the sheer difficulty, not to mention the messiness of the act, was making her panic. For some reason she wanted to speak, to hear her own voice one last time, but all that came out of her was a hot, agonising rattle. God, she hadn’t wanted to die like this! Retching and vomiting and turning her lovely bedroom into some sort of ghastly, filthy abattoir! She leaned forward so she could cough more easily and saw that most of what she was bringing up now was blood. Esme began to cry, and in spite of the fact that she still really, really wanted to go beyond the veil and be with her Neville once again, she began to whisper, ‘Help! Help me!’
The pain in her wrecked throat moved to her chest and increased in intensity so that Esme began to howl, a long, fierce, tattered scream.
For the next two nights the raids were long and hellish. My night-time runs were lit up by massive fires all over the docks and especially in the manors closest to them: North Woolwich and Silvertown. As usual I can’t be absolutely certain about what I did when I was out fleeing from the bombs. But I know that at one point I was in Central Park, East Ham. I remember plants of some sort wrapping themselves around my feet and tripping me up. At the time this was just simply annoying. But later I realised that what I’d probably tramped through with my great big boots was some poor sod’s allotment. A lot of the parks are turned over to the growing of veg for the war effort – have been ever since the start.
By that Friday morning, I was dead on my feet. Aside from the raids, we’d done three funerals the day after Neville Robinson’s, and then on the Thursday I’d spent a good eight hours talking to bereaved families and making arrangements with them. Nan, apparently, had managed to fit in a visit to Claybury.