From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  ‘The person who did this should be brought to justice,’ Mrs Bell persisted but I could tell by her resigned tone that she knew there was no way of changing Lisette’s mind once she’d decided on a course of action. ‘If you do nothing then you leave him free to kill again.’

  ‘We’ll deal with him in our own way,’ Lisette snapped before beckoning the porters forward and speaking in incomprehensible French to them again, sometimes pointing to the corpse at her feet and other times out across the town.

  ‘Lisette, no…’ Mrs Bell interjected, sounding shocked. ‘She should have a proper burial.’

  Madame snorted and gave the corpse another fastidious nudge with her foot. ‘And so she will have. Sailors have been burying their men at sea for centuries and see nothing wrong with it. I’ve told the men to say a prayer over her before they throw her in, that’s no less than any vicar would do for her.’

  ‘But what of her family?’ Mrs Bell stepped forward from the gloom and I could see that her pale kindly face was drawn close with worry. She knelt down beside the dead woman and gently lifted her head, which lolled at a precarious angle as she’d had her throat cut clean through. ‘Her family deserve to know what became of her,’ she whispered to Madame.

  ‘If her family gave a damn about what happened to her, she wouldn’t have ended up here,’ Lisette replied coldly before turning and walking away, pulling her silk robe close around her shoulders. ‘I’ve given my orders and expect them to be obeyed.’ She noticed Marie and I skulking in the shadows then and gave a small nasty smile that revealed teeth browned by decades of tea drinking and tobacco. ‘I suppose that I ought to say that you should both let this be a lesson to you about what happens when you tarts don’t know what side your bread is buttered on, but what would be the point?’ she said before sweeping past us back into the house, leaving in her wake a sense of unease and a strong aroma of expensive French perfume.

  As soon as she had gone, Mrs Bell stood up and wiped the damp and dirt from her dark grey cotton skirts. ‘I wish that I dared to disobey her damned orders,’ she said wryly as Marie and I crept slowly out of our hiding place, ‘but I’d find my stuff thrown out of a window and myself speedily following it within minutes of the gendarmes arriving at this house.’

  ‘Who is it?’ I whispered as the porters bent over the body and prepared to lift it into a large sack that had been brought from the dilapidated stable at the back of the yard. ‘She said it was one of her girls.’

  Mrs Bell gave a sad nod. ‘It’s Bea,’ she said. ‘I thought she was in bed but she must have gone out to earn a few more bob.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Whoever it was slit her throat and then cut her open. She hasn’t just been murdered; she’s been slaughtered.’

  I was close enough to see the body now and instinctively recoiled as I looked down at Bea’s pale face, which had a dark smear of blood on the chin. Her hazel eyes were wide open and her rouged mouth hung slack in an expression of startled dismay. ‘We saw it happen,’ I whispered as I took in Bea’s torn and bloodstained pale blue dress and her damp blonde hair, which had come out of its usually carefully coiled and pinned bun and trailed across the dirty cobbles.

  Mrs Bell gave me a sharp look. ‘Are you quite sure, Emma?’ She glanced up to where she knew our window was. ‘It was very dark. Perhaps you were imagining things?’

  I shook my head, ignoring the warning pinch that Marie gave my arm. ‘No, I definitely saw something. I saw his knife and everything.’ With much huffing and puffing the porters lifted up the body, doing their best to support poor Bea’s wildly lolling head and deposited it as carefully as they could into the sack.

  ‘Did you see his face?’ Mrs Bell asked softly. ‘Think carefully, girl.’

  Marie pinched my arm again and after a pause, I gave my head a regretful shake. ‘It was too dark,’ I lied, crossing my fingers behind my back as I had used to do as a little girl.

  Mrs Bell looked at me searchingly for a long moment then gave a satisfied nod. ‘Very well.’

  We all turned to watch as the sack was placed carefully on to the floor of Madame Lisette’s rather shabby black carriage, which had plainly seen better days before she’d snapped it up at an auction house. One of the porters, who looked most displeased about having to drive out in the middle of the night, climbed heavily up onto the perch and gathered the reins in his gloved hands. He then briefly touched his cap to Mrs Bell before driving briskly out of the yard, taking Bea with him and leaving the other porters to throw icy cold buckets of water and thick handfuls of straw onto the bloody cobbles, grumbling to each in French as they did so. It seemed that Madame Lisette had thought of everything in her determination that this crime should go undetected.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Marie whispered to me, shivering as she pulled her thin red shawl closer about her shoulders. ‘I want to be as far away as possible from this place by tomorrow.’

  I nodded and followed her back into the house, with one last curious look over my shoulder at Mrs Bell who continued to stand quietly in the middle of the yard, while the porters went about their grim business around her.

  ‘Poor old Bea, eh?’ Marie said as we clomped back up the stairs to our room. ‘Still, she was almost at the end of the road anyway.’

  I gawped at her. ‘Leave it out, she was only thirty one. That’s hardly ancient, is it?’ I was just trying to be kind though and didn’t quite mean it. I’d turned seventeen my first week in Calais and thirty one seemed unimaginably old to me. Old enough to be a grandmother in the part of the world that I came from. Old enough to be dead already.

  Marie flounced a little. ‘It is in our line of work, sweetheart,’ she said with a pout. ‘If she was a horse, she’d have been packed off to the knackers yard soon enough. Shame she couldn’t find something better for herself before it happened.’

  ‘She never got the chance,’ I said quietly, feeling suddenly terribly sad.

  Marie shrugged. ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to her stuff now that she’s gone?’ she said thoughtfully, looking across at Bea’s closed door, which lay across the landing from our own. ‘She had some lovely things, didn’t she?’

  ‘Madame will have first pickings no doubt,’ I replied listlessly, following Marie’s gaze. ‘We should probably wait until…’ I spoke in vain, of course, as the other girl had already turned the door handle and stolen quietly into the dark room beyond.

  ‘Are you coming in, then?’ she called out and I heard her crash heavily against a piece of furniture and swear with pain and annoyance.

  ‘I’ll fetch a lamp then, shall I?’ I said rather resentfully before going into our room, picking up a small gas lamp that stood on a rickety blue painted chest of drawers next to the door and then returning to Bea’s cologne scented bedroom, where I put it down on the small table beside her carefully made bed, which was covered with a pretty patchwork counterpane that I suspected she’d brought from home, folding it carefully so that it fit into her trunk. I touched it gently and felt sad all over again.

  ‘I reckon we’re the first to come in here,’ Marie said with much satisfaction, pulling open a drawer and rifling through poor dead Bea’s stockings and lace edged petticoats. ‘I told you that she had some nice things, didn’t I?’ she said with glee as she pulled out some pink ribbed stockings and a petticoat with a blue ribbon laced through the edging which she threw onto the bed. ‘Mind you, she always did look like she thought she was a cut above the rest of us poor tarts.’

  ‘I’m not sure we should be doing this,’ I said, looking around but not touching anything. It made me feel miserable to be standing there in a dead woman’s room, seeing her things lying there just had she had left them and knowing that she would never be coming back.

  Marie had moved on to the wardrobe beside the window and threw it open to reveal half a dozen light coloured dresses hanging together with little lavender and rose scented sachets tied to each one by a pale pink ribbon. ‘What does Bea care?’ she said over her sh
oulder as she pulled a pale lemon yellow dress out, held it up against her then threw it onto the pile on the bed. ‘She’s probably at the bottom of the Channel by now.’ She pulled out a pink dress with a pretty rose bud pattern and added it to the pile. ‘I always liked that one and didn’t think it did anything for her. It’ll look much better on me.’

  I sighed and opened a drawer, not really intending to take anything but at the same time curious to see Bea’s things for reasons that I couldn’t really explain other than that she had been murdered and that, in a way, gave her belongings a certain tawdry glamour and allure. Inside the drawer there was a small blue watered silk box and underneath that, a sealed envelope, stamped and waiting to be sent. I looked warily across at Marie, who was busily trying on bonnets and pouting at herself in front of a tarnished mirror then picked up the envelope, which was addressed to a Miss Alice Redmayne at 18 Grosvenor Road, Highbury, London. I slid it into my corset then opened the box, which held a pretty amber pendant, engraved on the back with ‘To my lovely Beatrice from her Alice.’ I looked across at Marie again, who had now moved with great relish on to Bea’s shoes, which stood in neat rows at the bottom of the wardrobe, then hid the box in my fist.

  ‘I hope you’ve got enough money for the crossing back to England?’ Marie said, buttoning up a pair of shiny red leather boots and turning her slender ankle from side to side, the better to admire the effect. ‘Only, I don’t have enough money saved up for both of us.’

  ‘I haven’t said that I’m coming with you,’ I huffed, quietly closing the drawer. ‘I might stay here for a while.’

  Marie stared at me. ‘Are you simple?’ she demanded. ‘That madman could come back at any time. Didn’t you hear what Mrs Bell said about what he did to poor Bea?’ She pulled off the boot, picked up its fellow and added them to the ever increasing pile. ‘He gutted her. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not staying here to see if he comes after me with that knife of his.’ She picked up another pair of shoes, pale blue this time, and threw them on to the bed. ‘Don’t forget that he clocked a look at you as well.’

  ‘Where should we go?’ I said with a heavy sigh, resigning myself to the inevitable.

  Marie grinned then. ‘I know just the place.’

  Chapter Two, Cora, London, August 1888

  I rubbed my eyes then clambered out of bed, careful as always not to wake my elder sister, Cat who slept on, her face buried deep in her pillow and the blankets pulled up high around her shoulders. I tiptoed carefully to the window and pulled the threadbare yellow cotton curtain aside to look down into the backyard, where a few cats were already prowling, on the hunt for scraps and perhaps a scratch behind the ear if they were lucky.

  The station was usually quiet at this hour, most of the policemen were either out on the beat or inside getting briefed and ready for the day ahead. I knew that Pa had already gone down as I’d lain awake in bed earlier on, listening to him pulling on his boots then cursing softly as he hunted for his helmet which my little brothers had hidden in their room while he was asleep.

  Today was different though and as I quietly pulled on my clothes, I could hear shouts coming from the station below, the slamming of doors and the sound of the policemen’s heavy boots stamping on the wooden stairs. Something had clearly happened and as I fastened up my dress, I wondered if Pa, always so keen to help out and be useful, was in the thick of it as usual.

  I padded on stockinged feet to the main room of our quarters, a plain whitewashed chamber that smelled faintly of sweaty feet, stewed cabbage, boiled beef from last night’s dinner and carbolic soap, where my sister and I did most of the cooking, ate our meals, worked at the sewing we took in from a fancy dressmaker in Mayfair and oversaw the boys’ reading and where Pa slept on the small truckle bed in the corner, preferring to let we girls have the relative privacy of the big main bedroom while the boys shared a bed in the other bedroom. The small window, which had been painted a cheerful bright blue by Cat, overlooked the street and I stood on tiptoe to look down on Commercial Street, which already bustled with activity with several hawkers and street girls selling their wares, the traders heading to Spitalfields Market to start the days trading, a few worse for wear soldiers shambling back to their barracks and an incessant trail of wagons and carriages trundling down the middle of the dusty thoroughfare chased by gangs of ragged little street boys.

  As I watched, the great doors of the police station opened and about half a dozen officers ran out, some of them clearly caught unawares for they clumsily did up their navy blue tunics and straightened their helmets as they hurried down the street towards Christ Church. I looked to see if Pa was one of them but didn’t spy his thick thatch of red hair, so easily picked out in any crowd, and so relaxed, relieved that he wasn’t going to be in the midst of whatever trouble was occurring.

  ‘What’s happened?’ It was Cat, drowsy and yawning her head off in the doorway, her pale pink pinafore apron held up by just one button while the other strap trailed down to her knees. She wasn’t exactly a morning person. ‘I heard shouting down below.’

  I shrugged. ‘Dunno. Some of the men have just run down the street.’ I saw my sister open her mouth to ask the obvious question and cut her off. ‘Not Pa though. He must still be downstairs.’

  We’d lived in the station for three years, ever since Ma died giving birth to baby Alfred. We’d had our own place back then, a pretty little house on Brick Lane but then Ma died and Pa brought us all to live above the station, thinking it would make it easier for him to carry on working and still keep an eye on us all. My sister should have been long gone by now, flown off to her own life and family but instead she stayed to help care for the boys and Pa until they were able to take care of themselves and did her sewing work in the evenings to help make ends meet.

  ‘What do you think has happened?’ Cat said, turning away to make porridge for the boys, first measuring rough oats from a chipped blue ceramic jar into a pan then adding milk. ‘Another riot maybe? Or do you think there’s been a murder?’ She sounded hopeful. Whenever Cat had some spare money, she liked to spend it on editions of the Illustrated Police News, a grubby rag that specialised in gruesome, and according to Pa, wildly exaggerated illustrated reports of all the latest murders and executions while my secret vice was collecting play bills and posters from the local theatres and music halls then daydreaming over them when I thought no one was looking.

  I turned back to the window and peered over the dingy roof tops and smoking chimneys to where Christ Church soared in the distance, its huge white tower looming over the surrounding houses, forbidding and angular as a pagan temple. ‘I hope not,’ I said with a shudder. I never could abide the sight of my own blood, let alone anyone else’s.

  Cat scoffed. ‘Oh you, some policeman’s daughter you are,’ she said, stirring the porridge until it began to bubble then solidify. ‘Faint at the sight of your own shadow, you would.’

  I felt myself go hot and red with embarrassment. ‘I would not,’ I protested, knowing that actually my sister was right but I would rather have died a thousand times over than admit it.

  Cat laughed then, not unkindly. ‘Yes, you would. Gawd knows what would happen if you was to see an actual killing.’ She spooned the porridge into four brown earthenware bowls and sprinkled a little of our precious store of sugar on each one. ‘To keep the little blighters sweet,’ she said with a wink to me just as our four little brothers charged noisily into the room, auburn hair tousled and eyes grimy with sleep. It was drawing to the close of the school holidays and they were looking forward to a long sunny day of lazily kicking about the streets with their friends and perhaps earning a few illicit pennies fetching and carrying in the market.

  Alfred, the youngest, put his arms up to me and I smiled with real love as I picked him up and pressed my lips to his sticky cheek, which was still warm from his bed. ‘Sleep well, sweetheart?’ I whispered and he nodded before struggling to be let down again. Unlike the other boys he wa
s still too young for school or to be allowed out to play on the street and so stayed at home with Cat and me to look after him while we worked on our sewing and did the housework.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see what’s happening?’ Cat said, jerking her head to the door as she spooned out a helping of porridge for herself then put the rest aside for me. ‘Maybe Pa will know.’

  I hesitated for a moment then nodded, pulled on my boots and scampered out of the room before the ever mercurial Cat changed her mind and decided to go instead of me. Although I made the trip downstairs several times a day to use the privies in the yard or go out on to Commercial Street, I was a bag of nerves this time when instead of crossing the yard, I opened the door into the station itself then went down a brown painted corridor that smelt strongly of male sweat, leather boots and pipe smoke to the main lobby, a large shabby room with a scratched and battered wooden desk along the back wall which was usually manned by a couple of sergeants. Just beyond this I could see the cells, which as usual housed a motley collection of vagrants, petty criminals and drunken prostitutes. Sometimes they would keep me awake at night with their shrieks, tuneless singing and demands to be set free but this morning they were all quietly slumped on the floor, all of the stuffing knocked out of them by a night in the cells and clearly longing to be elsewhere.

  ‘What are you doing down here, Cora?’ a voice said close to my ear and I whirled around in panic only to smile with relief when I saw who it was.

  ‘Ned,’ I said, putting my hand to my breast as if touch alone could calm my leaping heart. Ned was a new recruit, a local boy who had gone to school with my sister Cat and, I suspected, was more than a bit sweet on her. ‘I just came down to see what was happening.’ I looked around for Pa and saw that the usually stern policemen behind the desk were unusually animated as they chatted with a tall young man with shining dark brown hair that I’d never seen before. I reluctantly dragged my eyes away from him and smiled at Ned. ‘Cat thinks there’s been a murder.’