‘There’s been a woman knifed in George Yard,’ Ned whispered with relish, leaning so close that his lips almost grazed my cheek and he jumped back in embarrassment. ‘Nasty business by all accounts. Stabbed over and over again.’
I was wide eyed now. I knew George Yard, which despite the misleading name was actually a narrow street and not a yard at all, well as I often used it to get from Brick Lane to Whitechapel High Street, where it came out as an archway between a pawnbrokers and the distinctly down at heel White Hart pub with its grimy bow window. It was a dingy ill lit alleyway, lined with cheap lodging houses and stinking of urine, rubbish, horse manure and the foul smoke generated by the tall chimney of the Whitechapel Board of Works’ rubbish incinerator on the corner of Wentworth Street. Most would take pains to avoid it at night but it was safe enough during the day, mainly thanks to the presence of a large ragged school for poor children at the Whitechapel High Street end. ‘Is she dead?’ I asked.
Ned looked at me in amazement. ‘Course she’s dead,’ he said as if to a simpleton. ‘She’s been stabbed all over.’
I felt a bit sick but managed to swallow it down. ‘Is she still there?’ I whispered.
Ned shook his head. ’Nah, they’ve taken her to the workhouse mortuary on Old Montague Street,’ he said. ‘Just waiting for someone to identify the body now.’ He peered closely at me. ‘You alright, Cora? You’ve gone awful pale. Your Pa is around here somewhere if you need looking after.’
I closed my eyes and shook my head. ‘No thanks, Ned.’ I felt irked though; this was the second time that morning someone had suggested that I needed looking after in some way, that I was too squeamish and pathetic to cope with anything gruesome.
‘Your sister always says that you are as weak as water,’ Ned said with a nervous laugh, obviously terrified that I was about to faint and cause a fuss that he would get the blame for. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything about the stabbing. I’m sorry.’
That did it. My eyes snapped open and I forced myself to smile. ‘It’s alright, Ned,’ I said as jauntily as I could even though I was seething inside. ‘I haven’t had my breakfast yet, that’s all. I’ll be right as rain in a minute.’
He smiled at me uncertainly, obviously unconvinced. ‘Well, that’s good. I have to be off now.’ He looked suddenly shy and a crimson flush spread up from his collar to the tips of his ears. ‘Be sure to say hello to Cat for me, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I will,’ I said grimly, my mind working swiftly as I formulated a plan that would show them all that I wasn’t the hopeless little milksop that they all thought I was. Weak as water? I’d show them. ‘Wait, Ned, who is that at the counter?’ I whispered, jerking my head towards the newcomer who was still chatting away with the policemen as if they were all old friends. He was nice looking with dark grey eyes, a firm clean shaven chin, full lips and waving hair that even I knew was quite a bit longer than was fashionable and which fell just short of his slate grey coat collar. There was something open and friendly about his expression that made me want to look at him for a long time but even so I hastily dropped my gaze, feeling my cheeks go red with embarrassment, when he turned and looked at me for a moment over his shoulder.
Ned pulled a face. ‘That’s Henry Mercier, he’s studying to become a lawyer and comes in to help people with legal matters if they can’t afford to hire anyone proper.’ His expression was scornful. ‘Although what good it does, I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘That’s kind of him,’ I said faintly, watching as Mr Mercier followed a policeman to the cells then squatted down on his haunches to talk quietly to one of the miserable looking women slumped on the floor. As I watched, the woman started to cry and he took her grimy hands in his own to console her, talking soothingly all the while.
‘I don’t know why he wastes his time with them. If they’re in here then they’re past all help, aren’t they?’ Ned said with a snort of disgust before nodding briskly to me and strolling off to the briefing rooms that lay in a warren behind the lobby.
I waited a few seconds to make sure that he wasn’t coming back then slipped out through the front door of the station and ran as fast as I could down Commercial Street, pulling my shawl close about my shoulders as I went. I’d show them that I was tougher than they thought. They’d rue the day they called me weak as water because I was going to do something that not one of them would ever dare to do.
I carried on running until I could go no further then leaned against the grimy railings of Christ Church to catch my breath, doing my best to ignore the curious stares of the homeless people who spent their miserable days sleeping and drinking themselves into a state of forgetful oblivion among the mossy stones in Itchy Park, the local nickname for the former graveyard. I then dusted myself down before carrying on more slowly to the turning on to Wentworth Street. The day before had been a bank holiday and there was a distinctly louche atmosphere in the air with litter everywhere on the sun warmed pavements, everyone nursing hangovers and tattered bunting hanging from the dusty windows of the pubs that stood on almost every corner and everyone nursing hangovers.
Pa had had the day off and, being brave and also somewhat foolhardy, took us all off on the train from Liverpool Street to Southend for a day at the seaside, using money he’d been saving for months to pay for it. He grew up next to the sea in Norfolk and it made me feel sad to see him standing on the pier at Southend gazing wistfully out into the great expanse of blue where sea and sky met and merged together. ‘Are you alright there, Pa?’ I asked eventually, slipping my hand, which was sticky with melted ice cream, into his. He looked down at me with a start of surprise as if he’d forgotten that I was there then gave me a sad smile. ‘I’m alright, sweetheart,’ he said with a deep sigh. He sighed all the time since Ma died. ‘I was just watching the gulls and wondering what adventures and strange foreign lands the breeze will take them to.’ Poor Pa. I squeezed his hand and turned to watch the gulls with him, admiring the way they soared and dipped without a care on the wind and envying them their freedom.
Caught up in my memories of the day before, I remembered too late that my route would take me straight past George Yard where several of my father’s colleagues were even now hanging about the street entrance and doing their best to keep curious locals from seeing anything, pushing them back none too gently with their hands and truncheons when the large crowd that had gathered threatened to surge past them to the murder scene. ‘Not that there’s anything worth seeing,’ an elderly woman huffed with annoyance as I pulled my shawl up over my head and tried to sneak past the entrance to the alley. ‘It all happened indoors in George Yard Buildings. There’s not a spot of blood to be seen on the street.’ She clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘I wish I’d known that before I wasted my time trundling all the way down here to have a look.’
Once I had skirted around the crowd and avoided all of the policemen, it didn’t take me long to reach the entrance to the workhouse mortuary, a low shabby, red brick building, no better than a shed, reached via a pair of black painted gates on narrow, winding Eagle Place. Next door was the Davenant Foundation School and I thought how odd it was that the mortuary, encased as it always was in a heavy pall of death and decay, should be directly next to the schoolyard where, if it hadn’t been for the holidays, the sound of children playing and laughing would have drifted over to me as I hesitated then pushed open the gate, which led on to a tiny yard.
There should have been a policeman on duty to let people in but to my great relief he was nowhere to be seen and had probably nipped off for a cigarette and a cup of strong tea with his mates down at George Yard. I hoped that he wouldn’t get into trouble should I be caught inside but even that fleeting feeling of guilt wasn’t enough to make me waver from my purpose as I crossed the cobbled yard. There were two more doors in front of me, one straight ahead leading to the bin shed and the other on the left which led directly into the mortuary itself. ‘Oh cripes,’ I whispered to myself before putting my
hand to the black painted handle and turning it, not even thinking of what I was going to say should anyone else already be inside.
The door opened and luckily the large room beyond, which reeked of antiseptic, soap and the harsh metallic tang of old blood, was empty. Thanking my lucky stars, I swiftly made my way to the post mortem room, a small white tiled chamber entirely dominated by the examination table in the centre, upon which lay a body entirely covered by a grubby white sheet with ‘WHITECHAPEL WORKHOUSE’ stamped in faded red ink on the bottom left corner. The body beneath looked large enough to be a man’s but I could see a woman’s scuffed and much mended boots and a few straggling brown cotton petticoats peeping out from beneath the sheet.
I carefully closed the door behind me then took a deep breath and stepped up to the table. For a few horrible seconds, it seemed to me as if the cloth covering the dead woman’s mouth was being sucked in and released as if she still breathed and I instinctively gasped aloud with fright. The moment soon passed though and before I could give myself a chance to change my mind and run away, I closed my eyes, put my hand to the cloth and gave it a sharp tug.
I had seen death just once before when Ma died and I helped Cat and Aunt May wash and lay out the body, carefully plaiting her fair hair and tying it with a pretty blue ribbon then pulling the blankets up to under her chin so that she looked as if she were only sleeping and could still wake up at any minute. This was entirely different.
Whereas Ma had been pale and serene, the slight smile on her pale lips giving no clue of the terrible pain she had endured for days on end before she’d finally given up and quietly bled to death in Pa’s arms, this woman was mottled and bruised, her mouth hanging slackly open to reveal rotten teeth and a swollen tongue while the dark blood splattered over her face and neck was clear evidence of the violence of her end. She stank too, of blood, stale beer, sweat and a horrible pervasive damp, the dank scent of loneliness and desperation that I had smelt before on the vagrants and sad street women that Pa locked up in the station cells.
Horrified and sickened, I gave a little cry and dropped the sheet back over that terrible, twisted face before taking a step back. Weak as water I may well be but my sister was wrong in one respect - I hadn’t fainted and this was something far worse than my own shadow.
Swallowing down my revulsion, I looked around the room and spotted a pile of what looked like rubbish lying on a slate counter next to the sink but which on closer inspection was clearly the dead woman’s few paltry belongings - a crushed black bonnet, two shillings, an old glove missing most of its buttons, some pills in a wrap of old newspaper, a small tin of tea and a bulky blood stained envelope.
I stared at them for a moment, thinking how pathetic it was that this was all the poor woman had on her when she died and glad that at least Ma had left behind a sweet little baby for everyone to remember her by and not a pile of old trash. I gingerly picked up the envelope, holding it between thumb and forefinger so that I wouldn’t touch any of the blood and read the name written on it aloud. ‘Miss Alice Redmayne, Highbury.’ I looked around at the dead woman, my gaze resting thoughtfully on the battered old boots and ripped and tattered petticoats. She didn’t look like an Alice and she certainly didn’t look like she’d come from Highbury, which even I knew was a serious cut above even the nicest parts of Spitalfields.
It occurred to me then that it was all very well saying that I’d seen the dead woman but no one was actually going to believe it unless I produced solid evidence of the fact. I looked down at the envelope in my hand and then, before I really knew what I was doing, I shoved it deep inside my pocket.
‘What are you doing in here, girl?’ I didn’t hear the door open behind me and gave a guilty start before turning around with what I sincerely hoped was a look of perfect innocence as I faced an angry short man with a neatly clipped brown beard and small grey eyes that coldly scrutinised me from behind a pair of round glasses that I recognised at once as Dr Killeen, one of the police doctors. His gaze darted away just for a moment to the corpse on the table, doubtless checking that it was as it should be, before returning to my face with a look of enquiry.
‘I was just looking for my Pa,’ I said in a shaky voice, relieved that I had remembered to tuck the sheet back over the woman’s face before I went to look at her things. ‘He’s a sergeant with H Division. They said he might be in here.’ I glanced at the covered shape on the table and swallowed hard, willing myself not to faint as I remembered those rotten teeth, the blood, the stink of her. ‘I didn’t know that I wasn’t allowed.’
The doctor made an irritated sound. ‘Of course you knew,’ he said curtly, shrugging out of his tweed jacket and briskly beginning to turn up his sleeves. ‘I’ve often thought that the women and girls,’ at this he looked me over dismissively, ‘of this God forsaken district have the most disgustingly morbid curiosity that I have ever encountered.’ He went to the sink and began to angrily soap his hands and arms up to the elbow. ‘Do you not see enough death already without feeling compelled to actively seek it out for your own vulgar amusement?’
I felt my cheeks go red with shame. I could have told him that I’d only ever seen my Ma dead before but quickly decided that I didn’t want to share anything so personal, so raw with this man so instead I sadly shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I mumbled, bobbing an awkward and unnecessary curtsey under his cold gaze. ‘I should go and find my Pa now.’
The doctor rolled his eyes then selected a sharp looking scalpel from a small metal tray on a table next to the sink. ‘See that you do.’
I ran from the mortuary, almost colliding on the doorstep with another girl, not much older than myself and dressed in a flounced and much mended faded pink cotton dress with a little too much rouge smeared on her round cheeks. She almost didn’t see me coming as she was chatting away to the young police constable who had returned to his duties in the yard while I was inside. ‘Oops, careful now.’ The girl stepped quickly to one side and grinned at me before something about my appearance, probably my red cheeks and the tears in my eyes, made her smile drain away and her eyes narrow. ‘Have you been to see the body?’ she whispered, putting out a hand and placing it on my arm.
I nodded, glad of a sympathetic ear after the roasting I had just got from the doctor. ‘It was horrible,’ I murmured queasily. ‘There was blood and her face…’ The policeman made a little clucking noise and awkwardly patted my shoulder.
The girls nodded as if she completely understood. ‘Do they know who she is yet?’ she said, still whispering even though the policeman could hear every word. ‘Just that word on the street is that it’s an old friend of mine and she had something off me a few days ago that I’d like to have returned.’
‘I don’t know who she is,’ I said, noting that the way the girl said ‘friend’ didn’t actually sound very friendly at all. ‘I’ve never seen her before. Maybe you should go and have a look at her things? There’s not much but it’s all in there with the body.’
‘Maybe I’ll have a look then,’ the girl said more cheerfully, fluffing out her flaxen curls which looked far too yellow to be entirely natural. ‘I always told the silly old cow that she’d come to a bad end and now look at her.’ She looked up at the young policeman and gave him a sharp nudge with her thin elbow. ‘Shall we go and have a look then, bobby?’ She grinned, displaying surprisingly nice teeth and gave me a jaunty little wave over her shoulder as they disappeared together into the mortuary.
Chapter Three
Back in the room I shared with my sister, I carefully pulled the envelope out of my pocket and tipped the contents out into the palm of my hand. Whatever it was I expected to find among the seedy belongings of the murdered woman it wasn’t a delicate amber pendant with a sweet little message engraved on the back. I looked in the envelope again to see if there was a letter to go with it but there was nothing at all, just the necklace and a few grains of dirt.
‘Where did you get to this morning?’ Cat was loun
ging in the doorway watching me. ‘I thought you were only going down to the station to ask Pa what all the fuss was about. You were gone so long that he came up to take his break and told me all about the nasty business himself.’
I shrugged, quickly hiding the necklace and envelope in the folds of my dress. ‘I had to go out.’
Cat gave me a look and stepped into the room. ‘Where to?’ she said, her hazel eyes gleaming with curiosity. ‘Have you found yourself a lad?’
I felt my cheeks redden. ‘Course not,’ I muttered, mortified, and trying not to think about Mr Mercier’s broad shoulders and the gentle way he’d comforted the woman in the cells. Pa and his colleagues were never rough with the women, usually sad prostitutes the worse for drink and occasionally opium, who entered their care but not many of them would have taken one’s hand like that or spoken to her so gently.
‘I don’t know why you’re going so red,’ Cat said with a laugh. ‘You’re almost seventeen now. It’s about time you found some nice lad to cheer you up.’
‘So where’s yours then?’ I said without thinking before straight away putting my hands up to my mouth in shock, wishing that I could drag the words back into it again where they could remain unsaid and unheard.
Cat’s face darkened and for a horrible moment, I thought she was going to slap me. It wouldn’t have been the first time and she’d dispensed summary justice for far less sisterly treachery in the past. ‘You know why I don’t have a lad,’ Cat said at last with resignation. ‘I can’t leave you and the boys and Pa to fend for yourselves. I have to stay here, to take Ma’s place, until no one needs me any more.’
From Whitechapel Page 3
