I nodded. ‘You mean, would people care more if he was killing young girls like myself?’ I said. ‘My Pa thinks so. He says it’s not fair that people think it’s alright to treat the street women badly and behave as if they deserve the bad things that happen to them. He says that they deserve to be cared about just as much as everyone else. He says that if we’d cared more about them before they felt so hopeless that they went on the streets to survive then things like this wouldn’t happen.’ I stopped and like a child put my hand over my mouth, not having meant to say so much.
Mr Mercier looked at me in silence for a moment then smiled. ‘Your Pa sounds like a man after my own heart,’ he said. ‘I wish that there were more men like him in H Division.’
‘I’m very proud of him,’ I said quietly, my cheeks blooming crimson. We were standing in the lobby now and I could see the policemen behind the desk watching us curiously.
‘And so you should be,’ Mr Mercier said before giving me one last sad smile and strolling over to the desk.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Cat demanded crossly when I finally emerged a few moments later, red faced and panting, at the top of our stairs. ‘I was expecting you home hours ago. I want to hear all about the inquest.’
I sighed. ‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ I pushed past her into the kitchen and threw myself down on to one of the chairs. Cat had been working on a wedding gown and the table was covered in cloth to protect the fine silk and lace from the usual stains and debris of every day life. A series of distant thumps, bumps and gleeful shouts told me that our brothers were in but fully occupied in their room.
She pulled a face and sat down opposite me. ‘You said you’d help with this dress,’ she said resentfully, almost reverently picking up the trail of lovely lace that she was painstakingly attaching to a swag of silk at the front of the skirt. ‘It has to be perfect you see and your stitches are smaller than mine.’
I felt immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Cat,’ I said. ‘The inquest went on for longer than I expected and then Inspector Abberline wanted to talk to me about something.’ A rather self important tone sneaked into my voice as I said this. We didn’t know very much about Abberline but we’d spent a lot of time speculating about him. I felt quite pleased that I’d been the first to actually speak to him - in his own office no less.
Cat dropped the lace into her lap with surprise. ‘What did he want to talk to you about?’ she demanded, her eyes round. ‘Have you been up to no good again?’
I shook my head. ‘Of course not!’ I said with much indignation. ‘Although he knew all about that,’ I said ruefully, pulling the wicker work basket towards me and selecting a needle and bobbin of cream thread. ‘Well, about most of it anyway.’ He didn’t know about the missing envelope or if he did then he was keeping it back for some other occasion.
Cat looked startled. ‘Is he going to tell Pa?’ she asked in a fearful whisper. ‘Did he give you a telling off?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, still feeling confused about what had just passed between Abberline and myself. It had seemed like such a nothing filled sort of conversation but I’d been aware of deeper currents underneath, of things that were being deliberately left unsaid and other things that were being asked of me even though I was not quite aware of them. ‘I think he really wanted to know about a friend of mine,’ I mused.
‘You don’t have any friends,’ Cat scoffed, picking up her lace and bending over her work again.
That’s what she thought.
Chapter Twenty
The next few weeks passed quickly. There were no more murders, much to the relief of everyone in Whitechapel and the obvious annoyance and disappointment of the journalists that still swarmed around the area, desperate to sniff out any story that might keep the sensation alive in the minds of the newspaper reading public. It was front page news, you see and according to my Pa, everyone in London, in the whole country even, was talking about the horrible murders in Whitechapel, taking the case apart piece by piece and pretending to feel concern about the conditions that people lived in there.
‘I hate all these do-gooders about the place,’ my Pa said angrily over dinner one evening. ‘They pretend to give a damn about the people of Whitechapel when really all they care about is making themselves feel better at our expense.’
I thought of Miss Redmayne then, who was still working at the Whitechapel Women’s Mission most days then going back to her big house in Highbury in the evenings. I knew for a fact that she wasn’t really here to help but even so there was always a glow about her, a look of satisfied contentment that suggested that she had found some sort of peace in her work among the fallen women and girls of Spitalfields.
I kept my distance from her though, mainly because I didn’t want her to recognise me again and ask awkward questions but also because I didn’t want to see her hanging about Mr Mercier. Just the thought of them together, of him smiling down into her eyes, made me hurt where I thought my heart must surely be.
I saw Emma even less often - generally in the distance as I went about my chores on Commercial Street but once I caught sight of her walking beneath our kitchen window in the station and I threw it up and hailed her. She’d looked up, startled then grinned and waved to me before calling something up that I couldn’t quite hear over the rumbling of carts and carriages and shouts from the nearby market.
It was to be a few more days before I managed to speak to her properly though. I was just on my way down Brushfield Street, where my sister had sent me to pick up some fresh bread, eggs and milk for our pantry when she came running up behind me, her cheeks pink and eyes shining with exertion. ‘There you are,’ she said, coming to a halt in front of me. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
I smiled despite myself. ‘Have you?’ I said, feeling pleased that she gone to the trouble of looking for me. ‘I’d have thought I’d be easy enough to find.’
Emma shrugged and put her arm through mine so that we proceeded together down the street. ‘Not if you don’t want to go near the police station, my girl,’ she said with a wink. She looked plumper, cleaner and healthier than she had done the last time I saw her and even seemed to be wearing a new dress, a simple affair in pale blue sprigged cotton with only a few buttons missing from the front. ‘I’ve got a job,’ she said, grinning with pride. ‘I’m working as a barmaid in the Britannia on the corner of Dorset Street which doesn’t pay too badly and it’s live in as well so I’m not sleeping in doss houses no more but am sharing a room with two other girls up above the pub.’
‘So you’re safe then?’ I asked, not liking the idea of her unprotected and vulnerable to attack in the cheap rooms that sprang like mushrooms in the dank, damp abandoned houses of the district.
She nodded, still smiling. ‘Yes, I’m safe,’ she said. ‘No more lodging houses and there’s a barred door between me and Whitechapel every night.’
I smiled too. ‘Oh, I’m right glad for you,’ I said, meaning every word. ‘You’ll be able to save up now and everything.’
She laughed. ‘Save? Oh, I don’t know about that, Cora.’ She smoothed down the front of her dress. ‘What do you think? I got it on Middlesex Street for a song on account of all the missing buttons.’
‘It’s lovely,’ I said before adding shyly: ‘I can find you some buttons if you like? We always have spare ones lying about from our jobs. I’m sure I can find you some pretty ones that won’t look too out of place.’
She stopped and gave me a quick fierce hug. ‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. I’ve never been too handy with my needle and thread so it wouldn’t occur to me to sew new buttons on. You should see my darning.’ Something, a memory perhaps, made her eyes darken then and she moved her head slightly as if to shake it away out of her head.
‘What did you want to see me for?’ I asked after she’d pulled away. I hadn’t had many friends in my life so the idea that someone might want to simply pass the time with me for no par
ticular reason was a novel one. Emma, on the other hand, was obviously the sort of person who made friends with ease so I was under no illusion that this meant anything much to her. ‘Has something else happened?’ I whispered.
She tucked one hand back under my arm and waved the other airily before her. ‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ she said, her smile slipping a little so that I instantly regretted saying anything. ‘I was just wondering, now that I have some money see, if you’d like to come out on my night off.’
‘Come out?’ I stared at her, a little bewildered. ‘And do what?’
Emma laughed. ‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ she said. ‘We could go to a music hall maybe. I’ve got a friend who comes into the pub and who reckons he can get us in to the Pavilion music hall on Whitechapel Road for free so then we’d only have to pay for our drinks once inside.’ We’d reached the shop I was heading for and now stood on the pavement in front of it. ‘What do you think?’
‘A music hall?’ Pa and Cat wouldn’t like it but I couldn’t prevent a throb of excitement entering my voice as I repeated those magical words. ‘A real music hall?’
She grinned. ‘Of course it’s a real one, you dummy,’ she said. ‘How about it? I’m off for most of tonight so could come and get you at about nine if you can get away?’
‘I’m usually in bed by then,’ I said doubtfully. ‘And Pa is working on the front desk tonight.’
‘All the better,’ Emma said brightly. ‘Just wait for that sister of yours to nod off then sneak out. I’ll wait for you outside your yard.’ She made it all sound eminently possible and normal but I must have allowed a little of my doubts to show on my face for she leaned forward and hugged me again. ‘Oh, Cora,’ she said, ‘how old are you now? Almost seventeen? You should be having some fun, my dear.’
‘I do have fun,’ I said staunchly if a little doubtfully.
‘Do you?’ Emma asked with a cheeky look and then she was gone.
I had my doubts, of course I did, but there was never any real chance that I wouldn’t go out to meet her. The lure of the music hall, a glittering treat that I had longed for as long as I could remember but which had always remained apparently impossible, and the prospect of seeing Emma again were both enough to ensure that I was wide awake and clambering clumsily back into my clothes at just before nine after having waited impatiently for over half an hour for my sister’s usual stream of night time chatter about the day we’d had, her plans for the boys and some small worries about Pa and the longevity of the side of bacon in the pantry to slow almost to a standstill then be gradually be replaced by the heavy breathing of deepest sleep.
‘You came then?’ Emma whispered to me out of the darkness after I’d carefully sneaked down the stairs then crossed the yard, hesitating just for a moment before opening the door out to the street. I whirled around and saw her leaning against the wall by the privies. She was wearing a different dress, this time of dull black silk, stained, worn through and shiny in places but still impressive enough to make me look down at my pink flowered cotton frock with slight dismay. ‘I thought I might as well wait in here,’ she said with a small shrug, patting the silly little black velvet hat she wore pinned on top of her blonde curls into place. ‘It’s better than loitering about outside on the street.’ She caught me looking at her dress and smiled. ‘I borrowed it from Molly, one of the Irish girls at the Britannia. She’s ever so nice like that. I expect she’ll want something in return though.’
I grinned at her. ‘One day I’ll take you upstairs to meet everyone,’ I said, not really interested in Molly from the Britannia. ‘I think you’d like my sister.’
‘But would she like me?’ Emma replied with an arch look as she pulled open the street door and stepped out on to the street. ‘After all, I’m leading you astray aren’t I?’
I laughed and linked arms with her. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’m fairly sure that my sister already thinks I’m something of a lost cause.’
Emma slid me a wry sidelong look. ‘Because of your propensity for looking at dead bodies and stealing from mortuaries?’ she said with, I hoped, no hint of any ill feeling. ‘I can’t imagine why she should think that.’
‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘This can’t possibly be as bad as that.’
We were walking down Commercial Street together and, being unused to being out at such a late hour, I looked around myself with gleeful interest at the life and noise that still teemed in the streets from an elderly man sitting on the step of the Ten Bells and throwing bread crumbs angrily to a group of pigeons to a cluster of thin cheeked giggling match girls in battered old bonnets admiring their reflections in a shop window to two grim faced middle aged women arguing and almost coming to blows over a red nosed scrawny man who stood somewhat shamefacedly to the side to a sad huddle of half starved looking young men standing outside the pub and counting out their pennies to see what they could afford to drink if they all pooled in together. ‘I love it here,’ Emma said suddenly, much to my surprise. ‘I feel at home in Whitechapel. I feel like I know it even better than my own village.’
‘My Pa says that some people are more suited to city life than living in the countryside,’ I said. ‘He grew up in Suffolk and says that he’d never want to go back to that quiet sort of life where everyone knows everyone else’s business and nothing much happens.’ I remembered his wistful face that afternoon in Southend. ‘He misses the sea though,’ I added softly.
Emma snorted. ‘There’s always the Thames,’ she said. ‘Although I suspect it’s got more rats than the sea and I wouldn’t fancy the chances of anyone who tried swimming in it.’ She pulled me across the road to the Princess Alice. ‘Let’s have a couple of drinks before we go on our way,’ she said with a wink.
‘Let me buy them,’ I said, feeling my cheeks go pink. ‘It’s just that I know you were counting on selling that pendant for money and I feel bad about giving it away especially to the likes of Miss Redmayne, who doesn’t want for anything.’
She stared at me. ‘I don’t mind about all that,’ she said. ‘I mean, I did at first but I don’t now.’ She smiled. ‘Oh, I was mad as hell when I first guessed what had happened but I know that you were just acting for the best and it’s not like I needed the money really is it?’ She pulled me into the pub, which was hot, noisy, stinking of armpits, spilled beer and gin and packed to the rafters with the usual gaggle of drunken flirtatious dollymops, slumming soldiers, sour faced old tarts, market men and locals. ‘Honestly, Cora, I wouldn’t let it trouble you.’
‘Well I do,’ I said doggedly as we fought our way through the throng to the bar at the back of the room. ‘I wish I’d never done it.’
She didn’t hear me though over the din of the piano in the corner being amateurishly played by a drunken soldier, whose fellows clustered about him singing a popular song and the shouts and laughter of the punters at the bar, all yelling and waving their money in the faces of the poor harassed barmaids. Emma had confidently pummelled her way through the crowd to the bar and was cheerfully joining in the general pushing and shoving that was going on there so I turned away and looked around the room, looking with interest at the various different groups at each of the low tables and thinking how shocked my Pa would be if he knew where I was now.
He’d made both Cat and I promise not to go out after dark, had been quite adamant in fact so I felt a little sick with shame to be going against his wishes although obviously not shamed enough to turn around and march straight back home again. ‘The murdered women have all been of a certain class,’ he’d told us a little awkwardly. ‘They weren’t decent young girls like you but older women who’d had hard lives and who worked on the streets.’ Bless my Pa - Cat and I were both Whitechapel born and bred; we knew tarts when we saw them and there was no need to be coy when talking about them around us. ‘I can’t promise though that things might not change one day,’ he went on, pulling off his boots with a sigh. ‘He’s clearly insane after all and might
very well get bored with such easy targets and then where will we all be?’
Where indeed. It wasn’t like Pa to speculate about the motivation that lay behind the murders or other crimes that went on in Whitechapel. His job was to catch whoever was behind it and ensure that justice was done and that, to the letter, was what he generally did and nothing more or less. This worry and speculation was entirely new but not, perhaps, completely surprising - after all, as Abberline had said, all of London was at it so why shouldn’t be the poor devils paid to police the streets of the East End have their fun also?
When we had finished our drinks, Emma took me down to the Pavilion music hall on Whitechapel Road, a huge and to my innocent eyes opulent building with a passing resemblance to a Roman temple or, more blasphemously, Christ Church on Commercial Street with huge columns on either side of the entrance and a stately triumphal arch two storeys up that towered over the neighbouring buildings. It turned out that Emma knew one of the boys on the ticket stall outside, a surly looking lad with straw coloured hair, a crust of raspberry coloured acne and a painful looking stye on one eye and after some muttered conversation between them he waved us inside with a cheerful nod and a wink. ‘You enjoy yourself now ladies!’ he called.
‘Here we are then,’ Emma said cheerfully as she led me by the hand through to the stalls, which were crammed full of people, all craning their heads to watch the stage where a small, rather chubby looking young woman with fair hair was belting out popular songs one after the other while flouncing up and down the stage in a fuchsia pink dress. Most of the audience, especially the women, was enthusiastically singing along, their eyes rapturously closed as they swayed together in time with the music. It was everything that I had hoped it would be and more.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Emma shouted to me above the din, miming the motion of raising a glass to her lips and grinning.
From Whitechapel Page 22
