Last Rights

by Barbara Nadel

  Ruby shrugged. ‘I dunno. All I remember of that time is the beatings Mum used to get off Harold.’ She looked away again. ‘We was all out, Pearl, Amber and me, when Mum – when Harold died.’ She looked back again. ‘Mr Hancock, I need someone as can find out what’s happening here. I get a feeling as if there could be something going on. Me and Pearl, we’re being, somehow, pushed into positions what make us both guilty. I don’t know who could be doing it, not really.’

  ‘And you thought of me.’

  ‘Bessie said you was helping Pearl.’

  ‘But Pearl has been arrested.’

  ‘Yes, I know. As I said, as soon as Bessie heard about it she come and told me,’ she said. It was then that I told Ruby exactly how Pearl’s husband had died and watched her face turn white as she listened to the details. ‘Well, that makes it even more important someone gets to the truth. Somebody has to know about our past to do something like that. Pearl’s no killer. She’s the gentlest of all of us.’

  Pearl, of course, was thinking along similar lines and I told Ruby so. I also told her about her fears for Amber in particular and how Velma was going to try to find her. ‘It does seem quite odd to me that none of you kept in touch,’ I said. ‘I mean because your younger sister was adopted, perhaps that was a problem, but the rest of you . . . Apparently Pearl told Velma that your mother wanted you all to stay together.’

  ‘Yeah, she did. But we thought it was for the best that we didn’t,’ Ruby said. ‘Considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’

  She looked away yet again. ‘Well, considering what happened. On your own you’re a smaller target, like,’ she said. ‘If your mum or your dad kills someone then there’ll always be people more curious about you than they should be. You never get free of something like that, you know. Murdered people have friends, family, people.’

  ‘People like this Phyllis Neilson?’

  Ruby shrugged again. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So are there others, besides this woman?’ I asked.

  Ruby closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I dunno,’ she said.

  ‘Well, are there any other names you can—’

  ‘No.’ She opened her eyes again and looked me straight in the face. ‘Point is, I don’t know who might have it in for us. Might not even be someone who knew Neilson. People get funny about relatives of killers. That’s why I’m asking you to help. All I know is that just before that raid started, the one when Shlomo died, Bessie and me saw some woman we couldn’t recognise hanging about at the end of the road.’

  ‘Could you see—’

  ‘What? Whether it could be Phyllis Neilson or not? No. She was quite a way off.’

  ‘Did Bessie tell the police about this woman?’ I asked.

  Ruby smiled. It was a weird, crooked affair. ‘Yeah, course,’ she said. ‘But they reckoned it could’ve been anyone and they might be right at that. But, like the comrades say, they want it to be me and I know that an’ all. It’s easy if it’s me.’

  I know that some of the coppers try to keep to their standards, but it’s hard under the circumstances. Every night, sometimes in the day too, women, kids, men, old people – you name it – are dying. As a copper, as anyone apart from Churchill, there’s nothing you can do about that. There isn’t much you can do about your own fear either or about the looting, the black-market ’erberts, the call-up dodgers, the pimps, the pros or even the bleeding drunk and disorderly mob, not in the depths of the blackout. Murder, of course, is a different kettle of fish. But with bombs dropping God alone knows where, there isn’t much hope of gathering a lot in the way of evidence. And if some people are behaving strangely at any particular time, what of it? Most people behave oddly nowadays. All of this only hinders solving a crime and murders particularly need to be solved these days. People are frightened enough of what flies through the air without having to worry about what walks the streets. Ruby’s thought about the coppers going for easy marks like her and her sister might be just right.

  I didn’t say I’d do anything, but I did ask Ruby about where she thought this Phyllis Neilson might be. She said up Paddington way, near to where her mum Victorine and she and her sisters had lived, which had been in a flat on Praed Street. In her forties now, Phyllis Neilson, as Ruby remembered her, had short brown hair and a very large, distinctive nose, broken in the middle like a boxer’s. She had been, and possibly still was, a prostitute.

  It was getting dark now and as well as knowing that the ‘comrades’ would soon want the room, I was also aware that I’d left Arthur and the horses for far too long already.

  ‘You know I’m trusting you not to tell the coppers about me?’ Ruby said, as I went to take my leave.

  ‘I won’t tell them about you,’ I said. ‘Just let me know if you move on. Although I do think you should chance it and go to the coppers, but . . . Look, I’ll try to find this Phyllis Neilson if you like. I don’t know if it’ll do any good. Mind you, your Jewish friends’ll look after you, won’t they?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘They must think a lot of you,’ I said. ‘Is it because you want to convert?’

  ‘Not this lot. They’re all Commies. I’m just another cause for them, a victim.’ She smiled at me. ‘My dad was Jewish, according to Mum. Don’t know who he was, but I’ve always felt this kind of connection . . . Who knows whether it’s true? But it’s why I came here, to work and . . . I didn’t have to become a frummer. But I always wanted to belong properly, do something right in my life for once. I hope Pearl’s kid finds Amber and I hope she’s gonna be all right.’

  ‘So do I,’ I said. ‘Was Amber’s dad Jewish or . . .’

  ‘Amber’s dad was Harold Neilson,’ Ruby said. ‘It was when Mum had Opal, by some Jewish bloke she said, don’t know if he was the same one as fathered me, but after that the trouble started with Harold, the violence and suchlike. Opal, see, was always Mum’s favourite, her baby. Had the best clothes, best food – treated her like a princess, Mum did. Harold was always jealous.’

  ‘And Pearl? What of her father?’

  ‘Mum always used to tell her he was some kind of gentleman. Had a title by all accounts, but what do I know? Pearl was born just over a year after me, so I can’t remember nothing. Mum didn’t say a lot about other boyfriends once she was with Harold. To him there was only hisself and punters. That’s why there was so much trouble over Opal. Her dad was more’n a punter. I heard Mum say so. Harold wanted her to get rid of the kid, but she wouldn’t. He hit her everywhere it wouldn’t show.’

  Considering that I didn’t really have anything, personally, to do with any of these women, I was paddling in deep water here. Two, at least, children of a murderess had been affected by the killings of other significant men. In the case of Kevin Dooley it was undeniable that he’d been killed in the same way as Victorine Reynolds had murdered Harold Neilson. Not that it meant Pearl had done it. But if she hadn’t then someone who maybe knew about Victorine and what she’d done had. For it to be just a coincidence was a bit hard to swallow. Whether or not Kevin’s death was connected to the death of Shlomo Kaplan, who’d met his end in quite another way, was open to question. Given that I was also worried about Hannah and where I was with her, I didn’t feel especially up to looking in all these various directions, which were now going a long way beyond making sure that Kevin Dooley got justice. Warning Amber, wherever she was, was one thing, but looking for the villains involved, if indeed they existed, was quite another. There was a lot of history that I knew nothing about and, anyway, I’m not and never have been a copper. Frank Hancock does what he can for the dead – the living shouldn’t have too much importance – or, at least, that was how it always had been in the past.

  ‘You know, Ruby,’ I said, ‘your sister Pearl has got this lawyer, a Mr Blatt.’

  ‘Blatt?’ Her eyes had narrowed right down into deep pinpoints of suspicion.

  ‘Yes.’

  Ruby reached inside her skirt pocket and took out one
battered-looking fag, which she lit by striking a match against the wall. ‘She ask for Blatt, did she?’

  I didn’t know what the arrangement might have been and I said so.

  ‘Well, she’d be barmy if she did ask for him,’ Ruby said. ‘Might as well have put the noose round Mum’s neck himself, that bastard!’

  It wasn’t how Blatt had described events, but I let Ruby go on. After all, in writing to me about Amber, Pearl had shown that, despite what Ruby was saying, she didn’t entirely trust Mr Blatt herself. If she had there would have been no need for me.

  ‘Kept on about her being on the game, about how many men she’d had! He said he was trying to impress the jury with how poor and destitute Mum was. But all it done was make them hate her and want her dead. He even told the court that us kids has all different fathers. How do you think that looks to “nice” people from Forest Gate and posh places like that? No,’ she growled. ‘I don’t want to talk to Blatt and, if she’s got any sense, Pearl won’t either. I want you to help us, Mr Hancock. I’ve had people ask around. People say they can trust you.’

  ‘People?’

  Ruby smiled at my confusion and said, ‘Good people. Them you’ve helped, Mr Hancock. Them as don’t comment on the colour of your skin.’

  Of course it had to be Hannah. Through her probably most unwelcome visitor, the frummer Bessie Stern, from Hannah to Ruby, the full story, as she knew it, of Frank Hancock and his amazing, sometimes almost free, funeral service. Had she, I wondered, also told Bessie that I was barmy?

  So what could I do? I said I’d continue to help as I could, which seemed to satisfy Ruby to some extent. I also gave her my card so she could either visit or call me if she needed to. She was safe for the moment and I said I wouldn’t ask her to leave the synagogue. I have to admit, though, that I didn’t entirely believe everything Ruby had told me. She could have killed Shlomo Kaplan and I only had her word that what she’d told me about their relationship and her own past was the truth. Just before I left she pushed a piece of paper into my hand with the address of where she and her mother and sisters had lived up in Paddington: 125 Praed Street. Phyllis Neilson, she told me, had lived just round the corner from there. Maybe some of the neighbours would know where she was now, if indeed she was anywhere. Old prozzies, as Hannah is always quick to tell me, don’t tend to live long unless they are very, very clever.

  Chapter Eleven

  We were half-way down the Commercial Road when the sirens went off. Luckily I was driving or we might’ve ended up coming to grief. The horses still can’t quite get a hold on themselves when the sirens start off and Arthur is still a little bit afraid to pull as hard as he should on the reins.

  ‘What are we gonna do, Mr H?’ Arthur said. ‘It’s miles back to the shop.’

  ‘Don’t you have an auntie round here somewhere?’ I said.

  In a split second Arthur went from being terrified to delighted. Young people can do that. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Auntie Flo. She lives up by Barnes Street. She’s got an Anderson in her garden. We can go there.’

  So we did. Less than five minutes later there we were, outside Auntie Flo’s, me taking leave of Arthur to the sound of the Jerry bombers streaming down over the river.

  Auntie Flo, who was about fifty years old and about twenty stone in weight, grabbed hold of my sleeve with one swollen hand. ‘You get in here, Mr Hancock,’ she said. ‘Come on! I won’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘I can’t leave these horses,’ I said, as I hung on grimly to Rama and Sita’s reins. ‘Without the horses, I don’t have any business.’

  As gently as I could, I took Auntie Flo’s hand away from my arm, then swung myself up into the driving seat. Just before the first explosion, which had to be, I reckoned, down near Silvertown Way, I heard her say to Arthur, ‘You’re right, he is a bleedin’ nutcase.’

  I knew I’d never be able to get the horses or the hearse back to the shop in one piece until the raid was over. What I needed was somewhere to hole up for a while, somewhere under cover. I needed it soon too. The horses were beginning to bare their teeth and stamp, which is not a good sign. Sometimes I speak softly to them, in the small amount of Hindi the Duchess has taught me, and this does serve to calm them. But the noise was so terrific now that I could hardly hear my own voice above the din of falling bombs and shattering explosions. Christ, that Ruby Reynolds had done a right number on me! The hearse, at least, should’ve been back in the yard hours before, with both horses locked up in their stable. But instead I was out, yes, but I was pretty much hobbled by the horses and the vehicle.

  Turning out of Auntie Flo’s road, back on to the Commercial, the railway bridge hit me in the eye like a gift from God Almighty. Jesus, the Limehouse railway bridge, we could get under there! Not like a proper shelter or anything, but at least it would hold for anything but a direct hit. There were also, I could see now, people there too – about ten if I was right. Maybe they’d even help me with the horses if the poor beasts really got frightened. But as I drew closer I could see that none of them was likely to do that. Those that weren’t either pregnant or old women were drunk and filthy and probably lived under the bridge in normal times. For these, as I drew the horses and the hearse underneath and close in on the soot-blackened wall, I was a kind of trespasser in their parlour. One spat, another peered, uncomprehending, while the rest just lay about, passed out some time before I’d arrived.

  ‘I ’ope you ain’t got no one in there,’ an old woman said, as she flicked her head towards the hearse. One of the long since dark lamps that hangs uselessly from high up on the wall clanked metallically against the brickwork in time to the sound of the bombers from above.

  ‘N-n-no,’ I said. I even tried a smile to accompany my stutter, take the edge off it, as it were, but from the look on the woman’s face, I’d failed miserably.

  ‘You shouldn’t look at a hearse from a distance,’ a young pregnant girl said.

  ‘What distance?’ another girl said. ‘A foot, a yard?’

  ‘I dunno,’ the first girl said. ‘All I know is you shouldn’t look at it.’

  And they and the old woman turned their backs on me. What good I thought the railway bridge would do is something I can now look back on with amazement. Even with their blinkers on, the horses could see just about everything I could and that included fires spearing through the darkness, the clouds of dust so thick you could be forgiven for thinking the smog had come in. And then there was the noise. Some raids, like this one, are wall to wall explosions. I don’t know how many tons of the stuff we get dropped on us, but it’s a lot because those bastards just don’t stop. Wave after wave. I know our anti-aircraft guns are somewhere – some over Victoria Park and some over Barking – but you can’t hear them, not when you’ve been half deafened by bombs going off. So, what with the bombings, the crackling from the fires and my having to hold on for dear life to the horses’ bridles, it was like Bedlam underneath that bridge. And when one of the drunks started singing I thought I’d go mad. I was itching to run as it was so it wasn’t until I felt the fingers tighten round my throat that I paid whatever had crept in behind me any heed.

  Whether I made any noise or not, I don’t know. All I could remember afterwards was the voice, gruff and deep it was, like someone who’d lived and well near died on the streets for many a long year. And the fingers, hard, long and very serious in their intent, I felt. Fingers that were also smooth and cool and kind of refined.

  ‘Keep away from the Reynolds women,’ the dark voice wheezed menacingly. ‘I’m taking care of them.’

  To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even try to turn round even when the fingers let me go and I felt a swish of wind behind me as my attacker made good his escape. Yes, of course I wanted to know who it was and find out in what way he was going to ‘take care’ of the Reynolds girls. But with a raid in full swing I knew it’d take me five minutes just to start the question, let alone get the answer.

  But I had to do somet
hing so I shook the drunk nearest to me and finally got out a question about what he might have seen. But he’d seen no one. The women with their backs to me couldn’t have seen anything and I knew that the other drunks were unconscious. Whoever the rough-voiced, smooth-fingered person had been, he had known he’d easily get away with threatening me in this company. But how had he known I’d be there?

  The thought that he’d followed me, possibly from Princelet Street, made me feel sick. Had he, already, ‘taken care’ in some way of Ruby Reynolds after I’d left the synagogue? Had he, perhaps, disguised himself as a ‘comrade’ to get to Ruby? And what was his point in doing this? What was it with these Reynolds women and why did their past, according to some of them, seem to figure so strongly in their present? Could it be that someone with a grudge, like that Phyllis Neilson Ruby had told me about, was using the chaos of the bombing to cover up what were really acts of revenge? If that was the case then she certainly had to have some patience waiting all of these years to do it. One thing that did seem certain, however, was that Ruby and Pearl’s fears had some substance. That gruff, menacing voice had frightened the life out of me.

  ‘Telephone’s out again,’ Nan said, as I staggered in over the scullery step and into the back privy. My poor Rama and Sita had been so terrified by their experiences of the previous night that I’d had a job first separating them from the hearse and then getting them back into their stable. What the poor buggers really needed was a bloody good gallop over the Beckton marshes, but I knew I wasn’t up to it. I was exhausted and worried after what had happened under the Limehouse railway bridge and I needed to decide what I was going to do next.

  As I walked out of the karzy, there was Nan waiting for me. ‘Did you hear what I said, Frank? About the telephone?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Well?’

  I shrugged. ‘If we need it we can ask Mr Deeks in the bank. I’m sure that if his line’s working he won’t mind us using it for essential—’