Paradise Court

by Jenny Oldfield

  Robert whispered the full story to Duke. The shock had given even him a bad knock.

  ‘How come you was there, you and Ett?’ Duke asked. There were misgivings in the old man’s mind. He didn’t like Robert being mixed up in this.

  Robert had to confess how they went back looking for Ernie. ‘He got home all right in the end, didn’t he?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Ssh! Yes, no thanks to you. I seen him coming up with Frances about midnight. Keep your voice down.’ Duke didn’t want to wake the others. He shook his head and glanced across at Hettie. ‘What we going to do with her?’ She was sitting across the room from them, upright and quiet, but seemingly out of touch with her surroundings.

  ‘Leave her be.’ Robert knocked whisky to the back of his throat, felt it burn. ‘She’ll soon come round.’

  Next morning, shock waves rippled up and down the court. No one could believe it. Poor Daisy O’Hagan was dead, stabbed through the heart by some unknown villain, her young life ebbing away in the dingy back rooms of the dark, deserted Palace. That bright, fresh young girl done away with in some dark corner; it was a cruel thing for everyone who knew her.

  Hettie had sat through the night. ‘I ain’t going back to the Palace,’ she told Frances. ‘I decided I don’t want to work there no more.’ Her hands were folded in her lap. Frances, seeing her shiver, had thought to put a shawl around her shoulders. Now they’d all heard the horrible story and were letting the news sink in.

  ‘Oh, Ett, that’s a shame.’ Frances had always recognized that her sister had talent, right from being a small child. The music hall was her life. ‘I don’t see why you should give it all up just because of this.’

  Hettie never blinked.

  ‘Ett? Listen, the life suits you, don’t it? You like being up on that stage with the other girls. Wait a bit. Don’t make no rash moves.’

  ‘It ain’t the same after what’s happened.’

  ‘Not now it ain’t, course not. But just wait a bit.’

  ‘I thought you never liked the place?’ Hettie turned towards Frances. It weren’t never good enough for you. You never liked Daisy much neither, did you?’

  ‘Oh, Ett, how could you think that?’ Frances’s arms went around her sister and she hugged her close. ‘I thought Daisy was a lovely girl, only just a bit lively sometimes. I never said nothing against her!’

  ‘You never had to. She was scared stiff of you, Frances. She said you always made her feel like she had to sit up straight and talk proper.’ Hettie recalled all the laughing remarks. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘I know. I can’t help it, Ett,’ Frances said humbly. She cried too. ‘I’m so sorry for what’s happened!’

  ‘And you’ll go up today and tell Mr Mills for me? I ain’t never going back, Fran.’

  Frances nodded and blew her nose. ‘No more singing and dancing,’ she agreed.

  ‘I thought you’d be over the moon.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t, Ett, believe me.’

  But she went up that afternoon and gave the news to Fred Mills. He was sorry, he said, but he couldn’t really blame Hettie. A lot of the girls were very scared by the murder and worried it would be their turn next. ‘And they ain’t even seen it, not like your sister, Miss Parsons.’ He frowned. ‘I had to clear up a lot of the mess myself. Very upsetting. I’m telling them to take more care who they hang round with from now on. You never know.’

  Frances spoke to him in his small, dingy room behind the box-office. His face was grey as he stood and shook her hand; a little man whose confidence was demolished. She received an extra week’s wages on Hettie’s behalf. ‘Hettie seems to think ifs her fault, Mr Mills,’ she confided. ‘She thinks if she’d tried a bit harder to track Daisy down last night and walk home with her like normal, this would never have happened.’

  ‘We could all think that about ourselves,’ the manager confessed, his features blank and unreadable, his voice flat. ‘Tell her not to think it though. It don’t do no good, and it weren’t her fault. Tell her that.’

  Frances nodded once and went on her way. She walked out through the foyer, under glass chandeliers, between rows of laughing faces. Glossy, smiling photographs of the stars beamed down; the comedians, singers and showgirls seemed to follow her with their eyes.

  No one had been able to prevent Hettie from going to see the O’Hagans. Jess was busy with Ernie, who still hadn’t recovered his bearings from the night before and was going around in a dream. She’d pushed the business about the boots firmly to the back of her mind and locked it away. Now she tried in vain to get him to eat toast and drink tea. The poor boy seemed lost in a mental maze and refused everything.

  Sadie had cancelled her bike ride with Charlie Ogden to sit with poor Hettie, but she’d given in without protest when her sister insisted there was something she must do. Frances returned from the Palace to find Sadie sitting miserably in her own room. She scolded her for not looking after Hettie better, then immediately hugged her. ‘It’s not your fault, I just hope Hettie don’t find it all too upsetting. It takes a lot to go and see the O’Hagans after what’s just happened. Now dry them eyes, come with me and we’ll make some scones,’ she suggested impulsively. Sooner or later they would all have to pull themselves together and go down the court to number 48.

  Father O’Rourke came down the tenement stairs as Hettie went up. He bowed silently. His rosary swung forward towards her. Then he went on his way. She found Mary sitting stranded in a sea of miserable children, half-finished laundry, broken furniture; the flotsam of her poverty-stricken life. Her eyes were sunken, her blouse unbuttoned at the top and torn at the sleeve. She sat on the one chair, shoulders slumped, staring with unseeing eyes.

  Hettie bent over and took her hand. Beside the worn-out woman she looked proud and supple. Try as she might, she couldn’t avert her eyes from the squalor of the room. This is how Daisy had to live, she thought.

  An older child struggled to manage the needs of the little ones, but the dirty, ill-fed infants wailed on. There was no sign of Joe O’Hagan, who, unable to bear any more, had slunk off to roam the streets at daybreak. So Mary’s bleak figure formed the focus of the children’s movements. They crawled around her, dragged at her skirt and climbed on to her unresponsive lap.

  Hettie felt her heart break. Robbed of words, she began to look around for practical ways of lifting the woman out of her misery. ‘Go down the backyard and fetch clean water in this bucket,’ she told the oldest child; a girl of about ten. ‘Bring it back up here quick.’ She wanted to wash the little ones’ faces, and the water in the tap at the sink had dried up. She found a brush for their hair, sent the girl, Cathleen, on a second errand up the court to the Duke for milk and bread. Tell them Hettie says to send as much as they can spare,’ she ordered. Quickly she began to make improvements to the state of the two rooms, working around the silent mother. Frances sent fresh scones along with the bread and milk, and the children set about them ravenously. It was the first food to pass their lips since Friday, Cathleen said

  At last Mary roused herself to ask Hettie tearful questions. How could such a thing have happened? Why didn’t anyone try to save her poor girl?

  ‘We wasn’t there. We’d all packed up and gone home,’ Hettie answered. ‘It happened when the whole place was empty.’

  ‘And how did she die?’ Mary looked Hettie in the eyes for the first time.

  Hettie drew a sharp breath. ‘Didn’t the policeman tell you that?’

  ‘Most likely. I don’t remember,’ came the dull reply.

  The words shaped themselves out of the images in Hettie’s mind; a pool of blood, staring eyes, an outstretched hand. ‘She was stabbed, Mary.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘They don’t know that yet.’

  ‘Who done it to her, Hettie?’ The look she gave the young woman still shook her to the core.

  ‘They don’t know that neither.’

  ‘And did you see her?’ The tortured inquisitio
n continued. ‘Did she suffer?’ Mary’s sobs came thick and fast. ‘Did my poor girl suffer long?’

  Hettie breathed in deeply. She was regaining control. Once the words were out, you had to accept them. ‘They think it was pretty quick. I heard the police doctor say there weren’t much sign of a struggle. Whoever it was must’ve sprung it on her out of the blue.’

  Mary nodded, satisfied. ‘She was a good girl.’

  ‘She was, Mrs O’Hagan. Daisy was one of the best.’

  People could raise their eyebrows at Daisy’s goings-on, and Hettie herself used to scoff at her naïve belief that one day the right man would be standing at the stage door with a bunch of flowers and true romance. She warned her to be more careful. ‘Just because they’re giving you presents, it don’t mean they want your hand in marriage,’ she said right from the start. But Daisy had found it hard to rein back her high spirits.

  As for the presents, she always brought them straight back home to this place of neglect and despair. She gave the chocolates to her brothers and sisters, her wages to Mary, and she brought them their only ray of light with her bright, loving smiles.

  ‘She was a beauty though.’ Pride shone through Mary’s tears. She pulled a small object from her shabby skirt pocket and laid it in the palm of her hand to show Hettie. ‘It’s her birthday next Thursday. I was saving this for her.’ The object was a shiny tortoiseshell comb for Daisy’s hair. ‘I ain’t got much to give, but I was saving this for her.’ Her fingers closed over it. ‘She’ll have to wear it for her funeral now.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hettie went back home and organized more supplies of food for the struggling family. Frances, Jess and Sadie joined in with a will. ‘We got to help them get back on their feet,’ Frances agreed. ‘This is a bad blow for them and we all got to rally round.’ ‘I told young Cathleen to call here at six to see what we’ve managed to rustle up. Her ma ain’t fit to do it. We’ll ask around the other women in the court too; see what they can spare. Mary needs clothes for them kids as well as food. There’s a lot to do.’ Since recounting events to poor Mary, Hettie had broken out of her own lethargy. Now she was intent on doing good.

  Sadie listened and slipped off to her room. She came back with two items of clothing, a skirt that had been lengthened to its limit but was now too small, and a pair of boots. ‘Tell Cathleen she can have these when she comes,’ she offered. ‘The boots is too small for me, but there’s plenty of wear left in them.’ In fact, they were her favourite Sunday boots, fastened with buttons. She would have continued to squeeze her feet into them for months to come if not for this sudden emergency. Until now she’d known Cathleen O’Hagan only as the wild-haired child who ran barefoot up the street.

  Hettie hugged her and began to make up a box of things that Cathleen could take. ‘Go down and pass the word around,’ she told Jess. ‘Pa’s already opened up. They was all stood on the doorstep gossiping about poor Daisy.’

  Jess went down into the pub’s smoky atmosphere to talk to Duke about it. There was a lot of sympathy for the O’Hagans, he told her, especially since their boy Tommy had gone missing too. He hadn’t been seen for weeks. All in all, things looked pretty bleak for them.

  Maurice Leigh couldn’t help overhearing. He leaned at the bar, intrigued by the buzz of scandal, but vague about the details. As a stranger, he’d been excluded from the gossip, though he gathered something pretty bad had occurred. ‘What’s going on?’ He collared Jess, choosing her to set him straight. ‘I come in for a quiet pint and the whole place is up in arms.’

  Jess was struck by his direct, energetic manner. He didn’t beat about the bush. His gaze unsettled her because she felt it sought her out without knowing her circumstances. At the same time, she felt she wanted to talk to him. The confusion brought colour to her cheeks. ‘Something happened last night. A friend of ours got herself killed. Ain’t Dolly told you?’

  ‘I ain’t seen Mrs Ogden this morning. She shot out early and I ain’t seen her since.’

  ‘Well, poor Daisy O’Hagan got stabbed to death, and now we got to round up some stuff to help the family. Daisy was the only one bringing in any money to speak of.’ Jess raised her head to look him in the eye. ‘That’s what this is all about.’

  He nodded, wanting to know more about the victim. ‘Here’s me thinking I moved into a respectable street!’ he challenged.

  ‘You have.’ She missed the amused light in his eyes and hotly defended Paradise Court. ‘We never normally go round killing people. It’s a terrible shock!’

  Maurice smiled. His face, which was angular and a bit tense, relaxed. Still he stared at Jess. ‘Any idea who done the girl in?’ He pulled up a stool and sat facing her across the bar, more interested in engaging Jess in conversation than the murder itself.

  ‘Well, first off, I just heard my brother Robert sounding off about the manager of the place where she worked, saying he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. He was on the premises when it happened. Fred Mills, the manager, that is. But my sister Ett reckons there’s a bloke there called Archie Small and he was always bothering Daisy.’ Jess listed them on her fingers. ‘But we think the police have got their work cut out. It could just be any Tom, Dick or Harry for all we know.’

  Maurice nodded. Despite his comment about a respectable street, he was himself no stranger to the seamier side of life. A boyhood in Bethnal Green as the middle son of parents working in the book binding business hadn’t shielded him from the ragged men and women who tramped the streets all night, unable to find a bed. He’d played in those streets with boys who died of fever, and knew the hollow feeling of a stomach that had gone forty-eight hours without food. His father had died when Maurice was just twelve, and the family, made homeless by the dead man’s employers, had moved through a succession of ever seedier boarding-houses.

  With a keen eye on self-improvement, however, Maurice had made himself useful to a landlord in one of these places, a pawnbroker who eventually set him behind the counter to conduct business whenever he was called away. Maurice was a lad he could trust. That was how he’d first become one of the flashiest and best-groomed boys in the area, showing off on a Saturday night in other men’s pawned Sunday best. By slow and gradual stages, he’d moved into manning the box-office at an old music hall in Stepney, and from there to the Palace, and then into cinema management.

  There was no doubt that the moves had been helped by his appearance. He was a dapper young man, tail and upright, and his dark colouring gave him a sophisticated air. His features were even, his jawline strong. Perhaps he was able to find work in the cinemas because he represented in the flesh an echo of the romantic actors who glamorized life on screen. Now, at twenty-seven, he was seen as well set up, ambitious and eligible. But Maurice himself acknowledged his own single-minded streak and up till now had used it as an excuse to avoid entanglements. Life was hard enough, he thought, as a single man trying to make his way. ‘No complications’ was his motto, and it seemed to work.

  In the bar, Dolly Ogden vied with Annie Wiggin to solve the mystery of Daisy’s murder.

  ‘It ain’t what you think, Annie,’ she announced. ‘To my way of thinking, this bloke what done her in is someone she knew!’

  ‘No, a complete stranger, more like.’ Annie felt irritated by the impression Dolly gave that she knew all the answers. ‘There was hundreds of blokes in that audience. Thousands gawping at her all evening. Any one of them could’ve nipped back and done it easy as anything.’ Annie planted her feet firmly under the table and took a long drink. Seeing Duke with his eye on her, she resisted the impulse to wipe her mouth on her sleeve.

  ‘That’s right, Annie,’ Duke called across. He returned the kindness she’d shown to baby Grace by backing her now.

  Annie clutched the edge of the table in surprise. ‘See!’ she said, recovering enough to put Dolly in her place.

  ‘See, nothing!’ Dolly shook her head slowly, gathering herself to present her case. �
�Now, look, who’d murder the girl just for the fun of it? No, this bloke must’ve known her, else how did he get backstage in the first place? Say, for instance, he arranged to meet up with her and she invited him in, not suspecting a thing of course. What then? Easy as pie to hang around till everyone’s gone off home, and then stab her to death, see.’ She appealed to her listeners, hands outspread.

  Robert’s ears pricked up. The murder had left him gloomy. On top of his little difficulty with Chalky White and the general feeling that life was going to the dogs, Daisy’s death, lonely and brutal, had set the seal on his ambition to move away and make a complete break. He’d meant what he said to Walter about joining up. He’d thought about it long enough and planned to break the news to Duke that night. But natural curiosity diverted his thoughts and drew him into the women’s orbit. ‘You lot think it’s a boyfriend what done this to Daisy?’ he repeated.

  Dolly looked up at him and nodded. She enjoyed lording it with her opinions. ‘Ain’t no doubt in my mind. Why, did you know her latest beau?’ she quizzed.

  ‘It were him!’ Liz Sargent said. ‘You was sweet on Daisy, wasn’t you?’ Unlike most of the local women, she thought Robert Parsons was too big for his boots, and enjoyed getting in this sty dig.

  Robert bristled. He set a tray of full glasses down on the women’s table. ‘We was all sweet on Daisy, Liz. She was a real postcard queen.’ He regarded her through narrowed eyes; her thin, grim mouth, her prominent nose. ‘I just wish there was more like Daisy around.’

  ‘Lay off him, Liz. He’s been through a lot,’ Annie said. ‘Him and Ett found the corpse.’

  ‘I’m asking you, who’s her young man then?’ Dolly took on the role of chief investigator. She sensed Robert had a juicy detail to give them.

  ‘I can tell you of one that’ll interest you, Dolly, at any rate.’ He pulled up a chair and straddled it. ‘Of course, this is between you and me and the gatepost.’

  ‘Cut it out, Robert, just get on with it. Tell us what you know,’ she grumbled. But she warmed to the flattery implied by Robert’s special attention; even many of the older women found his looks and manner irresistible.