by BK Duncan
Once everyone was seated in the courtroom, May waited for Colonel Tindal to indicate he was ready for her to read the proclamation necessary for opening the inquest. She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. This moment always made her feel heavy with the knowledge that she was about to start something that could end in much worse than the death of only one person. Poplar Coroner’s Court saw more than its fair share of murder verdicts. The coroner finished his conversation with the jury foreman and nodded down at her. She stood, her chair scraping back the silence. Even after all these months she still had to read the words from a card; they were too important to fumble and she knew her self-consciousness would confuse them in her head. It didn’t help that everyone was undoubtedly waiting for the real coroner’s officer to come and take his seat. She cleared her throat.
‘You good men of the London Borough of Poplar, summoned to appear this day to inquire for our Sovereign Lord the King, when, how, and by what means Clarice Gem came to her death, answer to your names as you shall be called. Every man at the first call, upon the pain and peril that shall fall thereon.’
The worst bit was over. She heard Mrs Gem stifle a sob: for her it had just begun. There was nothing for May to do now but to read out the jury names, swear everyone in, and take verbatim notes.
PC Collier was the first the coroner called. Colonel Tindal liked to have everyone in the courtroom throughout the proceedings so it was a simple matter for the policeman to walk from his chair and sit behind the low rail opposite the jury. May had typed up numerous requests from Colonel Tindal to the London County Council to have a raised witness box built but they always declined on the grounds of cost. She secretly thought they suspected an element of self-aggrandisement. The setting was formal enough already with its light oak panelling, vaulted and beamed ceiling, and slim minstrels’ gallery for press and spectators. She sat in the body of the room at a table long enough to accommodate any legal representatives, the coroner behind a bastioned dais on a high oak chair beneath a matching canopy. And he surely looked to be minor royalty to the ordinary people of Poplar in his tailcoat buttoned over his waistcoat, white stiff-collared shirt, silk pocket-handkerchief and matching tie, and striped trousers. Witnesses would probably think he was dressed so formally in order to intimidate them. But they’d be wrong. This was his ordinary attire, and it was something he did to everyone.
After being sworn in, under the coroner’s questioning PC Collier repeated the facts of how Clarice Gem’s death had been brought to the attention of the authorities. Colonel Tindal asked if anything had been found at the scene to indicate that it might not have been suicide. The policeman answered in the negative, and was dismissed.
Now it was the turn of Mrs Harrison. May waited for her to settle her ample frame in the chair before walking across to administer the oath.
‘The evidence which you shall give to this inquest on behalf of our Sovereign Lord the King, touching the death of Clarice Gem, shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God.’
Mrs Harrison responded with the assurance of one not averse to attention.
‘Under what circumstances were you acquainted with the deceased?’
Back at her table, May watched the woman’s face contort at the coroner’s words. Was it from distress or trying to grasp the meaning of the question? Colonel Tindal certainly didn’t have the common touch; in her preliminary conversations with witnesses May always gleaned more background information than his questioning ever did but he wouldn’t allow her to give him her notes so he could ask witnesses merely to corroborate the undisputable facts. Her fingers tingled with frustration, her pencil poised.
‘Reckon she’d been in the attic about three months.’
‘So you were her landlady?’
Mrs Harrison looked at May. ‘Ain’t that what I told him?’
May nodded. Mrs Harrison tightened her grip on the handbag in her lap.
‘Came to me, she did, saying as she had to leave her last place all of a sudden. But she had the air of being well-to-do so I took her in. No cause to be asking questions when the rent looks set to be paid. She was never no trouble. Quiet as a mouse you might say. Hardly saw her much in fact. Always out, having a good time like as not, of an evening. Most times, any road. ’Cept she sometimes had these headaches, see, and she had a blinder last Monday. I was all for popping to the herbalist to get a little something but she said she had powders she took that did the trick.’
Colonel Tindal coughed. May was already aware that Mrs Harrison had committed the cardinal sin of giving information not directed by his questions; he was in control of this inquiry and was not going to let anyone appear to dilute his authority. No matter how well it served the cause of getting to the truth.
‘Tell the jury when, where, and how you discovered the deceased. Be brief and stick to the facts.’
‘She were in my arms, weren’t she? Can’t exactly say as I had to go doing much discovering.’
A jury member tittered.
‘I told you how she had this blinder...’
Mrs Harrison was in full flow now, leaning forward with her bosom pressed up against the rail.
‘...I was setting about getting ready for my bed when I heard this sort of screaming - first off, I though it was them cats in the yard again - but it was coming from up top so I went to see what was what. I didn’t want her causing no upsetment to the other lodgers - the families all got dockers in and they have to be up at sparrow’s fart. I reckoned it was no time to be standing on politeness so I opened her door without being asked. There she was, bold as brass, thumping her head - real hard like - on the wall. I knew the blinder was the cause of it so I did a bit of soothing like you would to a sickening child and told her that a little lie down would do her head more good than all that banging. Asked her if she’d taken a powder and she said she’d had two in a glass of water. Meek as a lamb she let me tuck her up. I said as I would come and look in after I’d got me rags in. It can’t have been more than half an hour before I was up there again. She was all tangled in her sheets and when she turned her head my way she had...’ Mrs Harrison looked across at Mrs Gem, ‘begging your pardon, missus... she had this foam - like pink soap bubbles - around her mouth. I reckon it was the powders what did it-’
‘That will be enough!’ Colonel Tindal glared. ‘Only if and when you become qualified in medical practice can you offer such an unsubstantiated opinion.’
He slid a glance at the jury: his views on expert testimony were well known. Behind her, May heard Dr Swan crack his knuckles.
‘Do you have in your possession the packets that these powders were in?’
‘Lord above, no. I chucked ’em right quick on the fire. Won’t have nothing like that in my house ever again. Terrible it was what they did to her. Terrible.’
‘The jury and I have heard more than enough. You may take yourself back to your place, but remember you are still bound should I be forced to recall you. I will now hear what the other person who saw the deceased in her last hours has to say.’
This was Mrs Harrison’s unmarried daughter, Anne. About thirty, she was as unlike her mother as it was possible to be. Thin and stooped, she resembled a drab caged songbird that never saw the light of day. Her voice was just as reedy as she responded to the oath. She looked at Colonel Tindal who waved his hand in an impatient manner.
‘I heard her come in. I didn’t think to as she’d told me she’d be out all night. So I took myself to pay a call.’
‘On Clarice Gem?’
‘That’s right, your Lordship.’
May hid a smile as she watched Colonel Tindal preen a little.
‘What time was this?’
‘I can’t rightly say but we’d had our supper and the range was cold so I reckon it must’ve been nigh on eleven o’clock.’
‘Go on. How did you find her?’
‘She weren’t like herself at all. I reckoned she’d been crying some; her eyes was all red. She said she was fed up. I asked her if she wanted to talk - you know, like sisters - but she said she knew a better way to lift things. She all but pushed me out the door. Next thing I knew, ma was calling me to fetch the doctor.’
Colonel Tindal thanked her with a perfunctory nod and called Dr Swan to give evidence.
‘At midnight I attended the girl in question. Despite the previous witness’ testimony, she was not dead at that time but unconscious. I was with her for about thirty minutes, during which time she slipped in and out of lucidity. I was able to ascertain she had been suffering convulsions, motor spasms, tingling and numbness in the limbs, mental confusion, and an incapacitating headache. From my own observations, I would add possible delirium. I asked her what she had taken and she replied it had been cocaine. But to be certain, a number of toxicological tests would have to be undertaken by an expert in the field.’
‘I’m sure the jury will agree that the expense for engaging such services can be spared. It seems to me only the pathologically foolhardy would say they had taken a drug they knew to be banned under the Defence of the Realm Act if it were not true. You may return to your seat, Dr Swan.’
The inquest had now reached the stage May hated most of all: the inquisition of the relatives. The truly dreadful ordeal of sitting in front of a room full of strangers, struggling to bury the grief long enough to speak the unthinkable.
Mrs Gem’s feet hardly made a sound as she walked across the courtroom. She took the oath with her head almost buried in her chest. The coroner then asked her to tell the court something of her daughter’s state of mind immediately prior to the night in question.
‘She was always cheery. Wanted to spread her happiness around, too. She was at mine playing with her nephews not two days before. Reading them stories and saying as she hoped we’d all be able to go visiting her other sister in Margate again come the summer.’
‘Can you tell the jury why she would want to take her own life?’
‘She didn’t. She wouldn’t. She had no reason to. She was talking of starting a new job. She was a dancer, an artiste, been given her big break in the West End.’
Colonel Tindal grunted. May could have predicted that given how he thought Clarice had earned her living. Mrs Gem began to sob. She made no effort to cover her face as she stared at the jury, snot dripping from her reddening nose. May couldn’t pretend to be unmoved by such pain. She slid open the table drawer and took out the pressed handkerchief she kept there and, with a glass of water in the other hand, she went across and stood in front of Mrs Gem, shielding her distress as much as she could. The woman’s thoughts couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted them from the courtroom roof: There must’ve been some signs she’d missed; a look in her daughter’s eye or a silence stretched long enough to be filled with brooding; she should have asked more questions, or asked less and listened more, or stopped nagging her over some irritating habit, or given her the snack supper she’d asked for and not kept it for tomorrow’s dinner, or not worn those filthy old slippers, or stopped shouting at her grandchildren to shut up, or suggested a Sunday trip to the country to blow the cobwebs away...
Colonel Tindal’s voice made May jump. She flushed as she realised how unprofessional she was being by allowing herself to become involved. A death was a death was a death, no matter how it happened.
Dr Swan was being recalled to give the results of the post-mortem.
‘The pupils were abnormally dilated. The fingers uniformly blue. The brain, lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys intensely congested. The heart was enlarged and engorged, and it was the failure of this organ that killed her. Prior to that, the pressure in the constricted blood vessels forced fluid into the spaces in her lungs. There was evidence of a pinprick rupture of a blood vessel in the brain which would have resulted in a massive haemorrhage had the heart continued beating. Although there is no toxicology to confirm it, all the pathological evidence points to cocaine poisoning.’
He paused as a member of the jury put up his hand; a weasel-faced man who May knew to be a catmeat shop proprietor. The coroner acknowledged him with a nod.
‘If she was one of these dope girls we read about in the papers, could she have taken extra in the way someone accustomed to drink might put a shot of something stronger in his beer? You know, to get the feeling of it back again.’
Dr Swan regarded him. ‘A very intelligent question, if I may say so. She might have done, yes, but I consider it unlikely. The quantity isn’t really the issue here. It was the dissolving of the substance in water that was her fatal error because it meant the drug was absorbed more quickly into her system.’
‘D’you reckon she could’ve known that?’
‘It’s possible.’
The juror sat back with his hands clasped across his stomach. He received a pat on the back and a few wise nods from his fellow jurors: Colonel Tindal’s suicide list was conforming to expectations. May noted the intervention down. Was anyone here going to stick up for Clarice?
‘In general terms the young woman was strong and healthy - evidence of the usual childhood diseases of course; a touch of rheumatic fever affecting the joints, and a few chickenpox scars.’
Mrs Gem let out a low quivering moan and May smoothed out the handkerchief on her lap.
‘But there was one other thing.’
Dr Swan gathered himself like a stage acrobat about to turn a somersault.
‘I found internal scaring indicating she had undergone an abortion. I can’t say exactly when but probably between eight to twelve months ago. Not very expertly done, I’m afraid. It would have caused a lot of pain and haemorrhaging.’
May could almost taste the shock in the room seconds before Mrs Harrison gasped, Clarice’s mother wailed, and the wooden benches creaked as the jury leaned forward as one man. Her shorthand deserted her as the picture she’d wanted to hold on to - a temporarily down young woman who became a victim of misadventure - began to slip away. She was aware of Mrs Gem struggling to catch her breath. Dr Swan left the witness stand to go to her side. Colonel Tindal drummed his fingers.
‘If there is nothing for you to add, Dr Swan, I suggest you escort the deceased’s mother from the courtroom and attend to her in my chambers where she may remain in privacy for as long as necessary.’
May was surprised at his sensitivity. But then remembered that he had been a father once.
‘It is clear to me that the truth of the circumstances leading up to Clarice Gem’s wilful action was not known by the witnesses present. On behalf of the jury I instruct my officer to identify and subpoena anyone with pertinent evidence to come forward.’ Colonel Tindal stood up, his gaze sweeping the room. ‘All manner of persons who have anything more to do at this court for the London Borough of Poplar, may depart home at this time, and give their attendance here again thirteen days hence, being Tuesday the sixteenth day of March, at two of the clock in the afternoon precisely. God save the King.’
Chapter Five
Friday morning was grey and cold enough to be a reminder that spring often began with a whimper. May trudged past the high wall of East India Import Dock on her way to Mrs Harrison’s. She had arranged with the landlady to have a look around Clarice’s room in case there was anything - letters perhaps, or an address book - that could furnish clues to other possible witnesses. She was going to place an announcement in the newspaper asking for any friends to come forward but found a personal request on official notepaper usually prompted a quicker response.
She turned past Naval Row and into Robinhood Lane. The houses looked like those in her own street - only taller and thinner - all shunted into two long lines of soot-encrusted brick. The front doors were black or red: ship painting colours. Five grimy windows cracked e
ach façade. The air smelled of Kitson’s disinfectant factory, and the goods stored in the warehouses on the other side of Tunnel Gardens; nostril-tingling pepper, wood, coffee, the sweetness of saltpetre, and the sunshine richness of sheds of ripening bananas. Woven within these, and overwhelming them with every gust of wind off the water, was the stench of the tannery. With such a pervasive reminder that Poplar was the dumping ground for industries nobody else wanted on their doorstep, it was no wonder so many hopeless souls passed through the mortuary.
Number sixty-nine cheered May up a little. Mrs Harrison had strung up a net curtain with a butterfly pattern in the ground floor window. Either she’d been charging Clarice more than the going rent, or the woman had ideas well above her station. May’s knock was answered almost immediately. The landlady and her daughter were standing in the hallway with their coats on.
‘Thought you was coming earlier, dearie. We’re off shopping. You can do what you have to do and let yourself out. Don’t bang the door, Mr what’s-his-name’s on night shift.’
The two women edged passed her, Anne Harrison looking as though she was attached to her mother’s waist by a string. May checked the narrow hall table for letters addressed to Clarice but found only a catalogue from Gamages and a subscription periodical on dancing. She left them for Anne Harrison; someone might as well get some pleasure from thumbing through their pages, as Clarice no longer would.
May had to rely on the illumination from the grubby fanlight above the door to help her up the first flight of stairs. The fumes of cooked cabbage thickened with the gloom. On the second floor there was some light creeping out from under two of the three doors. Behind one of them, a baby was squalling. If Mrs Harrison was a typical landlady then she would be sub-letting each room to a different family, she and her daughter making do with the front room and kitchen. The stairway was beginning to smell of un-emptied chamber pots and mould. The jauntiness of the butterfly net curtain now felt like a forgotten promise. May wondered if Clarice had thought the same when she’d first been shown the room. But maybe this was a palace compared with where she’d lived before. It was only now she was here that May could appreciate how loud the young woman’s screams must’ve been to have reached Mrs Harrison’s ears. What about the families living in the middle? Had they heard? PC Collier hadn’t said so. In all probability none of them ever opened their doors to any goings on. Living cheek by jowl with strangers could be dangerous if you poked your nose in with someone brought up to keep things private with their fists.
