by David Field
‘Inspector Reid seems to think so,’ Percy Enright replied dismissively.
‘Inspector Reid knows so,’ Reid replied defiantly. ‘If we assume that Polly Nichols was murdered in order to silence her regarding something that happened on the night that Martha Tabram was murdered, then the next victim could turn out to be another of those women who were with her in the White Hart that night.’
‘That’s at least two assumptions,’ Percy Enright observed. ‘The first assumption is that there’ll be another victim and the second — and bigger — assumption is that this elusive guardsman who’s being guided around the district by Pearly Poll is capable of inflicting the sort of injuries that I witnessed on the body of the Nichols woman.’
‘The Sergeant’s of the opinion that we’re looking for a maniac with more medical knowledge than is possessed by your average soldier,’ Reid explained to Esther.
‘Senior Scotland Yard officials share that opinion,’ Enright insisted.
‘Only because you gave it to them,’ Reid growled back.
‘I’m sure that Miss Jacobs has better things to do than listen to us argue over theories that shouldn’t be expressed outside police hearing,’ Enright said. ‘Would you care to take one more look at those photographs, miss?’
Esther did as requested and halfway through the book there was one that caught her attention. More than anything she was struck by the woman’s plainness of features and once again found herself wondering why men found such women so attractive that they would pay to engage in sexual activities with them, when most of them no doubt had loving wives at home. This one — whose name was given as ‘Dark Annie’ — had a noticeably thick nose and lips, and even allowing for the fact that she was presumably not pleased to be having her photograph taken she still seemed somewhat sullen of countenance.
‘Was she one of them?’ Reid enquired eagerly as he saw her staring at the photograph.
Esther shook her head. ‘Definitely not. The others were all quite attractive, in a gaudy sort of way.’
‘No-one looks their best in the early hours of the morning, after a hard night’s totting,’ Reid explained. ‘Anyway, if you’re certain that you haven’t been able to pick anyone out, we’ll call it a damp squib. Thank you anyway. Constable Enright will no doubt be happy to show you out.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Esther replied as she rose to her feet, feeling somehow inadequate. She was still feeling despondent as she walked back down the hallway from Reid’s office and Jack looked sideways at her gloomy face as he attempted to lift her mood.
‘Never mind. My uncle took quite a liking to you, I could tell.’
Esther was pondering his words as she walked slowly back up Whitechapel High Street, glancing through the open doors of the White Hart as she dodged a couple of street hawkers trying to interest her in boot laces. With a start she recognised the face of the woman seated at the bar and on a whim she walked on a few more paces, then stopped and sidled into the doorway of a cobbler’s shop and waited.
Her patience was rewarded only a few minutes later when the woman walked unsteadily out of the White Hart and weaved her way into George Yard. Esther now had an urgent decision to make; should she follow the woman and find out why she’d gone into the Yard where Martha had died, or should she enter the White Hart and try to find out more about her? Then again, why should she do either of these things? Perhaps because she was becoming more fascinated by the week with this detective work and she had nothing better to do. And if she found out anything of value to the police, that would be a good enough excuse to see Jack again before next Sunday. She wanted to tell him that a walk along the creek in Barking was her greatest ambition at this point in her life, but she didn’t want to seem too eager.
Somehow the prospect of wandering into that gloomy alleyway, with its horrible associations, didn’t immediately appeal to her, so she took a deep breath, tried to look more confident than she felt, which wasn’t difficult, and strode through the open door of the White Hart. There was no sign of the proprietor with whom she’d spoken on the previous occasion, whose name she couldn’t remember anyway in her nervousness, but the younger man behind the counter seemed pleasant enough and the place was half empty anyway.
He smiled as Esther took a seat on one of the available seats at the long counter and ordered a small glass of mild beer.
‘Heavy night last night, were it?’ the barman enquired with a knowing grin.
Esther smiled back as she replied. ‘I don’t normally drink.’
‘Then what brings you in ’ere at one o’clock in the afternoon, miss?’
‘I need some information from you. That woman who was sitting in the seat I’m now occupying — did you know her?’
‘What, Dark Annie, d’yer mean? There can’t be anyone within a mile o’ this place what doesn’t know ’er. Are you one o’ they Salvation Army types, tryin’ ter save fallen women? If so, yer’d best follow Annie inter the alleyway next door, where she usually falls.’
‘Does she live there?’
‘Who knows? But she’s often seen around there an’ I ’eard tell that she ’as a room up in that doss ’ouse at the end.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Esther enthused as she smiled warmly at her informant. ‘How much for the drink?’
‘On the ’ouse,’ the barman replied. ‘I don’t normally get ter talk ter a pretty face like yourn this early in the day. If yer really do save fallen women, save one fer me fer later.’
Esther could barely contain her excitement as she dashed back down the High Street and took her life in her hands by weaving in and out of the busy wagon traffic at the massive junction that gave access to Leman Street. Less than ten minutes later she was pressing up to the metal grille just inside the entrance to the Police Office and asking to speak to Constable Enright.
‘He’s out on patrol, miss. Would his uncle do instead? He’s from Scotland Yard.’
‘No, perhaps Inspector Reid, if he’s not too busy.’
‘I’ll send up for him, miss, if you’d like to take a seat on that bench opposite.’
Esther was still trying to convince herself that she was not wasting anyone’s time and trying to think of some way in which Dark Annie’s association with George Yard might have a bearing on Martha’s murder there weeks previously, when she was conscious of someone looking down at her. It was Jack’s Uncle Percy and she smiled up at him.
‘I thought you were on your way home,’ he smiled back. ‘Or were you waiting for Jack, by any chance? He’s taken quite a shine to you, by the way. Don’t go breaking his heart, else you’ll answer to me.’
‘I won’t, I promise,’ Esther assured him, as she willed her own heart to stop fluttering. Then a loud voice called her name and Inspector Reid came striding down the stairs. Percy Enright looked up, frowned and bid Esther a good morning as he strode purposefully out through the front entrance.
‘Did you change your mind about the identifications?’ Reid enquired hopefully as he stared after the retreating Percy Enright, then smiled down at Esther.
‘No, but … look, this may mean nothing, but that woman whose photograph we were discussing earlier this morning — Dark Annie?’
‘Yes, what about her?’
‘I saw her coming out of the White Hart as I was walking back home. She went into George Yard and I made enquiries. I was told that she may have a room in the doss house in which they found Martha’s body and it struck me as too much of a coincidence.’
Reid’s eyes opened wide in respect. ‘You have the instincts of a trained detective, Miss Jacobs. Come back upstairs with me. Just wait there a second while I give out some instructions.’ He walked swiftly over to the grille cage and issued a loud command. ‘Get Enright back off patrol and in here. The nephew, that is, not the spy from the Yard. Then get a four man squad together and make sure they’ve all got their truncheons.’
An hour and more tea and biscuits later, Esther looked up from the comfortable arm
chair in which she’d been installed in the tea room, to the obvious delight of several constables who came and went, when a tall shadow fell across the open doorway and there stood Jack.
‘You’ve really lit a fire under the Inspector! We’re off to flush Dark Annie out of her rat-run and bring her in for her own safety. You can’t come with us, of course, but I was wondering if you’d had any other great inspirations while you’ve been sitting there.’
‘Yes,’ Esther replied. ‘First of all, you have a lovely uncle. Secondly, I feel like a walk up a creek in Barking on Sunday afternoon.’
Chapter Nine
‘We can take the train back, if this isn’t to your liking,’ Jack offered as he saw Esther’s nose wrinkling in distaste.
‘It’s a bit smelly, you must admit,’ she said.
‘That’s because the tide’s out and the seaweed comes up on every tide,’ Jack explained as he guided her by the elbow around a puddle that lay ahead of them on the bank of the creek as it wound its way up to distant Barking. ‘It’s getting all industrial now, but when we first moved here it was just like being in the country. The same railway that allowed my father to be in the City in less than an hour — which is why he chose to move here — also brought industry.’
‘Can we “fraternise” now?’ Esther enquired. ‘I’m all agog to know what you found out when you took that party of constables into George Yard.’
‘I didn’t want anyone on the ferry to overhear us,’ Jack advised her with an air of mystery and intrigue, ‘because what we found out’s supposed to be kept secret. I shouldn’t even be telling you.’
‘If it weren’t for me, you’d never even have known that the Yard held a secret,’ Esther pointed out, ‘so the least you can do is to share it with me.’
‘Well,’ Jack explained, ‘we went in there immediately after I left you at Leman Street and we found Dark Annie in no time, since she was lying unconscious on the stairs. Seems that she’s been staying in a room there for the past week or two, but we ran her in for her own protection — or at least, that’s what Inspector Reid told her.’
‘The room she was staying in,’ Esther butted in, ‘was it by any chance on the first floor landing?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘You’re not the only one who can put two and two together. Martha was killed on the landing between two room doors in there and Dark Annie’s got a room somewhere in that dreadful place. All we need to do is find evidence of some sort of association between Dark Annie and Pearly Poll and her guardsman friend, and wouldn’t it then be just too much coincidence if it was one of those rooms outside which Martha met her horrible fate?’
‘Well deduced,’ Jack replied as he used the occasion to take her hand back into his.
‘Please don’t hold my hand, if it means that’s an end to our “fraternising”,’ Esther requested. ‘You’re just getting to the interesting bit. I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes and no,’ Jack replied, ‘but as for “fraternising”, I don’t give a damn if we are, and you’ve given us enough help already, so I don’t think you count as “the public” any more.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ Esther sniffed, ‘but get on with it, before I explode with anticipation!’
For the third time since they’d left the ferry, Jack looked up at the sky before replying. ‘Dark Annie did indeed have a key to a room on that first floor landing, but she’s not the only one, by all accounts. We finally tracked down the old bag who passes for the Superintendent of that particular rat-house and she told us that women are coming and going all the time in and out of that room. The rent’s paid in advance, monthly, by “some Army gent”, as she described him and provided that the rent’s paid up to date neither she nor the proprietor seem to give a damn. I ran the Superintendent past Inspector Reid, who threatened her with a charge of “living off” and she just laughed in our faces. In the end we sent her packing with a formal warning.’
‘Is that all you intend to do?’ Esther demanded, ‘The “army gent”, as you call him, is almost certainly the guardsman you’re all looking for and he’s probably running the brothel in there, with Pearly Poll as his manageress. And why do you keep looking up at the sky? Are you apprehensive that we might be overheard by someone in one of those “dirigible” things?’
‘I was just thinking that it looks like rain,’ Jack replied evasively as they continued up the left hand bank of the creek as it slowly narrowed towards the distant houses.
‘I’m not easily distracted, as you’ll discover,’ Esther persevered, ‘so don’t try and change the subject. What further enquiries do you intend to make in George Yard?’
Jack sighed. ‘I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but we already had some inside information that one of the rooms in George Yard is where Pearly Poll does her abortions. It’s only rumour, mind, and it came from one of our criminal associates who’s prepared to give us street-level information in exchange for not being charged with pick-pocketing from time to time. It’s amazing what those street dips learn while they’re hanging around waiting to snaffle a wallet.’
‘So can’t you just kick down all the doors and find out?’ Esther enquired. ‘And you were right — here come the first few spots of rain.’
‘Follow me,’ Jack replied with a smug look on his face as he pulled her by the hand, then ducked off the grassy stream bank through a hole in the wild privet hedge. He led the way up a muddy lane towards a fine three-storey house that sat in its own grounds next to the ruins of an old church, lifted the latch on the front gate and strode towards its front door.
Esther hesitated at the gate and Jack looked back and beckoned her into the front garden.
‘How do you know we’ll be allowed to shelter in there?’ she demanded from the safety of the front gate.
‘For one thing, it was once a vicarage and clergymen always give sanctuary to travellers in need,’ Jack replied, ‘and, more importantly, I grew up here.’
Esther walked up the path to join Jack as he knocked imperiously on the front door. It opened to reveal a young girl dressed in the standard black dress and white apron of a domestic servant, who smiled and stood back to let them in.
‘Good day, Master Jackson,’ she beamed, just as a tall, almost statuesque, woman in her early fifties, with striking white hair and piercing blue eyes, appeared in the hallway behind her, strode forward and all but lifted Jack bodily off the ground as she hugged him to her.
‘Jackson, for once you kept your promise!’ she enthused, as she looked past to him to where Esther stood transfixed. ‘And you must be Esther — so glad you could finally make it! Do come inside and Alice will make us some tea, won’t you Alice?’
Alice bowed slightly and disappeared further inside the house, while their hostess, who Esther took to be Jack’s mother, escorted them into a finely appointed sitting room with several comfortable chairs and at least one sofa, all upholstered in the same heavy chintz rose pattern that exactly matched the curtains. As they took a seat, Esther silent mouthed ‘Jackson?’ to the man she knew as Jack, then remembered her manners as she caught his mother eyeing her up and down.
‘This is very hospitable of you, Mrs Enright,’ she mumbled.
‘Constance, dear — do please call me Constance. “Mrs Enright” is so formal, and I hardly qualify for that name any more, since Jack’s father has been dead these seven years or so. So, how was your journey down here?’
‘It would have been better at high tide, I believe,’ Esther replied in her best English.
Constance smiled. ‘You are very tactful, Esther. The river stinks to high Heaven these days and the creek mouth is even worse, but for some reason Jackson seems to find it entrancing.’
‘All those boyhood memories,’ Jack explained, just as a vision of loveliness appeared in the doorway from the hall, with a petulant expression on an otherwise flawless countenance. She was so obviously Jack’s sister, with her bright blue eyes and hair the colour of ri
pening corn.
‘This is my sister Lucy,’ Jack explained unnecessarily, ‘but she normally has a smile for visitors.’
Lucy broke into a smile that reminded Esther of a torch beam. ‘I’m sorry, please excuse me, but I’ve just made a very vexing discovery.’
‘You mean the doctor’s son’s already spoken for?’ Jack teased her, evoking a grin that must be an Enright family heirloom, Esther concluded.
‘No, but almost as bad as that,’ Lucy continued. ‘I’m due to attend a social evening at the church after Evensong and Simon Molyneux will be there. I was hoping to wear that blue silk gown that I save for special occasions, but it’s been so long since I had an opportunity to wear it in this backwater that when I tried it on earlier I discovered that I must have grown a couple of inches since last time. I can’t possibly wear it, because then my ankles would be showing.’
‘Does it have a hem?’ Esther enquired without thinking.
‘A what?’ Lucy enquired.
‘A hem — a fold of material running up the bottom of it, on the inside.’
‘I believe so,’ Lucy replied. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because it can be unpicked and let down, giving the gown extra length, depending on the width of the hem. I could let it down for you, if you’d permit me.’
‘We don’t have a sewing machine,’ Constance Enright advised Esther with a smile.
‘Neither do I, at home,’ Esther replied, ‘but I’ve done dozens by hand in the past.’
‘That would be wonderful!’ Lucy exclaimed and rushed out of the sitting room, returning a minute later with an exquisite blue silk tea dance gown. Esther asked for needle, thread and scissors and set about unpicking the two inch hem on the bottom.
‘It’ll need to be ironed when I’ve finished, but make sure that the iron’s not too hot for this delicate silk,’ she advised Lucy.
‘You clearly have a talent for such matters,’ Constance Enright complimented Esther as she poured the tea and helped herself to one of the buttered muffins that Alice had just placed on the side table. ‘Are you in the garment trade?’
