The Esther & Jack Enright Box Set

by David Field

  ‘Who knows,’ Poll observed as she continued to stare at Esther’s body as if pricing it by the pound, ‘but yer seems to ’ave put weight on since the last time I saw yer.’

  ‘That’s because I’m eating more regularly,’ Esther assured her.

  Poll jerked her head in the direction of the still open door. ‘Does yer new fancy man treat yer right?’

  ‘He’s not my fancy man,’ Esther bridled. ‘He’s sort of my adopted father and he’s very good to me. I live here now, as you probably know already, if it’s one of your associates who’s been following me for the past few weeks. That’s how you tracked me down to here, isn’t it? Well, now you’ve found me, what do you really want?’

  ‘Don’t know what yer on about by suggestin’ that I bin followin’ yer,’ Poll stared her out, ‘but I were wonderin’ if yer ready ter join me team o’ young ladies what can earn easy money on their backs of an evenin’. The way yer lookin’ now, I reckon yer could pull in over a quid a night, chargin’ up ter five bob a time.’

  ‘I’m not interested,’ Esther replied haughtily.

  ‘You’ll find me in the White ’Art some time after seven this evenin’,’ Poll advised her as if she hadn’t heard.

  Esther raised her voice as she turned to go. ‘The traffic noise must be heavier than I allowed for, so I’ll say it again, louder this time. I’m not the slightest bit interested in joining your prostitutes’ club, so I’ll bid you good morning.’

  ‘Seven o’clock in the White ’Art,’ Poll insisted.

  ‘I just told you, I’m not interested,’ Esther reminded her.

  Poll smiled. ‘But yer are interested ter ’ear ’ow yer friend Martha come ter die, ain’t yer? Seven o’clock in the White ’Art. The snug. An’ come on yer own this time.’

  Esther made her way back inside Rosen’s, her head reeling, while across the road, half hidden behind a stack of railway sleepers in the entrance to the timber yard, Jack felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Caught you at long last. Your mother will be pleased!’

  ‘Uncle Percy! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I’d like to be able to say that I was tracking you down at the request of a sister-in-law who’s going out of her mind with apprehension for the welfare of her only son, but in reality I was following Pearly Poll.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Before I disclose that piece of confidential information to someone who’s no longer authorised to receive it, please confirm that you were spying on Esther.’

  ‘Why else would I spend every day staring at the front wall of a Jewish tailor’s shop?’

  ‘No reason other than unrequited passion?’

  ‘What other reason could there be?’

  ‘Do you come here every day?’

  ‘Yes, including Saturdays and Sundays, why?’

  ‘Is that the first time you’ve ever seen Pearly Poll here?’

  ‘Yes, but why are you following her?’

  ‘My itchy nose. You probably read that the latest Ripper victim was Mary Kelly?’

  ‘Yes indeed — it must have been the same woman we heard about when we were following up on the murder of Catherine Eddowes, right?’

  ‘Only too right — and I was the one who probably led Pearly Poll to her, so that she could send in her tame knife man. The problem — for you — is that it was Esther who got me her address.’

  ‘So you went ahead with that insane plan of yours, despite my protests?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Now, despite what Abberline and Reid may think, I’m even more convinced that Poll’s behind at least this latest killing and probably the earlier ones. They were all women who could point the finger at her.’

  ‘So now she’s found her way to Esther, shouldn’t we do something to warn her?’

  ‘Forgive me for saying this — and if you’re going to throw a punch at me, make it my right side, since I have loose teeth on the left — but I have to eliminate the possibility that Esther is somehow assisting Pearly Poll, perhaps out of fear or something, so we can’t warn her that we’re on to Poll just yet.’

  ‘Always the policeman,’ Jack muttered, ‘while the woman I love’s become the next target of Poll’s crazy knife maniac.’

  ‘You definitely won’t like to hear this,’ Percy replied, ‘but if she is lined up as a target and we keep a few paces behind her everywhere she goes, she could be the means by which we catch the Ripper.’

  ‘You’re dead right,’ Jack stared in disbelief, ‘I didn’t want to hear it and I’ll do everything I can to stop it.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it,’ Percy smiled back, ‘since I was counting on that. But we’ll have to box clever, since you’re no longer on the force. How have you been living, just out of curiosity and so that I can assure your mother that you’ve not been selling your body in some male brothel?’

  ‘I had some savings,’ Jack explained. ‘With heavy emphasis on the “had”. I’m just about stony now, so it’ll be back to Barking for a short while when the rent money runs out this week.’

  ‘I can lend you enough to keep you there while you’re helping me trap the Ripper and then we can work out what I can say to persuade Reid to take you back on the force.’

  ‘I was thinking of maybe getting a job in the fish market,’ Jack explained. ‘I’ve always enjoyed fishing.’

  Percy burst out laughing. ‘My brother was right all those years ago when he predicted that you wouldn’t be fit to be let out once you came of age. Have you ever seen the inside of a fish market?’

  ‘Once — at Southend.’

  ‘Well, I once had occasion to investigate a knifing at Billingsgate and the main problem I had was that everyone in there had a knife and hated everyone else. Believe it or not, you’ll be safer back in uniform.’

  ‘But not for what you have in mind with Pearly Poll?’

  ‘Obviously not. Leave Poll to me to follow, while you stay within hero distance of Esther at all times.’

  ‘Poll knows what you look like, surely, the same as she does me?’

  ‘Of course, which is why I’ve sent for Detective Constable Atkins, the Yard’s best impersonator of a newspaper boy. Some of those you employed on that stake-out in George Yard can also be drafted in on a shift basis and I won’t need you, unless Esther crosses Poll’s path again. Just so you know, I’ll also be armed with a pistol.’

  ‘And to think that Mother always feels reassured when I’m in your company,’ Jack grinned. ‘It looks as if my stay in this wood yard will be longer than I originally anticipated — any chance of a meat pie and a cup of tea?’

  ‘Consider this your most important lesson in undercover policing,’ Percy grinned back. ‘There are no lavatory breaks and the catering’s abysmal.’

  Across the road, Esther was considering her options. She was now safely installed in comfortable accommodation with a substitute father, she had more money coming in than she’d ever contemplated in her wildest dreams and yet she was now seriously considering meeting with a dangerous woman who might be able to summon up a maniac who enjoyed carving women to pieces. Then she remembered Martha, the woman who’d shown her friendship when she was a lonely and fearful young seamstress who was too scared even to go down into the communal kitchen to make herself a cup of tea until the lady across the landing had all but dragged her down there and introduced her to several fellow residents as ‘My good friend Esther, what’s able ter read an’ write, if any of yers needs anythin’ like that.’

  Whatever the danger, she owed it to Martha to find out how she’d come to die and who had been responsible. Assuming that she survived until the following morning and could avoid being fed to one of Pearly Poll’s sexual customers like the sacrificial virgins she’d learned about in Testament classes with Rabbi Goodmann, she could pass the information on to Inspector Reid. Perhaps Jack would get to hear of the assistance she’d been able to render and think more worthily of her. Don’t even build your hopes up there, girl, sa
id another voice in her head. Just find out for Martha’s sake.

  Telling Isaac that she was going out for an hour to visit a friend from her days in George Street, she slipped out of the rear door of Rosens’ in the half light and dodged behind a stationary bus as its driver waited to turn left into Commercial Street. No point in drawing attention to herself, she reasoned, and if Poll had been telling the truth when she denied having her followed, then Esther still needed to do her best to elude whoever was following her, for whatever reason.

  As a result, Jack almost missed her. But as luck would have it, he happened to glance down Commercial Street, where he could see someone disappearing into the gathering dusk with that distinctive skipping gait that he remembered so fondly, wearing what looked like Esther’s best ‘walking out’ coat of trimmed fake brown fur. Was it her or not? He had an important choice to make very quickly — if it was her, he needed to follow her, but if it wasn’t, he’d be abandoning his post and exposing Esther to potential danger.

  There was only one way to resolve the issue and without giving any thought to what he would say if he’d mistaken some other woman for Esther he dashed across Lamb Street, dodging wagons and buses and earning curses from a couple of their drivers. He hammered on the front door of the tailor’s premises and an aggrieved looking Isaac came to the door and stared out at him.

  ‘Why would you be requiring alterations after six in the evening?’ Isaac enquired.

  ‘I have an important message for Miss Jacobs,’ Jack advised him.

  Isaac shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then I have an important message for you, whoever you may be. She has gone out for an hour.’

  ‘Did she say where?’

  ‘Only that it was a friend where she used to live. Now I come to look at that jacket of yours, it could do with being taken in. Our terms are reasonable …’

  But he was talking to himself, since Jack had shot off like a greyhound, running as hard as he could down Commercial Street in the direction of George Street.

  Esther slipped apprehensively into the snug bar of the White Hart to find that Poll was already installed at a table with two other women of dubious appearance and she nodded towards Poll before taking a seat at a table near the far door. Poll left her seat and walked over with a broad smile.

  ‘Mild, weren’t it?’

  ‘Yes please — a small one,’ Esther replied.

  Poll took the opportunity to order herself a large gin and brought both drinks to the table with another encouraging smile as she sat across from Esther.

  ‘Now then, yer friend Martha.’

  ‘Yes?’ Esther enquired nervously.

  ‘You think I got ‘er killed, don’t yer? That’s why yer so scared o’ me.’

  ‘I’m not scared of you,’ Esther insisted unconvincingly.

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ Poll insisted. ‘It were one o’ the guardsmen.’

  ‘At two o’clock in the morning?’ Esther reminded her. ‘According to the landlord of this place, Martha went off with that guardsman well before midnight.’

  ‘No she didn’t,’ Poll assured her. ‘She were wi’ another o’ the women — Clara — what were all set ter do the business wi’ the guardsman.’

  ‘But ...’ Esther began to protest, before Poll raised her hand.

  ‘Shut up an’ listen. The arrangement were that Clara an’ ’er guardsman would go inter that room on the first floor — the one outside where Martha’s body finished up — an’ while they was at it, Martha were gonna creep inter the room an’ rob the bloke. That worked fine, then it were the turn of another guardsman what were lined up wi’ another o’ me girls, Mary. Same routine an’ another nice little earner. An’ on it went, four or five o’ them, an’ each time Martha were able ter rob the bloke while ’e were at it wi’ one o’ me girls, ’til we got ter Polly. Then Martha musta got careless, or else Polly ’adn’t got ’is full attention or sumfin, but this guardsman rumbled what were goin’ on an’ chased Martha onter the landin’ an’ done ’er in wi’ this big knife ’e were carryin’. Then ’e ran off smartish an’ we was left wi’ Martha’s body on the landin’. We didn’t want it ter look like an army bloke ’ad done it, so I took a knife o’ me own an’ added a few extra ’oles in ’er body, then we left ’er for some poor sod ter find later.’

  Esther was beginning to feel the effects of the beer as she tried to focus on the questions that were swirling around her brain, but which she couldn’t quite find the words for.

  ‘The woman — the Polly — that one who … guardsman ... Bucks Lane ...’

  She couldn’t quite hear what she was saying because the background noise in the snug had become much louder and was beginning to echo around in her head. She wanted to ask Poll to get her friends to talk more quietly, but she couldn’t quite focus on the woman’s face. Then it seemed as if Poll was swirling her head around in circles and someone was moving the walls of the room like the horses on a fairground roundabout. Not content with that, they lifted the floor and Esther could feel herself falling into a deep empty canyon.

  Jack learned from an irate Sadie Thompson that Esther had not been seen at her former lodgings for some time and as he stood anxiously on the pavement in George Street, his next choice was the best he could have made, given what was happening further south. Instead of retracing his steps and continuing down Commercial Street, he ran into Osbourn Street and headed for Leman Street, intent on making urgent enquiries of his Uncle Percy regarding the current whereabouts of Pearly Poll.

  This took him along Whitechapel High Street and past the White Hart, outside which he was intercepted and bundled into a doorway by the very man he’d been looking for.

  ‘You took your time,’ Percy complained. ‘Your quarry went in there twenty minutes or so ago.’

  ‘Esther’s in there?’ Jack enquired breathlessly. ‘What the Hell for?’

  ‘She’s met up with Pearly Poll, which is what I’m doing here,’ Percy advised him. ‘How come you were running like the hounds of Hell were after you and why the delay?’

  ‘Long story,’ Jack wheezed as he doubled over in search of additional breath. ‘But how do you know that Esther’s in there with Poll? You didn’t reveal yourself, I hope?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Percy grinned triumphantly. ‘Constable Atkins wanders in there every so often, selling newspapers and your former colleague Preedy’s doing his drunk impersonations in the alleyway up the side. So we’ve got them covered from both sides. Here comes Atkins with his latest progress report.’

  A youth who looked to be no more than fifteen years old came strolling over with a bundle of evening editions over his arm, a jaunty cap on his head but a frown on his face.

  ‘Well?’ Percy enquired.

  ‘They’re not in there any more,’ Atkins advised them. ‘They must have gone out through the other door.

  Jack raced into George Yard via the side alley and skidded to a halt in front of the prostrate form of Albert Preedy. ‘Did you see Poll come of the White Hart in the company of another woman?’

  ‘Certainly did,’ Albert confirmed. ‘There were three o’ them, actually. Poll and a second woman who looked like a tottie and they were carryin’ a drunk woman between ’em. Poll’s still inside the doss house, but the second woman came out just before you turned up and went back inter the White ’Art through that side door.

  ‘The third woman,’ Jack asked breathlessly, ‘the drunk one — how was she dressed?’

  ‘Some sorta cheap brown coat covered in what looked like dead cats, why?’

  ‘And they went into the doss house?’

  ‘Yeah, but ... ’

  ‘Give me your billy staff,’ Jack demanded.

  ‘You’re not on the force any more,’ Preedy objected. ‘I can’t surrender … ’

  ‘Give it me — now!’

  Esther began to come round to discover that Polly was even heavier than she looked and was sitting on her stomach.

  ‘You can’t kill me in h
ere,’ Esther protested. ‘They’ll connect my body with you when they find it.’

  ‘Yer reckon?’ Poll grinned. ‘Yer forgettin’ that this place is rented be a military gent. That guardsman that everyone reckons did all them killin’s’

  ‘You arranged all those killings, didn’t you?’ Esther said accusingly.

  ‘Whatever yer says,’ Poll leered back as she reached down behind her and produced the largest knife Esther had ever seen, even in the hands of the shochet butcher from whom her parents used to get their supplies. She screamed and Poll laughed.

  ‘Scream all yer like, sweet’eart. Most folks in this place just minds their own business. They’ll find you in ’ere like they found Mary Kelly — another blabbermouth just like you. Pity, you bein’ so lovely an’ all. D’yer wanna know why the others ’ad ter go, just like you’re goin’ to?’

  ‘If it stops you using that knife on me, then tell me,’ Esther croaked.

  Poll smiled and it somehow seemed more threatening than the knife in her hand.

  ‘Well, let’s see now. There was Polly Nichols, o’ course — she were first. She were there when yer friend Martha got ’er one way ticket an’ she were gettin’ nervous when the Peelers showed up at the inquest on yer friend. She were dead easy, since she ’ad nowhere ter go that night an’ I just follered ’er until we got to a quiet street in a poxy slum area.’

  ‘Then you called in the knifeman, or was he with you all the time?’

  ‘What knifeman? Annie Chapman were next, ’cos she knew all about the little services I were doin’ fer pregnant totties an’ suchlike in ’ere an’ she wanted money ter keep ’er gob shut. So I shut it for ’er, in a manner o’ speakin’ an’ most of ’er guts finished up on display. That’s when yer stupid p’lice friends got ter thinkin’ that some sort o’ loony doctor were responsible. I done Mary Kelly even better, in case she remembered where she went fer the op — thanks fer leadin’ me ter that one, by the way.’