Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online

fair-haired bloke, quite lined in the face, stood up and took my hand.
    ‘Hello, Frank,’ he said.
    ‘Albert.’
    Doris, who was sitting at the back of the shop at our now battered-looking desk, said, ‘You and Mr Cox like a cuppa, would you, Mr H?’
    ‘That’d be lovely, Doris,’ Albert said cheerily as he took his fags out of his pocket and offered me one.
    I said I’d like a cup of tea too, and so Doris left the shop and went upstairs to the kitchen.
    ‘So, Albert,’ I said, ‘to what do I owe the pleasure?’
    The smile that Albert Cox had had on his face when I’d come in from the yard dropped.
    ‘Thought I’d better warn you,’ he said as he lit up his fag and mine and then threw the dead match into Doris’s ashtray, ‘there’s a nutter about, mate.’
    ‘A nutter?’ The word covered a multitude of mad people as far as I was concerned, including, even I had to admit, myself at times.
    ‘Just finished burying an old girl up the East London,’ Albert said. He looked around to make sure that no one was coming in either from out in the street or from the yard at the back. ‘While I was there I went over to see the grave of a woman I buried two days ago. There’d been quite a lot of flowers and I was checking they were still there. You know how people can be . . .’
    I nodded in agreement. War or no war, the theft of flowers from cemeteries still, sadly, goes on.
    Albert took a drag on his fag and said, ‘Well, I’m having a butcher’s, like, and the flowers are all still there, and then I see something new.’
    ‘Something new?’
    ‘A little posy it was. Pretty little thing. So I bends down to have a look and I sees that there’s a card with it. I read it.’ Albert let his breath out on a whistle and then he said, ‘Bloody horrible, Frank! No rest in peace or none of that!’ He lowered his voice. ‘Things like “evil slut”, “Nazi bitch” and “rot in hell”!’
    ‘Blimey.’ I’ve come across some less than complimentary last messages to the dead in the past, but never that sort of thing. ‘Was there anyone about? What did you do?’
    ‘No one, apart from my mourners and the priest, as far as I could see,’ Albert said. ‘Normally I would’ve asked around a bit, discreet like, but in this instance . . .’
    I frowned.
    ‘It was on the grave of that woman what got murdered,’ Albert said. ‘Violet Dickens.’
    ‘Bloody hell!’
    ‘I took the whole shebang down the cop shop,’ Albert said. ‘Let them have a look at it. But it give me the creeps, Frank, as you can imagine. Then I thought of you burying that other woman, that spinster from Green Street, up there on Thursday, and I thought I’d better let you know. Just between us, though, and the coppers, as you know.’
    ‘What about Father Burton?’ I asked. ‘Does he know?’
    ‘Oh yes, I had to tell him,’ Albert said. ‘But shtum to everyone else, all right?’
    I puffed on my fag and said, ‘Yes, Albert, I understand. Thank you, I appreciate that.’
    Albert went on with other nutter stories while I came to grips with this information about one of the so-called Ripper victims. Someone had put something very personal on Violet Dickens’s grave. Whether or not it was the same person who had killed her, I didn’t know. But even beyond the grave, it seemed, Mrs Dickens had at least one enemy.
    Doris came in then with our cups of tea, but almost immediately she went off to powder her nose. Once she’d gone I asked Albert a question.
    ‘What was Violet Dickens’s funeral like?’ I said. ‘Did it go all right or . . .’
    ‘Well attended. Luckily not by, I don’t think at least, too many of the ghoulish types who like to go to funerals of them who’ve been murdered. But like I said, a lot of flowers for these days,’ Albert said. ‘Not from the family, though.’ He leaned in close to me and lowered his voice. ‘Skint, the lot of them. Friend of the family paid me, the priest, the flowers,