Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page A

everything.’
    I was shocked. Families, even of the poorest docker, usually pay for their own relatives’ funerals. If necessary they put their possessions in the pawn shop to do so.
    ‘A friend?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t the lodger they had, was it?’
    ‘Ronnie Arnold? No,’ Albert said. ‘He ain’t got a ha’penny to bless himself with. Like poor old Violet’s husband, Ronnie’s a drinker. That’s why he was living there.’ He moved in closer once again and said, ‘I know there’s been some talk about Ronnie and Violet maybe . . .’ He winked suggestively. ‘But there was none of that. It was Ronnie and Fred Dickens, Vi’s husband, what had interests in common, if you know what I mean.’
    For a moment I wondered whether Violet Dickens’s husband and this Ronnie bloke had been involved in some sort of male love, something homosexual . . .
    Seeing the look of nervousness on my face, Albert smiled and said, ‘No! They was never iron hoofs or nothing, Frank! No, Ron and Fred got drunk together! When they couldn’t get work down the docks they went down the pub while poor old Vi did whatever she could to earn a crust – taking washing, cleaning, you know.’
    I did. Some say that the dockers’ women work harder than their men, and in lots of cases that is true.
    ‘Violet liked a drop herself, don’t get me wrong,’ Albert said. ‘But she worked and had her Friday nights in the pub, if you know what I mean.’
    ‘So who paid, then?’ I asked. ‘For the funeral.’
    ‘A lady called Mrs Darling,’ Albert said, and then he pulled a strange, almost disgusted face. ‘Priest weren’t happy.’
    ‘Father Burton?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, she’s one of them spiritual mediums,’ Albert said.
    ‘Mrs Darling?’
    ‘Yes. Violet liked all that table-turning and talking to the dead, apparently,’ he said. ‘Been going to this Darling woman for years, so Fred said. Schlepping all the way up to East Ham twice a week.’
    ‘Oh, it’s not that far,’ I began.
    But then Albert said, ‘It is if you’re a cripple, mate. Vi wore callipers all her life. Something wrong with her bones, they say. Staggering up East Ham twice a week must have taken it out of the poor cow. But anyway, all that’s by the by,’ he continued. ‘Main thing is, Frank, be on the lookout when you bury the Green Street woman. Maybe whoever is killing these ladies is leaving little messages for them in their flowers.’
    Doris returned from powdering her nose then, and so Albert and I talked of other things.
    Although our firm was the nearest one to the late Nellie Martin’s home on Iniskilling Road, I hadn’t actually buried the body that myself and Arthur had found. Nellie’s family, who I had discovered when I’d been asking around about the women’s various religions were devout Baptists, had insisted on using a family firm known for their affiliation to that faith, namely Haigh’s of Barking. There had been a service for Nellie up at the Memorial Baptist on the Barking Road followed by an interment at the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park. That had been a big affair, with lots of what Albert Cox calls ‘ghouls’ in attendance. But then whereas Violet Dickens’s family had been made up of basically poor drinkers, Nellie’s were business people. She herself had been a decent Baptist widow, and sympathy for her was high. There was, I felt, a little bit of a feeling that Violet Dickens, with her drunken husband and loud-mouthed lodger in tow, had somehow deserved what had happened to her. Not so Dolly O’Dowd, however, although her funeral, as Father Burton told me later on that day, was going to be small for other reasons.
    ‘The sister wants to keep it very quiet,’ he said. ‘People have only been invited by word of mouth.’
    ‘My Nancy’s going,’ I said as I followed him into his parlour and then sat down.
    ‘I should think so, they were good friends,’ Father Burton said. Thin and