Last Rights by Barbara Nadel Page A

the shikseh Ruby used
     to live with.’
    ‘She’s moved on?’ Pearl asked.
    ‘In a way,’ Hannah said, and she headed off towards Princelet Street, which was the very next turning.
    Bessie Stern was a fat old woman who wore a very matted, very bad red wig. At first she was deeply suspicious, almost hostile.
     Even with Hannah talking Yiddish, the old girl – from her tone and the way she stood at her street door like an angry wrestler
     – wasn’t having any of it, whatever it was. Strangely it was only when Pearl was brought into it that her attitude changed.
     Suddenly we were in.
    A tiny parlour with a scullery at the back was lit by a single gas mantle that hissed and spluttered as we entered. Over on
     the range, which had obviously been blackleaded to within an inch of its life, a pot of something was steaming and smelling
     of cabbage. Out in the scullery I could see a string with washing hanging down from it: a pair of great big stays, bloomers
     and a cardigan.
    ‘Sit! Sit!’ the old woman said, as she ushered us on to a row of hard chairs behind a large wooden table. As Hannah rattled
     away in Yiddish again, Bessie Stern settled herself in a busted-up armchair next to the range.
    Once she’d finished listening to what Hannah had to say, she turned to Pearl and said, ‘You know Ruby kept the house for Shlomo
     Kaplan and he let her live without paying rent. He was a good man. I miss him. Do you want tea? What about the girl?’
    ‘Do you mean he’s dead?’ Pearl asked.
    ‘Oh, yes, love. Two and a half, three weeks ago. During one of the earliest raids here.’
    ‘So where’s Ruby?’ Pearl enquired.
    The old woman shrugged. ‘Who knows? One day she’s there with Shlomo Kaplan, doing his housework, ironing his shirts, and the
     next day he’s dead and she’s gone! Do you want me to put the kettle on, dear? It really is no trouble.’
    ‘No . . .’
    I looked at Pearl, whose face was quite white now.
    ‘How did he die, Mrs Stern?’ I asked.
    ‘Head bashed in,’ she said darkly. ‘Blood up the parlour walls! Saw it with me own eyes. Terrible!’
    ‘The coppers think he was murdered,’ Hannah said.
    ‘Yes, although why I don’t know,’ Bessie Stern said, as she looked at Hannah with, I felt, distaste. ‘Nothing stolen and he
     wasn’t a poor man, Shlomo Kaplan, oh, no! There’s a gramophone in there and everything! Then some said that maybe it was Ruby,
     but I put them straight on that, the police. She was down in Katz’s shelter withme and Etta Nathan when it happened – there was a raid on!’
    ‘Ruby can’t’ve done it,’ Pearl said. ‘Not Ruby. It’s impossible!’
    ‘But then, soon as the police come, she goes,’ Bessie Stern continued. ‘So what’re they to think, is what they say.’
    ‘His house wasn’t damaged in the raid?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes, a bit. I’m thinking when I go in there that maybe one of the gas pipes hit him on the head. One of them was down across
     the table. But the police say no, so what do I know? The police say he was murdered. God willing, whoever done it will get
     caught.’
    ‘It wasn’t my sister!’ Pearl was up on her feet now, tears in her eyes.
    ‘I’ve never thought it was, darling,’ the old woman said.
    ‘But you’re thinking that because she’s gone—’
    ‘I don’t know why she ran off any more than you do,’ Bessie said. ‘When the siren went, I took off to get Ruby. I never saw
     Shlomo, I admit that. He would never come down the shelter, too stubborn. “No German going to make me leave my home,” he always
     said.’ She laughed. ‘More like no German going to make him leave the money he kept all over the house. But whoever killed
     him didn’t take his money. I’m sure Ruby didn’t do no wrong, but it’s not me she needs to convince. It’s the police. That
     she’s gone they think is very suspicious. She was the last person to see Shlomo alive. They want to talk to her.’
    I found myself looking at