Last Rights by Barbara Nadel Page A

uncomfortably like the way Pearl’s mother
     had killed her fellow, it was more Pearl’s whereabouts on the night that Dooley had died that bothered both me and the police,
     who wanted to speak to her and the rest of Kevin’s family. This was now, after all, a murder, which meant that everyone connected
     in any way to it would be questioned.
    ‘So you think that I . . .’ Fearing, I imagined, that someone might hear her, Pearl moved in closer to me and dropped her
     voice. ‘I never killed Kevin and I can prove it!’ she said.
    ‘Can you? You weren’t too clear when I asked you . . .’
    ‘Yes, I can!’ she said. ‘Ask your girlfriend’s landlady if you don’t believe me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I never killed Kevin. I wouldn’t. Why don’t you believe me?’
    ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you,’ I said, ‘but your story about where you were that night, with friends, just doesn’t ring
     true. You told me yourself you don’t have any friends.’
    ‘If you’re thinking of calling the coppers . . .’
    ‘No.’
    She stared at me. ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because we’re already here, love,’ a deep voice said behind her.
    Fred Bryant’s guv’nor, Sergeant Hill, gave the order for the funeral to be stopped. Albert Cox duly went over to Father Burton
     and had a word in his ear. The Dooleys started hollering and swearing almost immediately.
    I looked at the chaos around me with fear. The police were taking a destitute, weeping woman away with them – something I’d
     had a hand in. If only I’d taken Kevin Dooley seriously that night! If only I’d asked him who ‘she’ was and why she’d done
     what she had to him.
    Because she’d managed to get Father Burton to perform Kevin’s funeral so quickly, Vi Dooley had wanted her son’s body to stay
     over at Cox’s. Maybe, in part, she’d thought that Pearl might want to see him too – although I didn’t suppose that was much
     of a consideration for her. But whatever the reason, Kevin being at Albert’s shop had allowed Marcus Cockburn to re-examine
     the body, if reluctantly, in something approaching peace. His new conclusion about the cause of death was a lot different
     from his first attempt. Kevin Dooley’s heart had beenpunctured by a long, sharp instrument that had caused him to bleed to death inside his own body. Like him or not, Kevin Dooley
     had suffered a painful death that, with or without evidence from that night to back it up, had to have been murder. No one
     does that to themselves, however barmy.
    Dr Cockburn’s first thought had been to stop the funeral. But now that I’d told the coppers everything I knew about Pearl,
     they were keen to speak to her – if they could find her. None of us knew where she might be so it was decided to let something
     that looked like a funeral go ahead. It was almost a dead cert she’d turn up, and even though Father Burton wasn’t happy about
     performing a funeral for an empty coffin and was, to make things even worse, without the bereaved family’s knowledge, he agreed
     to do it anyway.
    So, now Kevin’s wife and family were going to have to answer questions about what they were doing on the night he died. The
     coppers took them down the station while I followed on with the sergeant and the dead man’s wife. I was interested in what
     Pearl had had to say about Hannah’s landlady, Dot Harris, and her involvement in all this. I did begin to ask her about it
     until Sergeant Hill put me right. ‘You have to let us take it from here, Mr Hancock,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much for your
     help, sir.’ He then raised his helmet and, with one hand round Pearl’s thin arm, he led her away towards the cemetery gates.
    As she went she turned briefly and gave me a look that might have been of either desperation or hatred. But,then, if she did hate me, I could understand that. After all, I’d laid it all, whatever it turned out to be, open to the air.
     In effect, I had put her in the