The Whitechapel Conspiracy (28 page)

Remus spoke to an old woman carrying a bundle of laundry.

Gracie moved close enough to overhear. He seemed so absorbed in what he was asking she hoped he would not be aware of her. She stood sideways, staring across the street as if waiting for someone.

“Excuse me …” Remus began.

“Yeah?” The woman was civil but no more.

“Do you live around here?” he asked.

“White’s Row,” she answered, pointing a few yards to the east, where apparently the street changed its name. It was only a short distance before it finished in the cross street, facing the Pavilion Theater.

“Then perhaps you can help me,” Remus said urgently. “Were you here four or five years ago?”

“O’ course. Why?” She frowned, narrowing her gaze. Her body stiffened very slightly, balancing the laundry awkwardly.

“Do you see many coaches around here, big ones, carriages, not hansoms?” Remus asked.

Her expression was full of scorn. “Does it look ter yer like we keep carriages ’round ’ere?” she demanded. “Yer’ll be lucky if yer can find an ’ansom cab. Yer’d be best orff ter use yer legs, like the rest of us.”

“I don’t want one now!” He caught hold of her arm. “I want someone who saw one four years ago, around these streets.”

Her eyes widened. “I dunno, an’ I don’t wanner know. You get the ’ell out of ’ere an’ leave us alone! Gorn! Get out!” She yanked her arm away from him and hurried away.

Remus looked disappointed, his sharp face surprisingly young in the morning light. Gracie wondered what he was like at home relaxed—what he read, what he cared about, if he had friends. Why did he pursue this with such fervor? Was it love or hate, greed, the hunger for fame? Or just curiosity?

He crossed the road past the theater and turned left into Hanbury Street. He stopped several people, asking the same questions about carriages, large closed-in ones such as might have been cruising to pick up prostitutes.

Gracie stayed well behind him as he went the length of the street right up to the Free Methodist Church. Once he found someone who gave him an answer he seemed delighted with. His head jerked up, his shoulders straightened and his hands moved with surprising eloquence.

Gracie was too far away to hear what had been said.

But even if there had been such a carriage, what did that tell her? Nothing. Some man with more money than sense had come to this area looking for a cheap woman. So he had coarse tastes. Perhaps he found a kind of thrill in the danger of it. She had heard there were people like that. If it had been Martin Fetters, what of it? If it were made public, would it matter so much, except to his wife?

Was Remus really chasing after the reason for Fetters’s murder anyway? Perhaps she was wasting her time here, or to be more honest, Charlotte’s time.

She made a decision.

She came out of the doorway, squared her shoulders, and strode towards Remus, trying to look as if she belonged here and knew exactly what she was doing and where she was going. She was nearly past him when at last he spoke.

“Excuse me!”

She stopped. “Yeah?” Her heart was pounding and her breath was so tight in her throat her voice was a squeak.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “But have you lived here for some time? I am looking for someone with some particular knowledge, you see.”

She decided to modify her reply a bit, so as not to be caught out by recent events—or the geography of the area, of which she knew very little.

“I bin away.” She gulped. “I lived ’ere a few years back.”

“How about four years ago?” he said quickly, his face eager, a little flushed.

“Yeah,” she said carefully, meeting his sharp, hazel eyes. “I were ’ere then. Wot is it yer after?”

“Do you remember seeing any carriages around? I mean really good quality carriages, not cabs.”

She screwed up her face in an effort of concentration. “Yer mean like private ones?”

“Yes! Yes, exactly,” he said urgently “Do you?”

She looked steadily at his face, the suppressed excitement, the energy inside him. Whatever he was looking for, he believed it was intensely important.

“Four year ago?” she repeated.

“Yes!” He was on the verge of adding more to prompt her, and only just stopped himself.

She concentrated on the lie. She must tell him what he expected to hear.

“Yeah, I ’member a big, fine-lookin’ carriage around ’ere. Couldn’t tell about it except, like, as it were dark, but I reckon as it were about then.” She sounded innocent. “Someone yer know, was it?”

He was staring at her as if mesmerized. “I’m not sure,” His breath caught in his throat. “Perhaps. Did you see anyone?”

She did not know what to answer because this time she was not sure what he was looking for. That was what she was here to find out. She settled for bland; that could mean anything.

“It were a big, black coach, quiet like,” she replied. “Driver up on the box, o’ course.”

“Good-looking man, with a beard?” His voice cracked with excitement.

Her heart lurched too. She was on the brink of the truth. She must be very careful now. “Dunno about good-lookin’!” She tried to sound casual. “I reckon as ’e ’ad a beard.”

“Did you see anyone inside?” He was trying to keep his face calm, but his eyes, wide and brilliant, betrayed him. “Did they stop? Did they talk to anyone?”

She invented quickly. It would not matter if the man he was looking for had not stopped. It could have been for any reason, even to ask the way.

“Yeah.” She gestured ahead of her. “Pulled up an’ spoke ter a friend o’ mine, jus’ up there. She said as they was askin’ after someone.”

“Asking after someone?” His voice was high and scratchy.

She could almost smell the tension in him.

“A particular person? A woman?”

That was what he wanted to hear. “Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s right.”

“Who? Do you know? Did she say?”

She chose the one name she knew of connected with this story. “Annie summink.”

“Annie?” He gasped and all but choked, swallowing hard so he could breathe. “Are you sure? Annie who? Do you remember? Try to think back!”

Should she risk saying “Annie Crook”? No. Better not overplay her hand. “No. Begins with a C, I think, but I in’t certain.”

There was utter silence. He seemed paralyzed. She heard someone laugh fifty yards away, and out of sight a dog barked.

His voice was a whisper. “Annie Chapman?”

She was disappointed. Suddenly all the sense in it collapsed. She was cold inside.

“Dunno,” she said flatly, unable to conceal it. “Why? ’Oo was it? Some feller after a night out on the cheap?”

“Never mind,” he said quickly, trying to conceal the importance of it to him. “You’ve been immensely helpful. Thank you very much, very much indeed.” He fished in his pocket and offered her threepence.

She took it. At least she could return it to Tellman, give him something back of what she had spent. Anyway, depending upon where Remus went next, she might need it.

He left without even looking behind him, striding off over the cobbles, dodging a coal cart. Nothing was further from his mind than the possibility that he might be followed.

He went straight back down Commercial Street to the Whitechapel High Street. Gracie had to run every now and then to keep up with him. At the bottom he turned west and went to the first bus stop, but instead of traveling all the way back to the City, as she had expected, he changed again at Holborn and went south to the river and along the Embankment until he came to the offices of the Thames River police.

Gracie followed him straight in, as if she had business
there herself. She waited behind him, her head down. She had taken the precaution of letting her hair out of its pins and rubbing a little dirt into her face. She now looked reasonably unlike the young woman Remus had stopped on Hanbury Street. In fact, she appeared rather like the urchins who scrambled for leftovers along the riverbank, and hoped she would be taken for one, if anybody bothered to look at her twice.

Remus was inventive also. When the sergeant who answered his call asked him what he wanted, he answered with a story Gracie was certain was created for the occasion.

“I’m looking for my cousin who’s disappeared,” he said anxiously, leaning forward over the counter. “I heard someone answering his description was nearly drowned near Westminster Bridge, on the seventh of February this year. Poor soul was involved in a coach accident that nearly killed a little girl, and in his remorse he tried to kill himself. Is that true?”

“True enough,” the sergeant answered. “Was in the papers. Feller called Nickley. But I can’t say as he really tried to kill ’isself.” He smiled twistedly. “Took ’is coat an’ ’is boots off afore ’e jumped, an’ anyone ’oo does that don’t mean it fer real.” His voice was laden with contempt. “Swam, ’e did. Fetched up on the bank along a bit, like yer’d expect. Took ’im ter Westminster ’Ospital, but weren’t nothin’ wrong wif ’im.”

Remus became suddenly casual, as if what he was asking now were an afterthought and scarcely mattered.

“And the girl, what was her name? Was she all right too?”

“Yeah.” The sergeant’s blunt face filled with pity. “Close call, poor little thing, but not ’urt, jus’ scared stiff. Said it weren’t the first time, neither. Nearly got run down by a coach before.” He shook his head, his lips pursed. “Said it were the same one, but don’t suppose she can tell one fancy big coach from another.”

Gracie saw Remus stiffen and his hands knot by his sides. “The second time? By the same coach?” In spite of himself his voice was sharp as if this new fact had momentous meaning for him.

The sergeant laughed. “No, ’course it weren’t! Just a little
girl … only seven or eight years old. What’d she know about coaches?”

Remus could not contain himself. He leaned farther forward. “What was her name?”

“Alice,” the sergeant answered. “I think.”

“Alice what?”

The sergeant looked at him a little more closely. “What’s this all about, mister? You know summink as you should tell us?”

“No!” Remus denied it too quickly. “It’s just family business. Bit of a black sheep, you know? Want to keep it quiet, if possible. But it would help a lot if I knew the girl’s name.”

The sergeant was skeptical. He regarded Remus with the beginning of doubt. “Cousin, you said?”

Remus had left himself no room to escape. “That’s right. He’s an embarrassment to us. Got a thing about this little girl, Alice Crook. I just hoped it wasn’t her.”

Gracie felt the name shiver through her. Whatever it was, Remus was still on the track of it.

The sergeant’s face softened a little. “Well, I’m afraid it were ’er. Sorry.”

Remus put his hands up quickly, covering his face. Gracie, standing behind him, saw his body stiffen, and knew it was not grief he was hiding but elation. It took him a moment or two to recompose himself and look up again at the sergeant.

“Thank you,” he said briefly. “Thank you for your time.” Then he turned on his heel and walked out rapidly past Gracie, leaving her to run after him if she wanted to keep up. If the sergeant even noticed her, he might have thought she was with Remus anyway.

Remus walked back away from the river, looking to the right and left of him as if he were searching for something.

Gracie stayed well back, keeping at least half behind other people in the street, laborers, sightseers, clerks on errands, newsboys and peddlers.

Then she saw Remus change direction and walk across the footpath to the post office and go inside.

She went in after him.

She saw him take out a pencil and write a very hasty note in a scribble, his hands shaking. He folded it up, purchased a stamp, and put the letter into the box. Then he set out again at considerable speed. Once more Gracie had to run a few steps every now and then to not lose him.

She was delighted when Remus apparently decided he was hungry and stopped at a public house for a proper meal. Her feet were sore and her legs ached. She was more than ready to sit down for a while, eat something herself, and observe him in comfort.

He chose an eel pie, something she had always disliked. She watched with wonder as he tucked into it, not stopping until he had finished, then wiping his lips with his napkin. She had a pork pie and thought it a lot better.

Half an hour later he set out again, looking full of purpose. She went after him, determined to not lose him. It was early evening by now, and the streets were crowded. She had the advantage that Remus had no idea there was anyone behind him, and he was so set in his purpose that he never once looked over his shoulder or took the slightest steps to be inconspicuous.

After two omnibus rides and a further short walk, Remus was standing by a bench in Hyde Park, apparently waiting for someone.

He stood for five minutes, and Gracie found it taxed her imagination to think of something to explain her own presence.

Remus kept looking around, in case whoever he was waiting for came from the opposite direction. He could not help seeing her. In time he had to wonder why she was here.

What would Tellman have done? He was a detective. He must follow people all the time. Try to be invisible? There was nothing to hide behind, no shadows, no trees close enough. Anyway, if she hid behind a tree she would not see whom he met! Think of a reason to explain her being here? Yes, but what? Waiting for someone as well? Would he believe that? Lost something? Good, but why had she not started to look for it as soon as she got here?

Got it. She had only just discovered it was missing.

She started to retrace her steps very slowly, staring at the ground as if searching for something small and precious. When she had gone twenty yards she turned and started back again. She had almost reached her original position when finally a middle-aged man came towards him along the path and Remus stepped out directly in front of him.

The man stopped abruptly, then made as if to walk around Remus and continue on his way.

Remus moved to remain across his path and, from the attitude of the other man, apparently spoke to him, but so softly Gracie, thirty feet away, could not hear more than the faintest sound.