The Whitechapel Conspiracy (33 page)

I
T WAS NEARLY
midnight when Tellman reached Keppel Street, but he would have no chance in the morning to tell Gracie what he had learned, and Charlotte also. They must know. This hideous conspiracy was bigger than any individual’s career, or even their safety. Not that keeping it from them would protect them. Nothing he or Pitt said could prevent them from continuing to pursue the truth. In both women, devotion to Pitt, as well as a sense of justice, was far stronger than any idea of obedience they might have possessed.

Therefore they must have the very slight protection that a knowledge of the conspiracy’s enormity might give them.

And they might help. He told himself that fiercely as he stood on the doorstep and looked up at the dark windows. He was a police officer, a citizen of a land in very real danger of being plunged into violence from which it might not emerge for years, and even when it did, much of its heritage and identity could be destroyed. The safety of two women, even one he admired and one he loved, could not be placed before that.

He lifted up the brass knocker and let it fall. It thudded loudly in the silence. Nothing stirred right along the street. He knocked again, three times, and again.

A light came on upstairs, and a few moments later Charlotte herself answered the door, her eyes wide with fear, her hair a dark shadow across her shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Tellman said immediately, knowing what she feared. “But I’ve got things I have to tell you.”

She pulled the door wider and he followed her inside. She called Gracie, and led him through to the kitchen. She riddled the stove and put more coal on. He bent to help her too late, feeling clumsy. She smiled at him and put the kettle on the hob.

When Gracie appeared, tousle-haired from sleep and, to Tellman, looking about fourteen, they sat around the table with tea, and he told them what he had learned from Lyndon Remus and all that it meant.

It was nearly three in the morning before, at last, Tellman went out into the dark streets to return home. Charlotte had offered to allow him to sleep in the front parlor, but he had declined. He did not feel it was proper, and he needed the width and the loneliness of the street to think.

When Charlotte woke it was daylight. At first all she remembered was that Pitt was not there. The space beside her was the kind of emptiness you have when a tooth has been lost, aching, tender, not right.

Then she remembered Tellman’s visit and all that he had told them about the Whitechapel murders, Prince Eddy and Annie Crook, and the fearful conspiracy to conceal it all.

She sat up and pushed the covers away. There was no point in lying there any longer. There was no warmth, either physical or of the heart.

She started to wash and dress automatically. Odd how much less pleasure there was in something simple like brushing and curling her hair now that Pitt was not there to see it, even to annoy her by touching it and pulling pieces out of the pins again. She missed the touch of his hands even more than the sound of his voice. It was a physical pain inside her, like the ache of hunger.

She must concentrate on the problem. There was no time for self-indulgence. Had John Adinett killed Fetters because he was part of the conspiracy to conceal the Whitechapel murderer and the royal part in it all? If he had been part of it, then Adinett should have exposed him and made him answer for his crime, to whatever degree he was involved.

But that made no sense. Fetters was a republican. He would
have been the first person to lay it bare himself. The answer had to be the other way around. Fetters had discovered the truth and was going to expose it, and Adinett had killed him to prevent it. That would explain why he could never have told anyone, even to save his own life. He had not been in Cleveland Street asking after the original crime in 1888 but after Fetters’s enquiries into it this year. He must have realized that Fetters knew, and would inevitably make it public for his own ends. And apart from his desire to shield the men who had committed the horrific murders, he wanted to keep the secret they had killed to hide in the first place; whether or not he was a royalist, he did not want revolution and all the violence and destruction it would inevitably bring.

She went downstairs slowly, turning the thought over and over in her mind. She walked along the corridor to the kitchen and heard Gracie banging saucepans and the splash of water as she filled the kettle. It was still early. There would be time for a cup of tea before she woke the children.

Gracie swung around when she heard Charlotte’s footsteps. She looked tired, her hair was less tidy than usual, but she smiled with quick response as Charlotte came in. There was something brave and very determined in her eyes which gave Charlotte a surge of hope.

Gracie pushed her stray hair behind her ears, then turned and poked the fire vigorously to get the flames high so the kettle would boil. She dug the poker in as if she were disemboweling some mortal enemy.

Charlotte thought aloud while she fetched milk from the larder, watching where she trod because of the cats circling around her as if determined to trip her up. She poured a little into a saucer for them, and then broke off a small crust of new bread and dropped it on the floor. They fought over it, and patted it around with their paws, chasing it and diving on it.

Gracie made the tea and they sat in companionable silence sipping, while it was sharp and pungent, and still too hot. Then Charlotte went upstairs and woke first Jemima, then Daniel.

“When is Papa coming home?” Jemima asked as she
washed her face, being rather generous with the water. “You said soon.” There was accusation in her voice.

Charlotte handed her the towel. What should she say? She heard the sharpness, and knew it came from fear. Life had been disrupted and neither child knew why. The unexplained made the world frightening. If one parent could go and not come back, perhaps the other could as well. Which did the least harm: the uncertain, dangerous truth; or a more comfortable lie that would get them over the next few days, but which might catch her in the end?

“Mama?” Jemima was not prepared to wait.

“I hoped it would be soon,” Charlotte replied, playing for time. “It’s a difficult case, worse than he thought.”

“Why did Papa take it, if it’s that bad?” Jemima asked, her stare level and uncompromising.

What was the answer to that? He had not known? He had had no choice?

Daniel came into the room, pulling his shirt on, his hair wet around his brow and over his ears.

“What?” He looked at his mother, then at his sister.

“He took it because it was right,” Charlotte replied. “It was the right thing to do.” She could not tell them he was in danger, that the Inner Circle had destroyed his career in vengeance for his testimony against John Adinett. Nor could she say he had to work at something or they would lose their home, perhaps even be hungry. It was too soon for such realism. Certainly she could not tell them he had discovered an evil so terrible it threatened to destroy all he knew and trusted from day to day. Dragons and ogres were for fairy stories, not reality.

Jemima frowned at her. “Does he want to come back home?”

Charlotte heard the fear in her that perhaps he had gone because he wished to. She had caught the shadow before, the unspoken thought that some piece of disobedience had made him go, that in some way Jemima had not matched up to his expectations of her and he was disappointed.

“Of course he does!” Daniel said angrily, his face flushed,
his eyes hot. “That’s a stupid thing to say!” His voice was raw with emotion. His sister had challenged everything he loved.

At another time Charlotte would have told him very quickly about his language; now she was too conscious of the tremor in his voice, the uncertainty that prompted the retaliation.

Jemima was stung, but she was terrified that what she feared was true, and that was far more important than dignity.

Charlotte turned to her daughter. “Of course he wants to come home,” she said calmly, as if any other idea were not frightening, only silly. “He hates being away, but sometimes doing the right thing is very unpleasant and means you have to give up some of the things that matter most to you for a while, not forever. I expect he misses us even more than we miss him, because at least we are all together. And we are here at home, and comfortable. He has to be where he is needed, and that is not nearly as clean or pleasant as this.”

Jemima looked considerably comforted, enough to start arguing.

“Why Papa? Why not someone else?”

“Because it’s difficult, and he’s the best,” Charlotte replied, and this time it was easy. “If you are the best, that means you always have to do your duty, because there is no one else who can do it for you.”

Jemima smiled. That was an answer she liked.

“What sort of people is he chasing?” Daniel was not yet willing to let it go. “What have they done?”

This was less easy to explain. “They haven’t done it yet. He is trying to make sure that they don’t.”

“Do what?” he persisted. “What is it they are going to do?”

“Blow up places with dynamite,” she answered.

“What’s dynamite?”

“Stuff that makes things blow up,” Jemima supplied before Charlotte had time to struggle for it. “It kills people. Mary Ann told me.”

“Why?” Daniel did not think much of Mary Ann. He was disinclined to think much of girls anyway, especially on such subjects as blowing people up.

“ ’Cos they are in pieces, stupid,” she retorted, pleased to
turn the charge of inferiority back at him. “You couldn’t be alive without your arms and legs or your head!”

That seemed to end the conversation for the time being, and they went down to breakfast.

It was well after nine, and Daniel was building a boat out of cardboard and glue, and Jemima was sewing, when Emily arrived to find Charlotte peeling potatoes.

“Where’s Gracie?” she said, looking around.

“Out shopping,” Charlotte replied, abandoning the sink and turning towards her.

Emily looked at her with concern, her fair eyebrows puckered a little, her eyes anxious. “How is Thomas?” she said quietly. There was no need to ask how Charlotte was; Emily could see the strain in her face, the weariness with which she moved.

“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. “Not really. He writes often, but he doesn’t say much, and I can’t see his face, so I don’t know if he’s telling me the truth about being all right. It’s too hot for tea. Would you like some lemonade?”

“Please.” Emily sat down at the table.

Charlotte went to the pantry and returned with the lemonade. She poured two glasses full and passed one across. Then she sat down and told Emily all that had happened—from Gracie’s excursion to Mitre Square to Tellman’s visit last night. Not once did Emily interrupt her. She sat pale-faced until finally Charlotte stopped speaking.

“That is far more hideous than anything I had imagined,” she said at last, and her voice trembled in spite of herself. “Who is behind it?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “It could be just about anyone.”

“Does Mrs. Fetters have any idea?”

“No … at least I’m almost certain she doesn’t. The last time I was there we found Martin Fetters’s papers and it seemed he was a pretty ardent republican. If Adinett were a royalist, and part of this other terrible thing, and Fetters knew it, then that would explain why Adinett killed him.”

“Of course it would. But how can you pursue that now?”
Emily leaned forward urgently. “For heaven’s sake, Charlotte, be careful! Think what they’ve done already. Adinett’s dead, but there could be any number of others alive, and you don’t have any idea who they are.”

She was right, and Charlotte had no argument against it. But she could not let go of the thoughts, the knowledge that Pitt was still in Spitalfields, and men who were guilty of monstrous crimes were going unpunished, as if it did not matter.

“We must do something about it,” Charlotte said quietly. “If we don’t at least try, who will? And I have to know if that’s the truth. Juno has the right to know why her husband was murdered. There must be people who care. Aunt Vespasia will know.”

Emily considered for a moment. “Have you thought what will happen if it is true, and because of what we do it becomes public?” she said very gravely. “It will bring down the government …”

“If they connived at keeping it secret then they need to be brought down, but by a vote of no confidence in the House, not by revolution.”

“It isn’t only what they deserve.” Emily was perfectly serious. “It is what else will happen, who will take their place. Oh, they may be bad, and I wouldn’t argue over that, but before you destroy them you have to think whether what you get instead may not be even worse.”

Charlotte shook her head.

“What could be worse than a secret society in government that for its own reasons will connive at murdering like that? It means there is no law and no justice. What happens the next time someone gets in their way? Who will it be? Over what? Can they be butchered too, and whoever does it protected?”

“That’s extreme—”

“Of course it’s extreme!” Charlotte protested. “They are insane. They have lost all sense of reality. Ask anyone who knows anything about the Whitechapel murders—I mean, really knows.”

Emily was very pale. The memory of the tales of four years ago was in her eyes. “You’re right,” she whispered.

Charlotte leaned towards her. “If we cover it up too, then we are part of it. I’m not prepared to be.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See Juno Fetters and tell her what I know.”

Emily looked frightened. “Are you sure?”

Charlotte hesitated. “I think so. I’m sure she’d rather believe her husband was killed because he knew about this than because he was planning a republican revolution, and that’s what she thinks now.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “A republican revolution? Because of this?” She drew a deep, shivery breath. “It might have succeeded … just possibly …”

Charlotte remembered Martin Fetters’s face in the photograph Juno had shown her, the wide eyes frank, intelligent, daring. It was the face of a man who would follow his passions whatever the cost. She had liked him instinctively, as she had liked the way he had written about the places and people of the ’48 revolutions. Through his sight it had been a noble struggle, and she had seen it that way with him. It had seemed the cause any decent person would have espoused, a love of justice, a common humanity. That he had planned violence here in England was startlingly bitter, almost like the betrayal of a friend. She realized it with surprise.