The Whitechapel Conspiracy (6 page)

“On the contrary,” Voisey retorted. “I am all for new ideas, if they are good ones. To fail to progress is to die.”

Vespasia looked at him with interest. It was an unusual point of view from one whose profession was so steeped in the past.

He did not smile back at her, as a less confident man might have done.

The Prince was already thinking of something else. His admiration for other people’s ideas seemed highly limited.

“Of course,” he dismissed airily. “The number of new inventions around is incredible. Ten years ago we would not have conceived what they could do with electricity.”

Voisey smiled very slightly, his eyes on Vespasia’s for an instant longer before he replied. “Indeed, sir. One wonders what may yet be to come.” He was polite, but Vespasia heard the faintest thread of contempt in his voice. He was a man of ideas, broad concepts, revolutions of the mind. Details did not hold his regard; they were for smaller men, men whose view was conceived from a lower level.

They were joined by a noted architect and his wife, and the conversation became general. The Prince glanced at Vespasia with regret, a shred of humor, and then played his part in the trivialities.

Vespasia was able to excuse herself and moved on to speak to a politician she had known for years. He looked weary and amused, his face deeply lined, full of character. They had shared personal crusades in the past, triumph and tragedy, and a fair share of farce.

“Good evening, Somerset,” she said with genuine pleasure. She had forgotten how fond of him she had been. His failures had been magnificent, as had his successes, and he had carried them both with grace.

“Lady Vespasia!” His eyes were alight. “Suddenly a breath of sanity!” He took the hand she offered, barely brushing it with his lips in a gesture rather than an act. “I wish we had a new crusade, but this is beyond even us, I think.” He glanced around at the opulent room and the ever-increasing number
of men and women in it, laughing together, diamonds blazing, light on silks and pale skin, swathes of lace, shimmering brocades. His eyes hardened. “It will destroy itself … if it doesn’t see sense in the next year or two.” There was regret in his voice, and confusion. “Why can’t they see that?”

“Do you really think so?” She assumed for a moment that perhaps he was speaking for effect, a little dramatic overstatement. Then she saw the tightness of his lips and the shadow over his eyes. “You do….”

He turned to her. “If Bertie doesn’t curtail his spending a great deal”—he inclined his head momentarily towards the Prince of Wales ten yards away, laughing uproariously at someone’s joke—“and the Queen doesn’t come back into public life and start courting her people again.” There was another guffaw of laughter a few yards away.

Somerset Carlisle lowered his voice. “Lots of us suffer grief, Vespasia. Most of us lose something we love in our lives. We can’t afford to give up—stop working because of it. The country is made up of a few aristocrats, hundreds of thousands of doctors, lawyers, and priests, a million or two shopkeepers and traders of one sort or another, and farmers. And dozens of millions of ordinary men and women who work from dawn to dusk because they have to, to feed those who depend on them, the old and the young. Men die, and women break their hearts. We go on.”

Somewhere at the far end of the room the music started. There was a tinkle of glass.

“You can’t lead people from more than a certain distance away,” he went on. “She isn’t one of us anymore. She has allowed herself to become irrelevant. And Bertie is too much one of us, with his appetites—only he isn’t indulging them on his own money, as the rest of us have to!”

Vespasia knew that what he said was true, but she had not heard anyone else put it quite so boldly. Somerset Carlisle had an irresponsible wit and a high sense of the bizarre, which she knew only too well. She still felt a note of hysteria rise inside her when she thought of their past battles and the grotesque things he had done in his attempts to force through
reform. But she knew him too well to think he was joking or exaggerating now.

“Victoria will be the last monarch,” he said almost under his breath, a harsh edge of regret in his voice. “If some people have their way … believe me. There is unrest in the country more profound than anything we’ve had in two centuries or more. The poverty in some places is almost unbelievable, not to mention the anti-Catholic feeling, the fear of the liberal Jews who’ve come into London after the ’48 revolutions in Europe, and of course there are always the Irish.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “We’ve always had most of these elements. Why now, Somerset?”

He remained silent for several moments. People passed them. One or two spoke, and the others nodded in acknowledgment but did not intrude.

“I’m not sure,” he said finally. “A mixture of things. Time. It’s nearly thirty years since Prince Albert died. That’s a long time to live without an effective monarch. We have a whole generation who are beginning to realize we can manage fairly well without one.” He lifted one shoulder slightly. “I don’t personally agree with them. I think the mere existence of a monarch, whether that monarch does anything or not, is a safeguard against many of the abuses of power, which perhaps we don’t realize, simply because we have had that shield so long. A constitutional monarchy, of course. The prime minister should be the head of the nation, and the monarch the heart. I think it is very wise not to have both in the one figure.” He gave a twisted, little smile. “It means we can change our minds when we find we are mistaken, without committing suicide.”

“It is also who we are,” she said, equally softly. “We have had a throne for a thousand years, and the notion of it far longer I don’t think I care to change.”

“Nor I.” He grinned at her suddenly, lighting his face with a wild humor. “I am too old for it!” He was at least thirty-five years younger than she.

She gave him a look that should have frozen him at twenty paces, and she knew it would not.

They were joined by a slender man, little more than Vespasia’s height, with a shock of dark hair threaded through with gray at the temples. He had very dark eyes, a long nose and a sensitive mouth, deeply lined at each side. He looked intelligent, wry, and weary, as if he had seen too much of life and his compassion for it was growing thin.

“Evening, Narraway.” Carlisle regarded him with interest. “Lady Vespasia, may I present Victor Narraway. He is head of Special Branch. I’m not sure if that is supposed to be a secret or not, but you know a score of people you could ask, if it interested you. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould.”

Narraway bowed and made the appropriate acknowledgment.

“Thought you’d be far too busy ferreting out anarchists to waste your time in chatter and dancing,” Carlisle said dryly. “England safe for the night, is it?”

Narraway smiled. “Not all the danger is lurking in dark alleys in Limehouse,” he replied. “To be any real threat it would have to have tentacles a great deal longer than that.”

Vespasia watched him closely, trying to make some estimate in her mind as to whether he believed as Carlisle did, but she could not separate the amusement from the sadness in his eyes. A moment later he was making some remark about the foreign secretary, and the conversation swept past the subject and became trivial.

An hour later, with the strains of a waltz sweet and lilting in the background, Vespasia was enjoying an excellent champagne and a while seated alone, when she was aware of the Prince of Wales a dozen feet away from her. He was in conversation with a solidly built man of middle age with a pleasant, earnest face and a quiff of hair that was thinning markedly on the top. They seemed to be speaking of sugar.

“ … do you, Sissons?” the Prince enquired. The expression on his face was polite but less than interested.

“Mostly through the Port of London,” Sissons replied. “Of course, it is a very labor-intensive industry.”

“Is it? I admit, I had no idea. I suppose we take it for granted. A spoonful of sugar for one’s tea, and so on.”

“Oh, there is sugar in scores of things,” Sissons said with
feeling. “Cakes, sweet pastries, pies, even some things we might have supposed to be savory. A sprinkle of sugar improves the taste of tomatoes more than you would believe.”

“Does it really?” The Prince raised his eyebrows slightly in an attempt to look as if the information were of value to him. “I had always thought of salt for that.”

“Sugar is better,” Sissons assured him. “It is mostly labor that adds to the cost, you see?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Labor, sir,” Sissons repeated. “That is why the Spitalfields area is good. Thousands of men needing work … an almost endless pool to call upon. Volatile, of course.”

“Volatile?” The Prince was still apparently lost.

Vespasia was aware of others within earshot of this rather pointless exchange, and also listening. Lord Randolph Churchill was one of them. She had known him in a slight way most of her life, as she had known his father before him. She was conscious of his intelligence and his dedication to his political beliefs.

“A great mixture of people,” Sissons was explaining. “Backgrounds, religions and so on. Catholics, Jews, and of course Irish. Lot of Irish. The need to work is about all they have in common.”

“I see.” The Prince was beginning to feel he had said enough to satisfy courtesy and might be excused for leaving this exceedingly dull conversation.

“It must be profitable,” Sissons continued, urgency rising in his voice, his face pink.

“Well, I imagine with a couple of factories, you are in a position to know.” The Prince smiled pleasantly, as if to conclude the matter.

“No!” Sissons said sharply, taking a step forward as the Prince took one away. “Actually three factories. But what I meant was not that it was profitable but that there is a great obligation upon me to make it so, otherwise over a thousand men will be thrown out of work, and the chaos and injury that would result from that would be appalling.” His words were tumbling out at increasing speed. “I could not even venture a
guess as to where that would end. Not in that part of the city. You see, there is nowhere else for them to go.”

“Go?” The Prince frowned. “Why should they wish to go?”

Vespasia felt herself cringing. She had a very vivid idea of the soul-destroying poverty of parts of London, most especially the East End, of which Spitalfields and Whitechapel were the heart.

“I mean for work.” Sissons was becoming agitated. It was plain in the beads of sweat on his brow and lip, which were glistening in the lights. “Without work they will starve. God knows, they are close enough to it now.”

The Prince said nothing. He was clearly embarrassed. It was a most unseemly subject in this gorgeous, lavish display of pleasure. It was poor taste to remind men with glasses of champagne in their hands, and women decked with diamonds, that within a few miles of them thousands had not food and shelter for the night. It made them uncomfortable.

“It is necessary I stay in business!” Sissons’s voice rose a trifle, carrying above the hum of other conversations and the beat of the distant music. “I have to make sure I collect all my debts … so I can keep on paying them.”

The Prince looked bewildered. “Of course. Yes … it must be. Very conscientious, I am sure.”

Sissons swallowed. “All of them … sir.”

“Yes … quite so.” The Prince was looking decidedly unhappy now. His desire to escape this absurd situation was palpable.

Randolph Churchill took the liberty of interrupting. Vespasia was not surprised. She knew his relationship with the Prince of Wales was long and had varied. It had been one of extreme hatred over the Aylesford affair in 1876, when the Prince had actually challenged him to a duel with guns—to be fought in Paris, such a thing being illegal in England. Sixteen years ago the Prince had publicly refused to enter the house of anyone who received the Churchills. Consequently they had been almost entirely ostracized.

Eventually it had all died down, and Jennie Churchill, Randolph’s wife, had so charmed the Prince—apparently enough
to become one of his many mistresses—that he willingly dined at their home in Connaught Place and gave her expensive gifts. Randolph was back in favor. As well as being appointed leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, two of the highest offices in the land, he was the closest personal confidante of the Prince, sharing sporting and social events, giving advice and receiving praise and trust.

Now he stepped in to relieve a tedious situation.

“Of course you have to … er … Sissons,” he said cheerfully. “Only way to conduct a business, what? But this is a time for enjoyment. Have some more champagne; it’s excellent.” He turned to the Prince. “I must congratulate you, sir, an exquisite choice. I don’t know how you do it.”

The Prince brightened considerably. He was with one of his own, a man he could trust not only politically but socially.

“It is rather, isn’t it? Did well there.”

“Superbly,” Churchill agreed, smiling. He was a beautifully dressed man of average height with regular features and a very wide, turned-up mustache which gave him a distinguished air. His manner was one of unquenchable pride. “I fancy it calls for something succulent to eat, to complement it. May I have something sent for you, sir?”

“No … no, I’ll come with you.” The Prince grasped the chance to escape. “I really ought to speak to the French ambassador. Good fellow. Do excuse us, Sissons.” And he turned and went with Churchill too rapidly for Sissons to do anything but mutter something unheard and take his leave.

“Mad,” Somerset Carlisle said softly at Vespasia’s elbow.

“Who?” she enquired. “The sugar man?”

“Not so far as I know.” He smiled. “Tedious in the extreme, but if that were insanity, then I should lock up half the country. I meant Churchill.”

“Oh, of course,” she said casually. “But you are far from the first to say that. At least he knows which side his advantage lies, which is an improvement on the Aylesford situation. Who is that very intense-looking man with the gray hair?” She half looked into the distance to indicate who she meant,
then back again at Carlisle. “I don’t recall having seen him before, and yet he exudes a kind of passion which is almost evangelical.”