The Whitechapel Conspiracy

by Anne Perry

  But they had had a passion inside and a loyalty that gave more than it ever cost, even at the very last. The men who beat them were stronger, richer and sadder.

  “They mock because they don’t understand,” she said, thinking of those who had derided their aspirations so long ago.

  He was looking at her as he always had, as if there were no one else.

  “Sometimes,” he agreed. “It is far worse when they do it because they do understand but they hate what they cannot have.” He smiled. “I remember my grandfather telling me that if I desired wealth or fame there would always be those who would hate me for it because both are earned at someone else’s cost. But if I wished only to be good, no one would begrudge me that. I did not argue with him, partly because he was my grandfather, but mostly because I did not realize then how wrong he was.” His mouth tightened and there was a terrible sadness in his eyes. “There is no hatred on earth like that for someone who possesses a virtue you do not have, or want. It is the mirror that shows you what you are, and obliges you to see it.”

  Without thinking she reached out her hand and laid it on his. His fingers closed over hers immediately, warm and strong.

  “Who are you thinking of?” she asked, knowing it was not simply memory speaking, dear as that was.

  He turned to her, his eyes grave. They were nearly there and it would be time to alight in a moment, join the throng gathering on the opera house steps, women in laces and silk, jewels winking in the lights, men in shirts so white they gleamed.

  “Not a man, my dear, so much as a time.” He looked around them. “This cannot last, the extravagance, the inequality and the waste of it. Look at the beauty and remember it, because it is worth a great deal, and too much of it will go.” His voice was very soft. “Only a little wiser, a little more moderate, and they could have kept it all. That is the trouble—when anger bursts at last it destroys the good as well as the bad.”

  Before she could press him further the carriage stopped and he alighted, handing her down before the footman could do so. They went up the steps and in through the crowds, nodding to a friend or acquaintance.

  They saw Charles Voisey standing deep in conversation with James Sissons. Sissons was looking flushed, and every time Voisey hesitated he cut in.

  “Poor Voisey,” Vespasia said wryly. “Do you think we are morally obliged to rescue him?”

  Mario was puzzled. “Rescue him?” he asked.

  “From the sugar factory man,” she said with surprise at having to explain to him. “He is the most crashing bore.”

  An aching pity filled Mario’s face, a regret that filled her with longing for things which could never be, not even all those years ago in Rome, except in dream.

  “You know nothing of him, my dear, not of the man beneath the awkward surface. He deserves to be judged for his heart, not his grace ... or lack of it.” He took her arm and with surprising strength led her past Voisey and Sissons and the group beyond them, and up the stairs towards the box.

  She saw Voisey take his seat almost opposite them, but she did not see Sissons again.

  She wanted to enjoy the music, to let her mind and her heart be fully with Mario in this little space of time, but she could not rid her thoughts of what Charlotte had told her. She turned over every possibility in her mind, and the longer she did so the less could she doubt that what Lyndon Remus had been led to was hideously close to the truth, but that he was being manipulated for purposes far beyond everything he understood.

  She trusted Mario’s heart. Even after all those years she did not believe he had changed so much. His dreams were woven into the threads of his soul. But she did not trust his head. He was an idealist; he saw too much of the world in broad strokes, as he wished it to be. He had refused to allow experience to dull his hope or teach him reality.

  She looked at his face, still so full of passion and hope, and followed his glance across at the royal box, which was empty tonight. The Prince of Wales was probably indulging in something a trifle less serious than the deliberation of the doomed gods of Valhalla.

  “Did you choose Twilight of the Gods on purpose?” she asked.

  Something in her voice caught his attention, a gravity, even a sense of time running out. There was no laughter in his eyes as he answered.

  “No ... but I could have,” he said softly. “It is twilight, Vespasia, for very flawed gods who wasted their opportunities, spent too much money that was not theirs to cast away, borrowed money that has not been paid back. Good men will starve because of it, and that makes more than the victims angry. It wakens a rage in the ordinary man, and that is what brings down kings.”

  “I doubt it.” She did not enjoy contradicting him. “The Prince of Wales has owed so much money for so long it is only a slow anger left now, not hot enough for what you speak of.”

  “That depends who he has borrowed from,” he said gravely. “From rich men, bankers, speculators or courtiers; to some extent they took their own risks and can be thought to deserve their fate. But not if the lender is ruined and takes others down with him.”

  The houselights were dimming and a silence fell in the theater. Vespasia was hardly aware of it.

  “And is that likely to happen, Mario?”

  The orchestra sounded the first ominous notes.

  She felt his hand touch hers gently in the darkness. There was still remarkable strength in him. In all the times he had touched her he had never hurt her, only broken her heart.

  “Of course it will happen,” he replied. “The Prince is as bent on his own destruction as any of Wagner’s gods, and he will bring all Valhalla down with him, the good as well as the bad. But we have never known how to prevent that. That is their tragedy, that they will not listen until it is too late. But this time there are men with vision and practical sense. England is the last of the great powers to hear the voice of the common man in his cry for justice, but perhaps because of that it will learn from those of us who failed, and you will succeed.”

  The curtain went up and showed the elaborate set on the stage. In its light Vespasia looked at Mario, and saw the hope naked in his face, the courage to try again, in spite of all the battles lost, and in him still no generosity to wish victory for others.

  She almost wished it could succeed, for his sake. The old corruption was deep, but in so many cases it was part of life, ignorance, not deliberate wickedness, not cruelty, simply blindness. She could understand Charles Voisey’s arguments against hereditary privilege, but she knew human nature well enough to believe that the abuse of power is no respecter of persons: it affects king and commoner alike.

  “Tyrants are not born, my dear,” she said softly. “They are made, by opportunity, whatever title they give themselves.”

  He smiled at her. “You think too little of man. You must have faith.”

  She swallowed the tears in her throat, and did not argue.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  After leaving Charlotte, Pitt walked on down the street towards the sugar factory. The heavy, sickly smell caught in his nose and throat, but not even the thought of standing the night watch there could dull the happiness that welled up inside him at having seen her, even for a short time. She was so exactly as his memory had recreated her in the long nights alone: the warmth of her, the line of her cheek, her lips, above all her eyes as she looked back at him.

  He turned in at the factory gates, the huge building towering over him, the men jostling at his sides. All he wished to know was if they needed him that night. He called by to check most mornings.

  “Yeah,” the senior watchman said cheerfully. He looked tired today, his blue eyes faded and all but hidden by the folds of his skin.

  “Right,” Pitt replied regretfully. He would prefer a night’s sleep. “How is your wife?”

  The night watchman shook his head. “Poorly,” he said with an attempt at a smile.

  “I’m sorry.” Pitt meant it. He always asked, and the answer varied
from day to day, but she was failing and they both knew it. He stayed and talked a few moments longer. Wally was lonely and he always wanted a listening ear to share his anxieties.

  Afterwards, Pitt hurried back towards Saul’s workshop, now a trifle late. He was late from his first errand too, because a wagonload of barrels had spilled out onto the street, and he stopped and helped the carter put them back. The little bubble of peace inside him made him impervious to the gray streets, the anger and the fear that set nerves on edge.

  He went back to Heneagle Street early. Isaac was not home yet and Leah was busy in the kitchen.

  “That you, Thomas?” she called as she heard his footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.

  He could smell cooking, sharp, sweet herbs. He was more accustomed to them now and had grown to like them.

  “Yes,” he answered. “How are you?”

  She never responded directly. “Are you hungry? You should eat more ... and not keep all those late hours at that factory. It’s not good for you.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I am hungry, and I’ve got to do the early watch tonight.”

  “Then come and eat!”

  He went upstairs first to wash his face and hands, and found the clean laundry she had laid on the chest for him. He picked up the shirt on top, and saw that she had turned the cuffs for him, placing the worn edges to the inside.

  A wave of homesickness washed over him so overwhelmingly that for a moment he was almost unaware of the room around him. It was a simple domestic kindness, the sort of thing Charlotte did. He had seen her spend all evening mending, turning collars or cuffs, needle clicking against her thimble, light flashing silver on it as it wove in and out in tiny stitches.

  Then he was furious for so many women like Leah Karansky, who were never asked whether they wanted revolution or what price they would pay for someone else’s idea of social justice or reform. Perhaps all they wanted was their family safe at home at night, and enough food to put something on the table fit to eat.

  He looked at Leah’s stitches on his cuff and knew how long it had taken her to do. He must thank her, let her know he was mindful of the kindness, perhaps talk to her about something interesting as he did. Or better, listen to her with all his attention while she talked.

  After supper, still smiling at Leah’s stories, he walked into the sugar factory yard just as Wally arrived.

  “Ah, you again!” Wally said cheerfully. “Wot d’yer do with all yer money, eh? Silk all day and sugar all night. I tell yer, somebody’s ’avin’ a soft life on yer labor, fer certain.”

  “Me, one day,” Pitt said with a wink.

  Wally laughed. “ ’Ere, I ’eard a good story about a candle maker an’ an old woman.” And without waiting he proceeded to tell it with relish.

  An hour later Pitt made his first round of his area of patrol, and Wally went in the opposite direction, still chuckling to himself. There was still a skeleton staff working. The boilers never went out, and he checked in each room, climbing the narrow stairs past every floor. The rooms were small, the ceilings low to cram in as many storeys as possible. The windows were tiny; from outside in the daylight the building looked almost blind. Now, of course, it was lit by lamps, carefully guarded because the syrup was highly flammable.

  Each room he passed was filled with vats, casks, retorts and huge dish-shaped boilers and pans several feet wide. The few men still working glanced around, and he spoke a few words to them and continued on. The smell of raw, almost rotting sweetness was everywhere. He felt as if he never got it out of his clothes and hair.

  Half an hour later he reported back down to Wally. They boiled a kettle on the brazier in the open yard and sat on old hogshead barrels in which the raw sugar came from the West Indies, and sipped the tea until it was cool enough to drink. They swapped stories and jokes; some of them were very long and only mildly funny, but it was the companionship that mattered.

  Once or twice there was movement in the shadows. The first time, Wally went to investigate and returned to say he thought it had been a cat. The second time, Pitt went, and found one of the boiler men asleep behind a pile of casks. His slight stirring had upset one of them and sent it rolling across the cobbles.

  They each completed another round, and another.

  Once, Pitt saw a man leaving whom he did not recognize. He seemed older than most of the workers, but then life in Spitalfields aged people. It was the cast of his features which caught Pitt’s attention: strong, fine-boned, dark complexioned. He kept his eyes averted, merely raising one hand in a quick salute, and light flashed for an instant on a dark-stoned ring. There was a sense of intelligence in him that remained in the memory even as Pitt returned to the yard and found Wally boiling the kettle again.

  “Do many men leave shift at this time?” Pitt asked.

  Wally shrugged. “A few. Bit early, but poor devils don’t get thanked for it anyway. Sloped off ’ome ter bed, I daresay. Good luck ter ’im. Wouldn’t mind me own bed.” He took the kettle off the fire.

  “ ’Ere, did I ever tell yer abaht w’en I went up the canal ter Manchester?” And without waiting for an answer, he carried on with the tale.

  Two hours later Pitt was halfway through the next round of the upstairs rooms when he came to the end of the corridor and saw Sissons’s office door ajar. He thought it had not been open the last time he was here. Had some worker been in there?

  He pushed the door open, holding up his lantern. The room was wider than the others, and from seven storeys up in the very faint light of the false dawn he could see over the rooftops to the south, the silver reflection on the shining surface of the river.

  He held his lantern high, turning around the room.

  Sissons was sitting at his desk, slumped forward across its polished surface. There was a gun in his right hand, and there was a pool of blood on the wood and leather beneath him. But sharpest, glaring white in the lamplight that caught it, was a sheet of paper untouched by the blood, unstained. The inkwell was on the right of the desk towards the front, set in its own slightly sunken base, the quill resting in its stand, the knife beside it.

  Cold, his stomach a little queasy, Pitt took the two steps over to Sissons, careful not to disturb anything, but he could see no footmarks on the bare floor, no drops of blood. He touched Sissons’s cheek. It was almost cold. He must have been dead two or three hours.

  He moved around the desk and read the note. It was written in a neat, slightly pedantic hand.

  I have done all I can, and I have failed. I was warned, and I did not listen. In my foolishness I believed that a prince of the blood, heir to the throne of England, and so of a quarter of the world, would never betray his word. I lent him money, all I could scrape together, on a fixed term and at minimal interest. I believed that by so doing I could relieve a man of his financial embarrassment, and at the same time earn a little interest that I would be able to put back into my business, and benefit my workers.

  How blind I was. He has denied the very existence of the loan, and I am finished. I shall lose the factories, and a thousand men will be out of work, and all those who depend upon them will perish likewise. It is my fault, for trusting a man not worthy of honor. I cannot live to see it happen; I cannot bear to watch it, or face the men I have destroyed.

  I am taking the only course left to me. May God forgive me.

  James Sissons

  Beside it lay a note of debt for twenty thousand pounds, signed by the Prince of Wales. Pitt stared at them and they swam before his eyes. The room seemed to sway around him as if he were aboard a ship. He put his hands on the desk to steady himself. Sissons was beyond help. When the first clerk came in, when he was found, and the letter and note of debt with him, it would do more damage than half a dozen sticks of dynamite. An unrepaid loan to the Prince of Wales, for him to race horses, drink wine and give presents to his mistresses, while in Spitalfields fifteen hundred families went into beggary! Shops would close, tradesmen would go out of business,
houses would be boarded up and people would live on the streets.

  There would be riots that would make Bloody Sunday in Trafalgar Square look like a playground squabble. The whole of the East End of London would erupt.

  And when Remus was given the last piece of evidence he needed to expose the Whitechapel murderer as in the service of the throne, no one would care whether the Queen or the Prince of Wales, or anyone else, had known of it or wished it; there would be revolution. The old order would be gone forever, replaced by rage, and then terror, and then unrelenting destruction, the good and the bad torn apart together.

  Law would be the first to suffer, the law that oppressed and the law that protected equally, and finally all law, even that which governed conscience and the violence within.

  He reached for the letter. If he tore it up, no one else would ever know. Then he noticed beside it a pattern of tiny splatters of ink with a large clear space in the center. It was a moment before he realized what it was; then he picked up the inkwell and placed it very carefully over the unmarked patch. It fit exactly. The inkwell normally sat to the left of Sissons! Had it been moved to make him seem right-handed?

  Carefully he took the dead man’s left hand and turned it over, gently touching the insides of the first and second fingers. He felt the ridge where Sissons normally held a pen. Why?

  He had been shot in the right side of his head ... and someone had realized too late that he was left-handed.

  A murder made to look like suicide ... but by whom? And who might lie and say Sissons was right-handed, or could use either hand?

  He must make certain this was seen as the murder it was. If he got rid of the gun, dropped it in one of the sugar vats, there could be no denying it.

  This half of the conspiracy could be stifled. Then even if Remus broke the other story, the rage here in Spitalfields would not erupt. There would be anger, but against Sissons, not against the throne.

  Was that what he wanted? His hand stayed in the air, poised above the paper. If the Prince of Wales had borrowed money for his own extravagance and not repaid, even when it would bring ruin to thousands of people, then he deserved to be overthrown, stripped of his privileges and left as comparatively destitute as those in Spitalfields were now. Even if he became a fugitive, a refugee in another land, it was no worse than what happened to many. He would have to start again as a stranger, just as Isaac and Leah Karansky and tens of thousands like them had done. In the last analysis, all human life was equal.