Whitechapel Conspiracy

by Anne Perry

  “Possibly,” Vespasia agreed. She smiled very slightly, and with a sadness that lay deep behind her eyes. “It is not an ignoble cause. I do not agree with it, but I can understand much that it strives for, and admire those who pursue it.”

  There was something in her which prevented Charlotte from arguing. She realized with a sense of loneliness how much older Vespasia was than she, and how much of Vespasia’s life there was about which she knew nothing. And yet she loved her with a depth that had nothing to do with time or blood.

  “Let me consider it,” Vespasia said after a moment or two. “In the meantime, my dear, be extremely careful. Learn what you can without jeopardizing yourself. We are dealing with people who think little of killing individual men or women in order to accomplish their purposes for nations. They believe ends justify means, and think they have the right to do anything they consider will serve what they have convinced themselves is the greater good.”

  Charlotte felt a darkness in this light room, and a chill as if night had fallen early. She stood up.

  “I will. But I must tell Thomas. I—I need to see him.”

  Vespasia smiled. “Of course you do. I wish I could also, but I realize it’s impractical. Please remember me to him.”

  Impulsively, Charlotte stepped forward and bent to put her arms around Vespasia, and held her, their shoulders close. She kissed her cheek, and then left without either of them speaking again.

  Charlotte went home by way of Tellman’s lodgings, and to his landlady’s consternation, waited over half an hour for him to return from Bow Street. Without prevarication she asked that he take her the following morning to meet with Pitt on his way to work at the silk factory. Tellman protested the danger of it to her, the unpleasantness, and above all, the fact that Pitt would certainly not wish her to go to Spitalfields. She told him not to waste time with protests that meant nothing. She was going, with or without him, and they both knew it, so it would be altogether better if he simply acknowledged it so they could agree upon arrangements and get a good night’s sleep.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he conceded. She saw in his face that he was too aware of the gravity of the situation to make more than a token argument to satisfy conscience. He saw her to the omnibus stop again.

  “I’ll be at the door in Keppel Street at six in the morning,” he said gravely. “We’ll take a hansom to the underground railway station, and a train to Whitechapel. Wear your oldest clothes, and boots that are comfortable for walking. And maybe you could borrow a shawl to hide your hair; it would make you less noticeable from the local women.”

  She agreed, with a sense of foreboding, yet anticipation at the thought of seeing Pitt.

  When she got home she ran up the stairs, washed her hair even though she would hide it under a shawl, and brushed it until it shone. She had not intended to tell Gracie, but she could not keep it secret. She went to bed early, and found herself too excited to sleep until long after midnight.

  In the morning she woke late and had to hurry. There was barely time for a cup of tea. She drank it too hot and left half of it behind when Tellman knocked at the door.

  “Tell Mr. Pitt we miss ’im terrible, ma’am!” Gracie said quickly, blushing a little, her eyes steady.

  “I will,” Charlotte promised.

  Tellman was on the step, the dark shape of a hansom looming behind him. He looked thin-shouldered, gaunt-faced, and she realized for the first time how much Pitt’s disgrace had affected him. He might loathe admitting it, but he was deeply loyal, both to Pitt himself and to his own sense of right and wrong. He might resent authority, see its faults and the injustices of differences in class and opportunity, but he expected the men who led him to observe certain rules within the law. Above all, he had not expected them to betray their own. Whatever his origins, Pitt had earned his place as one of them, and in Tellman’s world that had meant he should have been safe.

  He might deplore the social conscience, or lack of it, among those of the officer class, but he knew their morality, at least he had thought he did, and it was worthy of respect. That was what made their leadership tolerable. Suddenly it was no longer so. When the fixed parts in the order of things began to crumble, there was a new and frightening kind of loneliness, a confusion unlike anything else.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly as he walked across the damp footpath with her and handed her up into the cab. They rode in silence through the morning streets, the clear, gray light catching the windows of houses and shops. There were already many people about: maids, delivery boys, carters fetching fresh goods in for the markets. The first milk wagons were waiting at the ends of the streets and already queues were forming as they turned in towards the station.

  The train as it roared through the black tunnel was far too noisy to allow conversation, and Charlotte’s mind was absorbed in anticipation of seeing Pitt. It had been only a matter of a few weeks, but it stretched behind her like a desert of time. She pictured how he would look: his face, his expression, whether he would be tired, well or ill, happy to see her. How much had the injustice wounded him? Was he changed by the anger he had to feel? That thought cut so deeply it caught her like a physical pain.

  She sat bolt upright in the train seat. She did not realize, until Tellman moved beside her and stood up, gesturing to the door, how she had been clenching and unclenching her fingers so they ached. She stood up as the train lurched to a stop. They were at Aldgate Street, and they must walk the rest of the way.

  It was broader daylight now, but the streets were dirtier, more congested with carts and wagons and groups of men on their way to work, some trudging, heads down, others shouting across to each other. Was there really a tension in the air, or did she imagine it because she knew the history of the place, and because she herself was frightened?

  She kept close beside Tellman as they turned north out of the High Street. He had said they were going to Brick Lane, because Pitt would pass that way on his journey to the silk factory where he worked. This was Whitechapel. She thought about what the name meant literally, and how ludicrous a name it was for this grimy, industrial area with its narrow streets; dust; gray, broken windows; dogleg alleys; chimneys belching smoke; smells of drains and middens. Its history of horror lay so close beneath the surface it was sharp and painful in the heart.

  Tellman was walking quickly, not to seem out of place among the men hurrying to the sugar factories, warehouses and yards. She had to trot to keep up with him, but perhaps here that was appropriate. Women did not walk beside their men at this time of day, as if they were courting couples.

  There was a burst of raucous laughter. Someone smashed a bottle, and the thin tinkle of glass was startlingly unpleasant. She thought not of the loss of something useful, as she would at home, but of the weapon the jagged ends would make.

  They were in Brick Lane now.

  Tellman stopped. She wondered why. Then, with a lurch of her heart she saw Pitt. He was on the other side of the road, walking steadily, but unlike the other men, he was looking from side to side, listening, seeing. He was dressed shabbily; his coat was torn at the back, sitting crookedly as usual. And instead of his beautiful boots that Emily had given him, he had old ones with the left sole loose and string for laces. His hat was dented at the side of the brim. It was only by the familiarity of his walk that she recognized him before he turned and saw her.

  He hesitated. He would not expect to see her here—he probably had not even been thinking of her—but perhaps something about the way she stood attracted him.

  She started forward, and Tellman caught her arm. For an instant she resented it and would have torn herself loose, then she realized that running across the street would draw attention to her, and so to Pitt, and she allowed herself to be held back. People around here knew Pitt. They would ask who she was. How could he answer? It would start gossip, questions.

  She stood with one foot on the curb, her face hot with embarrassment.

  Her brief movement
had been enough. Pitt had recognized her. He sauntered across the street, dodging between the carts, behind a dray and in front of a costermonger’s barrow. He reached them and after the merest nod to her, he spoke as if to Tellman.

  “What are you doing here?” he said softly, his voice jagged with emotion. “What’s happened?”

  She stared at him, memorizing every line of him. He looked tired. His face was freshly shaved but there was a grayness to his skin, and a hollowness around his eyes. She felt her chest tight with the ache to comfort him, to take him home to his own house, to warmth and a clean kitchen, the smells of linen and scrubbed wood, the quietness of the garden with its scent of damp earth and cut grass, doors that closed out the world for a few hours—above all, to hold him in her arms.

  But far more urgent than that was the need to show people that he had been right, to prove it so they would have to acknowledge it, to heal the old wound of his father’s shame. She was angry, hurt, helpless, and she did not know what to say or how to explain herself to make him understand, so he would be as pleased to see her as she was just to be close to him, see his face and hear his voice.

  “A lot’s happened,” Tellman was saying quietly. He only called Pitt “sir” if he was being insolent, so he had no need to guard his tongue for unintentional betrayal now. “I don’t know it all, so it would be better for Mrs. Pitt to tell you. But it’s things you have to know.”

  Pitt caught the edge of fear in Tellman’s voice, and his anger evaporated. He looked at Charlotte.

  She wanted to ask how he was, if he was all right, what his lodgings were like, if they were kind to him, was his bed clean, had he enough pillows, how was the food, was it enough. Most of all, she wanted him to know she loved him and missing him was more painful, more deeply lonely than she could have imagined, in every way: for laughter, for conversation, for sharing the good and bad of the day, for touching, just for knowing he was there.

  Instead she began with what she had been rehearsing in her mind, and probably Tellman could have told him just as well. She was very succinct, very practical.

  “I’ve been visiting Martin Fetters’s widow….” She ignored the startled look on Pitt’s face and went on quickly before he could interrupt. “I wanted to find out why he was killed. There has to be a reason….” She stopped again as a group of factory women went past them, talking together loudly, looking at Pitt, Tellman and Charlotte with undisguised curiosity.

  Tellman shifted his weight uncomfortably.

  Pitt moved a step away from Charlotte, leaving her seeming to belong to Tellman.

  One of the women laughed and they moved on.

  A vegetable cart rumbled down the street.

  They could not stand here talking for long, or it would be remembered, and endanger Pitt.

  “I read most of his papers,” she said briefly. “He was a passionate republican, even prepared to help cause revolution. I believe that was why Adinett killed him, when he discovered what Fetters meant to do. I imagine he didn’t dare trust the police. No one might have believed him—or worse, they might have been part of it.”

  Pitt was stunned. “Fetters was …” He took a long, deep breath as the meaning became clear of all she had said. “I see.” He stood silently for long moments, staring at her. His eyes moved down her face as if he would recall every detail of it, touch her mind beyond.

  Then he recalled himself to the present, the crowded street, the gray footpath and the urgency of the moment.

  Charlotte found herself blushing, but it was a sweet warmth that ran through the core of her.

  “If that is so, we have two conspiracies,” he said at last. “One of the Whitechapel murderer to protect the throne at any cost at all, and another of the republicans to destroy it, also at any cost, perhaps an even more dreadful one. And we are not sure who is on which side.”

  “I told Aunt Vespasia. She asked to be remembered to you.” She thought as she said it how inadequate those words were to convey the power of the emotions she had felt from Vespasia. But as she looked at Pitt’s face she saw that he understood, and she relaxed again, smiling at him.

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “To be careful,” she replied ruefully. “There’s nothing I can do anyway, except keep on looking to see if we can find the rest of Martin Fetters’s papers. Juno is certain there are more.”

  “Don’t ask anyone else!” Pitt said sharply. He looked at Tellman, then realized the pointlessness of expecting him to prevent her. Tellman was helpless, frustrated, and it was plain in his expression, a mixture of hurt, fear and anger.

  “I won’t!” she promised. It was said on the spur of feeling, to stop the anxiety she could see consuming him. “I won’t speak to anyone else. I’ll just visit with her and keep on looking inside the house.”

  He breathed out slowly.

  “I must go.”

  She stood still, aching to touch him, but the street was full of people. Already they were being stared at. In spite of all sense she took a step forward.

  Pitt put out his hand.

  A workman on a bicycle whistled and shouted something unintelligible at Tellman, but it was obviously bawdy. He laughed and pedaled on.

  Tellman took Charlotte by the arm and pulled her back. His fingers hurt.

  Pitt let out a sigh. “Please be careful,” he repeated. “And tell Daniel and Jemima I love them.”

  She nodded. “They know.”

  He hesitated only a moment, then turned and crossed the street again, away from them, not looking back.

  Charlotte watched him go, and again heard laughter from a couple of youths on the farther corner.

  “Come on!” Tellman said furiously. This time he took her wrist and yanked her around, almost off balance. She was about to say something very curt indeed when she realized how conspicuous she was making them. She had to behave as people expected or it would look even worse.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and followed him dutifully back down towards the Whitechapel High Street. But her steps were lighter and there was a singing warmth inside her. Pitt had not touched her, nor she him, but the look in his eyes had been a caress in itself, a touch that would never fade.

  Vespasia was not especially fond of Wagner, but the opera, any opera at all, was a grand occasion and held a certain glamour. Since the invitation was from Mario Corena, she would have accepted it even had it been to walk down the High Street in the rain. She would not have told him so, but she suspected he might already know. Not even the hideous news that Charlotte had brought could keep her from going with him.

  He called for her at seven and they rode at a very leisurely pace in the carriage he had taken for the evening. The air was mild and the streets were crowded with people, seeing and being seen on their way to parties, dinners, balls, exhibitions, excursions up and down the river.

  Mario was smiling, the last of the sunlight flickering on his face through the windows as they moved. She thought that time had been kind to him. His skin was still smooth, the lines were upward, without bitterness, in spite of all that had been lost. Perhaps he had never given up hope, only changed it as one cause had died and another had been created.

  She remembered the long, golden evenings in Rome as the sun went down over the ancient ruins of the city, now lost in centuries of later and lesser dreams. The air there was warmer, with no cold edge to it, heavy with the smell of heat and dust. She remembered how they had walked on the pavements that had once been the center of the world, trodden by the feet of every nation on the earth come to pay tribute.

  But that had been the Imperial age. Mario had stood on one of the older, simpler bridges across the Tiber, watching the light on the water, and told her with passion raw in his voice of the old republic that had thrown out the kings, long before the years of the Caesars. That was what he loved, the simplicity and the honor with which they had begun, before ambition overtook them and power corrupted them.

  With the thought of po
wer and corruption, a chill touched her that the warmth of the evening could not ease; even the echoes of memory were not strong enough to loose its grip.

  She thought of the dark alleys of Whitechapel, of women waiting alone, hearing the rumble of carriage wheels behind them, perhaps even turning to see its denser blackness outlined against the gloom, then the door opening, the sight of a face for a moment, and the pain.

  She thought of poor Eddy, a pawn moved one way and then the other, his emotions used and disregarded in a world he only half heard, perhaps half understood. And she thought of his mother, deaf also, pitied and often ignored, and how she must have grieved for him, and been helpless to move even to comfort him, let alone to save him.

  They were approaching Covent Garden. There was a small girl standing on the corner and holding out a bunch of wilted flowers.

  Mario stopped the coach, to the anger and inconvenience of the traffic around them in both directions. He climbed out and walked over to the girl. He bought the flowers and returned with them, smiling. They were dusty, their stalks bent and petals drooping.

  “A little past their best,” he said wryly. “And I gave rather too much for them.” There was laughter in his eyes, and sadness.

  She took them. “How very appropriate,” she answered, smiling back, a ridiculous lump in her throat.

  The carriage moved on again, amid considerable abuse.

  “I’m sorry it’s Wagner,” he remarked, resettling himself into his seat. “I can never take it all with the right degree of seriousness. The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”

  She looked at him and knew how profoundly he meant it. There was an edge to his voice like that she remembered in the hot, dreadful days of the siege before the end. They had realized, during those nights alone, when all the work they could do was past and there was nothing else but to wait, that in the end they would not win. The Pope would return and sooner or later all the old corruptions would come back too, bland-faced, pitiless, impersonal.