Whitechapel Conspiracy

by Anne Perry

  But Pitt would do it, if he had to pack for them himself and walk with them down to the quay, purchase their tickets in his own name, and bribe or coerce some cargo captain to take them.

  Outside, the street was hot and dusty. The stench of effluent hung sour in the air. Chimneys belched smoke, dimming the sunlight.

  Pitt walked quickly southwards. He would find Isaac and warn him this afternoon. He passed a newspaper seller and glanced sideways to see the headlines … still the same drawing, but now there was a black caption underneath it—WANTED—SUGAR FACTORY MURDERER—just in case anyone had overlooked his offense against the community. The picture seemed to be changing slightly with each reprint, looking more than ever like Isaac.

  Pitt increased his pace. He passed peddlers and draymen, carters, beggars, a running patterer making a rhyme about Sissons’s murder. He went so far as to say what everyone else was thinking: the killer was a moneylender teaching a bad debtor to pay his dues. It was a clever piece of doggerel. He did not use the word Jews, but the suggested rhyme did it for him.

  Pitt reached Heneagle Street and went in at the front door and straight through to the kitchen. Leah was standing by the stove. There was a pot simmering, and the smell of herbs was sweet in the air. Isaac was on the far side of the table, and there were two soiled cloth bags on the floor beside him.

  He turned sharply as Pitt came in. His face was deeply lined, his eyes dull with exhaustion. There was no need to ask if he had seen the posters or understood what they meant.

  “You must go!” Pitt heard his own voice unintentionally sharp, fear and anger in it. This was England. They had done nothing; an innocent man should not have to flee from the law.

  “We are going,” Isaac answered, putting on his old jacket. “We were only waiting for you.”

  “Your supper is on the stove,” Leah told him. “There’s bread in the pantry. Clean shirts are on your dresser—”

  There was the sound of heavy knocking on the door.

  “Go!” Pitt said desperately, the word choking him.

  Isaac took Leah by the arm, half pushing her towards the large back windows.

  “There’s soap in the cupboard,” she said to Pitt. “You’ll find—”

  There was more thunderous banging at the front of the house.

  “We’ll get word to you through Saul,” Isaac said as he opened the window and Pitt moved towards the corridor. “God be with you.” And he half lifted Leah out.

  “And with you,” Pitt replied. The pounding on the front door was so loud it threatened to break the hinges. Without waiting to watch them leave, he went along the short corridor and undid the latch just as another blow landed on the paneling which might well have burst the hinge had he not opened it first.

  Harper was standing on the other side, with Constable Jenkins beside him, looking profoundly unhappy.

  “Well, you again!” Harper said with a smile. “Fancy that, then.” He pushed past Pitt and strode down to the kitchen. He found it empty. He looked puzzled, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the unfamiliar herbs. “Where are they, then? Where’s Isaac Karansky?”

  “I don’t know,” Pitt said, feigning slight surprise. “Mrs. Karansky just went out to buy something she forgot for the meal.” He indicated the pot simmering on the range.

  Harper swiveled around on his heel, frustrated but not yet suspicious. He inspected the pot, the half-prepared meal, the domesticity of the kitchen. Isaac’s best jacket was hanging on a hook behind the door. Pitt silently thanked God for the knowledge of fear which had driven him to leave it there, in spite of its value. He looked at Harper with a hatred he could not even try to conceal. It burned inside him with a sharp, grinding pain.

  Harper pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. “Then we’ll wait for them,” he announced.

  Pitt moved over to the pot and stirred it gently. He had very little idea what he was doing, but there was no point in letting the food burn. Tending it lent an air of normality and allowed him to seem occupied so he did not have to look at Harper.

  Jenkins stood silently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  Minutes ticked by.

  Pitt drew the pot over to the edge of the range, off the heat.

  “What did she go for?” Harper said suddenly.

  “I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “Some herb, I think.”

  “Where’s Karansky?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. “I only just got back myself.” They probably knew that was true.

  “You’d better not be lying,” Harper warned.

  Pitt kept his back to him. “Why should I lie?”

  “To protect them. Maybe he paid you?”

  “To say Mrs. Karansky’s gone to buy herbs?” Pitt said incredulously. “He didn’t know you were coming, did he?”

  Harper made a sound of deep disgust.

  Another ten minutes ticked by.

  “You are lying!” Harper exploded, getting to his feet and banging against the table. “You warned them and they’ve gone. I’ll charge you with aiding and abetting a fugitive. And if you’re not lucky, maybe with accessory to murder as well!”

  Jenkins cleared his throat. “You can’t do that, sir; you got no proof.”

  “I’ve got all the proof I’ll need,” Harper snapped, glaring at his junior malevolently. “And I’ll thank you not to interfere. Arrest him, like you’re told!”

  Jenkins remained stubbornly where he was. “We got a warrant for Karansky, sir. We got nothing for Tom.”

  “You’ve got my word, Jenkins! Unless you want to end up in a cell beside him, you’ll obey my order!”

  Shaking his head, his lips pursed, Jenkins told Pitt he was under arrest, then, as Harper glared at him, he put the manacles on Pitt’s wrists. He very carefully took the pot off the range and fixed the lid firmly on it, in case Leah should return and find it spoiled.

  “Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged the action.

  Outside they were watched by a crowd of a dozen or so men and women, angry and frightened. They glared at the police with undisguised hatred, but they did not dare intervene. Pitt, Harper and Jenkins left Heneagle Street and walked the three quarters of a mile or so to the police station. None of them spoke. Harper had apparently accepted that at least for the time being Isaac had eluded him, and it infuriated him.

  They passed sullen men and women in the streets, and more newspapers with pictures that were plainly of Isaac. There were rumors that the sugar factories were closing.

  In the police station, Pitt was put into a cell and left.

  It was over two hours later that Jenkins came back, smiling broadly. “Sugar factories in’t gonna close down arter all,” he said, standing just inside the cell door. “Lord Randolph Churchill an’ some o’ ’is friends ’as put up the money ter keep ’em all goin’. In’t that a turn up?”

  Pitt felt a surge of amazement and relief. It had to be Vespasia!

  “An’ you’d better go ’ome, an’ all,” Jenkins added, his smile turning into a positive grin. “In case the Karanskys come back.”

  Pitt stood up. “Aren’t they wanted anymore?” He could scarcely believe it.

  “Oh yeah! But ’oo knows where they is? Could be on the ’igh seas by now.”

  “And Inspector Harper is prepared to let me go?” Pitt did not yet move forward. He could imagine Harper’s fury, and his vengeance against Pitt. It would be the Inner Circle’s great satisfaction if Pitt spent a few years in prison for aiding the escape of the sugar factory murderer.

  “No, ’e in’t prepared.” Jenkins oozed pleasure. “ ’E in’t got no choice, ’cos word came down from the top as yer ter be treated right an’ let go. Yer got friends someplace real ’igh. Which is as well fer you.”

  “Thank you,” Pitt said absently, profoundly puzzled as he walked out into freedom and received his few belongings back from the desk sergeant. Vespasia again? Hardly … or she would have protected him in the first place. Narrawa
y? No, he had neither the knowledge nor the power.

  The Masons … the other side of the Whitechapel conspiracies. Suddenly freedom had a dual sweet and bitter taste.

  He would go back to Heneagle Street and eat Leah’s dinner, then, when he could do it unobserved, go to see Saul, see about raising all the money they could for Isaac and Leah, all the help.

  Charlotte was still determined to find the papers both she and Juno were certain Martin Fetters had hidden somewhere. They had exhausted all the places they knew of beyond the house and were back in the library staring around the shelves, searching for further ideas. Charlotte was grimly aware that a few feet away from where she stood, Martin Fetters had been killed by a man he had trusted and believed a friend. Her imagination of that terrible moment hung like a chill in the air. She thought of the instant he saw his own death in Adinett’s eyes, and knew what was going to happen, then the swift pain and the oblivion. Surely, Juno must be even more aware of it than she.

  Each night Charlotte slept alone in her room, conscious of the empty space in the bed beside her, worrying about Pitt, frightened for him. Juno slept not only alone but knowing what had happened just a few rooms away from her, and that the worst she could possibly dread was already the truth.

  “They must be here,” Juno said desperately. “They do exist; Martin didn’t know to destroy them, and Adinett didn’t have time. He left and he wasn’t carrying anything with him, because I saw him go myself. And when he came back again that was when we found Martin … I suppose he could have taken something then …” She trailed off.

  “When did he have time to look?” Charlotte reasoned. “If Martin had them out, then Adinett must have put them away again, and then got them out when he returned. You said he didn’t have a case of any sort, just a stick. How did he carry loose papers, or do you suppose it was all written as entries in one book?”

  Juno was staring around the walls. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what we’re looking for, or how much, except from what we know—there were lots more plans. They intended to do something positive. They were not just dreamers, meeting to talk over ideas. And if you mean to achieve something, you need to have very precise actions in mind.”

  “Then surely as a royalist bent on preventing their plans from being acted upon, Adinett would have wanted to destroy them?” Charlotte said thoughtfully. She gazed around at the book-lined shelves. “I wonder where he looked?”

  “Nothing seems out of place,” Juno replied. “Except the three books that were on the floor, of course. But we always assumed they were there to make it look as if Martin pulled them off when he fell from the ladder.”

  “I imagine the police would have searched pretty thoroughly anyway.” Charlotte felt hope slip away again. “If there’d been anything on the shelves behind the books, it would have been found pretty easily.”

  “We could always take all the books down,” Juno suggested. “We haven’t anything better to do. Well, I haven’t anyway.”

  “Neither have I,” Charlotte agreed quickly, turning around one way then the other to gaze at the shelves. “It wouldn’t be behind books he took out regularly,” she said aloud. “Otherwise it would be seen too easily. Someone would observe it by chance. Do any of the maids take out the books to clean or dust?”

  “I don’t know.” Juno shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so, but I suppose they could. You are right. It would be somewhere that no one would pull out. That is if it is behind books at all.”

  Charlotte felt disappointment fill her again. “I suppose it isn’t a very good place. And inside a book would make it fat enough it would be noticed immediately. We’re not looking for one or two sheets of paper, I don’t think.”

  “What about …” Juno looked up at the top shelves, where there were large reference volumes.

  “Yes? What?” Charlotte said quickly.

  Juno pushed her hair back off her brow in a gesture of weariness.

  “What about really inside a book … one hollowed out and replaced? I know it sounds like terrible vandalism, but it might be as safe as it could be. Who else is going to look inside some of those?” Juno gestured up at the top shelf towards the window where there was a row of obscure memoirs of eighteenth-century politicians and half a dozen volumes of statistics on export and shipping.

  Charlotte went over to the steps and wheeled them around. Then, holding the pole firmly in one hand, and picking up her skirt in the other, she climbed up. “Careful!” Juno warned, stepping forward, her voice harsh.

  Charlotte stopped, balanced precariously. She turned to smile at Juno, who stood pale-faced, drained by the dead black she wore.

  “I’m sorry,” Juno apologized, moving back again. “I …”

  “I know,” Charlotte said quickly. The steps were quite steady, but she could not help thinking of Martin Fetters, and the way he was first supposed to have died, falling from exactly this position. If she lost her balance from here she would end almost where he had been found, only her head would lie the other way.

  She dismissed it quickly. That simple, almost private death was a world away from what they faced now. She reached up and pulled out the first volume, a wide, yellow book on shipping routes, hopelessly out of date. Why on earth would anyone have kept such a thing, except as an oversight, forgetting it was there? It was heavy. She passed it to Juno.

  Juno riffled through it.

  “Exactly what it says,” she said with an effort to mask disappointment. “Martin must have bought it twenty years ago.” She put it on the floor and waited for the next one.

  Charlotte went through them one by one, and each was examined and then placed on the floor in ever-increasing piles. They kept on because neither of them could think of anything better to try.

  It was almost into the third hour and they were both smeared with dust, arms aching, when Juno finally conceded defeat.

  “They’re all just what they say.” The misery in her voice was so sharp Charlotte ached for her. Had nothing more been at stake than the desire to know, she might have encouraged her to abandon the effort. There comes a time when grief must end the struggle to understand, and allow healing to begin.

  But she needed to prove to the world that Pitt had been right about John Adinett. She steeled herself to continue.

  “Sit down for a while,” she suggested. “Perhaps a cup of tea?” She climbed down the steps, and Juno held out a hand to steady her. Her fingers were cool and strong, but her arm shook a little and there was a pallor of strain in her face. She looked away from Charlotte’s eyes.

  “Perhaps we should stop,” Charlotte said impulsively, against all she had intended, but pity hurt inside her too much to listen to sense. “Maybe there’s nothing to find after all? It may have been just dreams.”

  “No,” Juno said quietly, still keeping her gaze averted. “Martin wasn’t like that. I knew him well.” She gave a little jerky laugh. “At least, I knew some parts of him. There are characteristics you can’t hide. And Martin always worked to make his dreams come true. He was a romantic, but even if it was something as trivial as getting me roses for my birthday, if he thought of it, he would work until he could accomplish it.”

  They were walking towards the library door. Juno opened it for them to go downstairs for tea.

  Roses for her birthday seemed a very unremarkable gift. Charlotte wondered what made her mention it.

  “Did he manage it?”

  “Oh, yes. It took him four years.”

  Charlotte was startled. “Roses grow very easily. I’ve had them in my garden even at Christmas.”

  Juno smiled, a sweet smile on the edge of tears. “I was born on Leap Day. It takes a great deal of ingenuity to find roses at the end of February. He insisted I celebrated only on leap years, then he would have a four-day-long party for me and spoil me utterly. He was very generous.”

  Charlotte found it suddenly hard to swallow for the ache in her throat. “How did he get the roses?” sh
e asked, her voice coming out broken, husky.

  Juno swallowed, smiling through tears. “He found a gardener in Spain who managed to force them, and he had them brought by boat when they were in bud. They only lasted two days, but I never forgot them.”

  “Nor would any woman,” Charlotte agreed.

  “We’ve been through all the books.” Juno reverted to the search again, closing the library door behind her. “It was a silly idea anyway. I should have known better. Martin loved books. He would never have vandalized one, even to hide things. He would have found another way. He used to mend any books that were broken, you know. He was very good at it. I can see him in my mind’s eye, standing with a damaged book in his hands and lecturing me on how uncivilized it was to ill use a book, break the spine, tear it, mark it in any way.”

  They were going down the stairs and Charlotte saw a maid cross the hall beneath them. Tea was a very good idea indeed. She had not realized until now how dry her mouth was, as if all the paper and the dust had drained her.

  “He would completely rebind them sometimes,” Juno went on. “Dora, will you bring tea to the garden room, please.”

  “Rebind them?” Charlotte said quickly.

  “Yes. Why?”

  Charlotte stopped on the bottom stair.

  “What?” Juno asked.

  “We didn’t look for books that he bound …”

  Juno understood immediately. Her eyes widened. She did not hesitate. “Dora! Wait with the tea. I’ll tell you when!” She turned to Charlotte. “Come on. We’ll go back and find them. It would be the perfect place.”

  Together they almost ran up the stairs again, skirts in their hands not to trip, and strode along the corridor back to the library.

  It took them nearly half an hour, but finally Juno had it: a small book on the Trojan economy, in discreet dark leather with gold lettering, hand-bound.

  They stood side by side reading a random page:

  The evidence of the loan has, of course, been carefully laid. It will all be in his letter, which will be found on his death. As soon as it is known, the journalist will be given the final piece of proof on the Whitechapel story.