Death at Whitechapel (23 page)

Sister Ursula ran her finger down the column. “Annie Crook, Annie—” She stopped. “This should be it, I suppose, on March fifteenth. Annie Elizabeth? Oh, yes, here is your cousin's name, as witness, only here she signs herself Marie Jeannette Kelly. The other witness, I see, was a man by the name of Walter Sickert. The groom's brother, I suppose, or his father.” Her dreamy smile held more than a little envy, Kate thought. “It makes me happy to see the names of a wedding party in our register and think of the joy they felt as the vows were exchanged. So much delight in the small compass of a wedding ring! I always pray that the happiness of their wedding day shall last forever, and be shared by all those who know and love them.”

Forever! Kate thought. If her two informants were to be believed, poor Annie's tragic happiness had lasted only a short while, and had led to such indescribable villainy that it still echoed across the kingdom.

With these thoughts swirling in her mind, Kate gazed at the register. They were here, the four names, the final, ultimate evidence of the marriage. The name of Annie Elizabeth Crook, written in a poorly formed cursive script. Marie Jeannette Kelly, awkwardly printed and badly blotted—Mary Kelly, styled in the French manner. Walter Sickert, elegantly decorated with a pair of artistic flourishes.

And the bridegroom's name? The name of the man whose secret and ill-conceived marriage had been prologue to such an unholy course of events? Kate bent closer, trying to make it out, for it was almost illegible. And then it came clear, and she felt an almost sickening sense of disappointment. Sickert, it was—A.V. Sickert—the same name that Mrs. O'Reilly had given her an hour earlier. The bridegroom had borrowed his friend's name, not only for his everyday doings in Cleveland Street, but for his wedding as well.

She turned away from the register, and Sister Ursula closed it with a gentle reverence. “I hope,” she said, “that you've learned what you came to know.”

“Yes, thank you,” Kate said, with a slight smile. But there was nothing to smile about. She was no closer to the one truth she had come to learn. The name of Annie Elizabeth Crook's husband was still a mystery.

 

 

J
ennie Churchill sat at the desk in the library at Sibley House, reading the kind note that Manfred Raeburn had sent through Winston, complimenting the story Beryl Bardwell had written for the first volume of
The Anglo Saxon Review
—and commending her great skill in choosing contributors. She read it with a slight smile, thinking how good it was to have Manfred's able services. He was such a dear boy, and so competent. He seemed to know just what she wanted almost before she knew it herself. If only he weren't so nervous—he positively made her nervous, as well. And it would be nice if he and Winston could get along better. She did not understand the animosity between them, but as long as it did not rise to the level of discomfort, she supposed they could all live with it.

Jennie laid Manfred's note aside to give to Kate, and began to leaf through the manuscripts he had sent for her review. There was a poem—rather a gloomy thing, Jennie thought—from Algernon Swinburne, and a twenty-five-page story from Henry James, written in his usual indeterminate style, as well as five letters from the Duke of Devonshire. If these early submissions were any indication of the quality of the work that was to appear in
The Review, Maggie
(as Jenny still thought of it in her own mind) ought to be a stunning success, a work of quality and substance.

Manfred had also sent several recent press clippings with the manuscripts. One, from
Town Topics,
was highly positive about her efforts, but the others were the usual carping criticisms that were aimed at any new thing—especially a new thing that was thought of by a woman. One critic wrote that it was “presumptuous” to think that a mere woman could bear so significant an editorial burden. Another thought that while Lady Randolph was “splendidly fit” to handle the editorial side of
The Review,
her management skills would be proven sadly lacking. Jennie bridled at both these criticisms, but she did not take them personally. They were the sort of thing that small-minded men wrote about large-minded women. In fact, criticisms and oppositions such as these only strengthened Jennie's commitment to dear
Maggie,
and her resolve to make the magazine the very best in the entire world.

But neither the manuscripts nor the press clippings could hold her attention. Instead, she found herself drawn to the passionate, pleading note she had received from George, less than an hour ago, hand-delivered by a messenger. It lay beside her on the desk now, carefully typed, as if George did not trust himself to write for fear that his emotions might overpower his hand. She took it up to read it for the third time.

 

Should she, would she, forgive him and take him back? Jennie's sigh was a mixture of frustration and perplexity and she threw down the note with an impatient gesture. Since she had known George, her life had not been her own. He had pursued her, written to her, sent gifts and flowers, and embarrassed her with his attentions. But whatever his jealousies, she knew that George could not have killed Finch. The man had been newly dead when she found him, and George had been with her since the evening before. Anyway, George would never have stabbed Finch in the back. If he had raced to Cleveland Street before her to confront the man, he would have insisted on having satisfaction, however illegal dueling might be. As far as the Finch affair was concerned, there was, in Jennie's opinion, not a very great deal to forgive except for a moment's impetuosity.

But that wasn't the entire question, was it? Jennie sat back in her chair, frowning. Forgiving George was one thing, but taking him back was quite another. If she were going to break off the relationship, now was the best time to do it, when she could justify her decision by citing his jealousy. And there was certainly enough good reason to break it off. None of her friends thought the connection a suitable one, and even the Prince (who, God knew, had had enough unsuitable liaisons of his own!) had taken it upon himself to warn her that she risked social censure if she continued to be seen in public with a young man the age of her son. Already the invitations to country-house weekends were beginning to taper off, as people understood that an invitation to Lady Randolph meant as well an invitation to her young lieutenant. Randolph's family were clearly distressed at the thought of her being connected with a man with no fortune of his own. And even Winston, who had supported her so wholeheartedly in other family crises, had made a point of stating the obvious: that whatever George's merits, the ability to support a wife was not among them. “We must frankly face the fact that we are poor, Mama,” he had written. “If you marry a young man with no prospects, who cannot help you to pay that seventeen-thousand-pound note, you are both likely to be dragged down by the debt.” And of course, her connection with George held the very real possibility of social embarrassment for Winston, whose political career was in that vulnerable period of incubation. From that point of view, he was right to point this out.

But it was exactly this attitude on the part of her family and her so-called friends that made Jennie angry—angry enough, at this moment, to toss her pen onto the desk and begin pacing up and down in front of the sofa where she had rejected George the night before. Her spirit recoiled from the idea that she must choose a husband from the ranks of the men who could afford to marry a lady of her standing. Even more, she was repelled by the thought that Society believed it could dictate to her what she might or might not choose to do. The gall of Daisy Warwick, of all people, advising her to look for more suitable lovers of her own age, as if her heart could be subject to her intellect! The audacity of the Prince, kind-hearted and well-meaning as he was, to write to her that a liaison with George would be both mischievous and foolish, and that it would cost her the royal friendship! Couldn't they see, these “frightfully concerned” friends of hers, that their very opposition propelled her in a direction exactly opposite to their wishes? Couldn't Winston, who was so much like her, understand that to contradict his mother was to ensure that she would become even more fixed in her resolve?

For Jennie Churchill knew herself well enough to know that she was compelled by contraries, and that when her will was opposed, her will grew diabolically strong. It had happened when she first met Randolph, so many years ago at the Cowes regatta, when she was scarcely nineteen. When he proposed after only three days' acquaintance, her mother had positively put down her foot, and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had adamantly refused their permission, even going so far as to threaten to cut off Randolph's allowance. But of course, these refusals had accomplished the opposite purpose, hardening Jennie's resolve to have the man she loved, whatever the opposition and whatever the cost. The same thing had happened a good many other times since, whenever she wanted to do something or go somewhere or become someone, and was denied. At these times, something inside her rose up ferociously to defend her right to make a fool of herself, if that was what it amounted to. But it was
her
right, and she
would
have it, and that was all there was to say about it!

And in that spirit—knowing that she was very likely making a blunder from which she might never recover, knowing that she was acting out of willfulness rather than wisdom and that her action should certainly have strong negative consequences for Winston and Jack—Jennie sailed back to the desk, shoulders straight, chin high, and picked up her pen to write:

 

 

C
arrying a small bag containing a clean shirt and his shaving things, Winston turned out of Great Cumberland Road and headed in the direction of Paddington Station, which was so near that there was no sense going to the bother of a cab. He was on his way to Bath to address a gathering of the Primrose League sponsored by a Party man named H.D. Skrine, a one-night stay only, but no less important for that. It was his maiden effort for the Tories—officially, that is, for he had already made several other informal speeches, to see what response there might be to his entry into the political arena. Ordinarily, the event should have brought him great joy in the anticipation, but what had happened the night before had changed all that. And even though he tried to push the memory of what his mother had told him out of his mind, it kept rearing up like a savage dog, to chew away at him.