The Whitechapel Conspiracy (45 page)

It was fifty years since she had known him in Rome. He would not have murdered a man then. But a lifetime had come and gone since that summer, for both of them. People change. Disappointment and disillusion can wear away all but the strongest heart. Hope deferred too long can turn to bitterness.

She dressed in silver-gray, an exquisite watered silk, and selected one of her favorite hats. She had always looked well under a sweeping brim. Then she sent for the carriage to come to the door and gave the coachman the address where Mario Corena was staying.

He received her with surprise and pleasure. Their next engagement had not been until the following day.

“Vespasia!” His eyes took in her face, the soft sweep of her gown. The hat made him smile, but as always, he did not comment on her appearance; his appreciation was in his eyes. Then as he regarded her more closely the joy faded from his expression. “What is it?” he said quietly. “Don’t tell me it is nothing; I can see differently.”

The time for pretense was long past. Part of her wished to stand in this beautiful room with its view over the quiet square, the rustling summer trees, the glimpses of grass. She could be close to him, allow the sense of fulfillment to possess her that she always felt in his company. But however long
or short the time, it would come to an end. The inevitable moment would have to be faced.

She turned and looked into his eyes. For a moment her resolve faltered. He had not changed. Their summer in Rome could have been yesterday. The years had wearied their bodies, marked their faces, but their hearts still carried the same passion, the hope, and the will to fight and to sacrifice, to love, and to endure pain.

She blinked. “Mario, the police are going to arrest Isaac Karansky, or some other Jew, for the murder of James Sissons. I am not going to allow it. Please don’t tell me it is for the greater good of the people to sacrifice one that all may benefit. If we allow one innocent man to be hanged and his wife left bereaved and alone, then we have made a mockery of justice. And once we have done that, then what can we offer the new order we want to create? When we use our weapons for ill, we have damaged their power for good. We have joined the enemy. I thought you knew that….”

He looked at her in silence, his eyes shadowed.

She waited for him to answer, the pain inside her building as if to explode.

He took a long, deep breath. “I do know that, my dear. Perhaps I forgot for a while exactly who the enemy was.” He looked down. “Sissons was going to take his own life in the cause of a greater liberty. He knew when he lent the money to the Prince of Wales that it would not be returned. He wanted to expose him for the self-indulgent parasite that he is. He knew it would cost many men their jobs, but he was prepared to pay with his own life.” He looked up at her again, brilliant, urgent. “Then at the last moment his nerve failed him. He was not the hero he wanted to be, wished to be. And yes … I did kill him. It was clean, swift, without pain or fear. Only for an instant did he know what I was going to do, then it was over. But I left the note in his own hand that said it was suicide, and the Prince’s note of debt. The police must have concealed them. I cannot understand how that happened. We had our own man in place, on duty, who should have seen to it that suicide was recognized and no innocent person blamed.”
Confusion shadowed his face, and unhappiness for fear and wrong.

Vespasia could not look at him. “He tried,” she acknowledged. “He came too late. Someone else found Sissons first, and knowing what riot it would cause, destroyed the note. Only, you see, it could not have been suicide because James Sissons did not have the use of the first fingers of his right hand, and the night watchman knew it.” She met his eyes again now. “And I saw the note of debt. It was not the prince’s signature. It was an excellent forgery, designed for just the purpose you tried to use it.”

He started to speak, then stopped. Understanding slowly filled his face, and grief, and then anger. He did not need to protest that he had been deceived; she could not have doubted it from his eyes and his mouth, and the ache that filled him.

Her throat hurt with the effort of control. She loved him so fiercely it consumed all of her but a tiny, white core in the heart. If she were to yield now, to say it did not matter, that either of them could walk away from this, she would lose him—and even more, she would lose herself.

She blinked, her eyes smarting.

“I have something to undo,” he whispered. “Good-bye, Vespasia … I say good-bye, but I shall take you with me in my heart, wherever I go.” He lifted her hand to his lips. Then he turned and walked out of the room without looking back, leaving her to find her way when she was ready, when she could master herself and go back to the footman, the carriage and the world.

The whole story of Prince Eddy and Annie Crook remained in Gracie’s mind. She imagined the ordinary girl, not so very much better off than many Gracie herself might have passed on the streets of her own childhood—a little cleaner, a little better-spoken perhaps, but at heart expecting only a pedestrian life of work and marriage, and more work.

And then one day a shy, handsome young man had been introduced to her. She must have realized quickly that he was a gentleman, even if not that he was a prince. But he was also
different from the others, isolated by his deafness and all that it had done to him over the years. They had found something in each other, perhaps a companionship neither had known elsewhere. They had fallen in love.

And it was impossible. Nothing they could have imagined could ever have touched the horror of what would happen after that.

She still could not entirely rid herself of the memory of standing in Mitre Square, seeing Remus’s face in the gaslight, and realizing who it was he was after. Her throat still tightened at the thought of it, even sitting in the warm kitchen in Keppel Street, drinking tea at four o’clock in the afternoon, and trying to think what vegetables to prepare for dinner tonight.

Daniel and Jemima were out with Emily again. She had spent a lot of time with them since Pitt left for Spitalfields. Emily had climbed greatly in Gracie’s estimation. Gracie had actually been considering her a trifle spoiled lately. Since she was Charlotte’s sister, it was nice to be mistaken.

She was still staring at the rows of blue-and-white plates on the dresser when a knock on the back door startled her into reality again.

It was Tellman. He came in and closed the door behind him. He looked anxious and tired. His shirt collar was as tight and neat as usual, but his hair had fallen forward as if he had not bothered with its customary, careful brushing, and he was about a week overdue for the barber.

She did not bother to ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. She went to the dresser, fetched a cup and poured it.

He sat down at the table opposite her and drank. There was no cake this time, so she did not mention it. She felt no need to break the silence.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said at last, watching her over the top of his cup.

“Yeah?” She knew he was worried; it was in every line of him, the way he sat, the grip of his hands on the cup, the edge to his voice. He would tell her what was bothering him if she did not probe or interrupt.

“You know this factory owner who was killed in Spitalfields, Sissons?”

“I ’eard. They said mebbe all ’is factories would close, then the Prince o’ Wales an’ Lord Randolph Churchill an’ some o’ ’is friends put up enough money ter keep ’em goin’ a few weeks anyway.”

“Yes. They’re saying it was a Jew who did it … killed him, because he’d borrowed money from a whole collection of them and couldn’t pay it back.”

She nodded. She knew nothing about that.

“Well, I reckon that was meant to happen about the same time as Remus was supposed to find the last pieces of the Whitechapel murderer story. Only they didn’t tell him yet, because the sugar factory thing went wrong.” He was still watching her, waiting to see what she thought.

She was confused. She was not sure it made sense.

“I went to see Mr. Pitt again,” he went on. “But he wasn’t there. They’re trying to say it was Isaac Karansky, the man he lodges with, who killed Sissons.”

“D’yer reckon it was?” she asked, imagining how Pitt would feel, and hating it for him. She had seen before how it tore at Pitt’s emotions when someone he knew turned out to be guilty of something horrible.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. He looked confused. There was something else in his eyes, dark and troubled. She thought perhaps he was afraid—not with the passing ripple of momentary fear, but deep and abiding and of something he could not fight against.

Again she waited.

“It isn’t that.” He put the cup down at last, empty. He met her gaze unblinkingly. “It’s Remus. I’m scared for him, Gracie. What if he’s right, and it really is true? Those people didn’t think twice about butchering five women in Whitechapel, not to mention whatever they did to Annie Crook and her child.”

“An’ poor Prince Eddy,” she said quietly. “D’yer reckon ’e died natural?”

His eyes widened a fraction. His face went even paler.

“Don’t say that, Gracie! Don’t even think it to yourself. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear. But yer scared too, an’ don’t tell me yer in’t.” It was not a charge against him. She would think him a fool were he not. She needed the closeness of sharing the fear for herself, and she wanted it for him. “Yer scared fer Remus?” she went on.

“They’d think nothing of killing him,” he answered.

“That’s if ’e’s right,” she argued “What if ’e’s wrong? Wot if it weren’t nothin’ ter do wi’ Prince Eddy, an’ the Inner Circle is makin’ it all up?”

“I’m still scared for him,” he replied. “They’d use him and throw him away, too.”

“Wot are we gonna do?” she said simply.

“You’re going to do nothing,” he answered sharply. “You’re going to stay here at home and keep the door locked.” He swiveled around in his seat. “You should’ve had that back door locked.”

“At ’alf past four in the afternoon?” she said incredulously. “There in’t nob’dy arter me. If I kept the scullery locked they’d think I really ’ad got summink goin’ on.”

He blushed faintly and looked away.

She found herself smiling, trying to hide it, and failing. He was frightened for her and it was making him overprotective. Now he was embarrassed because he had given himself away.

He looked at her and saw the smile. For once he interpreted it correctly, and his color deepened. At first she thought it was anger; then she looked at his eyes and knew it was pleasure. She had equally given herself away too. Oh, well … she couldn’t play games forever.

“So wot are we gonner do, then?” she repeated. “We gotta warn ’im. If ’e won’t be told, then we can’t ’elp it. But we gotta try, in’t we?”

“He won’t listen to me,” he said wearily. “He thinks he’s onto the newspaper story of the century. He won’t give that up, no matter where it leads him. He’s a fanatic. I’ve seen it in his face.”

She remembered the wild look in Remus’s eyes and the
horror and terrible excitement she’d sensed in him as he had stood in Mitre Square, and she knew Tellman was right.

“We still gotta try.” She leaned forward across the table. “ ’E’s scared as well. Let me come wiv yer. We’ll both ’ave a go at ’im.”

He looked doubtful. The lines of strain were deep in his face. No one was looking after him. He had no one else to share his fears with, or the sense of guilt he would feel if something happened to Remus and he had not tried to warn him.

She stood up, accidentally scraping her chair legs on the floor. “I’ll get yer some tea. ’Ow about bubble an’ squeak? We got lots o’ cabbage an’ taters left over, an’ fresh onion. ’Ow’ll that be?”

He relaxed. “Are you sure?”

“No!” she said crisply. “I am standin’ ’ere ’cos I can’t make me mind up. Wot yer think?”

“You’ll cut yourself with that tongue,” he replied.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. She meant it. She did not know why she had been so quick with him. Perhaps because she wanted to do far more to comfort him, look after him, than he would like or accept.

That realization made her blush suddenly, and she swung around and strode into the larder to get the cold vegetables and start cooking. She brought them back and kept her back to him while she chopped and fried the onions, then added the rest and moved it gently till it was steaming hot on the inside and crisp brown on the outside. She put it all onto a warm plate and set it in front of him. Then she boiled the kettle again and made fresh tea.

At last she sat down on the chair opposite him again.

“So are we goin’ ter find Remus and tell ’im just ’ow big this is? In case ’e’s so ’ell-bent on getting ’is story ’e in’t realized ’oo ’e’s up agin?”

“Yes,” he replied with his mouth full, trying to smile at the same time. “I am. You aren’t.”

She drew in her breath.

“You aren’t!” he said quickly. “Don’t argue with me. That’s the end of it.”

She sighed heavily and said nothing.

He bent his attention to eating the bubble and squeak. It was hot, crisp and fragrant with onions. It did not seem to occur to him that she had given in rather easily.

When he had finished, he thanked her with a touch of real admiration. He remained another ten minutes or so, then left out of the scullery door.

Gracie had followed Remus successfully all the way to Whitechapel and back again. She thought she was really rather good at it. She now took her coat and hat from the peg at the back door and went after Tellman. She did not especially like Lyndon Remus, but she had learned something about him, his likes and dislikes, seen the excitement and the terror in him. She did not want to think of him hurt, not seriously. A little chastening would not harm, but there was nothing moderate about any part of this.

Of course, following Tellman would be much harder because he knew her. On the other hand, he was not expecting her to follow, and she knew where he was going: to Remus’s rooms to await his return from whatever story he was working on apart from the Whitechapel murders.