The Whitechapel Conspiracy Read online

  “Fetters. No. I’m not. He did it. We just don’t know why.”

  “Then we’d better find out, an’ sharpish, ’adn’t we?” she responded. “You’re a detective. Where do we start?”

  A mixture of expressions crossed his face: reluctance, gentleness, anger, pride, fear.

  With a stab of shame she realized how much she was asking of him. She had little to lose compared with what failure would cost him. If the new superintendent had deliberately commanded him to not enquire into the matter anymore, and to forget Pitt, and then Tellman disobeyed, he would lose his job. And she knew how long and hard he had worked to earn his place. He had asked no one any favors, and received none. He had no family still alive, and few friends. He was a proud, lonely man who expected little out of life and guarded his own anger at injustice carefully, cherishing his sense of fairness.

  He had bitterly resented it when Pitt had been promoted to command. Pitt was not a gentleman. He was ordinary, a gamekeeper’s son, no better than Tellman himself and hundreds of others in the police force like them. But as they had worked together an unadmitted loyalty had grown, and to betray that would be outside Tellman’s sense of decency. He would not be able to live with himself, and Gracie knew that.

  “Where do we begin?” she said again. “If ’e done it, then ’e done it for a reason. Less’n yer daft, yer don’t up and kill someone without a reason so good it’s like a mountain yer can’t get ’round no other way.”

  “I know.” He stood in the middle of the footpath, deep in thought as carriages and wagons streamed past down Bow Street, and people were obliged to step into the gutter to get around them. “We did everything at the time to find out why. Nobody knew of anything that even looked like a quarrel.” He shook his head. “There was no money, no women, no rivalry in business or sports or anything else. They even agreed about politics.”

  “Well, we in’t looked ’ard enough!” She stood squarely in front of him. “What would Mr. Pitt do if ’e were ’ere?”

  “What he did anyway,” he replied. “He looked at everything they had in common to see what they could possibly have quarreled over. We spoke to all their friends, acquaintances, everybody. Searched the house, read all his papers. There was nothing.”

  She stood in the bright sun, chewing her lip, staring up at him. She looked like a tired and angry child on the brink of tears. She was still far too thin, and had to take up most of her clothes at the hem or she would have fallen over them.

  “Yer don’ kill anyone fer nuffink,” she repeated stubbornly. “An’ ’e did it sudden, so it were summink ’as ’appened just ’afore ’e were killed. Yer gotta find out wot ’appened every day fer a week up until then. There’s summink there!” She would not bring herself to say please.

  He hesitated, not out of unwillingness, but simply because he could think of nothing useful to be done.

  She was staring at him. He had to give her an answer, and he could not bear it to be a denial. She did not understand. She had no idea of the difficulties, of everything he and Pitt had done at the time. She saw only loyalty, a matter of fighting for those she loved, who belonged to her life.

  He did not really want to belong to anyone else’s life. And he was not ready to admit that he cared about Pitt. Injustice mattered, of course, but the world was full of injustice. Some you could fight against, some you couldn’t. It was foolish to waste your time and your strength in battles you could not win.

  Gracie was still waiting, refusing to believe he would not agree.

  He opened his mouth to tell her how pointless it was, that she did not understand, and found himself saying what he knew she wanted to hear.

  “I’ll find out about Adinett’s last few days before he killed Fetters.” It was ridiculous! What kind of a policeman allows a slip of a maid to coerce him into making a fool of himself? “I don’t know when,” he went on defensively. “In my own time. It won’t help anyone if Wetron throws me out of the force.”

  “ ’Course it won’t,” she said, nodding her head reasonably. Then she gave him a sudden, dazzling smile which sent his heart rocketing. He felt the blood surge up his face and hated himself for being so vulnerable.

  “I’ll come and tell you if I find anything,” he snapped. “Now, go away and leave me to work!” And without looking at her again he swung around and marched back up the steps and in through the doorway.

  Gracie sniffed fiercely, and with a lift of hope inside her went to find an omnibus back to Keppel Street.

  •

  Tellman began that evening, going straight from Bow Street, buying a hot pie from a peddler as he did most evenings, and eating it as he walked up Endell Street. Whatever he did, he must manage to do it without leaving any trace, not only for his own safety but for the very practical reason that if he were caught he would be unable to continue.

  Who would know what Adinett had done, whom he had seen, where he had gone in the time immediately before Fetters’s death? Adinett himself had sworn that he had done nothing out of the ordinary.

  He bit into the pie, being careful not to squash out its contents.

  Adinett was of independent means and had no need to earn his living. He could spend his time as he wished. Apparently that was usually visiting various clubs, many of them to do with the armed services, exploration, the National Geographic Society, and others of a similar nature. That was the pattern of those who had inherited money and could afford to be idle. Tellman despised it with all the anger of a man who had watched too many others work all the hours they were awake and still go to bed cold and hungry.

  He passed a newspaper boy.

  “Paper, sir?” the boy invited. “Read about Mr. Gladstone? Insulted the laborers o’ the country, so Lord Salisbury says. Some get an eight-hour day—mebbe!” He grinned. “Or they brought out a new edition o’ Darkness an’ Dawn, all about corruption an’ that, in ancient Rome?” he added hopefully.

  Tellman handed over his money and took the late edition, not for the election news but for the latest on the anarchists.

  He quickened his pace and turned his mind back to the problem. It would give him more than one kind of satisfaction to find out why Adinett had committed murder, and prove it so all London would be obliged to know, whether they wished to or not.

  He was well-used to tracing the comings and goings of people, but always with the authority of his police rank. To do it discreetly would be very different. He would have to call on a few favors done in the past, and perhaps a few yet to come.

  He decided to begin at the most obvious place, with hansom cab drivers he knew. They usually frequented the same areas, and the chances were that if Adinett had used a cab—and since he did not own a coach, that was quite likely—then he would more than once have chanced on the same driver.

  If he had used an omnibus, or even the underground railway, then there was almost no chance at all of learning his movements.

  The first two cabdrivers he found were of no assistance at all. The third could only point him in the direction of others.

  It was half past nine. He was tired, his feet hurt and he was angry with himself for giving in to a foolish impulse, when he spoke to the seventh cabdriver, a small, grizzled man with a hacking cough. He reminded Tellman of his own father, who had worked as a porter at the Billingsgate fish market all day and then driven a hansom half the night, whatever the weather, to feed his family and keep a roof over their heads. Perhaps it was memory which made him speak softly to the man.

  “Got a little time?” he asked.

  “Yer wanna go somewhere?” the cabbie responded.

  “Nowhere special,” Tellman answered. “I need some information to help a friend in trouble. And I’m hungry.” He was not, but it was a tactful excuse. “Can you spare ten minutes to come and have a hot pie and a glass of ale?”

  “Bad day. Can’t afford no pies,” the cabbie answered.

  “I want help, not money,” Tellman told him. He had little ho
pe of learning anything useful, but he could still see his father’s weary face in his mind’s eye, and this was like a debt to the past. He did not want to know anything about the man; he simply wanted to feed him.

  The cabbie shrugged. “If you like.” But he moved quickly to leave his horse at the stand and walk beside Tellman to the nearest peddler, and accepted a pie without argument. “Wot yer wanna know, then?”

  “You pick up along Marchmont Street way quite often?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Tellman had brought a picture of Adinett which he had not thrown away after the investigation. He took it from his pocket and showed it to the driver.

  “Do you recall ever picking up this man?”

  The cabbie squinted at it. “That’s the feller wot killed the one wot digs up ancient pots an’ the like, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You police?”

  “Yes—but I’m not on duty. This is to help a friend. I can’t make you tell me anything, and no one else is going to ask you. It’s not an investigation, and I’ll probably get thrown out if I’m caught following it up.”

  The cabbie looked at him with awakening interest. “So why yer doin’ it, then?”

  “I told you, a friend of mine is in trouble,” Tellman repeated.

  The cabbie looked at him sideways, his eyebrows raised. “So if I ’elp yer, yer’ll ’elp me ... when yer are on duty, like?”

  “I could do,” Tellman conceded. “Depends if you can help me or not.”

  “I did pick ’im up, three or four times. Smart-lookin’ gent, like an old soldier or summit. Always walked stiff, ’ead in the air. But civil enough. Gave a good tip.”

  “Where did you take him?”

  “Lots o’ places. Up west mostly, gennelman’s clubs an’ the like.”

  “What sort of clubs? Can you remember any of the addresses?” Tellman did not know why he bothered to pursue it. Even if he knew the names of all the clubs, what use would it be? He had no authority to go into them and ask whom Adinett had spoken to. And if he found out, it would still mean nothing. But at least he could tell Gracie he had tried.

  “Not exact. One was a place I never bin ter before, summink ter do wi’ France. Paris, ter be exact. It were a year, as I ’member.”

  Tellman did not understand. “A year? What do you mean?”

  “Seventeen summat.” The cabbie scratched his head, tipping his hat crooked. “1789 ... that’s it.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “I could eat another pie.”

  Tellman obliged, more for the man’s sake than as a bribe. The information was useless.

  “An’ ter a newspaper,” the cabbie continued after he had eaten half the second pie. “The one wot’s always goin’ on about reform an’ the like. ’E came out wi’ Mr. Dismore wot owns it. I know ’cos I seen ’im in the papers meself.”

  This was unsurprising. Tellman already knew that Adinett was acquainted with Thorold Dismore.

  The cabbie was frowning, screwing up his face. “That’s w’y I thought it real odd, a gennelman like that, askin’ ter go all the way past Spitalfields ter Cleveland Street, wot’s off the Mile End Road. Excited, ’e were, like ’e’d found summink wonderful. In’t nuffink wonderful in Spitalfields nor Whitechapel nor Mile End, an’ I can tell yer that fer nuffink.”

  Tellman was startled. “You took him to Cleveland Street?”

  “Yeah ... like I said. Twice!”

  “When?”

  “Just afore ’e went ter see that Mr. Dismore wot owns the paper. All excited, ’e was. Then a day or two arter that ’e went an killed that poor feller. Strange, in’t it?”

  “Thank you,” Tellman said with sudden feeling. “Thank you very much. Let me get you a glass of ale along the way here.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Ta.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Pitt found it painfully difficult to endure living in Heneagle Street. It was not that either Isaac or Leah Karansky did not make him as comfortable as their means allowed, or were not friendly towards him on the occasions they were together, such as at the meals they provided. Leah was an excellent cook, but the food was different from the simple and abundant fare he was used to. He could eat only at set times. There were no cups of tea whenever he wished, no homemade bread with butter and jam, no cake. It was all unfamiliar, and he slept with exhaustion at the end of the day, but he did not relax.

  He missed Charlotte, the children, even Gracie, more than he would have thought possible. It was some comfort to know that money was provided for Charlotte to collect every week from Bow Street. But watching Isaac and Leah together, the glances between them that spoke of years of shared understanding, the occasional laughter, the way she nagged at him about his health, the gentleness in his hands when he touched her, reminded Pitt the more forcefully of his own loneliness.

  Towards the end of the first week he realized the other emotion that was consuming him, knotting his stomach and making his head ache.

  He had accepted Isaac’s offer to help him find work with Saul, the silk-weaver. Of course, it was completely unskilled labor, a matter of bending his back to lift crates and bales, to sweep the floor, fetch or carry everything as needed, run errands. It was the most manual task in the establishment, and the pay corresponded, but it was better than nothing at all, and probably physically easier than labor in the sugar factory. It also offered him far more opportunity to be in the streets, to listen and observe without calling any attention to himself. Although he could see little purpose in it; the capture of anarchists Nicoll and Mowbray was evidence that the Special Branch’s detectives were well schooled in their craft and needed no help from a stranger in the area like Pitt.

  As he was walking back to Heneagle Street—he could not think of it as home—he heard shouting ahead of him. The anger in it was unmistakable. Voices were high and rough, and a moment later there was a crash as if a bottle had been hurled to the pavement and splintered to pieces. There was a yell of pain, and then a torrent of abuse. A woman screamed.

  Pitt broke into a run.

  There was more shouting and the sound of a load of barrels cascading onto the ground, several bursting open as they landed on each other. A cry of rage rose above the general hubbub.

  Pitt turned the corner and saw about twenty people in the street ahead of him, half of them partly obscured by a wagon whose tailboard was open. Barrels rolled into the street, blocking the traffic in both directions. Men were already beginning to fight, hard and viciously.

  Other people came out of shops and workplaces, at least half of them joining in. Women stood on the sidelines shouting encouragement. One stooped and picked up a loose stone and hurled it, her arm swinging wide, her torn brown skirts swirling.

  “Go home, yer papist pig!” she screamed. “Go back ter Ireland w’ere yer belong!”

  “I in’t no more Irish than you are, yer soddin’ ’eathen!” the other woman shouted back at her, and whirled a broom handle around so hard that when it caught the first woman across her back it broke in half and sent her flying into the gutter, where she lay winded for a few moments before sitting up slowly and beginning to curse viciously and repetitively.

  “Papist!” someone else shrieked. “Whore!”

  Half a dozen more people, men and women, joined in the melee, everyone hurling abuse with all the power of their lungs. Several scruffy children were hopping up and down, squealing encouragement, backing whoever they fancied in the scrum.

  A police whistle blew, thin and shrill. There was a moment’s lull through which came the pounding of feet.

  Pitt swung around. It was not his job to stop this, even if he could have. He saw a constable running towards them, and he stepped back near the arch of the gate into a stonemason’s yard.

  Narraway would expect him to observe. Although what he could tell him that would be of the slightest use, he had no idea. It was only one of countless numbers of ugly street scenes that
must occur regularly and surprised no one.

  More police came and started trying to pull the fighting men apart, and were rewarded for their trouble by becoming the victims themselves. Hatred for the police seemed about the only thing that the crowd had in common.

  “Useless bloody rozzers!” one man yelled, flailing his fists in the air, willing to hit anyone and everyone within reach. “Couldn’t catch a cold, yer stupid bastards! Pigs!”

  A policeman lashed out at him with a truncheon, and missed.

  Pitt remained in the shadows. He looked around at the shabby, crumbling buildings grimed with the smoke of thousands of chimneys, the patched windows, the broken cobbles of the streets, the overrunning gutters. The smells of rot and effluent were everywhere. The fighting in the street was vicious. It was not a quick flare of temper but the slow, sullen rage of years of anger and hate shown naked for a few moments, before the police frightened or beat it into silence again ... until next time.

  Pitt turned and walked away before he was noticed—and remembered. He kept his head down, hat jammed forward, hands in his pockets. He went around the first corner he came to, even though it was away from Heneagle Street. He had been aware of a simmering resentment since he came here, an edge to people’s voices, a quickness to take offense. Now he had seen how close the rage simmered under the surface. It only needed an insult perceived, one ugly remark, and it broke through.

  This time the police had come quickly and some form of order was restored, but nothing was solved. Pitt had been startled by how anti-Catholic feeling had erupted within seconds. It must have been only just controlled all the time. Now, as he walked past a row of small shops, narrow-fronted windows piled with boxes and goods, he remembered other remarks he had heard, slang words for papist said not in fun but with vindictiveness driving them.

  And the feeling had been given back with good measure added.

  He remembered also snatches of conversation about business that would not be done on religious grounds, hospitality denied, even the reasonable help to one in trouble withheld, not out of greed but because the one in need was of the other faith.