Whitechapel Conspiracy

He woke up cold, the sheets mangled and knotted, half off his body. The gray morning light filled the room. He could hear Leah moving around downstairs. She was frightened. He had seen it yesterday in her averted eyes, the tension in her hands, which were clumsier than usual. He could picture her in the kitchen, her face tight with anxiety, going about her morning rituals automatically, listening for Isaac’s step, perhaps dreading Pitt’s coming downstairs because she would have to pretend in front of him. It was difficult having strangers in the house in times of crisis, and yet it had its advantages. It forced one to hide the terror that threatened to swallow one from inside. Panic was delayed.

Sissons had been murdered after all … and then it had been made to look like a suicide, and Pitt had altered the evidence—lied, in effect—to make it murder again. He had made the decision to conceal the truth, what he thought was truth, in order to stop riot, perhaps revolution. Was that ridiculous?

No. He knew the violence in the air, the fear, the anger, the smoldering despair that could be ignited by a few words, spoken by the right person at the right time and place. And when Dismore—and then all the other editors—published Lyndon Remus’s story about the Duke of Clarence and the Whitechapel murders, the fury would seize all London. It would then take only half a dozen men in positions of power, ready and willing, to overthrow the government and the throne … with how much death and waste to follow?

And yet in twisting the truth Pitt had betrayed the man in whose house he now lay and at whose table he would eat his breakfast, as he had eaten last night’s supper.

The pain of that knotted in his stomach and forced him to get up and walk across the carefully homemade rug to the dresser and the ewer of water. He poured half of it out into the bowl and plunged his hands in it, then lifted them to his face.

Whom could he turn to for help? He was cut off from Cornwallis, and was certain he was powerless anyhow. Perhaps even Tellman would despise him for this. For all his anger, Tellman was a conservative man, a rigid conformer to his own rules, and he knew precisely what those were. They would not include lies, falsifying evidence, misleading the law—whatever the purpose.

How often had Pitt himself said “The end does not justify the means”?

He had trusted Narraway with at least part of the truth, and that thought rippled a cold fear through him, an uncertainty like nausea. And what about Charlotte? He had so often talked to her about integrity.

He stood shivering a little, sharpening his razor absentmindedly. Shaving in cold water hurt. But half the world shaved cold!

What would Charlotte say to him about Sissons? It did not matter what she said; what would she think? Would she be so disappointed in him it would kill something of the love he had seen in her eyes only days ago? You could love vulnerability—perhaps more even than the lack of it—but not moral weakness, not deceit. When trust was gone, what was it that was left? Pity … the keeping of promises because they had been made … duty?

What would she have done had she found Sissons and the letter?

He looked at his face in the small square of glass. It was the same as always, a little more tired, a little more deeply lined, but the eyes were not different, nor the mouth.

Had he always had these possibilities within him? Or was it the world that had changed?

Standing there turning it over and over in his mind would achieve nothing. Events would not wait for him, and his decision was already made in that moment in Sissons’s office. Now he must save from it what he could.

He realized that while he had been scraping at his cheeks, not minding the sting and drag of the blade, it had crystallized in his mind that the only person he trusted and who might have some power to help was Vespasia. He was absolutely certain of her loyalties and her courage, and—perhaps just as important—of her anger. She would feel the same sick, scalding outrage that he did at the thought of what would happen if riot engulfed the East End and spread—or if it were contained and some member of the Jewish population was hanged for a crime he had not committed, because the law was administered by the prejudiced and corrupt.

That too would be a kind of overthrow of government, deeper to the heart. It would appear to affect fewer, but did it not corrupt all eventually? If the law did not distinguish between the innocent and the guilty but was merely expedient for those in power, then it was worse than useless. It was a positive evil, masquerading as good, until finally it deceived no one and became itself a thing of loathing. Then not only the reality of law was gone, but the concept destroyed in the minds of the people.