Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Don’t stand there cluttering up my office, Pitt,” Narraway said impatiently. “I know the police are after a scapegoat, and Karansky will do nicely. They are still smarting over the Whitechapel murders four years ago. They won’t let this one go unsolved, whether the solution fits or not. They want a resolution that people will praise them for, and Karansky suits. If I could save him, I would. He’s a good man. The best advice I can give is for him to get out of London. Take a ship to Rotterdam, or Bremen, or wherever the next one is going to.”

Arguments teemed in Pitt’s head: about honor, surrender to anarchy and injustice, questions about the very existence of law if this was all it was worth. They faded before he spoke them. Narraway must have said them all to himself. They were new to Pitt. They shook his belief in the principles that had guided him all his life; they undermined the value of everything he had worked for, all his assumptions of the society of which he had thought himself a part. When it came to the final decision, if all the law could say to a man unjustly accused was “Run,” then why should any man honor or trust the law? Its ideals were hollow—beautiful, but containing nothing, like a shining bubble, to burst at the first prick of a needle.

He hunched his body, shoving his hands hard into his pockets.

“They knew who the Whitechapel murderer was, and why,” he said boldly. “They concealed it to protect the throne.” He watched for Narraway’s reaction.

Narraway sat very still. “Did they, indeed?” he said softly. “And how do you believe catching him would have affected the throne, Pitt?”

Pitt felt cold. He had made a mistake. In that instant he knew it. Narraway was one of them—not Inner Circle, but Masons, like Abberline, and Commissioner Warren, and God knew who else … certainly the Queen’s late physician, Sir William Gull. He had a moment’s panic, an almost overwhelming physical urge to turn and run out of the door, out of the shop and down the street, and disappear somewhere into those gray alleys and hide. He knew he could not do it quickly enough. He would be found. He did not even know who else worked for Narraway.

And he was angry. It made no sense, but the anger was greater.

“Because the murders were committed to conceal the Duke of Clarence’s marriage to a Catholic woman called Annie Crook, and the fact that they had a child,” he said harshly.

Narraway’s eyes widened so fractionally Pitt was not certain if he had seen it or imagined it. Surprise? At the fact, or that Pitt knew it?

“You discovered this since you’ve been in Spitalfields?” Narraway asked. He licked his lips as if his mouth were dry.

“No. I was told it,” Pitt replied. “There is a journalist who has all the pieces but one or two. At least he had. He may have them all by now, except the newspapers haven’t printed it yet.”

“I see. And you didn’t think it appropriate to inform me of this?” Narraway’s face was unreadable, his eyes glittering beneath lowered lids, his voice very soft, dangerously polite.

Pitt spoke the truth. “The Masons are responsible for it … that is what happened. The Inner Circle are feeding it to the journalist piece by piece, to break it at a time of their own choosing. Half the senior police in charge were in on the original crime. Sissons’s murder was Inner Circle. You could be either. I have no way of knowing.”

Narraway took a deep breath and his body slumped. “Then you took a hell of a risk telling me, didn’t you? Or are you going to say you have a gun in your pocket, and if I make the wrong choice you’ll shoot me?”

“No, I haven’t.” Pitt sat down opposite him in the only other chair. “And the risk is worth it. If you’re a Mason, you’ll stop the Inner Circle, or try to. If you are Circle, you’ll expose the Masons and, I daresay, bring down the throne, but you’ll have to reinstate Sissons’s death as a suicide to do that, and at least that will save Karansky.”

Narraway sat up slowly, straightening his back. There was a hard edge to his voice when he spoke. His fine hands lay loosely on the tabletop, but the anger in him was unmistakable, and the warning.

“I suppose I should be grateful you’ve told me at last.” The sarcasm cut, but it was against himself as much as Pitt. For a moment it seemed as if he was going to add something, then he changed his mind.

Pitt wondered if Narraway felt the same anger, the same confusion that the law was not only failing here, but that there was no higher power to address, no greater justice beyond, to which they could turn. It was corrupted at the core.

“Go and do what you can for Karansky,” Narraway said flatly. “And, in case you have doubts about it, that is an order.”