Whitechapel Conspiracy

They arrived at Charles Voisey’s house in Cavendish Square a little after eight, and were shown immediately into the splendid withdrawing room. It was decorated in mostly traditional style, of dark, warm colors, reds and soft golds, but with a startling addition of exquisite Arabic brasses, trays, jugs and vases, which caught the light on their engraved surfaces and simple lines.

Voisey received them with courtesy, his curiosity for their call concealed, but he made no pretense at superfluous conversation. When they were seated, and refreshment had been offered and declined, he turned to Juno enquiringly.

“How can I be of service to you, Mrs. Fetters?”

Juno had already faced the worst in acknowledging to herself that Martin was not the man she had loved all the years of their marriage. Telling someone else was going to be difficult, but there were obvious ways in which, if she told the right person, it would be almost a relief.

“As I intimated to you on the telephone,” she began, sitting upright and facing him, “I have made a discovery in some of my husband’s papers which the police did not find because they were so cleverly concealed.”

Voisey stiffened very slightly. “Indeed? I assumed they had made a very thorough search.” His eyes flickered towards Charlotte, and then away again. She had the sensation that Pitt’s failure pleased him, and she had to make a deliberate effort not to defend him.

Juno did it for her. “They were bound into a book. He did his own binding, you know? He was very good at it. Unless you were to read every volume in the library there would be no way of being certain to find it.”

“And you did that?” There was a slight lift of surprise in his voice.

She smiled bleakly. “I have nothing better to do.”

“Indeed …” He allowed it to hang in the air, unfinished.

“I wished to know why John Adinett, whom I had always believed to be his friend, should kill him,” Juno went on levelly. “Now I do know, and I believe it is morally necessary that I should acknowledge it. It seemed to me you were the right person to tell.”

He sat quite still. He let out his breath slowly. “I see. And what did these papers say, Mrs. Fetters? I assume there is no doubt they are his?”

“They are not in his hand, but he bound them into a book and concealed them in his library,” she replied. “They were letters and memoranda in a cause in which he very obviously believed. I think when John Adinett found out, that was why he killed him.”

“That seems … very extreme,” he said thoughtfully. Now he completely ignored Charlotte, concentrating his entire attention upon Juno. “If it was something of which Adinett disapproved so passionately, why did he not simply make it public? I assume it was illegal? Or at the least something which others could have prevented?”

“To make it public might have caused panic, even have provoked others of like mind,” she answered. “Certainly it would have caused England’s enemies great joy and perhaps suggested to them ways in which to damage us.”

Voisey was staring at her with increasing tension. When he spoke his voice was harder, anxiety edged in it. “And the reason you believe he did not report it to an appropriate authority, even discreetly?”

“Because he could not know who else was involved,” she replied. “You see, it is a wide conspiracy …”

His eyebrows rose fractionally. His fingers tightened on each other. “A conspiracy? To do what, Mrs. Fetters?”

“To overthrow the government, Mr. Voisey,” she replied, her voice surprisingly flat for so extreme a statement. “By violent means—in short, to create a revolution which would bring down the monarchy and replace it with a republic.”

He sat silently for several moments before replying, as if he was completely stunned by what she had said and barely able to believe it.

“Are you … quite sure, Mrs. Fetters? Could you not have misunderstood some writings on another country and assumed they were referring to England?” he said at last.

“I wish it were possible, believe me.” Her emotion was clear; he could not have doubted it. He turned to Charlotte.

She met his eyes and was aware of an intense intelligence—and a coldness of extraordinary, almost uncontrollable dislike. It startled her, and she found herself afraid. She could think of no reason for it. She had never met him before and certainly never done him harm.

He was speaking to her, his voice sharp.

“Have you seen these papers, Mrs. Pitt?”

“Yes.”

“And do you see in them the plans for revolution?”

“Yes, I am afraid I do.”

“How extraordinary that your husband did not find them, don’t you think?” Now the contempt in him was unmistakable, and she understood it was Pitt for whom he felt this emotion he could not conceal.