Whitechapel Conspiracy

A LITTLE OVER three weeks later Pitt was home early from Bow Street and pottering happily in the garden. May was one of the most beautiful months, full of pale blossom, new leaves and the brilliant flare of tulips, the heavy scent of wallflowers rich as velvet. The lupines were beginning, tall columns of pinks, blues and purples, and he now had at least half a dozen Oriental poppies opening, fragile and gaudy as colored silk.

He was doing more admiring than actual work, even though there were sufficient weeds to have kept him fully occupied. He was hoping Charlotte would finish whatever domestic duties she had and would join him, and when he heard the French doors open he turned with pleasure. But it was Ardal Juster who walked down the lawn, his dark face grim.

Pitt’s first thought was that the appeal judges had found some flaw in the procedure and the verdict had been overturned. He did not believe there was new evidence. He had searched everywhere at the time and questioned everyone.

Juster stopped in front of him. He glanced to right and left at the flower beds, then up at the sunlight pouring through the chestnut leaves at the far end of the lawn. He drew in a deep breath of the fragrance of damp earth and blossoms.

Pitt was about to break the tension himself when Juster spoke.

“Adinett’s appeal failed,” he said quietly. “It will be in the newspapers tomorrow. A majority verdict—four to one. Voisey delivered it. He was one of the four. Abercrombie was the only dissenting voice.”

Pitt did not understand. Juster looked as if he had brought news of a defeat, not a victory. He seized on the only explanation he could think of, the one he felt himself, that to hang a man was a solution that degraded yourself and allowed the man no answer to his sin, no time to change. Certainly he believed Adinett had committed a profound evil, but it had always troubled him that he had no idea of the reason. It was just conceivable that had they known the whole truth everything might have looked different.

But even if it did not, and whatever Adinett was, to demand the final payment from him diminished those who exacted it more than it did him.

Juster’s face in the evening sun was bleak with anxiety. There was only reflected light in his eyes.

“They’ll hang him.” Pitt put it into words.

“Of course,” Juster answered. He pushed his hands into his pockets, still frowning. “That’s not why I came. You’ll read about it in the newspapers tomorrow, and anyway, you know as much about that as I do. I came to warn you.”

Pitt was startled. A chill grew inside him, in spite of the balmy evening.

Juster bit his lip. “There was nothing wrong with the conviction, but there are many people who can’t believe a man like John Adinett really murdered Fetters. If we could have provided them with a motive then they might have accepted it.” He saw Pitt’s expression. “I don’t mean the ordinary man in the street. He’s perfectly happy that justice has been done … possibly even agreeable that a man in Adinett’s position can meet with the same justice as he would. Such people don’t need to understand.” He squinted a little in the light. “I mean men of Adinett’s own class, men of power.”

Pitt was still uncertain. “If they didn’t overturn the verdict, then the law accepts both his guilt and that the trial was fairly conducted. They may grieve for him, but what else can they do?”

“Punish you for your temerity,” Juster answered, then smiled lopsidedly. “And perhaps me too, depending on how far they consider it my choice to prosecute.”

The warm wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut tree, and a dozen starlings swirled up into the air.

“I thought they had already hurled every insult that they could think of at me when I was on the witness stand,” Pitt replied, remembering with a flash of anger and pain the charges against his father. He had been taken by surprise that it still hurt so much. He thought he had pushed it into the background and allowed it to heal over. It startled him that the scab was so easily ripped off and that the wound should bleed again.

Juster looked unhappy, a faint flush on his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Pitt. I thought I had warned you enough, but I’m not sure that I did. It’s far from over.”

Pitt felt a catch in his throat, as if for an instant it was hard to breathe. “What could they do?”

“I don’t know, but Adinett has powerful friends … not powerful enough to save him, but they’ll take losing hard. I wish I could warn you what to expect, but I don’t know.” His distress was plain in his eyes and the slight droop to his shoulders.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Pitt said honestly. “If you don’t prosecute a case because the accused has friends the whole law is worth nothing, and neither are we.”