Whitechapel Conspiracy

Pitt most assuredly did not want to work at night, but his curiosity impelled him to pursue the matter.

“Why? Is there night work available?”

The man squinted at Pitt. “Mebbe. Yer wanner stand in if one o’ the night watchmen goes sick?”

“Yes,” Pitt said immediately.

“Where’d yer live, then?”

“Heneagle Street, on the corner of Brick Lane.”

“Yeah? Well, mebbe we’ll send fer yer … an’ mebbe we won’t. Leave yer partie’lars at the office.” He pointed towards a small door in the side of the building.

“Right,” Pitt accepted. “Thank you.”

For several days there was no word from the sugar factory, but work at Saul’s silk-weaving shop was more interesting than Pitt had expected. He found himself admiring the bright, delicate fibers, and without having intended to, watching how they were woven into brocades, the subtle blending of colors into patterns.

Saul observed him with amusement, his dark, narrow face relaxed for a change.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he said in the middle of one Monday afternoon early in June. “Why are you doing this? It’s not your trade!”

“It’s a living,” Pitt replied, turning his face away. He liked Saul, who had been more than fair to him, but he remembered Narraway’s warning to trust no one. “Isaac said it was hard to get into the sugar factories unless you knew someone.”

“So it is,” Saul agreed. “Everyone wants work. And selling on the street is hard. You can make enemies easily. Everyone’s got their own patch. Get your throat cut for pinching someone else’s.”

Pitt wondered what pressures Narraway had used to persuade Saul to take him on. He noticed most of the other Jews he visited employed their own people, as did all the other identifiable groups.

“I’m sure.” Pitt smiled. “And who in Spitalfields cares about sweeping crossings?”

Saul grunted. “There’s worse places.”

Pitt gave him a glance of incredulity.

“Believe me!” Saul said with sudden fierceness, his dark eyes brilliant. “Spitalfields may be dirty and poor, and smell like a hole in hell … but it’s safer than the places I’ve been … at least for the moment. Here you can say what you think, read what you like, walk out in the street without being arrested.” He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched, his face tense. “Robbed … perhaps? Set on by hooligans and religious bigots … some days.” He gave a little grunt. “But that’s probably so most places. Here at least it’s random, not organized by the state.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Some of the police are corrupt, and most of them are incompetent—but they’re not vicious, bar the odd one or two.”

“Corrupt?” Pitt could not help asking. He had not meant to, but the words were out before he guarded them.

Saul shook his head. “You’re really not from around here, are you!”

Pitt said nothing.

“There’s all sorts of things going on,” Saul continued gravely. “You just keep your head down, mind your own business and look after your own. If gentlemen come down here from up west, you don’t see them, don’t know them. Understand?”

“You mean after women?” Pitt was surprised. There were plenty of better-class prostitutes from the Haymarket to the park and anywhere else. No one had need to come this way where it was dark, dirty and quite possibly dangerous as well.

“And other things.” Saul bit his lip, his eyes anxious. “Mostly things you shouldn’t ask. Like I said, better you don’t know.”

Pitt’s mind raced. Was Saul talking about private vice or the plans of insurrection that Narraway feared?

“If it’s going to affect me, it’s my business,” Pitt argued.

“It won’t, if you look the other way.” Saul’s face was grave; the urgency of his advice was too vivid to deny.

“Dynamiters affect everyone,” Pitt said quietly, afraid the moment he had said it that he had gone too far.

Saul was startled. “Dynamiters! I’m talking about gentlemen from up west who drive around Spitalfields at night in big, black coaches and leave the devil’s business behind them.” His voice trembled. “You tend to your work, run your errands and look after your own, and you’ll be all right. If the police ask you about anything, you don’t know. You didn’t hear. Better still, you weren’t there!”

Pitt did not argue any further, and that evening as he sat over the table with the last of the food, his attention was taken up by a friend of Isaac’s coming to the door bruised and bleeding, his clothes torn.

“Samuel, whatever happened to you?” Leah said in dismay, starting up from her chair as Isaac led him in. “You look like you were run over by a carriage.” She looked at him with concern puckering her face, judging what she should do to help him.

“Had a bit of trouble with a bunch of local men,” Samuel answered, dabbing a bloodstained handkerchief to his lip and wincing as he tried to smile.

“Here! Don’t do that,” Leah ordered. “Let me look at it. Isaac, fetch me some water and ointment.”

“Did they rob you?” Isaac asked without moving to obey.

Samuel shrugged. “I’m alive. It could be worse.”

“How much?” Isaac demanded.