Whitechapel Conspiracy

The New Oriental Bank Corporation had been compelled to withdraw funds and suspend certain payments. The price of silver was seriously down. They had sustained losses in Melbourne and Singapore. The liquidation of the Gatling Gun Company had affected them badly. A hurricane in Mauritius was the crowning blow.

She did not read the rest of it. Her eye moved down the page, and in spite of herself was caught by the dark type announcing that John Adinett was to be executed at eight o’clock that morning.

Instinctively she glanced at the kitchen clock. It was a quarter to eight. She wished she had not opened the paper until later, even half an hour would have been enough. Why had she not thought of that, counted the days and been careful not to look?

Adinett had killed Martin Fetters, and the more Charlotte learned about Fetters the more she believed she would have liked him. He had been an enthusiast, a man who grasped at life with courage and enjoyment, who loved its color and variety. He had a passion to learn about others, and it seemed from his writings that he was equally eager to share what he knew so that anyone else could see the same enchantment he did. His death was a loss not only to his wife—and to archaeology and to curators of ancient artefacts—but to anyone who knew him and to the world in general.

Still, ending the life of Adinett did not improve anything. She doubted it would even deter anyone else from future crime. It was the certainty of punishment that stopped people from killing, not the severity. Each one presumed he or she would get away with it, so the penalty was irrelevant.

Gracie came in from the back door, where she had been collecting herrings from the fishmonger’s boy.

“These’ll do dinner for us,” she said briskly, swirling through the kitchen and putting the dish into the larder. She continued talking to herself absentmindedly about what would do for which meal, how much flour or potatoes they had left, and if the onions would last. They had used a lot of onions lately to flavor very plain food.

She had been preoccupied recently. Charlotte thought it had to do with Sergeant Tellman. She knew he had been at the house the other evening, even though she had not seen him herself. She had heard his voice and deliberately not intruded. Having Tellman sitting in the kitchen, exactly as if Pitt were still at home, made her sense of loneliness even more overwhelming.

She was happy for Gracie, and she was very well aware, rather more than Gracie was herself, that Tellman was fighting a losing battle against his feelings for her. Just at the moment she found it difficult to make herself seem cheerful about anything. Missing Pitt was hard enough. The evenings seemed endless when she was not listening for his step. There was no one to tell about her day, even if it had been entirely uneventful. The high point might have been something as trivial as a new flower in the garden, or a piece of gossip, perhaps a joke. And if things somehow went wrong, perhaps she would not mention it, but the knowledge that she could made all the irritation seem temporary, something that could be ignored. It was odd how happiness unshared was only half as great, and yet any kind of misfortune alone was doubled.

But far worse than loneliness was her anxiety for Pitt, the ordinary day-to-day worry as to whether he was eating properly, was warm enough, had anyone to wash his clothes. Had he found somewhere even remotely comfortable and kind to live? The real misery in her mind was for his safety, not only from anarchists, dynamiters or whomever he was looking for, but from his secret and far more powerful enemies in the Inner Circle.

The clock chimed and she was dimly aware of it. Gracie riddled the stove and put more coal on the fire.

Charlotte tried not to think, not to imagine, and during the day she was quite good at it. But at night, the moment her mind was blank, the fears came rushing in. She was emotionally exhausted and physically not tired enough. She had never been to Spitalfields, but she pictured it all too easily, narrow dark streets with figures lurking in doorways, everything damp and flickering with movement, as if it were only waiting to catch the unwary.

She woke too many times in the night, aware of every creak in the house, of the empty space beside her in the bed, wondering where he was, if he were awake also, feeling his loneliness.