Whitechapel Conspiracy

What she relied on him to do was find out the truth and show that Pitt had been right, so he could be reinstated in Bow Street, where he belonged. And he had signally failed to do that!

A flower cart trundled past them and stopped a dozen yards away.

“What is it?” he said again, more sharply. “Gracie!”

She swallowed hard. He could see her throat jerk. Now he was really afraid. Too much of his life was tied up in Keppel Street. He could not shrug it off and walk away. He would be left incomplete, hinting.

“I followed Remus, like yer said.” She looked at him defiantly.

“I didn’t tell you to follow him! I told you to stay at home and do your job!”

“Yer told me first ter follow ’im,” she pointed out stubbornly.

A couple walked past them, the woman holding newly bought roses up to smell the perfume.

Gracie was frightened. Tellman could see it in her face and in the way she stood, the stiffness inside her. Her whole body was rigid It made him angry, made him want to protect her, and he felt the fear as if it had brushed him too with a breath of ice. He did not want this! He was vulnerable, wide open to being hurt, twisted, even broken.

“Well, you shouldn’t have! You should stay at home where you’re supposed to be, looking after Mrs. Pitt and the house!”

Her eyes were wide and dark, her lips trembling. He was making it worse. He was hurting her and leaving her alone with whatever it was that she had seen, or thought.

“Well, where did he go?” he asked more gently. It sounded grudging, but it was himself he was angry with—for being clumsy, feeling too much and thinking too little. He did not know how to behave with her. She was so young, fourteen years younger than he was, and so brave and proud. Trying to touch her was like trying to pick up a thistle. And there was nothing of her! He’d seen bigger twelve-year-olds. But he had never known anyone of any size with more courage or strength of will. “Well, then?” he prompted.

Her eyes did not waver from his. She ignored the passersby. “I spent all yer money,” she said. “An’ a bit wot I was give as well.”

“You didn’t go out of London! I told you …”

“No, I didn’t,” she said quickly, gulping. “But I don’ ’ave ter do wot yer tells me. ’E went ter Whitechapel, Remus did … ter the back streets, Spitalfields way, Lime’ouse side. ’E asked if anyone seen a big carriage about four years ago, drivin’ around, one as don’t belong. Which were kind o’ daft. Nobody around there’s goin’ ter ’ave a carriage. Shanks’s pony, more like. Omnibus if yer sticks ter the main ’Igh Street.”

He was puzzled. But at least this was not sinister. “Looking for a carriage? Do you know if he found anything?”

For a moment he thought she was going to smile, but it died before it began. There was an underlying terror inside her which snuffed out every shred of lightness. It gripped at him with a kind of pain he could hardly bear.

“Yeah, ’cos ’e never recognized me, so I let ’im ask me, like ’e asked anyone else,” she answered. “An’ I told ’im I’d seen a big black carriage four years ago. ’E asked me if anyone in it ’ad acted like they was lookin’ fer anyone special. So I told ’im they ’ad.”

“Who?” His voice came roughly, hoarse with tension.

“I said the first name as came ter me ’ead. I were thinking o’ that girl wot wos took from Cleveland Street, so I said ‘Annie.’ ” She shivered violently.

“Annie?” He took a step closer to her. He wanted to touch her, hold her by the shoulders, but she might have pushed him away, so he stood still. “Annie Crook?”

Her face was bleached white. She shook her head very slightly. “No … I didn’t know it till later, hours later, w’en I followed ’im back to Whitechapel again, arter ’e’d bin ter the river police, wrote a letter ter somebody, an’ met up wi’ a gent in ’Yde Park an’ accused ’im o’ summink terrible, an’ ’ad a real quarrel wif ’im, an’ then gorn all the way back ter Whitechapel—” She stopped, breathless, her chest heaving.

“Who?” he demanded urgently. “If it wasn’t Annie Crook, what does it matter?” Unreasonably, he was disappointed. Only the horror in her face held him from looking away.

She gulped again. “It were Dark Annie,” she said in a strangled whisper.

“Dark … Annie …?” Slowly the horror began to dawn on him, cold as the grave.

She nodded. “Annie Chapman … wot Jack cut up!”

“The … Ripper?” He could barely say the word.

“Yeah!” she breathed. “The other places ’e were askin’ about coaches were Buck’s Row, w’ere Polly Mitchell were found, ’Anbury Street w’ere Dark Annie were, an’ ’e finished up in Mitre Square, w’ere they got Kate Eddowes, wot wos the worst o’ them all.”

Horror washed over him as if something nameless, primeval, had come out of the darkness and stood close to them both, death in its heart and its hands.

He could not bring himself to say the name. “If you knew it then, you shouldn’t have followed him the rest of the way back to the river police and …” he started, hysteria rising in his voice.