Whitechapel Conspiracy

“No!” Tellman said quickly, warmed by a sudden sense of normality, of life where affection was possible and the darkness outside was a temporary thing, and under control. “No, but I have learned something I must tell him now. I’m sorry to disturb you,” he added.

Karansky pulled the door wider. “Come in,” he invited. “Come in. His room is at the top of the stairs. Would you like something to eat? We have—” Then he stopped, embarrassed.

Perhaps they had very little.

“No, thank you,” Tellman declined. “I ate just before I came.” That was a lie, but it did not matter. Dignity should be preserved.

Karansky may not have meant it to, but the relief was in the tone of his voice. “Then you had best go and find Mr. Pitt. He came in half an hour ago. Sometimes we play a little chess, or talk, but tonight he was late.” He seemed about to add something further, then changed his mind. There was anxiety in the air, as if something ugly and dangerous were expected, an inward clenching against hurt. Was it always like that here, the waiting for violence to erupt, the uncertainty as to what the next disaster would be, only the certainty that it would come?

Tellman thanked him and went up the narrow stairs and knocked on the door Karansky had indicated.

The answer was immediate but absentminded, as if Pitt knew who it would be and half expected it.

Tellman opened the door.

Pitt was sitting on the bed, shoulders slumped forward, deep in thought. He looked even more untidy than usual, his hair wild and too long over his collar, but his shirt cuffs had been neatly darned, and there was a pile of clean laundry on the chest of drawers, well ironed.

When Tellman closed the door without speaking Pitt realized it was not Karansky, and looked around. His mouth dropped with amazement, then alarm.

“It’s all right!” Tellman said quickly. “But I’ve learned something I have to tell you tonight. It’s …” He pushed his hand over his hair, slicked back as always. “Actually, it’s not all right.” He found he was shaking. “It’s the most … it’s the biggest … it’s the most hideous and terrible thing I’ve ever heard, if it’s true. And it’s going to destroy everything!”

As Tellman told him, the last remaining color bleached out of Pitt’s face and he sat motionless with horror, until his body began to shiver uncontrollably, as if the cold had gotten inside him.

10

IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Tellman reached Keppel Street, but he would have no chance in the morning to tell Gracie what he had learned, and Charlotte also. They must know. This hideous conspiracy was bigger than any individual’s career, or even their safety. Not that keeping it from them would protect them. Nothing he or Pitt said could prevent them from continuing to pursue the truth. In both women, devotion to Pitt, as well as a sense of justice, was far stronger than any idea of obedience they might have possessed.

Therefore they must have the very slight protection that a knowledge of the conspiracy’s enormity might give them.

And they might help. He told himself that fiercely as he stood on the doorstep and looked up at the dark windows. He was a police officer, a citizen of a land in very real danger of being plunged into violence from which it might not emerge for years, and even when it did, much of its heritage and identity could be destroyed. The safety of two women, even one he admired and one he loved, could not be placed before that.

He lifted up the brass knocker and let it fall. It thudded loudly in the silence. Nothing stirred right along the street. He knocked again, three times, and again.

A light came on upstairs, and a few moments later Charlotte herself answered the door, her eyes wide with fear, her hair a dark shadow across her shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Tellman said immediately, knowing what she feared. “But I’ve got things I have to tell you.”

She pulled the door wider and he followed her inside. She called Gracie, and led him through to the kitchen. She riddled the stove and put more coal on. He bent to help her too late, feeling clumsy. She smiled at him and put the kettle on the hob.

When Gracie appeared, tousle-haired from sleep and, to Tellman, looking about fourteen, they sat around the table with tea, and he told them what he had learned from Lyndon Remus and all that it meant.

It was nearly three in the morning before, at last, Tellman went out into the dark streets to return home. Charlotte had offered to allow him to sleep in the front parlor, but he had declined. He did not feel it was proper, and he needed the width and the loneliness of the street to think.

When Charlotte woke it was daylight. At first all she remembered was that Pitt was not there. The space beside her was the kind of emptiness you have when a tooth has been lost, aching, tender, not right.

Then she remembered Tellman’s visit and all that he had told them about the Whitechapel murders, Prince Eddy and Annie Crook, and the fearful conspiracy to conceal it all.