Whitechapel Conspiracy

She sat up and pushed the covers away. There was no point in lying there any longer. There was no warmth, either physical or of the heart.

She started to wash and dress automatically. Odd how much less pleasure there was in something simple like brushing and curling her hair now that Pitt was not there to see it, even to annoy her by touching it and pulling pieces out of the pins again. She missed the touch of his hands even more than the sound of his voice. It was a physical pain inside her, like the ache of hunger.

She must concentrate on the problem. There was no time for self-indulgence. Had John Adinett killed Fetters because he was part of the conspiracy to conceal the Whitechapel murderer and the royal part in it all? If he had been part of it, then Adinett should have exposed him and made him answer for his crime, to whatever degree he was involved.

But that made no sense. Fetters was a republican. He would have been the first person to lay it bare himself. The answer had to be the other way around. Fetters had discovered the truth and was going to expose it, and Adinett had killed him to prevent it. That would explain why he could never have told anyone, even to save his own life. He had not been in Cleveland Street asking after the original crime in 1888 but after Fetters’s enquiries into it this year. He must have realized that Fetters knew, and would inevitably make it public for his own ends. And apart from his desire to shield the men who had committed the horrific murders, he wanted to keep the secret they had killed to hide in the first place; whether or not he was a royalist, he did not want revolution and all the violence and destruction it would inevitably bring.

She went downstairs slowly, turning the thought over and over in her mind. She walked along the corridor to the kitchen and heard Gracie banging saucepans and the splash of water as she filled the kettle. It was still early. There would be time for a cup of tea before she woke the children.

Gracie swung around when she heard Charlotte’s footsteps. She looked tired, her hair was less tidy than usual, but she smiled with quick response as Charlotte came in. There was something brave and very determined in her eyes which gave Charlotte a surge of hope.

Gracie pushed her stray hair behind her ears, then turned and poked the fire vigorously to get the flames high so the kettle would boil. She dug the poker in as if she were disemboweling some mortal enemy.

Charlotte thought aloud while she fetched milk from the larder, watching where she trod because of the cats circling around her as if determined to trip her up. She poured a little into a saucer for them, and then broke off a small crust of new bread and dropped it on the floor. They fought over it, and patted it around with their paws, chasing it and diving on it.

Gracie made the tea and they sat in companionable silence sipping, while it was sharp and pungent, and still too hot. Then Charlotte went upstairs and woke first Jemima, then Daniel.

“When is Papa coming home?” Jemima asked as she washed her face, being rather generous with the water. “You said soon.” There was accusation in her voice.

Charlotte handed her the towel. What should she say? She heard the sharpness, and knew it came from fear. Life had been disrupted and neither child knew why. The unexplained made the world frightening. If one parent could go and not come back, perhaps the other could as well. Which did the least harm: the uncertain, dangerous truth; or a more comfortable lie that would get them over the next few days, but which might catch her in the end?

“Mama?” Jemima was not prepared to wait.

“I hoped it would be soon,” Charlotte replied, playing for time. “It’s a difficult case, worse than he thought.”

“Why did Papa take it, if it’s that bad?” Jemima asked, her stare level and uncompromising.

What was the answer to that? He had not known? He had had no choice?

Daniel came into the room, pulling his shirt on, his hair wet around his brow and over his ears.

“What?” He looked at his mother, then at his sister.

“He took it because it was right,” Charlotte replied. “It was the right thing to do.” She could not tell them he was in danger, that the Inner Circle had destroyed his career in vengeance for his testimony against John Adinett. Nor could she say he had to work at something or they would lose their home, perhaps even be hungry. It was too soon for such realism. Certainly she could not tell them he had discovered an evil so terrible it threatened to destroy all he knew and trusted from day to day. Dragons and ogres were for fairy stories, not reality.

Jemima frowned at her. “Does he want to come back home?”

Charlotte heard the fear in her that perhaps he had gone because he wished to. She had caught the shadow before, the unspoken thought that some piece of disobedience had made him go, that in some way Jemima had not matched up to his expectations of her and he was disappointed.