Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Possibly,” Vespasia agreed. She smiled very slightly, and with a sadness that lay deep behind her eyes. “It is not an ignoble cause. I do not agree with it, but I can understand much that it strives for, and admire those who pursue it.”

There was something in her which prevented Charlotte from arguing. She realized with a sense of loneliness how much older Vespasia was than she, and how much of Vespasia’s life there was about which she knew nothing. And yet she loved her with a depth that had nothing to do with time or blood.

“Let me consider it,” Vespasia said after a moment or two. “In the meantime, my dear, be extremely careful. Learn what you can without jeopardizing yourself. We are dealing with people who think little of killing individual men or women in order to accomplish their purposes for nations. They believe ends justify means, and think they have the right to do anything they consider will serve what they have convinced themselves is the greater good.”

Charlotte felt a darkness in this light room, and a chill as if night had fallen early. She stood up.

“I will. But I must tell Thomas. I—I need to see him.”

Vespasia smiled. “Of course you do. I wish I could also, but I realize it’s impractical. Please remember me to him.”

Impulsively, Charlotte stepped forward and bent to put her arms around Vespasia, and held her, their shoulders close. She kissed her cheek, and then left without either of them speaking again.

Charlotte went home by way of Tellman’s lodgings, and to his landlady’s consternation, waited over half an hour for him to return from Bow Street. Without prevarication she asked that he take her the following morning to meet with Pitt on his way to work at the silk factory. Tellman protested the danger of it to her, the unpleasantness, and above all, the fact that Pitt would certainly not wish her to go to Spitalfields. She told him not to waste time with protests that meant nothing. She was going, with or without him, and they both knew it, so it would be altogether better if he simply acknowledged it so they could agree upon arrangements and get a good night’s sleep.

“Yes, ma’am,” he conceded. She saw in his face that he was too aware of the gravity of the situation to make more than a token argument to satisfy conscience. He saw her to the omnibus stop again.

“I’ll be at the door in Keppel Street at six in the morning,” he said gravely. “We’ll take a hansom to the underground railway station, and a train to Whitechapel. Wear your oldest clothes, and boots that are comfortable for walking. And maybe you could borrow a shawl to hide your hair; it would make you less noticeable from the local women.”

She agreed, with a sense of foreboding, yet anticipation at the thought of seeing Pitt.

When she got home she ran up the stairs, washed her hair even though she would hide it under a shawl, and brushed it until it shone. She had not intended to tell Gracie, but she could not keep it secret. She went to bed early, and found herself too excited to sleep until long after midnight.

In the morning she woke late and had to hurry. There was barely time for a cup of tea. She drank it too hot and left half of it behind when Tellman knocked at the door.

“Tell Mr. Pitt we miss ’im terrible, ma’am!” Gracie said quickly, blushing a little, her eyes steady.

“I will,” Charlotte promised.

Tellman was on the step, the dark shape of a hansom looming behind him. He looked thin-shouldered, gaunt-faced, and she realized for the first time how much Pitt’s disgrace had affected him. He might loathe admitting it, but he was deeply loyal, both to Pitt himself and to his own sense of right and wrong. He might resent authority, see its faults and the injustices of differences in class and opportunity, but he expected the men who led him to observe certain rules within the law. Above all, he had not expected them to betray their own. Whatever his origins, Pitt had earned his place as one of them, and in Tellman’s world that had meant he should have been safe.

He might deplore the social conscience, or lack of it, among those of the officer class, but he knew their morality, at least he had thought he did, and it was worthy of respect. That was what made their leadership tolerable. Suddenly it was no longer so. When the fixed parts in the order of things began to crumble, there was a new and frightening kind of loneliness, a confusion unlike anything else.

“Thank you,” she said quietly as he walked across the damp footpath with her and handed her up into the cab. They rode in silence through the morning streets, the clear, gray light catching the windows of houses and shops. There were already many people about: maids, delivery boys, carters fetching fresh goods in for the markets. The first milk wagons were waiting at the ends of the streets and already queues were forming as they turned in towards the station.