From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  I shook my head. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘What about you? Although I don’t expect you discovered anything of significance while shovelling seed cake into your face.’

  ‘Ah, that’s where you are wrong,’ Patrick said mysteriously. ‘It’s amazing what you can discover while eating cake.’

  I sighed. ‘Really Patrick, I can’t imagine why anyone would think that we are at all well suited.’ I thought with a pang of poor Mr Mercier. What a wretch I was to him.

  He laughed. ‘Don’t you? Oh dear, I see that I shall have to work harder to gain your approval.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Is that what the problem is? Do you feel like perhaps this is all just a little too neatly arranged? That it’s not romantic enough?’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I think that I could perhaps fall to my knees at your feet and maybe even squeeze out a few tears in an excess of emotion? Would that do?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Unable to meet his eyes, I carried on staring out at the countryside. ‘Or perhaps I am just inherently suspicious of anything that my aunt Minerva approves of.’

  ‘I can’t win then, can I?’ he said with a sigh.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  We hardly spoke to each other on the way back to London as we were both wrapped up in our own thoughts. Mine revolved around the girls at Panacea House and what Beatrice’s life must have been like there. Patrick’s, of course, were a mystery to me but judging by the firm clench of his jaw, I guessed that they weren’t cheerful.

  It was only when our carriage pulled up at Canonbury Station that he looked at me and reached across to take my hands in his. ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.

  ‘I have to go back to Whitechapel,’ I said with a feeling of heavy resignation. ‘Those girls must know where my sister is and I am now more determined than ever to know the truth.’

  He sighed and withdrew his hands. ‘Promise me that you’ll take care of yourself, Alice,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to have to go down there to avenge your death.’ He gave me a flickering smile then, before I could move back or stop him, leaned across and kissed me on the lips before pulling slightly away and resting his forehead against mine. ‘Stay safe, my love.’

  ‘I will,’ I whispered, wishing that he would kiss me again but knowing that it would be a bad idea. ‘You haven’t seen the last of me, Patrick.’

  He gave me one last regretful look over his shoulder as he closed the carriage door behind him and then I was alone again. I sat there for a moment watching him as he walked towards the station entrance then tapped on the vehicle roof to let the coachman know that he should move on.

  It was starting to rain heavily again by the time I got back to the house on Grosvenor Avenue and I held my hat to my head as I rushed inside, flashing a grateful smile at Swift as I went past him. ‘Is my father at home?’ I asked as I crossed to the table and pulled off my hat and damp kid leather gloves.

  ‘He is in his study, Miss Redmayne,’ Swift said. ‘I shall order that some tea be brought to you there.’

  I smiled at him. ‘You are very good to me, Swift,’ I said, patting my wet cheeks and for one second letting my fingers linger on my lips, which still felt the pressure of Patrick’s mouth against mine.

  ‘Not at all, Miss Redmayne,’ the butler said sombrely but I saw a flash of pleasure in his dark eyes as he turned away.

  I hesitated for a moment then straightened my shoulders and crossed the hall to my father’s study. It was now or never. I needed to know the truth. I stood for a moment and listened outside the door, just as Mrs Smith-Welsh had done with Miss Fairchild, before lifting my hand to knock.

  ‘My dear child,’ my father looked up with a pleased smile as I entered. ‘Did you get caught in the rain? What a bore.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up then came to my side of the desk and led me towards his fire, which was blazing away merrily in the grate. He never could abide the cold and would insist on having fires lit from the end of August onwards. I dread to think how ruinously expensive this was but it seemed a small price to pay for the cessation of his endless complaints about being cold. ‘Is Swift bringing tea? Good, good.’

  I smiled politely but could wait no longer. ‘Papa, I need to ask you something,’ I blurted out. ‘It’s about Beatrice and Panacea House.’

  He stared at me for a moment then sat down heavily on one of the comfortable crimson leather chairs that stood either side of the fireplace. ‘How do you know about that?’ he said dully, staring down at the floor and not looking at me.

  ‘I found a letter,’ I said. ‘What happened, Papa?’

  He shook his head and for a terrible moment I thought he was going to refuse to tell me but then he seemed to brace himself and began to talk. ‘Do you remember Beatrice at all, Alice?’ he said, looking up at me then and I saw that his eyes were filled with tears. ‘You were very young of course but…’

  ‘Of course I remember her,’ I interrupted him brusquely, fighting against my own tears. ‘I was eleven years old, not a tiny child or a baby. I remember everything about her.’ I sat down on the chair opposite him and pulled Mrs Smith-Welsh’s letter out of my reticule. ‘Why did you send her away?’

  He looked away. ‘You think that you remember her but you don’t know what she was like,’ he said. ‘Not really. There were tantrums and terrible… scenes. Your mother found it all so distressing. It was exhausting just to be in the same house.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps we did the wrong thing but it seemed like the correct thing to do and then, of course when…’ he broke off and looked at me for a moment in silence before giving a shrug and carrying on: ‘We couldn’t carry on as we were. It would have killed your mother and destroyed our family. We were afraid for you as well.’

  ‘Why afraid for me? Beatrice loved me and I loved her,’ I said. ‘She would never have done me any harm.’

  He stood up and went to the drinks tray that had been laid out as usual on top of a cabinet behind his desk. ‘Perhaps not physical harm in the sense that you mean but in other ways,’ he said as he shakily poured himself a brandy. I stared longingly at the bottle, thinking I could do with some myself but could hardly dare to ask him to pour me a glass. ‘Her behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic and we feared that there might be some sort of incident that would reflect badly on you. It hardly seemed fair to expose you to that so we did what we thought best.’ He gave a rueful smile as he settled back into his chair. ‘We had already made plans to take her to Panacea House for a rest but then there was an incident that necessitated our moving more swiftly to have her removed from the house.’ He took a sip of brandy and closed his eyes, apparently at an end.

  I stared at him, hardly able to breathe. ‘What sort of incident?’ I said in a low voice. It seemed so odd, so completely bizarre to be having this conversation in such a perfectly ordinary way in the well known surroundings of my father’s study while all the while I was conscious of the cook and maids downstairs busying themselves making our tea and slicing cake as if everything was just as it always was, as if nothing had changed.

  He sighed and opened his eyes. ‘She threatened your mother with a knife,’ he said baldly. ‘I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.’ He took another sip of brandy, a larger one this time. ‘I should have been. I should have known not to leave them alone together as it had been building up for weeks.’

  ‘She threatened Mama with a knife?’ I could hardly believe it. ‘But why?’

  My father shook his head. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ he said. ‘Like I said, she was erratic and prone to hysteric fits and becoming increasingly so. Who knows what was in her mind at the time? I don’t suppose she knew herself.’ He drained his glass with one gulp and placed it on a small table at his side. ‘Anyway, after that, you can see why we could no longer have her in the house. I telegraphed Panacea House straight away and within a few hours the arrangements were made and she was on her way.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘It was no easy task to get her there,’ he said with a small w
ince. ‘She fought like a tigress but it was only when I promised her that if she could only be good and do her best to get well again that she agreed to go quietly.’

  ‘How could you?’ I whispered, tears now spilling down my cheeks. ‘How could you send her away from us all?’

  He looked up at me. ‘But what else could we do?’ he said sharply. ‘She was a danger to herself and others. She almost killed your mother and might very well have killed you too. She was fortunate indeed that we sent her to Panacea House instead of contacting the police.’

  I couldn’t disagree with this and so remained silent for a moment taking it all in, my thoughts running this way and that and always returning to the same thing: that my family had lied to me about everything for six years. ‘Does everyone know?’

  He gave a weary nod of assent. ‘I know that you are angry with me,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘and you have every right to be but please believe that I acted only for the best.’

  There was a knock on the door, which opened a second later to admit Swift and one of the parlour maids bearing a laden tea tray. My stomach rumbled terribly as I watched them carefully laying out plates covered with sandwiches and cake and I remembered with a jolt that I had had nothing to eat since breakfast - at which point I could barely restrain myself from snatching several sandwiches from the plate and shoving them into my mouth like some kind of savage.

  My father and I remained completely silent as the butler and maid laid out our tea things, wincing as if in pain at every chink of silver against china or clatter of tea spoons. Our silence continued after they had gone as I performed my usual task of pouring out the tea and adding milk and a sugar to my father’s cup.

  ‘Please don’t be angry with me, Alice,’ he whispered as he took the cup from my outstretched hand.

  I hesitated. ‘I’m not angry with you,’ I said at last, finding to my surprise that I wasn’t. After all, I’d known my father all my life and no matter how painful this was, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that he had acted out of malice. Carelessness certainly and perhaps stupidity, but never malice. What was it that Napoléon once said? Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. That was my poor dead foolish Papa all over.

  He smiled weakly. ‘Well, that’s something at least,’ he said sadly. ‘I always intended that she should come home one day but then her behaviour deteriorated so much that it just never seemed to happen. I hear that she is doing well now though so perhaps in time…’

  I stared at him. ‘But Papa, surely you know that she isn’t there any more,’ I said, spluttering over my tea as he looked at me in confusion. ‘I was at Panacea House today. I went there to see her and find out what had happened but she wasn’t there.’ I put my tea down on the table so clumsily that it spilled all over the polished wood. Usually this would earn me a reprimand but for once my father didn’t notice. ‘She left just over a year ago. Apparently that awful Mrs Smith-Welsh wrote to let you know but I think that it must have happened while we were in Italy.’ Again I felt that crushing sense of entirely irrational guilt that we should have been enjoying ourselves in the sunshine while my sister was apparently some kind of fugitive.

  ‘Over a year ago?’ My father was aghast. ‘But how can this be? Why was I not informed?’ He ran his fingers through his greying hair. ‘And this woman claims to have written to let me know?’ He stood up and went to his desk, which as usual overflowed with scraps of paper, sketchbooks, pamphlets and peculiar odds and ends. He pulled open a drawer and plunged his hands into a mess of papers and old letters, all tangled up with paint brushes, blunt pencils, a yellowing French newspaper and several receipts from art shops. ‘But that is impossible,’ he muttered to himself as he searched. ‘Absolutely impossible.’

  I rose and went to stand beside him, wondering what on earth he was hunting for so desperately. ‘What is it, Papa? How is it impossible?’

  He gave a small cry and pounced on a letter that had been pushed to the side of the drawer. ‘Read this,’ he said, pushing it into my hands then standing back, slightly flushed, as I cautiously opened the envelope and extracted the letter within, which I saw at once was written on the headed notepaper favoured by Panacea House.

  ‘Dear Sir,

  As promised, I am writing to let you know how your daughter is getting on. Although we had hopes that she would be able to receive visitors again very soon, I am afraid that there has been another marked deterioration in her behaviour and that any contact with family members must continue to be discouraged.

  I am so sorry to tell you this as I know that quite some time has passed since you were last able to see your daughter but please be assured that we have given the matter much consideration and can see no other option.

  Otherwise, she is doing well and continues to eat and sleep as well as can be expected. As we advised, we are discouraging her from the reading of sentimental novels of the sort that are liable to inflame such impressionable young women and instead recommending that she devotes herself to a proper study of far more improving religious and historical tracts…’

  I crumpled the letter in my fist and stared at him. ‘What does this mean?’ I said in a whisper. ‘This letter was apparently written just two months ago, which if Mrs Smith-Welsh is to believed is impossible.’

  My father reached out and took the letter from me, straightening it between his long fingers. Artist’s fingers. I looked down at my own and noticed for the first time how short and stubby my own were in comparison. Perhaps I was a changeling after all? ‘But Mrs Smith-Welsh signed this letter herself,’ he said patiently, showing me the bottom of the letter where that lady’s unmistakable signature, bold and florid in purple ink stood out starkly against the pale creaminess of the expensive paper. ‘So she must be lying.’

  ‘But why is she lying to us?’ I said, feeling suddenly so weak legged that I had to sink down into one of the chairs. ‘I didn’t see Beatrice when I was there and I even asked to see her room.’ They had had no warning of our visit, no time to prepare, which made me think that everything I had been told that day was the truth - which meant that this letter must be a lie. Or was it? ‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ I said wearily. ‘But I think I know where to go to find out.’

  Chapter Twenty Six

  After a mostly sleepless night, I was up early and ringing for an extremely disapproving Minnie to come and help me into one of the plain dresses that I usually wore for my visits to Whitechapel. ‘I thought you’d finished with all of that, Miss,’ she said with a sniff as she finished putting up my hair in an intricate coiled plait, pinning it into place with carved jade headed pins. ‘And it’s hardly safe there at the moment is it?’

  I sighed and picked up my pearl earrings, which I remembered Beatrice wearing before she vanished. They’d been left behind in her room and had been lying forgotten in my jewellery box ever since. Until now. ‘There haven’t been any murders for almost a month now and I expect there are no more to come,’ I said, fastening the earrings then stepping back to take in the full effect in my dressing table mirror.

  ‘You don’t know that, Miss,’ Minnie persisted with a scowl. ‘Seems to me that no one knows what’s going to happen next.’

  ‘Well, maybe you are right but I certainly don’t feel like I am endangering myself by going there,’ I replied reprovingly. ‘If it bothers you so much, perhaps you should accompany me to ensure my safety? After all, this Ripper fellow is hardly likely to attack both of us, is he? He actually seems like rather a cowardly sort of chap when all is said and done.’

  Minnie looked satisfyingly aghast at this proposal. ‘You wouldn’t make me do that, Miss,’ she spluttered, backing away with hot patches of colour high on her cheekbones. ‘You can’t. It’s not what I’m paid for.’

  ‘Then hold your tongue,’ I said sharply, pulling on my gloves and giving myself one last glance over my shoulder to ensure that my outfit of a plain cobalt blue dress with matchin
g fitted jacket was as it should be. ‘I will be back in the early evening as usual.’

  I didn’t feel entirely confident though as I sat in the carriage on my way to Whitechapel and I found myself continually checking my reflection in the window or nervously patting down my skirts and rearranging my cuffs. I hadn’t been back to the Mission for a fortnight now and felt anxious about the sort of reception I would get, even though I had written to let Miss Lawler know why I was absent and received a very cordial reply in the return post.

  I suppose that I was worried that they might all think that I was just the sort of spoiled and cherry picking philanthropic hobbyist that Mr Mercier was always complaining about, that I had no real interest in the people of the East End or concern for their plight. Even though I had my own personal reasons for wanting to be in Spitalfields, I would have hated for anyone to think that about me and especially not Miss Lawler, whom I now thought of as something close to a friend.

  I need not have worried of course. Charlie and his little ragged crew were there outside the main entrance on Lamb Street as usual and grinned and looked very pleased with the coins that I gave them and there was a huge hug waiting for me from Miss Lawler when I stepped inside. My welcome from Mrs Lightfoot was rather more restrained but still relatively cordial by her rather dour standards.

  I dared not look about for Mr Mercier as we went up to one of the classrooms where I was to help some of the girls with their writing practice that morning but Miss Lawler managed to preempt that by telling me quite naturally that he was at the police station helping one of their past residents who had been caught stealing from a grocers on Brick Lane. ‘He will be sorry to have missed you, I am sure,’ she added with an understanding light in her dark eyes. ‘He speaks of you often.’