The Whitechapel Conspiracy

by Anne Perry

  Gracie felt her cheeks wet. She swallowed and could barely breathe. She remembered Remus’s face as she had seen it here before, shining with excitement, eyes glittering.

  She thought of the huge black carriage that had rumbled down these streets with something unimaginably violent and evil inside, waiting.

  She caught hold of Tellman’s arm and gripped him tightly as a rat scuttled by, and someone stirred by the wall. He did not pull away; in fact, he gripped her back.

  They turned off Duke Street into the alley by St. Botolph’s Church, fumbled by the light of the constable’s bull’s-eye towards the far end, and Mitre Square.

  They emerged into emptiness which was faintly lit by the one lamp high on the wall. There was no one there.

  Gracie was giddy with relief. Never mind that the constable would think she was a fool—and no doubt be angry. Never mind that Tellman—Samuel—would be angry too.

  Then she heard his indrawn breath in a sob, and she saw it, sprawled on the stones in the far corner, arms wide.

  The constable moved forward, his breath rasping in his throat, his feet floundering.

  “No!” Tellman said, holding Gracie back. But she saw it by the light of the bull’s-eye. Lyndon Remus was lying just as Catherine Eddowes had been, his throat cut, his entrails torn out of his body and placed over his shoulder as in some hideous ritual.

  Gracie stared at Remus for one terrible moment more, a moment burned into her mind forever, then turned and buried her head in Tellman’s shoulder. She felt his arms tighten around her and hold her hard and close to him as if he would never let her go.

  Remus had known the truth—and died for it. But what was it? The question beat in her mind. Had the man behind the Whitechapel murders killed him because he knew it was a conspiracy to hide Prince Eddy’s indiscretion? Or was it the Inner Circle, because he had discovered it was not true—and Jack the Ripper, Leather-apron, was a lone madman, just as everyone had always supposed?

  He had taken his secret to his fearful death, and no one would tell the story he had found—whichever it was.

  She loosened herself just enough to put her arms around Tellman’s neck, then moved closer again, and felt his cheek and his lips on her hair.

  •

  Isaac and Leah’s house was silent, almost dead-seeming without them. Pitt heard his own footfalls sounding in the passage. The click of pots and pans was loud as he made supper in the kitchen.

  Even the noise of his spoon against his bowl seemed a disturbance. He kept the stove going so he could cook and have at least some hot water, but he realized it was Leah’s presence that had given the house true warmth.

  He ate alone and went to bed early, not knowing what else to do. He was still lying awake in the dark when he heard the sharp, peremptory knocking on the door.

  His first thought was that it meant further trouble in the Jewish community, and someone was looking for Isaac to help him. There was nothing Pitt could do, but he would at least answer.

  He was half dressed and on the stairs when he realized there was a kind of authority in the knock, as if the person had a right to demand attention, and expected to receive it. And yet it was more discreet and less impatient than the police would have been, especially Harper.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and went the three steps across the hall. He undid the bolt and opened the door.

  Victor Narraway walked straight in and closed the door behind him. His face looked haggard in the hall gaslight, and his thick hair was wild and damp from the mist.

  Pitt’s stomach lurched. “What is it?” Imagination raced hideously through his mind.

  “The police have just called me,” Narraway answered hoarsely. “Voisey has shot Mario Corena.”

  Pitt was stunned. For a moment the news had little meaning to him. He could not place Corena, and Voisey was only a name. But the look in Narraway’s eyes said that it was momentous.

  “Mario Corena was one of the greatest heroes of the ‘48 revolutions across Europe,” Narraway said quietly, a terrible weight of sadness in him. “He was one of the bravest and most generous of them all.”

  “What was he doing in London?” Pitt was still bemused. “And why would Voisey shoot him?” Memories of things Charlotte had said, and Vespasia, came back to him. “Isn’t Voisey sympathetic to republican feelings? Anyway, Corena is Italian. Why should Voisey care?”

  Narraway’s face pinched. “Corena was bigger than any one nation, Pitt. Above all, he was a great man, willing to put all he possessed on the line to fight for a decent chance for all people, for a quality of justice and humanity anywhere.”

  “Then why would Voisey kill him?”

  “He said it was self-defense. Put your clothes on and come with me. We’re going to see what it’s about. Be quick!”

  Pitt obeyed without question, and half an hour later they were in a hansom pulling up outside Charles Voisey’s elegant house in Cavendish Square. Narraway climbed out, paid, and strode ahead of Pitt to the front door, which was opened as he reached it by a uniformed constable.

  Pitt went up the steps and inside immediately behind Narraway. There were two other men in the hallway. Pitt recognized one as a police surgeon; he did not know the other. It was the second who spoke to Narraway, then gestured towards one of the doors leading off.

  Narraway glanced at Pitt, indicating that he should follow, then went over to the door and opened it.

  The room was plainly a study, with a large desk and several bookcases and two carved, leather-padded chairs. The gas was turned up and the room flooded with light. On the floor, as if he had been walking from the door towards the desk, lay a slender man with a dark complexion and dark hair liberally threaded with white. On his fine-boned hand was a signet ring with a dark stone in it. His face was handsome, almost beautiful in the passion of its form and the peace of its expression. The lips were curled in the faintest smile. Death had come to him with no horror and no fear, even as a long-awaited friend.

  Narraway stood motionless, fighting to control emotion.

  Pitt knew the man. He knelt and touched him. He was still warm, but apart from the bullet hole in his chest and the scarlet blood on the floor, there was no mistaking death.

  Pitt straightened up again and turned to Narraway.

  Narraway swallowed, looking away. “Let’s go and speak to Voisey. See how he can ... explain this!” His voice was choked but the rage poured through it.

  They went out, and Narraway closed the door softly, as though the room were now a kind of sanctuary. He walked across the hall to where the second man stood waiting. They exchanged only a glance of understanding, then the man opened the door and Narraway went in, Pitt on his heels.

  This was the withdrawing room. Charles Voisey sat on the edge of the large sofa, his head in his hands. He looked up as Narraway stood in front of him. His face was drained of all color except for the livid marks where his fingers had pressed into the flesh of his cheeks.

  “He came at me!” he said, his voice rising high and cracking. “He was like a madman. He had a gun. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen. He—he didn’t seem to be hearing anything I said. He was ... a fanatic!”

  “Why would he want to kill you?” Narraway asked coldly.

  Voisey gulped. “He—he was a friend of John Adinett, and he knew I had been also. He thought I somehow ... betrayed him ... by not being able to save him. He didn’t understand.” He glanced at Pitt, then back to Narraway. “There are loyalties higher than friendship, no matter how you ... regard someone. And there was a great deal that was fine in Adinett ... God knows ...”

  “He was a great republican,” Narraway said with an edge to his voice, a mixture of passion and sarcasm that Pitt could not read.

  “Yes ...” Voisey hesitated. “Yes, he was. But ...” Again he stopped, uncertainty in his eyes. He looked at Pitt, and for a moment the hatred in his face was naked. Then as quickly he masked it again, lowering his gaze. �
��He believed in many reforms, and fought for them with all his courage and intelligence. But I could not deny the law. Corena could not understand that. There was something of the ... savage ... in him. I had no choice. He came at me like a lunatic, swearing to kill me. I struggled with him, but I could not take the gun from him.” The flicker of a smile touched his lips, more in amazement than any kind of humor. “He had extraordinary strength for an old man. The gun went off.” He did not add any more; it would have been unnecessary.

  Pitt looked at him and saw the blood on his own shirtfront, at the right height to have matched Corena’s wound. It could have been true.

  “I see,” Narraway said grimly. “So you are saying it was self-defense?”

  Voisey’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course I am! Good God—do you think I would have shot the man on purpose?” The amazement and incredulity were so intense in his whole being that in spite of his own feelings, Pitt could not help but believe him.

  Narraway turned on his heel and strode out, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

  Pitt looked at Voisey once more, then followed after Narraway.

  In the hall, Narraway stopped. As soon as Pitt caught up with him he spoke very quietly.

  “You know Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, don’t you?” It was barely a question. He did not even wait for an answer. “Perhaps you didn’t know that Corena was the greatest love of her life. Don’t ask me how I know; I do, that is enough. You should be the one to tell her this. Don’t let her read it in the newspapers or hear it from someone who doesn’t know what it means to her.”

  Pitt felt as if he had been hit so hard the breath had been forced out of him, and he could not fill his lungs again. Instead there was an ache inside him almost enough to make him cry out.

  Vespasia!

  “Please do it,” Narraway said urgently. “It shouldn’t be a stranger.” He did not beg, but it was there in his eyes.

  There was only one possible answer. Pitt nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and went back to the front door and out to the quiet street.

  He took the first hansom and gave Vespasia’s address. He rode through the darkness without thinking. There was no point in rehearsing how he would say such a thing. There was no way.

  The cab pulled up and he alighted. He rang the doorbell and to his surprise it was answered within moments.

  “Good evening, sir,” the butler said quietly. “Her Ladyship is still up. Would you care to come in, and I shall tell her you are here.”

  “Thank you ...” Pitt was confused, walking in a nightmare. He followed the butler into the yellow room and stood waiting.

  He had no idea whether it was two or three minutes, or ten, before the door opened and Vespasia came in. She was wearing a long silk robe of almost white, her hair still coiled loosely on her head. She looked fragile, old, and almost ethereally beautiful. It was impossible not to think of her as a passionate woman who had loved unforgettably one Roman summer half a century ago.

  Pitt found the tears choking his throat and stinging his eyes.

  “It’s all right, Thomas,” she said so quietly he barely heard her. “I know he’s dead. He wrote to me, telling me what he would do. It was he who killed James Sissons, believing it was what Sissons himself had intended, but at the last moment lost his nerve to be a hero after all.” She stopped for a moment, struggling to keep her composure. “You are free to use this, to see that Isaac Karansky is not blamed for a crime he did not commit—and perhaps that Charles Voisey is, although I am not certain how you can accomplish that.”

  Pitt loathed telling her, but it was not a lie that could live.

  “Voisey says he shot him in self-defense. I don’t know that we can prove otherwise.”

  Vespasia almost smiled. “I’m sure he did,” she agreed. “Charles Voisey is the leader of the Inner Circle. If they had succeeded in their conspiracy to cause revolution, he would have become the first president of Britain.”

  For an instant, the beat of a heart, Pitt was astonished. Then the beat passed, and it all made perfect sense: Martin Fetters’s discovery of the plot, his facing Adinett—who was probably Voisey’s friend and lieutenant—and being killed because he wanted reform but not revolution. And then for all his power and his loyalty, Voisey could not save Adinett. No wonder he hated Pitt and had used all his influence to destroy him.

  And Mario Corena, a man driven by a simpler, purer fire, had been used and deceived to destroy Sissons. Now, realizing it at last, he had tried to turn it back on Voisey.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” Vespasia said softly. “Voisey meant to be the ultimate hero of all reform, to be the leader into a new age ... perhaps originally his aims were good. He certainly had some good men with him. Only his arrogance led him to believe he had the right to decide for the rest of us what was in our best good and then force it upon us, with or without our consent.”

  “Yes ... I know ...” Pitt began.

  She shook her head, the tears glistening in her eyes. “But he can never do that now. He has killed the greatest republican hero of the century ... above any one country’s individuality or nationalism.”

  He thought he began to see just a glimmer, like a distant star. “But it was self-defense,” he said slowly.

  She smiled, and the tears slid down her cheeks. “Because he discovered the conspiracy to overturn the throne, to invent this spurious debt of the Prince of Wales, and murder Sissons and create riot—and when Mario realized he knew, he attacked him, so of course Voisey had to shoot. He is a very brave man! Almost single-handedly he has uncovered a terrible conspiracy and named the men in it—who will certainly be at the least disgraced, maybe arrested. Perhaps the Queen will even knight him ... don’t you think? I must speak to Somerset Carlisle and see if it can be arranged.” Then she turned away and walked out of the room without speaking again. She could no longer keep within her the grief and the longing that consumed her.

  Pitt stood still until her footsteps died away, then he turned and walked back into the hall. It was empty except for the butler, who showed him out into the lamp-lit street.

  •

  Almost exactly a month later, Pitt, superintendent of Bow Street again, stood beside Charlotte in the throne room in Buckingham Palace. He was acutely uncomfortable in a new suit, an immaculate shirt, collar high and straight, boots perfect. Even his hair was well cut and tidy. Charlotte had a new gown, and he had never seen her look lovelier.

  But it was Vespasia, a few feet away, who held his attention. She was gowned in dove gray with pearls at her throat and ears. Her hair gleamed silver, her chin was high, her face exquisite, delicate, very pale. She refused to lean on Somerset Carlisle’s arm, even though he stood ready and watchful to help.

  A little in front of them, Charles Voisey knelt on one knee as another old woman, short, dumpy, sharp-eyed, moved a trifle clumsily to touch the sword to his shoulder and command him to arise.

  “We are sensible of the great service you have given us, for the throne and the continued safety and prosperity of your country, Sir Charles,” she said distinctly. “It is our pleasure to acknowledge before the world the acts of selfless courage and loyalty which you have performed in private.”

  The Prince of Wales, standing a few yards away, beamed his approval and even more heartfelt gratitude. “The throne has no more loyal servant ... or friend,” he said appreciatively.

  There was a rustle of enthusiastic applause from the audience of courtiers.

  Voisey tried to speak, and choked, as he would be choked from now on, should he ever again raise his voice for a republic.

  Victoria was accustomed to men being overcome in her presence. She ignored it, as good manners required.

  Voisey bowed and turned to leave. As he did so he looked at Pitt with a hatred so violent, so intense, his body shook with it, and there were beads of sweat in his face.

  Charlotte grasped Pitt’s arm until her fingers dug into his flesh even through the fab
ric of his coat.

  Voisey looked at Vespasia. She met his gaze unblinkingly, her head high, and she smiled with that same passionate calm with which Mario Corena had died.

  Then she turned and walked away so he should not see her tears.