Death at Whitechapel

by Robin Paige

  Jennie’s hands fluttered and she clasped them in her lap. “Oh, it has,” she said quickly. Now was the time to tell him about the photograph and those miserable letters, before he distracted himself with the many projects he had arranged to undertake on his return. “But I am afraid that something has arisen that I could not have anticipated when I—”

  “Are you speaking of Maggie?” Winston asked in a cautionary tone. “You should not consider the magazine your financial obligation, you know. You are to be the editor, not an investor. Not a penny of your money should go into it.” Maggie was the sobriquet that one of Jennie’s friends had given to her latest undertaking—a quarterly literary journal.

  “No, not of Maggie,” Jennie said. “I have hired a managing editor who is raising the necessary funds. No, there is something else.” She cleared her throat nervously. “I’m afraid I must tell you that—”

  “Listen to me, Mama.” Winston spoke in a firm, measured tone. “You and I are both spendthrift and extravagant and neither of us pays the proper sort of attention to money. But—and I say this in all sympathy, my darling, and not at all in anger—in comparison to your follies, my own are quite trifling. I may squander a few hundred on a pony, or rare books, or a dozen bottles of fine Scotch. But you are utterly suicidal in your expenditures. You must have lost a thousand pounds or more at the races at Goodwood.”

  Jennie frowned. She loved her son dearly, but when he climbed onto his high horse and began to lecture her, he was really quite insufferable. “This is not the time for you to preach to me on extravagance, Winston,” she replied sharply. “The current difficulty is not of my making, and it has enormous consequences for you.”

  Winston did not appear to have heard her. “I am sorry to be so blunt, Mama, but someone must say it. You have brought us to the brink. If this constant financial drain continues, we will surely be ruined, and our peace and contentment will be ended forever.”

  Then, his mouth relaxing, smiling the shy, boyish smile that always charmed Jennie, he added, “But the soldiers are home from the wars, dearest, and this should be a day of celebration! We shall put this wretched business aside and amuse ourselves. Is Jack in town? Is there a small dinner party somewhere tonight where I might pick up a few shreds of political gossip? I am speaking again at Bradford in a few days, and I should very much like to appear in the know.” His smile became wistful. “How I wish, oh how I wish, Mama, that dear Papa could have heard me speak there in July. I was listened to with the greatest of attention for over an hour, and there was really a very great deal of enthusiasm, people mounting their chairs and applauding me. It was enormously gratifying.”

  Jennie sat back, thinking. Perhaps this was not the time to tell him about the bank notes in the envelope, or where they were going, or why. Perhaps it was not fair to seek her son’s help in resolving this ugly business. He was so full of political ambitions and his plans for another book, so aglow with the promise of his future. No, he was not the person to help her think how to put a stop to this dreadful affair.

  But then who? Certainly not dear Jack—he was too young, and just beginning to find his feet. But the burden was so great that she could not bear it alone much longer. Perhaps, shameful as the matter was, she should share it with the Prince. The connection between Randolph and HRH had been strong to the end. Indeed, Bertie supported Winston’s ambitions and had promised to help him in every way possible. The thought of it gave her a new hope. Yes, she would talk with the Prince, and save Winston the trauma of knowing her secret—at least for now.

  She smiled tightly. “Your brother has gone off with Ernest Cassel on some sort of business. But the Sheridans are in town and have invited a very small group to Sibley House for dinner. Lord Charles will be glad to hear your reports. He asked me about you just the other day.”

  “Sheridan? Ah, that great anomaly, a liberal lord.” Winston smiled a worldly smile and put his hand on his hip, his elbow jutting out in the style he had copied from his father. “I heard that he was in the Sudan in the eighties—had quite a time there, in fact—so we can exchange reminiscences. Did you know that his wife is the pen behind those pseudonymous Bardwell stories you fancy? A female Conan Doyle, or so she is being called.”

  “It is a well-deserved compliment,” Jennie said. “Lady Charles and I are discussing the possibility of her writing something for Maggie’s first issue. A story from her is sure to attract readers.”

  “Well, then.” Winston stood. “I’ll just go and see if Walden has finished unpacking my gear. I have one or two little presents for you.”

  “And I shall send Lady Charles a note and let her know that you will be coming,” Jennie said, making up her mind. “She won’t object—she is delightfully informal.” She glanced at Winston out of the corner of her eye. “George Cornwallis-West is escorting me, since of course I had no idea when you would manage to get home.”

  Winston paused on his way to the door. “George, heh?” Jennie could tell that he was making an effort, albeit not a very successful one, to screen the disapproval from his voice. “Since you hadn’t mentioned him recently in your letters, I thought that perhaps the two of you were no longer...” His lips tightened.

  Jennie, who did not intend to let her son tell her who she might take as a lover, let the silence lengthen. “Winston, my dear,” she said at last, “you can’t possibly suppose that I tell you everything that is happening in my life?”

  2

  Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

  HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL

  Journal

  England expects that every man will do his duty.

  HORATIO, LORD NELSON

  at the Battle of Trafalgar

  Sibley House, London

  3 October, 1898

  Kate Sheridan hurriedly wrote a few lines, folded and sealed the note, and handed it to the footman.

  “To Lady Randolph,” she said. “In Number 35 Great Cumberland Place. And ask Parsons to lay another place, please. We will be seven at dinner.”

  As the footman went off, Charles looked up from his newspaper. They were in the library, in Kate’s opinion the only habitable room in Sibley House, the grand Mayfair mansion that was part of Charles’s ancestral heritage. Kate much preferred her own home, Bishop’s Keep, and spent as much time there as possible, coming to London—and to Sibley House—only when it was necessary.

  “So young Churchill is back from the wars,” Charles remarked. “I suppose he is already writing a new book to tell us all about Omdurman. I quite enjoyed his report on the Indian campaign, though. He is a precocious boy.”

  “He’s hardly a boy,” Kate objected. She picked up a book containing one of Wilkie Collins’s mysteries and went to sit by the fire. A damp, chill fog, thick with the coal smoke of London chimney pots, had settled into the streets. She was glad they were leaving the next day for East Anglia, where the sun shone and a few roses still bloomed in her garden. She settled into her chair, thinking of Winston and of the relief Lady Randolph must feel now that her son was safely home from the Egyptian campaign. “That young man has been in some quite deadly battles.”

  “To hear him tell it, at least,” Charles said dryly. He grinned. “But his adventures will be popular with the Tory working men, which I suppose is what he has in mind by writing those letters for the Morning Post. One suspects that he is already in the running for a seat in the Commons.”

  “Charles,” Kate said, in some surprise. “I thought you admired Winston.”

  “So I do, more or less,” Charles replied. “He has zeal and ambition and a great future—although I can’t agree with his Conservative politics. But why does he have to be in such an infernal hurry to make a name for himself?” Answering his own question, he said, “It’s his mother’s American blood, I suppose, that gives him that indomitable spirit.” He raised his paper and from behind it, added, “You have the same fire. That’s what so infuriates Mama, you k
now. If you gave in now and then, you might win the old lady over.”

  “I doubt it,” Kate said, with a laugh that was half a sigh. “I could give in to your mother’s demands from now until the Resurrection, but that wouldn’t alter the fact that my mother was Irish.”

  Charles chuckled. “Mama can think as she likes,” he replied, still behind the newspaper. “It won’t alter the fact that I love you—American, Irish, whatever you are.”

  “And I you, my dear,” Kate said softly, “all that you are.” Her husband rarely spoke of his feelings, and she treasured the moments when he opened his heart.

  She sat back and opened her book but her glance lingered on the fire instead of the page. When she fell in love with Charles, she had been twenty-seven and a spinster, accustomed to living her own life and earning her own living. Her inheritance of her aunts’ estate and manor house had strengthened her independence, as had the financial and literary success of the stories she wrote under the pen name of Beryl Bardwell. Whether it was her Irish blood, or her upbringing in a New York City working-class family, or the financial freedom she had gained with her pen, Kathryn Ardleigh Sheridan was her own woman, and her mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Somersworth, could not forgive her for it.

  For a time, Lady Somersworth’s stern disapproval had made Kate unhappy, for she had hoped to be close to Charles’s mother. In the last eighteen months, though, this difficulty had been overshadowed by another: her loss of the child she carried and the doctor’s announcement that she could never again conceive. Now, even that darkness was fading, for Charles had made it clear that he did not long for a child, that he was quite content that their marriage be exactly as it was. Anyway, Kate had satisfying work of her own to fill any empty hours. She had started a vocational school for girls, called a School for the Useful Arts, at Bishop’s Keep. And her latest Bardwell book, an historical novel set in the seacoast village of Rottingdean and called Smugglers’ Village, had just appeared. The reviews had been excellent, and she was beginning to think it was time to start another book, although she had no idea what sort of book it ought to be.

  On the other side of the fire, Charles Sheridan, the fifth Baron of Somersworth, was also neglecting his reading. He was thinking, quite unhappily, about his mother and the visit he should have to pay next week to the family estate in Norwich, where the dowager Lady Somersworth lived when not in residence at Sibley House.

  Until two years ago, Somersworth and Sibley House had also been home to his older brother, Robert, the fourth Baron, whose death had shifted to Charles’s unwilling shoulders not only the barony but the duties and responsibilities that went with it: the management of estates in England and Ireland, the family seat in the House of Lords, and a place in Society—none of which Charles wanted. The estates presented far too many intractable problems, his liberal leanings made him unpopular with the other lords, and he didn’t give a shilling for Society, which he found trivial and tedious. He had even insisted on retaining the name of Sheridan, his own name, which had served him well for his lifetime.

  Now, after two long years of being Lord Sheridan, Charles was bored, frustrated, and ready to throw the whole damn thing over. If he had his way, he and Kate would retire to her Essex estate, where she could write her books and tend her gardens and he could indulge himself by modernizing the old house, cataloging the local flora and fauna, and pursuing the new developments in forensic technologies in which he had a strong interest.

  The clock in the corner proffered a tentative whirr, wheezed twice, and began to chime the hour. If he wanted to retire to the country, why the devil didn’t he retire? The answer unfortunately lay in his oppressive sense of duty. When he and Robert were children, their father had dinned into their ears the favorite British catechism: Not what you will but what you must, and that hoary old exhortation of Nelson’s: England expects that every man will do his duty.

  Unfortunately, Charles had learned his lesson all too well. Until his mother was dead, he would do what he must to uphold the family name, which would die with him, since Kate could not bear him any children. What he would not do was allow his mother to behave discourteously to his wife, and the safest way to guarantee that was to keep them apart. Hence, Kate was taking the train to Essex in the morning, and he would go off to Somersworth to discuss the year’s harvest yields with his estate agent, act the beneficent landlord to his tenants, and play the role of dutiful son to his overbearing mother—all very dull, terribly boring, and unfortunately obligatory.

  Charles sighed and went back to his newspaper.

  3

  11 April, 1898

  Marlborough House

  My dear Winston,

  I cannot resist writing a few lines to congratulate you on the success of your book! I have read it with the greatest possible interest and I think the descriptions and the language generally excellent. Everybody is reading it, and I only hear it spoken of with praise. Having now seen active service you will wish to see more, and have as great a chance I am sure of winning the V.C. as Fincastle had; and I hope you will not follow the example of the latter, who I regret to say intends leaving the Army in order to go into Parliament.

  You have plenty of time before you, and should certainly stick to the Army before adding MP to your name.

  Hoping that you are flourishing,

  I am, Yours very sincerely,

  A.E. [Albert Edward, Prince of Wales]

  The dining room at Sibley House was as large and as bleak as a cave, but Kate had screened off an area near the fireplace and had a table for seven arranged there. Their guests were Lady Randolph and her companion, a handsome young (very young) lieutenant of the Scots Guards named George Cornwallis-West; Manfred Raeburn, the managing editor of Jennie’s magazine; Mr. Raeburn’s vivacious and thoroughly modern sister, Maude, who had recently returned from a walking tour of Italy and Greece; and Winston.

  The staff at Sibley House was so excellently trained that Kate gave scarcely a thought to the mechanics of dinner. Elegant dishes appeared and disappeared and fine wines were poured with a flourish, while sparkling conversation ebbed and flowed the length of the intimate table. The only difficulty that Kate could see was a marked coldness between Winston and Mr. Raeburn, a bespectacled man who had apparently been in his regiment, and a definite stiffness between Winston and Lieutenant Cornwallis-West. Kate understood perfectly well what that was about, because the young guardsman, who was almost exactly Winston’s age, was Lady Randolph’s current affaire du coeur. Lady Randolph—her dark beauty emphasized by her pale green satin gown, quite décolleté—was a stunningly attractive woman who always had a coterie of men at her heels, usually younger men. The rumors about her relationship with the gallant and self-assured guardsman had been flying wildly about London all summer, even finding their way into the newspapers. Kate put Winston’s aloofness down to jealousy, for it was obvious from the way he looked at his mother that he was extraordinarily attached to Jennie, and not a little possessive.

  The women made their usual departure after dinner, Kate leading them to the smallest of the three drawing rooms, where fresh flowers from the conservatory scented the air and coffee and liqueurs were arranged on a table in front of the fire. Miss Raeburn excused herself to freshen up, and Kate and Lady Randolph were left alone.

  Kate leaned back in her chair, wishing that she were an artist and might sketch this beautiful woman with the enigmatic eyes. “I am so glad to get to know you better, Lady Randolph.”

  “I should like to call you Kate,” Lady Randolph said decidedly, “and I wish you would call me Jennie.” She returned Kate’s smile and lowered her voice confidentially. “After all, we are both Americans, married into English families. We both know how difficult that can be.” She paused. “And you already know that I am a great admirer of Beryl Bardwell. I have read all her work.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, although she doubted that Jennie Churchill knew everything she had written. Back in New York, where
she had supported herself entirely with her pen, Kate had produced whatever she could sell—mostly sensational penny dreadfuls with titles like “Missing Pearl” and “The Daughter’s Deadly Revenge” for Frank Leslie’s monthly magazine. She wasn’t ashamed of the work, for it had put food on the table and a roof over her head, and had taught her a good bit into the bargain. But the surprising inheritance that had delivered her from writing for a living now allowed her to write as she chose. While her recent work still belonged more or less to the popular genre of detective fiction, it was far more psychologically inclined, with a deeper exploration of motive and mood. Kate was especially interested in portraying strong and self-willed women who made their own way in the world, sometimes becoming victims of their own ambition, sometimes becoming villains, sometimes heroines. Strong-willed, forthright women who managed their own affairs, knew their own minds, and followed their own hearts. Women like Jennie Churchill—and hence Kate’s interest in her guest.

  “Perhaps,” Jennie said, “you would consider writing a story for the first issue of my new literary venture. And I should very much like to have your advice and counsel on the magazine itself.”

  “Mine?” Kate asked in surprise. “But I thought that Mr. Raeburn—”

  “Mr. Raeburn,” Jennie said firmly, “is experienced in the technical and financial aspects of publishing. But I need someone who knows the literary scene and can help me make an editorial plan for the first four issues.” Her dark eyes were intense, her face passionate. “I have such dreams for the magazine, Kate! My life has grown meaningless these last two years. I sometimes think that all I have to look forward to is an endless parade of country-house parties, dinners, and balls.” She leaned forward. “The magazine can change all that. It will give my life direction. More than that, it will have an influence on the way people think.”