The Whitechapel Conspiracy

chapter TEN

It was nearly midnight when Tellman reached Keppel Street, but he would have no chance in the morning to tell Gracie what he had learned, and Charlotte also. They must know. This hideous conspiracy was bigger than any individual's career, or even their safety. Not that keeping it from them would protect them. Nothing he or Pitt said could prevent them from continuing to pursue the truth. In both women, devotion to Pitt, as well as a sense of justice, was far stronger than any idea of obedience they might have possessed.

Therefore they must have the very slight protection that a knowledge of the conspiracy's enormity might give them.

And they might help. He told himself that fiercely as he stood on the doorstep and looked up at the dark windows. He was a police officer, a citizen of a land in very real danger of being plunged into violence from which it might not emerge for years, and even when it did, much of its heritage and identity could be destroyed. The safety of two women, even one he admired and one he loved, could not be placed before that.

He lifted up the brass knocker and let it fall. It thudded loudly in the silence. Nothing stirred right along the street. He knocked again, three times, and again.

A light came on upstairs, and a few moments later Charlotte herself answered the door, her eyes wide with fear, her hair a dark shadow across her shoulder.

"It's all right," Tellman said immediately, knowing what she feared. "But I've got things I have to tell you."

She pulled the door wider and he followed her inside. She called Gracie, and led him through to the kitchen. She riddled the stove and put more coal on. He bent to help her too late, feeling clumsy. She smiled at him and put the kettle on the hob.

When Gracie appeared, tousle-haired from sleep and, to Tellman, looking about fourteen, they sat around the table with tea, and he told them what he had learned from Lyndon Remus and all that it meant.

It was nearly three in the morning before, at last, Tellman went out into the dark streets to return home. Charlotte had offered to allow him to sleep in the front parlor, but he had declined. He did not feel it was proper, and he needed the width and the loneliness of the street to think.

***

When Charlotte woke it was daylight. At first all she remembered was that Pitt was not there. The space beside her was the kind of emptiness you have when a tooth has been lost, aching, tender, not right.

Then she remembered Tellman's visit and all that he had told them about the Whitechapel murders, Prince Eddy and Annie Crook, and the fearful conspiracy to conceal it all.

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.

"Of course he does!" Daniel said angrily, his face flushed, his eyes hot. "That's a stupid thing to say!" His voice was raw with emotion. His sister had challenged everything he loved.

At another time Charlotte would have told him very quickly about his language; now she was too conscious of the tremor in his voice, the uncertainty that prompted the retaliation.

Jemima was stung, but she was terrified that what she feared was true, and that was far more important than dignity.

Charlotte turned to her daughter. "Of course he wants to come home," she said calmly, as if any other idea were not frightening, only silly. "He hates being away, but sometimes doing the right thing is very unpleasant and means you have to give up some of the things that matter most to you for a while, not forever. I expect he misses us even more than we miss him, because at least we are all together. And we are here at home, and comfortable. He has to be where he is needed, and that is not nearly as clean or pleasant as this."

Jemima looked considerably comforted, enough to start arguing.

"Why Papa? Why not someone else?"

"Because it's difficult, and he's the best," Charlotte replied, and this time it was easy. "If you are the best, that means you always have to do your duty, because there is no one else who can do it for you."

Jemima smiled. That was an answer she liked.

"What sort of people is he chasing?" Daniel was not yet willing to let it go. "What have they done?"

This was less easy to explain. "They haven't done it yet. He is trying to make sure that they don't."

"Do what?" he persisted. "What is it they are going to do?"

"Blow up places with dynamite," she answered.

"What's dynamite?"

"Stuff that makes things blow up," Jemima supplied before Charlotte had time to struggle for it. "It kills people. Mary Ann told me."

"Why?" Daniel did not think much of Mary Ann. He was disinclined to think much of girls anyway, especially on such subjects as blowing people up.

" 'Cos they are in pieces, stupid," she retorted, pleased to turn the charge of inferiority back at him. "You couldn't be alive without your arms and legs or your head!"

That seemed to end the conversation for the time being, and they went down to breakfast.

It was well after nine, and Daniel was building a boat out of cardboard and glue, and Jemima was sewing, when Emily arrived to find Charlotte peeling potatoes.

"Where's Gracie?" she said, looking around.

"Out shopping," Charlotte replied, abandoning the sink and turning towards her.

Emily looked at her with concern, her fair eyebrows puckered a little, her eyes anxious. "How is Thomas?" she said quietly. There was no need to ask how Charlotte was; Emily could see the strain in her face, the weariness with which she moved.

"I don't know," Charlotte replied. "Not really. He writes often, but he doesn't say much, and I can't see his face, so I don't know if he's telling me the truth about being all right. It's too hot for tea. Would you like some lemonade?"

"Please." Emily sat down at the table.

Charlotte went to the pantry and returned with the lemonade. She poured two glasses full and passed one across. Then she sat down and told Emily all that had happened-from Gracie's excursion to Mitre Square to Tellman's visit last night. Not once did Emily interrupt her. She sat pale-faced until finally Charlotte stopped speaking.

"That is far more hideous than anything I had imagined," she said at last, and her voice trembled in spite of herself. "Who is behind it?"

"I don't know," Charlotte admitted. "It could be just about anyone."

"Does Mrs. Fetters have any idea?"

"No... at least I'm almost certain she doesn't. The last time I was there we found Martin Fetters's papers and it seemed he was a pretty ardent republican. If Adinett were a royalist, and part of this other terrible thing, and Fetters knew it, then that would explain why Adinett killed him."

"Of course it would. But how can you pursue that now?" Emily leaned forward urgently. "For heaven's sake, Charlotte, be careful! Think what they've done already. Adinett's dead, but there could be any number of others alive, and you don't have any idea who they are."

She was right, and Charlotte had no argument against it. But she could not let go of the thoughts, the knowledge that Pitt was still in Spitalfields, and men who were guilty of monstrous crimes were going unpunished, as if it did not matter.

"We must do something about it," Charlotte said quietly. "If we don't at least try, who will? And I have to know if that's the truth. Juno has the right to know why her husband was murdered. There must be people who care. Aunt Vespasia will know."

Emily considered for a moment. "Have you thought what will happen if it is true, and because of what we do it becomes public?" she said very gravely. "It will bring down the government..."

"If they connived at keeping it secret then they need to be brought down, but by a vote of no confidence in the House, not by revolution."

"It isn't only what they deserve." Emily was perfectly serious. "It is what else will happen, who will take their place. Oh, they may be bad, and I wouldn't argue over that, but before you destroy them you have to think whether what you get instead may not be even worse."

Charlotte shook her head.

"What could be worse than a secret society in government that for its own reasons will connive at murdering like that? It means there is no law and no justice. What happens the next time someone gets in their way? Who will it be? Over what? Can they be butchered too, and whoever does it protected?"

"That's extreme-"

"Of course it's extreme!" Charlotte protested. "They are insane. They have lost all sense of reality. Ask anyone who knows anything about the Whitechapel murders-I mean, really knows."

Emily was very pale. The memory of the tales of four years ago was in her eyes. "You're right," she whispered.

Charlotte leaned towards her. "If we cover it up too, then we are part of it. I'm not prepared to be."

"What are you going to do?"

"See Juno Fetters and tell her what I know."

Emily looked frightened. "Are you sure?"

Charlotte hesitated. "I think so. I'm sure she'd rather believe her husband was killed because he knew about this than because he was planning a republican revolution, and that's what she thinks now."

Emily's eyes widened. "A republican revolution? Because of this?" She drew a deep, shivery breath. "It might have succeeded... just possibly..."

Charlotte remembered Martin Fetters's face in the photograph Juno had shown her, the wide eyes frank, intelligent, daring. It was the face of a man who would follow his passions whatever the cost. She had liked him instinctively, as she had liked the way he had written about the places and people of the '48 revolutions. Through his sight it had been a noble struggle, and she had seen it that way with him. It had seemed the cause any decent person would have espoused, a love of justice, a common humanity. That he had planned violence here in England was startlingly bitter, almost like the betrayal of a friend. She realized it with surprise.

Emily's voice cut across her thoughts.

"And Adinett was against it? Then why not simply expose him?" she said reasonably. "He would have been stopped."

"I know," Charlotte agreed. "That's why it makes far more sense that this was the reason he was killed... he knew about the Whitechapel murders, and he would have exposed that when he had the proof."

"And now this man Remus is going to?"

Charlotte shuddered in spite of the warmth of the familiar room. "I suppose so. He surely wouldn't be stupid enough to try blackmailing them?" It was half a question.

Emily spoke very softly. "I'm not sure he isn't stupid even wanting to know."

Charlotte stood up. "I want to know... I think we have to." She took a deep breath. "Will you look after the children while I go to see Juno Fetters?"

"Of course. We'll go to the park," Emily agreed. Then, as Charlotte stood up and moved past her, she reached out and caught her arm. "Be careful!" she said with fear in her voice, her fingers gripping hard.

"I will," Charlotte promised. She meant it. All this she had was frighteningly precious-the children, this familiar home, Emily, and Pitt somewhere in the gray alleys of Spitalfields. "I will. I promise."

***

Juno was pleased to see Charlotte. Her days were still necessarily tedious. Very few people called and it was not appropriate that she enjoy any form of entertainment in public life. In truth, she did not wish to. But she had more than sufficient means to employ a full complement of servants, so there was nothing left for her to do. The hours dragged by; there was only so much reading or embroidery, so many letters to write, and she had no talent or interest in painting.

She did not immediately ask if Charlotte had news or further thoughts, and it was Charlotte who opened the subject as soon as they were in the garden room.

"I have discovered something which I need to tell you," she said rather guardedly. She saw Juno's face light with eagerness. "I am not at all sure if it is true, but if it is, then it will explain a great deal. It seems preposterous... and much more than that, we may never be able to prove it."

"That matters less," Juno assured her quickly. "I want to know for myself. I need to understand."

Charlotte saw the dark shadows around her eyes and the fine lines of strain in her face. She was living with a nightmare. All the past which she treasured, which should have given her strength now, was shadowed with doubt. Had the man she loved ever existed, or was he a creature of her imagination, someone she had built out of fragments and illusions because she needed to love?

"I think Martin discovered the truth about the most terrible crimes ever committed in London-or anywhere else," Charlotte said quietly. Even in this sunlit room looking onto the garden, the darkness still touched her at the thought, as if that fearful figure could haunt even these streets with his bloody knife.

"What?" Juno said urgently. "What crimes?"

"The Whitechapel murders," Charlotte replied, her voice catching.

Juno shook her head. "No... How-" She stopped. "I mean... if Martin had known, then he..."

"He would have told," Charlotte agreed. "That's why Adinett had to kill him, to keep him from ever doing that."

"Why?" Juno stared at her in horror and bewilderment. "I don't understand."

Quietly, in simple words raw with emotion, Charlotte told her all she knew. Juno listened without interruption until she fell silent at the end, waiting.

Juno spoke at last, her face ashen. It was as if she felt the brush of terror herself, almost as if she had seen the black carriage that rumbled through those narrow streets and looked into the eyes, for an instant, of the man who could do such things.

"How could Martin know that?" she said huskily. "Did he tell Adinett because he thought he could trust him? And he found out only in that last second of his life that Adinett was one of them?"

Charlotte nodded. "I think so."

"Then who is behind Remus now?" Juno asked.

"I don't know. Other republicans, perhaps..."

"So it was revolution..."

"I don't know. Maybe... maybe it was simply justice?" She did not believe it, but she would like to have. She should not stop Juno from clinging to that, if she could.

"There are other papers." Juno spoke again, her voice very steady, as if she were making an intense effort. "I have read through Martin's diaries again, and I know he is referring to something else that is not there. I've looked everywhere I can think of, but I haven't found anything." She was watching Charlotte, entreaty in her face, the struggle to conquer the fear inside her. She needed to know the truth because her nightmares would create it anyway, and yet as long as she did not know she could hope.

"Who else might he trust?" Charlotte racked her thoughts. "Who else would keep papers for him?"

"His publisher!" Juno said with a flash of excitement. "Thorold Dismore. He's an ardent republican. He makes so little secret of it most people discount him as being too open to be any danger. But he does mean it, and he's not nearly as bland or eccentric as they think. Martin would trust him because he knew they had the same ideals and Dismore has the courage of his beliefs."

Charlotte was unsure. "Can you go and ask him for Martin's papers, or would they belong to him, as publisher?"

"I don't know," Juno confessed, rising to her feet. "But I'm prepared to try any approach to get them. I'll beg or plead or threaten, or anything else I can think of. Will you come with me? You can call yourself a chaperone, if you like."

Charlotte seized the chance. "Of course."

***

It was not a simple matter to see Thorold Dismore, and they were obliged to wait for some three quarters of an hour in a smart, uncomfortable anteroom, but they made good use of the time to plan what Juno should say. When they were finally shown into his startlingly Spartan office, she was quite ready.

She looked very handsome in black, far more dramatic than Charlotte, who had not foreseen such a visit and was in a fairly sober soft green.

Dismore came forward with an easy courtesy. Whatever his political or social beliefs, he was by nature a gentleman, and by birth also, although he made little of it.

"Good morning, Mrs. Fetters. Please come in and sit down." He indicated a chair for her, and then turned to Charlotte.

"Mrs. Pitt," Juno introduced her. "She came to accompany me." It did not need further explanation.

"How do you do," Dismore said with a quickening of interest. Charlotte wondered if he remembered her name from the trial or if his interest was personal. She thought it would be the former, although she had certainly seen that sudden flare in men's eyes before.

"How do you do, Mr. Dismore," she replied modestly, and accepted the seat he offered her, a little to the side of Juno's.

When refreshment had been offered, and declined, it was natural to turn to the purpose of their call.

"Mr. Dismore, I have been reading some of my husband's letters and notes again." Juno smiled, her voice warm with memory.

He nodded. It was a very natural thing to do.

"I realize he had several articles planned for you to publish, on subjects very dear to his heart, matters of social reform he longed to see..."

A flicker of pain touched Dismore's eyes; it was more than sympathy, certainly more than mere good manners. Charlotte would have sworn it was real. But they were dealing with causes far more passionate and overwhelming than friendships, however long or sweet. As far as these men were concerned it was a form of war, and one sacrificed even comrades for the ultimate victory.

She studied Dismore's face as he listened to Juno describe the notes she had found. He nodded once or twice but he did not interrupt. He seemed intensely interested.

"Have you all these notes, Mrs. Fetters?" he asked when she finished.

"That is why I have come," she answered innocently. "There seem to be certain essential pieces missing, references to other works, especially"-she took a breath, and her eyes wavered as if she would turn to Charlotte, then she resisted the impulse-"references to people and beliefs which I think are essential to the sense of it."

"Yes?" He sat very still, unnaturally so.

"I wondered if he might have left any papers, documents, or earlier, more complete drafts with you?" She smiled uncertainly. "Together they might be sufficient for an article."

Dismore's face was eager. When he spoke his voice was sharp with excitement. "I have very little, but of course you may see it. But if there is more, Mrs. Fetters, then we must search everywhere possible until we find every last page. I am willing to go to any trouble, or expense, to find them..."

Charlotte felt a faint prickle of warning. Was that a discreet threat?

"He was a great man," Dismore continued. "He had a passion for justice which shone like a light through every piece he wrote. He could stir people to look again at old prejudices and rethink them." Again his face pinched with sorrow. "He is a loss to mankind, to honor and decency, and the love of good. A man such as can be followed but not replaced."

"Thank you," Juno said very slowly.

Charlotte wondered if the same thoughts were racing through Juno's mind as were in her own. Was this man a dupe, a naive enthusiast, or the most superb actor? The more closely she watched him the less certain she was. There was none of the deliberate menace in him that she had sensed in Gleave, the heaviness, the feeling of power which would be used ruthlessly if tempted. Rather it was an electric, almost manic energy of mind and a wholehearted passion and intelligence.

Juno would not give up so easily.

"Mr. Dismore, I should be so grateful if I might see what you have of Martin's, and take it home with me. I wish above all things to be able to put what he left in order and then offer you a last work as a memorial to him. That is, of course, if you would wish to publish it? Perhaps I am being presumptuous in-"

"Oh no!" he cut across her. "Not in the least. Of course, I will publish whatever there is, in the best form possible." He reached out and rang the bell on his desk, and when it was answered by the clerk, he instructed him to bring all the letters and papers they possessed written by Martin Fetters.

When the clerk had disappeared to obey, Dismore sat back in his chair and regarded Juno warmly.

"I am so glad you came, Mrs. Fetters. And may I say, I hope without impertinence, how much I admire your spirit in wishing to compose a tribute to Martin. He spoke of you with such high regard it is a pleasure to see that it was not just the voice of a loving husband but of a fine judge of character as well."

The color crept up Juno's cheeks and her eyes filled with tears.

Charlotte ached to comfort her, but there was no comfort to give. Either Dismore was innocent or he spoke with the most exquisite cruelty, and the longer she watched him the less sure she became as to which it was. He was sitting a little forward now, enthusiasm lighting his eyes, his face full of animation as he recalled other articles Fetters had written, journeys he had made to the sites of great struggles against tyranny. His own almost fanatic dedication crackled through every word.

Was it conceivable that his ardor for republican reform was the subtlest mask to conceal a royalist who would commit murder to hide the Whitechapel conspiracy? Did his passion for reform of the law actually cover an obsession so ruthless it would expose that same conspiracy in order to foment revolution with all its violence and pain?

She watched him, listened to the cadences of his voice, and still she could not judge.

The papers were brought in a heavy manila envelope, and without hesitation Dismore passed them to Juno. Was that honesty? Or the fact that he had already read through them all?

Juno took them with a smile that was tight with the strain of maintaining her composure. She barely glanced down at them.

"Thank you, Mr. Dismore," she said quietly. "Of course, I shall return to you everything that might be worthy of printing."

"Please do," he urged. "In fact, I should very much like to see whatever you have also, and if you discover more. There may be things of value that do not appear to be so."

"If you wish," she agreed, inclining her head.

He drew breath as if to add something further, an additional urgency to his request, then changed his mind. He smiled with sudden charming warmth. "Thank you for coming, Mrs. Fetters. I am sure that together we shall be able to create an article which will stand for the best memorial to your husband, the one he would wish, which will be a forwarding of the great cause of social justice and equality, a real freedom for all men. And it will come. He was a great man, a man of vision and brilliance, and the courage to use them both. I was privileged to know him and be a part of what he accomplished. It is a tragedy that he had to be lost to us so young, and when he is so desperately needed. I grieve with you."

Juno stood motionless, her eyes wide. "Thank you," she said slowly. "Thank you, Mr. Dismore."

When they were outside and safely back in the first passing hansom, she turned to Charlotte, clutching the papers in her hand.

"He's read them, and there's nothing."

"I know," Charlotte agreed. "Whatever it is that is missing from the papers, it's not what he gave us today."

"Do you suppose they are incomplete?" Juno asked, fingering the manila envelope. "And he kept the rest? He's a republican, I'd swear to that."

"I don't know," Charlotte admitted. The core of Dismore eluded her. She felt less certain of him now than she had before they met.

They rode back to Juno's home in silence, then together looked at all that Dismore had given them. It was vivid, beautifully written, full of passion and the hunger for justice. Once again Charlotte was torn by her instinctive liking for Martin Fetters, his enthusiasm, his courage, his zeal to include all mankind in the same privileges he enjoyed, and at the same time a revulsion for the destruction his beliefs would cause to so much that she loved. There was nothing whatever in any of the new material to suggest he knew of the Whitechapel murders, their reason, or any plan to involve Remus to reveal them now, and the rage and violence that could bring.

She left Juno sitting and reading them yet again, emotionally exhausted, and yet unable to put them down.

She walked to the omnibus stop, her own mind in turmoil. She could not speak to Pitt, which was what she wanted above all else. Tellman had very little knowledge of the world in which people like Dismore and Gleave lived, or the others who might be high in the Inner Circle. The only person she could trust was Aunt Vespasia.

Charlotte was fortunate in finding Vespasia at home and without company. She greeted Charlotte warmly, then looked more intently at her face and settled to listen in silence while the story poured out: everything that first Tellman had learned, and then Gracie's realization of the truth as she stood alone in Mitre Square.

Vespasia sat motionless. The light from the windows caught the fine lines on her skin, emphasizing both the strength of her and the years. Time had refined her, tempered her courage, but it had also hurt her and shown her too much of people's weaknesses and failures as well as their victories.

"The Whitechapel murders," she said softly, her voice hoarse with a horror she had not imagined. "And this man Remus is going to find the proof and then sell it to the newspapers?"

"Yes-that is what Tellman says. It will be the biggest story of the century. The government will probably fall, and the throne almost certainly," Charlotte replied.

"Indeed." Vespasia did not move, but stared with almost blind eyes into some distance which lay within her rather than beyond. "There will be violence and bloodshed such as we have not seen in England since the time of Cromwell. Dear God, what evil to match evil! They would sort out one corruption to replace it with another, and all the misery will be for nothing."

Charlotte leaned forward a little. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"I don't know," Vespasia confessed. "We need to learn who it is that is guiding Remus, and what part Dismore and Gleave play in it. What was Adinett doing in Cleveland Street? Was he seeking to find the information for Remus, or to prevent him from finding it?"

"Prevent him," Charlotte replied. "I think..." Then she realized how little she knew. Almost all of it was conjecture, fear. It involved Fetters and Adinett, but she was still not certain beyond doubt how. And there was no room for even the smallest mistake. She told Vespasia about Gleave's visit and his desire to find Martin Fetters's papers. She described her own sense of threat from him, but said here in this clean, golden room it sounded more like imagination than reality.

But Vespasia did not decry the impression. She continued to listen intently.

Charlotte then went on to tell her about Juno's conviction that there were new papers, and their visit to Thorold Dismore, and her belief that he was a true republican and fully intended to use all he could find or create to bring to pass his own purposes.

"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, 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, and yet an anticipation inside her 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.

The train as it roared through the black tunnel was far too noisy to allow conversation, and Charlotte's mind was absorbed in anticipation of seeing Pitt. It had been only a matter of a few weeks, but it stretched behind her like a desert of time. She pictured how he would look: his face, his expression, whether he would be tired, well or ill, happy to see her. How much had the injustice wounded him? Was he changed by the anger he had to feel? That thought cut so deeply it caught her like a physical pain.

She sat bolt upright in the train seat. She did not realize, until Tellman moved beside her and stood up, gesturing to the door, how she had been clenching and unclenching her fingers until they ached. She stood up as the train lurched to a stop. They were at Aldgate Street, and they must walk the rest of the way.

It was broader daylight now, but the streets were dirtier, more congested with carts and wagons and groups of men on their way to work, some trudging, heads down, others shouting across to each other. Was there really a tension in the air, or did she imagine it because she knew the history of the place, and because she herself was frightened?

She kept close beside Tellman as they turned north out of the High Street. He had said they were going to Brick Lane, because Pitt would pass that way on his journey to the silk factory where he worked. This was Whitechapel. She thought about what the name meant literally, and how ludicrous a name it was for this grimy, industrial area with its narrow streets; dust; gray, broken windows; dogleg alleys; chimneys belching smoke; smells of drains and middens. Its history of horror lay so close beneath the surface it was sharp and painful in the heart.

Tellman was walking quickly, not to seem out of place among the men hurrying to the sugar factories, warehouses and yards. She had to trot to keep up with him, but perhaps here that was appropriate. Women did not walk beside their men at this time of day, as if they were courting couples.

There was a burst of raucous laughter. Someone smashed a bottle, and the thin tinkle of glass was startlingly unpleasant. She thought not of the loss of something useful, as she would at home, but of the weapon the jagged ends would make.

They were in Brick Lane now.

Tellman stopped. She wondered why. Then, with a lurch of her heart she saw Pitt. He was on the other side of the road, walking steadily, but unlike the other men, looking from side to side, listening, seeing. He was dressed shabbily; his coat was torn at the back, sitting crookedly as usual. And instead of his beautiful boots that Emily had given him, he had old ones with the left sole loose and string for laces. His hat was dented at the side of the brim. It was only by the familiarity of his walk that she recognized him before he turned and saw her.

He hesitated. He would not expect to see her here-he probably had not even been thinking of her-but perhaps something about the way she stood attracted him.

She started forward, and Tellman caught her arm. For an instant she resented it and would have torn herself loose, then she realized that running across the street would draw attention to her, and so to Pitt, and she allowed herself to be held back. People around here knew Pitt. They would ask who she was. How could he answer? It would start gossip, questions.

She stood with one foot on the curb, her face hot with embarrassment.

Her brief movement had been enough. Pitt had recognized her. He sauntered across the street, dodging between the carts, behind a dray and in front of a costermonger's barrow. He reached them and after the merest nod to her, he spoke as if to Tellman.

"What are you doing here?" he said softly, his voice jagged with emotion. "What's happened?"

She stared at him, memorizing every line of him. He looked tired. His face was freshly shaved but there was a grayness to his skin, and a hollowness around his eyes. She felt her chest tight with the ache to comfort him, to take him home to his own house, to warmth and a clean kitchen, the smells of linen and scrubbed wood, the quietness of the garden with its scent of damp earth and cut grass, doors that closed out the world for a few hours-above all, to hold him in her arms.

But far more urgent than that was the need to show people that he had been right, to prove it so they would have to acknowledge it, to heal the old wound of his father's shame. She was angry, hurt, helpless, and she did not know what to say or how to explain herself to make him understand, so he would be as pleased to see her as she was just to be close to him, see his face and hear his voice.

"A lot's happened," Tellman was saying quietly. He only called Pitt "sir" if he was being insolent, so he had no need to guard his tongue for unintentional betrayal now. "I don't know it all, so it would be better for Mrs. Pitt to tell you. But it's things you have to know."

Pitt caught the edge of fear in Tellman's voice, and his anger evaporated. He looked at Charlotte.

She wanted to ask how he was, if he was all right, what his lodgings were like, if they were kind to him, was his bed clean, had he enough pillows, how was the food, was it enough. Most of all, she wanted him to know she loved him and missing him was more painful, more deeply lonely than she could have imagined, in every way: for laughter, for conversation, for sharing the good and bad of the day, for touching, just for knowing he was there.

Instead she began with what she had been rehearsing in her mind, and probably Tellman could have told him just as well. She was very succinct, very practical.

"I've been visiting Martin Fetters's widow..." She ignored the startled look on Pitt's face and went on quickly before he could interrupt. "I wanted to find out why he was killed. There has to be a reason..." She stopped again as a group of factory women went past them, talking together loudly, looking at Pitt, Tellman and Charlotte with undisguised curiosity.

Tellman shifted his weight uncomfortably.

Pitt moved a step away from Charlotte, leaving her seeming to belong to Tellman.

One of the women laughed and they moved on.

A vegetable cart rumbled down the street.

They could not stand here talking for long, or it would be remembered, and endanger Pitt.

"I read most of his papers," she said briefly. "He was a passionate republican, even prepared to help cause revolution. I believe that was why Adinett killed him, when he discovered what Fetters meant to do. I imagine he didn't dare trust the police. No one might have believed him-or worse, they might have been part of it."

Pitt was stunned. "Fetters was..." He took a long, deep breath as the meaning became clear of all she had said. "I see." He stood silently for long moments, staring at her. His eyes moved down her face as if he would recall every detail of it, touch her mind beyond.

Then he recalled himself to the present, the crowded street, the gray footpath and the urgency of the moment.

Charlotte found herself blushing, but it was a sweet warmth that ran through the core of her.

"If that is so, we have two conspiracies," he said at last. "One of the Whitechapel murderer to protect the throne at any cost at all, and another of the republicans to destroy it, also at any cost, perhaps an even more dreadful one. And we are not sure who is on which side."

"I told Aunt Vespasia. She asked to be remembered to you." She thought as she said it how inadequate those words were to convey the power of the emotions she had felt from Vespasia. But as she looked at Pitt's face she saw that he understood, and she relaxed again, smiling at him.

"What did she say?" he asked.

"To be careful," she replied ruefully. "There's nothing I can do anyway, except keep on looking to see if we can find the rest of Martin Fetters's papers. Juno is certain there are more."

"Don't ask anyone else!" Pitt said sharply. He looked at Tellman, then realized the pointlessness of expecting him to prevent her. Tellman was helpless, frustrated, and it was plain in his expression, a mixture of hurt, fear and anger.

"I won't!" she promised. It was said on the spur of feeling, to stop the anxiety she could see consuming him. "I won't speak to anyone else. I'll just visit with her and keep on looking inside the house."

He breathed out slowly.

"I must go."

She stood still, aching to touch him, but the street was full of people. Already they were being stared at. In spite of all sense she took a step forward.

Pitt put out his hand.

A workman on a bicycle whistled and shouted something unintelligible at Tellman, but it was obviously bawdy. He laughed and pedaled on.

Tellman took Charlotte by the arm and pulled her back. His fingers hurt.

Pitt let out a sigh. "Please be careful," he repeated. "And tell Daniel and Jemima I love them."

She nodded. "They know."

He hesitated only a moment, then turned and crossed the street again, away from them, not looking back.

Charlotte watched him go, and again heard laughter from a couple of youths on the farther corner.

"Come on!" Tellman said furiously. This time he took her wrist and yanked her around, almost off balance. She was about to say something very curt indeed when she realized how conspicuous she was making them. She had to behave as people expected or it would look even worse.

"I'm sorry," she said, and followed him dutifully back down towards the Whitechapel High Street. But her steps were lighter and there was a singing warmth inside her. Pitt had not touched her, nor she him, but the look in his eyes had been a caress in itself, a touch that would never fade.

***

Vespasia was not especially fond of Wagner, but the opera, any opera at all, was a grand occasion and held a certain glamour. Since the invitation was from Mario Corena, she would have accepted it even had it been to walk down the High Street in the rain. She would not have told him so, but she suspected he might already know. Not even the hideous news that Charlotte had brought could keep her from going with him.

He called for her at seven and they rode at a very leisurely pace in the carriage he had taken for the evening. The air was mild and the streets were crowded with people, seeing and being seen on their way to parties, dinners, balls, exhibitions, excursions up and down the river.

Mario was smiling, the last of the sunlight flickering on his face through the windows as they moved. She thought that time had been kind to him. His skin was still smooth, the lines were upward, without bitterness, in spite of all that had been lost. Perhaps he had never given up hope, only changed it as one cause had died and another had been created.

She remembered the long, golden evenings in Rome as the sun went down over the ancient ruins of the city, now lost in centuries of later and lesser dreams. The air there was warmer, with no cold edge to it, heavy with the smell of heat and dust. She remembered how they had walked on the pavements that had once been the center of the world, trodden by the feet of every nation on the earth come to pay tribute.

But that had been the Imperial age. Mario had stood on one of the older, simpler bridges across the Tiber, watching the light on the water, and told her with passion raw in his voice of the old republic that had thrown out the kings, long before the years of the Caesars. That was what he loved, the simplicity and the honor with which they had begun, before ambition overtook them and power corrupted them.

With the thought of power and corruption, a chill touched her that the warmth of the evening could not ease; even the echoes of memory were not strong enough to loose its grip.

She thought of the dark alleys of Whitechapel, of women waiting alone, hearing the rumble of carriage wheels behind them, perhaps even turning to see its denser blackness outlined against the gloom, then the door opening, the sight of a face for a moment, and the pain.

She thought of poor Eddy, a pawn moved one way and then the other, his emotions used and disregarded in a world he only half heard, perhaps half understood. And she thought of his mother, deaf also, pitied and often ignored, and how she must have grieved for him, and been helpless to move even to comfort him, let alone to save him.

They were approaching Covent Garden. There was a small girl standing on the corner and holding out a bunch of wilted flowers.

Mario stopped the coach, to the anger and inconvenience of the traffic around them in both directions. He climbed out and walked over to the girl. He bought the flowers and returned with them, smiling. They were dusty, their stalks bent and petals drooping.

"A little past their best," he said wryly. "And I gave rather too much for them." There was laughter in his eyes, and sadness.

She took them. "How very appropriate," she answered, smiling back, a ridiculous lump in her throat.

The carriage moved on again, amid considerable abuse.

"I'm sorry it's Wagner," he remarked, resettling himself into his seat. "I can never take it all with the right degree of seriousness. The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything."

She looked at him and knew how profoundly he meant it. There was an edge to his voice like that she remembered in the hot, dreadful days of the siege before the end. They had realized, during those nights alone, when all the work they could do was past and there was nothing else but to wait, that in the end they would not win. The Pope would return and sooner or later all the old corruptions would come back too, bland-faced, pitiless, impersonal.

But they had had a passion inside and a loyalty that gave more than it ever cost, even at the very last. The men who beat them were stronger, richer and sadder.

"They mock because they don't understand," she said, thinking of those who had derided their aspirations so long ago.

He was looking at her as he always had, as if there were no one else.

"Sometimes," he agreed. "It is far worse when they do it because they do understand but they hate what they cannot have." He smiled. "I remember my grandfather telling me that if I desired wealth or fame there would always be those who would hate me for it because both are earned at someone else's cost. But if I wished only to be good, no one would begrudge me that. I did not argue with him, partly because he was my grandfather, but mostly because I did not realize then how wrong he was." His mouth tightened and there was a terrible sadness in his eyes. "There is no hatred on earth like that for someone who possesses a virtue you do not have, or want. It is the mirror that shows you what you are, and obliges you to see it."

Without thinking she reached out her hand and laid it on his. His fingers closed over hers immediately, warm and strong.

"Who are you thinking of?" she asked, knowing it was not simply memory speaking, dear as that was.

He turned to her, his eyes grave. They were nearly there and it would be time to alight in a moment, join the throng gathering on the opera house steps, women in laces and silk, jewels winking in the lights, men in shirts so white they gleamed.

"Not a man, my dear, so much as a time." He looked around them. "This cannot last, the extravagance, the inequality and the waste of it. Look at the beauty and remember it, because it is worth a great deal, and too much of it will go." His voice was very soft. "Only a little wiser, a little more moderate, and they could have kept it all. That is the trouble-when anger bursts at last it destroys the good as well as the bad."

Before she could press him further the carriage stopped and he alighted, handing her down before the footman could do so. They went up the steps and in through the crowds, nodding to a friend or acquaintance.

They saw Charles Voisey standing deep in conversation with James Sissons. Sissons was looking flushed, and every time Voisey hesitated he cut in.

"Poor Voisey," Vespasia said wryly. "Do you think we are morally obliged to rescue him?"

Mario was puzzled. "Rescue him?" he asked.

"From the sugar factory man," she said with surprise at having to explain to him. "He is the most crashing bore."

An aching pity filled Mario's face, a regret that filled her with longing for things which could never be, not even all those years ago in Rome, except in dream.

"You know nothing of him, my dear, not of the man beneath the awkward surface. He deserves to be judged for his heart, not his grace... or lack of it." He took her arm and with surprising strength led her past Voisey and Sissons and the group beyond them, and up the stairs towards the box.

She saw Voisey take his seat almost opposite them, but she did not see Sissons again.

She wanted to enjoy the music, to let her mind and her heart be fully with Mario in this little space of time, but she could not rid her thoughts of what Charlotte had told her. She turned over every possibility in her mind, and the longer she did so the less could she doubt that what Lyndon Remus had been led to was hideously close to the truth, but that he was being manipulated for purposes far beyond everything he understood.

She trusted Mario's heart. Even after all those years she did not believe he had changed so much. His dreams were woven into the threads of his soul. But she did not trust his head. He was an idealist; he saw too much of the world in broad strokes, as he wished it to be. He had refused to allow experience to dull his hope or teach him reality.

She looked at his face, still so full of passion and hope, and followed his glance across at the royal box, which was empty tonight. The Prince of Wales was probably indulging in something a trifle less serious than the deliberation of the doomed gods of Valhalla.

"Did you choose Twilight of the Gods on purpose?" she asked.

Something in her voice caught his attention, a gravity, even a sense of time running out. There was no laughter in his eyes as he answered.

"No... but I could have," he said softly. "It is twilight, Vespasia, for very flawed gods who wasted their opportunities, spent too much money that was not theirs to cast away, borrowed money that has not been paid back. Good men will starve because of it, and that makes more than the victims angry. It wakens a rage in the ordinary man, and that is what brings down kings."

"I doubt it." She did not enjoy contradicting him. "The Prince of Wales has owed so much money for so long it is only a slow anger left now, not hot enough for what you speak of."

"That depends who he has borrowed from," he said gravely. "From rich men, bankers, speculators or courtiers; to some extent they took their own risks and can be thought to deserve their fate. But not if the lender is ruined and takes others down with him."

The houselights were dimming and a silence fell in the theater. Vespasia was hardly aware of it.

"And is that likely to happen, Mario?"

The orchestra sounded the first ominous notes.

She felt his hand touch hers gently in the darkness. There was still remarkable strength in him. In all the times he had touched her he had never hurt her, only broken her heart.

"Of course it will happen," he replied. "The Prince is as bent on his own destruction as any of Wagner's gods, and he will bring all Valhalla down with him, the good as well as the bad. But we have never known how to prevent that. That is their tragedy, that they will not listen until it is too late. But this time there are men with vision and practical sense. England is the last of the great powers to hear the voice of the common man in his cry for justice, but perhaps because of that it will learn from those of us who failed, and you will succeed."

The curtain went up and showed the elaborate set on the stage. In its light Vespasia looked at Mario, and saw the hope naked in his face, the courage to try again, in spite of all the battles lost, and in him still no generosity to wish victory for others.

She almost wished it could succeed, for his sake. The old corruption was deep, but in so many cases it was part of life, ignorance, not deliberate wickedness, not cruelty, simply blindness. She could understand Charles Voisey's arguments against hereditary privilege, but she knew human nature well enough to believe that the abuse of power is no respecter of persons: it affects king and commoner alike.

"Tyrants are not born, my dear," she said softly. "They are made, by opportunity, whatever title they give themselves."

He smiled at her. "You think too little of man. You must have faith."

She swallowed the tears in her throat, and did not argue.