The Whitechapel Conspiracy (22 page)

“Worst of all, he has to live there. I haven’t seen him. I can’t even write to him because I don’t know where he is! He writes to me—but I can’t answer!”

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” Vespasia said, sorrow filling her face. If she was angry also, it came second. She had seen too much injustice to be surprised anymore.

“It is partly in revenge for his testimony against John Adinett,” Charlotte explained. “And partly to protect him … from the Inner Circle.”

“I see.” Vespasia bit into the toast delicately. The maid brought fresh tea and poured it for Charlotte.

When the maid had gone, Charlotte resumed her story. She told Vespasia how she had determined to find the motive for Martin Fetters’s death, and had gone to visit Juno for that purpose. She recounted as exactly as she could recall what she had read in the papers in Fetters’s desk, and then spoke of Gleave’s visit.

Vespasia remained silent for several minutes.

“This is extremely unpleasant,” she said at length. “You are quite right to be afraid. It is also highly dangerous. I am inclined to share your opinion as to the purpose of Reginald Gleave’s visit to Mrs. Fetters. We must assume that he has a profound vested interest in the matter and may be prepared to pursue it regardless of what means may be necessary.”

“Including violence?” Charlotte made it only half a question.

Vespasia made no pretense. “Assuredly, if there is no other opportunity open to him. You must be extremely discreet.”

Charlotte smiled in spite of herself. “Anyone else would have said I must leave it alone.”

The light shone in Vespasia’s silver eyes. “And would you have?”

“No …”

“Good. If you had said yes it would either have been a lie, and I should not care to be lied to, or it would have been the truth, and I should have been very disappointed in you.” She leaned forward a little across the polished table. “But I mean the warning very seriously, Charlotte. I am not certain how much there is at stake, but I think it is a very great deal. The Prince of Wales is ill-advised, at best. At worst he is a spendthrift and careless of his reputation for financial honesty. Victoria has
long since lost her sense of duty. Between them they have invited republican sentiment to flourish, and it has done so. I had not realized it was so close to violence, or involved men as much admired as Martin Fetters. But what you have discovered would explain his death as nothing else so far has done.”

Charlotte realized she had been half hoping Vespasia would say she was mistaken, that there was some other, more personal answer, and society as they were familiar with it was in no danger. Her agreement swept away the last pretense.

“Is it the Inner Circle who support the monarchy at any cost?” Charlotte asked, lowering her voice in spite of the fact there was no one to overhear them.

“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted. “I do not know what their aims are, but I have no doubt they are willing to follow them regardless of the rest of us.

“I think it is best you keep silent,” Vespasia went on gravely. “Speak to no one. I believe Cornwallis is an honorable man, but I do not know it beyond doubt. If what you have suggested is true, then we have stumbled into something of immense power, and one murder more or less will be of no consequence at all, except to the victim and those who loved him or her. I hope Mrs. Fetters will do the same.”

Charlotte felt numb. What had begun as her private sense of outrage at injustice to Pitt had developed into a conspiracy that could threaten everything she knew.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, staring at Vespasia.

“I have no idea,” Vespasia confessed. “At least not yet.”

After Charlotte had left, looking confused and deeply unhappy, Vespasia sat for a long time in the golden room, staring out of the window and across the lawn. She had lived through the whole of Victoria’s reign. Forty years ago England had seemed the most stable place in the world, the one country where all the values were certain, money kept its worth, church bells rang on Sundays, and parsons preached of good and evil and few doubted them. Everyone knew their places and largely accepted them. The future stretched out ahead endlessly.

That world was gone, like summer flowers.

She was startled how angry she was that Pitt should have been robbed of his position and his life at home, and sent to work in Spitalfields, almost certainly uselessly. But if Cornwallis was the man Vespasia judged him to be, then at least Pitt was relatively safe from the vengeance of the Inner Circle; that was one good thing.

She no longer received the vast number of invitations she once had, but there were still several from which to choose. Today she could attend a garden party at Astbury House, if she wished to. She had meant to decline, and had even said as much to Lady Weston yesterday. But she knew various people who would be there—Randolph Churchill and Ardal Juster, among others. She would accept after all. Perhaps she would see Somerset Carlisle. He was one man she would trust.

The afternoon was fine and warm, and the gardens were in full bloom. It could not have been a better day for a party in the open air. Vespasia arrived late, as was her habit now, and found the lawns bright with the silks and muslins of beautiful gowns, the cartwheels of hats decked with blossom, swathed with gauze and tulle, and like everyone else she was in constant danger of being skewered by the point of some carelessly wielded parasol.

She wore a gown of two shades of lavender and gray, and a hat with a brim which swept up like a bird’s wing, arching rakishly to one side. Only a woman who did not care in the slightest what others thought would dare to choose such a thing.

“Marvelous, my dear,” Lady Weston said coldly. “Quite unique, I’m sure.” By which she meant it was out of fashion and no one else would be caught wearing it.

“Thank you,” Vespasia said with a dazzling smile. “How generous of you.” She glanced up and down Lady Weston’s unimaginative blue dress with total dismissal. “Such a wonderful gift.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lady Weston was confused.

“The modesty to admire others,” Vespasia explained, then,
with another smile, flicked her skirt and left Lady Weston furious, knowing she had been bested and only now realizing how.

Vespasia passed the newspaper proprietor Thorold Dismore, whose keen face was sharp with heightened emotion. He was talking with Sissons, the sugar manufacturer. This time Sissons too seemed to be driven by some vigor and enthusiasm. He was barely recognizable as the same man who had been such a thundering bore with the Prince of Wales.

Vespasia watched for a moment with interest at the change in him, wondering what they could be discussing which could so engage them both. Dismore was passionate, eccentric, a crusader for causes in spite of being born to wealth and position. He was a brilliant speaker, a wit at times, if not on the subject of political reform.

Sissons was self-made and had seemed leaden of intellect, socially inept when faced with royalty. Perhaps he was one of those who simply freeze when in the presence of one in direct line to the throne. With some people it was genius which paralyzed them, with some beauty, with a few it was rank.

Still, she was curious to know what they held in common that so engrossed them.

She was never to know. She found herself face-to-face with Charles Voisey, whose eyes were narrowed against the sun. She could not read the emotion in his face. She had no idea whether he liked or disliked her, admired or despised her, or even dismissed her from his thoughts the moment she was out of sight. It was not a feeling she found comfortable.

“Good afternoon, Lady Vespasia,” he said politely. “A beautiful garden.” He looked around them at the profusion of color and shape, the dark, trimmed hedges, the herbaceous borders, the smooth lawn and a stand of luminous purple irises in bloom with the light through their curved petals. It was lazy in the warmth, dizzy with perfume. “So very English,” he added.

So it was. And even as they stood there she remembered the heat of Rome, the dark cypresses, the sound of falling water from the fountains, like music in stone. During the days
her eyes had been narrowed against the lush sun, but in the evening the light was soft, ocher and rose, bathing everything in a beauty that healed over the scars of violence and neglect.

But that was to do with Mario Corena, not this man in front of her. It was a different battle, different ideals. Now she must think of Pitt and the monstrous conspiracy of which he was one of the victims.

“Indeed,” she replied with equally distant courtesy. “There is something particularly rich about these few weeks of high summer. Perhaps because they are so brief and so uncertain. Tomorrow it may rain.”

His eyes wandered very slightly. “You sound very reflective, Lady Vespasia, and a trifle sad.” It was not quite a question.

She looked at his face in the unforgiving sunlight. It found every flaw, every trace left by passion, temper, or pain. How much had it hurt him that Adinett had hanged? She had heard a raw note of rage when he had spoken at the reception, before the appeal. And yet he had been one of the judges who had been of the majority opinion, for conviction. But since it had been four to one, had he voted against, it would have betrayed his loyalty without altering the outcome. That must have galled him to the soul!

Was he driven by personal friendship or political passion? Or simply a belief in John Adinett’s innocence? The prosecution had never been able even to suggest a motive for murder, let alone prove one.

“Of course,” she replied noncommittally. “Part of the nature of one’s joy in summer’s fleeting beauty is the knowledge that it will pass too soon, and the certainty that it will come again, even if we will not all see it.”

He was watching her intently now, all pretense of casual politeness gone. “We do not all see it now, Lady Vespasia.”

She thought of Pitt in Spitalfields, and Adinett in his grave, and the unnamed millions who did not stand amid the flowers in the sun. There was no time to play.

“Very few of us do, Mr. Voisey,” she agreed. “But at least it exists, and that is hopeful. Better flowers bloom for a few than not at all.”

“As long as we are of the few!” he returned instantly, and this time there was no disguising the bitterness in his face.

She smiled very slowly; there was no anger in her for his rudeness. It had been an accusation.

Doubt flickered in his eyes that perhaps he had made an error. She had wished him to show his hand, and he had done so. It cost him an effort; he was not a man who smiled superficially, but his face relaxed now, and he smiled at her widely, showing excellent teeth.

“Of course, or how else would we speak of them, except in dream? But I know you have worked for reforms, as I have, and injustice outrages you also.”

Now she was uncertain. He was not an easy man, but perhaps it was a rare integrity which made him so. It was not impossible.

Had Adinett killed Martin Fetters to prevent a republican revolution in England? That was a very different thing from reform by changing the law, by persuasion of the people who had the power to act.

She smiled back at him, and this time she meant it.

A moment later they were joined by Lord Randolph Churchill, and the conversation was no longer personal. With an election so close, naturally politics arose: Gladstone and the whole troubled issue of Irish Home Rule, the rise of anarchy across Europe, and dynamiters here in London.

“The whole East End is like a powder keg,” Churchill said softly to Voisey, apparently having forgotten Vespasia was still within earshot. “It will only take the right spark and it will all go up!”

“What are you doing?” Voisey asked, his voice full of concern, his brow puckered.

“I need to know whom I can trust and whom I can’t,” Churchill replied bitterly.

A cautious expression flickered in Voisey’s face. “You need the Queen to come out of seclusion and start pleasing the public again, and the Prince of Wales to pay his debts and stop living as if there were no tomorrow—and no reckoning.”

“Given all that I shouldn’t have a problem,” Churchill rejoined.
“I knew Warren, and Abberline to a degree, but I’m not sure of Narraway. Clever, certainly, but I don’t know where his loyalties are, if it comes to it!”

Voisey smiled.

A group of young women passed, laughing together, glancing sideways and hastily composing themselves to a more decorous manner. They were pretty, fair-skinned and blemishless, dressed in pastel laces and muslin, skirts swirling.

Vespasia had no hunger to be their age again, for all its hope and innocence. Her life had been rich, her regrets were few; there had been an act of selfishness or stupidity here and there, but never for anything she had failed to grasp, nothing flinched from out of cowardice—although perhaps there should have been.

She did not find Somerset Carlisle and was conscious of a feeling of disappointment, suddenly aware that she had been standing a long time. She was about to excuse herself and leave when she was aware of hearing Churchill’s voice again just beyond a rose arbor. He was speaking hurriedly, and she could barely distinguish the words.

“ … refer to it again! It has been dealt with. It won’t happen again.”

“It had damned well better not!” another voice said in hardly more than a whisper, the emotion in it so intense the voice was unrecognizable. “Another conspiracy like that could mean the end—and I don’t say that lightly!”

“They’re all dead, God help us,” Churchill replied hoarsely. “What did you think we were going to do—pay blackmail? And where do you imagine the end of that would be?”

“In the grave,” came the response. “Where it belongs.”

At last Vespasia turned away. She had no idea of the meaning of what she had overheard.

Ahead of her, Lady Weston was telling an admirer about Oscar Wilde’s latest play,
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
They both laughed.

Vespasia moved out into the sunlight and joined them, for once actually intruding into someone else’s conversation. It
was sane, trivial, funny, and she desperately needed to be part of it. It was brightly glittering and familiar. She would hold on to it as long as she could.