The Whitechapel Conspiracy (31 page)

Who was Alice, that the coach driver had nearly run her down, not once, but twice? Why? What kind of a man wants to murder a seven-year-old child?

There was definitely a great deal more to learn, and if Remus knew any of it, then Tellman must get it from him, one way or another.

And who was the man Remus had met in Regent’s Park, who seemed to have been giving him advice and instruction? And who was the man he had quarreled with at the edge of Hyde Park? From Gracie’s description, a different man.

He got off at Whitechapel and walked rapidly to Cleveland Street, turning the corner and striding briskly.

This time luck was with him. He saw the figure of Remus less than a hundred yards ahead, standing almost still, as if uncertain which way to go.

Tellman increased his pace and reached him just as he was about to turn left and go towards the tobacconist’s shop.

Tellman put out his hand and grasped Remus’s arm.

“Before you go, Mr. Remus, I’d like a word with you.”

Remus jumped as if he had been frightened half out of his wits.

“Sergeant Tellman! What the devil are—” Then he stopped abruptly.

“Looking for you,” Tellman answered the question, even though it had not been completed.

Remus effected innocence. “Why?” He started to say something more, then thought better of it. He knew about protesting too much.

“Oh, a lot of things,” Tellman said casually, but without letting go of Remus’s arm. He could feel the muscles clenched under his fingers. “We can start with Annie Crook, go on through her abduction to Guy’s Hospital and whatever happened to her, and the death of her father, and the man you met in Regent’s Park, and the other man you quarreled with in Hyde Park…”

Remus was too badly shaken to conceal it. His face was white, fine beads of sweat on his lip and brow, but he said nothing.

“And we could go on to the coach driver who tried to run down the child, Alice Crook, and then threw himself into the river, only he swam out of it again,” Tellman went on. “But most of all I want to know about the man inside the coach that drove around Hanbury Street and Buck’s Row in the autumn of ’88, and cut the throats of five women, ending up disemboweling Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, where you were last night …” He stopped because he thought Remus was going to faint. He retained his grasp on him now as much to hold him up as to prevent him from running away.

Remus was shuddering violently. He tried to swallow, and nearly choked.

“You know who Jack is.” Tellman made it a statement.

Remus’s whole body was rigid, every muscle locked.

Tellman felt his own breath rasping. “He’s still alive … isn’t he?” he said hoarsely.

Remus jerked his head in a nod, but in spite of his fear there was a light returning to his eyes, almost a brilliance. He was sweating profusely. “It’s the story of the century,” he said, licking his lips nervously. “It’ll change the world … I swear!”

Tellman was doubtful, but he could see that Remus believed it. “If it catches Jack that’ll be enough for me,” he said quietly. “But you had better do some explaining, and now.” He could not think of a sufficiently effective threat, so he did not add one.

The challenge returned to Remus’s eyes. He snatched his arm loose from Tellman’s grip. “You won’t prove it without me. You’ll be lucky if you ever prove it at all!”

“Maybe it isn’t true.”

“Oh, it’s true!” Remus assured him, his voice ringing with certainty. “I just need a few more pieces. Gull’s dead, but there’ll be enough left, one way or another. And Stephen’s dead too, poor devil … and Eddy, but I’ll still prove it, in spite of them.”

“We,” Tellman corrected him grimly. “We’ll prove it.”

“I don’t need you.”

“Yes you do, or I’ll blow it wide open,” Tellman threatened. “I don’t care about making a story, you’re welcome to that, but I want the truth for other reasons, and I’ll get it, whether I make your story or ruin it.”

“Then come away from the shop,” Remus urged, glancing over his shoulder and back again at Tellman. “We can’t afford to wait around here and be noticed.” He turned as he spoke and started off towards the Mile End Road again.

The air smelled like thunder, damp and heavy.

Tellman hurried after him. “Explain it to me,” he ordered. “And no lies. I know a great deal. I just haven’t worked out how it all connects up … not yet.”

Remus walked a few paces without answering.

“Who is Annie Crook?” Tellman asked, matching him step for step. “And more important, where is she now?”

Remus deliberately ignored the first question. “I don’t know where she is,” he answered without looking at him. Then, before Tellman could become angry, he added, “Bedlam, by now, I should think. She was declared insane and put away. I don’t know whether she’s still alive. There’s no proper record of her at Guy’s, but I know she went there and was kept there for months.”

“And who was her lover?” Tellman went on. In the distance thunder rumbled over the rooftops and a few heavy spots of rain fell.

Remus stopped dead, so abruptly Tellman was a couple of steps beyond him before he stopped too.

Remus’s eyes were wide; he started to laugh, a high, sharp, hysterical sound. Several people turned in the street to look at him.

“Stop it!” Tellman wanted to slap him, but it would have drawn even more attention to them. “Be quiet!”

Remus gulped and controlled himself with an effort. “You don’t know a damn thing, do you? You’re just guessing. Go away. I don’t need you.”

“Yes, you do,” Tellman contradicted him with certainty. “You haven’t got all the answers yet, and you can’t get them, or you would have. But you know enough to be frightened. What else do you need? Maybe I can help. I’m police; I can ask questions you can’t.”

“Police!” Remus gave a guffaw of laughter, full of anger and derision. “Police? Abberline was police—and Warren! As high as you like … commissioner, even.”

“I know who they are,” Tellman retorted sharply.

“Of course you do,” Remus agreed, nodding his head, his eyes glittering. The rain was heavier, and warm. “But do you know what they did? Because if you do, the next thing I know I’ll be in one of these alleys with my throat cut as well.” He took a step back as he said it, almost as if he thought Tellman might make a sudden lunge for him.

“Are you saying Abberline and Warren were involved?” Tellman demanded.

Remus’s contempt was withering. “Of course they were! How else do you think it was all covered up?”

It was absurd. “That’s ridiculous!” Tellman said aloud, ignoring the rain, which was now soaking them both. “Why would someone like Abberline want to cover up murder? He’d have made a name for himself that would have gone down in history if he’d solved that case. The man who caught the Whitechapel murderer could have called his own price.”

“There are some things bigger even than that,” Remus said darkly, but the tension and the excitement were back in his face again, and his eyes were bright and wild. The water was running down his face, plastering his hair to his head. Over the rooftops the thunder rumbled again. “This is bigger than fame, Tellman, or money, believe me. If I’m right, and I can prove it, it will change England forever.”

“Rubbish!” Tellman denied it savagely. He wanted it to be false.

Remus turned away.

Tellman grabbed his arm again, bringing him up short. “Why would Abberline conceal the worst crimes that have ever happened in London? He is a decent man.”

“Loyalty.” Remus said the word hoarsely. “There are loyalties deeper than life or death, loyalties deep as hell itself.” He put his hand to his throat. “Some things a man … some men … will sell their own souls for. Abberline is one, Warren’s another, and the coachman Netley—”

“What Netley?” Tellman asked. “You mean Nickley?”

“No, his name’s Netley. When he said Nickley at the Westminster Hospital, he was lying.”

“What’s he got to do with them? He drove the coach around Whitechapel. He knew who Jack was, and why he did what he did.”

“Of course he did … he still does. And I daresay he’ll go to the grave telling no one.”

“Why did he try to kill the child—twice?”

Remus smiled, his lips drawn wide over his teeth. “As I said before, you know nothing.”

Tellman was desperate. The thought of Pitt’s being thrown
out of office in Bow Street because he had stuck to the truth infuriated him. Charlotte was left alone, worried and frightened, and Gracie was determined to help, no matter what the danger or the cost. The thought of the whole monstrous injustice of it all was intolerable.

“I know where to find a lot of senior policemen,” he said very quietly. “Not just Abberline, or Commissioner Warren, but a fair few more as well, all the way up, if I have to. Those two might be retired, but others aren’t.”

Remus was ashen white, his eyes wild. “You … wouldn’t! You’d set them on me, knowing what they did? Knowing what they’re hiding?”

“I don’t know!” Tellman responded. “Not unless you tell me.”

Remus gulped and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. His eyes flickered with fear. “Come with me. Let’s get out of the rain. Come to the pub across there.” He pointed over the road.

Tellman was glad to agree. His mouth was dry and he had already walked a considerable distance. The rain did not bother him. They were both soaked to the skin.

Lightning flashed in a jagged fork, and thunder cracked overhead.

Ten minutes later they were sitting in a quiet corner with glasses of ale and the smell of sawdust and wet clothes all around them.

“Right,” Tellman began. “Who did you meet in Regent’s Park? And if I catch you in one lie, you’re in trouble.”

“I don’t know,” Remus said instantly, his face pained. “And so help me God, that’s the truth. The man who put me onto all this, right from the beginning. I admit I wouldn’t tell who he is if I knew, but I don’t.”

“Not a good start, Mr. Remus,” Tellman warned him.

“I don’t know!” Remus protested, a kind of desperation in his voice.

“What about the man in Hyde Park that you quarreled with and accused of hiding a conspiracy? Another mysterious informant?”

“No. That was Abberline.”

Tellman knew Abberline had been in charge of the Whitechapel murders investigation. Had he concealed evidence, even that he had known the identity of the Ripper, and not revealed it? If so, his crime was monstrous, and Tellman could think of no explanation that justified it.

Remus was watching him.

“Why would Abberline hide it?” he asked again. Then he framed the question that was beating in his mind. “What has Adinett got to do with it? Did he know too?”

“I think so.” Remus nodded. “He was certainly onto something. He was at Cleveland Street, asking at the tobacconist’s, and at Sickert’s place.”

Now Tellman was confused. “Who is Sickert?”

“Walter Sickert, the artist. It was at his studio they met. That was in Cleveland Street then,” Remus answered.

Tellman guessed. “The lovers? Annie Crook, who was Catholic, and the young man?”

Remus grimaced. “How quaintly you put it. Yes, that’s where they met, if you like to phrase it that way.”

Tellman assumed from his words that it was more than a mere meeting. But the core of it all still escaped him. What had it to do with an insane murderer and five dead and mutilated women?

“You are not making sense.” He leaned a little forward across the table between them. “Whoever Jack was—or is—he wanted particular women. He asked for them by name, at least he did for Annie Chapman. Why? Why did you go asking after the death of William Crook in St. Pancras, and the lunatic Stephen in Northampton? What has Stephen to do with Jack?”

“From what I can tell …” Remus’s thin hands were clenched on his beer mug. It shook very slightly, rippling the liquid. “Stephen was the Duke of Clarence’s tutor, and he was a friend of Walter Sickert. It was he who introduced them.”

“The Duke of Clarence and Walter Sickert?” Tellman said slowly.

Remus’s voice was half strangled in his throat. “The Duke of Clarence and Annie Crook, you fool!”

The room whirled around Tellman as if he were at sea in a storm. The eventual heir to the throne, and a Catholic girl from the East End. But the Prince of Wales had mistresses all over the place. He was not even particularly discreet about it. If Tellman knew, then probably all the world did.

Remus looked at Tellman’s blank face.

“From what I know now, Clarence—Eddy, as he was called—was rather awkward, and his friends suspected he might have leanings towards men as much as women.”

“Stephen…”Tellman put in.

“That’s right. Stephen, his tutor, introduced him to a lot of more acceptable kinds of entertainment with Annie. He was very deaf, poor devil, like his mother, and found social conversation a bit difficult.” For the first time there was a note of compassion in Remus’s voice, and a sudden sadness filled his face. “But it didn’t work out the way they meant. They fell in love … really in love. The core of it is …” He looked at Tellman with a strange mixture of pity and elation. His hands were shaking even more. “They might have been married …”

Tellman jerked his glass so hard that ale slopped over the edges onto the table. “What?”

Remus nodded, shivering. His voice dropped to a whisper. “And that’s why Netley, poor Eddy’s driver, who used to bring him here to see Annie in Cleveland Street, tried twice to kill the child … poor little creature …”

“Child?” Now it was plain. “Alice Crook …” Tellman gulped in air and nearly choked. “Alice Crook is the daughter of the Duke of Clarence?”

“Probably … and maybe in wedlock. And Annie was Catholic.” Remus was whispering now. “Remember the Act of Settlement?”

“What?”

“The Act of Settlement,” Remus repeated. Tellman had to lean right across the table to hear him. “Made law in 1701, but still in effect. It excludes any person who marries a Roman Catholic from inheriting the crown. The Bill of Rights of 1689 says the same thing.”

The true enormity of it began to dawn on Tellman. It was
hideous. It jeopardized the throne, the stability of the government and the whole country.