The Whitechapel Conspiracy (32 page)

“So they forced them apart?” It was the only possible conclusion. “They kidnapped Annie and put her in a madhouse … and what happened to Eddy? He died? Or did they … surely …?” He could not even say it. Suddenly being a prince was a terrible thing, isolated, frightening, one individual lonely human being against a conspiracy that stretched everywhere.

Remus was looking at him with the pity still in his face.

“God knows”—he shook his head—“poor soul couldn’t hear half of what was going on, and maybe he was a bit simpler than some. It seems he was devoted to Annie and the child. Maybe he created a fuss about them. He was deaf, alone, confused …” He stopped again, his face filled with misery for a man he had never seen but whose pain he could imagine too vividly.

Tellman stared ahead at the scruffy posters and the scribbling on the pub wall, profoundly grateful that he was there and not in some palace, watched over by murderous courtiers, a servant to the throne and not master of anything.

“Why the five women?” he said at last. “There has to have been a reason.”

“Oh, there was,” Remus assured him. “They were the ones who knew about it. They were Annie’s friends. If they’d known what they were up against, they’d have disappeared. But they didn’t. Word has it they were greedy, at least one of them was, and led the others. They asked Sickert for money in exchange for silence. He told his masters, and the women got silence all right—the silence of a blood-soaked grave.”

Tellman buried his face in his hands and sat motionless, his mind in chaos. Was Lyndon Remus the real lunatic? Could any of this fearful story be true?

He looked up slowly, lowering his hands.

As if reading his thoughts, Remus spoke. “You think I’m mad?”

Tellman nodded. “Yes …”

“I can’t prove any of it … yet. But I will. It’s true. Look at the facts.”

“I am. They don’t prove it. Why did Stephen kill himself? How was he involved?”

“He introduced them. Poor Eddy was quite a good painter. Sight, you see. No hearing needed. Stephen loved him.” He shrugged. “In love with him, maybe. Anyway, when he heard he was dead, God knows what he thought, but it finished him. Guilt, maybe, maybe not. Perhaps just grief. It doesn’t affect the story.”

“So who killed the women?” Tellman asked.

Remus shook his head a little. “I don’t know. My guess is Sir William Gull. He was the royal physician.”

“And Netley drove the coach going around Whitechapel, looking for them, so Gull could carve them up?” Tellman found himself shaking with an inner cold the warmth of the tavern could do nothing to help. The nightmare was inside him.

Again Remus nodded. “In the coach. That was why there was never that much blood, and why he was never caught in the act.”

Tellman pushed away the last of his beer. The thought of eating or drinking made him sick.

“We just need the last pieces,” Remus went on, his glass also untouched now. “I need to know more about Gull.”

“He’s dead,” Tellman pointed out.

“I know.” Remus leaned forward. The noise around them was increasing, and it was getting harder to hear. “But that doesn’t alter the truth. And I need to have every fact possible. All the speculation in the world won’t do any good without the facts that can’t be argued away.” He watched Tellman intently. “And you could get access to things I can’t. They know who I am, and they won’t tell me any more. I don’t have an excuse.” He nodded. “But you could. You could say it was to do with a case, and they’d talk to you.”

“What are you going to do?” Tellman questioned. “What else do you need? And why? What will you do with it all when you have it, if you ever do? There’s no good going to the
police. Gull is dead, Abberline and Warren are both retired. Are you after the coachman?”

“I’m after the truth wherever it goes,” Remus said grimly. A large man hesitated near them, and Remus waited until he was gone before he continued. “What I really want is the man behind it, the one who sent them out to do these things. He may not have been within five miles of Whitechapel, but he is the heart and mind of the Ripper. The others were just the hands.”

Tellman had to ask. The sounds of ordinary life were all around them, talking, laughter, the clink of glasses, the shuffling of feet, the splash of beer. It seemed so sane, so commonplace, that such things as they were speaking of were surely impossible. And yet stop any one of these men in here and mention the horror of four years ago, and a sudden silence would fall, the blood would drain from faces and eyes would go cold and frightened. Even now it would be as if someone had opened an inner door onto a darkness of the soul.

“Do you know who that is?” Tellman’s voice was rough. He needed to drink to calm the dryness, but the thought choked him.

“I think so,” Remus answered. “But I’m not telling you, so there’s no point in asking. That’s what I’m going after. You find out about Gull and Netley. Don’t go near Sickert.” There was sharp warning in his face. “I’ll give you two days. Meet me back here then.”

Tellman agreed. He had no choice, regardless of what Wetron or anyone else might do. Remus was right; if what he supposed were true, then it was a far bigger issue than any individual crime, bigger even than solving the most terrible murders London had ever seen.

But he could not forget Pitt, and his original reason for asking.

“How much of this did Adinett know?”

Remus shook his head. “I’m not sure. Some of it, that’s certain. He knew about them taking Annie Crook from Cleveland Street to Guy’s, and taking Eddy away too.”

“And Martin Fetters? Where does he fit in? What did he know?”

“Who’s Martin Fetters?” Remus looked momentarily confused.

“The man Adinett murdered!” Tellman said sharply.

“Oh!” Remus’s face cleared. “I’ve no idea. If it had been the other way around, and Fetters had killed Adinett, I would say Fetters was one of them.”

Tellman stood up. Whatever he was going to do, it must be quickly. If Wetron caught him even once more, he might be dismissed. If he trusted Wetron, or anyone apart from Pitt, he would tell what he knew and be given time, almost certainly help as well. But he had no idea how far the Inner Circle stretched or whose loyalty lay where. He must do this alone.

He left the public house and walked out into the thinning rain.

If Sir William Gull had been the man who had carried out those fearful deeds, then Tellman needed to learn for himself everything about him that he could. His mind was crowded with thoughts and imaginings as he walked towards the main street and the nearest omnibus stop. He was happy to travel slowly. He needed time to absorb the story that Remus had told him and think what to do next.

If the Duke of Clarence had really married Annie Crook, whatever form the ceremony had taken, and there were a child, then no wonder certain people had panicked to keep it secret. Quite apart from the laws of succession to the throne, the anti-Catholic feeling in the country was sufficiently powerful that knowledge of the alliance would be enough to rock the monarchy, fragile as it was at the moment.

But if it was exposed that the most hideous murders of the century had been committed by royal sympathizers, perhaps even with royal knowledge, there would be revolution in the streets and the throne would be swept away on a tide of rage which might destroy the government as well. What would arise afterwards would be strange, unfamiliar, and probably no better.

But whatever it was, Tellman was filled with dismay at the
thought of the violence, the sheer weight of anger that would shatter so much that was good, as well as the relatively little that was not. How many ordinary people who were now going about their daily lives would have everything they knew swept away? Revolution would change those in power, but it would create no more food, houses, clothes, no more worthwhile jobs, nothing lasting to make life richer or safer.

Who would form the new government when the old was gone? Would they necessarily be any wiser or fairer?

He got out of the bus and walked up the slope towards Guy’s Hospital. There was no time for subtlety. When Remus had enough evidence in his own mind, he would make it public. The man in Regent’s Park who had prompted him would make sure of that.

Who was he? Remus himself had said he did not know. There was no time now to find out, but his motive was clear enough—revolution here in England, the end of safety and peace, even with all its iniquities.

Tellman went up the steps and into the front door of the hospital.

It took him the remainder of that day, talking to half a dozen different people about their recollections of the late Sir William Gull, to gain some impression of the man. What slowly gathered form was a picture of a man dedicated to the knowledge of medicine, most especially the workings of the human body, its structure and mechanics. He seemed impelled more by a desire to learn than by a wish to heal. He was driven by personal ambition and little visible compassion to relieve suffering.

There was one particular tale he heard about Gull’s treatment of a man who died. Gull decided to perform a postmortem. The dead man’s elderly sister was so profoundly concerned that the body should not be left mutilated that she insisted on remaining in the room during the operation.

Gull had not demurred, but carried out the whole procedure in front of her, removing the heart and putting it in his pocket to take away so that he might keep it. It revealed a
streak of cruelty in him to the feelings of patients and their families that Tellman found abhorrent.

But Gull had unquestionably been a good doctor, and served not only the royal family but also Lord Randolph Churchill and his household.

He could find no written record of Annie Crook’s stay at Guy’s, but three members of the hospital staff recalled her vividly and said that Sir William had performed an operation on her brain, after which she had very little memory left. In their opinion she was certainly suffering from some form of insanity, at least by the time she had been there for the hundred and fifty-six days of her stay.

What had happened to her after that they did not know. One elderly nurse was grieved by it, and still felt a sense of anger over the fate of a young woman she had been unable to help in her confusion and despair.

Tellman left a little before dark. He could wait no longer. Even if he jeopardized Pitt’s mission in Spitalfields, which he believed was largely abortive anyway, he must find him and tell him what he knew. It was far more terrible than any anarchist plot to dynamite a building here or there.

He took the train as far as Aldgate Street, then walked briskly along Whitechapel High Street and up Brick Lane to the corner of Heneagle Street. Wetron might very well throw him off the force if he ever found out, but more was at stake than any one man’s career, either his or Pitt’s.

He knocked on the door of Karansky’s house and waited.

It was several moments before the door was opened a few inches by a man he could barely see in the dim light. There was no more than the silhouette of head and shoulders against the background. He had thick hair and was a trifle stooped.

“Mr. Karansky?” Tellman asked quietly.

The voice was suspicious. “Who are you?”

Tellman had already made the decision. “Sergeant Tellman. I need to speak to your lodger.”

There was fear in Karansky’s voice. “His family? Something is wrong?”

“No!” Tellman said quickly, warmed by a sudden sense of
normality, of life where affection was possible and the darkness outside was a temporary thing, and under control. “No, but I have learned something I must tell him now. I’m sorry to disturb you,” he added.

Karansky pulled the door wider. “Come in,” he invited. “Come in. His room is at the top of the stairs. Would you like something to eat? We have—” Then he stopped, embarrassed.

Perhaps they had very little.

“No, thank you,” Tellman declined. “I ate just before I came.” That was a lie, but it did not matter. Dignity should be preserved.

Karansky may not have meant it to, but the relief was in the tone of his voice. “Then you had best go and find Mr. Pitt. He came in half an hour ago. Sometimes we play a little chess, or talk, but tonight he was late.” He seemed about to add something further, then changed his mind. There was anxiety in the air, as if something ugly and dangerous were expected, an inward clenching against hurt. Was it always like that here, the waiting for violence to erupt, the uncertainty as to what the next disaster would be, only the certainty that it would come?

Tellman thanked him and went up the narrow stairs and knocked on the door Karansky had indicated.

The answer was immediate but absentminded, as if Pitt knew who it would be and half expected it.

Tellman opened the door.

Pitt was sitting on the bed, shoulders slumped forward, deep in thought. He looked even more untidy than usual, his hair wild and too long over his collar, but his shirt cuffs had been neatly darned, and there was a pile of clean laundry on the chest of drawers, well ironed.

When Tellman closed the door without speaking Pitt realized it was not Karansky, and looked around. His mouth dropped with amazement, then alarm.

“It’s all right!” Tellman said quickly. “But I’ve learned something I have to tell you tonight. It’s …” He pushed his hand over his hair, slicked back as always. “Actually, it’s not all right.” He found he was shaking. “It’s the most … it’s the
biggest … it’s the most hideous and terrible thing I’ve ever heard, if it’s true. And it’s going to destroy everything!”

As Tellman told him, the last remaining color bleached out of Pitt’s face and he sat motionless with horror, until his body began to shiver uncontrollably, as if the cold had gotten inside him.

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