Death at Whitechapel (20 page)

“I grant you that we were fortunate, Charles. However, people who know of this are not as uncommon as one might expect.” Kate replied. “According to Mrs. McCarthy, the real reason for the murders is well-known throughout the East End, where there's a great deal of bitterness toward the police for pretending that the women were killed because they were prostitutes, or that they were the random victims of a lunatic. Their tongues are held in check only by fear. And Mr. Lees made it very clear that Scotland Yard believed that Sir William Gull was involved with the murders, and that it was known that he did not act alone. He also said that at least one policeman—perhaps your Inspector Abberline—could identify the other members of the group.”

Charles could not dispute her words. What she and Jennie had learned was corroborated by what Abberline had been willing to tell him, and all of it pointed in the direction of a massive official concealment of the truth, as high as the Home Office, perhaps even the entire Cabinet. And who was the highly placed person whose son's secret marriage and child so threatened—

“I'm afraid there's more, Charles,” Kate said quietly. She rose and went to the desk, where she took out an envelope. She opened it carefully, took out a sheet of cheap white paper, and handed it to him. Charles squinted at the penciled script:

 

Charles had to suppress a small smile. Whatever his other faults and failings, Tom Finch had had a sense of humor, at least when it came to choosing a pseudonym. But there was more than that to cheer him, for it looked very much as if he now had a lead on the whereabouts of the negative. First thing tomorrow, he would visit Number 24 and see what could be learned.

“The letter was dated and posted on the day Mr. Finch was murdered,” Jennie said in a low voice, “but somehow delayed in the post. I found it with the rest of my letters, which Winston sent over at my request earlier this eveni ng.” to

“Jennie and I talked about it while we were waiting for you,” Kate said, “and this is what we have concluded. For whatever reason, Mr. Finch decided that it was time to end the extortion. So he wrote and posted the note to Jennie, giving her directions to the place where he kept the negative—perhaps a rented or borrowed studio. Immediately thereafter, someone else discovered what Finch planned to do and killed him—without learning that he had written this letter. Then that man telephoned Jennie and summoned her to the scene of the murder, hoping, perhaps, that she might be seen and implicated. If we can find that man, we shall have found Finch's killer
and
the man who wrote the typed blackmail note. And if we can locate the negative at this address”—she pointed to the letter—“there will be no more blackmail!”

Charles frowned. Kate's postulate of a second blackmailer sounded plausible enough, and he possessed no facts with which to contradict it. But George Cornwallis-West was also a suspect. He had a powerful motive—he was passionately jealous of Jennie and would do anything to keep her to himself—and he had been at the scene of the crime. What's more, the typed note that had accompanied the clipping might not have been a blackmail note after all. “You are not yet free” might simply be George's way of binding Jennie more closely to him. It might all seem a bit irrational, but what lover—especially a young and passionate lover—behaved rationally?

And then, as though the thought had summoned the devil, the library door flew open and George himself burst in, with Winston at his heels, ineffectually remonstrating, and Richards following after, wringing his hands in dismay at such an ill-mannered display.

“Jennie!” George cried ardently. “Jennie, my dearest, my only love, at last I have found you!”

Jennie straightened her shoulders and gathered a dark dignity. “Winston,” she said with a frown, turning on her son, “what is the meaning of this?”

“I'm dreadfully sorry, Mama,” Winston said. “I tried to stop him, but once your footman let it slip that you were here, he absolutely would not listen to reason.” He cast a disgusted look at George. “I thought it best to come with him, for I feared he might create a scene.”

“A scene!” George was irate. “Well, I certainly
hope
so! A scene is exactly what I mean to create.” Half-recollecting himself, he bowed in Kate's direction. “Do please forgive my impetuosity, Lady Charles. I realize that I am behaving boorishly. But I must beg a word with Lady Randolph alone. She and I have a great deal to—”

Winston put both hands on George's arm. “George, Mama does not want to see you. You must come away with me, now!”

George shrugged off Winston's hands. “I have nothing to say to you, Winston. I intend to talk to your mother, and I will not go away until—”

“I am utterly ashamed of you, George.” Jennie had risen and fixed a haughty eye upon her lover. “What
can
you be thinking of—intruding on the Sheridans in this unconscionable way!”

“Jennie!” George all but wailed her name. “We
must
speak! I can save you! I can tell the police—”

Now it was Charles's turn to grasp George's arm, with far greater authority than had Winston. “Whatever you have to tell the police must needs be said to me first, George.”

“And to me,” Winston said determinedly.

Charles shook his head. “Not now, Winston.” He pulled at George's arm. “Come along to the billiards room, where we can have privacy.”

“Jennie!” George's cry was anguished. “Jennie, please!” But Jennie had turned her back on him, and George was left to choose between following Charles of his own volition, or being dragged.

 

 

I
t was dreadfully late, gone half-past eleven, but Sarah Pratt was not yet in bed. Still fully dressed, she sat half-dozing in front of the kitchen fire, her feet on the fender and the calico cat on her lap. Sarah had not yet gone to bed because Mary Plumm had not yet returned from walking out with the stableboy, and because she worried that Dick Pratt might come drunk from the pub and bang on the kitchen door and rouse the household—and because she feared that if she went to bed, she should dream that horrible dream again, the dream where she put rat poison in Pratt's roast chicken.

Except that willy-nilly, she
had
fallen asleep, there in the chair, and dreamed it again, real as life itself. Only this time, the poison was not in the roast chicken. It was in the cup of fresh horseradish sauce she'd made to go with the slices of cold joint that had gone into the basket Pratt picked up late that afternoon, when he came for the boots.

The boots. At the thought of the boots, Sarah's eyes popped open and the sleepiness fled from her brain, to be replaced by a bone-chilling fear. And this time, her fear was not just for herself, but for her niece Amelia Quibbley, who worked as housekeeper and her ladyship's maid. Frantic with the impossibility of meeting Pratt's demand for boots and unable to think of anywhere else to turn, Sarah had gone to the housekeeper's closet, where Amelia was counting the linen sheets, and tearfully told her the whole story. About Pratt's release from prison and his sudden appearance, his ominous threats and demands, which every day grew more oppressive. About the food and the wine and the trousers. About the boots.

“Boots!” Amelia had exclaimed. Her mouth was a round, horrified O. “Yer sayin' as how ye want me t' steal a pair o' the master's
boots
?”

“Well, not steal, 'xactly,” Sarah said, in a small voice.

Amelia put her hands on her hips—rounder and softer hips, now that her baby had been born. “If it's not stealin‘, I don't know wot it is,” she said indignantly. “Ye sart'nly don't mean t' put the boots back after Pratt's done wi' ‘em, d'ye?”

Faced with this question, Sarah could only shake her head numbly. “F‘rgit wot I asked,” she said. “ 'Tis not fair fer me t' drag ye into this mess. I'll think o' some other way.”

Amelia put out a hand. “Don't fret,” she said more softly. “There's a old pair o' ‘is lordship's ridin' boots on the top shelf in 'is dressin' room. I've niver seen ‘im wear 'em. ‘Ee prob'bly don't even know they're there. Will ridin' boots do fer Pratt?”

Sarah had no idea whether riding boots would do for Pratt or not, but she was so eager to put the business behind her that she nodded vigorously. So, within the hour, Amelia had brought the boots to the kitchen, where Sarah hid them behind the vegetable bin. She had not expected Pratt before nightfall, but the brazen man had appeared just before teatime, demanding not only the boots. but a basket of food. He had spied the cold joint she was slicing for the servants' tea and ordered her to put it in the basket, with bread and butter and beer—a half-dozen bottles of beer—and some of the fresh-made horseradish sauce he saw on the table.

And now the dream, so real that it made Sarah Pratt break out in a cold sweat. The poison was ready to hand, just where it always was, on the shelf just inside Mr. Humphries's garden shed. She had gone in there many times to fetch poison for use in the pantry or the scullery. She could see her hand reaching for the package, see herself shaking it into a cup and carrying it into the kitchen, where she—

There was a noise at the back door, and the cat sprang from Sarah's lap. It was Mary Plumm, most like, back from her carryings-on. If it had been Harriet who'd gone out without asking, Sarah should have known what to do: her half-day holiday cut, her kitchen duties extended, and a smart dressing-down in front of Mr. Hodge. But Sarah could not discipline Mary Plumm, because to do so would invite revelations too horrible to imagine. It was an impossible situation.

But the noise at the back door was not Mary Plumm. The door shook under a heavy knock, and Sarah knew with a sinking heart that it was Pratt, back for more food and drink. But that was wrong too, for when she opened the door, she saw Constable Laken standing on the stone step.

“May I come in, Mrs. Pratt?” he asked.

Sarah stared at him, cold fear striking into her heart. She was acquainted with the constable, who had visited Bishop's Keep on the deaths of her ladyship's aunts, and was a friend of the his lordship. She knew him as a kind man and a good police officer, not given to rapping on people's doors near midnight just to annoy them. And from his ordinary clothing, she guessed that he, too, had been summoned from his fireside.

“May I come in?” Constable Laken asked again.

“Why?” she replied apprehensively. “Wot's wrong?”

“I have bad news for you, Sarah,” the constable said. “It concerns a certain Dick Pratt.”

Sarah's thoughts flew to the rat poison in the horseradish sauce, and her legs nearly failed her. “Wot about Dick Pratt?” she whispered.

But instead of Constable Laken's reply came Mr. Hodge's irritated question: “What's all the noise, Mrs. Pratt? Who's knocking at the door at this hour of the night?” He came to stand beside Sarah, wearing his night-robe and slippers. “I am Mr. Hodge, the butler,” he said to the constable, in a tone of great dignity. “Who, sir, are you?”

Sarah tried to speak, but the words came out in a mouse-like squeak. The constable answered for her.

“Constable Laken, sir,” he said courteously. He turned to Sarah. “Dick Pratt told Ralph Martingale, at The Lamb, that you and he are married. Is it true?”

“Married?” Mr. Hodge, both eyebrows arched, turned incredulous eyes on Sarah.
“Our
Mrs. Pratt?
Married?”

To Sarah's credit, it did not occur to her to lie. “ ‘Tis true,” she said wretchedly. “Pratt 'n' me 'ave bin married these twenty-five years, more's the pity.”

Constable Laken put out his hand. “Then it is my duty to tell you, Sarah, that your husband is dead.”

Sarah stared at him. His words seemed to come from far away, and his face loomed before her, a harbinger of doom. “Dead?” she whispered. “Pratt's... dead?”

“Yes,” the constable said. “I know it's late, but I'm afraid you'll have to come with me to the jail.”

But Sarah was not going anywhere for the next few minutes. She had fainted dead away on the kitchen floor.

 

 

K
ate woke early, but Charles was up before her, already dressed and standing by the bed with her cup of tea on a tray. He put the tray down and bent to kiss her, then went to the window to stare out at the gray morning, his hands in his pockets. Kate pulled herself up against the pillow and gratefully sipped the tea.

“I'm sorry for what happened last night,” Charles said. “I looked in on you after George left, but it was around midnight and you were sleeping so soundly that I bedded down across the hall.” He paused. “I do hope Jennie is all right.”