The Whitechapel Conspiracy (10 page)

“An’ no mutton,” Gracie added. “ ’Errings is good. An’ oysters is cheap. An’ I know w’ere yer can get good bones fer soup an’ the like. We’ll be o’right.” She drew in a deep breath. “But it still in’t fair!”

*   *   *

It was difficult to explain to the children too. Jemima at ten and a half was already growing tall and slim and had lost a little of her roundness of face. It was possible to see in her a shadow of the woman she would become.

Daniel, at eight, was sturdier of build and very definitely a child. His features were developing strength, but his skin was soft and the hair curled at the back of his head exactly the way Pitt’s did.

Charlotte had tried to tell them that their father would not be home again for a long time in such a way that they understood it was not of his choosing, that he would miss them terribly.

“Why?” Jemima said immediately. “If he doesn’t want to go, why does he do it?” She was fighting against accepting, her whole face full of resentment.

“We all have to do things we don’t wish to sometimes,” Charlotte answered. She tried to keep her voice level, knowing that both children would pick up her emotions as much as her words. She must do all she could to disguise from them her own distress. “It is a matter of what is right, what has to be done.”

“But why does
he
have to do it?” Jemima persisted. “Why couldn’t someone else? I don’t want him to go away.”

Charlotte touched her gently. “Neither do I. But if we make a fuss it will only be harder for him. I told him we would look after each other, and would miss him, but we’d be all right until he comes back.”

Jemima thought a few moments about that, uncertain if she was going to accept it or not.

“Is he after bad men?” Daniel spoke for the first time.

“Yes,” Charlotte said quickly. “They must be stopped, and he is the best person to do it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s very clever. Other people have been trying for a while, and they haven’t managed to do it, so they’ve sent for Papa.”

“I see. Then I suppose we’ll be all right.” He thought for a few minutes more. “Is it dangerous?”

“He’s not going to fight them,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “He’s just going to find out who they are.”

“Isn’t he going to stop them?” Daniel asked reasonably, his brow puckered up.

“Not by himself,” she explained. “He’ll tell other policemen, and they’ll all do it together.”

“Are you sure?” He knew she was worried, even though he was uncertain why.

She made herself smile. “Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

He nodded, satisfied. “But I’ll miss him.”

She forced the smile to remain. “So will I.”

Pitt went by train straight to the address to the north of Spitalfields that Cornwallis had given him. It proved to be a small house behind a shop. Victor Narraway was waiting for him. Pitt saw that he was a lean man with a shock of dark hair, threaded with gray, and a face in which the intelligence was dangerously obvious. He could not be inconspicuous once one met his eyes.

He surveyed Pitt with interest.

“Sit down,” he ordered, indicating the plain wooden chair opposite him. The room was very sparsely furnished, with no more than a chest with drawers, all of which were locked, a small table, and two chairs. Probably it had originally been a scullery.

Pitt obeyed. He was dressed in his oldest clothes, the ones he used when he wished to go into the poorer areas unnoticed. It was a long time since he had last found it necessary. These days he employed other people for such tasks. He felt uncomfortable, dirty, and at a complete disadvantage. It was as if his years of success had been swept away, nothing but a dream, or a wish.

“Can’t see that you’ll be a great deal of use to me,” Narraway said grimly. “But I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose. You’ve been foisted on me, so I’d better
make the best of it. I thought you were noted for your handling of scandal among the gentry. Spitalfields doesn’t seem like your patch.”

“It isn’t,” Pitt said grudgingly. “Mine was Bow Street.”

“And where the hell did you learn to speak like that?” Narraway’s eyebrows rose. His own voice was good—he had the diction of birth and education—but it was not better than Pitt’s.

“I was taught in the schoolroom along with the son of the house,” Pitt replied, remembering it sharply even now, the sunlight through the windows, the tutor with his cane and his eyeglasses, the endless repetitions until he was satisfied. Pitt had resented it at first, then become fascinated. Now he was grateful.

“Fortunate for you,” Narraway said with a tight smile. “Well, if you’re going to be any use here, you’ll have to unlearn it, and rapidly. You look like a peddler or a vagrant, and you sound like a refugee from the Athenaeum!”

“I can sound like a peddler if I want to,” Pitt retorted. “Not a local one, but I’d be a fool to try that. They’ll know their own.”

Narraway’s expression eased for the first time, and a glint of acceptance shone for an instant in his eyes. It was a first step, no more. He nodded.

“Most of the rest of London has no idea how serious it is,” he said grimly. “They all know there is unrest. It’s more than that.” He was watching Pitt closely. “We are not talking of the odd lunatic with a stick of dynamite, although we’ve certainly got them too.” A brief flicker of irony crossed his face. “Only a month or two ago we had a man who tried to flush dynamite down the lavatory and blocked the drains up until his landlady complained. The workmen who took up the drains and found it had no idea what it was. Some poor fool thought it would be useful to mend cracks in something or other, and put it on the floor of his loft to dry out, and blew the whole place to smithereens. Took half the house away.”

It was farce, but bitter and deadly. One laughed at the absurdity of it, but the tragedy was left.

“If it’s not the odd nihilist achieving his ambition,” Pitt asked, “then what is it we are really looking for?”

Narraway smiled, relaxing a little. He settled in his chair, crossing his legs. “We’ve always had the Irish problem, and I don’t imagine it’ll go away, but for the moment it is not our main concern. There are still Fenians around, but we arrested quite a few last year, and they’re fairly quiet. There is strong anti-Catholic feeling in general.”

“Dangerous?”

He looked at Pitt’s expression of doubt. “Not in itself,” he said tartly. “You have a lot to learn. Start by being quiet and listening! Get something to do to explain your existence. Walk ’round the streets here. Keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. Listen to the idle talk, hear what is said and what isn’t. There’s an anger in the air that wasn’t here ten years ago, or perhaps fifteen. Remember Bloody Sunday in ’88, and the murders in Whitechapel that autumn? It’s four years later now, and four years worse.”

Of course Pitt remembered the summer and autumn of ’88. Everyone did. But he had not realized the situation was still so close to violence. He had imagined it one of those sporadic eruptions which happens from time to time and then dies down again. Part of him wondered if Narraway were overdramatizing it, perhaps to make his own role more important. There was much rivalry within the different branches of those who enforced the law, each guarding his own realm and trying to increase it at the cost of others.

Narraway read his face as if he had spoken.

“Don’t rush to judgment, Pitt. Be skeptical, by all means, but do as you are told. I don’t know whether Donaldson was right about you or not on the witness stand, but you’ll obey me while you’re in Special Branch or I’ll have you out on your ear so fast you’ll fetch up living in Spitalfields or its like permanently, and your family with you! Am I clear enough for you?”

“Yes, sir,” Pitt answered, still hideously aware of what a dangerous path he trod. He had no friends, and far too many
enemies. He could not afford to give Narraway any excuse to throw him out.

“Good.” Narraway recrossed his legs. “Then listen to me, and remember what I say. Whatever you think, I am right, and you will need to act on what I say if you are to survive, let alone be any actual use to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t parrot back at me! If I wanted a talking bird I’d go and buy one!” His face was tight. “The East End is full of poverty—desperate, grinding poverty such as the rest of the city can’t even imagine. People die of hunger and the diseases of hunger … men, women, and children.” A suppressed anger made his voice raw. “More children die than live. That makes life cheap. Values are different. Put a man in a situation where he has little to lose and you have trouble. Put a hundred thousand men in it and you have a powder keg for revolution.” He was watching Pitt steadily. “That’s where your Catholics, your dynamiting anarchists, nihilists and Jews are a danger. One of them could be the single spark which could unintentionally set off all the rest. It only needs a beginning.”

“Jews?” Pitt said curiously “What’s the problem with the Jews?”

“Not what we expected,” Narraway confessed. “We have a lot of fairly liberal Jews from Europe. They came after the ’48 revolutions, all of which were crushed, one way or another. We expected their anger to spill over here, but so far it hasn’t.” He shrugged very slightly. “Which isn’t to say it won’t. And there’s plenty of anti-Semitic feeling around, mostly out of fear and ignorance. But when things are hard, people look for someone to blame, and those who are recognizably different are the first targets, because they are the easiest.”

“I see.”

“Probably not,” Narraway said. “But you will, if you pay attention. I have found you lodgings in Heneagle Street, with one Isaac Karansky, a Polish Jew, well-respected in the area. You should be reasonably safe, and in a position to watch and listen, and learn something.”

It was still very general, and Pitt had little idea of what was
expected of him. He was used to having a specific event to investigate, something that had already happened and was his task to unravel so he could learn who was responsible, how it had been done, and—if possible—why. Trying to learn about some unspecified act which might or might not happen in the future was completely different, and something too indefinite to grasp. Where did he begin? There was nothing to examine, no one to question, and worst of all, he had no authority.

Once again he was overwhelmed by a sense of failure, both past and to come. He would be no use at this job. It required both skills and knowledge he did not possess. He was a stranger here, almost a foreigner in the ways that would matter. He had been sent not because he would be of use but as a punishment for accusing Adinett, and succeeding. Perhaps as far as Cornwallis was concerned it was also for his safety, and so that he still had a job of some sort, and an income for Charlotte and the children. He was grateful for at least that much, even if at the moment it was well buried beneath fear and anger.

He must try! He needed more from Narraway, even if it meant stifling his pride and making himself ask. When he left this tiny, drab room it would be too late. He would be more completely alone than he had ever been professionally in his life, until now.

“Do you believe there is someone deliberately trying to foment violence, or is it just going to happen by a series of unguarded accidents?” he asked.

“The latter is possible,” Narraway answered him. “Always has been, but I believe this time it will be the former. But it will probably look spontaneous, and God knows, there is enough poverty and injustice to fuel it once it is lit. And enough racial and religious hatred for there to be open war in the streets. That’s what it is our job to prevent, Pitt. Makes one murder more or less look pretty simple, doesn’t it, even close to irrelevant—except to those concerned.” His voice was sharp again. “And don’t tell me all tragedy or injustice is made up of individual people … I know that. But even the best societies in the world don’t eradicate the private sins of
jealousy, greed and rage, and I don’t believe any ever will. What we are talking about is the sort of insanity where no one is safe and everything of use and value is destroyed.”

Pitt said nothing. His thoughts were dark, and they frightened him.

“Ever read about the French Revolution?” Narraway asked him. “I mean the big one, the 1789 one, not this recent fiasco.”

“Yes.” Pitt shivered, thinking back to the classroom on the estate again, and the word pictures of the streets of Paris running with human blood as the guillotine did its work day after day. “The High Terror,” he said aloud.

“Exactly.” Narraway’s lips thinned. “Paris is very close, Pitt. Don’t imagine it couldn’t happen here. We have enough inequality, believe me.”

Against his will, Pitt was considering the possibility that there was at least some truth in what Narraway was saying. He was overstating the case, of course, but even a ghost of this was terrible.

“What do you need of me, exactly?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully controlled. “Give me something to look for.”

“I don’t need you at all!” Narraway said in sudden disgust. “You’ve been wished on me from above. I’m not entirely sure why. But since you’re here, I may as well do what I can with you. Apart from being able to provide you with as reasonable a place to live as there is in Spitalfields, Isaac Karansky is a man of some influence in his own community. Watch him, listen, learn what you can. If you find anything useful, tell me. I am here every week at some time or another. Speak to the cobbler in the front. He can get a message to me. Don’t call unless it’s important, and don’t fail to call if it could be! If you make a mistake, I’d rather it were on the side of caution.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Then go.”

Pitt stood up and walked towards the door.

“Pitt!”

He turned. “Yes, sir?”

Narraway was watching him. “Be careful. You have no
friends out there. Never forget that, even for an instant. Trust no one.”

“No, sir. Thank you.” Pitt went out of the door feeling cold, in spite of the close air and the semisweet smell of rotting wood, and somewhere close by an open midden.

A couple of enquiries led him through the narrow, gray byways to Heneagle Street. He found the house of Isaac Karansky on the corner of Brick Lane, a busy thoroughfare leading past the towering mass of the sugar factory down to the Whitechapel Road. He knocked on the door. Nothing happened, and he knocked again.