Death at Whitechapel (19 page)

Jennie let out a long-held breath. “So Jack the Ripper was no lunatic!”

“As lunatic as you ‘n' me,” Mrs. McCarthy replied. She picked up her knitting again. “I' fact, 'ee wuz more than one. ‘Ee wuz a 'ole gang o' Rippers.”

From the back of the shop came the slam of a door and a man's loud voice, shouting.

“Ol' woman, ol' woman! Where th' divil are ye?” Glass smashed, and there was the sound of cursing.

Suddenly anxious, Mrs. McCarthy screwed up her face. “That's McCarthy. ‘Ee'd beat me if 'ee knew I told. Ye won't go tellin' wot I said, now, will ye?” she added in a whimper. “Only t' Mary's mother?”

“Only to Mary's mother,” Kate lied. She reached into her purse. “I think I should like two yards o' that Turkey red now, if ye please, Mrs. McCarthy.”

“And I should like to have that shawl,” Jennie said, pointing to a blue woolen shawl draped over a wooden rack. “And those tortoise shell combs, please.”

A few moments later they were outside, with their bundles. “Whatever shall I do with this shawl?” Jennie asked, frowning. “And these combs.”

“I know,” Kate said, turning back toward Millers Court. When they departed Dorset Street a little later, they had left their purchases behind in the possession of a young girl with long black hair and a purple bruise on one cheek.

 

T
wilight was falling by the time Kate and Jennie arrived at Sibley House, having decided that they were far too tired and footsore to take the train back to Colchester that evening. They could not go to Great Cumberland Place, since Jennie feared that the police might come there to inquire after her, and Kate suggested that they spend the night at Sibley House, where a reduced staff was maintained while the family were not in residence. She and Jennie were not expected, but Charles was, so the cook (while she would complain bitterly about the lack of notice) could surely think of something for their dinners.

The butler did not blink at the sight of his mistress and her illustrious friend, garbed like ordinary servants. “Good evening, Lady Charles, Lady Randolph. You are very wet, I fear. May I take your wraps?”

Jennie began to unwind the veiling from Mrs. Pratt's green hat and Kate wearily yielded up her mud-speckled coat and Amelia's red-trimmed bonnet, much the worse for having been thoroughly dampened.

“Thank you, Richards,” she said, clasping her arms around herself with a shiver. “Lady Randolph is staying the night, in the blue bedroom. She and I will take tea upstairs in our rooms and then have a rest. What time is Lord Charles expected?”

“Not until about nine-thirty, I believe, m‘lady.” As Richards took Mrs. Pratt's hat from Jennie, the green silk cabbage rose, now wet and bedraggled, fell off. He picked it up from the floor. “With permission, m'lady,” he said gravely, “I shall see to the repair of Lady Randolph's hat.”

“Thank you,” Kate replied. “And please tell Cook that we shall be three at dinner. We shall eat in the library, I believe. Be sure that there is a good fire. Lord Charles will be cold and wet. Oh, and do send Rose upstairs.”

Neither Richards' face nor his voice revealed what he thought of the heresy of dining in the library. “Yes, m‘lady. Is there anything else, m'lady?”

Jennie handed him Mrs. Pratt's green cape. “Perhaps a footman could be sent round to Great Cumberland Place with a message for Winston,” she told Kate. “I left Bishop's Keep without telling him where I could be found.”

Kate was struck by how wretched Jennie looked. Well, it was no wonder, given their long, wet trek around London, and what they had learned along the way. “Is there a telephone at your house?” she asked. “If not, you can use the telephone in Charles's study. He had it installed just a few months ago.”

“There is indeed,” Jennie said with alacrity. So Richards retired to the kitchen to break the news to Cook, Jennie went off to telephone Winston, and Kate went upstairs to her bedroom. She kept a wardrobe in London, and she took a change of clothing and the necessary toilette articles to the blue bedroom. Rose, the upstairs maid, appeared, and Kate requested fires and hot baths. There was much for her and Jennie to talk about and a great deal of new information to be weighed and considered, but there was no point in any discussion until they were rested, and until Charles had arrived and could hear what they had learned.

In the meantime, she looked forward to a cup of hot tea, a hot scented bath to wash away the dirt of the East End, and a nap—although she knew that her sleep would be troubled by many things, among them the poignant memory of a pretty young girl with a bruised face and the glint of tears in her eyes.

 

It was nearly ten by the time Charles arrived, cold and wet indeed. At Richards' direction, he went straight to the library, where he was greeted by a heartening domestic scene: a bright fire, a glass of fine, dry sherry, his slippers toasting on the fender, and the sight of his dear wife wearing his favorite blue dress, her face rosy in the firelight.

“Kate!” he exclaimed in surprise, bending to kiss her. “What the devil are
you
doing in London?” He turned, to see Jennie seated on the sofa.
“Both
of you! I thought—”

“You thought,” Kate said demurely, “that we would do as we were told and stay in the country, out of trouble.” She handed him a glass of sherry and poured one for herself. “Isn't that right?”

“Well, something like that,” Charles admitted. He turned to see a table laid for three, with a white damask cloth, fresh flowers, and candles. “But I see you have come to town to keep me company at dinner.” How very sweet of Kate, not wanting to be parted from him for a single night.

“Something like that,” Jennie said. She sighed heavily, and Charles noticed how worn and sad she looked. “But there is a great deal more. I fear you shall be very angry when you hear what we have got up to, Charles.”

“No, he won't,” Kate replied. “He shall be far too interested in what we have to tell him to be angry.” She smiled and put her hand through Charles's arm. “But Cook has made your favorite partridge pie, my love, and nothing at all shall be said of the day's doings until you have warmed yourself, finished your sherry and dinner has been eaten.”

An hour later, after they had progressed from their sherries through dinner and dessert to the port, they were once again seated in front of the fire, Charles and Kate on the sofa, Jennie in the chair opposite. Charles half turned so that he could see his wife's face.

“Now, Kate,” he said fondly, lifting a lock of her russet hair, “let me. hear what you have done today. You have been shopping, I suppose?” He smiled at Jennie. “Is that why I should be angry with her, Jennie? Has she been spending a great deal of money?”

Kate pulled her hair out of his grasp. “You can stop being patronizing, Charles,” she said tartly. “It is not becoming to either of us.”

Charles frowned. He never meant to patronize Kate, but sometimes he didn't entirely think through the implications of his words. “I'm sorry for offending, Kate,” he said, genuinely regretful. “You can spend whatever you like, of course.” He paused. Should he have said that, or was it patronizing, too?

Kate stirred impatiently but did not reply to his remark. Instead, she said, “Jennie and I should like to discuss what has been learned today. What discoveries have you made?”

“I don't really think—” Charles began.

“Charles,” Kate remonstrated quietly.

Charles thought for a moment. Kate had certainly proved helpful on other occasions, when there were complex issues to be untangled and difficult relationships to be sorted out. Perhaps, since she was removed from this case and knew so little about its various dimensions, she could bring a fresh view to it. And certainly Jennie had a right to know what he had attempted to do on her behalf today.

“Of course, my dear,” he said, and began a recital of the discoveries of the day, however minor, in the order that they had occurred. He described the confectioner's clerk's denial that she had ever known Mary Kelly and reported the landlady's assertion that Finch had not kept a darkroom at his lodgings. He recited the barber's claim that the dead man was an expert photographer with a history of blackmail, going back to the notorious episode of the male brothel on Cleveland Street, and his recollection that Mary Kelly might have been a nursemaid. Then he recounted Abberline's stunning statement that the Ripper case had been solved long ago, and the inspector's refusal to be involved with the investigation except by-perhaps-confirming or denying what Charles might learn from other sources. He concluded with Abberline's remark that the Ripper killings had been motivated by a secret marriage, and his intimation that there had been a cover-up, at senior police levels or even higher, in the Home Office.

“In the Home Office!” Jennie exclaimed, and Kate said, “Do you suppose the police knew, all along, who was responsible?”

“It's possible,” Charles said, “which makes it very unlikely that anyone, at this late date, will get at the truth. There have been too many opportunities to destroy the evidence.” He sat back, feeling weary and defeated. Although he had managed to gather an impressive array of odd bits of information, he could not for the life of him put them together in any meaningful pattern.

And worse, he had kept two important things back, out of concern for Jennie's feelings. First, he had not revealed that George Cornwallis-West had indeed been stationed where he could see Jennie go up and down the stairs to Finch's lodgings, and second, that he was beginning to harbor the definite suspicion that George, in the heat of a jealous passion, might have stabbed Tom Finch to death.

 

 

K
ate and Jennie had sat quietly through Charles's recital, alternatively glancing from him to each other and to the fire. When he came at last to the end, they sat for some moments, not speaking. Finally, Kate broke the silence.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose we had better tell you about our day.”

Charles got up to pour himself a second glass of port and to put another log on the fire. “Tell away, dear,” he said. “I promise to be amused.” He sat down, put his feet on the ottoman, and prepared himself for the gay account of the hours that his wife and her friend had spent flitting frivolously in and out of the Regent Street shops and the difficulties they had experienced in finding exactly the right hat or shoes or ribbon.

But instead, Charles found himself listening in shocked amazement and growing incredulity as Kate narrated the journey she and Jennie had made in their disguises as Mary Kelly's Irish kinswomen, first to a clairvoyant in Bloomsbury who had told them that Dr. William Gull was the man who had carried out the Ripper's butchery—and then, even more unbelievably, to Duval Street, in the most dangerous depths of the East End, where they had somehow managed to locate Mary Kelly's former landlady and hear her astonishing claim that Kelly and her three friends, attempting blackmail, had been murdered to ensure their silence, while Catherine Eddowes had been killed in error.

“So Jack the Ripper was no lunatic,” Kate said, concluding. “And if Mrs. McCarthy is telling the truth, Dr. Gull—if indeed he was the one who dissected the women—did not act alone. He was only one member of a group of men who singled out these women because they had information that jeopardized the well-being of a certain highly placed individual or family. It was more expedient and more effective to murder them than to buy their silence. Besides, no matter how much the women were paid, they couldn't be trusted to hold their tongues. Sooner or later, word about the secret marriage and the baby would get out.”

All through Kate's recital, Jennie had sat silent and stricken, her face quite pale, her fingers tightly laced together in her lap. It was clear to Charles that the idea of Sir William Gull's involvement distressed her deeply—and with good cause. Throughout the late eighties, Sir William and Randolph Churchill were known to have been the best of friends. If Gull had taken part in the Ripper murders, might not Randolph have done so, as well?

Charles let out his breath. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Absolutely incredible.”

“It's all true, Charles,” Kate protested. “I've accurately reported every word we heard!” She appealed to Jennie. “Isn't that so, Jennie?”

“I wish I could say otherwise, but I cannot,” Jennie said with a long sigh.

“I am not at all questioning your veracity,” Charles said hastily. What Kate said tallied with Abberline's reluctant assertion that the Ripper killings took place because some highly placed authority found it necessary to cover up the traces of a secret marriage. He gave her a wry grin. “I suppose it's your good fortune I'm questioning—that the two of you could manage to locate and question not one but two people out of the whole of London who have important facts about these murders.”