The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [104]
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