The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [106]
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,