The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [132]
“Aunt Vespasia …” Then he realized with a wave of embarrassment that he had been too familiar. She was not his aunt. She was his wife’s sister’s aunt, by marriage. He had presumed intolerably. “I …”
“Yes, I heard you, Thomas,” she said quietly, no anger or offense in her voice, only confusion. “I was wondering whether it was deliberate or another piece of opportunism. I can see no way in which opportunism is believable. It must have been planned in order to embarrass the crown, or worse, perhaps to cause riots which could then be exploited …” She frowned. “But it is very ruthless. I …” She lifted one shoulder very slightly. He saw how thin she was under the silk of the peignoir, and again he felt her fragility, and her strength.
“There is more,” he said quietly.
“There must be,” she agreed. “Alone this does not make sense. It would accomplish nothing permanent.”
Suddenly he felt as if they were allies again. He was ashamed of doubting her generosity of spirit. Stumbling to find the right words, he told her what Tellman had said about the Duke of Clarence and Annie Crook, and the whole tragic story.
The clear morning light caught both Vespasia’s beauty and her age, the passion of all that she had seen in her lifetime. It was naked in her eyes and her lips, how deeply she had felt it, and understood.
“I see,” she said when he finally came to the end. “And where is this man Remus now?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “Looking for the last shred of proof, I imagine. If he had it, Dismore at least would have printed it by now.”
Vespasia shook her head fractionally. “I think from what you say that it was intended to break at the same time as Sissons’s suicide, and you prevented that. We may have a day or so of grace.”
“To do what?” he asked, a sharp note of desperation back in his voice. “I have no idea who to trust. The Inner Circle could be anybody!” He felt the darkness close in on him again, impenetrable, suffocating. He wanted to go on, say something that would describe the enormity of it, but he did not know how to, except by repeating the same desperate, inadequate words over and over again.
“If the Inner Circle is at the heart of this conspiracy,” Vespasia said, almost as much to herself as to him, “then their desire is to overthrow the government, and the throne, and replace them with a leadership of their own, presumably a republic of some nature.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But knowing that does not help us to find them, let alone prevent it.”
She shook her head a little. “That is not my point, Thomas. If the Inner Circle’s intent is to create a republic, then they certainly were not the ones who concealed the tragic marriage of the Duke of Clarence or murdered five unhappy women to make sure it was never known.” She looked at him steadily, her silver eyes unblinking.
“Two conspiracies …” he whispered. “Then who else? Not … not the throne itself?”
“Please God, no,” she answered. “I cannot swear, but I should guess the Masons. They have the power, and the will to protect the crown and the government.”
He tried to imagine it. “But would they …?”
She smiled very slightly. “Men will do anything, if they believe in the cause enough and have sworn oaths they dare not break. Of course, it is also possible it has nothing to do with them at all. We may never know. But someone has broken an oath, or been extraordinarily careless, and someone else has been cleverer than anyone foresaw, because the Inner Circle now has both the power to shatter everything and, it seems, the will to do it.” She took a deep breath. “You have delayed them, Thomas, but I doubt they will accept defeat.”
“And meanwhile I will have contrived to endanger half the Jews in Spitalfields and almost certainly get one of them hanged for a crime he may not have committed,” he added. He hated the self-loathing in his voice the instant he heard it.
She shot him a look of anger that did not yet include pity, but it would be worse