The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [143]
But then Adinett had refused to give even the slightest explanation. How could anyone know? Even Gleave had said nothing. Presumably he had not known. Then she remembered his face as he had pressed Juno for Martin’s papers. He had not threatened them in words, but it had been there in the air, and they had all felt it like a coldness in the bone.
He had known! Only he was on Fetters’s side! Poor Adinett … there had been no one for him to turn to, no one to trust. Little wonder he had remained silent and gone to his death without attempting to save himself. He had known from the moment of his arrest that he had no chance of winning. He had acted to save his country from revolution, knowing it would cost him his life. He deserved the truth to vindicate him now, at the very least.
“Yes,” she agreed. “You are quite right. As Inspector Pitt’s wife, I should like to come with you, if I may?”
Juno turned around. “Yes, please. I was going to ask you anyway.”
“Who will you tell?”
“I have thought of that. Charles Voisey. He is a judge of appeal and was one of those who sat on the case. He is familiar with it all. I know him a little. I don’t know the others. I shall see if I can go this evening. I want to do it straightaway…. I—I’d find it very difficult to wait.”
“I understand,” Charlotte said quickly. “I shall be there.”
“I will call by in the carriage at half past seven, unless he is unable to see us. I shall let you know,” Juno promised.
Charlotte rose to her feet. “Then I shall be ready.”
They arrived at Charles Voisey’s house in Cavendish Square a little after eight, and were shown immediately into the splendid withdrawing room. It was decorated in mostly traditional style, of dark, warm colors, reds and soft golds, but with a startling addition of exquisite Arabic brasses, trays, jugs and vases, which caught the light on their engraved surfaces and simple lines.
Voisey received them with courtesy, his curiosity for their call concealed, but he made no pretense at superfluous conversation. When they were seated, and refreshment had been offered and declined, he turned to Juno enquiringly.
“How can I be of service to you, Mrs. Fetters?”
Juno had already faced the worst in acknowledging to herself that Martin was not the man she had loved all the years of their marriage. Telling someone else was going to be difficult, but there were obvious ways in which, if she told the right person, it would be almost a relief.
“As I intimated to you on the telephone,” she began, sitting upright and facing him, “I have made a discovery in some of my husband’s papers which the police did not find because they were so cleverly concealed.”
Voisey stiffened very slightly. “Indeed? I assumed they had made a very thorough search.” His eyes flickered towards Charlotte, and then away again. She had the sensation that Pitt’s failure pleased him, and she had to make a deliberate effort not to defend him.
Juno did it for her. “They were bound into a book. He did his own binding, you know? He was very good at it. Unless you were to read every volume in the library there would be no way of being certain to find it.”
“And you did that?” There was a slight lift of surprise in his voice.
She smiled bleakly. “I have nothing better to do.”
“Indeed …” He allowed it to hang in the air, unfinished.
“I wished to know why John Adinett, whom I had always believed to be his friend, should kill him,” Juno went on levelly. “Now I do know, and I believe it is morally necessary that I should acknowledge it. It seemed to me you were the right person to tell.”
He sat quite still. He let out his breath slowly. “I see. And what did these papers say, Mrs. Fetters? I assume there is no doubt they are his?”
“They are not in his hand, but he bound them into a book and concealed them in his library,” she replied. “They were