The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [160]
“I don’t know how much to take for the children,” Charlotte said as if it were a question. “How dirty will they get, I wonder …”
They were in the bedroom doing the last of the packing before going for the midday train south and west.
“Very, I hope,” Pitt replied with a grin. “It isn’t healthy for a child to be clean … not a boy, anyway.”
“Then you can do some of the laundry!” she replied instantly. “I’ll show you how to use a flatiron. It’s very easy—just heavy—and tedious.”
He was about to retaliate when their maid, Gracie, spoke from the doorway. “There’s a cabbie ’ere with a message for yer, Mr. Pitt,” she said. “ ’E give me this.” She offered him a piece of paper folded over.
He took it and opened it up.
Pitt, I need to see you immediately. Come with the bearer of this message. Narraway.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked, a sharp edge to her voice as she watched his expression change. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Narraway wants to see me, but it can’t be much. I’m not starting back with Special Branch for another three weeks.”
Naturally she knew who Narraway was, although she had never met him. Ever since her first encounter with Pitt eleven years ago, in 1881, she had played a lively part in every one of his cases that aroused her curiosity or her outrage, or in which someone she cared about was involved. In fact, it was she who had befriended the widow of John Adinett’s victim in the Whitechapel conspiracy and finally discovered the reason for his death. She had a better idea than anyone else outside Special Branch of who Narraway was.
“Well, you’d better tell him not to keep you long,” she said angrily. “You are on holiday, and have a train to catch at noon. I wish he’d called tomorrow, when we’d have been gone!”
“I don’t suppose it’s much,” he said lightly. He smiled, but the smile was a trifle downturned at the corners. “There’ve been no bombings lately, and with an election coming at any time there probably won’t be for a while.”
“Then why can it not wait until you come back?” she asked.
“It probably can.” He shrugged ruefully. “But I can’t afford to disobey him.” It was a hard reminder of his new situation.
He reported directly to Narraway and he had no recourse beyond him, no public knowledge, no open court to appeal to, as he had had when a policeman. If Narraway refused him there was nowhere else to turn.