“ ’Cos they are in pieces, stupid,” she retorted, pleased to turn the charge of inferiority back at him. “You couldn’t be alive without your arms and legs or your head!”
That seemed to end the conversation for the time being, and they went down to breakfast.
It was well after nine, and Daniel was building a boat out of cardboard and glue, and Jemima was sewing, when Emily arrived to find Charlotte peeling potatoes.
“Where’s Gracie?” she said, looking around.
“Out shopping,” Charlotte replied, abandoning the sink and turning towards her.
Emily looked at her with concern, her fair eyebrows puckered a little, her eyes anxious. “How is Thomas?” she said quietly. There was no need to ask how Charlotte was; Emily could see the strain in her face, the weariness with which she moved.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. “Not really. He writes often, but he doesn’t say much, and I can’t see his face, so I don’t know if he’s telling me the truth about being all right. It’s too hot for tea. Would you like some lemonade?”
“Please.” Emily sat down at the table.
Charlotte went to the pantry and returned with the lemonade. She poured two glasses full and passed one across. Then she sat down and told Emily all that had happened—from Gracie’s excursion to Mitre Square to Tellman’s visit last night. Not once did Emily interrupt her. She sat pale-faced until finally Charlotte stopped speaking.
“That is far more hideous than anything I had imagined,” she said at last, and her voice trembled in spite of herself. “Who is behind it?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “It could be just about anyone.”
“Does Mrs. Fetters have any idea?”
“No … at least I’m almost certain she doesn’t. The last time I was there we found Martin Fetters’s papers and it seemed he was a pretty ardent republican. If Adinett were a royalist, and part of this other terrible thing, and Fetters knew it, then that would explain why Adinett killed him.”
“Of course it would. But how can you pursue that now?” Emily leaned forward urgently. “For heaven’s sake, Charlotte, be careful! Think what they’ve done already. Adinett’s dead, but there could be any number of others alive, and you don’t have any idea who they are.”
She was right, and Charlotte had no argument against it. But she could not let go of the thoughts, the knowledge that Pitt was still in Spitalfields, and men who were guilty of monstrous crimes were going unpunished, as if it did not matter.
“We must do something about it,” Charlotte said quietly. “If we don’t at least try, who will? And I have to know if that’s the truth. Juno has the right to know why her husband was murdered. There must be people who care. Aunt Vespasia will know.”
Emily considered for a moment. “Have you thought what will happen if it is true, and because of what we do it becomes public?” she said very gravely. “It will bring down the government …”
“If they connived at keeping it secret then they need to be brought down, but by a vote of no confidence in the House, not by revolution.”
“It isn’t only what they deserve.” Emily was perfectly serious. “It is what else will happen, who will take their place. Oh, they may be bad, and I wouldn’t argue over that, but before you destroy them you have to think whether what you get instead may not be even worse.”
Charlotte shook her head.
“What could be worse than a secret society in government that for its own reasons will connive at murdering like that? It means there is no law and no justice. What happens the next time someone gets in their way? Who will it be? Over what? Can they be butchered too, and whoever does it protected?”
“That’s extreme—”
“Of course it’s extreme!” Charlotte protested. “They are insane. They have lost all sense of reality. Ask anyone who knows anything about the Whitechapel murders—I mean, really knows.”
Emily was very pale. The memory of the tales of four years ago was in her eyes. “You’re right,” she whispered.
Charlotte leaned towards her. “If we cover it up too, then we are part of it. I’m not prepared to be.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See Juno Fetters and tell her what I know.”
Emily looked frightened. “Are you sure?”
Charlotte hesitated. “I think so. I’m sure she’d rather believe her husband was killed because he knew about this than because he was planning a republican revolution, and that’s what she thinks now.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “A republican revolution? Because of this?” She drew a deep, shivery breath. “It might have succeeded … just possibly …”
Charlotte remembered Martin Fetters’s face in the photograph Juno had shown her, the wide eyes frank, intelligent, daring. It was the face of a man who would follow his passions whatever the cost. She had liked him instinctively, as she had liked the way he had written about the places and people of the ’48 revolutions. Through his sight it had been a noble struggle, and she had seen it that way with him. It had seemed the cause any decent person would have espoused, a love of justice, a common humanity. That he had planned violence here in England was startlingly bitter, almost like the betrayal of a friend. She realized it with surprise.
Emily’s voice cut across her thoughts.
“And Adinett was against it? Then why not simply expose him?” she said reasonably. “He would have been
