“Apparently there was a brief uprising in Manitoba in 1869 and 1870 led by a French-Canadian called Louis Kiel. They resented the British taking over everything, and executed someone or other.” She frowned. “The British sent in a military expedition led by Colonel Wolseley. Adinett and Shogun volunteered to act as guides for them into the interior, and met up with them at Thunder Bay, four hundred miles northwest of Toronto. They led them another six hundred and fifty miles. It was that he used to talk about.”
Charlotte could see nothing useful in it at all. It sounded like a far more interesting conversation than was held over most dinner tables. What had happened that led to a quarrel so violent it ended in murder?
“Was the rebellion put down?” She supposed it must have been, but she had not heard of it.
“Oh yes, apparently very successfully.” Juno saw Charlotte ’s confused look. “Adinett formed a very strong sympathy with the French Canadians,” she explained. “He spoke of them often, and with great warmth. He admired French republicanism and their passion for liberty and equality. He went to France quite often, even up to a few months ago. That was what he and Martin really had in common, the passion for social reform.” She smiled in recollection. “They talked about it for hours, and ways in which it could be accomplished. Martin learned about it from ancient Greece, the original democracy, and Adinett from French revolutionary idealism, but their aims were very close.” Again her eyes filled with tears. “I just don’t understand what could possibly have led them to quarrel!” She blinked several times and her voice wavered. “Could we be wrong?”
Charlotte was not ready to consider that.
“I don’t know. Please, think back if Mr. Fetters expressed any difference of opinion or anger over anything.” It seemed a slender thread. Did anyone but a lunatic quarrel to the point of blows over the virtues of one foreign country’s form of democracy rather than another’s?
“Not anger,” Juno said with certainty, staring at Charlotte. “But he was preoccupied with something. I would have said concern, not really anything more than that. But he was always a trifle absentminded when he was absorbed in his work. He was brilliant at it, you know?” There was urgency in her voice. “He used to find antiquarian pieces no one else could. He could see the value in things. Lately he did more writing about it, for various journals, and went to meetings and so on. He was a very gifted speaker. People loved to listen to him.”
Charlotte could visualize it easily. His face in the photograph was full of intelligence and enthusiasm.
“I’m so sorry…” The words were out before she thought of their effect.
Juno gulped, and it was a few moments before she regained complete control of herself again.
“I… apologize,” she said with a little shake of her head. “He was worried about something, but he wouldn’t discuss it with me, and I couldn’t press him, he just became annoyed. I have no idea what it was. I imagined it was something to do with one of the antiquarian societies he belonged to. They do fight among themselves rather a lot. There is tremendous rivalry, you know.”
Charlotte was confused. It all seemed so very ordinary and good-natured.
“But Adinett wasn’t interested in antiquities?” she reaffirmed.
“Not at all. He listened to Martin, but only because he was a friend, and I could see that sometimes he was bored by it.” Juno looked at her with shadowed eyes. “It doesn’t help, does it.” It was not a question.
“I can’t see that it does,” Charlotte admitted. “And yet there must be some reason. We just don’t know yet where to look first.” She rose to her feet. She would learn nothing more at the moment, and she had trespassed long on Juno Fetters’s time.
Juno stood up also, slowly, as if there were a debilitating tiredness in her.
Charlotte caught a glimpse of the engulfing loneliness of mourning, but she had no idea how to help. She had met Juno less than two hours ago. She could hardly offer to keep her company. And perhaps Juno preferred to grieve alone. The necessity of being courteous to strangers might be the last thing on earth she wanted… or it might be the first. At least it would force her to keep control of herself, and occupy her mind for a while, not allowing it to be consumed with memory. The conventions that kept a new widow out of society were probably meant to be kind, and to observe the decencies, and yet they could hardly have been better designed to intensify her grief. Perhaps they were for everyone else, to save them the embarrassment of having to think of something to say, and so one was not reminded too forcefully of death and that eventually it would come to all.
“May I call again?” Charlotte said aloud. She knew she was risking rebuff, but at least that gave the decision to Juno.
Juno’s face filled with hope. “Please do… I…” She breathed in deeply. “I want to know what really happened, apart from the physical facts. And… and I want to do something more than just sit here!”
Charlotte smiled back at her. “Thank you. As soon as I can think of anything remotely hopeful to follow, I shall call upon you.” And she turned towards the door, knowing that so far she had accomplished almost nothing to help Pitt.
Gracie had plans of her own. As soon as Charlotte left the house she abandoned the rest of her own chores, put on her best shawl and hat-she had only two-and taking enough for a fare in the omnibus, she went out also.
It took her a little over twenty minutes to reach the Bow Street police station, where until yesterday Pitt had been superintendent. She marched up the steps and inside as if she were going to war, and she felt much as if she were. During her childhood police stations had been places to be avoided at any cost, and their inhabitants whoever they were. Now she was going in deliberately. But it was in a cause for which she would have gone into the mouth of hell, had it been the only way. She was sufficiently angry she would have taken on anyone at all.
She went straight up to the desk sergeant, who looked at her with very little interest.
“Yes, miss? Can I ’elp yer?” He did not bother to stop chewing his pencil.
“Yes, please,” she said smartly. “I wish to speak to Sergeant Tellman. It is very urgent, and concerns a case he is working on. I have information for him.” That was a complete invention, of course, but she needed to see him, and any story that accomplished that would do. She would explain when she saw him.
The sergeant was unimpressed. “Oh yes, miss. And what would that be?”
“That would be ’very important,’” she replied. “And it’ll not make Sergeant Tellman best pleased if you don’t tell ’im I’m ’ere. My name is Gracie Phipps. Yer go tell ’im that, and leave ’im ter do the choosin’ as ter whether ’e comes out or not.”
The sergeant looked for a long moment at her face, her unflinching eyes, and decided that in spite of her diminutive size she was determined enough to be a considerable nuisance. Added to which, he knew very little of Tellman’s personal life or family. Tellman was a remarkably taciturn man, and the sergeant was not certain who this girl might be. Discretion was the better part of valor. Tellman could be unpleasant if crossed.
“You wait there, miss. I’ll tell ’im, an’ see what ’e says.”
It took Tellman rather less than five minutes to appear. As always he looked lean, dour and so neatly dressed as to be uncomfortable with his tight collar and slicked-back hair. His hollow cheeks were slightly flushed. He ignored the desk sergeant and walked right across to where Gracie was standing.
“What is it?” he said half under his breath. “What are you doing here?”
“I come ter find out wot you’re doin’, more like,” she retorted.
“What I’m doing? I’m investigating burglaries.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re looking after a bit o’ thievin’, w’en Mr. Pitt’s bin throwed out o’ ’is job an’ sent ter Gawd knows w’ere, an’ Mrs. Pitt’s near beside ’erself, an’ the children got no father at ’ome… an’ you’re chasin’ some bleedin’ flimp!”
“It’s no pocket-picking!” he said angrily, but still keeping his voice low. “It’s a proper cracksman we’re after.”
“An’ that’s yer reason, is it?” Her disgust was withering. “Some ruddy safe is more important that wot they done to Mr. Pitt?”
“No, it isn’t!” His face was white with anger, both at her, for her misjudgment of him, and with the whole injustice of what had happened. “But there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said indignantly. “They aren’t going to listen to me, are they! They’ve already got someone else here, while his chair is still warm. Fellow called Wetron, and he told me to let it go, don’t even think about it. It’s done, and that’s that.”
“An’ o’ course yer bein’ the soul of obedience, like, yer jus’ do like ’e says!” she challenged, her eyes blazing. “Then I reckon as I’ll ’ave ter try ter fix it on me own, won’t I?” She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. “Can’t say
