Remus turned away.

Tellman grabbed his arm again, bringing him up short. “Why would Abberline conceal the worst crimes that have ever happened in London? He is a decent man.”

“Loyalty.” Remus said the word hoarsely. “There are loyalties deeper than life or death, loyalties deep as hell itself.” He put his hand to his throat. “Some things a man… some men… will sell their own souls for. Abberline is one, Warren ’s another, and the coachman Netley-”

“What Netley?” Tellman asked. “You mean Nickley?”

“No, his name’s Netley. When he said Nickley at the Westminster Hospital, he was lying.”

“What’s he got to do with them? He drove the coach around Whitechapel. He knew who Jack was, and why he did what he did.”

“Of course he did… he still does. And I daresay he’ll go to the grave telling no one.”

“Why did he try to kill the child-twice?”

Remus smiled, his lips drawn wide over his teeth. “As I said before, you know nothing.”

Tellman was desperate. The thought of Pitt’s being thrown out of office in Bow Street because he had stuck to the truth infuriated him. Charlotte was left alone, worried and frightened, and Gracie was determined to help, no matter what the danger or the cost. The thought of the whole monstrous injustice of it all was intolerable.

“I know where to find a lot of senior policemen,” he said very quietly. “Not just Abberline, or Commissioner Warren, but a fair few more as well, all the way up, if I have to. Those two might be retired, but others aren’t.”

Remus was ashen white, his eyes wild. “You… wouldn’t! You’d set them on me, knowing what they did? Knowing what they’re hiding?”

“I don’t know!” Tellman responded. “Not unless you tell me.”

Remus gulped and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. His eyes flickered with fear. “Come with me. Let’s get out of the rain. Come to the pub across there.” He pointed over the road.

Tellman was glad to agree. His mouth was dry and he had already walked a considerable distance. The rain did not bother him. They were both soaked to the skin.

Lightning flashed in a jagged fork, and thunder cracked overhead.

Ten minutes later they were sitting in a quiet corner with glasses of ale and the smell of sawdust and wet clothes all around them.

“Right,” Tellman began. “Who did you meet in Regent’s Park? And if I catch you in one lie, you’re in trouble.”

“I don’t know,” Remus said instantly, his face pained. “And so help me God, that’s the truth. The man who put me onto all this, right from the beginning. I admit I wouldn’t tell who he is if I knew, but I don’t.”

“Not a good start, Mr. Remus,” Tellman warned him.

“I don’t know!” Remus protested, a kind of desperation in his voice.

“What about the man in Hyde Park that you quarreled with and accused of hiding a conspiracy? Another mysterious informant?

“No. That was Abberline.”

Tellman knew Abberline had been in charge of the Whitechapel murders investigation. Had he concealed evidence, even that he had known the identity of the Ripper, and not revealed it? If so, his crime was monstrous, and Tellman could think of no explanation that justified it.

Remus was watching him.

“Why would Abberline hide it?” he asked again. Then he framed the question that was beating in his mind. “What has Adinett got to do with it? Did he know too?”

“I think so.” Remus nodded. “He was certainly onto something. He was at Cleveland Street, asking at the tobacconist’s, and at Sickert’s place.”

Now Tellman was confused. “Who is Sickert?”

“Walter Sickert, the artist. It was at his studio they met. That was in Cleveland Street then,” Remus answered.

Tellman guessed. “The lovers? Annie Crook, who was Catholic, and the young man?”

Remus grimaced. “How quaintly you put it. Yes, that’s where they met, if you like to phrase it that way.”

Tellman assumed from his words that it was more than a mere meeting. But the core of it all still escaped him. What had it to do with an insane murderer and five dead and mutilated women?

“You are not making sense.” He leaned a little forward across the table between them. “Whoever Jack was-or is-he wanted particular women. He asked for them by name, at least he did for Annie Chapman. Why? Why did you go asking after the death of William Crook in St. Pancras, and the lunatic Stephen in Northampton? What has Stephen to do with Jack?”

“From what I can tell…” Remus’s thin hands were clenched on his beer mug. It shook very slightly, rippling the liquid. “Stephen was the Duke of Clarence’s tutor, and he was a friend of Walter Sickert. It was he who introduced them.”

“The Duke of Clarence and Walter Sickert?” Tellman said slowly.

Remus’s voice was half strangled in his throat. “The Duke of Clarence and Annie Crook, you fool!”

The room whirled around Tellman as if he were at sea in a storm. The eventual heir to the throne, and a Catholic girl from the East End. But the Prince of Wales had mistresses all over the place. He was not even particularly discreet about it. If Tellman knew, then probably all the world did.

Remus looked at Tellman’s blank face.

“From what I know now, Clarence-Eddy, as he was called-was rather awkward, and his friends suspected he might have leanings towards men as much as women.”

“Stephen…” Tellman put in.

“That’s right. Stephen, his tutor, introduced him to a lot of more acceptable kinds of entertainment with Annie. He was very deaf, poor devil, like his mother, and found social conversation a bit difficult.” For the first time there was a note of compassion in Remus’s voice, and a sudden sadness filled his face. “But it didn’t work out the way they meant. They fell in love… really in love. The core of it is…” He looked at Tellman with a strange mixture of pity and elation. His hands were shaking even more. “They might have been married…”

Tellman jerked his glass so hard that ale slopped over the edges onto the table. “What?”

Remus nodded, shivering. His voice dropped to a whisper. “And that’s why Netley, poor Eddy’s driver, who used to bring him here to see Annie in Cleveland Street, tried twice to kill the child… poor little creature…”

“Child?” Now it was plain. “Alice Crook…” Tellman gulped in air and nearly choked. “Alice Crook is the daughter of the Duke of Clarence?”

“Probably… and maybe in wedlock. And Annie was Catholic.” Remus was whispering now. “Remember the Act of Settlement?”

“What?”

“The Act of Settlement,” Remus repeated. Tellman had to lean right across the table to hear him. “Made law in 1701, but still in effect. It excludes any person who marries a Roman Catholic from inheriting the crown. The Bill of Rights of 1689 says the same thing.”

The true enormity of it began to dawn on Tellman. It was hideous. It jeopardized the throne, the stability of the government and the whole country.

“So they forced them apart?” It was the only possible conclusion. “They kidnapped Annie and put her in a madhouse… and what happened to Eddy? He died? Or did they… surely…?” He could not even say it. Suddenly being a prince was a terrible thing, isolated, frightening, one individual lonely human being against a conspiracy that stretched everywhere.

Remus was looking at him with the pity still in his face.

“God knows”-he shook his head-”poor soul couldn’t hear half of what was going on, and maybe he was a bit simpler than some. It seems he was devoted to Annie and the child. Maybe he created a fuss about them. He was deaf, alone, confused…” He stopped again, his face filled with misery for a man he had never seen but whose pain he could imagine too vividly.

Tellman stared ahead at the scruffy posters and the scribbling on the pub wall, profoundly grateful that he was there and not in some palace, watched over by murderous courtiers, a servant to the throne and not master of anything.