Seven Dials

“Please stay seated,” she said quickly, as if he had already half risen. “You must hold the soup carefully. It is very hot. You will need both hands. Please take care not to burn yourself.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he muttered, relaxing again and taking the bowl from her gingerly. He rested it on the blanket across his knee straightaway. It was too hot to hold for long, and he was aware that his fingers were clumsy.

She smiled at him, although he did not see it, then realizing that she might be embarrassing him, she turned and went back into the scullery again.

Sandeman was bending over the tin bath, rubbing at the clothes. He was using rough soap made of potash, carbolic, and lye. It was strong and would do his skin no good, but it would get rid of the worst of the dirt, and no doubt the lice, and the odor and infection that would lie with them.

“Mr. Sandeman,” she said urgently, “I really do have to speak to you. This young man who has disappeared may be in some danger, and we have been told that he came looking for you. If he found you, he might have said something which could tell me where he went, and why.”

He looked sideways at her, resting his thin arms on the edge of the bath and leaning his weight on them. It was a backbreaking job. “Who is it?” he asked.

“Martin Garvie…”

The words were barely out of her mouth when she saw him stiffen and the color drain from his face, and then flow back in again as if the blood had rushed up in a tide. Her own heart constricted with fear. Her lips were so stiff it was difficult to form the words. “What’s happened to him?” she said huskily.

“I don’t know.” He straightened up very slowly. He turned to face her, ignoring the wet clothes and letting them sink back into the water. “I’m sorry, I ca

“He may be in danger, Mr. Sandeman,” she said quickly. “He is missing! No one has seen or heard from him for three weeks. His sister is frantic with worry. Even his master, Mr. Stephen Garrick, does not appear to have gone where he is said to have. There is no trace of him on train or ship. We need anything we can find to help us learn what has happened.”

It was painfully clear that Sandeman was laboring under some intense emotion, so profound he could not control the shivering of his body or the raggedness of his breathing, but when he managed to find his voice, there was no indecision in him, no possibility of change.

“I ca

“But if a man’s life is at stake…” she argued, knowing even as she did so that she was doomed to failure. She could see it in his eyes, the pallor of his face, the muscles locked tight in his jaw and neck.

“I can only trust God,” he replied so softly she barely heard him. “It rests in His hands. I ca

“Is… is he alive?”

“I don’t know.”

She drew her breath in to try one more time, and then let it out in a sigh. She recognized the finality in his eyes, and looked away. She could not think what else to say. The emotion was too high for anything banal, and yet what else was there?

“Mrs…” he started, leaving it hanging because he did not know her name.

“Pitt,” she answered. “Charlotte Pitt.”

“Mrs. Pitt, it concerns too many other people. If it were my secret alone, and speaking would do any good… but it won’t. It’s an old story, long past helping now.”

“To do with Martin Garvie?” She was puzzled. “He told you something…”

“I can’t help you, Mrs. Pitt. I’ll walk with you back as far as Dudley Street, in case you get lost.” His voice was urgent, his dark eyes full of trouble. “Please go home. You don’t belong here. You may get hurt, and you will do no good. Believe me. I live here, and I know this place as well as any outsider can do, but I seldom go out after dark. Come…” He dried his hands on a piece of torn cloth and put his jacket on again. “Do you know your way from Dudley Street?”

“Yes… thank you.” She could only accept. There was nothing else to do with dignity, or even without it. And, she admitted, she cared what he thought of her.

WITH PITT not at home, Charlotte had no wish to light the parlor fire and sit there alone after Daniel and Jemima had gone to bed. Instead she sat in the warm, bright kitchen and told Gracie what she had discovered from Sandeman, but neither of them could think of anything further to do, unless they could find more information. In spite of the cats more or less asleep in the clothes basket beside the stove, and the soft patter of rain on the window, they shared a quiet, bitter feeling of defeat.

The evening after was no better, but at least there were domestic chores to be done, and that was more satisfying than idleness. Gracie was going through cupboards, tidying them, and Charlotte was mending pillowcases when a little after nine o’clock the doorbell rang.

Gracie was standing on a stool with her arms full of washing, so Charlotte went to answer it herself.

On the step stood a slender man, very smartly dressed in tailoring that would have astounded Pitt. He had a lean, clever face, deeply lined, and with eyes so dark they looked black in the light of the street lamp. His shock of dark hair was liberally sprinkled with gray.

“Mrs. Pitt.” He said it more as an introduction than a question.

“Yes,” she acknowledged cautiously. She was certainly not going to allow a stranger into the house. Nor, in fact, would it be a good idea to tell him that Pitt was away. “What may I do for you?” she added.

He smiled slightly. It was self-deprecating, and yet he was obviously full of confidence. It was a ma

“How do you do. My name is Victor Narraway. In your husband’s absence in Alexandria, where I regret I was obliged to send him, I wished to call upon you and ascertain that you are safe and well… and that you remain so.”

“Have you some doubt, Mr. Narraway?” She was startled at his identity, and there was a flutter of fear in her that he knew something of Pitt which she did not. And for him to have come, it had to be something ugly. She had heard nothing from Pitt yet, but it was far too early. The post would take days. She tried to steady herself. “Why have you called, Mr. Narraway? Please be candid.”

“Exactly as I said, Mrs. Pitt,” he replied. “May I come in?”

She stood back in tacit invitation and he stepped up and past her, glancing momentarily at the delicate plasterwork on the ceiling of the hall. Then as she closed the door, he went where she indicated into the parlor.

She followed him and turned up the lamps. She hoped he was not going to be there long enough for it to matter that she had not lit the fire. She faced him almost challengingly, her heart pounding. “Have you heard something about Thomas?”

“No, Mrs. Pitt,” he said immediately. “I apologize if I gave you that impression. As far as I know, he is safe and in good health. Were he not, I would have heard to the contrary. It is your safety I am concerned about.”

He was very polite but she detected a shadow of condescension in his tone. Was it because Narraway was a gentleman, and Pitt was a gamekeeper’s son, in spite of his perfect diction? There was always something in the ma

Charlotte was not aristocracy, as Vespasia was, but she was very definitely of good family. She looked at him with a cool arrogance which Vespasia might not have disowned. Her old dress with its darned cuffs was irrelevant.