Seven Dials

“Mrs. Pitt.” He dried his hands on the rough cloth he was carrying. His skin looked red, as if the soap had burned him. “What can I do for you?” His voice had denial in it, and his face was already closed.

She had expected it, and tried to forewarn herself; even so, something inside her sank. She had intended to smile, but it died before it reached her lips. “Good morning, Mr. Sandeman,” she replied quietly. “I have come back to you because circumstances have changed since we spoke before.” She stopped. She knew he did not believe her. For Tilda’s sake she was prepared to tell him more of the truth now, even to add a force to it she would not have before.

“Mine have not,” he replied, meeting her eyes without flinching. She was struck again by the i

She continued only because it would be absurd to have come this far and then leave again without trying harder than this. “I did not expect you to have changed, Mr. Sandeman. But since I last saw you my husband has returned from Alexandria, and told me…” She stopped. The color had drained from his skin. When she glanced down at his hands, they were clenched so tightly on the rag he was holding that the folded edge of it threatened to leave marks on his flesh.

She seized the chance. “And told me a great many things he learned while he was there regarding Mr. Lovat’s service in Egypt, and other things…” She did not wish to be specific, in case it allowed him to realize how very little she really knew. “Mr. Sandeman, I fear Martin Garvie’s life is in danger. I had a very senior gentleman from Special Branch warn me that I was concerning myself with affairs of great danger and I should leave them be, but I ca

Sandeman’s eyes were enormous, as if staring at something that transfixed him. “Special Branch?” His lips seemed dry. “What have they to do with Martin Garvie?”

“You must be aware that Edwin Lovat has been murdered. It is in all the newspapers,” she replied. “And that an Egyptian woman is on trial at the Old Bailey. Even here in Seven Dials the ru

“Yes,” Sandeman agreed quietly. “Of course I heard people talking about it. But it is another world from here. It’s a story to us. Nothing more.” He said it as if he were trying to believe it himself, pushing it away so it was not his responsibility.

Charlotte felt her brief advantage slipping out of her hands, and she did not know how to get it back. A tiny flutter of panic stirred inside her. She must try something or he would refuse her again and then it would be too late. She remembered what Pitt had said about the fourth friend. “Mr. Yeats is dead too, you know,” she said abruptly.

He looked as if she had struck him. He opened his mouth and drew in his breath with difficulty. She knew she had told him something he had not known, and that it wounded him deeply. There would be time for her to be guilty about it later; now she must drag out of him whatever it was that Martin Garvie had confided in him. She was about to speak, and something in his face warned her to stop.

“How… how did he die?” he asked awkwardly. He was seeking information from her now, and he was aware of the irony of it.

“In battle,” she replied. “In India somewhere. Apparently he was very brave… even reckless.” She stopped, seeing the last trace of color bleach from his skin.

“Battle?” He clung to the word as if it was some kind of desperate hope. “You mean military action?”

“Yes.”

He looked away.

“Please, Mr. Sandeman!” she said urgently. “My husband is clever and determined. I expect he will find out what it is you know, but it may be too late to help Martin Garvie-or Mr. Garrick, if they are together.” She was not sure if that was wise, or if she had gone too far and betrayed her ignorance. She saw the indecision fighting in his face, and her heart knocked inside her in the tension as she waited.

His eyes flickered and he looked away from her, down at his hands. “I don’t think there is much you can do to help,” he said flatly, and there was terrible pain in his voice. “Even if I told you all that Martin said to me, I believe we are all too late.”

The coldness in the room ate into her and she found she was shivering, her body tight. “You think that Martin has been murdered as well? Who next? You?” she challenged. “Are you just going to sit here and wait for whoever it is to come after you too?” Her voice was shaking with anger, and fear, and a sense that she was fighting alone, in spite of the fact that she was so close to him she could smell the carbolic in the soap he had used, even though his hands were dry. She jerked her arm out in an aimless sweep. “Don’t you care enough about these people to want to save yourself? Who is going to look after them if you don’t?”

He looked up at her. She had touched a nerve.

“It’s your job!” she said wildly. It was not fair, and not really true. She knew nothing about him and had no business to make such a statement. If he had been angry with her she would not have blamed him.

“Martin had heard of me,” he said very quietly, but as if deep in thought, not faltering as though he might stop. “I have befriended many soldiers who have fallen on hard times, drink too much because they have thoughts and memories they can’t live with and can’t forget. Or because they don’t know how to fit back into the lives they had before they went to war.” He drew in a long breath. “It may be only a few years for the people at home, whose lives are much the same every day, little dreams. For them the world stays the same.”

She did not interrupt. It was irrelevant so far, but he was feeling his way toward something.

“It isn’t like that in the army. It can be just a little while, but it is a lifetime,” he continued.

Was he speaking about Egypt, about himself, and Stephen Garrick, and Lovat? Of all the lost and hopeless men he ministered to here in the alleys of Seven Dials?

“Martin tried to help Garrick.” Sandeman stared at the floor, not meeting his eyes. “But he didn’t know how to. Garrick’s nightmares were getting worse, and more frequent. He drank to try and dull himself into insensibility, but it worked less and less all the time. He began to take opium as well. His health was deteriorating and he was losing control of himself.” Sandeman’s voice was sinking. She had to lean towards him to catch the words.

“He couldn’t trust anyone,” he went on. “Except Martin, because he was desperate. Martin thought perhaps I could help, if Garrick would come to me… or even if I went to him.”

“Why didn’t you go?” she asked, hearing the edge to her voice she had not meant to allow through.

He was too deep in his own thoughts to be stung.

“Just because he lives in Torrington Square instead of a doorway in Seven Dials doesn’t mean he needs your help any less!” she accused him. “He was obviously in his own kind of hell.”

He looked up at her, his eyes hollow. “Of course he was!” he grated. “But I can’t help him. He doesn’t want to hear the only thing I know how to say.”

She did not understand. “If you can’t help nightmares, then who can? Isn’t that what you do for these men here? Why not for Stephen Garrick?”

He said nothing.

“What were his nightmares?” she prodded, knowing she was hurting him, but she could not stop now. “Did Martin tell you? Why couldn’t you help him face them?”

“You say that as if it were easy.” Anger lay just under the surface of his voice and in the stiff lines of his body. “You have no idea what you are talking about.”