Seven Dials (19 page)

Was that why she had gone to London, not out of any desire to make her own future, but to help her people? If that was so, then presumably she had sought out Ryerson specifically, as a man with the power to help her, if she could persuade him to do so.

How had she intended to do that? No matter how deeply he was in love with her, he would hardly alter government policy to please her, would he? And according to Yacoub’s estimate of her character, she would have despised him if he had.

But then unless she cared for him, that would hardly matter to her. Did she? Had she unexpectedly fallen in love with him, and it was suddenly no longer simply a matter of patriotic duty?

Or had she planned to blackmail him, and Lovat’s murder was part of that plan, somehow hideously gone wrong, and she herself had ended up arrested, and by now probably charged as well? What had she meant to have happen? Offer him escape from blame, and increase the pressure upon Ryerson to yield more autonomy to Egypt?

Or was her goal Ryerson’s ruin, and the placement of another, more pliable minister in his place-one who would pay the Egyptian price?

But that made little sense. No minister of trade was going to yield the cotton back to Egypt unless he was forced to by circumstances far more powerful than love, or even ruin. He would simply be replaced in time by another stronger and less vulnerable man.

Pitt finished his wine and thanked Yacoub. The voices and laughter bubbled around them, but he could think of nothing further to ask, and instead they spoke again of the rich, intricate history of Alexandria.

When Pitt was at the breakfast table the following morning, a messenger brought him a note from Trenchard, asking him if all was well and if he would care for any further assistance. It also said that if Pitt cared to join him for luncheon, Trenchard would be happy to show him some of the less-well-known places of interest in the city afterwards.

Pitt requested paper and wrote back accepting, and dispatched the messenger with his reply before continuing with his excellent fresh bread, fruit, and fish. He was very rapidly growing accustomed to the exotic food, and enjoying it greatly.

He spent part of the morning in an English library reading what he could find about the Orabi uprising and looking for any reference to anyone named Ghali involved in politics at the time. The passion and the betrayal were so absorbing he was almost late for his luncheon with Trenchard, and arrived at the consulate barely by noon.

Trenchard made no comment, but rose from his chair with a smile and welcomed him in.

“Delighted you could come,” he said warmly. He regarded Pitt’s pale cotton shirt and trousers, and the already deepening color of his face and lower arms. “You look as if you are well settled in-apart from a few mosquito bites,” he observed.

“Very well,” Pitt agreed. “It is a city one could spend a year exploring, and hardly touch the surface.”

Something in Trenchard’s face eased. The lines of his mouth softened and there was an added reality to the warmth in his eyes. “Egypt has you, hasn’t it?” he said with evident pleasure. “And you haven’t even been anywhere near Cairo yet, never mind up the Nile. I wish your detection took you to Heliopolis, or the tombs of the caliphs or the petrified forest. You could not go that far without riding out to the pyramids at Giza, and of course the Sphinx, and then sat up until you could at least see the pyramids at Aboukir and Sakhara, and the ruins of Memphis.” He shook his head slightly, as if at some pleasant, well-known inner joke. “And then nothing on earth could stop you from continuing on up that greatest and oldest of all ruins till you reached Thebes, and the Temple of Karnak. That defeats even the imagination.” He was watching Pitt’s face as he spoke. “Believe me, no modern Western man can conceive the grandeur of it, the sheer enormity!” He did not wait for comment. He stood still in the middle of the room, oblivious of modern furniture and consulate papers around him. His vision was on the timeless sands.

Pitt did not interrupt; no answer was expected or wanted.

“Then south to Luxor,” Trenchard went on. “You should cross the river at dawn. You have never seen anything in your life like first light over the desert, moving across the water’s face. Then you have only about four miles to the Valley of the Kings.

“If you ride on a fast camel you will see the sunrise on the tombs of the pharaohs whose fathers ruled this land four thousand years before Christ was born. They were ancient before Abraham came out of Ur of the Chaldees. Have you any idea what that means, Inspector Pitt?” There was challenge in his eyes now. “The British Empire that circles the earth now was born in the last five minutes of time compared with them.” He stopped suddenly. He took a deep breath. “But you haven’t time for that… I know. And Narraway certainly won’t pay for it. Forgive me. No doubt you are eager for your accommodation, and you are honest enough to be compelled by duty.”

Pitt smiled. “Duty does not forbid me from learning something about the history of Egypt, or from wishing I needed to pursue Ayesha Zakhari’s history at least as far as Cairo. I haven’t found an excuse, but I haven’t stopped looking.”

Trenchard laughed, and led the way out through the offices to the street and a short distance along the crowded thoroughfare in a direction Pitt had not been before. He found himself staring at the beautiful buildings decorated with stone fretwork like lace in its intricacy, balconies with roofs supported by simple pillars. He saw one, shaded from the heat, where a group of elderly men sat on thick turquoise-and-gold cushions eating bread, fruit, and dates as they talked earnestly to one another. They barely glanced at the two Englishmen, contempt and dislike in their eyes for a moment, then masked, because they dared not let it be seen. Behind them, a large man with skin almost as black as his beard, dressed in loose trousers caught in below the knee, seemed to be waiting their pleasure. Pigeons fluttered around, and a tall, narrow-necked vase was stuffed full of pink roses.

Pitt thought it might have looked exactly the same a thousand years earlier.

Trenchard found the café of his choice and ordered food for both of them without consulting Pitt, and when it came it made not the slightest pretense at European form. They ate with their fingers, and it was delicious. The color, the smell, the texture-everything pleased.

“I have been making a few enquiries of my own about Ayesha Zakhari,” Trenchard said when they were halfway through the meal.

Pitt stopped with a morsel of food in his hand. “Yes?”

“As we had supposed, she is Coptic Christian,” Trenchard replied. “Her name tells us as much. It seems she was deeply involved with some of the leading Egyptian nationalists in the Orabi uprising, just before the bombardments of Alexandria ten years ago. I am sorry, Pitt…” He looked rueful. “I have asked discreetly among the friends I have here, and it seems eminently probable that she went to London with the express purpose of ensnaring Ryerson, in some foolish and highly impractical idea that he could be persuaded to alter the British financial arrangements with Egypt… cotton at least, perhaps more. She has always been hotheaded where her idealism is concerned. She fell in love with Alexander Ghali, Ramses’s father, and even when he betrayed his cause, she was among the last to accept the truth about him.” Trenchard’s face was filled with profound emotion, a mixture of pity and contempt so deep even the mention of the facts which provoked it made his whole frame stiffen and his elegant hands suddenly look awkward.

Pitt felt overtaken by a feeling of emptiness also. “Disillusion is very bitter,” he said quietly. “Most of us fight to deny it as long as we can.”

Trenchard looked up quickly. “I’m sorry, Pitt. I am afraid you are likely to find that she is impulsive, romantic-an idealist who has been betrayed, and now acting from her own pain, and trying to make the old dreams come true, however unrealistic the means.”

Pitt looked down at the food in his hand. It no longer held the exotic charm it had only a few minutes ago. That was absurd. He had never even seen Ayesha Zakhari. It should matter nothing to him except professionally that she was irresponsible, a political failure who had allowed personal hurt to spoil her judgment. Yet suddenly he felt tired, as if he too had lost a dream.

“I’ll see what else I can find out about Lovat,” he said aloud.

Trenchard was watching him, his face full of regret. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I knew it would have been very much pleasanter to think there was some other explanation. But possibly Lovat gained enmities in England?”

“He was shot in Miss Zakhari’s garden at three in the morning!” Pitt said with a touch of bitterness. “And with her gun!”

Trenchard gave a slight gesture of resignation, graceful and sad. It had an elegance, as if he had picked up something of the innate dignity of the civilization he so admired.

They finished the meal. Trenchard insisted on paying, after thanking the proprietor in fluent and colloquial Arabic, then he accompanied Pitt to the bazaar and helped him to bargain for a bracelet set with carnelian for Charlotte, a small statue of a hippopotamus for Daniel, some brightly colored silk ribbons for Jemima, and a woven kerchief for Gracie.

Pitt ended the afternoon with information he accepted was inevitably true, however much he would have preferred it not to be, and gifts he was delighted with, and for which he knew he had paid a very small price indeed.

He thanked Trenchard and returned on the tram to San Stefano, determined to find the army barracks where Lovat had served and spend the rest of his time in Alexandria pursuing Lovat’s military and personal career and anything he could find out about him. Somewhere his path had crossed Ayesha’s, and there had to be more to learn about it.

CHARLOTTE FOUND IT very difficult trying to occupy her mind with anything, knowing that Pitt was in Egypt, alone in a land of which he knew nothing. More dangerous than simply its unfamiliarity was the fact that he was there to ask questions about a woman who might well be a heroine in her people’s struggle against British domination of Egyptian affairs. She tried to occupy herself with any number of other thoughts, mostly trivial, but they all fled before the enormity of his absence once she turned off the last of the gaslights downstairs and went up to her bedroom alone. Then she lay in the dark and her imagination raced.

Therefore she was pleased to see Tellman on the evening of the third day after Pitt had left. Gracie answered the back door to find him standing there looking tired and cold, his face pinched from the wind. He came in at her invitation, stamping his feet a little on the scullery floor as if to get rid of water, although it was not raining at the moment, but it had been. He took off his coat.

“Good evening, Mrs. Pitt,” he said, looking at Charlotte anxiously, as if somehow it was still his concern to care for her in Pitt’s absence. The old habit died hard, as did the pretense that he did not care.

“Good evening, Inspector,” she replied, amusement in her smile as well as pleasure to see him. She gave him his title intentionally. She had never used his Christian name. She was not even sure if Gracie had more than the odd, highly informal time. “Come in and have a cup of tea,” she invited him. “You look cold. Have you had any supper?”

“Not yet,” he replied, pulling out one of the hard-backed chairs and sitting down.

“I’ll get yer summink,” Gracie said quickly, putting the kettle onto the hob as she spoke. “In’t got nuthin’ left over for yer, though, ’ceptin’ cold mutton an’ bubble an’ squeak-’ow’s that?”

“Very good, thank you,” Tellman said without pleasure, glancing at Charlotte to make sure that was acceptable to her also.

“Of course,” she agreed quickly. “Have you heard something about Martin Garvie?”

He looked across at her, then at Gracie, his face full of pity and a gentleness exaggerated by the gaslight’s soft glow catching the angles of his high cheekbones and hollow cheeks.

“No,” he admitted. “And I’ve looked every way I can without police authority.” The urgency in his voice made it impossible to argue with him.

“Wot did yer get, then?” Gracie asked, putting the frying pan on the top of the stove and bending to riddle the ash down and allow the fire to burn hotly again. She did it almost absently, still looking mostly at Tellman.

“Martin Garvie’s definitely gone,” he answered unhappily. “Nobody’s seen him in almost two weeks now, but nobody’s seen Stephen Garrick either. None of the servants, which is what you said, so at first they supposed he was in his rooms, taken sick, in one of his tantrums-”

“Not for more than a week, without the cook at least being aware of it,” Charlotte interrupted. “Whatever illness he had, she’d be sending food of some sort up to him. And in that length of time, surely they’d have the doctor in?”

“So far as I can find out, there’s been no doctor,” Tellman answered, shaking his head a little. “And no other caller for him either.” His face tightened, his eyes black. “He’s not in the house-and nor is Martin Garvie. There’d be food, bed linen, if nothing else…”

Gracie fetched the cold potatoes from the larder. She started to peel and chop the onions with a brief apology, fishing for a handkerchief at the same time. “Bubble an’ squeak’s no good without onions,” she said, by way of explanation. The frying pan was already beginning to get hot.

“Were there no letters?” Charlotte asked. “Invitations? Surely they would be replied to… or at least forwarded?”

Tellman bit his lip. “I couldn’t be that direct, but I asked around about Mr. Garrick, and it seems he doesn’t have that many friends. He’s not good company. At least that’s what I understood.”

Gracie sniffed and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, then slid the chopped onions into the hot fat, and the sizzle blocked out her next words. “ ’E’s gotta ’ave somebody!” she repeated. “ ’E don’t work an’ ’e don’t stay ’ome, so where’d ’e go? Don’t nob’dy miss ’im?”

“Well, as far as I can make out, nobody sees him often enough to wonder where he’s gone,” Tellman replied, looking at Gracie, then turning in his chair to Charlotte. “He doesn’t seem to have the same sort of life as most young men his age from a family like that. He doesn’t go to a regular club, so nobody thought it odd not to see him. There’s nowhere he’s known, nobody he talks to, or plays any sport with, wagers with… nothing to make a… a life!” He cleared his throat. “I see the same people just about every day. If I wasn’t there they’d soon miss me, an’ there’d be questions asked.”

Charlotte frowned. It was worrying, but there was nothing specific yet to grasp. The subject that rose to her mind was indelicate, but the matter was too serious to pay deference to such things. However, she was aware of Tellman’s sensibilities, particularly in front of Gracie. “He is not married,” she said, feeling her way. “And apparently not courting anyone, so far as we know. Does he have…” Now she was not sure what to say.

“Couldn’t find anything,” Tellman said hastily, cutting her off. “As far as I could learn, he was an unhappy man.” He glanced at Gracie. “Much as you said. Drinks a lot and gets difficult. Lost most of his friends lately. They don’t seem to see him anymore. Not that I’ve had time to look very deep. But nobody’s seen him, and he doesn’t seem to have been planning to go anywhere, so wherever it is, he went in a hurry.”

“And took Martin Garvie with ’im?” Gracie said, stirring the onions without looking at them. “Then why didn’t the cook know? An’ Bella? Surely they’d ’ave ’eard? ’E didn’t go without cases an’ things. Gentlemen don’t.”

“No, they don’t,” Charlotte agreed. “And you didn’t answer about his letters. Are they forwarded to him, wherever he is? Someone would decline invitations, but surely he would want his letters?”

“His father?” Tellman suggested.

“Probably,” Charlotte agreed. “But does he take them to the postbox himself? Why? Most people like him have a footman to do that. Has Stephen gone somewhere so secret the household staff are not allowed to know? And why did Martin leave no message for Tilda?”

“Wasn’t time,” Tellman answered. “It was a sudden invitation… or at least a sudden decision on his part.”

“To somewhere from which Martin could not send a letter, if not to Tilda, then at least to someone who could let her know?” Charlotte said dubiously.

Gracie tipped the potatoes and cabbage into the pan to let them heat through, to mix with the onions and brown nicely. “It don’t sound right ter me,” she said quietly. “It in’t natural. I think as there’s summink wrong.”

“So do I.” Charlotte looked unblinkingly at Tellman.

Tellman gazed back at her without shifting his eyes even momentarily. “I don’t know how to take it any further, Mrs. Pitt. The police have got no reason to ask anyone. I got shown out pretty sharply more than once, as it was, and told to attend to my own affairs. I had to pretend it was to do with a robbery. Said that Mr. Garrick could have been a witness.” His face pinched up, showing his loathing for having allowed himself into the position of needing to lie. Charlotte wondered if Gracie knew just what cost he had paid to please her. She looked across at Gracie’s back, stiff and straight as she paid attention to the hot bubble and squeak in the frying pan, and very carefully lifted it on the slice to avoid breaking the crisp surface as she set it on the plate beside the cold mutton. Perhaps she did.

Tellman took the plate from her appreciatively. “Thank you.” He began to eat after only the slightest hesitation when Charlotte nodded to indicate he was welcome to begin.

“So wot are we gonna do, then?” Gracie asked, damping the fire down and filling the teapot. “We can’t jus’ leave it. ’E in’t gone inter thin air. If summink’s ’appened ter ’im it’s murder, whether it’s both of ’em or just Martin.” She turned to Charlotte. “D’yer reckon as Mr. Garrick ’ad one of ’is rages an’ ’it Martin, mebbe real ’ard, an’ ’e died? An’ they’re coverin’ it up ter save ’im? Send ’im orff inter the country, or summink?”

Charlotte was about to say “Of course not” when she realized that she was actually considering the possibility.

Tellman drew in his breath, but his mouth was full.

“I think we need to know a great deal more about the Garrick family,” Charlotte said, choosing her words carefully.

Gracie’s face tightened. “Yer gonna ask Lady Vespasia?” she said hopefully. She had not only heard of Vespasia’s help in other cases, she had actually met her and been spoken to on more than one occasion. Vespasia had visited Keppel Street. Gracie could not have been more impressed had it been the Queen herself. After all, the Queen was short and more than a little plump, whereas Vespasia was as regal and as beautiful as a queen should be. And more important than that, she was willing to help wholeheartedly in the solving of crimes. She might be a real lady, with all the unimaginable glamour that went with that, but she helped them detect, and that was the ultimate belonging. “She’d know,” Gracie added encouragingly.

Charlotte looked at Gracie’s eager face and then at Tellman, who hated aristocrats, and amateurs interfering with police business, especially women, and saw his eyes flicker, a shadow of self-mockery with the denial. She hesitated as if deferring to his opinion, then when he said nothing, she nodded.

“I can’t think of anything better. As we have already acknowledged, there is no police case to pursue, but there is almost certainly something wrong,” he conceded. “There’s no help for it.”

IT WAS FAR TOO LATE that evening to contact Aunt Vespasia, but in the morning Charlotte dressed in her best calling gown, albeit very definitely last year’s cut, which she had had no reason or incentive to alter yet. Since Pitt’s demotion from head of Bow Street into Special Branch, she had had absolutely no excuse, or opportunity, to attend social engagements of any importance. It was only now, looking at her overfamiliar wardrobe, that she realized it quite so forcefully.

However, there was no money to spare for unnecessary indulgences such as a fashionable gown when what she had was warm, becoming and perfectly adequate. It was not so very long ago that they had both worried as to whether there would be food and coal.

The thing that stung was that she had not had the opportunity to help Thomas, which would have been an important thing in itself, and as an added benefit would have given her the chance and the excuse to borrow something glamorous from Emily, or even from Aunt Vespasia herself, who, although two generations older, was of a more similar height.

Now she pulled out her plum-colored morning dress and changed into it, pleased that at least it still fit her very nicely. Finding the right hat was less easy, and she settled for black with a touch of soft reddish pink. She did not really like it, but she owned nothing better, and one could not call without wearing a hat of some sort. More important than her own feelings, if anyone else were calling upon Vespasia, she would not like to embarrass her. No one wishes for impecunious relatives, however distant, still less for ones with distressing taste in clothes.

Gracie saw her off with enthusiasm and last-minute advice and instruction. She would not have been so impertinent as to offer it had she thought first, but her eagerness overcame propriety.

“We gotta know wot that ’ouse’old is like,” she said with a frown. “They done summink to ’im. We gotta find out wot, an’ why.”

“I shall tell Aunt Vespasia the truth,” Charlotte answered her, standing on the front step and looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful day, bright but decidedly crisp.

“It in’t gonna rain,” Gracie said decisively.

“No, I can see that. I was just thinking it is the sort of day when everyone and their mothers will think to go out calling. I may be fortunate to find her alone, and it is really not the sort of conversation where I would care to be interrupted.”

“Well, we gotta try,” Gracie urged. “An’ I can’t think o’ no one better than Lady Vespasia. We don’t know nob’dy else, unless Mrs. Radley knows ’em?”

“Emily isn’t of much help,” Charlotte replied, stepping off onto the pavement. “She has not really been around long enough. I will be back when I can do no more. Good-bye.” And she set off with determination, now intent upon getting a hansom rather than saving money and losing time by taking a series of omnibuses. If she did the latter she would have to get off some considerable distance from Vespasia’s house. One could hardly arrive to call on Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould having alighted from a public omnibus.

However, when she arrived, Vespasia’s maid, who knew her well, told her with much regret that Lady Vespasia had decided in such clement weather to take the carriage to the park and go for a walk.

Charlotte was surprised how sharply disappointed she was. London was full of parks, but when society referred to “the Park” it only ever meant Hyde Park, so there was nothing to do but find another hansom and direct the driver to take her there.

Earlier in the year, during the season, she might have found a hundred carriages in or near the park, and looking for an individual would have been a waste of time, but now in the sharper autumn sunshine of late September, with a very decided chill in the breeze, there were not more than a dozen carriages at the nearer end of Rotten Row, and perhaps the same at the farther. Footmen and coachmen stood around gossiping with each other in the dappled shade, and keeping a weather eye open not to be caught by a returning master or mistress. Horses stood idly, moving only now and then with a clink of harness, brasses gleaming in the sun.

Charlotte was perfectly prepared to find Vespasia and join her, even if it meant interrupting almost anyone, short of the Princess of Wales. But since the Princess was seriously deaf, it was most unlikely Vespasia would be engaged in conversation with her, although they were friends, and had been so for years. If Vespasia was speaking with a duchess or countess, Charlotte would be unlikely to recognize the fact. She realized with a sharp intake of breath that she had better behave with the utmost circumspection, even if the lady in question should turn out to be of no social consequence whatever. Vespasia was perfectly capable of talking to an actress or a courtesan, if the person interested her.