Seven Dials

by Anne Perry

  “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.”

  “Then tell me! From what you are saying, he is sinking into madness. What kind of a priest are you that you won’t hold out a hand to him yourself, and you won’t help me to?”

  This time he looked up at her with rage and impotence naked in his face.

  “What help have you for madness, Mrs. Pitt? Can you stop the dreams that come in the night, of blood and fire, of screaming that tears your mind to pieces and leaves the shards to cut you, even when you are awake?” His whole body was trembling. “What can you do about heat that scorches your skin, but when you open your eyes you’re covered in sweat, and freezing? It is inside you, Mrs. Pitt! No one can help! Martin Garvie tried to, and it has sucked him into it. When he came to me, his fear was for Garrick, but it should have been for himself as well. Madness consumes not only those afflicted, but those who touch it as well.”

  “Are you saying Stephen Garrick is insane?” she demanded. “Why aren’t his family treating him? Are they too ashamed of it to admit that is what is wrong with him?” It was beginning to make sense at last. Many people denied illness of the mind, as if it were a sin rather than a disease. Had it been cholera, or smallpox, no one would have hidden it. “Have they taken him to an institution?” She did not mean to have raised her voice, but it was out of control. “Is that it? But why Martin as well? Why couldn’t he at least have written to his sister and told her where he was?”

  His face was filled with pity so deep it seemed the pain of it wounded him as if he would carry it long after he had finished trying to make her understand it. “From Bedlam?” he said simply.

  The word struck a shiver through her flesh. Everyone knew of the hospital for the insane that was like a house of hell. The name of it was an obscenity, an abbreviation of Bethlehem, the most holy town, the asylum of dreams, and this was the prison of nightmares where people were incarcerated in the torture of their own minds, screaming at the unseen.

  She struggled for a moment to find her voice. “You let that happen to him?” she whispered. It was not intended as an accusation, at least not entirely. She had admired Sandeman; she had seen a compassion in him too deep to believe indifference in him now, for any reason. What she had seen was real, she had felt it in the dignity with which he had regarded the drunken man the day she had found him.

  He looked at her with hurt for her judgment of him, and defiance. “How could I have prevented it? We each have to find our own salvation, Mrs. Pitt. I told Garrick what to do years ago, but I can’t make him do it.”

  She was about to correct him, say that
it was Martin Garvie she was thinking of, then she realized what he implied. “Are you saying that Stephen Garrick’s madness is his own fault?” she asked incredulously.

  “No …” He looked away, and for the first time she knew he was lying.

  “Mr. Sandeman!” Then she was uncertain what she could add that would help.

  He raised his head to meet her eyes. “Mrs. Pitt, I have told you more than I want to, just in case you can help Martin Garvie, who is a good man seeking to help someone in far deeper pain than he can understand—and he may suffer for it … terribly.” There was a plea in his voice. “If you have the power to reach anyone who can get him freed, before it is too late … if … if that is where he is.”

  “I will!” she said with more passion than belief. “At least now I know something, somewhere to begin. Thank you, Mr. Sandeman.” She hesitated. “I … I don’t suppose you know anything about Mr. Lovat’s death, do you?”

  The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “No. If you ask me to guess, I should think it is exactly what it looks like—the Egyptian woman killed him, for whatever reason of her own. Perhaps it goes back to something between them in Alexandria. I thought at the time that he did her no injury, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  This time he did not offer to walk with her as far as the street, and she left alone, determined to find Pitt as soon as possible and tell him where Martin Garvie was, and persuade him to get him freed, whatever it required to do it.

  ALL AFTERNOON SHE BEGAN and half finished tasks in the house, stopping every time she heard a footfall, hoping it was Pitt returning, so she could tell him.

  When he finally did come home, as usual he walked in his stocking feet down the passage to the kitchen, so she did not hear him until he spoke. She was so startled she dropped the potato she had in her hand, and spun around to face him still holding the peeling knife.

  “I know what happened to Martin Garvie,” she said. “At least I think I do … and to Stephen Garrick. Thomas, we have to do something about it. Immediately!”

  His expression darkened. “How do you know? Where have you been? Did you go back to Sandeman?”

  She lifted her chin a little. If they were going to have a disagreement about it, or worse, it would have to wait. “Of course I did. He is the only one who knows anything about it.”

  “Charlotte—” he began.

  “He’s in Bedlam!” she interrupted.

  It had the effect she had intended. His eyes widened and some of the color drained from his face. “Are you certain?” he said quietly.

  “No,” she admitted. “But it fits all the facts that we have. Stephen Garrick suffered terrible nightmares, far worse than ordinary people’s, and they went on even when he was waking, delusions of blood and fire and screaming. He had uncontrollable fits of temper and weeping.” Her words fell over each other. “He drank too much to try to rid himself of whatever it is that tormented him, and he took opium. Martin Garvie knew all about it, because he was the only one who could help him. But he was losing control of the situation, and he went to Sandeman to ask his advice, but there was nothing Sandeman could do either. And it was shortly after that that Stephen Garrick, and Martin, left Torrington Square early in the morning, without proper luggage, yet did not leave London in any way that we can trace. And the carriage returned to Torrington Square within a few hours, so either they traveled on by public means or they did not go far.”

  He stood still, turning over in his mind what she had said. She saw the gravity in his face. If he was going to criticize her for going back to Seven Dials, it was going to be long after this was dealt with.

  “Can we get him out?” she said quietly. “Martin, at least, doesn’t belong there. I know he may have gone originally to help Garrick, but he wouldn’t have done it willingly without letting Tilda know. That proves there is something badly wrong.”

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed, but she could see he was still deep in thought. “But we must be careful. Someone had the authority to place Garrick there. That can only have been his father.”

  “For Stephen Garrick, yes, but he had no right to put Martin there!” she protested. “At least not morally. I suppose he’s a servant, so legally—”

  “Yes … I know that,” he interrupted. “But we must be careful.”

  “Get Mr. Narraway to do it!” she said urgently. “At least to be there. You need Stephen Garrick because he was in Alexandria with Lovat, and now that Yeats is dead as well …” She trailed off. A hideous thought was filling her mind and she could see it in his eyes also. “Do you think that’s why his father put him there?” she whispered. “To protect him? Is someone from Egypt after them all? Are his nightmares actually terror?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “But it is possible …”

  She heard the unhappiness in his voice. “You don’t want it to be her—do you?” she said gently.

  “No … no, I don’t. But it looks more and more like it. I heard what happened in court today.” His face filled with distaste. “I don’t know if it is what Ryerson wants, but his defense is doing everything they can to blacken Lovat’s name. I suppose it is to cause reasonable doubt that there could be many others who wanted to kill him. I can’t see it doing much good. Ayesha Zakhari was at Eden Lodge. Surely anyone else who killed Lovat out of passion would hardly follow him around at three in the morning into someone else’s garden.”

  She realized as he said it that he was admitting a kind of defeat. He had not wanted Ryerson or Ayesha to be guilty. He had performed every contortion of reason to argue another solution, and had at last run out of the power to delude himself any further.

  “I’m sorry,” she said gently, putting out her hand to touch him. “But let us at least save Martin Garvie?”

  “Yes … yes, of course. I’ll go and find Narraway now. Thank you for that.” He smiled bleakly, taking her hand and holding it with exquisite gentleness. “I’ll deal with the issue of your going back to Seven Dials later.” And he kissed her very softly before he turned to leave.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  PITT LEFT KEPPEL STREET with his mind whirling. Bedlam! If Ferdinand Garrick had committed his son to an asylum whose very name was a byword for horror, then he must have had a powerful reason to do so. Was Stephen Garrick insane? There had been no mention of any kind of mental weakness in his military record; in fact, it had been excellent. He had shown courage and initiative, physical prowess and mental agility. He was perhaps the most promising of the four.

  Pitt strode down towards the Tottenham Court Road and hailed a cab, climbing in and shouting Narraway’s address.

  If Garrick was indeed mad now, what had driven him to it? Was it overuse of opium? Why had he taken to drinking excessively and smoking a substance that distorted the emotions and perceptions?

  Or had he seen something in Egypt which had driven Yeats to the recklessness which had ended in his death, Sandeman into a kind of exile in Seven Dials, and Lovat to be the victim of murder? Had Ferdinand Garrick consigned his only son to Bedlam to protect his life?

  From whom? Ayesha Zakhari? In God’s name—why?

  That thought was still repellent to him, but he could no longer ignore it. The evidence had to be faced.

  He reached the street where Narraway lived, alighted, paid the driver, and strode across the wet footpath in the mist. There was no echo to his footsteps; everything was muffled. On the step of Narraway’s house he pulled the lion-headed doorbell.

  It was answered by a discreet, gray-haired manservant who recognized him immediately.

  “Good evening, Mr. Pitt,” he said, stepping back to allow him in. He had no need to question what Pitt was there for, or if it were urgent. He saw the answer to both in Pitt’s face before he preceded him across the hall and knocked briefly on the door of the study before opening it.

  “Mr. Pitt, to see you, sir,” he announced.

  Narraway w
as sitting in an armchair with his stocking feet on a stool, and a plate of sandwiches on a small table at his elbow. A cut-glass goblet of red wine sat next to the plate.

  “This had better be worth it,” he said with his mouth full.

  The manservant retreated and closed the door behind him.

  Pitt sat down in the other chair, after pulling it around a couple of feet to face Narraway.

  Narraway sighed. “Pour yourself some claret.” He gestured towards the bottle on the sideboard. “Glasses in the cupboard.”

  Pitt stood up again and obeyed, watching the dark liquid reflecting facets of silvery light as it filled the bowl. “Charlotte found Martin Garvie and Stephen Garrick,” he announced.

  Narraway gasped and then coughed as his sandwich went down the wrong way. He jerked forward in his chair and reached for his wine.

  Pitt smiled to himself. It was exactly what he had intended.

  Narraway swallowed hard, cleared his throat and sat back. “Indeed?” he said, not quite as gratingly as he would have done had he not choked. “It seems you do not have your wife under control after all. Are you going to tell me where he is, or do I have to guess?”

  Pitt turned around with the claret and came back to sit down before replying.

  “Actually she went to see Sandeman again.” He made no comment on her lack of obedience to instructions. He crossed his legs comfortably and sipped. The claret was extraordinarily good, but he would have expected no less from Narraway. “She persuaded him to tell her the truth, or at least some of it. Garvie confided in Sandeman that Garrick was in a very bad way indeed with nightmares and delirium. Sandeman is almost certain that both he and Garvie have been taken to Bedlam.” He ignored the horror in Narraway’s face and continued. “Garvie perhaps unwillingly, since he apparently has had no opportunity to tell his family. It fits with all the facts we know. The question is, do Garrick’s nightmares stem from his use of opium, some madness inherent in or, far more seriously, from something that happened during his service in Egypt? And—”