Seven Dials - Anne Perry [103]
“No,” Margason replied without hesitation. “I told you, Garrick was very good. But it must have taken a great deal of skill and tight discipline. A case of fever that a man recovered from was hardly going to stay in the memory at such a time.”
“Do you usually send men home for a fever?”
“If it’s a recurrent sort, you might as well. Malaria, or something like that.” Margason shook his head. “You can find the medical officer’s report if you want to. I haven’t got time to find it for you. Far as I know, Lovat was a good officer, sent home for medical reasons. Loss to the army, but plenty for him to do in England. Talk to anyone you like, just don’t start rumors, and don’t waste our time.”
Pitt stood up. Margason would tell him nothing more, and he had no intention of wasting his own time either. He thanked him and availed himself of the permission to speak to the other men.
Pitt spent the rest of the day asking and listening, and he formed a far clearer picture of Lovat, particularly from a lean and wind-burned sergeant major who was finally persuaded to speak with some candor. It took a lot of recollections from Pitt of the London east end, where the sergeant major had grown up, descriptions, a trifle sentimental, of the dockside and the river stretch towards Greenwich, but eventually the man relaxed. They were walking slowly beside one of the many delta branches of one of the greatest rivers in Africa in the milk-soft, peach-colored glow of early sunset before he spoke of Lovat.
“I couldn’t stand ’im meself,” he said with cheerful contempt, his eye following a flight of birds, black against the luminous sky. “But ’e weren’t a bad soldier.”
“Why did you dislike him?” Pitt asked curiously.
“B’cause ’e was a self-righteous bastard,” the sergeant major said. “I judge a man by ’ow ’e be’aves hisself when the goin’s ’ard an’ that, an’ when ’e’s drunk. See a lot o’ truth about a man when ’is guard’s down.” He squinted sideways at Pitt to see if he understood. Apparently he was satisfied. “Got no time for a man wot wears ’is religion ’ard. Don’ get me wrong, I in’t no lover o’ Mohammed, or anythink ’e says. An’ the way they treat women is summink awful. But the way we does things sometimes in’t no better. Live an’ let live, I say.”
“Had Lovat no respect for the religion of Islam?” Pitt asked, not sure if it made any difference. He would hardly have been killed in London for that.
“Worse ’n that,” the sergeant major replied, his face puckering into a frown, dark as a bronze statue in the waning light. “ ’E were angry about anythink they ’ad as ’e reckoned should ’a bin Christian. Burned the ’ell out of ’im that they ever took Jerusalem. ’ ’Oly city,’ ’e said. An’ all places like that.”
“And yet he fell in love with an Egyptian woman,” Pitt pointed out.
“Oh, yeah. I know all about that. Mad about ’er, ’e were, for a time. But she were a Copt, so that made it all right.” He pulled his face into an expression of disgust. “Not that ’e were ever gonna marry ’er, like. It were just one o’ them things yer do when yer young, an’ in a foreign place. ’Is society’d ’a had pups if ’e’d come ’ome with a foreign wife!”
“Did you know her?” Pitt asked.
“Not to say know,” the sergeant major replied. “Beautiful, she were,” he said wistfully. “Moved like them birds in the air.” He gestured towards another flight of river birds gliding across the sunset.
“Did you know Lovat’s friends—Garrick and Yeats?” Pitt asked.
“ ’Course I did. An’ Sandeman. All gone ’ome now. Invalided out at the same time. Got the same fever, I s’pose.”
“Out of the army? All of them?”
The sergeant major shrugged. “Dunno. I ’eard as Yeats were dead, poor sod. Killed in some kind o’ military action, so I reckon ’e must ’a stayed in, just got posted somewhere wi’ a diff’rent climate. Yer wanna know about them too? Yer thinkin’ as they might ’a killed ’im?” He shook his head. “Dunno wot for. Still, that’s yer job, not mine, thank Gawd. I just gotta see that this lot”—he jerked his hand towards the dark silhouette of the barracks—“keeps order ’ere in Egypt.”