Seven Dials - Anne Perry [106]
“Wot?” she said urgently, as soon as they were seated and their order given. “Wot is it, Samuel?” She was not even aware of using his name.
He leaned forward. “Plenty of people saw Stephen Garrick leave his house, and they described the man who went with him—fair-haired, in his twenties, pleasant face. From what they say, he was a servant, almost certainly a valet, but there were only two small cases, no trunks or boxes. Mr. Garrick was ill. He had to be half carried out from the house and it took two men to help him into the carriage, but it was his own carriage, not an ambulance, and driven by the household coachman.”
“ ’Oo said?” she asked quickly.
“Lamplighter,” he replied. “Just beginning.”
“About six in the evening?” She was surprised. “In’t that a funny time ter start on a journey ter France? Is it summink ter do wi’ tides, or the like? Where’d ’e go from? London docks?”
“Morning,” he replied. “Putting the lamps out, not lighting them. But that’s the funny thing. I checked all sailings from the London docks that day, and they weren’t on anything to France, not Mr. Garrick alone, nor with anyone else.”
Their order arrived, a very good early supper of winkles and bread and butter, and there would be apple pie afterwards. Tellman thanked the serving girl and pronounced the meal excellent. Gracie picked up the long pin for digging out the flesh and held it up in her hand. “Mebbe they went from Dover? People do, don’t they?”
“Yes. But I tried the station for the train, and the porter who’d been on the Dover platform said that, to the best of his recollection, there was no one with anything like that description all day. No invalid, no one that needed helping of any kind, except with heavy baggage.”
She was puzzled. “So they din’t go from London, an’ they din’t go from Dover. Where else is there?”
“Well, they could have gone anywhere else, like somewhere on the Continent that wasn’t France, or anywhere in England—or Scotland, for that matter,” he replied. “Except that if Stephen Garrick has poor health, and the English climate is too harsh for him, he’d hardly go to spend the winter in Scotland.” He discarded his last winkle shell and finished his bread and butter.
She was even more puzzled. “But Lady Vespasia was very plain that that was wot Mr. Garrick said,” she argued. “An’ why would ’e lie to ’er? Rich folk often go away fer their ’ealth.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It doesn’t make sense. But wherever they went, it wasn’t straight to a ship and across to France.” He looked intensely serious. “You were right to be worried, Gracie. When people lie and you can’t see the reason, it usually means that the reason is even worse than you thought.” He sat silent for a moment, his face puckered with concern.
“Wot?” she urged.
He looked up at her. “If they weren’t going to catch a train, or a boat, why go at that time in the morning? They must have got up at five, when it was still dark.”
A kind of heaviness settled inside her. “ ’Cos they didn’t wanter be seen,” she replied. Suddenly matters of who loved whom and what to say or do about it had no urgency at all. She looked at him without any pretense. “Samuel, we gotta find out, ’cos if someone like old Mr. Garrick is tellin’ lies, even ter ’is own ’ouse’old, an’ Tilda don’t know where her brother is, then the answer in’t anythin’ good.”
He did not argue. “Trouble is, we’ve got no crime that we know of,” he said grimly. “And Mr. Pitt’s in Egypt, so we can’t even ask his help.”
“Then we gotta do it ourselves,” she said very quietly. “I don’t like that, Samuel. I wish as we din’t.”
He put out his hand instinctively and let it rest very gently over hers, covering it completely. “So do I, but we’ve got no choice. We wouldn’t be happy just forgetting about it. Tomorrow we’ll speak to Tilda again and get her to tell us everything Martin ever said about the Garricks.