Seven Dials - Anne Perry [110]
“It may not be so easy,” Tellman warned. “It could take a while. We still haven’t got proof of any crime, so—”
“I’ll look,” Charlotte interrupted him.
“In Seven Dials?” Tellman shook his head. “You have no idea what it’s like. It’s one of the worst places . . .”
“I’ll go in daylight,” she said quickly. “And I’ll dress in my oldest clothes—believe me, they’ll pass as local. There’ll be plenty of women around between eight o’clock and six in the evening. And I’m looking for the priest. Other women with relatives who were soldiers must do that too.”
Tellman looked at her, then at Gracie. His conflicting emotions were startlingly clear in his face.
Charlotte smiled. “I’m going,” she said decisively. “If I find him I have more chance of learning something about Martin than you have, if he really went on Stephen Garrick’s behalf. I’ll start straightaway.” She turned to Tilda. “Now you go back to your duties. You cannot afford to have your mistress dismiss you, however justified your absence.” She looked at Tellman. “Thank you for all you have done. I know it took a lot of your time . . .”
He brushed it aside, but he did not have the ease with words—even to think them, let alone tell her why it had mattered to him.
She stood up, and the others accepted it as leave to go.
CHARLOTTE WALKED the streets of the Seven Dials area from midday onwards. She had dressed in a very old skirt, one she had accidentally torn and had had to stitch up rather less than successfully. Instead of a jacket over her plain blouse, she took a shawl, which was more in keeping with what other women shopping or working in that area would wear.
Even so, she was startlingly out of place. Poverty had a stench unlike anything else. She had thought she knew, but she had forgotten just how many people sat on the pavements, huddled in doorways, or stood sad-eyed and hopeless around piles of rags or boots, waiting for someone to haggle over a price, and perhaps walk away with nothing.
The open gutter ran down the center of the street, barely moving in the slight incline. Human dirt was everywhere, and human smell clogged the air because there was little clear water, even to drink, no soap, no warmth or dryness, nothing to ease the hunger and the overintimacy.
She walked among them with her head down, not merely to seem like the others, beaten by life, but because she could not look at them, and meet their eyes, knowing she would leave and they could not.
She began tentatively, asking for a soldiers’ priest. It cost her considerable resolve even to approach someone and speak. Her voice would betray her as not belonging, and there was no way to disguise it. To ape their speech patterns would be to make fun of them and mark herself as dishonest before she even framed her questions, let alone received an answer.
All she achieved the first day was to eliminate certain possibilities. It was the afternoon of the second day when she succeeded suddenly and without any warning. She was in Dudley Street, trying to make her way through the piles of secondhand shoes heaped not only on the broken cobbles of the pavement but strewn across the roadway as well. Children sat untended beside them, some crying, many just watching with half-seeing eyes as people trudged by.
The man was walking towards her, moving easily as if he were accustomed to it. He looked perfectly ordinary, in his early forties, slim under his ragged coat. His head was uncovered and his brown hair was badly in need of cutting.
Charlotte stopped to allow him to pass. He had a purpose in his stride and she did not want to bar his way.
To her surprise he stopped also. “I hear you are looking for me.” His voice was soft and well educated. “My name is Morgan Sandeman. I work here with anyone who wants me, but especially soldiers.”
“Mr. Sandeman?” Her voice lifted more than she had meant, as if she were really some desperate wife in search of a lost husband he might know.
“Yes. How can I help you?”