Seven Dials - Anne Perry [113]
“Mr. Sandeman,” she said urgently, “I really do have to speak to you. This young man who has disappeared may be in some danger, and we have been told that he came looking for you. If he found you, he might have said something which could tell me where he went, and why.”
He looked sideways at her, resting his thin arms on the edge of the bath and leaning his weight on them. It was a backbreaking job. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Martin Garvie . . .”
The words were barely out of her mouth when she saw him stiffen and the color drain from his face, and then flow back in again as if the blood had rushed up in a tide. Her own heart constricted with fear. Her lips were so stiff it was difficult to form the words. “What’s happened to him?” she said huskily.
“I don’t know.” He straightened up very slowly. He turned to face her, ignoring the wet clothes and letting them sink back into the water. “I’m sorry, I cannot tell you anything that will help you. I really cannot.” He was breathing heavily, as if his chest were compressed, and yet at the same time starved for air.
“He may be in danger, Mr. Sandeman,” she said quickly. “He is missing! No one has seen or heard from him for three weeks. His sister is frantic with worry. Even his master, Mr. Stephen Garrick, does not appear to have gone where he is said to have. There is no trace of him on train or ship. We need anything we can find to help us learn what has happened.”
It was painfully clear that Sandeman was laboring under some intense emotion, so profound he could not control the shivering of his body or the raggedness of his breathing, but when he managed to find his voice, there was no indecision in him, no possibility of change.
“I cannot help you,” he said again. “What is told me as a confession of the soul is sacred.”
“But if a man’s life is at stake . . .” she argued, knowing even as she did so that she was doomed to failure. She could see it in his eyes, the pallor of his face, the muscles locked tight in his jaw and neck.
“I can only trust God,” he replied so softly she barely heard him. “It rests in His hands. I cannot tell you what Martin Garvie told me. If I could, I would tell you all of it. And I am still not sure it would help you find him.”
“Is . . . is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
She drew her breath in to try one more time, and then let it out in a sigh. She recognized the finality in his eyes, and looked away. She could not think what else to say. The emotion was too high for anything banal, and yet what else was there?
“Mrs . . .” he started, leaving it hanging because he did not know her name.
“Pitt,” she answered. “Charlotte Pitt.”
“Mrs. Pitt, it concerns too many other people. If it were my secret alone, and speaking would do any good . . . but it won’t. It’s an old story, long past helping now.”
“To do with Martin Garvie?” She was puzzled. “He told you something . . .”
“I can’t help you, Mrs. Pitt. I’ll walk with you back as far as Dudley Street, in case you get lost.” His voice was urgent, his dark eyes full of trouble. “Please go home. You don’t belong here. You may get hurt, and you will do no good. Believe me. I live here, and I know this place as well as any outsider can do, but I seldom go out after dark. Come . . .” He dried his hands on a piece of torn cloth and put his jacket on again. “Do you know your way from Dudley Street?”
“Yes . . . thank you.” She could only accept. There was nothing else to do with dignity, or even without it. And, she admitted, she cared what he thought of her.
WITH PITT not at home, Charlotte had no wish to light the parlor fire and sit there alone after Daniel and Jemima had gone to bed. Instead she sat in the warm, bright kitchen and told Gracie what she had discovered from Sandeman, but neither of them could think of anything further to do, unless they could find more information. In spite of the cats more or less asleep in the clothes basket beside the stove, and the