Seven Dials - Anne Perry [128]
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