Seven Dials - Anne Perry [129]
It was answered by a discreet, gray-haired manservant who recognized him immediately.
“Good evening, Mr. Pitt,” he said, stepping back to allow him in. He had no need to question what Pitt was there for, or if it were urgent. He saw the answer to both in Pitt’s face before he preceded him across the hall and knocked briefly on the door of the study before opening it.
“Mr. Pitt, to see you, sir,” he announced.
Narraway was sitting in an armchair with his stocking feet on a stool, and a plate of sandwiches on a small table at his elbow. A cut-glass goblet of red wine sat next to the plate.
“This had better be worth it,” he said with his mouth full.
The manservant retreated and closed the door behind him.
Pitt sat down in the other chair, after pulling it around a couple of feet to face Narraway.
Narraway sighed. “Pour yourself some claret.” He gestured towards the bottle on the sideboard. “Glasses in the cupboard.”
Pitt stood up again and obeyed, watching the dark liquid reflecting facets of silvery light as it filled the bowl. “Charlotte found Martin Garvie and Stephen Garrick,” he announced.
Narraway gasped and then coughed as his sandwich went down the wrong way. He jerked forward in his chair and reached for his wine.
Pitt smiled to himself. It was exactly what he had intended.
Narraway swallowed hard, cleared his throat and sat back. “Indeed?” he said, not quite as gratingly as he would have done had he not choked. “It seems you do not have your wife under control after all. Are you going to tell me where he is, or do I have to guess?”
Pitt turned around with the claret and came back to sit down before replying.
“Actually she went to see Sandeman again.” He made no comment on her lack of obedience to instructions. He crossed his legs comfortably and sipped. The claret was extraordinarily good, but he would have expected no less from Narraway. “She persuaded him to tell her the truth, or at least some of it. Garvie confided in Sandeman that Garrick was in a very bad way indeed with nightmares and delirium. Sandeman is almost certain that both he and Garvie have been taken to Bedlam.” He ignored the horror in Narraway’s face and continued. “Garvie perhaps unwillingly, since he apparently has had no opportunity to tell his family. It fits with all the facts we know. The question is, do Garrick’s nightmares stem from his use of opium, some madness inherent in or, far more seriously, from something that happened during his service in Egypt? And—”
“All right, Pitt!” Narraway said abruptly. “You don’t need to spell it out for me!” He rose to his feet in a single, smooth movement, the last of his sandwich still in his hand. “Yeats is dead, Lovat murdered, Sandeman has lost himself in Seven Dials, and now it seems Garrick is in a lunatic asylum with nightmares that have driven him mad.” He picked up his glass and drained the claret. “We had better go and fetch him. See if we can get any sense out of him.” He looked meaningfully at the glass in Pitt’s hand.
Pitt was not going to leave a claret of that quality behind. It was a pity not to savor it, but there was no time. He drank it quickly and put the glass on Narraway’s table.
Narraway ate the rest of his sandwich as they reached the door and he took his coat from the stand.
Outside, he walked briskly to the end of the street and hailed a hansom, Pitt only a stride behind him. He gave the driver a one-word command: “Bedlam!”
The hansom lurched forward and Pitt was thrown against the back of his seat. He said nothing; he would find the answers to all his questions as to how they would accomplish their task when they reached Bedlam.
It was quite a long journey, and it was not until they were rattling over Westminster Bridge, the lamps along the Embankment reflecting patchily through the mist onto the river, that Narraway at last spoke.
“Agree with anything I say, and be prepared to move quickly if necessary,” he commanded. “Stay close by me; on no account allow us to be separated. Do not act arbitrarily, no matter what happens. And do not