Seven Dials (34 page)

She smiled at Narraway very slightly. “Surely you will need to know more exactly what happened?”

His eyes widened a fraction. “Sandeman?”

“You will have to, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” That apology was real; she knew it without question.

For a moment he seemed about to say more, then changed his mind, and she bent her attention on Garrick, not to speak to him, because he was obviously not hearing anything, but simply to rest her hand on his shoulder and very tentatively touch his hair. Whatever he had done, it was tormenting him beyond his ability to bear. She had no need to judge him, and nothing she or anyone else could do would inflict on him a punishment as terrible as that he put upon himself.

Narraway turned to Pitt. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning. “There is nothing more we can do for him here. There is a house where he will be safe until we can find something permanent.”

“Will he be helped?” Charlotte asked when they reached the door and she held it open for them as Martin helped them pull and drag Garrick through it, talking to him softly all the time. It was rendingly clear that Garrick did not want to leave, for all Narraway’s assurances that this was not a return trip to Bedlam and Martin’s promises to remain with him. It was only on the footpath as Garrick turned desperately for one last look that Pitt realized it was Charlotte he clung to, not the house, and a shadow of searing pity crossed his face for an instant, and then was controlled and vanished the moment after.

She turned back and closed the door, leaning against it, almost choked for breath. She felt as if she had betrayed Garrick by allowing him to be taken, and the fact that there was no other possible answer did not take from her the memory of the anguish in his eyes, the despair as he realized she was not going with him.

“Are you gonna go an’ see the priest again later?” Gracie asked very quietly when they returned to the kitchen. “Yer gotta know what’s the truth of it.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said with hesitation. “There’s a whole lot more to it, there has to be.” She rubbed her hand across her eyes, exhaustion making them gritty. “You can tell Tilda that Martin’s safe.”

Pitt and Narraway returned to Keppel Street by half past nine, weary and aching. They stopped only long enough for breakfast, then Charlotte took them to Seven Dials, sending them through the alley and into the courtyard. This time she had no trouble remembering which door it was, and moments later they were in front of the smoldering fire while Sandeman, white-faced, stared beyond them with misery bleak and terrible in his eyes.

Charlotte felt as if she had betrayed him too, and yet surely he must have known when he told her of Garrick’s nightmares that she would have to come back to him, and when she did it would be with Pitt at least. She looked across at Pitt now, and caught the pity in his face. There was no blame in him as he met her gaze. He understood the pain inside her, and exactly why.

Tears prickled her eyes and she turned away. This was not a time to allow her own emotions to govern anything; they had no place in this.

“I need to know what happened, Mr. Sandeman,” Narraway said without any leniency in his voice. “Whatever I may feel or wish, there is no room for anything but the truth.”

“I know that,” Sandeman replied. “I suppose I always knew that one day it would be uncovered. You can bury the dead, but you can’t bury guilt.”

Narraway nodded. “We know about the sacrifice of the pig and the desecration of the sanctuary. What happened after that?” he asked.

Sandeman spoke as if the pain were still with him, physically eating into his gut. “A woman returning from caring for the sick saw the torchlight and came to see what it was. She screamed.” Without being aware of it, he moved his hands as if to put them over his ears and keep out the sound. “Lovat caught hold of her. She struggled.” His voice was barely audible. “She went on and on screaming. It was a terrible sound… thick with terror. He broke her neck. I don’t think he meant to.”

No one interrupted him.

“But she had been heard,” he whispered. “Others came… all sorts of people… They saw the dead woman lying there… and Lovat…”

The fire was burning and yet the room seemed to freeze.

“They came at us,” Sandeman went on. “I don’t know what they wanted… but we panicked. We… we shot them.” His voice broke. He tried to add something, but the scene inside his head suffocated everything else.

Charlotte felt as if she could not breathe.

“They weren’t found,” Narraway stated.

“No… we set fire to the building.” Sandeman’s voice was hoarse. “We burnt them all… like so much rubbish. It wasn’t difficult… with the torches. It was taken to be an accident.”

Narraway hesitated only a moment.

“How many were there?” he asked.

Sandeman shivered.

“About thirty-five,” he whispered. “Nobody counted, unless it was the imam who buried them.”

The room was engulfed in a hideous silence. Narraway was about as ashen as Sandeman. “Imam?” he repeated huskily.

Sandeman looked up at him. “Yes. They were given a decent Muslim burial.”

“God in heaven!” Narraway let out his breath in a sigh of anguish.

Charlotte felt a needle of fear inside herself, far down in the pit of her stomach. She was not even certain yet why, but something vast and unseen was terribly wrong. It was there in Narraway’s face, in the stiffness of his body in its elegant suit.

“By whom?” Narraway said, his voice shaking. “Who arranged it? Who found this imam?”

“The commanding officer,” Sandeman answered. “General Garrick. The place burned like an inferno, but there must have been something left.” He swallowed. His face was sheened with sweat. “Anyone looking at them would know they died of gunshots, and it couldn’t have been an accident.”

“Who else knows about it?” Narraway asked, his voice wavering.

“No one,” Sandeman replied. “General Garrick covered it up, and the imam buried the bodies. They were all wrapped up in shrouds, and he conducted all the appropriate prayers and rites.”

“And that is what drove Stephen Garrick mad?” Narraway continued. “Guilt? Or fear somebody one day would come after him for vengeance?”

“Guilt,” Sandeman replied without hesitation. “In his nightmares he relived it. It was the men and women we murdered who came after him.”

Narraway stared back at him, unblinking. “And you, do the dead pursue you as well?”

“No,” Sandeman replied, meeting his eyes, hollow and haunted by pain, but unflinching. “I let them catch me. I admitted my guilt. I can’t ever undo what I did, but I shall spend whatever is left of my life trying to give back something. And if whoever killed Lovat comes after me, they will find me here. If they kill me, then so be it. If you want to arrest me, I shan’t resist you. I think I am of more use here than at the end of a rope, but I shan’t argue the case.”

Charlotte could feel the ache in her chest tighten so hard it almost stopped her breathing.

“God is your judge, not I,” Narraway said simply. “But if I need you again, you would be wise to be here.”

“I shall be,” Sandeman answered.

“And repeat this to no one else,” Narraway added, his voice suddenly harsher than before, a note of threat in it. “I make a very bad enemy, Mr. Sandeman. And if you whisper even a word of this story to any man alive, I shall find you, and the end of the noose would seem very attractive to you in comparison with what I will do.”

Sandeman’s eyes widened. “Good God! Do you think it is something I repeat willingly?”

“I’ve known men who tell their crimes over and over, seeking absolution for them,” Narraway replied. “If you repeat this, it may cost a thousand times as many lives as you have already taken. If you feel tempted to seek some kind of release by confession, remember that.”

A look of irony as deep cutting as a knife to the heart covered Sandeman’s face. “I believe you,” he said. “I imagine that is why you do not arrest me.”

An answering flash softened in Narraway, but only for a moment. “Oh… and mercy also,” he responded. “Or perhaps it is justice? What could anyone else do to you that will equal the honesty with which you punish yourself?” He turned and walked very slowly back across the hallway towards the outside door, and Pitt took Charlotte by the arm. She tugged away from him long enough to look at Sandeman, to smile at him and know that he had seen her and understood, then she allowed herself to be led outside as well.

None of them spoke until they reached Seven Dials itself, and turned along Little Earl Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

It was Charlotte who broke the silence. “Surely the murder of Lovat has to be connected with this?” she said, looking at one then the other of them.

Narraway’s face was blank. “For it to be otherwise would be a coincidence to beggar belief,” he answered. “But that does not take away our difficulty. In fact, it adds a dimension so appalling it would be better to allow Ryerson to hang than to-” He stopped because Pitt had grasped hold of him and swung him around so sharply Charlotte almost collided with them both.

Narraway took Pitt’s hand off his arm with a strength that amazed Pitt and made him wince.

“The alternative,” Narraway said between his teeth, “is to allow the truth to be brought out-and see the whole of Egypt go up in revolt. After the Orabi rising, the bombardment of Alexandria, then Khartoum and the Mahdi, the place is like tinder. One spark and it could all ignite. We would lose the Suez Canal, and with it not only trade in Egypt but in the whole eastern half of the empire. Everything would have to go ’round the tip of Africa, not only tea, spice, timber and silk imports, but all our exports as well. Everything would cost half as much again. Not to mention the military and colonial traffic.”

Charlotte saw the tight fear in his face, and she turned to Pitt. It was there in him also as the enormity of it hit him, as if he had seen it before but clung to the hope that it was not real, just his own personal nightmare.

“Four drunken British soldiers massacring thirty-five peaceful Muslims in their own shrine,” Narraway said, barely above a whisper. Only by watching his lips could they be certain of the words. “Can you think what that will do in Egypt, Sudan, even India, if it’s known?”

“You mean Ayesha killed Lovat in revenge for her own people?” Pitt said slowly. His face betrayed how deeply the thought wounded him.

Charlotte wished she could think of anything at all to comfort him, but there was nothing. Who could blame Ayesha for it? The law would do nothing to answer the massacre, but it would hang her, without doubt… and probably Ryerson with her. But perhaps she did not care about that. “Has Ryerson anything to do with it?” she said aloud. “Or is he just unfortunate? He fell in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time…”

She was startled at the pain that for a moment was naked in Narraway’s face, acute and so obviously personal. Then he masked it, as if aware that she had seen. “Probably,” he agreed, starting to walk again.

They turned the corner and crossed the street into Shaftesbury Avenue. Charlotte had no idea where they were going, and she had a strong belief that neither Pitt nor Narraway did either. The dread that filled their minds drowned out everything else, as it did with her. She was aware of the noise of traffic passing, but it was all a blur of meaningless movement. Alexandria was another world which she had seen only in paintings and through Pitt’s descriptions he had shared with her. But it was linked with everything here as really as if it lay across some immediate border. It would be British soldiers who would be sent to fight and die there if there was an armed revolt, just as there had been in the Sudan. She could remember the newspaper accounts of that well enough. She had known and liked a woman whose only son had been killed at Khartoum.

And if Suez fell, the repercussions of it would touch every life in Britain.

But it was still wrong to sacrifice an innocent man to the rope. If he was innocent? Aunt Vespasia wanted to believe he was, but that did not make it so. Even she could be mistaken. People did things that seemed unimaginable to others when they were in love.

Narraway stopped on the footpath, facing Pitt. “Garrick is safe enough for the foreseeable future, whatever that is. I’m less happy about Sandeman, but I think if he understands the dangers he will keep silent. If he wanted to be a martyr to soothe his own conscience, he would have done it before now. Staying in Seven Dials matters to him. It is his way of answering for his soul. I believe he will die before he will sacrifice that. And Yeats and Lovat are dead.”

“Is it Ayesha?” Pitt said almost hesitantly. “For vengeance?”

“Probably,” Narraway replied. “And God help me, I can’t blame her… except for drawing Ryerson in. And perhaps she couldn’t help that. It was chance that brought him there that night, exactly as she was disposing of the body. She couldn’t have been sure he would help rather than calling the police-as, if he had an ounce of self-preservation, he would have.”

“Why did she wait for fifteen years?” Charlotte interrupted. “If some of my family had been killed like that, I wouldn’t.”

Narraway looked at her with curiosity turning to interest. “Neither would I,” he said with feeling. “Something must have made it impossible before-a lack of knowledge? Of help? Power? Assistance from someone, their belief, money?” He looked from one to the other of them for an answer. “What would make you wait, Mrs. Pitt?”

She thought only for a moment. A brewer’s dray with six gray horses rumbled past, their huge feet heavy on the cobbles, manes tossing, brasses bright. “Not knowing about it,” she said first. “Either not knowing it happened, or that my family was involved, or not knowing who did it or where to find them. Some situation that I couldn’t leave-”

“What situation?” Narraway interrupted.

“Illness,” she said. “Someone I had to nurse, a child or a parent? Or someone I had to protect, who might be hurt if I acted? Somebody implicated, maybe? A hostage to fortune of some kind.”

He nodded slowly, and turned to Pitt, his eyebrows raised.

“Only not knowing,” Pitt replied, and as he said it something tingled in his memory. “I knew of the fire, but the people I spoke to believed it was an accident, at least that is what they said. How did Ayesha learn that it wasn’t?”