Anne Perry - Seven Dials

And yet she was the center of this storm which was going to destroy Ryerson, and possibly Stephen Garrick as well.

Vespasia went out into the street where her carriage was waiting, and allowed her footman to assist her up the step and to be seated comfortably, her mind still absorbed in thought.

GRACIE WAS ALONE in the house when she heard the knock on the scullery door. It was late on a wet and gusty night. Charlotte and Pitt were both out briefly to visit Charlotte’s mother, whom they had not seen in some time.

The knock came again, urgent and persistent.

She picked up the rolling pin, then put it down and chose the carving knife instead. Keeping it hidden in the folds of her skirt, she tiptoed to the back door and opened it sharply.

Tellman stood on the step with his hand raised to knock again. He looked cold and worried.

“You should have asked who it was before you opened,” he said immediately.

The criticism stung her. “You stop telling me wot ter do, Samuel Tellman!” she retorted. “You in’t got no right. This is my ’ouse, not yours.” She realized as soon as the words were out that her heart was pounding with suppressed fear, and she knew he was right. It would have been so simple to ask who it was, and she had not thought of it because she had been so preoccupied with thoughts about Martin Garvie, and people taken against their will and shut up in Bedlam, and the fact that they had not been able to solve the case of a man shot to death in a woman’s garden at night. What was he there for? No good, skulking in the bushes.

Tellman came inside. He was pale and his face was drawn with lines of tension.

“Somebody’s got to tell you what to do,” he said, closing the door hard. “You haven’t got the sense you were born with. What’s that?”

She put the knife down on the kitchen table. “A carvin’ knife. Wot does it look like?” she snapped back.

“It looks like something a burglar would take off you and hold to your throat,” he replied. “If you were lucky.”

“Is that wot yer came ’ere ter tell me?” she demanded, swinging around to face him. “It in’t me ’as got no wits.”

“Of course I didn’t come to tell you that!” He stood near the table, his whole body too tight to sit down. “But you’ve got to act with more sense.”

If anyone else had said that, she would have brushed it aside, but from him it stung unaccountably. He was at once too far and too close. She hated that it mattered so much because it confused her, it stirred up feelings over which she had no control, and she was not used to that.

“Don’t you tell me off like I belonged to yer,” she said, gulping back a surge of emotion, almost a loneliness, that threatened to swamp her.

He looked startled for a moment, then he frowned very slightly. “Don’t you want to belong to anyone, Gracie?” he asked.

She was stunned. It was the last thing she had expected him to say, and she had no answer for it. No, that was not true, she did have an answer, but she was not ready to admit it to him yet. She needed more time to accustom herself to the idea. She swallowed, opened her mouth to deny it, then like a wave breaking over her, she knew she could not. It would be a lie, but he might believe her and not ask again. He might even go away.

“W-well…” she stammered. “Well… I… s’pose I do…” She had said it… aloud!

He took a deep breath also. There was no indecision in him, only a fear that he would be rejected. “Then you’d better belong to me,” he answered. “Because there isn’t going to be anyone who wants you more than I do.”

She stared at him. The moment had come. It was now or never. The warmth rose up inside her like sliding into delicious, hot, sweet water, almost like floating. She did not realize she was not saying anything.

“Well, you’re stubborn and self-willed, and you’ve got the daftest ideas about people’s places I ever heard,” he went on in the crackling silence. “But heaven help me, there isn’t anybody else I really want… so if you’ll have me-” He stopped. “Are you waiting for me to say I love you? Maybe you haven’t got the wits you were born with, but you’re not so daft you don’t know that!”

“Yes, I know it!” she said quickly. “An’… an’…” It was only fair that she answer him honestly, however difficult it was to say. “An’ I love you too, Samuel. But jus’ don’ take liberties! It don’ give you the right ter tell me wot I’m doin’ or wot I in’t.”

His lantern face lit with a huge smile. “You’ll do as I tell you. But I want peace in my own house, so I reckon I won’t tell you anything you’d mind too much.”

“Good!” She took a gulp of air. “Then we’ll be all right when… when it’s time.” She took another gulp. “Would you like a cup o’ tea? Yer look ’alf starved.” She was using the word in the old sense of being cold.

“Yes,” he accepted, pulling out a chair and sitting down at last. “Yes, I would, please.” He knew better than to pursue an answer as to time now. She had accepted, that was enough.

She went past him to the stove, overwhelmed with relief. This was as far as she could go now. “Was that wot yer came for?” she asked.

“No. That’s been on my mind for… for a while. I came to tell Mr. Pitt that the police have a new witness in the Eden Lodge case, and it looks pretty bad.”

She pulled the kettle onto the hob and turned around to look at him. “Wot kind of a witness?”

“One that says he knows the Egyptian woman sent a message to Mr. Lovat, telling him to come to her,” he said grimly. “They’ll call him to the witness stand… bound to.”

“Wot can we do?” she asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” he answered. “But it’s better to know.”

She did not argue, but she worried for Pitt, and even the sense of warmth inside her, the little tingle of victory that she had faced the moment of decision and accepted it, and all the vast changes it would mean one day, did not dispel her concern for Pitt, and the case they surely could not win now.

PITT AND CHARLOTTE returned shortly after that. When Pitt had heard all that Tellman had to say, he thanked him for it, put his coat back on and went straight out again. He could not wait until tomorrow morning to inform Narraway. It was Friday night. They had two days’ grace before the trial resumed, but it was a very short time to rescue anything out of this. Pitt was not used to such complete failure, and it was a cold, hollow feeling with a bitter aftertaste he believed would remain.

Of course he had had unsolved cases before, and others to which he was certain he knew the answer but could not prove it, but they had not been of this magnitude.

Narraway looked up as the manservant closed the door, leaving Pitt standing in the middle of the room. He read his face immediately. “Well?” he demanded, leaning forward as if to stand up.

“The police have a witness who says Ayesha sent Lovat a note asking him to go to her,” he said simply. There was no point trying to make it sound less dreadful than it was. He was aware of all that it meant before Narraway spoke.

“So she deliberately lured him to the garden,” Narraway said bitterly. “Either he destroyed the note himself or she took it from him before the police got there. It was not a crime of the moment; she always intended to kill him.” His face creased in thought. “But did she intend to implicate Ryerson, or was that accidental?”

“If she did”-Pitt sat down uninvited-“then she must have been extraordinarily sure of him. How did she know that he would get there before the police, and that he would help her dispose of the body? Did she have an alternative plan if he had raised the alarm instead?”