a lean and wind-burned sergeant major who was finally persuaded to speak with some candor. It took a lot of recollections from Pitt of the London east end, where the sergeant major had grown up, descriptions, a trifle sentimental, of the dockside and the river stretch towards Greenwich, but eventually the man relaxed. They were walking slowly beside one of the many delta branches of one of the greatest rivers in Africa in the milk-soft, peach- colored glow of early sunset before he spoke of Lovat.
“I couldn’t stand ’im meself,” he said with cheerful contempt, his eye following a flight of birds, black against the luminous sky. “But ’e weren’t a bad soldier.”
“Why did you dislike him?” Pitt asked curiously.
“B’cause ’e was a self-righteous bastard,” the sergeant major said. “I judge a man by ’ow ’e be’aves hisself when the goin’s ’ard an’ that, an’ when ’e’s drunk. See a lot o’ truth about a man when ’is guard’s down.” He squinted sideways at Pitt to see if he understood. Apparently he was satisfied. “Got no time for a man wot wears ’is religion ’ard. Don’ get me wrong, I in’t no lover o’ Mohammed, or anythink ’e says. An’ the way they treat women is summink awful. But the way we does things sometimes in’t no better. Live an’ let live, I say.”
“Had Lovat no respect for the religion of Islam?” Pitt asked, not sure if it made any difference. He would hardly have been killed in London for that.
“Worse ’n that,” the sergeant major replied, his face puckering into a frown, dark as a bronze statue in the waning light. “ ’E were angry about anythink they ’ad as ’e reckoned should ’a bin Christian. Burned the ’ell out of ’im that they ever took Jerusalem. ’ ’Oly city,’ ’e said. An’ all places like that.”
“And yet he fell in love with an Egyptian woman,” Pitt pointed out.
“Oh, yeah. I know all about that. Mad about ’er, ’e were, for a time. But she were a Copt, so that made it all right.” He pulled his face into an expression of disgust. “Not that ’e were ever gonna marry ’er, like. It were just one o’ them things yer do when yer young, an’ in a foreign place. ’Is society’d ’a had pups if ’e’d come ’ome with a foreign wife!”
“Did you know her?” Pitt asked.
“Not to say
“Did you know Lovat’s friends-Garrick and Yeats?” Pitt asked.
“ ’Course I did. An’ Sandeman. All gone ’ome now. Invalided out at the same time. Got the same fever, I s’pose.”
“Out of the army? All of them?”
The sergeant major shrugged. “Dunno. I ’eard as Yeats were dead, poor sod. Killed in some kind o’ military action, so I reckon ’e must ’a stayed in, just got posted somewhere wi’ a diff’rent climate. Yer wanna know about them too? Yer thinkin’ as they might ’a killed ’im?” He shook his head. “Dunno wot for. Still, that’s yer job, not mine, thank Gawd. I just gotta see that this lot”-he jerked his hand towards the dark silhouette of the barracks-“keeps order ’ere in Egypt.”
“Do you think that’s going to be difficult?” Pitt asked, more for something to say than because he expected the man to know, and then the moment after, he realized he cared. The timeless beauty of the land would remain with him long after he went back to the modern urgency of London. He would always wish he had had time, and money, to go up the river and see the Valley of the Kings, the great temples and ruins of a civilization which ruled the world it knew before Christ was born.
And he also realized how profoundly he wanted Ayesha to be innocent, and to be able to prove it. He now believed she had gone to England to try to accomplish something for the economic freedom of her people. She had been looking for a justice she was not sophisticated enough to know would never be granted as long as the cotton mills of Lancashire fed and clothed a million people, who also were poor, with all the misery and disease that poverty brought, but who had political power in London. And even larger than that, a few miles across the desert older than mankind, ochre and shadow under the first stars, lay the modern miracle of a canal cutting its way from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and the other half of the empire.
He stood beside the sergeant major and watched the very last of the light die before thanking him, and going to look for Avram, to tell him that tomorrow they would return to Alexandria, where he would find Avram a suitable reward for his help.
CHAPTER NINE
GRACIE SAT in the corner of the public house staring across the table at Tellman. He was watching her intently, more than was required for what she was telling him, and with a warm ripple of both comfort and self- consciousness, she knew he would have looked at her that way even if she had been talking complete nonsense. It was a fact she was going to have to address sooner or later. He had shown all kinds of emotions towards her, from his initial lack of interest to irritation at her acceptance of being a resident servant in someone else’s house, totally dependent upon them even for the roof over her head. He had been forced into a grudging respect for her intelligence when she had assisted Pitt in certain cases, then showed more clearly than he knew, fighting for all he was worth not to admit to anyone at all, especially himself, that he was in love with her. Now he no longer pretended he was not-at least not all the time.
He had kissed her once, with a sweet, fierce honesty that she could still remember, and if she closed her eyes and blocked out the rest of the world, she could feel it again as if it were moments ago. When she had found herself doing that, standing alone in the windy street and smiling, she acknowledged it was time to admit that she loved him too.
Not that she was necessarily prepared to admit anything of the sort to him. But it was as well to know at least what she wanted, even if she did not know when.
She had been recounting to him what Lady Vespasia had learned about the Garrick household, and that Stephen Garrick was supposed to have gone to the south of France for the good of his health.
“But it’s more ’n long enough for him to have written and told Tilda, in’t it?” she finished. “In fact, ’e could ’ave sent ’er a message before ’e left. That in’t ’ard ter do, an’ surely Mr. Garrick wouldn’t ’ave minded?”
He frowned. His opinion of the whole business of permission from others to attend to ordinary family commitments was a sore point they had already argued over many times.
“Shouldn’t!” he said with feeling. “But you can’t tell.” He looked at her intently, as if no one else in the babble around them were real. “But if he went to the south of France, he must have taken cases with him, and either used a hansom or his own carriage, at least as far as the station. There’ll be record of a boat across the Channel. We’ll know for sure that Martin Garvie went with him. I just don’t know why there was no letter back.”
“Mebbe we could ask Mr. Garrick, ’oo’s still ’ere in London, fer an address?” Gracie suggested. “It’s fair, as ’is family should want ter know where ter write ter ’im.”
Tellman pursed his lips. “It is fair,” he agreed. “But we’ve already tried. Tilda herself tried, and then you did. I’ll see what I can find out about their leaving.”
She looked at him steadily. She knew every expression of his face; she could have pictured it exactly with her eyes closed. She was surprised and a little embarrassed to realize how often she had done so, not really telling herself the truth as to her reasons, or admitting the odd sense of comfort it gave her. She knew now that he was worried, and also that he was trying to hide it from her to protect her, and partly because he was uncertain.
“Yer think there’s summink wrong, don’t yer?” she said softly. “People don’t lie fer nothin’.”
He was cautious, gentle. “I don’t know. Can you get the evening off the day after tomorrow?”
“If I need ter. Why?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve found. It may take me a while. I’ll need to get witnesses, see train and ferry records and the like.”
“ ’Course. Mrs. Pitt’d never stand in the way of an investigation. I’ll be ’ere. Yer jus’ tell me wot time.”
“How about early? We’ll go to the music hall, see something good?” His face was eager, but the shadow in his eyes betrayed that her acceptance mattered to him, and he by no means took it for granted. This was a social engagement, something to do together for pleasure, not just as part of a case. It was the first time he had done such a thing, and they were both suddenly acutely aware of it.
