demanded.
Tellman swiveled to face Tilda. “Did Martin find this man?” he asked.
“Yeah. ’E told me. Why? D’yer think ’e’d know wot ’appened ter Martin?” The hope in her voice was needle sharp.
“He might know something.” Tellman tried to be careful, without crushing her. “Did he say his name, do you remember?”
“Yeah…” Tilda screwed up her face in effort. “Sand-summink. Sandy…”
Tellman leaned forward. “Sandeman?”
Tilda’s eyes opened wide. “Yeah! That’s it. Yer know ’im?”
“I’ve heard of him.” Tellman looked across at Charlotte.
“Yes,” she agreed before he asked the question. “Yes, we should try to find him. Whatever Martin said to him, it might be important.” She bit her lip. “Apart from that, we don’t have anything better.”
“It may not be so easy,” Tellman warned. “It could take a while. We still haven’t got proof of any crime, so-”
“I’ll look,” Charlotte interrupted him.
“In Seven Dials?” Tellman shook his head. “You have no idea what it’s like. It’s one of the worst places…”
“I’ll go in daylight,” she said quickly. “And I’ll dress in my oldest clothes-believe me, they’ll pass as local. There’ll be plenty of women around between eight o’clock and six in the evening. And I’m looking for the priest. Other women with relatives who were soldiers must do that too.”
Tellman looked at her, then at Gracie. His conflicting emotions were startlingly clear in his face.
Charlotte smiled. “I’m going,” she said decisively. “If I find him I have more chance of learning something about Martin than you have, if he really went on Stephen Garrick’s behalf. I’ll start straightaway.” She turned to Tilda. “Now you go back to your duties. You cannot afford to have your mistress dismiss you, however justified your absence.” She looked at Tellman. “Thank you for all you have done. I know it took a lot of your time…”
He brushed it aside, but he did not have the ease with words-even to think them, let alone tell her why it had mattered to him.
She stood up, and the others accepted it as leave to go.
CHARLOTTE WALKED the streets of the Seven Dials area from midday onwards. She had dressed in a very old skirt, one she had accidentally torn and had had to stitch up rather less than successfully. Instead of a jacket over her plain blouse, she took a shawl, which was more in keeping with what other women shopping or working in that area would wear.
Even so, she was startlingly out of place. Poverty had a stench unlike anything else. She had thought she knew, but she had forgotten just how many people sat on the pavements, huddled in doorways, or stood sad-eyed and hopeless around piles of rags or boots, waiting for someone to haggle over a price, and perhaps walk away with nothing.
The open gutter ran down the center of the street, barely moving in the slight incline. Human dirt was everywhere, and human smell clogged the air because there was little clear water, even to drink, no soap, no warmth or dryness, nothing to ease the hunger and the overintimacy.
She walked among them with her head down, not merely to seem like the others, beaten by life, but because she could not look at them, and meet their eyes, knowing she would leave and they could not.
She began tentatively, asking for a soldiers’ priest. It cost her considerable resolve even to approach someone and speak. Her voice would betray her as not belonging, and there was no way to disguise it. To ape their speech patterns would be to make fun of them and mark herself as dishonest before she even framed her questions, let alone received an answer.
All she achieved the first day was to eliminate certain possibilities. It was the afternoon of the second day when she succeeded suddenly and without any warning. She was in Dudley Street, trying to make her way through the piles of secondhand shoes heaped not only on the broken cobbles of the pavement but strewn across the roadway as well. Children sat untended beside them, some crying, many just watching with half-seeing eyes as people trudged by.
The man was walking towards her, moving easily as if he were accustomed to it. He looked perfectly ordinary, in his early forties, slim under his ragged coat. His head was uncovered and his brown hair was badly in need of cutting.
Charlotte stopped to allow him to pass. He had a purpose in his stride and she did not want to bar his way.
To her surprise he stopped also. “I hear you are looking for me.” His voice was soft and well educated. “My name is Morgan Sandeman. I work here with anyone who wants me, but especially soldiers.”
“Mr. Sandeman?” Her voice lifted more than she had meant, as if she were really some desperate wife in search of a lost husband he might know.
“Yes. How can I help you?” He stood beside her amid the piles of shoes.
There was no point in pretense, and perhaps no time to waste. “I am looking for someone who has gone missing,” she replied. “And I believe he may have spoken with you shortly before the last time he was seen. May I have a little of your time… please?”
“Of course.” He held out his hand. “If you would like to come with me, we can go to my office. I’m afraid I don’t have a church, more like an old hall, but it serves.”
“Yes, I’d like to,” she agreed without hesitation.
He led the way with no further speech, and she followed him back up the cobbles between the silent people, around the corner and along an alley towards a tiny square. The buildings were four or five stories high, narrow and leaning together, creaking in the damp, eaves crooked, the sour-sweet smell of rotting wood clinging to everything, choking the throat. There was no distinct sound, and yet there was not silence. Rat feet scuttled over stone, water dripped, rubbish moved and fluttered in the slight wind, wood sagged and settled a little lower.
“Over there.” Sandeman pointed to a doorway and walked ahead of her. It was stained with damp and swung open at his touch. Inside was a narrow vestibule and beyond a larger hall with a fire burning low in the huge open fireplace. Half a dozen people sat on the floor in front of it, leaning close to each other, but not apparently talking. It was a moment before Charlotte realized they were either insensible or asleep.
Sandeman held up his finger to request silence, and walked almost soundlessly across the stone floor towards a table in the corner to the right, at which there were two chairs.
She followed after him and sat as he invited.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I have nothing to offer you, and nowhere better than this.” He said it with a smile, not as if he were ashamed for it. It was more an accommodation to her than to himself. His face was gaunt and the marks of hunger were plain in his thin cheeks. “Who is it you are looking for?” he asked. “If I can’t tell you where he is, I can at least tell him that you asked, and perhaps he will find you. You understand that what is told me in confidence has to remain so? Sometimes when a man…” He hesitated, watching her intently, perhaps trying to judge something of the man she was seeking from her emotions.
She felt like a fraud, imagining the desperate women, wives, mothers or sisters who had come to him to find a man they had loved, lost to experiences he could not share with them, or whose burden he could not carry without the oblivion of drink, or opium.
She had to be honest with him. “It is not a relative of mine, it is the brother of a young woman I know. He has disappeared, and she is too distressed to look for him herself, nor has she the time. She could lose her position and not easily find another.”
His expression of concern did not alter. “Who is he?”
Before she could reply the outer door swung wide open, crashing against the wall and bouncing back to catch the person coming in. It hit him so hard he lost his precarious balance and crumpled to the floor, where he remained in a heap, like a bundle of rags.
Sandeman glanced at Charlotte too briefly to speak, then stood up and went over to the door. He bent down and put his hands under the man, and with considerable effort, lifted him to his feet. The man was very obviously drunk. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, but his face sagged, his eyes were unfocused and he had several days’ stubble on his cheeks. His hair was matted and the dirt on him could be smelled even from where Charlotte sat.
