Seven Dials Page 0,138

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