Seven Dials Page 0,27

bootboys see an' 'ear lots o' things!" she snapped at him. "Don't yer learn nothin' questionin' people? You bin on crimes in big 'ouses often enough! Yer've listened ter Mr. Pitt, 'aven't yer? Does 'e ever ignore people just 'cos they work in the scullery or the pantry? People notice things, yer know; they got eyes an' ears!"

He kept his patience with an effort she could see even in the lamplight, and she knew he did it only because he cared for her. Somehow that made it more annoying because it was a moral pressure, a kind of obligation to respect him when inside she was bursting to shout.

"I know that, Gracie," he said levelly. "I've questioned plenty of servants myself. And the fact that the bootboy doesn't know there is anything wrong is very good evidence that there probably isn't. Martin might have been dismissed and left, and if that is so, maybe he didn't want his sister to hear about it until he found another place." He sounded eminently reasonable. "He's trying not to worry her... or perhaps he's ashamed? Maybe he was dismissed for something embarrassing, some kind of mistake. It would be only natural he wouldn't want his family to know about it."

"Then why don't 'e send 'er a card or a letter for 'er birthday from somewhere else?" she challenged, pulling farther away from him and staring up into his eyes. " 'E din't do that, so she's gonna worry twice as much!"

"If he lost his position, and his bed and board at the same time," he replied, keeping his voice unnaturally calm, "then I daresay he had more pressing things on his mind, like where to sleep and what to eat! He wouldn't have remembered what day it was."

"Then if 'e's in that much trouble she's right ter be worried-in't she?" she said triumphantly.

Tellman let out his breath in a long sigh. "Worried, yes, but calling in the police, definitely not."

Gracie clenched her fists by her sides in an effort to hang on to the last shred of her temper. "She in't callin' in the police, Samuel! She told me, an' I'm askin' you. You in't police, yer me friend. Leastways, I thought yer was. I'm askin' yer 'elp, not tryin' ter start a case."

"What do you expect me to do?" His voice rose in indignation at the sheer unreasonableness of it.

She bit back her response with a mighty effort and forced herself to smile at him with the utmost sweetness. "Thank yer," she said charmingly. "I knew yer'd 'elp, when yer understood. Yer could start by askin' Mr. Garrick 'isself where Martin is. Yer don't 'ave ter say why, o' course. Mebbe 'e were a witness?"

"To what?" His eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

She ignored it. "I dunno! Think o' summink!"

"I can't use police authority to go and question someone over something I invented!" He looked offended, as if his morality had been insulted.

"Oh, don' be so... so..." She was almost lost for words. She loved him as he was, stiff, awkward, full of indignation, covering his compassion with regulations and habit, the rigidity he had been taught, but sometimes he infuriated her beyond endurance, and this was one of those times. "Can't yer see beyond the end o' yer nose?" she demanded. "Sometimes I think yer brain is shut inside yer book o' rules! Can't yer see that lives, feelin's, wot's inside people's wot matters?" She drew in breath and went on. "People are 'eart an' blood, an'... an' mistakes an' things. An' dreams! Tilda needs ter find wot 'appened to 'im... an' that's real!"

His face hardened. He clung on to what he understood. "If you break the rules, in the end they'll break you," he said stubbornly, and in that instant she knew she had lost him. He had made a statement he could not go back on. He was right as he saw it, and she understood more than she could now admit. She had been unfair, forgetting he was working for Wetron now, not Pitt, and there would be no latitude granted him for anything. He had already risked his job once to save her and Charlotte and the children, and done it without thought of himself. Another day, when she was not so angry, and when it would not look like either apology or trying to win him back, she would tell him so. Just at the moment her thoughts were centered on Tilda and what had happened to