The Bedlam Detective

THIRTY-TWO

That night he sat with Elisabeth before the fire in their rooms above the wardrobe maker’s, staring into the falling coals. Elisabeth wore a heavy dressing gown with a rug over her knees. Though allowed home, she was still fragile and her appetite was slow in returning. On the day of her return, Sebastian had carried her up the stairs from the street. Once he’d been able to sweep her up and spin with her, perfused with a joy of life and youth that defied gravity. But this time his knees ached, and they’d been aching ever since.

Elisabeth said, “Lucy came to call this afternoon.”

Lucy? Sebastian hunted through his memory for a few moments before he was able to place her among the Evelina’s staff.

“Good,” was all he could think of to say.

“I may have to appear as a witness. We all will.”

The maudlin Joseph Hewlett, despite his best efforts to take his own life, had fared better than the young nurse that he’d killed. The timely work of those present had managed to preserve him for justice.

Sebastian said, “You won’t have to face him if he pleads guilty. Don’t be swayed by gossip.”

“Gossip’s all I’m living for right now!” Elisabeth exclaimed, though not with ill temper. “I haven’t been out that door in three weeks.”

“Less than two.”

“See? I’m even losing track of the days. I’ll have to scratch a calendar on the wall. Like the Count of Monte Cristo.”

They both smiled. He saw that she was looking at the shabby jacket of this, his second-best set of clothes.

She said, “Frances couldn’t save your good suit?”

“She tried. The blood wouldn’t sponge out. I told her to burn it.”

“She could have taken it to the rag shop.”

“She did. No one here listens to me.”

There was a silence for a while. Some of the coals shifted and fell in a cokey shower, right at the heart of the fire where the heat was the whitest.

Elisabeth said, “Something’s troubling you.”

“What do you expect?” Sebastian said. “I want to see you well again.”

But she wouldn’t be deflected. “Besides that.”

Sebastian contemplated further evasion, and concluded that it would be a lesser drain on his energies to simply give her the story. He told her of the suspicions surrounding Sir Owain, of his own arrival and the events in Arnmouth, and of the arrest that had brought a premature end to official police interest in the case.

“What proof is there?” Elisabeth said when he’d concluded the tale. “Aside from your predecessor’s suspicions?”

“None,” he admitted. “It’s stupid to persist, I know.”

“It’s not stupid. Not if a man’s life now depends on it.”

“A tinker,” he said.

He stared into the fire for a while and then Elisabeth said, “Is a tinker’s life worth less than any other man’s? I’ve never known you to speak like that before.”

He said, “I’m weary. That’s all. Grace Eccles wouldn’t talk to me and I’ve no power to compel her.”

“What about the other young woman?”

“She claims no memory.”

“Memories can be jogged.”

“I know. I should have been more open with her, but I wasn’t and I drove her off. She’s somewhere in London, but that’s all I know.”

“So you’ve looked.”

“I even asked the census office to check for me. Under the guise of official business.”

“What’s her name?”

“Evangeline May Bancroft. Not exceptional. But not so common either. For all I know she may have married and changed it.”

“Or she may simply have avoided the census.”

“The census takers are terriers. Few people escape their attention.”

“You can find her, Sebastian. You used to be able to find anyone. How will you feel if the tinker hangs and then it happens all over again?”

They sat in silence for a while.

Then he said, “She had one of those purple pins the suffragettes wear. I saw one on the costume of an actress at the film studio. She couldn’t tell me what it meant, but the wardrobe mistress did. Didn’t suffragettes boycott the census?”

“There may be some record at the Old Bailey,” Elisabeth said. “Those women get arrested all the time.”