Bohemian Girl, The (14 page)

Denton grinned and got up. ‘I’ve promised the police I won’t go poking my nose into their business any more.’ He held out his hand. ‘I don’t think “Good luck” is what I should say, but I hope things work out.’

‘Oh, they’ll work out, I’m sure!’ Heseltine’s laugh suggested a state near the edge.

Denton got his coat and hat and said he could let himself out. He said from the door, ‘You’ve got a lawyer and all that?’

‘Counsel? Oh, yes. They provide that. Plus my father’s hired somebody to advise the military man.’ He smiled. ‘It will be done with full legal pomp.’

‘It may not be as bad as you think.’

‘I think they mean to parade me in front of the regiment with my buttons torn off. Did they do that in the American army?’

‘War makes people bloodthirsty. You’d think it would do the opposite.’

‘Only to those of us who are “sensitive, snivelling women”. My CO’s words.’

Denton stood in the cold sunshine at the entrance to Albany Court. He knew the machinery of military law, its grinding-up of anybody who seemed weak. War likes blockheads, he thought - those too stubborn to turn aside. It dislikes nuance, hesitation, compassion.

Insofar as he was capable of feeling pity, he felt it for Heseltine. He also felt anger and the decisive man’s contempt for the half-hearted. The military, as he had seen too well, could always find a desk for incompetence, but it drove weakness from the room: it feared that weakness was catching. Heseltine, he thought, was both incompetent and weak. The system was going to grind him into cat’s meat.

There was a light under Atkins’s downstairs door when Denton let himself in that evening. The soldier-servant would be reading the newspaper, he supposed, or possibly his Bible if his enthusiasm still ran to it. The truth was, he had almost no idea of Atkins’s private life, his sex life least of all. Atkins treated a nearby pub as a club, had what seemed a considerable popularity among the nearby housemaids. The social system, however, was rigged against them, Denton knew: occasions were few, privacy almost impossible, the women’s fear of losing a place extreme. Atkins, he guessed, did what soldiers - Denton included - did: found a whorehouse, perhaps the cheap one near Pentonville Road.

Settling in his chair, Denton mused on the difference between Atkins and Heseltine. How easily Atkins would have dealt with whatever mistake Heseltine had made - called in favours from the sergeants and the sergeant major, half-blackmailed his officer (about whom he’d always have known juicy bits), got the company orderly to mislay whatever paperwork implicated him. Heseltine, on the other hand, probably hadn’t so much as objected.

Denton read one of his psychological books about obsession and impersonation. None of it seemed to apply to Albert Cosgrove. About ten, Atkins put his head in and asked if he wanted a carob drink - an affectation he’d picked up in India.

‘I’m having a whisky.’

‘Oh well, carob isn’t in it, then.’ He started away.

‘How was chapel?’

‘Rum - absolutely rum. Saddest place I ever was. People with grey faces and no smiles singing about hope and heaven in the hereafter. I think I’ll concentrate on my secular interests for a bit.’

‘How did the pugilist do in the garden?’

‘Demon worker. Strong as an ox. Did you know he’s descended from Moses’s brother? Says he is, at any rate - you can never tell if people are pulling the wool. Brings the Book of Exodus alive, I must say.’

‘He calls himself the Stepney Jew-Boy.’

‘Told me that - in a voice that made me think I’d better not use the term meself.’

‘Wise. Is his first name Aaron, then?’

‘Hyam, last name Cohan. Peculiar names they have.’

‘Did you ask him what he thought of the name Atkins?’ Denton turned around in the chair to look down the room. ‘Can you take something to be photographed tomorrow? There’s that place on Oxford Street—’

‘Barraud’s.’

‘That’s the one.’ He rummaged in Mary Thomason’s trunk and took out the drawing of the female head with the little sketches in the corners. ‘I want a good copy of the head - size of a sheet of writing paper or thereabouts is all right - and then photos of the little drawings in the corners. Oversized, if they can do them. And one full-size of the whole thing.’

Atkins had come down the room and was leaning over him. ‘I thought we agreed she’s dead.’

‘“We” speculated she was
probably
dead. I’m not ready to go that far. I want a picture I can show around.’

‘You don’t even know it’s her.’

‘That’s what I’ll find out.’

‘Why?’

Denton looked at him, amused and annoyed. ‘Because like you I’m nosy.’

‘Oh, well - if you’re going to take that line—’ Atkins picked up the drawing. ‘One face-only, one each the little squiggles in the corners, one the lot.’

‘Fastest service. The drawing has to be back by noon in case Mrs Striker comes for the trunk.’ Atkins looked blank. ‘She’s going to take it back where she got it.’

‘I’d pitch it in the Grand Union canal.’ Atkins moved off, grumbling to himself. Rupert, his stump of tail going like a metronome set on Presto, followed.

Denton wanted to take a day away from all of it - the novel, Albert Cosgrove, Mary Thomason, even Janet Striker - and he had a fleeting notion of going to Hammersmith and rowing on the river, then a cut off the joint or something even rougher at the Dove. He didn’t do it, of course, but pushed himself to his desk before eight the next day and made himself write. His brain didn’t want to work - it, too, wanted to be on the river, being washed clean - but he bullied it and began to put words down on the paper as if he were trying to gouge them into it. He wasn’t well into it until ten, and then things started to flow, and he heard the bell pulled by the front door. He muttered a curse, got up and closed his own door, and minutes later was interrupted by a knock.

‘No!’

Another knock.

Denton wrenched the door open. ‘What now?’

‘Policeman below name of Markson. Wants to talk to you.’

‘Oh—! Damn him and damn Albert Cosgrove!’

He heard Atkins mutter, ‘For all the good it does,’ and he made himself more or less presentable and went down. Markson, whom he had last seen after the scuffle in the house behind, was standing by the sitting-room door, a bowler in one hand and a black box tucked under the same arm, looking straight down at Rupert, who had his chin planted in the detective’s crotch. Denton took that in, but what he was focused on was Mary Thomason’s trunk, which was about three feet from Markson’s left leg.

‘I see that Rupert’s found you. You’ve been told he’s friendly?’

‘Telling me so himself, isn’t he?’

Atkins was behind Denton now, over by the fireplace. Denton looked towards him, made a face and rolled his eyes towards the trunk before saying to the detective, ‘Ah, I’m working, you know.’

‘Yes, sir, but so are most people. No good time to talk to the Metropolitan Police, is what it comes down to.’

‘Is this about Cosgrove? Why are you coming to talk to me
now
? All that happened last week!’

‘Yes, sir. It won’t surprise you to hear that the police have been busy, too, I’m sure.’

While this had gone on, Atkins, with one smooth movement, had picked up a travelling rug from the chair opposite Denton’s and draped it over Mary Thomason’s trunk, then brushed the chair seat as if that was what he had meant to do all along, and thrown nonexistent dirt into the coals. ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said now in a voice that made both men look at him. Atkins had put on a stern expression. ‘You expressly wanted the sweep in this morning while you wasn’t in this room. If I may, I recommend you repair to your study so as not to suffer the discomfort of the chimney.’

‘Oh - ah - yes, I’d forgotten. Detective Markson - if you don’t mind - upstairs—?’

Markson murmured apologies for upsetting the whole house, but by the time he’d finished they were on their way up to the next floor. Denton’s bedroom-study looked sufficiently workmanlike, Denton thought - Atkins had long since made the bed and hung up the clothes - and he pulled out a chair for Markson as he sat at his desk. ‘As you see - I was working—’

‘I’ll make this quick, sir. Only two things, really. First, a question or two.’ His questions were the ones Denton had already answered - why he’d gone into the house behind, was there any possibility that ‘the man Cosgrove’s’ letters were still about somewhere. Had he received any more letters from the man Cosgrove? When they were done with those, Markson opened the black box and held up the manuscript that Albert Cosgrove had left in the other house.

‘You’ve seen this, sir?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Which you allege is lifted from a book of your own, is it?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Which one?’

‘It’s the opening paragraph of
The Demon of the Plains
. Then I thought there was some from my outline for the book I’m trying to finish.’

‘Left in this house while you were away, sir?’

‘In a drawer of this desk.’ He pulled open the drawer as if to prove that, there being a drawer there, it must be where the outline had been left.

Markson sniffed. Munro had said Markson was capable; Denton would take his word for it. The questions seemed to him repetitive and obvious, but Markson was perhaps the dogged kind who dotted every i. Now, he said, ‘We’d like to have your reading of this manuscript, Mr Denton.’ Before Denton could say anything, he went on, ‘Literary criticism isn’t common at New Scotland Yard. We’d like to know what you see in it - if there’s anything more of your own, for one thing. And what you find in it - what sort of mind this chap has, what he thinks he’s doing.’

‘Detective, I’m trying to finish a book!’

‘And we’re trying to catch a criminal that attacked you, sir.’

‘He didn’t hurt me.’

‘Also broke into the house over there and, it looks like, broke into this house as well. Anything else missing, by the way?’

Denton stared at the desk. ‘I think a pen.’ It sounded absurd. He’d noticed only that morning that a pen he sometimes used wasn’t there.

‘Yes, sir. That sounds right. Anything else? How about clothing? ’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Underclothing?’ The question surprised Denton, suggested a sophistication he hadn’t expected in Markson.

‘You’d have to ask Atkins. I don’t keep track.’

‘Yes, sir. You’ll read the manuscript?’

‘Oh - if I have to—’ He reached for it.

‘At New Scotland Yard, I’m afraid, sir. Evidence. I had to sign for it, myself. This afternoon?’

Denton allowed himself the luxury, later to be the cause of self-flagellation, of blowing up. It had no effect. One of the qualities Munro may have been thinking of when he’d said that Markson was capable was a calm stubbornness. When Denton’s tantrum was over, Markson said, ‘Yes, sir. What time would be best for you?’

Denton had another, lesser eruption. When he had subsided, he was aware of voices downstairs, then that one was a woman’s, which he sorted out as Janet Striker’s. He was out of the chair and down the stairs in seconds. She was standing at the far end of the room with Atkins and the dog. The trunk, which he’d feared Atkins would already have uncovered again, wasn’t there.

‘I’ve just come for the—’ she began.

‘Detective!’ Denton shouted. ‘I’m with a detective from the Metropolitan Police. Uuuhhh—’ He was aware of Markson’s coming up behind him.

Janet Striker smiled and held out her hand. ‘How nice to see you again, Mr Denton. I’ve just come for the donation you promised us.’

‘Aaahh—’ He was shaking her hand. ‘This is Mrs Striker of the Society for the Improvement of Wayward Women. Um - Detective Markson.’

Then Denton said he’d write a cheque; she said that would be very fine of him; Atkins took the dog away; and Markson said he would go. ‘Three o’clock today, sir?’

‘Oh, if I have to. Yes, all right - all right—’

Markson went down the stairs quickly, seeming light on his feet. Moments later, Denton heard Atkins close the front door on him.

Janet Striker was giggling. He’d never heard her giggle before; it was a minor revelation. He said, ‘I was afraid you’d mention the damned trunk.’

‘I know!’ She went off into laughter again, this time more boisterously. He thought perhaps he was seeing some sort of metamorphosis in her, the result of leaving the Society - maybe of leaving an entire way of life. ‘Is he gone?’

Denton looked out, didn’t see Markson, glanced up and down out of habit for Albert Cosgrove. ‘You brought a cab.’

‘I’m not about to carry the trunk to Euston station on my shoulder. Well!’ She laughed again. ‘That was fun.’

‘I have to go to New Scotland Yard at three to read that damned lunatic’s scribbles.’

‘I’ll be on my way back from Biggleswade by then. Did you get the drawing photographed?’

‘Atkins did, I hope.’ He turned to bellow for Atkins, found him standing ten feet away with the trunk in his arms.

‘Of course I did,’ Atkins said. ‘Prints ready tomorrow.’

‘Where’s the drawing?’

‘In the trunk.’

She interrupted, ‘We found it under most of the other things.’

‘I put it towards the bottom, with the sketchbook, madam.’

‘You’re a pearl of great price.’

Atkins smiled the gracious smile of royalty receiving tribute. ‘I’ll just put it in the cab.’

When he was gone, Denton said, ‘I’m losing my mind, between the book and these interruptions.’

‘No you’re not. You’re the sanest man I’ve ever known - also the best. There! You see what comes out when I’m contented.’

‘So I’m forgiven? Will you have dinner with me?’

‘Can’t - I’m having dinner with my solicitor. It’s all about money, mostly about when I get some from the lawsuit. I’m as poor as a church mouse, Denton - getting that money is important to me. What did Geddys say?’