Bohemian Girl, The (27 page)

‘What did you think of the new man - Crum?’

‘It isn’t my place to think anything of him.’ Brown’s stolid, fleshy face closed up. ‘I have a very good position with Mr Himple, sir. My wages continue while he’s away. I don’t want to give any cause for Mr Himple to - think less of me.’

‘But this Crum, you said, has been discharged. Your opinion of him won’t matter now. You do have an opinion of him, I think.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Brown shifted uneasily. He cleared his throat, then burst out: ‘An upstart. He was an upstart, sir. He didn’t know his craft, between you and me, sir.’ Brown became almost animated. ‘I was a footman for nine years before I was allowed to even lay out my employer’s clothes. This Crum hadn’t done any of that.’ Brown was sitting in a small armchair. He stared at his large hands, then abruptly broke out again: ‘He couldn’t even speak good English, sir! He was a - a—He was of a very low sort, sir. Mr Nobody from Nowhere.’

‘Why did Mr Himple hire him, then?’

‘I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.’

‘Was there something personal between them?’

Brown simply looked at him. His worry seemed to increase: to say anything on this score was to endanger his place, he meant.

Denton said, ‘Do you know how Crum and Mr Himple got acquainted?’

‘Crum was a model, sir. As I say, he modelled Lazarus. I believe that’s how he came to Mr Himple’s attention.’

‘Did he know anything about painting? Was he an artist himself ?’

‘I think he knew the studio, sir - by that I mean, he could care for the brushes, and he knew how to make the varnishes and grind the colours. The rude work of the studio.’ Brown sniffed. ‘Hardly an artist. No idea of art, I suspect, although I’d never have engaged him in conversation about such a subject.’ Again, he seemed to have done talking and then abruptly realized he had more to say. ‘He was beneath me, sir! I wanted nothing to do with him. Mr Himple realized that, I think. If it hadn’t been for speaking French, there’d have been no thought of employing him, I’m sure. Mr Himple made that very clear to me when he continued my wages in his absence and put me in charge of the studio. Crum was merely temporary.’

‘Did Crum have some sort of hold over Mr Himple?’

Brown’s eyebrows drew together; a look of pain, almost of illness, took over his face. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’

‘It has a stink to it, Munro.’

‘Not my manor. It’s Guillam’s business, missing persons.’

‘Guillam won’t give me the time of day, and you know it. Don’t you think it’s peculiar?’

‘Peculiarity isn’t a crime.’

‘An artist just happens to draw a picture of a girl who’s missing. A man who looks like her, probably her brother, models for the same artist, then goes off to the Continent as his valet right after she writes me a letter and disappears. The artist and the man travel together, then the artist reports he’s fired the man. So the girl’s missing and now the brother’s missing.’

‘What makes you think he’s missing? What you mean is, you can’t find him. Not the same thing.’

‘I asked at the Slade about Arthur Crum. Asked a couple of the sister’s friends. Had somebody look in the Kelly’s. No Arthur Crum.’

‘What’re you suggesting - an RA took him to the Continent and did him in? Save it for a novel.’

‘Munro, you’re as hard to move as an elephant.’

‘And a good deal busier. Want a word of advice?’

‘No.’

‘We got enough crimes without you inventing them. Leave it.’

‘I can’t leave it. I thought I had; it came back.’

Munro looked up from his paperwork. ‘Where’d you get a picture of her?’

‘It turned up.’

‘Convenient.’ He went back to scribbling on a piece of typescript. ‘You hear that the docs sent in a report on your man Jarrold?’

‘“My man Jarrold” - my God!’

‘Guillam’s office filed it with the magistrate - “given to harmless childish fantasies but improving”. Docs recommend more of whatever they’re doing and a continuance of the charges. Guillam’s recommending to Mrs Striker that she agree.’ He raised his head. ‘She hasn’t told you?’

‘I haven’t seen her in a bit.’

‘Mm. Perhaps you should. Better than mucking about with missing persons.’ He started to lower his head to his paperwork again but lifted it and said, ‘Anyway, they’ve pulled the watchers off you because of the report on Jarrold. You’re on your own.’

When he saw her two days later, he said, ‘You didn’t tell me you’d heard about Jarrold.’

‘I haven’t seen you.’

‘You could have sent one of your telegrams.’

‘I didn’t think it was important.’

‘It’s important to me. Jarrold’s hoodwinked them. If they think what’s behind that moon face of his is a “harmless childish fantasy”, they should be disbarred or defrocked or whatever it is you do with medical men.’

‘Their report is quite positive. He’s “calm”. They’re giving him chloral at night and he’s sleeping. He’s given up wandering about in the dark, sleeps the night through. The Lady Astoreth has dropped out of his life.’

‘He’s pulling the wool over their eyes.’

‘Maybe the Lady Astoreth has run off with Arthur Crum.’

‘If Arthur Crum actually exists somewhere.’

‘Not to mention the Lady Astoreth.’ They were in his sitting room. Outside, it was crisp and cold; thin winter sunlight showed the sooty patterns on his windowpanes. She was wearing another suit, this one in a heavy rust-red wool; she had taken off the jacket to reveal a plain white blouse with a mannish necktie. She said, ‘Maybe Munro’s right about both Mary Thomason and Arthur Crum. They’re both much ado about nothing.’

‘I think the Thomason business is nothing, then I swing the other way and am certain something’s really happened. The coincidences - the drawing, Himple, Crum going off with him—’ He struck the velvet arm of his chair and dust motes jumped into the room. ‘The little drawings, the remarques - if they mean something, if they’re some sort of code - Augustus John and the housekeeper both recognized the one of Lazarus, so that one’s clear enough. If she drew it, she was referring to the man who drew her picture, to Himple. But the other one—’

‘You said nobody recognizes the other one.’

‘It’s a doorway, just a doorway.’ He put his legs out. He touched her foot with one of his, frowned at her small boot. ‘Heseltine looked funny when he saw it, but he said he didn’t recognize it. No, he didn’t say that - he just said something about - what? It was too small to see, or something. But he did look funny.’

‘Ask him again.’

‘I hate to bother him. He’s in a bad state.’

‘So are you.’

He looked at her with the same frown. He meant that he didn’t think his own frustration was anything like Heseltine’s despair. She reddened.

‘Anyway, I don’t like the docs’ report on Jarrold. And the police have pulled off their watchers because of it. Damn them.’

Next afternoon, he walked down to Albany Court when he was done working. He had had the satisfaction of writing ‘end’ below a final paragraph, then underlining it. He had got the whole book out of his head and on the page, now had only to wait for the typewriter to do the final sheets, then take them to bed, revise, edit, get them down to the publishers. The great anticlimax.

Heseltine opened his own door. He answered a question about Jenks with only a shake of his head. Heseltine hadn’t shaved; he was still in a dressing gown, again with an old woollen scarf around his neck. The place smelled of benzoin, as if he really had been ill. When they had talked banalities for a few minutes, Denton let a silence fall and then he said, ‘Do you remember the drawing I showed you?’

‘Drawing?’

‘The young woman.’

‘Oh, of course.’

‘There were little drawings in the corners.’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘I thought you recognized one of them.’ Heseltine didn’t react. Denton pulled out a photographic copy and held it towards him. Heseltine hesitated and then took it.

‘The lower left one.’

Heseltine looked at it, but he spoke before he looked. ‘Afraid it doesn’t mean a thing to me.’

‘The light’s poor. I’d be grateful if you’d look at it in better light.’ Denton handed him a folding magnifier he’d brought on purpose.

Heseltine took it to a window. The Wesselons hung on the wall next to him; his shoulder almost brushed it as he leaned against the window frame. The light was colourless but bright. Denton got up and stood at his shoulder. ‘Recognize it?’

‘No - no—’ The corner of the paper quivered.

Denton said, ‘It’s important. It means something. You wanted to help me find this young woman, remember?’

Heseltine turned around him into the room and went back to where he had been sitting, a rather grubby love seat; he leaned over and put the drawing on the cushion of Denton’s chair, then dropped his head on the fingers of one hand and looked at the raddled carpet. He said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘You were talking about going away.’

Heseltine rubbed his forehead with his fingers as he leaned on them. ‘The little drawing is of a doorway in Mayfair. It’s a place called the Mayflower Baths.’ His eyes were shut. He kept rubbing. ‘I was taken there when I was a schoolboy. I didn’t know—A friend of my father’s took me. It was only the once, I swear. I’m not—’ He stopped rubbing, then put his thumb and first finger on his eyes and seemed to push. ‘It’s
that
kind of place, do you understand?’

‘You mean - women, or men?’

‘Men, of course, dear God - women!’ He threw himself back, his eyes still closed. ‘I was deeply ashamed. I’m still ashamed. And the man who took me was a friend of my father’s, I trusted him, but looking back I realize he’d said things earlier, made insinuations.’

‘You were a boy.’

‘I was seventeen. I knew enough. At school - there’s always a certain amount of that sort of thing. I won’t claim I was innocent.’ He sat up. ‘But it was only the one time!’

‘You’re sure that’s what the picture shows.’

Heseltine cackled. ‘It’s unmistakable. I used to pass that doorway before the war, going to a house where I often looked in after dinner. I could never see it without flinching.’ He swallowed. ‘I learned to look away.’ He laughed.

Denton stayed to talk about other things, but he knew when he left that he’d made Heseltine’s day worse, not better.

He wanted to talk to somebody about it, but Janet was off with her lawyer; Atkins’s was the wrong ear. What did it mean that Mary Thomason had drawn the doorway of a male rendezvous on her portrait? Did she know something about Erasmus Himple and thus was making a threat? Had she learned something from her brother, who then went off to the Continent with Himple? Did this make Himple the one she feared was going to hurt her?

He went in the Regent Street entrance of the Café Royal and then into the Domino Room. He was hoping for Frank Harris, but it was far too early. No Augustus John, either; he would be back in Liverpool by now. He sat, still wearing his hat and overcoat, and drank a milky coffee and tried to think it through. It was the same squirrel cage - round and round, too much suggestion and not enough fact.

A little after six, a disreputable figure shambled across his view of the room.

‘Crosland!’

Crosland was pushing fifty but looked older, untidy grey hair surrounding a pouched and lined face. He wore an enormous unfitted ulster that, like a magician’s cloak, had pockets both inside and out. Papers stuck out of them. His hat had once been a silk topper. His waistcoat, unmatched to anything else he wore, carried old egg yolk down it like candle drippings. Crosland was nominally a hack journalist, really a polemicist and an information peddler; he prided himself on being able to cobble up a fire-breathing pamphlet on both sides of any subject.

‘Got a minute?’

‘Buy me a drink?’

Denton signalled for a waiter. Crosland, never absolutely drunk, was usually on the way; beery breath blasted from him - always a sign that he was on his uppers, his preferred drink brandy - and, under and around it, an odour of wet wool and sour milk.

‘I need some information.’

‘Cost you.’

Denton dropped a shilling on the table. ‘The Mayflower Baths.’

‘Ha! Cost you more than that.’

Denton fished out another shilling.

‘Make it half a crown. Pricey part of town.’ When the other sixpence had gone on the pile, Crosland removed his hat and rubbed his dirty hair with his left hand, then put the hat on the table. A glass of brandy had appeared by then; he sipped. Denton’s own glass was empty; Crosland indicated the money and said, ‘Buy you a drink?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, then. The Mayflower Baths. Ah, well. Discreet spot for gents of a certain taste to find young ’uns, if you follow me. Mm? Used to be any evening after seven - very different during the day, ladies’ Turkish bath and so on - but at night, this other drama. Oscar was known to drop in. Had a taste for some of the rougher ones.’ He drank again. ‘Gone now, if you’d been thinking of stopping by.’