The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘Neither of us. You’re a capitalist now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Bit of a story about that. Leave off, Colonel, let me do my work.’

  ‘Oh, put that damned suitcase down. You’re not a servant any more!’ Atkins was by then halfway down the long room that served Denton as sitting room and parlour; at the far end were the stairs to his bedroom. He turned. ‘Matter of fact, General, I am. Or will be if you’ll take me back.’

  ‘What about the recording business?’

  Atkins cleared his throat. He looked profoundly embarrassed. ‘I left the business for, ah, mmm, reasons of an ethical nature. I’d like to apply formally to take up my old position with you, if that’s possible, sir. If you don’t have somebody else. If you’re not just glad to—’

  Denton had come striding down the room to embrace him. ‘My God, you don’t need to ask! Yes, and yes!’ He stood back, holding Atkins at arm’s length as if he might try to get away. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Could I wait to tell you about it? It’s very fresh, and, er, not very flattering to my business judgement. May I say, instead, Colonel, that I’m pleased as Punch to be in your service again.’ He eyed Denton. ‘At the old wage.’

  ‘The old wage, of course.’ Denton was grinning. ‘I’m sorry about the recording business, but—’

  Atkins was pulling at Denton’s overcoat. ‘No use to cry, Sarah! Chuck yourself out of that coat and hat and I’ll put them where they belong before you fling them at the nearest piece of furniture. And don’t you take that suitcase upstairs; that’s my job! You hungry? ’Course you are. You fancy a drop of sherry? It’s the right time of day. Whisky, brandy—?’ Atkins raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What I fancy is tea.’

  ‘Tea! Oh, I suppose I could do tea. If you really want tea.’

  Seeing that tea had been the wrong answer, Denton said with a smile, ‘Sherry?’

  ‘There you are.’ Atkins headed for a small table near the fireplace that had been crowded against the wall by Denton’s easy chair; he lifted a decanter, peered into it, got two small glasses. ‘Thought I’d be asked to join you,’ he said.

  ‘Won’t you join me?’

  ‘I will, thanks very much.’ Atkins poured, handed a glass to Denton.

  ‘How’s Mrs Striker?’

  Atkins took a deep breath. ‘I never see her. Never here.’ Janet owned the house behind, the gardens connected through a door in the wall. ‘She’s living at Westerley Street, is the word I get. Hasn’t been home except the day she arrived, and then only to tell the Cohans she wouldn’t be staying.’ The Cohans were the couple who lived in her half-basement and took care of the house.

  Denton frowned and turned away. He had hoped to see Janet at once. The gloom he had felt crossing London returned; he tried to shake it off by saying, ‘I’m sure she’ll want to see me.’

  Atkins rolled his eyes. ‘You just got here; don’t you want to sit down with your pipe and slippers and say it’s good to be home? Be it ever so humble and so on? Tell me traveller’s tales till I can’t keep my eyes open?’

  He threw himself into his chair. ‘I don’t have any tales. Let’s hear yours—what happened to the recording business? Last I heard, you were on the way to being a millionaire, and then—’

  Atkins made a face. ‘Can’t you wait?’ He sighed. ‘If I say that I came into the office last Saturday and found my partners making a recording called “What Mabel Did with the Postman on Saturday Afternoon”, will you get a whiff of what happened?’ He sipped again. ‘There’s my friend Shelm and some “actress” who was really a tart from over the way, and perfect for the role as all she had to say was “oooooh” and “eeeeeeeeh”. Also some words I never expected to hear on a wax recording, but some people have no sense of propriety. Could have knocked me over with a feather duster. Here I thought we had a nice little company for the making of comic songs and monologues, doing quite nicely, thank you, and behind my back they’re making stuff to sell under the counter in pubs and tobacconists. I was hurt—deeply hurt! And worried about the police.’

  ‘And the business went bust?’

  ‘Not at all. My part of the business went bust! I went straight to my legal adviser, got a letter sent saying that because of the making of recordings not consonant with our contract and offensive to me, I was withdrawing, etc., etc. And I did. Thirty-six hours after I heard Mabel and the postman doing the dirty, I was out of the lodge of capitalist strivers and one of the mass of the unemployed.’

  ‘Your partners didn’t object?’

  ‘They were delighted. One less piece of the pie to be cut. Also, they thought I was an obstacle to growth—me! And the whole company was my idea!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, for my sake! I’ve other irons in the fire. More than one way to skin the cat. In the meantime, welcome home, thanks for having me back, all’s well that ends well, and pip-pip. Now may I carry that case upstairs?’

  ‘Can you carry that case upstairs?’

  ‘Oh, ha-ha, Italy hasn’t changed you a bit.’ Atkins picked up the suitcase as if he intended to toss it through the large window at the end of the room, then swayed around the newel post and headed up the stairs. The dog came behind, panting as if he were trying to make it up the Matterhorn. Denton waited for the sound of falling but heard Atkins make it to the top, cross to Denton’s bedroom, and drop the suitcase with a crash that made the house shake.

  A huge pile of mail sat on a table near his chair. Anything important had already been sent on to him in Naples; knowing what was left was dross, Denton started quickly through it. When Atkins appeared again, he said, ‘You might as well have thrown this lot out.’

  ‘Then you’d have asked me where was so-and-so and it’d have been all my fault. Anyway, I wasn’t in your employ when most of that lot arrived, so I’m not liable. You eating in or out?’

  ‘I thought I’d go out.’

  ‘First night home after seven weeks in an Italian cesspit, and you’re going out? I could have something brought over from the Lamb.’

  ‘I thought I’d stop by Westerley Street.’ He hoped Janet would go somewhere to eat with him.

  Atkins watched him flip through envelopes with a finger, piling them against his left thumb. He said, ‘What brought you back, anyway? Not to pry, of course. The lady, is it?’

  Denton stopped, kept his finger in the stack to mark his place. ‘Something came up about a man who died in Naples.’

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, no, Captain—not somebody else you think was murdered!’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

  ‘Oh, I knew it. You could go to Timbuctoo and they’d murder somebody for you, just to make you feel at home. What is it this time, some Dago with a knife in his belly?’

  ‘An old Englishman, actually. “Dago” isn’t a nice word.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be nice, but I apologise if it turns out you’re Italian.’

  ‘I’m not, but I like them. And their food.’

  ‘No accounting for tastes.’

  Denton flipped more envelopes against his thumb and at last came to the end of the pile. ‘Toss them all out,’ he said.

  Atkins took the stack. ‘You taking the motor car?’ he said. He seemed apprehensive.

  ‘Good God, I’d forgotten I own one. Is it still in one piece?’ He’d allowed Atkins to drive it while he was gone.

  ‘It, mmm, had an encounter with a dray in Oxford Street. Functions like a well-made watch but has a bit of a dent.’

  ‘How could you have hit a dray?’

  ‘Didn’t hit a dray; the dray hit us! And, mmm, I wasn’t driving. An error of judgement on my part. I admit it. Thinking with my heart at the time, not my head.’

  ‘A woman? You let some woman drive my motor-car?’

  Atkins tipped his chin up and turned away, his hands full of the letters. ‘I’ll tell you about it another time, shall I?’ He went down the room and then took the stairs to his own qu
arters.

  Denton strode after him and bellowed down the stairs, ‘How bad is it?’ The dog, as if he, too, expected an answer from the lower depths, sat on Denton’s foot and stared down.

  Atkins’ voice floated up from somewhere below. ‘If you hadn’t surprised me by coming home, you’d never of known. A pal of mine is knocking out the ding on Monday next.’

  Denton stared down the dark stairs. He thought about his ridiculous little car, which had three seats, the third one backward-facing and intended for the dog. He laughed. He scratched the dog’s head, causing the dog to throw himself to the floor and expose his privates. Atkins’ face appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You seducing my dog?’

  ‘I think he’s seducing me.’

  ‘He’s pleased to see you. Asked about you every day.’

  Denton stopped scratching, and the dog rolled on his side, sighed, and went to sleep. Denton went back to his chair and sat, thinking about Janet. Janet loved her house; it was astonishing that she wasn’t living in it. He supposed that Ruth Castle must be very near death. It was trivial, even mean minded, but he thought that in that case Janet wouldn’t want to go to dinner with him.

  In time, Atkins came up and asked if he wanted dinner clothes laid out.

  ‘I’ll just go the way I am.’

  ‘You most certainly will not. You’re wearing travelling clothes!’

  ‘Well, I’ve been travelling.’

  ‘And you look it! I’ll draw you a bath and unpack your case. I suppose you didn’t bring the good dinner suit back with you, oh, no. What’s left here to wear will do for the Café Royal and the like, but stay out of the Criterion, will you? I know people there.’

  ‘Do you know, I haven’t thought much about clothes for weeks?’

  ‘Yes, but you were among Italians, General. This is London.’

  So it was. Gloomy, noisy, smelly London, where in the morning he’d have business with the police.

  Westerley Street was a quiet, short row of good but not palatial houses put up in the eighteenth century. Ruth Castle’s brothel had become so famous, however, that the name of the whole had come to stand for the part: say ‘Westerley Street’ to a cab driver and he would take you to Mrs Castle’s.

  Denton had been a patron off and on until he met Janet. Ruth Castle had been a mentor of sorts to Janet, a sometime adviser to Denton, particularly where Janet was concerned. Pretty even in middle age, Ruth Castle had become increasingly alcoholic, a bottle of champagne always at hand as she held court in Westerley Street, surrounded by often powerful men and the much younger women they picked out from her stock. A kind of social club as well as a whorehouse, the place, always slightly shabby in Denton’s time, had from late in the afternoon until early morning shone with electric light and flattered the ear with soft music. Denton never understood what the neighbours made of it—cabs coming and going, men strolling in and out—but he knew that Ruth Castle paid the police and made generous contributions in the borough, and a former pugilist named Fred Oldaston maintained decorum at the door and inside—with his fists, if he had to.

  Now, however, in the early darkness of a winter evening, the house was the darkest and the quietest on the street. Denton thought the cab had brought him to the wrong place, but of course the driver knew what he was doing: when Denton had said, ‘Westerley Street,’ the driver had said, ‘No good, sir—closed up.’ But he had brought Denton here when he insisted, and now Denton saw that it was indeed closed. The windows were dark, only a dim light showing behind a curtain on the second floor. The music was silenced. The gas lamps that framed the front door were unlit. No black crape, however, had been hung on the pillars, so Ruth Castle was still alive.

  Denton paid the man, who said he’d be happy to wait, and knew another place Denton could go that was almost as good, but Denton waved him on. He went up the familiar steps, remembering that he had not so long before been shot in the back only a few yards away. He tried to look into a window next to the door, saw nothing but his own reflected scowl.

  He pulled the bell. Nothing happened, and after thirty seconds he pulled it again. Some sound reached him, perhaps a door closing, then footsteps. When the door opened, he expected to see either Fred Oldaston or Janet, but the woman whose face appeared in the opening was a stranger—heavy featured, stern, beyond middle age, with piled-up hair that reminded him of Eusapia Palladino. The woman said, ‘The house is closed.’

  ‘I know that. I haven’t come for… I want to see Mrs Striker. I was told she’s staying here.’

  ‘There’s illness in the house. Serious illness.’

  ‘Will you take a message to Mrs Striker, please.’

  ‘Mrs Striker’s resting. She’s not to be disturbed.’

  ‘I believe she would want to see me.’ Would she?

  The woman put her head out a little farther. ‘Is your name Dunton?’

  ‘Denton.’ He reached for his card case, wished he’d started by offering a card, but the woman pulled her head back into the house and closed the door. It made Denton instantly angry, too angry, fatigue and frustration combining; he yanked on the bell-pull. He was ready to haul on it again when the door opened a few inches and an envelope appeared, long, blunt fingers holding it. A couple of feet above it but back in the shadow of the interior, the same face looked at him. ‘She left this for you.’

  He took the envelope but put his other hand flat on the door so it wouldn’t close. ‘How is Mrs Castle?’

  ‘She’s dying, isn’t she? Nurse says tonight or tomorrow.’

  She tried to shut the door; he pushed against it. ‘Where’s Fred Oldaston?’

  ‘Let go. No reason for him now, is there?’

  ‘I want to see Mrs Striker!’

  ‘She’s resting, I told you. Leave off pushing on that door, or I’ll have the police.’

  ‘When will I be able to see her?’

  But the woman must have put her shoulder to the door, because it closed with a soft thud, and he heard bolts being thrown on the other side. He looked up and down the street, as if to see if he had been caught in a shameful moment; except for a small man with a dog the length of the street away, he saw nobody. It was getting on for the dinner hour. People would be in their houses.

  He walked down the steps and turned on the pavement to look at the house, as if he might see Janet looking down from an upper window, like the mad wife in a novel. But the place had closed in on itself, and, except for the open shutters, it was lifeless.

  He walked down towards Marylebone Road and wandered until he found a chop house, which he made the mistake of going into. He ordered a sort of supper, which proved to be as bad as English food’s reputation in Italy. He read her letter, which was short and unemotional and, he thought, exhausted: ‘Please don’t try to see me, I’m not seeing anybody. Ruth is dying. I can think of nothing else. We shall talk when this is over’.

  He decided to drink his supper and pushed the greasy plate away.

  In the morning, hung over and repentant, he went to New Scotland Yard. Detective Inspector Donald Munro was an acquaintance of several years, a massive man with a limp from a household accident and a perpetual sense of indebtedness to Denton for having helped to get him out of a paper-pushing office and back into the CID. A Canadian, Munro had been in the London police for thirty years but still sounded as if he came from somewhere else—another affinity with Denton.

  ‘I got your cable.’ Munro had greeted him as if they had last seen each other the day before, had immediately sat down again behind his scarred desk. Around them, a dozen other men were trying to do the CID’s business, several of them shouting into telephones at the far end of the huge room. ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘A death in Naples. I thought you might be able to help.’

  ‘How’s Mrs Striker?’

  ‘Ruth Castle’s dying. She’s with her.’

  ‘I heard about Mrs Castle. Rather changes the face of London, doesn’t it? What’s a retir
ed cop in Brum got to do with a death in Naples?’ Denton had asked about Cherry in his cable.

  Denton rubbed the bone just above his enormous nose; the headache seemed to have taken root there. ‘A question of evidence.’

  ‘Hmph. Naturally, you’ve stuck your big nose in.’

  ‘That’s more or less what Atkins said.’

  ‘Well, he’s right. It sticks so far out in front of you it’s always getting into things it shouldn’t. You’re going to trip over it one of these days. You a bit the worse for wear this morning?’

  ‘Just tired.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Munro opened a drawer, swore when it stuck, and took out a piece of paper. ‘I got a reply from Brum police. Yes, Joseph Cherry was a sergeant, retired seven years ago, still collects his pension and is believed to be living with a married daughter. That do it for you?’

  ‘No photo, I suppose.’

  ‘No, no photo, you didn’t ask for a photo! Anyway, no time to get it here since you sent me your message. You want me to ask for a photo?’ He sounded exasperated.

  Denton shook his head, a movement that made the headache seem to sway within his skull like the clapper in a bell. ‘But he’s still alive.’

  ‘Seems to be—I’d take “believed to be living with a married daughter” to mean something like that.’

  ‘But they didn’t say he’s a private detective.’

  ‘No, they didn’t. Didn’t say he isn’t, either. Would you like to let me know what this is about?’

  ‘Don’t want to take up your time.’