The Frightened Man tds-1

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘Grey as a ball of lint,’ he said aloud. His voice was husky. He cleared his throat. He found he didn’t like ‘grey as a ball of lint’. He cleared his throat again. ‘Grey as the bottom of a boot.’ Better. But so depressing that he felt even worse. ‘Damn her!’ he groaned. Still. He fell into the desk chair and wrote Emma an apology and then sent Atkins to find a boy to deliver it to her. Atkins, always worrying about clothes, reminded him that he was supposed to be going out to dinner that evening; Denton cursed, because Emma would be there, the reason in fact that he’d been invited in the first place. He wrote another note, this one to the hostess, pleading illness. He couldn’t face Emma. Alone again, he stared at the pile of manuscript, tried to think about it, found his mind sloping off to Mulcahy, Emma, the dead tart. He stood up, leaned his hands on the desk, stared down at its scarred surface.

  Odd, that he should end up at a desk. Or perhaps he wouldn’t, as it wasn’t yet the end. ‘We all end up in a box, sooner or later,’ he muttered. Like the woman who had been mutilated and killed, or the other way around, last night. For her, the box had come much sooner than later. A dangerous profession, prostitution. Much safer to be a ‘nice’ woman like Emma Gosden. Damn her.

  He kept headache powders in a drawer; the search for them was irritating and over-long. He gulped more water, the white powder drifting in it like sand, then headed up the stairs to the top floor, thinking about nice women and women who weren’t nice. Nice, not nice. What was ‘not nice’ about a sixteen-year-old who’d just come to town from a farm? Was she less ‘nice’ than Emma, who’d had at least four lovers before him, had visited a whorehouse in Paris so she could look on from a hiding place, and had had him and somebody else on the string at the same time? How contradictory, now he thought about it, that Emma was ‘nice’ at all, the quality preserved by — what? Manner? No, money. And the whores, what was not ‘nice’ except their doing openly what Emma did in private?

  In the attic, he forced himself to pick up a forty-pound iron bar. Each curl seemed to push all his blood into his aching head.

  ‘Bad,’ he gasped aloud. He was thinking of Emma, her behaviour towards him — his towards her, for that matter — but the word would have done for all sorts of things he’d done in his life. Or so it seemed from the perspective of the hangover. Or all manner of things that men did to women. Like Stella Minter, the extreme case. He screwed his face up, wondering if that was what he had wanted for Emma in that moment of red blindness. God, no.

  He finished twenty curls and put the bar down with a thump. The attic smelled of dry wood, a whiff of fir, dust, smoke from below, the fresh odour of rain. He had two Flobert pistols up there, ‘parlour pistols’ some called them because their charge was so weak you could shoot them in a parlour. Or so they said. It was Denton’s view that if you hit somebody in the eye with one of the little bullets, you might find yourself a murderer. He perhaps had too much respect for firearms. But, then, a lot of experience.

  Nice women, ‘not nice’ women, the illusions of chastity and virginity. He’d never had a virgin except his wife, and what a horror that had been. They had both been nineteen, the Civil War just over. Huddled in the cold bedroom of a boarding house.

  ‘Cruel to her,’ he said aloud. He set up a target and walked the length of the attic and aimed. He had been over his marriage ten thousand times in his mind; it always made him wince with shame. He could have waited, he knew now, been gentle with her, helped her. But he had thought that consummation had to be immediate or she would escape him, become his sister and not his wife. At nineteen, he had known no better. So, tears, bloody sheets, a terrible train journey north and west with her in pain. When she’d got pregnant, she’d fled the farm for her parents’ house in St Louis, had had both the boys there, gone back to the farm each time with reluctance. But died on the farm.

  Like the murdered tart, in the box sooner, not later.

  He fired one pistol, then the other; reloaded, fired; reloaded. His head was spinning, his breath was foul, but he didn’t miss at this distance. He fired again, both pistols, and when he walked down and looked at the target, he could have covered the six bullet holes with his thumbnail.

  He went to a rowing contraption and made himself row for half an hour.

  As he strained, he thought about Mulcahy, the girl, Emma.

  Mulcahy had certainly been terrified by something. Whether he’d actually seen what he’d described or not was another matter. Was Mulcahy one of those lunatics who lived horrors that existed only in his own mind? Had Mulcahy opened a window on some inner hell and been appalled by it? But then why had he lied about it — for surely he’d lied? And why had he thought he needed protection? Or was that simply some extreme realization of his fantasy, as Atkins had suggested?

  Pouring sweat, his robe discarded and the old shirt unbuttoned, Denton rested on the oars, panting, heart pounding, his head aching to the beat of it. He pulled himself up, his legs weak, and towelled himself and then lay down next to a hundred-pound dumb-bell. The iron mistress. Like being in bed with it. Emma weighed only fifteen pounds more. On top of me, she felt light. Sweet. The sweetness of women, warm, soft- He dragged the dumb-bell on top of him, arching his back and raising his abdomen so the bar rested on it, then getting his forearms under it and hoisting it above him. Twenty lifts, the later ones forcing the blood into his head again so that it felt as if the veins would explode.

  Had Mulcahy murdered the girl? Was it as simple as that? But why come to Denton, then?

  He had his cap-and-ball pistol from the American Civil War; he removed it from its case, checked, as he always did, that it wasn’t loaded (but he knew it wasn’t loaded, hadn’t been loaded in ten years), and stood with the pistol held at arm’s length for five minutes, holding the sights on the target. Despite brandy, hangover, strenuous exercise, the pistol never wavered.

  He was at the Metropolitan Police Additional Headquarters before eleven, a ridiculous Gothic building from which passers-by expected to hear groans and sighs, perhaps muffled screams. The building had in fact been a warren of legal offices and dismal flats before the expanding police, already bursting out of New Scotland Yard, had acquired it ‘temporarily’. Its blackened stones were grim at best, horrible in the rain, and now that it was an annexe for the police, it had the air of a prison. The vast and sombre exterior led visitors to expect inside huge, shadowed vistas with topless staircases and vaults and chains; as it was, Denton was merely irritated by what he found — a setting for bureaucratic tedium. Long, uncarpeted passages led to enclosed staircases with, nonetheless, dark newels and banisters, and here and there were floors that sloped, others that abruptly took a step up or down. It was said that new occupants got lost in trying to get about the building. It made the hung-over Denton dizzy.

  On the third floor, past the gloomy entrance hall and the atrium that poked up through the building as if seeking light and air, up some stairs and around a balcony that looked down into the well, and up and around again and up, was the office of the Assistant Under-Secretary to the Assistant Secretary (not to be confused with the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Permanent Assistant Secretary, both career civil servants) who was in a sense responsible, although in fact not really responsible, for the apparatus that investigated the Metropolitan Police — not in a criminal sense, but a business one: its stated goal was efficiency. The Assistant Under-Secretary was a man named Hector Hench-Rose.

  ‘Denton!’ he shouted. ‘Ha-ha!’ Hench-Rose had ginger hair and a ginger moustache and was, at forty, already seriously into belly after years of pouring himself into the uniform of one of the higher-numbered regiments. He was affable, courageous and useless as an administrator, and so had been given the equivalent of the rank of superintendent and put one step down from the top of the division with no more experience of police work than if he had spent his life running a home for foundlings.

  ‘Hector.’ Denton liked Hector Hench-Rose in a qualified way; they were opposites w
ithout ever being enemies. Hench-Rose was energetic, cheerful and happy; Denton was listless, dour and doubtful that happiness existed. He liked to warm himself at Hector’s fire now and then.

  ‘Place stinks,’ Hector said now. He was leading Denton to a chair in an office so dark it could have been used to store coal. One window gave on to an air shaft; the only other light came from a gas lamp above the desk. The rain, nonetheless, managed to reach that only window and trickle down it with sooty smears. ‘Something in the chimney. Birds, I think. Place full of smoke half the time, then we get a puff of wind and this unspeakable smell.’

  ‘I had raccoons in a chimney once,’ Denton said.

  ‘Raccoons! Those are the buggers with eye-rings, aren’t they. Look like burglars in an operetta. What’d they do?’

  ‘They stank.’

  This amused Hector mightily. He offered a cigar, tea, an early drink; Denton refused them all. Hector made social small talk, mentioned the opera by way of getting to Emma, as if he knew about her and Denton. His tone was a little odd, perhaps more inquisitive than usual; Hench-Rose was an enthusiastic gossip but usually discreet. Did he know already that Emma had thrown him over?

  ‘Emma all right?’ Yes, he knew.

  ‘Fine, of course.’

  ‘Didn’t see you with her at the opera.’

  ‘And never will.’

  Hench-Rose showed his teeth in a tight smile, seemed about to say something, thought better of it and turned to the question of weekend parties. ‘You shoot?’ he said.

  ‘Nobody recently.’

  ‘Oh — ha! Ha-ha! Meant birds, man. Grouse, partridge, like that.’ He talked about shooting driven birds, which Denton found about as interesting as the opera — shooters stood at assigned posts and waited while a small army of beaters drove everything that could run or fly past them to be slaughtered. ‘Make some fantastic scores,’ Hector said. ‘Certain royal party knocks down hundreds in an afternoon.’

  ‘And then eats them all that night.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, ha-ha. No, actually, the birds go off to the markets. Very important part of the process, selling the kill.’

  ‘The purpose of the exercise, in fact.’

  Hector frowned, a rare expression on his smooth face. ‘Well-Yes, in a sense.’

  ‘The shooting party is in fact a cog in an economic machine.’

  ‘What have you been reading? You sound like an anarchist, Denton. Is this for a new book?’ In fact, Denton had figured out the economics of shooting for himself because he was an American, an American who had started with nothing and was always near ruin; it gave him a point of view. And earned him some insults — parvenu, nouveau. He wasn’t sure why there was recourse to French when ‘Johnny-come-lately’ or ‘counter-jumper’ would have served so well. Something about the upper-class English and French: they decried French morals but envied French culture, adopted French words, even when they couldn’t pronounce them. Soi-disant, beauté de singe, nostalgie de la boue, elle s’affiche.

  Hench-Rose waited while an overweight young man brought in a tea tray and poured two cups, even though Denton had already refused it. ‘I like something going down the gullet,’ Hench-Rose muttered. He helped himself to scones.

  Denton said, ‘I’ve come on a kind of business.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Hector seemed astonished that such a thing as business might even exist.

  ‘The newspapers are full of a new tale about a prostitute being murdered.’

  Hector groaned and said he knew it; it was terrifically boring. He held up a buff-coloured file. ‘I don’t have time for the interesting stuff. I’m supposed to respond to an endless minute on the cost of helmets written by that dried-up dog’s leavings Mortimer Asperley, the Permanent Under-Secretary. He’s written five pages to do with a three-page file.’

  ‘How accurate are the newspaper accounts of the new murder?’

  Hector looked blank. ‘The Times is always accurate.’

  ‘Hector, I mean I want to know the details of the crime.’

  ‘Ah, aha. Writer’s curiosity, eh? Well, you’ve come to the wrong shop for anything having to do with police work; I might as well be in Whitehall monitoring the clothing regulations for other ranks in hot climates as here, for all I know about what the police are doing.’ He rang the overweight young man back into the room, told him to ask Detective Sergeant Munro to step round, looked pleased with himself for moving so briskly. ‘Munro will set us straight,’ he said. ‘Munro knows everything.’ He smiled the brilliant and open smile that made up for many failings. ‘Munro is a real policeman, not an ex-army officer dropped into a sinecure, like me.’ He beamed.

  ‘I was an ex-officer, once,’ Denton said.

  ‘Yes, but you hadn’t cousins in the senior civil service, had you? You mustered out and went to work — lucky you, Denton. Look at you now.’

  Denton grunted. He had mustered out as a temporary lieutenant (three months’ worth, a sergeant jumped up to demobilize what was left) after the American Civil War; ‘going to work,’ as Hector put it, had meant going to an unploughed piece of prairie and trying to turn it into a farm. Going to work, indeed.

  Detective Sergeant Munro was huge and walked with a limp. His massive face widened as it went downwards from his eyes; the jaws, seen straight on, were enormous, as if he could have chewed up iron bolts. He had a trace of a Scots accent, something else unidentifiable. His contempt for Hench-Rose was clear, even to Hector, who seemed amused by it.

  ‘Mister Denton is a famous author,’ Hench-Rose began. ‘He’s interested in a lady of the night who was murdered yesterday.’

  Munro looked at Denton, expanded his circle of contempt to include him. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Hench-Rose smiled more fiercely. ‘I thought the first paperwork might have made its way up to us, and we could share it with him and send him on to the right people in CID.’

  Munro’s great jaws widened, the effect of a smile. ‘Not our crime, Mr Hench-Rose.’ Dripping with contempt. Hector, not the swiftest of intellects, stared at him. ‘Crime was apparently committed in the Square Mile, sir.’

  Hector frowned. ‘Oh, dear,’ Hector said. He looked at Denton. ‘Mr Denton’s American.’ Munro grinned at Denton, offering not a drop of pity for his being American. Hector explained. ‘The Square Mile is the City of London, Denton. My fault for not having realized it; I paid no attention to the location when I read the tale in the paper. We don’t get crimes from the City; the City of London Police get them.’ He looked up. ‘Sorry, Munro.’

  ‘I can go, then?’

  ‘Well-Perhaps you know somebody over there Mr Denton could go to see.’

  ‘Not very hospitable to journalists right now,’ Munro said. He apparently meant the City Police.

  ‘Mr Denton’s not a journalist.’

  Munro looked him over, apparently concluded that Denton was no better than a journalist, whatever he was.

  ‘Oh, come on, Munro!’ Hench-Rose’s voice was wheedling. Denton could imagine his using it on a sergeant major, one of those invaluable men who do the real work of a regiment. ‘You must know somebody over there who can lend a hand.’ Hench-Rose smiled, the kind of smile that would remind even a sergeant major which of them was the superior officer. ‘Munro, I insist.’

  Denton had been making small noises, but neither of the others paid any attention. He had muttered that it wasn’t important, that he would go, that he’d been stupid. No good. He was left feeling embarrassed, as he always was by British displays, however subtle, however polite, of upper-class leverage.

  ‘I’ll just see what I can do then, sir,’ Munro was saying. ‘If you’re ready to go, Mr, um, Denton, perhaps you could come along with me.’

  ‘There!’ Hench-Rose displayed his wonderful teeth. ‘You see, Denton?’

  Denton made a face — lower lip pushed up, corners of the lips pulled down, eyebrows raised — and thanked Hector for his help and went out behind Munro, turning to cock an eyebrow again at
Hench-Rose, who seemed vastly amused.

  They paced along a dark corridor that looked as if it ran the length of the building, perhaps of several other buildings as well, a smell of coal and drains just noticeable. The corridor was bitterly cold. Munro seemed determined to say nothing, and Denton, who had lived among all sorts of people, felt no impulse to change things. They came at last to a varnished door much like all the others they had passed, and Munro grasped the handle as if he were going to yank it out of the wall and threw the door open. Several clerks looked up with frightened faces.

  ‘This is where we shovel the paper,’ Munro said. He led Denton towards another door. ‘Raw police reports find their way up here; we copy them out in a fair hand, three copies each, and send one to Files, one to Prosecution and one to your friend.’ He jerked his head towards the north, the direction meant to include Hench-Rose. ‘No idea what he does with them. In ten years or twenty the gods may see fit to give us a typewriter.’ Munro went through the door into a dismal office piled high with faded brown folders, fell into a chair behind the only desk and began to rummage in a drawer. ‘I’ll give you a message to somebody I know in City CID. That’s all I’ll do. Coppers don’t like civilians much.’

  ‘I know. I used to be one.’ Munro looked up. Denton said, ‘A place called Railhead, Nebraska.’

  ‘What was that, two whorehouses and a dog?’

  ‘Just about. I was the entire police force.’

  Munro stared at him. His huge cheeks looked unhealthy in the gloom. ‘Well, you know how we feel about civilians putting their nose in, then.’