The Frightened Man tds-1

by Kenneth Cameron

‘Name is Maude, sir,’ the nervous young man said the moment the constable stopped talking. He was wearing a new suit, new round hat, new overcoat, none of the best but not the worst, either. ‘Sent by the Imperial Domestic Employment Agency, sir. Recommendation of — ’ he peeked at a card — ‘Mr Harris.’

  Denton’s head was still muzzy, his vision filmed. He was quitting the world of laudanum and entering one of something like influenza. ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m filling in currently. Until something permanent transpires. Sir.’

  The policeman was still in the room, waiting in fact for Denton to tell him to go. ‘He’s a valet, sir,’ he said, making it ‘val-it’ but clear enough. ‘Can I go, sir?’

  Denton was putting it together in the fog. Harris, valet, employment agency: Frank Harris had sent him a servant to replace Atkins; therefore, Harris knew what had happened. Harris was famous for knowing all sorts of things; he was also famous for doing all sorts of things, many of them scandalous, scurrilous, or actionable, but sometimes — like now — inexplicably generous. Denton waved the policeman away and said to the young man, ‘I’ve got no room for you. His — the permanent man’s — rooms are a crime scene.’

  ‘Only coming in by the day as a temporary, sir. Accustomed to making do.’ Seeing, probably, that Denton was unconvinced of the need for him, he said, ‘Somebody to answer the door in this trying time quite important, sir. Not proper for the cop — policeman. Not well yourself, if I may say so, sir, helpful to have somebody about. There’s also the matter of clothing, your morning newspaper, letters and calling cards-’ He held out the morning mail and the newspaper, which he had been holding all the time he had been there.

  ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir! But I can serve a proper dinner.’

  Atkins could cook. After a fashion. What he called ‘curries’, mostly meaning that he threw some things together and used spice from a tin he bought at the Army and Navy Stores. Plus eggs, gammon, toast, coffee and various sandwiches, always served with chutney and pickle. The Indian background.

  ‘But you can make a pot of tea.’

  ‘Why, yes.’

  ‘Good. Do it. Your hat and coat go in that closet. When the tea’s made, take a cup to each of the coppers outside — one’s at the back. Then I want you to go up to the attic and get some things for me, and then we’ll talk about drawing me a bath. You’ll get lunch for both of us from the Lamb, plus anything the officers want. Can you do that?’

  With the air of a man of parts, the boy — for he was only a boy, perhaps sixteen — said, ‘Of course, sir.’ Leaving Denton to wonder why Frank Harris, who was only an acquaintance, had gone out of his way to help him. And what he would want in return.

  Denton found the confirmation of what Guillam had told him buried on an inner page of the newspaper:

  CAPE COLOURED SEAMAN ARRESTED IN MUTILATION MURDER

  Confession Imminent, City Police Say

  Joseph Abrahams, a Cape Town seaman, has been detained for the violent murder of a woman in the Minories two nights ago. Abrahams was found in an inebriated state and covered in blood, City police say. Detective Sergeant Steven Willey said he expects to lay charges tomorrow. Abrahams’s ship, the Ladysmith Castle, will sail from the Port of London today.

  ‘Mr Atkins is comatose,’ Dr Bernat said several hours later. ‘Very bandaged, so I could not examine the wounding, but the resident was helpful.’ He tut-tutted. ‘A bad blow to the back of the head.’ He touched his own large dome behind his bald spot. ‘Concussion for certain. But not to despair yet. I am seeing many woundings of the head in Poland.’ The resigned smile again; no need, it said, to tell him who had been wounded and who had done the wounding.

  ‘I’d like you to see him again this evening. If you have time.’

  Bernat bowed, a curiously courtly and old-fashioned gesture. He raised one of Denton’s eyelids, then the other, then looked inside Denton’s mouth. ‘Laudanum was new to you. It is very forceful that way sometimes. The brandy was not wise.’

  ‘I know that now.’

  ‘The doctor cannot predict is coming in a burglar to kill you. Sleeping is what I wanted for you, not knifing. But the brandy was foolish.’ He waved a finger at Denton. ‘Now you know better.’

  ‘I’m learning.’

  Bernat gave him the smile, then rattled through advice — sleep, lots of liquids, red meat if he could eat it; rest, rest, rest. And no spirits. ‘You have no wife? No woman?’ A look of disapproval. ‘The man without a woman is prey to mental vexations. Woman is soothing and also is love, as well the conjugal activity of pleasure. Every life needs softness!’ Then he laughed, and Denton laughed, and he went away.

  By then, Maude had handed the tea around, answered the door four times (three newspapermen, one Christian Scientist), brought Denton the late newspapers (Famous Author Wounded in Dastardly Attack, which made Denton ask himself why, if he was so famous, he wasn’t rich), and made himself a tiny space at the top of the stairs that ran down to Atkins’s rooms and the kitchen — inside Atkins’s space, as it were, but not inside the crime scene.

  ‘Bath, sir?’

  ‘Attic first.’ Denton explained exactly what he wanted and made the boy repeat what he had said. ‘Now help me up to my bedroom and bring me the stuff there. Then the bath.’ A few minutes later, he was lying against three pillows on his own bed, loading the Colt. Then he had the bath. And his third cup of beef tea.

  Frank Harris turned up in the early afternoon. He looked pretty much as bad as he had the night before, but cleaner. Denton received him in his bedroom. ‘Informal but understandable, I hope,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, the author’s lair!’ Harris’s eyebrows went up and down. He had a lot of self-mockery, for surely he included himself in the idea of ‘author’. ‘How’s the temporary valet working out?’

  ‘Well enough that I want to thank you for him. I’m pretty much marooned here; it wasn’t working, having a copper for a doorman.’

  ‘I thought something like that. Plus it gave me an excuse for paying you a visit.’ The eyebrows went into their act again. ‘You ought to get away.’

  Denton made it clear that he was sick of hearing about getting away.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well, but you need to get away. You’ve been stabbed; a madman is after you. Your house is practically uninhabitable. Paris is the place for you!’ He grinned as if they shared a joke.

  ‘You’ve something in mind.’

  ‘Well. Yes. It’s this way, Denton-’ Harris hitched his chair closer, leaned in as if to share a secret. ‘Somebody from the Café Royal crowd, somebody literary, has to show the flag at Oscar’s funeral. We have to be seen to send somebody of some gravitas, don’t you agree? It’s the day after tomorrow.’ His eyebrows went up and stayed there. ‘All sentimental crap aside, Oscar Wilde can’t go into the ground with the world thinking nobody in literary London cared!’

  It was typical Harris. Two days ago, he might not have been ready to subscribe two-and-six to a fund for Oscar Wilde, but a combination of contrariness and old friendship now made him Wilde’s champion. Plus he had once set up a famous meeting with Wilde and Shaw at the Café Royal, trying to persuade Wilde to skip his trial. Plus his bravura performance at the Café, in which Denton had supported him, probably appealed to his sense of self-dramatization.

  And now Denton knew what he was supposed to do to repay him for the valet.

  ‘I’d go myself,’ Harris said, ‘but I’ve got a magazine going to hell under me, and anyway, the Paris authorities are not, mm, quite happy with me yet.’ He reached out and tapped Denton’s calf. ‘It’s about art, man. About art and this ridiculous, stuffy, suffocating, hypocritical society we live in! Everything’s regulated; everything’s marked out ahead of time — whole lives! — except for art. An artist can go anywhere — until he goes too far. Then the bastards turn their backs on him and sneer. We can’t let Oscar go like that, Denton. We owe it to ourselves as artists.’ Th
en he guffawed — a sound loud and abrupt enough to make Denton flinch — and said, ‘Heard the one about the tart who gave service à la bouche while playing “The Lost Chord” on the pianoforte with her toes?’

  Denton said he hadn’t. Perhaps he had, but he could never remember jokes, and he had a puritanical distaste for off-colour ones, a leftover from his New England boyhood.

  ‘Well,’ Harris said, settling into it with a grin. ‘Fellow goes to this tart, et cetera, et cetera, and she has the speciality as noted, so she begins, and he’s delirious with pleasure, and she’s swinking away, playing Sullivan with her toes, and he’s just a jot short of a climax when she stops dead and says, “I can’t remember how this part of the music goes.” Well, the man is beside himself! He shouts, “Play anything — anything — make something up!”’ Harris roared with laughter, and Denton, thinking this was the end, smiled; Harris, however, wiping his eyes, said, ‘So — so the tart rears back, and she says — she says — ’ he couldn’t keep from laughing — ‘she says, “Make something up! Sir — I’m an artist!”’ And he became helpless, laughing.

  Denton at least chuckled at that, but when Harris had recovered, Denton made the mistake of asking what à la bouche meant, and Harris became glum and said the joke was ruined. ‘I don’t know which is worse, Denton, your utter lack of humour or your sexual prudery.’

  ‘I don’t think that not knowing French makes me a prude.’

  ‘Ever hear of a man named Havelock Ellis?’

  ‘The Psychology of Sex. Downstairs on my shelves. Volume one, anyways.’

  ‘You astonish me. Well, how can you read that book and still be a prude?’ Harris leaned forward. ‘I suppose German and Latin would be too much for you, or I’d put you on to Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis. Set you straight.’

  ‘Ever occurred to you, Harris, that sex isn’t all that important?’

  Harris looked poleaxed.

  ‘I mean,’ Denton said, ‘it’s fine in its place. Pleasure is nice. But it’s not worth writing whole books about. Maybe you have sex a bit too much on the brain.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s mad about murdered tarts and voyeurism and sexual mutilation!’

  ‘But not because of the sex.’

  Harris stared at him, shook his head, and sighed, like an actor trying to make a point to a particularly stupid audience. He looked at his watch; then he pushed his hands down into his trouser pockets and sank even farther down in his chair, his legs out. Then he shook his head. ‘Thesis, antithesis, synthesis,’ he muttered.

  To cheer him, Denton said that he supposed he could go to Paris, but-‘Why me?’ he said, although he knew why. Because there was nobody else. ‘Are they all so afraid?’ he said.

  Harris sighed. ‘Since Oscar was jailed, everybody with a lingam behind his flies has been terrified to so much as own a copy of Dorian Gray. Actually, you’re the perfect one — you are, if I may say so, the epitome of the hairy masculine. Not a hint of English neurasthenia about you. Come on, Denton — if not for Oscar, then for me.’ He grinned — much show of teeth — and said, ‘After all I’ve done for you!’ It was both a joke and a solipsistic plea.

  All Denton could say was that he’d think about it. He didn’t say that he wasn’t going anywhere until Atkins was out of danger. Otherwise, the idea of a flying visit to Paris was not unattractive. Except that, of course, it was doing exactly what Guillam had advised him to do. And he shouldn’t spend the money just now. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said again — grumpily, as he realized when he heard himself. ‘I can’t leave Atkins unconscious in a hospital.’

  ‘Better in a hospital than somewhere else.’

  ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow. There’ll still be time to take the night mail and get there.’ Harris looked at him with the terrific frown that had made him feared — sheer uncivilized ferocity, as if he planned to club you to death and eat the remains. Denton wasn’t impressed, but he wondered how sane Harris was. He reminded himself that he didn’t know Harris at all well; they were Café Royal acquaintances, and not very frequent ones, at that. In fact, his only contact with Harris outside the Café had been when the man had asked him to provide ‘anything on American fiction’ more than a year before, and Denton had written something on Stephen Crane. So far as Denton could remember, he’d never been paid. Which wouldn’t have been much to begin with, its being Harris. To forestall more talk about Paris, Denton now said, ‘Did I ever get my money for that piece on Crane?’

  He should have said ‘Where’s my money for the piece on Crane?’ because Harris, given the possibility of its already having been paid, said, ‘Of course you did!’

  ‘I don’t remember it.’

  ‘Shock. Loss of blood.’

  ‘I think you gave me the loose notes from your pocket when I asked for it. I think it was about ten pounds short.’

  Harris became magisterial. ‘I don’t think we should bicker over money when Oscar is barely cold.’

  ‘I’m not bickering — I’m asking-’

  ‘Crane just died, of course. How about doing a piece on that? We could split the difference.’ Not getting encouragement for that idea, he rushed on to say, ‘Oh, another thought I had.’ Harris smiled, then touched his forehead and frowned. ‘Would it be possible to get a drink, do you think? Something is always welcome at this time of the day.’ It was not yet one o’clock.

  There was no bell, and Denton had forgotten the boy’s name. ‘Bellow down the stairs. Tell him what you want.’ What Denton wanted was for Harris to go; he was feeling disoriented, floaty, weak. Not up to the Harris personality. ‘Or you could just go next door to the Lamb.’

  ‘A public house? Good God! Only an American would suggest it.’ Harris went out and, instead of bellowing, said something in a low voice and then went on down the stairs. He was back in two or three minutes with brandy; Denton was almost asleep, and the smell woke and nauseated him. Harris drank, sighed, massaged his temples. ‘You really need to get away for a day or two, Denton. The boy isn’t to be here at night, he tells me; you’ll be alone.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, I said.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll cover your expenses — take up a collection. ’

  ‘Take up one for the Crane piece, while you’re at it.’

  Harris finished his brandy with great briskness and banged the glass down. ‘You disappoint me.’ He paused at the doorway like an actor with an exit line. ‘The Café Royal is counting on you.’

  Later, Maude — by then, Denton had remembered the boy’s name — brought up a lunch from the Lamb and more beef tea, of which Denton was getting noticeably weary. Denton asked him if Harris had paid his wages.

  ‘Oh, no, sir, that’s for you to do.’

  Of course it was.

  Towards six, Dr Bernat puffed up the stairs, a glass bottle in his hands full of what looked like blood. Denton was ready to shout that by God, he’d gone too far; he’d put up with beef tea, but not blood! But Bernat explained that it was Russian beet soup made especially for Denton by Mrs Bernat. ‘The beet is being full of mineral, which is also the blood. Drink.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘When better?’

  Denton had had enough beets in his childhood to last a lifetime, but he didn’t want to offend Bernat. Mentally holding his nose, he drank — and liked it. Borscht, he found, when made by the right cook, was very different from boiled beets. He smiled. Bernat smiled. They both laughed. Bernat said Denton was ‘very game’, an Englishism of which he seemed proud. He had been to see Atkins again. There had been a period of consciousness, he had been told, some indications that Atkins could see, move his limbs and ask questions, or at least say, ‘What the bloody hell?’

  ‘Now, he will improve, but he is having a nasty wound. Some days yet he must be in hospital.’

  ‘Can I visit?’

  ‘Tomorrow, maybe yes, maybe no. But you need rest yourself. Today, absolutely no.’

  Denton looked grim. ‘Somebody wan
ts me to go to Paris. A trip to University College Hospital won’t compare.’

  ‘Paris!’ Bernat frowned. ‘Paris is not a restful place. I trained in Paris. During the-’

  Maude was standing in the doorway. ‘Now there’s a gentleman named Munro to see you.’ He looked aggrieved. His work day had ended two minutes earlier, and here he was, announcing yet somebody else. Denton said to show him up, and the boy said that then he was leaving the house, sir, and he clattered downstairs.

  ‘I am going,’ Bernat said.

  ‘No, no, stay.’ Bernat had a half-finished glass of sherry. He looked uncertain, probably embarrassed. Munro, however, seemed unfazed by either patient or doctor. He was carrying his hat and coat and grinning. ‘Your man flew out of the house before I could give him my things.’

  ‘My man’s a kid, hardly out of short pants. Sling them on the bed.’ He introduced the two men, said that Bernat was a doctor and Munro a policeman. ‘Two professional visits in one,’ he said. ‘Munro, if you want a drink, you have to get your own. Atkins got his head broken.’

  ‘So I heard. Nothing for me, anyway.’ He looked at Bernat. ‘Well, how is he?’

  ‘Our host? Generally in excellent health, his wounds stable, still weak and I think a little shocked. But promising. ’

  Munro looked at Denton. ‘I’d like to hear your tale of what happened. Guillam’s keeping his own counsel — his prerogative; he’s being a good cop. Tell me what happened.’

  Bernat said he shouldn’t listen to private police business; no matter how much both men insisted, he drank off his sherry and left. He had seemed at ease with Denton, clearly was not with Munro, or perhaps only with two other people instead of one. ‘Shy,’ Denton said. ‘Been through the pogroms; maybe it’s because you’re a policeman.’

  ‘Coppers have that effect. Part of the job.’

  Then Denton told him the story of the two attacks, ending with Guillam’s visit and Guillam’s disdain for the Mulcahy story. ‘Guillam hates my guts,’ he finished.

  ‘That’s just Georgie. He wants to be a superintendent, at least; always on the make. To him, you’re a rival. I know, it’s stupid, but he’s like that. He doesn’t want anybody else to have an idea. Down on me because I had your observation about the peephole before he did.’