The Frightened Man tds-1

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘Show our guests into the front parlour, Mrs Wick,’ the man said in the voice of a clergyman welcoming somebody to a funeral.

  The room was small — twelve feet on a side — with a coal grate, unlit, and the same dark and brutally shiny woodwork, and dark furniture, vaguely Eastlake, that could be dated to the beginning of the Minters’ marriage. Antimacassars everywhere; on the walls calligraphic certificates in which the name Stella Minter could be made out, and on the dark mantel a tinted photograph (not one of Regis Mulcahy’s — wrong pose) of a plump young woman holding a book.

  ‘I’m afraid I am not cognizant of the reason for your visit,’ the man said. He was short, bald, plump and entirely sure of himself. ‘I am Alfred Minter,’ as if to say, I am the reason for all this magnificence.

  Janet Striker smiled as brightly as the woodwork and held out her hand. ‘I am Janet Striker of the Society for the Improvement of Women. And this,’ indicating Denton as the prize item in the menagerie, ‘is Mr Denton, the famous author.’

  Minter touched her hand and inclined his head, moving it in a quarter-circle to take in both of them. ‘And the reason for-?’ he said.

  ‘The matter is rather delicate.’

  He looked at her, then Denton.

  ‘Your daughter-’ she said. Minter’s head snapped up. ‘We’d like to ask you about your daughter.’

  ‘This is most unusual.’ He tugged again at his waistcoat. ‘Most surprising. I fail to see why you — why anyone — would ask me about my-’ He made a gesture, as if the word ‘daughter’ was too sacred to pronounce.

  ‘Do you have a daughter named Stella?’

  He pulled himself up to his full five feet six inches. He raised a hand and moved it slowly past the row of calligraphies on the wall. ‘An accomplished young woman. Thoroughly accomplished. The apple of our eye! I don’t understand your interest, madam.’

  ‘Might we see her?’

  ‘Certainly not. She is a girl, a sensitive and good girl. I see no reason to, mm, expose her to the-’ He frowned. ‘To strangers. Who, I must say, give me no reason to entertain, mm, to have confidence in, mm, to know who or what they are! I don’t know you, madam. Or you, sir.’

  Janet Striker gave Denton a look; he got out a calling card, then searched his pockets for Hench-Rose’s letter, now somewhat battered. He handed both over. Minter took them, held the card low and well away, tipping his head back, then went to the front window and studied them there. After that, he held the letter at arm’s length and read it. He looked back at Denton, perhaps to determine if he could really be the Sir Galahad described by Hench-Rose, then returned to the letter and apparently read it again. At last, he came back to them and stood in the same spot in front of his fireplace, defender of the hearth. ‘What is all this about?’ he said a little hoarsely.

  Janet Striker sat, the chair dark and overwrought, both hideous and uncomfortable-looking; she took up only the forward two or three inches of it. ‘A young woman using the name Stella Minter has met her death. We are looking for her parents.’

  His left hand went unconsciously to his chest; the idea of his daughter’s death caused a spasm of pain on his face. ‘But she is alive and well!’ he gasped. ‘In this house. At this moment!’

  ‘May we see her?’

  Minter’s lips moved; he hesitated, decided, went to the door and called into the darkness of the hall, ‘Mother! Please to bring our Stella to the front parlour. At once — please.’ He turned back to them. ‘You will see-’ He touched his forehead. ‘You gave me a turn. To suggest that our Stella-’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Minter. I didn’t mean to suggest that your daughter was the victim. Only that we are looking for her parents.’

  He went back to his place by the hearth and stared at the floor. ‘That was cruel,’ he murmured.

  A middle-aged woman paused in the doorway, then came into the room; behind her, holding the woman’s hand, a young but very large girl followed, clearly the girl in the photograph. Both were taller than Minter, neither ‘good-looking’ by most standards, the girl’s face broad and long, her colour good, her hair lank. Both, Denton thought, were overdressed: did they put on their best to welcome Papa home to tea? Or were the clothes a declaration of status, like the little motor car?

  ‘My wife, Mrs Minter,’ Minter said, drawing her still farther in, ‘and our beloved daughter, Stella.’

  The family stood together. They looked expectant. Minter stared at Janet Striker as if for help. Yet she looked at Denton, who saw it was his turn. ‘I’m happy to see,’ he said, ‘that Miss Minter isn’t the young lady we’re looking for.’

  ‘Looking for!’ the woman cried. ‘Why should you be looking for her?’

  Minter turned his head to say something to her, but Denton said loudly, ‘It’s a case of mistaken identity, ma’am. Another young woman of the same name.’ He didn’t say how disappointed he was.

  ‘I should think so!’ she said. ‘Very mistaken, indeed, I should think! You really ought to determine your facts in a better fashion, I think!’

  ‘Now, Mother-’ Minter managed to say.

  ‘Anyone who knows her knows that there can’t be any confusion about who she is! I can’t hardly understand how her identity could be confused! I think you must be very ignorant people!’

  ‘Oh, Mama-!’ the girl moaned.

  ‘Hush, dear.’

  ‘My wife is overwrought,’ Minter said. ‘Stella is the apple of our eye.’

  ‘Apple, indeed!’ Mrs Minter shouted. ‘A girl of such accomplishments-! ’

  ‘That’s enough, Mother!’ Minter said. He had reverted to the clergyman’s voice; the effect was instantaneous, Mrs Minter’s mouth remaining open but no sound coming out. The girl blushed and looked at Janet Striker in appeal, perhaps apology; she looked at Denton and gave him a tentative, awkward smile. She was sixteen, the birth record had told him that; she had the adolescent’s embarrassment at her parents, however they loved her and she them. Her smile to Denton seemed to ask for an understanding of that, and on an impulse, he said to her, ‘Is that your picture on the mantel, Miss Minter?’

  Her mother started to answer for her, but Minter said, ‘Now!’ in a warning voice; the girl, after a second or two, blushing some more, said, ‘I was just finished at the common school. I was only fourteen then.’

  ‘And look,’ Minter said, ‘at all she’s accomplished since! She’s won a scholarship to the Roedean School!’

  ‘And will go on to university — her teachers say so!’ the mother burst out.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ Denton said. ‘Wonderful. You went to the local school, then? And stayed after age eleven, and went on as long as you could.’

  ‘I love studying.’

  ‘What’s your favourite?’

  ‘Science. I’m going to be a scientist.’

  ‘Or a teacher,’ her mother said; unresolved conflict hovered over the words.

  ‘Yours is an unusual name,’ Denton said. The girl nodded, blushed, as if to suggest that the name was not her doing. ‘I wonder,’ Denton started, looking aside at Janet Striker, the idea forming in his head as he asked the question, ‘if any other girls have ever used your name. Pretended to be you.’

  ‘What, as a kind of cheat? To get money or something?’

  ‘No, dear,’ Mrs Striker said, picking up Denton’s notion, ‘no, more from, perhaps, admiration. Or envy. “The sincerest form of flattery,” do you know that saying?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s imitation.’

  ‘Well, yes, dear, that’s I think what Mr Denton means. Imitating you. Has there ever been anybody like that?’

  Mrs Minter laughed, a dismissive, contemptuous laugh. ‘They all envy her.’

  ‘Oh, Mama-’

  ‘Well, some are quite nasty, you’ve said so yourself! The green-eyed monster, that’s what afflicts people.’

  Denton crossed his arms over his chest, his words trying to pull the talk back to his question. ‘But has there ever
been anybody — some special friend, some girl who admired you, maybe talked like you, even said she wanted to be like you-?’

  Stella Minter looked at her mother, made nervous movements with her shoulders, said, ‘Alice, I suppose.’

  Her mother sniffed.

  ‘Well, she did admire me, Mama! She said so!’ She looked at Denton. ‘She was ever so unhappy, she said, and she wanted to make something of herself, to become somebody. She hadn’t my advantages, you see. We were such good friends, and she came here and she asked questions about everything, about-’

  ‘When they were very little girls; I think that when they are still in the age of innocence, little girls can be accepted where, later, they cannot,’ her mother said.

  ‘She wanted to know what a maid did, and what all the books I owned were, and how to play the piano, and — just everything! She was so sweet and she was my best friend, but-’ She glanced at her mother. ‘As Mama says, it was all right when we were little girls. She used to come here every day. I couldn’t go to her house, you see-’

  ‘A public house,’ Mrs Minter said. ‘We didn’t know, in the beginning. Then — it would have been most improper.’

  ‘Alice,’ Janet Striker said. ‘Alice what?’

  ‘Satterlee,’ Mrs Minter said. ‘The Satterlees, we found out too late, were low and common.’

  ‘Oh, Mama-’

  ‘You don’t understand these things yet, Stella. I couldn’t know her mother — to think of such a thing makes me ill; was it right that her child should know you? We decided not, finally. The girl was appealing when she was little, but at twelve, you can understand our position. It wasn’t proper.’

  Minter smiled. ‘But it was a spectacle to see them together! Little Alice was another Stella! She did talk like our Stella; you could hear her using the big words, hear her trying to talk proper. She’d borrow books and try to read them, I suppose.’

  ‘Steal them, you mean.’

  ‘She didn’t!’

  ‘One of your books simply disappeared!’

  ‘She wanted to learn things, Mama.’

  ‘Giving herself airs,’ the mother said.

  ‘Mama, she was trying to better herself. She was trying to be proper.’

  Janet Striker said, ‘Did she ever play at being you?’

  The girl blushed again. ‘I suppose. Maybe.’ She looked at her mother. ‘We had a game. When we played me giving a tea party with my tea set. I’d be somebody — oh, it’s awfully silly, but we were children — I’d be one of the royal princesses or a maid of honour, and she’d be me. It was just a game.’

  ‘And she called herself Stella?’ Mrs Striker said.

  ‘That was the game. She was Stella.’

  ‘But you said,’ Minter interrupted, ‘that a girl using the name had passed away.’ Mrs Minter said ‘Oh’ in a tiny voice and turned her daughter aside as if to protect her, but the girl shrugged her off. ‘Do I hear now that you think this other girl might have known our Stella?’

  Denton and Janet Striker exchanged a look; she said, ‘It seems possible.’

  ‘You mean Alice Satterlee?’ Stella said. ‘She’s — passed away?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Denton said. ‘We’re trying to find out.’

  Tears stood in the girl’s eyes, and Denton realized what a nice girl she probably was — truly touched, probably lonely, sentimental, treasuring the memory of somebody who had worshipped her. Her mother saw the tears, however, as danger and, after a glare at Denton, pushed the girl from the room.

  ‘Mrs Minter is very protective of our Stella,’ Minter said. ‘She doesn’t allow emotional scenes.’

  ‘How well did you know the Satterlees?’ Denton said.

  ‘As Mrs Minter said, they weren’t our sort of people. We never crossed paths, as the saying is.’

  ‘They lived in a pub?’

  ‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I believe they lived next to the public house.’

  ‘Satterlee was a publican?’

  ‘Satterlee was something for the building estate — over there on the other side of Crimea Way. He did something while the site was prepared, before the houses were put up — I remember walking Stella over there once and seeing the great expanse of it, levelled and nothing on it but the pub. Stella makes it sound as if they were friends for years, but it can’t have been awfully long; I think at most a year. Then they were gone.’

  ‘What’s the name of the pub?’

  ‘Oh-! I’ve never been in it.’ He frowned to indicate disapproval of the public house. ‘I think something about a rose. I really wouldn’t know.’

  A silence fell; Denton knew it was over. Janet Striker stood, and then they were out in the front garden again, and the cab was waiting at the kerb.

  ‘You know a pub beyond Crimea Way called the rose, or some such?’ Denton said to the driver.

  ‘Just been there, many thanks.’

  ‘Take us there.’ He winked. ‘You can have another and then take us to the station.’

  In the cab he leaned back against the stiff cushions, aware of how tired he was and how disappointed. That morning, he had despaired; now, they had come close, he thought, perhaps very close — yet not close enough.

  ‘I liked that girl,’ he said.

  ‘She has a hard row to hoe. As your grandmother might say.’

  The Rose and Rooster was less than half a dozen years old but looked as if it came from the seventies or eighties, a public house purpose-built to the designs of a man who specialized in pubs for a large syndicate. Its dark wood, stained glass and gleaming brass were meant to evoke those earlier houses in which such details had been innovative, were now ‘pub style’, to be expected by the patrons. The tiled front, the name in gold letters, were standins for a national nostalgia — the roast beef of old England.

  Denton steered Janet Striker around to the saloon bar, now comfortably full, the usual fug of pipe smoke hanging at chest level, women mostly sitting quietly while men in bowlers laughed or wrangled.

  ‘What’ll it be, then, love?’ the barmaid said to him as soon as they sat down at a small table. She was thirtyish, cheerful, professionally flirtatious.

  Janet Striker said, ‘A half of your best bitter.’

  ‘Two,’ Denton said, ‘and I’ll have a word with the publican, if I can.’

  ‘He’s that busy, I wouldn’t put money on it, dearie. What’s it about, then?’

  ‘Tell him it’s personal-historical.’

  She laughed, showing big, cream-coloured teeth. ‘You’re not a debt collector, I hope.’ When she was gone, Denton said, ‘Well?’

  Janet Striker shook her head. After several seconds, she said, ‘I was thinking of that poor girl — Satterlee. Wanting so much to get out of what she was and not knowing how to do it.’

  ‘And ending up dead. If it was her.’

  ‘The mother was a piece of work.’ She meant the real Stella Minter’s mother, he knew.

  He said, ‘Defending her chick.’

  Janet Striker snorted. ‘Defending the proper and the prudish, you mean. Ambitious for the girl, probably driving her husband as hard as she drives her daughter, wanting she doesn’t quite know what — more of something: more propriety, more money, more things, more signs around her of how proper and accomplished she is — through her husband and her daughter. You can build empires with women like that pushing people.’

  ‘You think the motor car is his idea or hers?’

  ‘His, of course. He handles the money and makes the decisions; she pushes and mostly sets the terms. I’m sure she wants a better house — wouldn’t surprise me if she has one picked out for the moment when Stella is launched from university and a success. Suburban, detached, stylish. What a weight that child has to carry!’

  ‘But carries it pretty well,’ he murmured as the barmaid came back, placed the two wet glasses neatly in front of them and said, ‘Landlord’s drawing pints for a party of nine and then he’ll pop in, but he says to te
ll you — his words, not mine, don’t take it out on me, love — “If it isn’t important, I’ll be back drawing pints faster’n Jack Sprat.”’ She bent down so that her hair brushed Denton’s face. ‘His bark’s worse’n his bite.’ She giggled again, straightened, winked at Janet Striker and whirled away.

  They toyed with the glasses, sipped — neither wanted the ale — tried to make the time pass. Janet Striker said, ‘Don’t jump at its being the Satterlees.’

  ‘I know, I know. We have to be dead certain. I want to be certain, that’s the trouble — it’s tempting to jump ahead.’

  ‘Don’t jump.’

  He studied her face, saw its intelligence, its hardness, wondered if he could ever get past that. She looked at him, looked away, then back; their eyes joined and held. It was disturbing: long, shared looks were supposed to be examples of intimacy, thus with her were embarrassing. He knew he was getting red, face warm; she looked cool and detached. He wanted to say something, to do something like touch her hand, but he didn’t dare.

  ‘Now then,’ a big voice bellowed next to him, ‘who wants to see me?’ He was a wide, solid man, shorter than Denton, confident and even brassy. Ex-military, Denton thought; he put on more assurance than he felt and said, ‘My name’s Denton.’ Taking the chance, he added, ‘Exsergeant, infantry. Sit down, will you?’

  He was holding out his hand; the other man took it, gripped it hard. ‘Penrose, gunner. Like calls to like, eh?’ He let go. ‘Can’t sit down, no time.’ Then, to Mrs Striker, ‘Evening to you, ma’am.’

  ‘Janet Striker,’ she said, holding her own hand out. He touched it but turned back to Denton; men were for business, he seemed to say. ‘What’s up, then?’

  ‘We’re trying to locate a family named Satterlee.’

  Penrose tipped his head back as if to have a better look at Denton. ‘This the personal or the historical?’

  ‘Little of both, I expect. We were told they used to live here.’

  ‘In aid of what?’

  ‘An enquiry.’

  ‘You got do better than that, ex-sergeant. American, are you? What army?’

  ‘Union. Our Civil War.’

  ‘Oh, that one. Saw a lot of it, did you? Yes, I think you did. I was lucky — thirteen years in South Africa, I never got so much as a stone thrown at me. All right, ex-sergeant, tell it to me straight what you want — I’ve a lot of thirsty people waiting.’