The Frightened Man tds-1

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘You can’t go anywhere.’

  Sir Francis said something about patience. Denton had a cup of tea, fidgeted, waited. After a few more minutes, a constable put his head in and said to Munro, ‘You’re wanted, please.’ Munro gave Denton a half-comical look and went out. Sir Francis said, ‘The plot thickens.’

  However, it was another half an hour before things were thick enough to produce a result. The door opened and a constable held it for Munro and the East Ham detective who had questioned Denton, and then for a burly man, whom Sir Francis seemed to know. The burly man was introduced as the deputy superintendent of CID, and he said, ‘No touching.’ He indicated a wooden box, which the East Ham man had put down on the table. ‘We want an untainted evidence trail. Everyone clear on that?’

  Sir Francis said that he must take them for fools; both he and the deputy superintendent chuckled. The deputy super said, ‘Munro, this is your party, I think. Your stroke of genius, isn’t it?’

  ‘I happened to get there first.’ Munro looked at the others. ‘This is stuff from the remains of a fire out behind Satterlee’s. Ashes were still warm.’ He took the top off the box, which was far too big for the things inside. Using a pencil as a pointer, Munro indicated one of them — a blackened, at first shapeless mass the size of a doll’s head. ‘Know what that is?’ he said to Denton.

  Denton bent down, studied it, saw bulges that seemed to suggest pattern but couldn’t make it out. He looked up at Munro.

  ‘Decorative knot from the end of a rope. A red rope.’ He grinned at Denton. ‘You were right; we hadn’t done our best when we went into Mulcahy’s. You seemed so sure of torture when I talked to you that night, I thought, “Maybe he’s got something; maybe I missed it and he got it.” So I went back next day. It took me two hours to catch on to the missing red rope, but once I got that, I looked at the chair. I did see the fibres without a hint, thanks very much. Now we’ll see if our experts can match them to what’s left in that burned mess.’

  ‘He told me about somebody’s maybe torturing Mulcahy yesterday,’ the deputy superintendent said. ‘Strictly sub rosa, as they say. A good copper isn’t supposed to go outside the lines of command, but a really good copper does, now and then.’ He winked at Sir Francis Brudenell. ‘If we can match the fibres, we can put Satterlee at Mulcahy’s, and the thing’s as good as done.’

  Munro pointed his pencil at several bent wires, what appeared to be a blackened metal plate. ‘Remains of a photographic camera. The lens is cracked but it’s still there, and we think there’re letters around the rim. If we can identify it as definitely one of Mulcahy’s, with his “Inventorium” on it — I’ve got a man up there now, looking at his other cameras — then we’ll go to court with your theory, Denton, that Mulcahy left a camera behind in that closet where he had the peephole, and Satterlee found it.’

  He pointed at a blackened key. ‘Might be the key to Mulcahy’s closet. Mr Denton believed that Mulcahy carried it off with him that night — maybe Satterlee found it in Mulcahy’s clothes. Would have taken it to keep anybody from connecting him with the peephole and the girl.’

  ‘Another nail in the coffin,’ the solicitor said.

  Munro indicated a shallow brick of burned paper and scorched cardboard. ‘What’s left of a book. Denton told Sergeant Cobb here — ’ he indicated the East Ham detective — ‘that the real Stella Minter may have had a book that the Satterlee girl took — borrowed or stole, doesn’t matter. This is certainly a kid’s book — the other side has some titles you can read, all for kids — and we’re hoping the Minters can identify this one. If we’re fantastically lucky, there’ll be a legible name written in it. We haven’t opened it — that’s for the experts.’

  Denton said, ‘Satterlee didn’t do a very good job of burning.’

  The deputy super shook himself, said, ‘Books are hard to burn, actually. He managed to destroy the camera and most of the rope well enough. But this type of man may like souvenirs. May have been reluctant to get rid of them.’ He looked at Sir Francis. ‘Seen it twice before.’

  ‘Plus he’s reckless,’ Denton said. ‘Very reckless.’

  Sir Francis put his long nose down towards the box as if to smell it. After some seconds, he said, ‘So you believe that you have evidence that links the man Satterlee to the man Mulcahy and to the murdered girl, is that right?’

  ‘We think so, yes.’

  Sir Francis put a hand through the deputy superintendent’s arm. ‘May we talk?’ he said, and they went out. A moment later, the East Ham man had closed the box and taken it to the door, cradled in his arms like a baby. Munro said, ‘Mind that doesn’t leave your sight! We’ll want an affidavit-!’

  The detective turned in the doorway, the door hooked into his right foot so he could pull it closed. He gave Munro a look that meant What do you take me for? With the slow delivery that mocks patience and suggests the speaker is talking to a fool, he said, ‘It’s going back with you and the super in the CID van.’

  ‘We’ll still want your affidavit!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah-’ He went out and pulled the door to with his toe.

  Munro smiled at Denton. ‘Hurry up and wait some more, eh?’

  ‘I want to see Mrs Striker.’

  ‘She, uh-Is she a, umm, your-?’

  Denton was grim. ‘She risked her life so that bastard wouldn’t get away.’

  Munro nodded his head. ‘Right. Right.’

  Five minutes later, Sir Francis came back in. He put his hand on Denton’s shoulder. ‘No charges will be laid. You’re free to go on my recognizance until they’re certain of the evidence.’ He gave Munro a small smile, turned back to Denton. ‘I have my motor car; may I give you a ride to town?’

  ‘I’m going to Bart’s.’

  ‘I can drop you, then.’ He nodded at Munro. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again, Sergeant.’ He turned back to Denton. ‘I’ll just have a word with my chauffeur.’

  When he was gone, Denton said, ‘“Seeing you again”?’

  Munro looked sheepish. ‘They want to talk about me going back to CID.’ He leaned back against the table. ‘Metropolitan Police were about to do something that would have been wrong and stupid — close the Mulcahy case. They were doing it because it was easy and because, let’s face it, people had persuaded themselves they were right. Powers that be were, so they say, beside themselves when this broke this morning. Even though I was in too little and too late, they think I fell down the privy seat and came up with a diamond, so maybe I can go back to CID despite the leg.’ He grinned. ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He put out his hand. ‘All’s well that ends well.’

  ‘I do have a question, though.’

  Denton waited.

  ‘What would you have done if your shot had hit the woman instead of Satterlee?’

  He had Denton’s hand; Denton returned his pressure, withdrew his hand. His voice was gruff. ‘I’d have got him with the second shot.’

  Denton had to wait in the upstairs corridor until the solicitor’s motor car came. He was told to stay away from the windows ‘because of the vultures from the press’. He peered out with his face against a window frame and was astonished to see more than twenty men clustered where he supposed the station’s entrance was. He saw mostly the tops of bowler hats, the occasional soft hat on somebody more daring; voices reached him, words unclear but the tone sometimes sharp, sometimes mocking.

  ‘They’re all there for you,’ a voice said behind him.

  ‘Harris!’ It was as if the man had materialized out of the stale air in the corridor. ‘What the hell?’

  Frank Harris, less red-eyed than usual, smiling his shark’s smile, rubbed a thumb and three fingertips together. ‘Lucre changed hands, copper showed me up the back stairs. Corruption in the bastion of law.’ He grinned. ‘Always think the worst of your fellow man — you’ll get farther.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Little bird told me a noto
rious murderer had been shot by a well-known author. I bustled. Rather early in the day for me to bustle — I do my best work in the dark — but I made an exception, and here I am with an offer that’s going to make your heart twitter with delight! You may want to kiss me, in fact.’

  ‘What’ve you done?’

  Harris craned to peek out the window. ‘Not a word to that crowd of poltroons. We’re dedicated to one rag and one rag only, the News of the World, because they’re paying us a hundred pounds for your story!’ He grinned again, preened. ‘How I Tracked and Shot the East Ham Monster with my Colt.45! ’ He waited. Clearly, he expected more than Denton was giving. ‘Well? Well?’

  ‘It wasn’t a.45; it was a.36. And what’s this “we”?’

  ‘Ah, well, y’see, I thought that as I negotiated, in fact invented and negotiated this arrangement, fifteen per cent seemed justified. For me. Of a hundred pounds, Denton! That’s eighty-five for you, man — any money troubles you had are over! Eh? Eh?’

  Denton stared at him. Anger had hit him first, now was giving way to some sort of humour, perhaps hysterical, a reaction to the shooting. He found that he was laughing. The more he laughed, the more perplexed Harris looked, making Denton laugh that much more. Denton leaned against the wall, feeling himself light-headed and knowing it was nervous reaction; soon he would feel emptied, then despairing. Pulling a trigger is easy; the labour comes after. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Harris.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘Can’t do it, Harris. No deal.’

  ‘I can’t get you more than a hundred. I tried — I said, “A hundred guineas!” but they wouldn’t budge. It’s no good-’

  ‘No deal. I won’t do it. No. N-O.’

  Harris’s voice was hoarse. ‘Why in the name of God not?’

  Denton thought how best to explain it, saw that there was no way to explain it that would pierce Harris’s cynicism. He said, ‘I can’t make money from killing somebody.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘I just can’t.’ Denton shrugged. ‘I just can’t.’

  Outraged, Harris put his swollen eyes close to Denton’s face and shouted, ‘Don’t you try to give me any crap about honour!’

  Below, an elegant motor car was slowly herding the newsmen out of the way as it pulled up close to the station entrance. He smiled at Harris. ‘I wouldn’t have the guts to try.’ He raised a hand.

  Janet Striker had been put in the women’s ward. Denton had arrived out of visiting hours and had been made to wait for more than an hour; leaning back against a wall in a bent-wood chair, he had felt himself slide into that state that is like exhaustion but that doesn’t come from labour. It is the emotional collapse after a single instant of action, the body raised to a pitch, then everything released, the result an inanition that could last, he knew, for days. He had tried to explain a few times why anybody who could kill without affect was a monster, but he supposed you had to live it to understand it. In the dime novels, on the stage of people like Cody, killing was easy and there were no awkward emotions afterwards. Life was a bit different.

  ‘You may come along now,’ a sister said. She was young, sweet-faced, but severe in her manner. ‘We’re making an exception for you.’ He supposed this to mean that it still wasn’t visiting hour.

  She led him along a tiled corridor and through a pair of double doors, seemingly into a different building — older, darker, a lingering smell of ether and carbolic. Ahead, a door was open and a trim, small man with a moustache was standing outside it. No introduction was made; he simply grasped Denton’s arm and turned him away from the open doorway, through which Denton had seen a small room, not much more than a closet, with a railed bed and a lot of white sheet.

  ‘We’ve brought her out here rather than have you on the ward. All-female, and so on.’ He was a lot younger than Denton but clearly in charge, certainly patronizing. ‘The police wish us to accede to your wishes as much as possible. You’re the husband?’

  Denton had to swim up from his exhaustion to say, ‘A friend. I was there when she was hurt.’

  ‘It was my understanding you were the husband. This is irregular. Well, as you’re here-I’ll have to ask sister to stay in the room with you.’

  A hard remark occurred to Denton, but he suppressed it.

  ‘She will have a scar.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Her left hand is another matter. There is damage to nerves and tendons; I don’t know how much use of it she’ll have. We had to transfuse her twice — great loss of blood.’

  ‘You were there for the, whatever it is. Operation?’

  ‘I performed the surgery. I am a specialist.’

  Denton couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Something seemed required — hosannas, perhaps. He said, ‘Can I see her now?’

  The surgeon arched his eyebrows once and said a little stiffly that of course, if that’s what he wished. He steered Denton back into the tiny room.

  The room was almost too small for the two men and the metal bed. The insistence on propriety — he couldn’t go on the ward out of hours — seemed stupid to him, wasteful. She was walled off from him by metal bars that were painted pale yellow and chipped along the upper edges, as were the head and foot of the bed. Her right hand, even against the white sheet, was pale. The left side of her face was covered with white gauze, secured under her chin with plaster; her left hand was entirely swathed. Behind him, the nursing sister muttered, ‘They gave her morphine. She’ll be going to sleep any time.’

  She looked asleep now. Denton said, ‘Can I talk to her?’

  ‘You can try.’

  He leaned over the bed. Before he could speak, her eyes opened. They were unfocused, in fact not looking at him but at the ceiling. They swung towards him and she frowned.

  ‘I came as soon as they’d let me,’ he said.

  She seemed to concentrate, to recognize him. ‘Did you kill him?’ she said in a hoarse voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well-’

  ‘It weighs on you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She drifted away, came back. ‘That’s good, too.’ Her eyes closed, and he thought she had fallen asleep, but after several seconds she stirred and even moved her right arm, as if to turn towards him. ‘They say I shall have a scar,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘It does to me. Astonishingly. “Vanity, vanity…”’ Her eyes closed and her voice sank away.

  He glanced at the sister, who looked annoyed. Mrs Striker’s breathing became slow and regular, then caught, and her eyes opened. ‘You’re still here.’

  ‘It hasn’t been long.’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘No, you saved your life. You were — magnificent.’

  She didn’t say anything for several seconds, her eyes narrowed as if she was perhaps seeing it all again, evaluating it. ‘Better a scar and no fingers than having my throat slashed.’

  Denton laughed. He knew he shouldn’t have, because he heard the sister’s sharp intake of breath, but he laughed for the relief and the release of it. ‘You’re a tough bird,’ he said.

  She smiled, winced as the smile pulled on her slit cheek and jaw. ‘A tough — sparrow-’ she said, and again her eyes closed and her breathing fell.

  Denton waited. This time, he didn’t think she would come out of it. The sister said, ‘She’s fallen asleep, sir. She’ll sleep for twelve hours now. The morphine.’

  ‘Well-’ he began. Then Janet Striker’s eyes opened and searched for him; when they found him, she smiled again and winced again. ‘Come back,’ she murmured, and fell asleep for the night.

  Denton rattled home in a cab for which he had barely enough money. He could, he thought, sleep for days. At the same time, a restlessness filled his brain with disconnected thoughts, now of money, now of the man he’d shot, now of Janet Striker. He should get to work. He needed money. He was a fool to have turned down
Harris’s offer. Was there possibility in Janet Striker’s Come back? Perhaps he should sell his house. Perhaps he should go back to America. Could he have taken Satterlee alive — or had he wanted an excuse to kill him? And whom was he killing — was Satterlee only a standin for his own demons? He made a sound like a groan wound around a sigh. He needed something — wanted something-

  His own house looked strange to him. The evening was dark now and cold; the morning’s frost had never melted where the shadows lay. A wind had risen, nosing around chimneys and skittering leaves and pieces of paper. He shivered.

  He went up the stairs and let himself in and was astonished to see Diapason Lang sitting in his own green armchair. Denton stared at him stupidly.

  Lang bounced out of the chair and rushed towards him. ‘Oh, my dear boy! Oh, you’re all right — are you all right? Oh, sit down, do sit down — brandy? Have brandy. Where’s that man of yours? Hoy! Was it horrible? Yes, of course it was. How horrible for you! Horrible, horrible!’ Denton was trying to get out of his overcoat; Lang was dancing around him, getting in his way; surprisingly, the man had tears in his eyes. ‘Brandy — servants quite useless when you want them-’ Lang had rushed to the table behind the armchair; something fell over with a crash. ‘There!’ Lang poured from the decanter, his hands shaking so that the neck rattled against the glass. When he handed it to Denton, the brandy slopped over their hands. ‘Oh, look what I’ve done! Oh, I’m such a useless old fool. Did the lawyer come? Are you a free man?’

  ‘Free, yes — he came-’ It seemed long ago.

  ‘I went right to Gwen as soon as I had your message. Gwen was a brick! “The best, we must have the best!” he said. I had no idea of such things, so I asked Frewn, you remember Frewn, crime is his hobby — he said Brudenell. Was Brudenell good? Frewn said that up to the moment you go into court, Brudenell’s the best man in England. Was he good? Did we do well by you?’ He had fetched a chair from farther up the room and carried it behind Denton and was pushing it against Denton’s knees, almost forcing him to sit. ‘Is that comfortable? Are you sure?’