‘Please ask your questions, gentlemen,’ the more senior of the warders said. ‘We have to remain present. We think he hears what’s said to him, but — he don’t respond.’
Jarrold’s face, after that knowing smile, had fallen back into its scowl, and now he looked at his hands, limp in his lap.
Denton remained standing. He took the drawing of Mary Thomason from an inner pocket and unfolded it, looking at it to make sure it was the right side up, and then he leaned quickly forward and held it against Jarrold’s side of the partition. One of the warders started forward, saying, ‘Sir-’ and Denton said, ‘Albert!’
Jarrold’s head lifted; his eyes found the paper. His mouth opened. He began to scream.
‘I never told! Astoreth — Astoreth — I never told! I never did — Astore-e-e-th-!’ His body spasmed and his back arched as he went into a seizure.
Denton was silent all the way back in the train. He’d told Munro he wanted to think and he wanted to talk to Janet Striker; Munro was welcome to come home with him, but he’d have to wait until then.
‘You knew he was going to do that, didn’t you! Dammit, Denton, that was a cheap courtroom trick. And what did you get out of it? All that way so you could-’
Denton held up a hand and said nothing. At Lamb’s Conduit Street, they climbed his stairs and sat silently while Atkins went for Mrs Striker. As soon as she was in the room, Denton told her what had happened.
‘Mary Thomason is Astoreth? But that’s impossible. Jarrold painted “Astoreth” on my wall months ago, when there was no way that-’ She looked at Munro. ‘Has he explained this to you?’
‘He hasn’t explained to me why I spent a day going to Devon and getting nothing out of it. Don’t be cute, Denton — spill it and let me get back to New Scotland Yard.’
‘I don’t have much to spill yet. Yes, Mary Thomason is Astoreth. That’s what I had to know before I could know anything else.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it means she’s alive and she isn’t missing, and because it means that she’s the one who told Jarrold to shoot me.’
Munro was sitting with his head tilted slightly back, his eyes half-closed, looking at Denton. ‘You’re spinning a tale.’
‘Why would Jarrold shoot me? Because his obsession with me had got out of hand? Yes, of course — that was something that was easy for her to play on. But why the very morning that Heseltine and I came back from France? Coincidence? I’d have said yes, if it hadn’t been for Heseltine’s death.’
‘It was suicide.’
‘No, it was murder. I respect you, Munro, and I like you, and you’re a good cop because you’re cautious. But now it’s time to jump. One, we need to show the drawings to the old man who’s supposed to be the gateman at Albany Court, and we need to show them to every man and boy who lives in the Albany. Then, when they identify at least one of them, you need to get Heseltine exhumed.’
‘Like hell — excuse me, Mrs Striker.’
‘I think he’ll show signs of some means of putting him out, probably a knock on the head. Munro, you don’t get a man to lie down in a bathtub so you can cut his wrists without a struggle!’ Munro hadn’t moved. If anything, his eyes had narrowed even more. ‘The coroner didn’t present evidence of a blow to the head, did he?’
‘Because there wasn’t any.’
‘Because he didn’t look for any. Exhumation, Munro.’ When the detective was still unconvinced, Denton leaned towards him and said, ‘If people at the Albany recognize the drawings, what other next move do you have?’
Janet Striker was working a cigarette out of a shagreen case. ‘Denton, it’s fanciful that Mary Thomason and Jarrold knew each other. You knew of Mary Thomason only because that letter reached you by way of Heseltine — the sheerest chance. You said that she wrote the letter to frighten Wenzli or Geddys — maybe both. It wasn’t supposed to reach you, but Heseltine found it and sent it on. Nothing to do with Jarrold! Jarrold was a poor sick man who got obsessed with you because of your books. There’s no connection with Mary Thomason!’
‘Not then, no.’
‘When?’
He moved uncomfortably, trying to get the bad leg into another position. ‘It’s why I made all those lists. The question is, when did Mary — or her brother — see Struther Jarrold as opportunity? Because they’re opportunists, rather impressively so. But there’s another question that maybe comes first: when did they learn that I was asking about them?’ He glanced at Munro, then back at her. She was smoking now. He put out a hand for one of her cigarettes. ‘That’s when it started — when they learned I was asking questions: that’s when they took notice of me. So who told them? There are several candidates — people we asked about Mary Thomason, I mean. The office people at the Slade, but I think that’s unlikely. Mrs Durnquess. Geddys, the picture dealer. Much later, the other artist, Wenzli; Mrs Evans, Himple’s housekeeper; and his valet, Brown. I think they can be discounted because it was too late — the opportunity to exploit Jarrold must have come earlier to have worked. Mary Thomason must have needed time to work on Jarrold.’
Munro shook his head. ‘Brown’s clean, anyway. I liked the idea of Brown — disgruntled valet, left behind in England, nurses a grudge against Himple and Crum — but it won’t wash. He’s stupid, but he isn’t criminal. Once a week, he goes to the studio to “do the pictures”, which I think is what housemaids call dusting. He sent on the bills and letters to the poste restante boxes; they were still there when the French police went looking. He’s taken a job evenings in a pub — never misses a day. We all wanted Brown to have done the dirty, but he didn’t. Too many people vouch for him.’
‘Well,’ Janet Striker said, ‘somebody told them about Denton.’
Denton made a negative grunting sound. ‘That sounds pretty cold-blooded. Passed a message, more likely — something innocent like “Send me a picture postcard of the beach if anybody asks about me.” This was way back last September, remember. Himple was already dead — had been dead since at least the first week of September. Arthur Crum was travelling, presumably as Himple, forging demands on the letter of credit, forging reports about where they were going next, and then disappearing. He — they — had got off scot-free. Until the message comes that I’m asking questions.’ Abruptly, Denton laughed. ‘But what must they have thought when they first learned I was asking questions? Me! When they were the ones who had used me as the bugbear to scare Wenzli! I wonder if they ever learned somehow that it was their own letter that got me going. My God — do you suppose they saw the horror of it?’
Janet stirred. ‘At any rate, you were asking questions, and somehow they found out — horror or no horror.’
‘Then — I can show you the sequence in my charts — Jarrold savages your rooms and paints “Astoreth” on the wall. At that time, Astoreth exists only in his mind. Mary Thomason hasn’t yet thought of becoming his Astoreth. His attack on your rooms makes the newspapers with lip-licking mention of Jarrold’s possible involvement in the incident behind my house. My name is mentioned, Jarrold’s is trumpeted, and at least the cheap papers do follow-ups that manage to hint at his obsession with me. And they all mention Astoreth and imply that Jarrold is dotty. So Mary Thomason or Arthur Crum needed only to read the papers to see the possibilities of Struther Jarrold. Not as a certainty, but as a possibility. These people are seducers, both of them — Mary Thomason with Geddys and with the other painter, Wenzli; Crum with Himple. They’re like confidence men, able to play on their victims’ wants and needs, able to manoeuvre their victims into wanting to do things for them. Mary got Wenzli to almost give her the painting, the “little Wesselons”; Crum got Himple to make him his valet, to take him to France — to be his lover, I suppose. So I think they decided to have a look at Struther Jarrold and the situation at his mother’s country house, and I think that what they found was that the security was laughable and a woman as talented as Mary Thomason could con that poor, sick brain into believing she was his dem
on and wanting to do anything she told him to do. So that if I got closer, they had a weapon.’
Munro had put an elbow on his chair arm, and his head on that hand. He looked bored and sleepy, but Denton knew he was as alert as a cat. ‘And she didn’t tell him to do anything until you went to France?’
‘Why would she have? I hadn’t learned anything new in weeks. Not anything serious, anyway. I was writing a book; I had other things on my mind.’ He glanced at Janet, got a cool look from her through the cigarette smoke. ‘What’s more important, they must have been as much in the dark about me as I was about them. That’s why Guillam and the private detectives were a godsend to them, because that way they at least knew when I was getting warmer, as we used to say in the kids’ game. But I think that except for the detectives’ reports they couldn’t keep track of what I was doing. It’s also why I think they never went after Janet — they lost her after she moved out of her rooms in Bethnal Green. It must have made them nervous, maybe frantic, and they did a frantic thing when they got hard information about my going with Heseltine to France — they tried to kill me, and they did kill him. It was the kind of mistake you make when you’re confused and panicked. Even though, as it turned out, finding Himple’s body didn’t help us find them.’
‘Thanks to the incompetence of the CID,’ Munro growled.
‘You know I don’t believe that.’
Munro took his head off his hand and studied his fingers. ‘We tried to pick up that trunk at Biggleswade. It had been collected.’
Denton was surprised. ‘When?’
Munro glanced at a notebook. ‘Ninth of October.’
Janet said, ‘Not too long after I put it back.’
‘As apparently Mary Thomason’s still with us,’ Munro said, ‘why didn’t she pick up her trunk before?’
‘You’re sure it was she who picked it up?’
‘Not sure of anything. Clerk said a young woman; he thought the drawing “might have been her” but wasn’t sure.’ He turned to Denton. ‘But I want to hear what you think — why didn’t she pick up the trunk as soon as she could after it was sent?’
‘Maybe that’s exactly what she did. It depends, doesn’t it, on where she was and what she was doing between writing me the note in early August and picking up the trunk in October. And once she knew that Himple was dead, she had to disappear, because she was too connected to Himple — her face was in the Lazarus; her brother was the man who went to Normandy with Himple. She couldn’t go back to work for Geddys, couldn’t go back to the Slade, couldn’t go back to modelling and flirting with Wenzli. I suppose she was quite right in thinking that the trunk wasn’t going anywhere. And there was nothing in it worth a damn, anyway.’
‘Except the drawing,’ Janet Striker said. She was involved in handing a cigarette to Munro, who had been seduced by their smoke. ‘If she made the little drawings in the corners — but then she didn’t, did she! The bit from the Lazarus and the sketch of the baths were about Arthur Crum, not her.’ She smiled and took out another cigarette for herself. ‘Which might suggest to some that they were the same person.’
The remark hung in the room like the sonority of a bell. Denton knew he had caught his breath; he thought Munro had, too. Janet’s smile, faintly wicked, persisted. At last, Munro grunted and said, ‘I wondered when somebody would get to that.’
‘By God, Munro, you mean the idea doesn’t disgust you? Janet’s been pushing it for days. I thought you’d have a fit.’
‘Even at New Scotland Yard, we old fogies are now and then able to tell a hack from a handsaw.’ Munro ground out his cigarette. ‘I have to think of them as two people, brother and sister, Mary and Arthur. But, yes, I can see a version of the tale where they’re the same person.’ He pulled himself out of his chair, rose to his full height, like a bear on its hind legs. ‘I’m not saying you two are right. Not even saying I’m convinced that your ideas hold together. But I will say, it’s always a treat to hear you talk. Makes you understand the power of the storyteller in olden days of yore. Ring for my hat and coat, will you?’
‘You still don’t believe us?’
‘Just the opposite — I do. That’s what’s got me worried.’
On a balmy, breezy day, Denton and Janet Striker took a cab to Fitzroy Street. She said, ‘Are we starting here because it’s the likeliest? ’
‘Or the safest; I don’t know.’
They gave their names again to the harassed Irish maid and were shown into the same cluttered room, where the same plump woman sat in what looked to be the same clothes. She was shocked by the very idea that she might not have told them the entire truth. ‘The police have been here!’ she said. Her laces fluttered. ‘Do you think I would dare to lie to the police?’
‘We thought you might have forgotten something.’
‘Do you think I am senile? Do you think me incompetent? You are very insulting. Please to ring the bell and tell the maid to show you out.’
Denton bowed, winked at Janet Striker and limped out of the crowded, stuffy room.
When they had been standing in the central hall for more than a minute, the Irish maid appeared from somewhere below. Her sleeves were rolled up again, and sweat had stained her blouse. Pushing back loose coils of hair, she said, ‘I’m mangling. It’s hot work.’
Denton held up a shilling. She reached for it and he said, closing his fingers over the coin, ‘Do you remember we talked about Mary Thomason?’
‘Oh, that again.’
‘You remember.’
‘Of course I do.’
He held her eyes. Her look was what so-so novelists called ‘bold’, meaning she didn’t flinch. He said, ‘When Mary Thomason left, did she give you a way to get in touch with her?’
The bold look wavered. ‘Why would she?’
‘She might have wanted to know when somebody came asking after her.’
‘Well, what if she did?’
‘How did you let her know after we were here asking?’
The young woman hesitated, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and settled back on her spine and looked straight at him. ‘She left me a card with a stamp to post to her — what of it?’
‘You didn’t tell us that when we were here before.’
‘You didn’t ast me.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
She snorted. ‘The English polis can go suck eggs for all of me.’
He held out the coin. When she took it, he said, ‘Which of them came back — Mary Thomason, or her brother?’ He had caught her fingers and held them as they held the shilling.
The girl’s voice fell almost to a whisper. ‘How’d you know somebody come back?’
‘Which?’
‘Her.’
‘She wanted to know who’d been here?’
‘Yeah. Just that.’
‘You had our names?’
‘Your cards, yeah. I give them to her.’ She flared up. ‘Where’s the harm, then? She was a poor lone thing like me; she had somebody meaning to hurt her! She give me a sixpence — be like a sovereign to you! She was a sweet, harmless little thing that wanted to know who was after her!’
‘So she left you a stamped card to send to her. What was the address on the card?’
‘You think I can read?’ She made a contemptuous, snorting sound in the back of her nose. ‘I grew up in a house no better than a pigsty that was a dozen miles from the nearest school — you think the old folks sent me there? I was needed to home! Reading’s for you fine English people.’
‘Did you send her a card or anything after Mrs Striker was here the other day?’
‘She left me oney the one card. It was oney the once!’
‘And after we leave here today — are you going to tell her somehow? ’
‘I ain’t, I ain’t, I got better things to do! I ain’t seen her in half a year and I got no more cards with stamps to them! Now leave me be.’
She started back for the stairs, but Denton caught he
r arm and held her. She was frightened, but she was angry; he thought that if he spoke one wrong word, she’d punch him. ‘If Mary Thomason or her brother comes back again, Hannah, you have to tell me. I’m going to give you a card. If either of them comes back, you take the card to Mrs Durnquess and have her read my address to you. Mary and her brother are involved in some very bad business. You don’t want to help them.’ He let her go and gave her one of his cards.
When they were out on the street, Janet Striker said, ‘I hope you don’t believe she’ll do what you told her to.’
‘No. She thinks Mary’s a victim, and she’ll side with her. Still, it was worth a try.’
Walking down Fitzroy Street, Janet said, ‘You thought all along she was the one?’
‘Since I thought there had to be somebody, yes. She seemed the likeliest. I’d rather it was Geddys — I don’t like him, and I like her — but I’ll take what I can get.’
‘You going to tell Munro?’
‘Mmm. Maybe. Not yet.’
She squeezed his arm. He told her he wanted to walk, to help his recovery; they went on down Charlotte Street. The bad leg dragged and had to be favoured, with much use of the walking stick, but he got around well on it now, not as fast as he used to but well enough. At Oxford Street, she suggested they stroll along past the shops. ‘If you’re not too tired.’
‘Being tired isn’t the problem; it’s being slow.’ They turned into Oxford Street. ‘You have shopping to do?’
‘I come to places like this to look. To see what I’m not missing, perhaps. Mrs Cohan is making curtains at the moment; I’m shopping for ideas.’
‘Which you won’t buy?’
‘She knows the remnant houses in the East End. We’ll go there when I know what I want. She has fantastic taste. One of her places has bolts of old Liberty silks and cashmeres, magnificent things that are out of fashion. I intend to surround myself with it.’
The shop windows were full of coronation goods, the coronation itself still almost two months off. They saw coronation chocolates, coronation cakes, the Coronation Tea Set with Spirit Lamp and Kettle, coronation platters and plates and bone china cups with portraits of the new king and queen. A coronation corset was being advertised.
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