The question was, why did Denton want to discuss the matter with him at all? As so often, his own motives seemed rooted in a guilt about something he hadn’t done. His gloom deepened. The only antidote he knew was work. He would go to work; he would try to recover the novel that he couldn’t bring out of Central Europe. He had written an outline of it before he had left London six months before. It was in a drawer in the desk.
He pulled the drawer open. It was empty. He was going to shout for Atkins when he found that Atkins was standing at his door. Denton said, ‘Have you been cleaning up my desk?’
‘Not likely. You know somebody wears a black bowler and has a red moustache?’
‘Did you find a Commissionaire?’
‘’Course I did.’
‘I’m missing something from my desk.’
‘I haven’t been home long enough to pinch it. You know a bowler and a red moustache or don’t you?’
Denton was going through the other drawers. ‘I hope not. Why?’
‘Looking at us from the window of the house behind.’
‘Lives there, I suppose.’
‘Housemaid two doors up says the house is empty and to let. Then, coming back from finding the Commissionaire, I see him skulking across the way. Have yourself a look.’
They both went along the corridor to the front of the house, on this floor a small bedroom he never used. Side by side, they looked down into the street. ‘Gone,’ Atkins said. ‘I knew it.’ He sniffed. ‘Suspicious.’
‘What’s suspicious about it?’
‘He had a rum look.’
‘Probably what he’d say about you.’ Denton went back to his desk.
Atkins followed. ‘As long as I’ve come this far, I might as well get your clothes.’ Denton’s blank look made him add, ‘Air them out. Six months in the clothes press. Eh?’
‘Well, hurry up, I’m working.’ He began again to search the drawers he’d already looked through.
‘Could have fooled me.’ Atkins loaded his arms with wool suits. Going out, he said, ‘That fellow was a bad actor, I’m telling you. They know you’re back, Colonel.’
‘Who?’
‘Your enemies.’
Denton put on an old shirt and hugely baggy corduroy trousers, stuffed his feet into leather slippers and went up another flight to the attic. Could he have left the outline up there? The unfinished wood smelled the same as it had six months before — dusty, dry, resinous — and his exercise contraption seemed the same, his dumb-bells, his Flobert parlour pistols, locked in their case and hidden under his massive rowing machine. The old Navy Colt that had been with him since the American Civil War, however, wasn’t there; like his novel and his Remington derringer, it hadn’t made it back from Transylvania. The outline wasn’t to be found, either. Denton hoisted a hundred-pound dumb-bell, thought he’d lost strength in the prison. He sat in the rowing machine, looked up at the skylight to make sure that nobody had tried to break in, went back downstairs. Checking his domain, like a dog pissing at corners.
Then he sat again, trying to find if he could recall, word by word, the novel that the Romanians had thought too dangerous to return.
CHAPTER TWO
The outline was nowhere in the house. Nonetheless, the novel was mostly there in his head, still his if he hurried to get it down on paper. He had seen the phenomenon before when he had lost a page or two of something and had had to do it over, then had located the original, and, comparing them, found that the second reproduced the first almost exactly. Writing was concentration; writing was thought: what came hard stayed in the brain. And pulling it back out, setting it down on paper, blotted out everything else — Janet Striker, the little Wesselons, the somebody who might be looking at them from the house behind, although that was an idea of Atkins’s he thought overblown, nonetheless offensive: he hated being spied on. Even having somebody read over his shoulder irritated him.
At two, he threw the pen down and rubbed his eyes. The left one stung. He supposed he’d need glasses soon. Distance vision was good — he could still shoot the spade out of an ace at twenty yards, as he’d proven to the sceptical officer who’d run the Romanian prison. But reading and writing made the eye hurt. The idea of eyeglasses piqued his vanity, reminded him of Janet Striker, brought back his feeling of deflation.
‘I’m going out!’ he shouted down the stairs. He’d walk, he thought, clear out his brain. At the very least, he could carry the pages he’d written up to his typewriter in Lloyd Baker Street. He wouldn’t trust anybody else to do it, anyway — the only copy, its loss not to be risked a second time. He started to pull on a different shirt and trousers, then went to the stairs and bellowed down, ‘Are we still wearing black?’ Victoria had died in January; they had left London in March, the city still in mourning.
Atkins was two flights down. He bellowed back, ‘What?’
‘Are — we — still — in — black?’
‘No — we — are — not!’ Atkins padded up to the first floor, his head appearing at the bottom of Denton’s stairs. ‘New king said three months’ mourning was enough. Wear the brown lounge suit.’
The brown suit was the only one left in the press. Atkins’s revenge for the Commissionaire, he thought: Denton disliked the suit, and Atkins knew it. Passing through his sitting room on the floor below, he automatically reached out towards a box on the mantelpiece, drew his hand back. He had been used to taking the derringer from the box and carrying it in his pocket, but the derringer hadn’t got out of the prison. Still, he flipped up the lid, as if the little pistol might have materialized there. It hadn’t.
He walked to Gray’s Inn Road, then up it to Ampton Street and so across to Lloyd Square, now and then stopping to look behind him, seeing nobody. The idea of being followed by a man in a bowler and a red moustache, of being known, troubled him.
His typewriter was flustered to see him, as always; they embarrassed each other somehow, as if they had some intimate past or future they didn’t dare discuss. He handed over the papers and fled to Pentonville Road where, on an impulse, he swung himself up into a Favourite omnibus — except it wasn’t an impulse, for he was still thinking of Atkins’s ‘bowler and red moustache’ and wanted again to watch to see who climbed aboard. Several bowlers boarded, none interested in him and only one with a moustache, that yellow. Atkins was seeing spooks, he decided, the product of a morbid interest in religion.
The ride invigorated him. London invigorated him, the day sunny and not quite cool — that tremendous sense of bustle that the city had, of pulsing, as if it were a live, growing thing that was always bursting a skin and emerging in a new one. He would visit a friend, he thought — an acquaintance, at least — at New Scotland Yard and report Mary Thomason’s letter, and that would be that matter out of the way. Let the police handle it. Guilt made him add that first he would stop at his publishers to go through some likely unpleasantness about the novel, which at best was going to be two months late.
He got down at London Bridge and got on a Red 21 and rode it to the Temple and in a light drizzle walked into the twistings of little streets north of Temple Bar — Izaak Walton’s London — to the somewhat ramshackle offices of Gweneth and Burse. His editor was a dry, thin man named Diapason Lang (his father an organist of some reputation), at once severely agitated to see Denton. There was no welcome back to London, no polite chit-chat about the trip.
‘I’m awfully glad you’ve come,’ he said, ‘at last. Awfully glad.’ Lang was older than Denton, apparently sexless, in love with books. ‘You’ve brought the new book?’ He sounded hopeless; he must already have seen that, unless Denton’s overcoat had a hidden kangaroo pocket, the manuscript hadn’t come with him.
‘The manuscript is in Romania.’ Denton tried to make a light story of it — Colonel Cieljescu, a novel in English as military contraband. ‘I’m putting it down again as fast as I can, Lang.’
‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Gwen will be beside himself.’ He looked at Denton as
if appealing for help. Gwen was Wilfred Gweneth, the publisher; the Burse of the firm’s name seemed not to exist. Lang picked at his blotter. ‘Gwen’s most unhappy about the motor car.’
‘It was seized, too.’
‘Gwen’s terribly upset. He’s said quite unkind things.’ The publisher had bought the motor car in which Denton had made the trip to Transylvania; it was in the contract, part of the deal. When Denton brought it back to London, it was to have been turned over to the firm. ‘Gwen even suggested you sold it over there.’
It had occurred to Denton that Cieljescu had let them ‘escape’ so he could keep the Daimler, but he wasn’t about to say that to Lang — right now, it would sound too much like having traded it for freedom. He smiled and pointed out that the vehicle had been insured.
‘Yes — yes — but the insurer is balking. They want proof. They want to know if you reported it to the police.’
‘Colonel Cieljescu was the police.’
‘Well, it’s all very awkward. Gwen is terribly upset. He blames me.’ The original idea for the book had been Lang’s, although it had been Denton who had added, in fact demanded, the motor car. Lang inhaled so suddenly the sound vocalized. ‘He’ll be in a state about the novel’s not being done, too.’
‘I’m working as fast as I can. A month. Lang, you’ve got the book on the Transylvanian trip; it’s going to make lots of money! What’s the problem?’ He had written the travel book as a series of articles as he travelled.
Lang looked at him with sick eyes. ‘He’s talking about taking the cost of the motor car out of royalties.’
Denton needed those royalties to live. He felt anger coming but pushed it back. ‘He can’t do that, as you well know. I’ll sue.’
‘I know, I know!’ Lang’s voice was a wail. He looked at a print on his wall — Elihu Vedder’s The Nightmare, a demon looming over a sleeping woman with much exposed flesh — and said to it instead of Denton, ‘We’re having a little party. Please come. It may mollify him.’
‘I hate parties.’
‘It’s to launch the collection of ghost stories. Henry James will be there!’ Lang, who loved horror in any of its forms, had put together stories from twenty authors, not all of them from the house. Denton was one, James another. ‘It would look so well if you came.’
‘And brought the motor car with me?’
‘It isn’t a laughing matter.’
‘I’ll send Gwen a letter explaining everything. Gwen will be delighted.’
Lang groaned, sure that he wouldn’t.
‘Everything will be all right, Lang.’
Lang leaned his narrow head on one dry hand and looked at the Vedder. ‘No, it won’t,’ he said.
Denton gave it up and headed for New Scotland Yard.
‘Well, well, by the saints! How’s the Sheriff of Nottingham?’
‘I wasn’t a sheriff; I was a town marshal.’
‘You’ve lost weight.’ Detective Sergeant Munro of the CID grunted. ‘I haven’t.’
Munro had come limping towards Denton across the lobby, outpacing the porter who’d gone to him with Denton’s card. He was big, as most detectives now were big, with a massive head that seemed to grow into a huge pair of jaws as it went downwards from his hairline, becoming almost Neanderthal. He could be brusque, acid, hard, but he was as dependable as anybody Denton had ever known. And he was good at his job.
‘I was in the clink,’ Denton said with a grin.
‘So I read in the press. Come on upstairs. Cup of tea?’
‘You’ve moved.’
‘I’d moved before you left town — thanks to you, and I do mean thanks, Denton. You got me back into the CID.’
Denton muttered something. Munro had got part of the credit for finding a murderer whom Denton had killed.
‘How’s the lady?’ Munro said.
‘I haven’t seen her yet.’
‘She forgiven you for shooting a bullet past her ear?’
‘She hasn’t said.’ Janet Striker had been held as a shield when Denton had shot the man holding her, who had already slashed her face once. It was true, the bullet had had to pass just above her ear to hit his eye.
They went up a flight of stairs and turned into a corridor where any trace of marble ended and a scruffy look of police business began. At the end was a huge room filled with wooden desks — and men. Denton saw at least a dozen, many in shirtsleeves; a fug of pipe smoke hung in the room, which smelled of the smoke and nervous sweat and damp wool.
Munro waved at somebody and caused two white mugs of tea to appear; he motioned to a chair by a desk that was like all the others. ‘Sit.’
‘No guns here,’ Denton said.
‘This isn’t the Assiniboine.’ Munro was Canadian and had been in the Mounties — the second intake, early days in the Canadian West. ‘We investigate, not shoot it out.’
‘You like it?’
‘It’s heaven, compared to pushing paper like I was. This lot here do nothing but complain; I tell them that a week at the Annexe untying bundles of paper and tying them up again in a ribbon, and they’d sell their wives to get back here.’ He drank tea, looked at Denton, sat back so that his patent chair squeaked on its big springs. ‘All right, what is it? You didn’t come to see me on your first day back in London because you’re in love with me.’
‘I was in the neighbourhood.’
‘Tell that to some sailor on a horse!’ Munro laughed. ‘You’re all business, Denton — I’ve watched you. Don’t tell me you’ve got another corpse for me.’
‘Only a letter. Maybe a missing girl.’
Munro slapped the desk. ‘How do you do it? Twenty-four hours home and you’re making trouble for me! Look, we don’t do missing girls here. We investigate. We-’
‘She sent me a letter just after I left. Months ago.’
‘And she’s actually missing?’
‘She said somebody was trying to harm her.’
‘And she’s missing?’
‘I don’t know.’ Denton leaned forward to cut off Munro’s response. ‘The letter reached me kind of roundabout. I don’t want to make a lot out of it.’
‘Good. Don’t. Drop it.’
‘I thought you’d know how to find if anything bad had happened to her.’
Munro stared at him. His jaws bulged even more. He said, ‘Do you know what “gall” means?’
‘I thought maybe you thought you owed me a favour.’
Munro tipped his head back so he could study Denton down the length of his fleshy nose. He stuck his lips out. He pushed out his chin. ‘You got a name?’
‘Mary Thomason.’
‘What division?’
‘She didn’t give an address.’
Munro made it clear he thought that that was the last straw. He muttered that Denton was going to give him heart failure one day. He gulped down his tea and stamped off through the room to a bank of three telephones on the wall at the far end. When he came back, he seemed better humoured.
‘Two days,’ Munro said. ‘Hope you can wait two days.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’
Munro began to fill a pipe. ‘Beggars, my arse! Well, you’re right I owe you one — wouldn’t be back here if not for you. I’ve put a query in train at the divisions, anything they have on Mary Thomason, same at the coroner’s. If she’s made a complaint or died, you’ll hear of it.’
‘I don’t remember you smoking.’
‘Self-defence in this place. Go home stinking of it, anyway; the wife complains. You don’t have a wife.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Thought there might be something with the lady whose ear you almost shot off. Mmm?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Oh, well, take that line if you must. How’d you like prison?’
‘I’m taking up your time.’
‘Slack hour. The prison?’
So Denton gave him a sketch of life as a political prisoner in a country that was still squirming out
of the mire of the Middle Ages. Munro filled out paperwork and grunted. When Denton was done, Munro said, ‘Been in prison before?’
‘I was a guard once.’
‘Dear heaven. Almost as bad.’ He pushed his papers aside and laid both forearms on the desk. ‘Ever think about joining the police again? I could use a partner with some brains.’
Denton smiled. He liked Munro. ‘I write books,’ he said.
‘A waste and a shame.’
‘Get Guillam.’
Munro made a face. George Guillam was a Detective Sergeant who had accepted a false confession in the crime that had led to Denton’s shooting the real criminal; Guillam and Denton had started off on the wrong foot and got worse. Munro said, ‘Georgie’s in a bit of a funk just now. Not saying much to me.’
‘The business last spring?’
‘Aye, that and me getting some credit. And there’s you.’
‘I didn’t strike on his box.’
‘You might say you weren’t his favourite fella.’
‘He still want to be a superintendent?’
‘In a funny kind of way, he is — acting like a super, anyway, but without the title. They kicked him sideways after the business with you. He’s “on leave” from CID and acting as super of a division of odds and sods — Domestic, Missing Persons, Juvenile, a lot of stuff. Georgie has pals upstairs, but he put his foot in the dog’s mess with that false confession he accepted. There’s some talk it was got with some physical persuasion, too. Georgie did what was right for him, not for the law, and he’s going to be in bad odour for a while. Serves him right, although I don’t say that to his face.’
‘Maybe I should have a word with him.’
‘Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn’t. Georgie don’t forgive easily.’ Munro dropped his voice to an almost inaudible rumble and leaned closer. ‘Georgie piles up grudges like bricks. Says all’s forgiven and then can’t resist the knife when you turn your back.’ He raised his voice to its normal boom. ‘Mind what I say.’ He put a finger next to his nose, an antiquated and strange gesture that made him seem like an actor playing Father Christmas. ‘Now I’ve got work to do.’
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