The Bohemian Girl tds-2

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘It isn’t all right with me!’

  ‘Janet — the clothes don’t matter; you’ll get more clothes-’

  ‘He poured paint on my piano — on the keys!’ And now she wept.

  For a piano. Between her sobs, she said, ‘You don’t know. I saved — for months to buy that — piano. And it’s only an old Clementi, a hundred years old, it’s junk you wouldn’t give a child to play, but it’s what I can afford!’ She raised her head and sat back, dabbing at her nose with a handkerchief. ‘Or could afford. I’ll have money soon, and money is happiness, am I right?’

  ‘You know better.’

  ‘Well — poverty is misery, I can tell you that.’ She wiped her eyes and sniffed. She looked at him as if she saw him for the first time, as if only now she understood that he was there. She leaned forward and put a hand behind his neck, pulled them together, her face hot and damp against his. ‘Well, now you’ve seen me cry,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t think you did.’

  ‘I’ve been known to.’ She kissed his ear. ‘I’d like you to take me to bed.’

  ‘Yes — yes-’

  She pulled away. ‘No. Not here.’

  ‘Come home with me.’

  ‘Not that, either. I shall stay here tonight in Ruth’s extra room. I know it seems quixotic, Denton, but I want to stay here. This is my haven — this knocking shop is the closest I have to a home.’

  ‘But you can’t go to bed in it with me.’

  ‘We’ve both been in the beds in this house too often as it is.’

  She stood and shook her hair back and walked up and down, looking at herself in a mirror and trying to fix what she saw with her fingers and the handkerchief. She poured herself water from a carafe that stood by the sofa, drank it. She said, ‘There’s sherry and whisky over there if you want it.’ She smiled at him. ‘Will that chair hold both of us?’

  ‘It really doesn’t even hold me.’

  She pulled him over to the sofa. ‘Hold me for a bit. Then you must go home.’ She looked into his eyes; they kissed; she put her head back. ‘I just wanted, as you say, to be with you for a little.’ She moved a few inches away. ‘Now you should go home.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m going to take one of Ruth’s laudanum pills and slip into the land of dreams for a while. I used to do it rather too much. But not in a long time.’ She leaned into the curved back of the sofa, which rose towards the ends in great loops like bows. ‘He painted “Astoreth” on the wall. I take it to mean that I’d been paid a visit by his demon.’ She exhaled shakily. ‘What sort of demon takes an interest in old clothes and a lot of odd bits picked off the rubbish tip? It makes me question the demon’s judgement.’ She looked shrewdly at him. ‘It was meant for you, you know.’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘And part for me? Yes, perhaps. “See what I can do.” Be careful, Denton.’

  ‘Will you be safe here?’

  ‘Between Fred, Ruth, the girls and the clientele, I shall be safer than in the Tower of London. Go home now.’

  ‘Can I come back tomorrow?’

  She frowned. ‘I’ll come to you. When do you stop working? Four? By then I’ll have begged or borrowed some clothes. I’ll come to you. Four?’

  He held her again, kissed her and slipped out of the little door. In her receiving room, Ruth Castle was now surrounded by men, two or three with women of the house. Everybody was in formal dress. There was a smell of cigars and alcohol and perfume. Denton was impressed by the fact that he hadn’t heard them from the inner room — nor they he, therefore.

  ‘Denton, you look a fright — I’ve seen better-dressed navvies. Do go away.’ Mrs Castle looked to the sleek, well-dressed men. ‘When he’s properly turned out, he’s quite one of my favourite people.’ Her voice was nasal, easily mocking; she dropped the H in ‘he’, perhaps intentionally. The received wisdom was that Ruth Castle had been a child from one of the rookeries who had been plucked out, bathed and raped by a wealthy man who had kept her for several years before sending her off to a house. From there, she had continued to rise — a ‘personage’, a marriage (or at least the honorific ‘Mrs’), her own house.

  She held out a hand, which he kissed, something he’d have done with nobody else. She pulled him close. ‘Take care of her,’ she murmured. The sour breath of champagne washed over him.

  ‘I mean to.’

  ‘You’d better.’ She shoved him off. ‘Now take your awful suit away.’

  Seeing Oldaston again as he went out, he said, ‘You ever know somebody called the Stepney Jew-Boy?’

  ‘Jew-Boy Cohan? Haven’t heard that name since Hector was a pup. Yes, I remember him well — mind, I never fought him, too small for me by a couple of stone.’

  ‘He says he was never knocked down.’

  ‘That’s a fact. Very tough. But not fast enough. He could take a terrific blow, but he couldn’t move his hands quick. Mind, he won fights, quite a deal of them. But lost, too.’

  ‘He’s looking for work, if you hear of anything.’

  ‘No! Well, that’s the pugilist’s life in a nutshell. He addled?’

  ‘No — seems quite sharp.’

  ‘Tell you what I’d do if I was him — go to Mrs Franken. She’s a Jewess herself, nothing wrong with that. She might have something in my line of work. She has a couple of houses, you never know.’

  Atkins was waiting at home. He’d found Janet Striker’s telegram beside Denton’s armchair. And he’d read it, of course, so there was no point in pretending nothing had happened, some gain perhaps in telling him.

  ‘I think I’ll keep carrying that derringer,’ Atkins said.

  ‘You have Rupert.’

  ‘All very well for you to say. You’re sitting on an arsenal.’

  ‘Don’t shoot yourself.’

  ‘Oh, ha-ha. Thirty years in the British army and I never so much as pinched my thumb in a breech. So your loony’s turned dangerous. Well, you said he would. Now what?’

  ‘A good citizen would wait for the police to catch him.’

  ‘Yes, but what are you going to do?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Munro and Markson showed up at three-thirty the next afternoon. The two detectives were sombre, Markson clearly nervous, perhaps blaming himself somehow for the attack on Janet Striker’s lodgings. Munro, phlegmatic at best, was apparently calm, but he acknowledged what Markson’s jerkings of a leg and facial tics indicated: the police were worried.

  ‘He isn’t just some Bohemian would-be writer now. He’s a threat,’ Munro said. He was sitting in the upholstered piece opposite Denton’s armchair; Markson was on an armless side chair that Atkins had fetched from farther up the room. ‘What he did was an act of violence.’

  ‘Symbolic violence, anyway,’ Denton said. ‘Paint looks like blood, but it isn’t blood. Cutting up clothes isn’t the same as cutting up a woman but gives the sense of it.’

  ‘You’re not defending him, I hope.’

  ‘Trying to be accurate.’ He was remembering what Janet Striker had said about insanity.

  Munro grunted. ‘For this copper, he’s only one step away from real blood.’

  ‘You’re the police. Go catch him.’

  Munro pushed his lips out and drew his brows down in an expression that, in a saloon, would have meant that a fight was coming. Markson said, ‘We’re trying. Mr Denton, we’ve had men on you all week.’

  ‘They did a particularly fine job of catching him while he watched Mrs Striker leave this house.’

  Munro raised a hand to silence Markson before he could complain. Munro twisted in his chair, crossed his legs, looked at Denton sideways. ‘How did he find her, do you think?’

  ‘Followed her, I suppose.’

  ‘“Follow that cab”?’ Munro snorted. ‘What is he, invisible? One of Mr H. G. Wells’s inventions, is he?’

  Markson twitched. ‘One of the watchers happened to be on his tea break.’

  Munro groa
ned. ‘Jesus wept.’ He wiped his right hand over his face, then leaned his head on that hand, the elbow on the chair back. He looked like an actor playing great pain. ‘I apologize, all right, Denton? For the Metropolitan Police, for myself — I apologize. We should have done better. All right?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to.’

  ‘No, but it makes me feel better. It’s also a lesson to young Fred here — we’re not always perfect.’ He leaned forward, elbows on knees. ‘Now look. We need to know where we are. How much danger is the woman in? You’ve got to be frank with me, Denton. Fred says she was here while he was here that day — she was collecting for some charity-’

  ‘The Society for the Improvement of Wayward Women.’

  ‘This is the same woman that got her face slashed last year and you saved her life, am I right? Now — don’t get your dander up — is there more to it than her stopping by to pick up a contribution?’

  ‘Why should there be more?’

  ‘Because I’m a suspicious, cynical Canuck who doesn’t share the English taste for pussy-footing about. You saved her life last year. One of the watchers reported following you to the Embankment where you met with a lady. Now she happens to be here collecting a contribution, which seems bloody odd, as the Royal Mail worked efficiently the last time I looked.’

  Denton looked into Munro’s eyes without wavering. ‘We’re friends.’

  ‘Was she here before? Could Cosgrove have seen her with you before?’

  Denton knew what Munro was after, knew that it was foolish to splutter and object. ‘Yes.’

  Munro looked at Markson, back at Denton. He sat back in his chair, his hands gripping the ends of the velour-covered arms. ‘I’m going to have to put a watch on her.’

  ‘Bit late. I don’t think she’ll like that.’

  ‘Nor would I, but we have to catch the bastard.’ He looked at Markson. ‘Report?’

  This had been arranged, Denton guessed — a kind of briefing to make him feel that at least he was included, even if little progress was being made. Markson said, one knee vibrating as the heel of that foot went up and down, up and down, ‘The letters have been posted from eight different places in London, but we’ve plotted them on the map and we think it’s west. He’s gone as far afield as Earl’s Court in that direction but only east as far as Holborn Viaduct. We think he’s walking, not using the steam underground or anything like the electric trams to get far out.’

  Munro spoke up. ‘Walking would be trying to be like you again, Denton.’

  Markson said, ‘Taking into account what you said about him being educated, we think maybe well off, then Mayfair or Kensington or some such.’ Nobody said anything. There was no point in saying the obvious. Munro, however, muttered, as another apology, ‘We admit, it’s thin.’

  ‘I know you’re doing what you can’

  ‘There is something-’ Markson looked as if he’d startled himself by speaking. He glanced at Munro for approval. ‘Is there anything else he could have stolen? Anything at all? There might be a clue. .’ His voice drifted off.

  ‘Books?’ Munro said. He looked at the wall of books that framed the fireplace. ‘You said he started off asking for your books. Any chance he stole them when you didn’t answer?’

  Denton shook his head. ‘I don’t keep my own stuff out here. I need the space.’

  ‘In your room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t have any copies of your own books?’

  ‘They’re put away someplace. In a box. You think I sit around reading my own books, Munro?’

  ‘Well-’ Munro squirmed in the chair. ‘I daresay if I’d written a book, I’d have it out where people could see it. Might put it under glass. Hmp. Well — any chance he could have got into the box?’

  Denton called Atkins (who was probably listening by the dumb waiter, anyway) and asked him to check the book boxes. While Atkins plodded back downstairs — what passed for a box room was an old pantry off the ground-floor kitchen — Munro tried to put together the sequence of Albert Cosgrove’s actions. When he had led the three of them through it all up to the attack on Mrs Striker’s rooms, he said, ‘So it began three months after you left on this trip you took. Any significance to that, do you think?’

  ‘You mean, he didn’t break in right away? Maybe the thing grew on him.’

  ‘So at the first, he really was asking for your books.’

  ‘All right, say he was. And?’

  ‘He doesn’t get a response, he’s a bit shirty. He writes again.’

  ‘The letters that were waiting for me here didn’t seem angry. On the contrary, they were soapy and overdone. Worshipful.’

  ‘Until you got home.’

  ‘A bit after.’

  ‘But he’s waiting in the house behind by then. He even more or less shows himself at the window — you think that was what he was doing, by the way, exhibiting himself?’

  ‘Like the old men in the park? I don’t think it was a sex thing.’ He listened to himself. ‘Or maybe it was.’

  ‘Well, you were the one talking about symbolism, not me. But anyway, by the time you come home, he knows you’ve been away. And as we know now, he knows it so well he breaks in here and steals a manuscript of yours and a pen — a bloody pen! But nothing else? That’s almost incredible.’

  ‘What would you have had him steal?’

  ‘Something that’s truly you. One of your Western hats. Your gun. Your-You’ve checked your guns, have you? It’d be terrible if he’s out there with a gun.’

  ‘The guns were with me. Except two parlour pistols, and they were locked away upstairs and were there when I got home.’

  Markson jiggled his knee. ‘If I could say, sir-’ Markson’s face twitched. ‘Is it significant that he didn’t put his own address in those early letters? Heaven knows there was none on the recent ones.’

  ‘I didn’t say he didn’t put an address in them,’ Denton said. ‘I told you I couldn’t remember an address.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but suppose there hadn’t been any address.’

  ‘Oh.’ Munro was nodding. ‘Then he never really wanted Denton to send the books, you mean.’

  ‘Why write, then?’

  Markson said, ‘Maybe so he could tell himself you didn’t bother to answer, sir.’

  Munro looked as if he’d smelled something off. Denton started to make a face, too, then thought about what Markson had said. ‘So that he could worship me and resent me at the same time?’

  ‘Fanciful,’ Munro growled.

  ‘But it would mean, Sergeant, that he never intended — I mean, if he’s capable of “intending” anything — he never intended just to be a well-known author’s follower. He was always after something else.’

  ‘It’s fanciful, and it doesn’t get us any closer to finding him.’

  Atkins came up from below then and announced that the boxes were where they belonged, and there was no sign they’d been opened. ‘I took Rupert and had him give it all a good sniff. He didn’t find anything, either.’

  ‘Rupert is that animal?’ The dog was sitting behind Atkins, wagging its massive rear because the stub of tail was planted in the carpet.

  ‘Rupert has the nose of a hound,’ Atkins said.

  ‘Rupert has a little bit of every dog that’s been down the street this ten years, from the look of him. However, we’ll take it as read that Cosgrove didn’t steal the books.’ Munro grunted. ‘Now I think of it, your own copies wouldn’t be signed anyway, would they? If he meant anything by asking for signed copies — really wanted them, I mean.’ Munro put his hands on his knees. ‘It’s so much a question of just how mad he is, isn’t it? I mean, we know what some criminals — perverts and so on — do with books. What the sex maniac does with pornography, pictures of children-A madman can pull his wire over anything.’

  ‘Stewart Caterwol,’ Markson said.

  Denton didn’t know the name. Munro said, ‘Chap who stole women’s shoes to get off into. He
was a drayman, used axle grease from his wagon to get his meat into the shoes — long, pointy toes some of them had. Kept the shoes in a trunk — forty-one pairs, every one full of axle grease and duff. Harmless otherwise. Got five years for petty theft times forty-one plus indecency plus moral turpitude. All done, so far as we know, in his own bedroom. Sometimes an Englishman’s home isn’t his castle, after all.’

  The doorbell rang.

  Denton went to the window and looked down. A cab was waiting at the kerb. When he turned back, he could hear Janet Striker’s voice as she came up the stairs. Atkins would already have told her that the police were there, he knew.

  The effect of her coming into the room was as if some loud sound had jolted both policeman to their feet. They shot up, then stood there staring at her, Markson even with his mouth a bit open. Denton said ‘Mrs Striker,’ in a voice that seemed to have been hit almost as hard.

  She was transformed.

  She was wearing a dress in the nominal colours of autumn — ‘fillemot’, the pale brown of dead leaves, grey-green, dusty yellow — but an autumn that was autumnal only in its muting, the total effect lively and almost summery. The cut was of the moment, perhaps a step in advance of the moment, the skirt above her shoe-tops, the sleeves tight, the fall of the silky fabric almost clinging. Even the usually livid scar seemed to have been muted; he thought that somebody had dusted powder on it. Her hat, which matched the dress, was jaunty, pretty, with a wisp of veiling. Atkins followed behind with her coat and umbrella, both coordinated with the dress. ‘I came,’ she said, smiling at their reaction, ‘to tell Mr Denton something, but as you gentlemen of the police are here, I shall be delighted to tell you, as well. I believe I have found Albert Cosgrove.’