The funeral, perhaps oddly, was to be late in the morning of the next day at Old St Pancras. He learned of it only from Atkins, who had got it from the Cohans. No notice appeared in the newspapers. Denton wondered how the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Mrs Castle’s loyal clients would learn of it. The answer was, of course, that they would not. Janet didn’t want them to know. Would anybody at all appear at the church? Well, he would, and he supposed that Fred Oldaston would, and, if Janet had been in touch with them, many of the women who had worked for Ruth and aged into respectability and often marriage. His late friend Sir Hector Hench-Rose would have gone, had he known of it—or would he? He had been a regular patron, but he had also had a very upright, in fact narrow-minded, wife.
He had sent Maltby a note to say that he was in London for a few days. He didn’t care whether he got a reply. Maybe the young man had found, once in London, that he was glad to be rid of him. At any rate, he thought he’d done the right thing; if Maltby let the ball drop, that was his affair.
He also sent a telegram to the new Lord Easleigh, asking if he might call on him. Easleigh’s case was different from Maltby’s: if he didn’t reply, Denton would think something was up.
Despite his hangover, Denton had thought seriously of going to Birmingham. Spina’s photograph nagged at him. If the blurred face was really Cherry’s, and the photographer was anywhere near right about the date, then Cherry had been a good deal less than forthcoming—at best. And if the other face was really that of the new Lord Easleigh, then something was very wrong. He supposed that Cherry and the young milord could have been in Naples sometime in the autumn quite innocently, but if so, why hadn’t Cherry mentioned it? On the contrary, he’d been almost a caricature of the first-time visitor, hopeless in the language, puzzled by the food.
Of course, it was likely that the blurred face wasn’t Cherry’s at all, and if the other one could be proven to belong to the new Lord Easleigh, was he therefore culpable? He might argue that he was free to travel if he liked, that he had had a distant cousin in Fra Geraldo and had wanted to see him. If Fra Geraldo’s diary didn’t mention him—and it did not, Denton knew—neither did it mention any other details of his life; the diary was a record of contrition, not trivial events. A visit from a distant nephew could have gone unmentioned, could have involved nothing but a mutually embarrassing few minutes in the cold entry of the Palazzo Minerva.
If Denton went to Birmingham, he told himself, he could confront Joseph Cherry and make sure he was the man who had turned up in Naples. If he was, Denton could ask him about the photograph. Birmingham was only a few hours away by train; he could go up and back in a day. But it was too late that day, and the next was the funeral. Maybe the day after. Or maybe by then Munro would have more information for him.
The truth was, the toxic effect of alcohol had left him unfit for much of anything. He rarely drank too much any more; when he did, he remembered why he had stopped. Hangovers of a certain intensity were worse than the symptoms of the influenza. What he really wanted to do after he left Munro was go back to bed.
He woke about five in the afternoon. He felt better, still a little light headed but no longer as if he might lurch if he tried to walk. He got up, pulled on an ancient dressing gown over his trousers and shirt and went downstairs. Atkins was straightening things in the sitting room. He looked up as Denton came down the stairs, raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
‘I overdid it,’ Denton said.
‘Effects of travel, I’m sure.’
‘I’m going to the funeral tomorrow. Do I have clothes?’
‘Same outfit you wore for Sir Hector’s. You only wore it the once.’
‘Lay it out, will you? Make sure it’s pressed and all that.’ Denton fell into his armchair. ‘Any sign of Mrs Striker at her house?’
‘Nor hide nor hair.’
‘I suppose she’s staying on at Westerley Street. Lot to do. I should send flowers.’
Atkins, who had been bent over with a whisk broom, straightened and said, ‘I think maybe you ought to consider that gentlemen aren’t welcome at this occasion, General.’
‘Gentlemen were her speciality.’
‘All the same, pardon me, they ain’t Mrs Striker’s, and she’s paying the fiddler. I’d go easy, if I was you.’
‘Approach the church with caution, prepared to flee?’
‘You know her better than I do.’
Denton lay back and closed his eyes. Atkins went on whisking, then ran a carpet sweeper, muttering something about the dirt people made when they’d only been in the house twenty-four hours. Denton opened one eye.
‘Sit a minute.’
‘I want to tell you about the death in Naples. You help me to think.’
‘You always tell me my ideas are rubbish.’
‘That’s how you help me.’
Uncomplimentary as that was, it seemed to satisfy Atkins. Telling him what had happened, trying to put in everything in order, Denton found himself seeing it more clearly himself. Atkins was naturally conservative, and at first he pooh-poohed the notion of a murder. Later, told about the chapel and the ledger, he said that Fra Geraldo sounded like a rum old loony but not one worth murdering. He dismissed out of hand the photograph that seemed to show the young Lord Easleigh: Denton was seeing things. His conclusion, after an hour’s talk, was that Denton should let sleeping dogs lie, and with that he went off to make what he called ‘a proper tea’, meaning his idea of a three-course meal.
Later, a knock on the door produced a hand-delivered note from the new Lord Easleigh: he would be delighted to see Mr Denton tomorrow afternoon and looked forward to meeting a man about whom he had heard so much good from his private detective, Mr Cherry.
When Atkins came up with a loaded tea tray, Rupert panting behind him, he brought with him a load of questions. As he set up two folding tables and laid out food, he shot them at Denton like somewhat sarcastic bullets.
‘Now, this new Lord Hoo-ha, you say you see his face in a photo, you’re off on a wild hare to London because you think you’ve proof he was in Naples. What’s the point?’
‘He came to Naples and killed the old man.’
‘Oh, of course—he wants to be the Gay Lord Quex and can’t wait another year or two.’
‘He’s seventeen. That age wants things right now. Can’t wait.’
‘My hat! He’d be daft to risk it when he’s got a sure thing not too far away.’
‘Ever tried telling that to a seventeen-year-old who has some girl ready to fall on her back for him?’
‘Oh, ha-ha, I don’t see the relevance of that. Don’t try to come over me with tricky arguments.’
Atkins, the pot and cups and dishes he had brought with him set out, went back the length of the room and opened a door opposite the Dresden stove—the dumb-waiter. He hauled on the cable, inhaled, and came back with a single large tray with half a dozen dishes on a white cloth. He began to put those on flat surfaces around Denton. ‘Tinned smoked trout, courtesy of the late Sir Hector, bless him. Boiled eggs, had them made up in the icebox, devilled them with a bit of curry. Cinnamon toast—leave the cloth on to keep the heat in, if you please. Bread and butter, very thick, very well buttered. Pickled cockles, not everybody’s cup of tea, but mine. Sliced ham. Eccles cake. Bit of Scottish shortbread, comes in a tin from the Army and Navy—not too bad. Gooseberry conserve. Hepburn’s Best Military Chutney. Pound cake with—where is it? Aha, in the gravy boat, couldn’t find anything else—custard. Jam tart.’ He looked severe. ‘That’s all there is!’
‘How many of us did you plan to feed?’
‘I thought this chat we’re having would take a while. And there’s Rupert.’ Rupert was the dog.
Atkins cracked open a linen serviette, dropped it with a flourish on Denton’s lap, then got one for himself and sat. ‘Tuck in, General, tuck in, you’ve been a soldier—you never know when your next chance to eat will come. All right, back to your murder that wasn’t a murder—who else?’
Denton told him about Scuttini and the Camorra; Atkins’ view was that they’d have strangled him and thrown him into the tunnels under the house and nobody would have been the wiser.
‘The boys, then. E and M—the choirboys who tried to kill him, at least according to the ledger.’
‘For buggering their bums? Well, yes, if he said they tried to kill him once, I suppose they might try again. But that was when—back in the age of Napoleon?’ He gave Rupert a triangle of shortbread.
‘Eighteen sixty or thereabouts.’
‘Pardon my untutored maths, Major, but I make that to be forty-four years. They’ve waited all this time?’
‘They had to mature. They had to let their hatred grow. It fermented in their minds, soured, exploded.’
‘Sounds like cheap champagne. The mind goes all fizzy, then pop! I thought you were the one read all the psychology, not me. I’d say from my layman’s point of view that’s rubbish, but then I haven’t read the latest by Herr Doktor Poop-Fartlebee.’ Atkins was eating large pieces of smoked trout on buttered bread. ‘Anyway, you said that “M” was a drunkard who could hardly put one foot in front of the other.’
‘He could have been temporarily sober.’
‘And he said, “Oh, I’ll get my old pal ‘E’ and have another go at murdering old Geraldo.” Where’s “E” been all these years, by the way?’
‘Maybe he emigrated and came back, and it was he got in touch with Michele, fed him full of the old grievances, got him sober.’
‘Just happened to be able to creep into the old man’s palazzo, pretend to be ghosts by imitating kids having their backsides split.’
‘Might have had a key. He and Michele had lived there, you know. Could have stolen a key then and kept it.’
‘For forty-four years? Love a duck, you’ve a high opinion of the human capacity for devilment! Though I’ll grant you one point: somebody that had been that mistreated as a kid and had made himself some money and become somebody might just want to get back at his persecutor. Put the seal on his being a man, eh? Show he can’t be buggered any more? Think about it.’
‘I have thought about it. Was the smoked trout good?’
‘Capital. I offered you some. Try the cockles. All right, I’ll concede a lurid possibility for “E” and “M”, but I think it’s far-fetched. And there goes your argument for the photograph and the young lord—if it’s “E” and “M” grown middle-aged, where’s Lord Boyishness?’
‘Meaning that you admit that idea is thinner than Irish soup.’
Denton was eating a devilled egg and feeling better. How he wished he’d had Atkins back when Fra Geraldo had died! He said, ‘Then there’s that spirit message about the policeman.’
‘You mean a spook voice from a so-called medium you wouldn’t trust to give you a correct message from the telephone, much less the great beyond? Come off it. The spirit voice is a fiddle, nothing but a deliberately mysterious sentence that came out of a medium’s mouth; she might as well have said, The dressmaker is playing cricket.’
‘“The cop is doing a play.” Meaning the cop is acting a part.’
‘Which cop?’
Denton shrugged and ladled custard over pound cake. ‘Then there’s the old man’s money. Everybody wants money, Sergeant.’
‘Was there money? You’re sure of that? Thought you told me somebody said the family had run through the money.’
‘He didn’t know for sure. Anyway, there’s the title. People would kill for a title, a lot of them.’ He thought of Mrs Newcombe, who would have destroyed her daughter’s life for a title.
‘They say they would, maybe. Hard to believe when you come to it. Try the Eccles cake—rather good.’ He woke Rupert to give him a piece.
‘And that would explain the photograph—that the face in the picture is the young lord, and the blurry one is the detective, who’s “acting a play”.’
‘And where did that photograph come from, I ask you. You say it came from some seaside artiste, but in fact he was brought to you by this Dago who forced himself on you from the very beginning—eh? Eh?’ Atkins was waving a cockle pick at him.
‘Don’t say “Dago”. DiNapoli didn’t force himself on me. Anyway, that was before I ever heard of Fra Geraldo. No, wait—it was just after the old man came to the pension to ask me for help.’
‘Aha! So the Dago had followed the old man to your place; like everybody in Italy, he knows Texas Jack and his doings, so he follows you and attaches himself to you like a limpet. Then when he’s done the old fellow in, he’s in a perfect position to influence your every move. He translates for you! You don’t know what people are really saying; he could be feeding you the whole Munchausen line! He’s in with the Camorra fellow—you said so yourself. He’s the one brings you the photographer. He’s your evil genius, Colonel. Playing Dago Svengali to your Trilby.’
‘I should never encourage you to go to the theatre.’
‘Have some jam cake.’
‘Mrs Striker thinks that DiNapoli is one of the world’s innocents.’
‘No offence to the lady, and I concede she has a wide knowledge of the world, but I think she missed a beat with this one. He sounds a thoroughly tricky sort. A man can smile and smile and be et cetera. Criminal past, into all manner of skulduggery, lives by his wits—at best shifty, Colonel, and could be lots worse.’
‘Why in the world would he murder Fra Geraldo?’
‘He was one of the choirboys. Or he’s working for that Camorra. Or…some reason we haven’t even thought of. I’ll get the cheese.’
Denton looked around at the ruin of their tea. He shouted towards the stairs, ‘And more of those Scottish biscuits, while you’re at it.’ Rupert looked startled.
He slept deeply, woke with an idea in his head and no memory of dreams: I was a fool to come to London.
It was as if he’d thought it through overnight and now the idea was clear and entirely decided. Fra Geraldo, the photograph, the theatrical policeman, Cherry—it was all nonsense. What had he been thinking of?
He faced an obvious truth: he’d come back to see Janet. The rest was self-deception.
He pulled on a long robe, in which he felt like somebody in a bad play but which he needed because the house was infernally cold. He washed in cold water, finding no hot in the pipe; downstairs, he prowled his sitting room, looking for heat, finally started a fire in the grate and then boiled water on his spirit stove and made tea. He thought how quickly habits changed—in Naples, he would have been walking to his café—and wondered if thinking, the mind, changed in parallel, as they said in the electrical sciences: did he now think differently about the old man’s death because he was in London? It was true, Fra Geraldo seemed distant; the Palazzo Minerva was somewhat hard to visualise; the chapel seemed to have diminished. Was Naples a play, London reality? Or was Naples play, London work?
It was not yet seven. Atkins seemed still to be asleep. The first mail had come through the slot before he heard Atkins letting Rupert out into the back garden. Denton got the mail, was coming up the stairs with it, not looking where he was going but reading the envelopes instead, when he almost ran into Atkins in the upper doorway.
‘Watchwhereyergoan!’ Atkins growled, swaying back into the sitting room. ‘Cripes, it’s you, Major, what’re you doing out of bed?’
‘Full of pep. The house is like an ice cave—what happened to our Dresden stove?’ The enormous porcelain thing filled an alcove near the stairs; it had been supposed to be the heater for all the upper floors.
‘Oh, cripes.’ Atkins looked chagrined. He had not shaved yet, was wearing a robe so old the nap of the velour had been worn down to woof and warp. ‘With you not here, I got out of the habit of lighting it. I’m heated from the furnace.’ Denton had tried having a furnace put in, a disaster for the house except for Atkins’ quarters and the draper’s shop in the ground-floor front.
‘And no hot water.’
‘Well, I said I forgot, didn’t I? I’ll do it, I’ll do it—’ He scuttled up the room towards the stove.
Denton had hoped for something from Janet. Even one of her telegrams would have given solace, but there was nothing. Among the bills, however, was an envelope with writing he didn’t recognise; on the back it said ‘F. Maltby’ and the address in Maida Vale Denton had got from Scotland Yard’s Recruitment Division.
‘Dear Mr Denton,’ the note inside said, ‘It was very good of you to write to me. I am well. Your friend Inspector Munro helped me and I think I will be joining the police force come September. May I call on you this afternoon? I have something to tell you. I am taking a course in criminal law and will be in your neighbourhood. Very sincerely yours, Frederick A. Maltby.’
A visit that afternoon? That was unwelcome. Ruth Castle’s funeral would be this morning; he wanted time with Janet—of course, she would be grieving, he’d have to be available to her—and then, in a day or two, they’d head back to Naples. It was important to him to get her back there. They’d been happy there. Hadn’t they?
‘I think that the truth is I came back to London out of homesickness,’ he said to Atkins, who seemed to have got flames going in the porcelain stove and was huddling over the open door with his ratty robe pulled tight around his throat.
‘Better than some daft murder,’ Atkins said. ‘No offence intended.’
‘I wanted to see Mrs Striker, is the truth.’
‘Funeral today. So then it’s off to Italy again, is it?’
Denton had come down to the alcove where he kept the spirit stove. ‘I certainly hope so. Tea?’ he offered.
Atkins looked exasperated. ‘That’s my function, General!’
Denton heard a muffled bark. Atkins headed for his stairs. ‘Cripes, I forgot Rupert. Everybody’s up too bleeding early today!’ He stamped down the stairs, and a few seconds later Denton heard the back door being opened. When, half an hour later, Atkins appeared, he was shaved and dressed in a clean high collar and shirt, black alpaca jacket and waistcoat and cinder-grey trousers; the Dresden stove was putting out more heat than a chameleon; and hot water flowed from Denton’s tap. He spent a while looking out his rear window into Janet’s garden and the blank windows of her house, then dressed in the black clothes that Atkins had laid out and went down to the sitting room to find a black silk hat, black gloves, ebony walking stick and black overcoat waiting.
‘I’ll be back by one. I’m not going to the graveside.’
‘Hope you’re not the only one there, if you don’t mind me saying. The line she was in, people fall off easily.’
‘Nonsense, there’ll be huge crowds. Ruth Castle was an institution.’ He held up Maltby’s note. ‘A young man may come by. Maltby. If he’s here before I am, stick him up here and give him something to read. He’s all right.’
‘Did I say he wasn’t? Never so much as set eyes on him.’
‘He gives the wrong impression sometimes.’ Denton pulled on the overcoat and put the top hat on his head. He detested top hats. ‘I look like a suburban undertaker.’
‘You look exactly the way you ought to look. Very respectable, if I may say so.’
Denton studied the man in the mirror—the dangling grey moustache, the lined face, the peculiar hat that seemed to rest on the tops of his ears, the too-correct overcoat and gloves. ‘Texas Jack,’ he said with some sarcasm.
Old St Pancras Church was an easy walk away, only across Euston Road and along Pancras Road. Denton took it quickly, his long legs eating up the pavement as the ebony stick rapped in tempo. Pancras Road was a thoroughfare for wagons and lorries delivering and picking up goods at the freight stations, and it was noisy with hooves and motors; it seemed hostile, as if not made for human beings, yet Old St Pancras Church, even from a distance, looked like something in a village, its grey stones soft among the greens of elms and the old churchyard—a watercolour in a surround of steel engraving. Nearing it, Denton saw that a sizeable crowd was milling about the door; closer still, he saw that most of the crowd were women. Turning in at the gate, he realised that he was in fact the only man.
Some of the women turned to look at him. Their talk, which had been low, murmurous, fell off to a few voices nearest the church. All in blacks and purples and whites, they seemed to fit with the old stones. Many had their faces veiled. Of the faces he could see, Denton recognised none. These were not the ‘girls’ of Ruth Castle’s most recent crew; they would have moved to other houses as soon as she closed hers, perhaps had been sent by her while she could still manage as part of an informal rotation that kept new faces in the good houses of the big cities. The women he saw now were all older, some with grey hair, many looking middle-class and comfortably heavy.
Uneasy with their stares, Denton took a turn in the churchyard, pretended to study a few of the stones. When he turned back, he saw another male figure entering the gate; he felt an impulse to rush to him but tamped it down because it was nobody he knew. The man was old, small, bent. Less than a minute later, another man came in behind three more women. Denton recognised him.
‘Fred,’ he said as he hurried closer. They shook hands. Fred Oldaston had been her muscle, always a fixture at the door in a dinner suit; now, he looked uncomfortable in black serge and a black bowler, a mourning band on his arm. He said, ‘Damned glad to see you. I thought I was going to be the only one with danglers here.’
Denton nodded at the old man. ‘Who’s he?’
Oldaston squinted where Denton had indicated with his chin. ‘I think he used to come in to do the drains. Fancy him coming to her funeral.’
‘I thought the place would be full of her old clients.’
Oldaston laughed. ‘It’s one thing to go to her house, another to tip your hat to her on the street. They won’t come.’
Denton looked at the women, who were beginning to straggle into the church. ‘I don’t feel very welcome.’
‘I wasn’t sure, m’self. May not be, in fact. Mrs Striker sent me packing the day she arrived. Nothing personal, her and me always got along, but she said she didn’t want any men in the house. We’ll see if that goes for the church as well.’ Oldaston moved towards the church door. Several women hurried in, as if to get away from him, and, even though two of them spoke to him—they must all have known him, Denton supposed—they didn’t smile or drop back to talk with him.
Oldaston stopped just short of the door, apparently to let all the women go in first. He turned with a chastened smile and said to Denton, ‘Thought I’d let them all get up front, slip into a back pew.’ He nodded at somebody behind Denton; Denton turned and saw the old man. He nodded; the old man nodded back and said, ‘Nice day. Sad time. Always good to me, she was. Paid on time, unlike some as thought they was better.’
The last of the women disappeared through the door. Oldaston said, ‘Well,’ and shrugged himself into his clothes but didn’t move forward. Denton, annoyed at the notion that he should hang back and creep in like a poor relation, stepped around him and, planting the cane firmly as if to claim the ground under it, strode through the door.
Janet was standing a few feet inside, her back to the sanctuary doors as if she were guarding them. She looked, he thought, dreadful, as drawn and hollow eyed as when she had had typhus. Her dress looked too big for her, perhaps was borrowed; her hair had been caught up any old how, with strands escaping down her neck. Never attractive in hats, she wore one that perched too far back on her head and looked as if it might fall off.
‘Janet,’ he said. He was smiling, happy at last to see her. He moved forward to say something conventional about Ruth Castle’s death.
‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice was like an angry man’s.
Behind him, he heard Fred Oldaston suck in his breath. Denton said, ‘I’ve come because of Ruth—Janet, she was—’
‘Go away. Go away!’
At that moment, he knew, she hated him. He felt his face go hot, then his neck and shoulders, and anger surged up through his body with the blood. At that moment, too, he hated her.
He turned, knocking into Fred Oldaston, who was already backing out the door; behind him, the old man was standing on tiptoe, trying to see in. Denton stumbled, gave Oldaston a shove to the side and brushed past the old man as he rushed from the church. The old man said something; Oldaston muttered a curse, but Denton was already almost to the gate. He hurtled through, his face flaming, and turned and almost ran along the pavement towards Euston Road.
The bitch! he thought. Those bitches! They could have told us. They could have let us know it was a twat party! They have telephones, some of them; Janet sends telegrams like they’re confetti, she could have done that. A whore’s trick, a fucking bloody whore’s trick on the men! Fucking congregation of cunts—!
He could feel the snarl that was on his lips. The cane reached out as if he were trying to stab something, and it hit the pavement with a harsh crack. On Euston Road, people got out of his way; one woman, clearly frightened, cowered against a lamp-post with an arm raised to protect herself. On and on he went, cursing, infuriated, muttering to himself, devouring the small streets below Euston Road and racing at last along Coram Gardens and across Guilford Road and into Lamb’s Conduit Street.
Reaching his own house, he didn’t ring for Atkins but shoved his key into the lock as if he were disembowelling an enemy. He slammed the door behind him; the whole house shuddered. Atkins’ surprised face appeared. Denton was already taking the stairs two at a time.
‘I say—General—’
‘Shut up!’
He tore open the upstairs door and then slammed it behind him even harder than he had the front, hoping it would break, hoping something would break. He raised the stick over his head and threw it down the long room, where it crashed against a wall and then the floor and bounced; there was a sound of breaking glass. Denton ripped off the overcoat and threw it at the grate, then took the hat and smashed it as hard as he could to the floor. When it settled, apparently still in good condition, he kicked it, followed it, and stamped on it. He stamped on it again to make sure it was crushed, then did it once more because his anger was still at red heat. Then he had to stand in the middle of his sitting room and look around to see what else he could smash.
His eyes met Maltby’s. The young man had been standing by the window behind him. Aware that he’d been noticed, Maltby said, ‘Uh, uh, I’ll leave. Just leaving.’
‘No, stay!’ Some dreg of courtesy, perhaps nothing more than shared maleness after all those women, asserted itself. Maltby had shaved off his whiskers, looked young and vulnerable; the sight steadied Denton. ‘No.’ He started for the stairs. ‘I’ll be right down—change these God-awful clothes—’ From the stair, he shouted, ‘Don’t go!’
In his bedroom, he tore the clothes off, saying to himself, Never again. She said she’d been good, well, she doesn’t know how good I’ve been, at her beck and call, always, always doing what she wants, fucking when she wants, sleeping with her when I’m allowed, living where she wants, putting up with her goddam insipid girls! I’m through with it. Harnessed to her minge and made to gee and haw like an ox! No more! By Christ, she can spend the rest of her life with women! I’ll sell this house; let her keep hers. I’ll go back to Naples. Live in Naples. Or the States—!
He pounded down the stairs, dressed now in a dark sack suit with the first necktie he’d seen on the rack, brown brogues that Atkins would disapprove of, but he didn’t care. Coming down into the sitting room, he saw Maltby precisely where he’d left him, but the funeral hat and coat and stick were gone; some broken glass lay below the dumb-waiter door, shoved there, he thought, by Atkins’ foot. He said, ‘I’m sorry for the performance. I’ve had a shock.’
Maltby waved a hand weakly. ‘I’m sure—quite all right. I didn’t notice.’
Denton barked out a harsh laugh. ‘Have you gone blind and deaf, Maltby?’ He grabbed the whisky decanter from the table beside his chair and poured a glass, drank it off, and poured another. ‘Want some?’
‘No, thank you. I really must go.’
‘Stay!’ Denton put the glass down on the mantel and rubbed his forehead. He found that he cared what Maltby thought. Why was that? ‘I’m sorry. Something happened.’ He flashed a rueful smile. ‘It isn’t you.’ He pulled the bell, which he normally hated to do, hated the idea of summoning a human being with a bell. Atkins appeared at the top of his own stairs as if he’d been waiting. Denton said as gently as he could manage, ‘Please pack up my things. I’m going back to Naples tonight.’
Atkins looked at him, waited for three seconds as if hoping for more instructions, and went up the stairs towards Denton’s bedroom.
Thinking aloud, Denton said, ‘I’ll have to send a note to Lord Easleigh to tell him I’m not coming.’ He looked at Maltby, said, ‘I was supposed to see Lord Easleigh this afternoon. Waste of time.’ He turned away. ‘Most things are a waste of time.’ He took a sip of the whisky, rubbed his forehead again. ‘You wanted to see me.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It must matter, or you wouldn’t have written.’
‘I, uh—it’s nothing. Just a little thing. You’ve got other things on your mind.’
Denton laughed unpleasantly. ‘You could say that. Well, I’d like to get those things off my mind. I hear you’re joining the police.’
‘Yes. That was one of the things I wanted to tell you. To express my thanks.’
Denton waved a hand without looking at him.
‘I’m taking a course at University College in criminal law. Sitting in, that is. Came in too late to take the whole course, but they’re letting me sit in. Thought it might…’ His voice ran down; he forced it into life again. ‘Help me.’
‘Good idea. Shows the right spirit.’ Denton turned towards him. His own face, he knew, was probably frightening; certainly, Maltby looked frightened. ‘You’ll make a good copper.’
Maltby flushed, shook his head. He hesitated, looked at Denton again. ‘The other thing…’
‘Yes?’
‘It isn’t anything much, maybe nothing, but I thought you’d be…’ Again his voice ran down. This time, he hardly managed to drag it back to a whisper. ‘Interested.’
Denton sipped the whisky. He was trying to drive Janet out of his mind. He had thought Maltby could help, but Maltby was being no more distracting than Atkins, who was bumping about softly in the bedroom overhead. He said wearily, ‘I’m interested, yes, tell me.’
‘It’s about that private detective. Cherry?’
Denton had to think about who Cherry was. All of that seemed so distant. Like people he had known in his childhood. Cherry. Yes. And the old man and DiNapoli. That name caused him a twinge of shame. ‘Yes. Cherry?’
‘Well, you remember that Dago poof from the Carabinieri? Donati? Rather childish ass, very full of himself—’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Well, you’ll remember I caught him stealing from the private detective’s case. He took one of his glass phials and some of his bloodstain fluid. I told you at the time—when we were in the house—’
‘I remember.’ He controlled his irritation. Maltby was proving a trial.
‘Well, I just had a letter from him—Donati. It came by way of the consulate. I suppose he was trying to butter me up so’s I wouldn’t tell anybody what he’d done. As if I would. He’s had Cherry’s fluid analysed and he shared the results with me—because, he said, he thought the British authorities should know the facts. The long and the short of it is, Cherry’s fluid is no good.’
Denton raised his head. Finally, Maltby had got to him. Janet receded.
‘That’s what the analysis showed—the claim that he could find hidden bloodstains just isn’t in it. Imagine! Unless somehow he believed it himself. People are remarkable when it comes to their own hobby-horses. He was convincing, I thought. Didn’t you? It just shows you what sort of world it is. He seemed such a respectable sort of fellow—rather low-class and certainly uncultured, but trustworthy, didn’t you think? And why would he invite us all to see something that’s no good? Why such a show?’
‘How does Donati know it was no good?’
‘He had the fluid analysed. I told you. He says it’s nothing but a mixture of water and common vinegar and permanganate something-or-other. Donati said his people tried it on bloodstains and it did nothing. Nothing. They did some sort of analysis in a laboratory; I don’t understand that stuff, couldn’t stand chemistry except for the set I got once for Christmas, then it was fun making smells and so on, but I didn’t know what I was doing. Donati says you could make the foamy reaction if you poured the fluid on common soda, but they couldn’t make anything turn pink with it. The only way it could be done, according to Donati, who has a very cynical mind, I think, is if you performed some sort of sleight of hand and sprinkled soda and a bit of red dye where you poured the fluid, but I’m sure Cherry didn’t do that because we were watching the whole time. Weren’t we?’
Janet had vanished. Denton was staring at Maltby as if he meant to kill him. ‘If Cherry’s fluid was a sham, there weren’t any bloodstains on the stairs!’
‘Well, exactly. What a cheap trick—just, suppose, to inflate our idea of him. I expect people to behave honourably, but really—’
But Denton had walked away from him and was rattling the hook of the telephone that leaned from the wall next to the dumb-waiter. He shouted a number into the mouthpiece and then pointed at Maltby and bellowed, ‘Don’t you go away!’
Denton waited. He fidgeted. He pounded twice on the wall. A rough voice shouted from the earpiece, ‘CID, Plackett here!’
‘Give me Munro! Inspector Munro! Can you hear me?’
‘They can hear you in bloody China.’ Denton heard the voice calling for Munro. He pictured the big, noisy, swirling CID room, Munro’s desk at the far end from the telephones. The first voice said, ‘Coming,’ and then he waited some more, and then Munro was there, sounding irritated.
‘Well?’
‘That man, Cherry. You said you’d check again with Birmingham—’
‘Well, I haven’t. Don’t get your dander up; there’s other cases than yours. And lots more important.’
Denton’s anger flared, displaced from Janet to Munro. He stepped back from it, made himself at least seem quiet. ‘What about the death in the underground? I sent you the details.’
‘Nothing yet. No time, Denton. Cripes, man, it’s only been hours.’
‘Right. Well, anything you hear—’
‘Right, right—when I’ve a minute—you’re in a long queue.’
When Denton turned from the telephone, Atkins was coming down with his bag. Atkins said, ‘Lower hall?’
‘Yes. Atkins!’
‘Sir?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you. It was…her.’
‘I know that, sir.’ But he didn’t seem mollified.
Denton strode back to Maltby, who started to say something, but Denton stopped him by putting a finger in his face. ‘If Cherry’s fluid was a try-on, then so was Cherry himself.’
‘Oh, but, see here—’
But Denton wasn’t listening. He went to the mantel and addressed the amber fluid in the glass that sat there. ‘If Cherry’s a sell, then what was the plan? To make it appear that the old man had hit his head as he fell? Where does that get us?’
‘I thought all this was over and done with.’
‘Where it gets us is that if he fell and rolled or bounced like a ball, then he probably wasn’t thrown. But either way, there wasn’t a lot of blood. Even Cherry’s magic liquid couldn’t produce a lot of blood.’ Denton looked at his watch. ‘What are you doing from now until four o’clock?’
‘Oh.’ Maltby shrugged. He looked embarrassed. ‘I often walk about at this time. Look at the shops. Things.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t have many friends yet in London.’
‘Good. You up to spending two hours with me?’
‘Oh.’ Maltby blushed, apparently with pleasure, or at least satisfaction. ‘Where are we going?’
‘The Albany.’ Denton picked the glass from the mantel and threw the contents into the grate. He put the glass down and went to the box that held his ancient derringer, took it out and put it into his jacket pocket; it felt comfortable there after weeks of absence. ‘Wait here.’
He went down the stairs to Atkins’ quarters, calling ahead because he knew he was going where he wasn’t much wanted. Rupert appeared, then Atkins; neither looked pleased.
‘I’m going out.’ That at least didn’t seem to displease Atkins. ‘How are you fixed for a soft cap and an old scarf?’
‘What’s on, General?’
‘Going to a masquerade.’
Atkins eyed him. He pushed out his lips as if he were going to kiss something—not Denton—and raised his eyebrows and went into his sitting room. ‘Have a seat.’ He disappeared, Rupert behind him. Minutes later, he was back with a small Gladstone bag, much scuffed. ‘Sending this stuff to the Salvation Army, but you’re welcome to go through it. Please don’t throw any of it out.’
‘Sorry about all that. She—’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘No, it’s better you know. She made it pretty clear we’re… She didn’t want me around.’
‘Figured it was something like that. Nevertheless, you don’t want to go off the handle, General.’
‘I already have.’
He was going through the handbag. He selected a cloth cap and a stained trilby. ‘No scarf.’
‘I ain’t the Old Curiosity Shop. What’s wrong with your own?’
‘Oh, but mine would be. Flattering.’ Atkins went to his bedroom and came back with a length of dark cloth that hung from his hand like a dead snake. ‘Ratty enough?’
‘It’ll have to be.’
‘Rupert likes to chew on it. Might smell a bit doggy.’
Denton took it and thanked him and started for the stairs. Atkins said, ‘General?’
‘Well?’
‘She’s one in ten thousand.’
He stopped. ‘Not today, she isn’t.’ He went on up.
He draped the scarf around Maltby’s neck and put the cloth cap on his head, which Maltby ducked to escape, but Denton insisted. He tucked the ends of the scarf into Maltby’s jacket. ‘Cigarette,’ he said.
‘I don’t indulge. Very bad for the wind.’
Denton got a cigarette from a box on his table and broke it in half and stuck an end in Maltby’s mouth. He stepped back. ‘Slouch.’
‘What?’
‘Slouch. Look unhappy.’
This was never hard for Maltby. Denton looked him over. ‘You’ll do.’ He went upstairs and got one of his own old overcoats. ‘Put that stuff in your pockets for now. Don’t lose the cigarette.’
‘What’s all this about?’
‘The game’s afoot, as our pal Cherry put it.’
They watched the two entrances of the Albany for more than an hour, Denton at a peephole behind a first-storey window on Piccadilly, and Maltby in the less likely Burlington Gardens. Maltby had been put in the shadow of a pillar by an empty house where a leafless plane tree gave a little cover; he was wearing the cap and scarf and half-cigarette. He objected that he was sure he looked foolish.
‘You’re practising police work, aren’t you? Think of yourself as an undercover narc. Hop to it.’
Denton had tried moving back and forth between the entrance to Burlington Arcade and the Albany wearing Atkins’ old hat and his own old overcoat. Policemen twice tried to move him on, but each time he took them to the art dealer Geddys in the Arcade and got his assurance that Denton was a respectable person. After the second time, the always irascible Geddys said he was tired of Denton’s bothering him.
‘“Allus movin’ on,”’ Denton said.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the police keep bringing me to you, not my choice.’
It was then that Geddys telephoned a friend across Piccadilly and got permission for Denton to sit on a hard chair behind the little door that allowed a tailor to put examples of his work—best gentlemen’s suitings, by appointment—on display one storey above the street.
When they were only ten minutes away from the appointment with Lord Easleigh, Denton walked around to Burlington Gardens and told Maltby to pack it in.
‘But I just saw him. I couldn’t leave my post to tell you, but I saw him—Cherry!’
‘He didn’t recognise you? What did he look like?’
‘Like somebody’s gent’s gent—black jacket, striped pants, bowler. He went into the Albany and he hasn’t come out. Not my way, anyway.’
Denton took off Maltby’s cap and scarf and dropped the cigarette in the gutter, then led the way to Geddys’ shop, where they had left their own outer clothes. Geddys—small-goateed, twist-backed—gave one of his malevolent looks when Denton said he wanted to leave the soft cap and other old clothes there.
‘This isn’t a rubbish tip; it’s an art shop!’
‘I told you, if you accommodated us, I’d let you buy my Scottish cows at a good price.’
‘They’re a drug on the market.’
‘Maybe I’ll give you the cows.’
As they walked down Piccadilly towards the front entrance to the Albany, Maltby said, ‘I saw you put a gun in your pocket. Is there going to be trouble?’
‘Habit. I’m not looking for trouble, if that’s what you mean.’ He glanced at the young man’s puckered face. ‘If you want to get out of it, now’s the time.’
The old man who served as Cerberus at the main gate to the Albany was the same one whom Denton remembered from a couple of years before. He didn’t remember Denton. He checked a list and said that, yes, Lord Easleigh was expecting him, but not the other gentleman, so would they please both sign the book? Denton, who had seen at least a dozen people go by the old man’s booth while he apparently napped, said nothing.
Inside, Maltby said, ‘Funny place.’
‘Very tony. Doesn’t look it, I know, but it is. Men only.’ He thought bitterly that it might suit him now. ‘Not a block of flats at all—more like a small street.’
Maltby said, ‘Undercover work is boring.’
‘The better crime novelists don’t tell you about that part.’
Number 12C was on the second floor of a small detached building. Denton went ahead. At the top of the stairs, he murmured to Maltby, ‘Let me do the talking.’
‘You already told me!’
‘No inventions—no inspirations. Just think of yourself as a plodding, silent, apprentice copper. And witness.’
He twisted the bell set into the middle of the door. Almost too quickly, the door opened, apparently pulled with a lot of force from inside. The young Lord Easleigh himself appeared in the opening, mouth open, face rather red. He wore a somewhat startling afternoon suit of a blue that Atkins wouldn’t have approved. His long hair, ringletted, hung almost to his shoulders. He looked about fourteen.
‘Mr Denton, to see Lord Easleigh.’
‘Phh! Oh, of course. I’m Paul Murie—Easleigh, that is. My man is off today. Answering the door myself. Rather—rather…’ He seemed unable to say rather what.
Denton was studying the face, trying to find the black-and-white image in Spina’s photograph. Was it really the same? Maybe, from a certain angle…
‘This is my friend, Mr Maltby. He’s on leave from the Naples consulate. I thought you might like to chat with him, too. He made the arrangements for you, I think—’ Denton was moving them into the flat, Easleigh backing away from him as if being pushed by an invisible wave that Denton threw up in front of himself.
‘Oh, yes—ah—yes…’ Easleigh managed to free himself by turning around and striding ahead into a sitting room. ‘I’ve just moved in. Not finished—rather a mess, in fact. I’m thinking of having a cosy corner over there…’ His voice trailed off. He was gesturing towards a corner where several pasteboard boxes were piled.
Otherwise, the sitting room was crowded with new-looking furniture of the heavy, machine-carved sort that filled middle-class houses all over England. Denton was thinking again that Easleigh was very young, also that he was not very lordly. His accent was the same as Cherry’s, indubitably Brum; he was a too-young, middle-class kid snatched from the jaws of respectability by the accident of inheritance.
‘An Oriental cosy corner,’ the very young man said. He now seemed to see Maltby for the first time and, after staring at him for a second or two, shot out a hand. ‘I’m Easleigh.’ His earlier nervousness was somewhat damped. ‘Thanks for taking care of things in Naples.’
Maltby shook his hand, muttered something about it’s being his job.
‘Still, good of you. Awful good.’ He reddened. ‘Awfully good.’ He looked around the room as if somebody with more experience and better manners might be there to tell him what to do next. ‘Shall we sit down?’ He seemed uncertain where, although the room had chairs for at least a dozen.
‘Yes, please. Good.’
They all sat. Denton took his time looking around. ‘Very pleasant room.’ In fact he thought it was one of the ugliest places he’d ever been in. He saw a fireplace, three doors stained almost black, a blizzard of framed photographs and chromos that almost managed to hide the chintz-patterned red and brown wallpaper, and a melodeon that rose up one wall like a siege engine. ‘Do you play?’ Denton said.
‘What? Oh, that. No.’ Easleigh was very red again. ‘But I mean to learn.’ After a silence, he said to Maltby, ‘You like music?’
Maltby looked at Denton as if asking permission to speak and muttered, ‘Not so much.’
Easleigh crossed, uncrossed and recrossed his legs the other way. ‘Me neither.’ Again, he looked around. ‘I suppose I could offer you some sherry…’
Denton had been wondering how long the young man could go on thinking of things to say. The answer seemed to be that he couldn’t go on much longer: his silences were getting thicker. This suited Denton; on the other hand, he’d have to come to business before Easleigh got silent for so long that he threw them out. Or would he never have the courage to do that? Denton said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to ask us about your cousin.’
Easleigh looked dumbstruck.
‘The fifth Lord Easleigh. Your predecessor.’
‘Oh. Um. Ye-e-e-s, well…’
A silence fell. From another room, a thud came, as if a shoe had been dropped. Easleigh jerked and said too loudly, ‘The moving man! Still moving me in. Clumsy fellows.’
Denton waited for another thud but nothing came. He said, ‘Mr Maltby could tell you about the investigator you sent to Naples, for example.’
Easleigh, mouth open, stared at him. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘You hired him.’
‘Yes.’ He jerked upright again and said, as if suddenly in a hurry, ‘I hired him in Birmingham before I moved down here. He came very highly recommended, a former member of the Brum police. First-class fellow. Up-to-date methods. I thought it wise to have my own investigation done because of the reputation of the Naples police.’ The last sentence seemed to come from something long memorised, like the phrases mouthed by a politician after too long on the stump.
‘We admired his work. Didn’t we, Maltby.’
‘Everybody did. First-rate.’
Easleigh tried to smile. He seemed relieved but stayed bright red. ‘Yes, first-rate.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He set your mind at rest, then, Mr Denton.’
‘My mind?’
‘You expressed doubts. Mr Maltby said so in his report, which was sent to me.’
‘Oh, those doubts. Yes, of course. Set at rest, yes, of course.’
‘Oh, good. Good.’ Easleigh managed to smile. He looked at a hideous ormolu clock that sat on the mantel like a toad. ‘I have to go out by and by…’
‘Yes, and we must be going soon. Soon.’ Denton smiled at him. Easleigh’s eyes swivelled away and swung here and there as if they had slipped their moorings. ‘Anything else we can tell you?’
‘No… No…’ Easleigh uncrossed his legs and, after another look at the clock, planted his feet as if he meant to stand.
‘Have you ever been to Naples yourself, Lord Easleigh?’
‘Me? No!’ Easleigh lay back in his chair, then slumped and looked from Denton to Maltby and back.
‘I thought you might have been. Having a relative there.’
‘I was in school!’
‘On holiday, I meant.’
‘No! We didn’t know him at all. He never wrote. Out of touch. No, I’ve never been out of England. Hardly out of Brum. Ever.’
‘But Mr Cherry had been there before?’
‘Cherry?’
‘The investigator.’
‘Why would you think a thing like that?’
‘I thought you might have hired him because of prior experience.’
‘I didn’t. I mean, I did, but in England. No, he’d never been there. He told me. He said it was an awful place. He couldn’t wait to get back. Why would you ever think he’d been down there at all?’
Denton took Spina’s photograph from an inner pocket of his suit jacket and offered it to the young man. ‘This photograph seems to show both you and Mr Cherry in Naples. We know it’s Naples because of the castle in the background—rather a landmark. You probably remember having it taken.’
The young man’s voice became a shriek. ‘I don’t! I was never there!’ A terrible look took hold of his face, haunted and fearful. He turned his head a fraction, and Denton suddenly had a dizzying sense of recognition, as if a moment from a dream had flashed on his consciousness. This was not dream, however, but memory: a young man in near-darkness, that same turn of the head and, although the face was obscured, somehow the same expression. Where had it been? And then he remembered: the first night he had gone to Fra Geraldo’s, the night that he had found the old man’s body, he had stopped in the darkness of a vico to ask directions, and he had been aware of somebody young in the shadows.
And then another memory emerged more sluggishly, like some amphibian hauling itself from the ooze. He had asked directions from a man while the young one waited. He had thought the man was somebody from the street. And of course the man had in fact been Cherry.
Shaken, Denton said huskily, ‘I’m afraid you were there. I saw you. And you saw me.’
‘No, I didn’t—I didn’t—!’ The boy began to weep.
Denton raised his voice. ‘And you saw me, too, Mr Cherry!’
Maltby looked utterly flummoxed. Easleigh’s half-stifled sobs went on. A footstep sounded from beyond one of the doors and then the door opened, and Cherry came in. He was smiling hugely. He was wearing a valet’s clothes—alpaca jacket, dark waistcoat, grey trousers—and he was carrying a tray covered with a white cloth and several dishes.
‘Here we are, then, here we are! I was out. Did you offer the gentlemen sherry, my lord? Sherry—did you?’
The boy snuffled back his tears, nodded.
‘And what did they say? I don’t see any sherry glasses put out. Did you gentlemen want sherry?’
Maltby managed to say no and then burst out with, ‘You’re not a detective at all!’
‘Oh, but I am, sir. The same Joe Cherry, ex of the Brum police, been a private tec these several years. When His Lordship here ascended to the title, as it were, his father thought it best to get him some protection, so I was taken on. The role of val-it suits, you see—a kind of disguise. But I couldn’t introduce myself that way in Naples, could I—how’d it have seemed if I’d said, “I’m His Lordship’s val-it, come to investigate the poor old man’s death?”’
He smiled at them. Denton said, ‘You’re a sham, Cherry. You’re no more a detective than I am. Your fluid for finding bloodstains was a dodge—it wouldn’t find bloodstains in a slaughterhouse.’
Cherry was standing by a hideous sideboard; he had opened a drawer and was taking out small rectangles of white cloth. ‘I thought you gentlemen would need serviettes.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘Why ever would you think that solution, which you saw show up bloodstains with your own eyes, wasn’t what I said it was?’
Maltby jumped in ahead of Denton. ‘Donati had it analysed! It’s water and vinegar and stuff.’
Denton said, ‘I saw you the night you two killed the old man.’
The boy shrieked, ‘I didn’t!’
‘The two of you threw him down the stairs! But he was already dead, wasn’t he, Cherry? Or should I say Signore diToledano?’
Cherry’s smile lost its force but lingered. ‘You made that up, about seeing us. We was never there.’
‘I’ve a photograph that shows both of you.’
‘For certain, sir? Absolute identification? I don’t think that can be. Well, I know it can’t be, don’t I, because we wasn’t there.’ His smile reasserted itself.
‘It’s the photo next to His Lordship. You’re welcome to look at it.’ Denton reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and took out one of the photographs of the chapel. ‘That’s you, too. As a kid. I’ve got a witness who can identify you in that one. Michele wasn’t the only one of the choirboys still around. And the photographer will identify you in the other one, and that will place you in Naples at the right time.’
‘Cock and bull. One of your romances, if you don’t mind me saying so, Mr Denton.’
‘This boy won’t last half an hour in a police room, Cherry. They’ll break him like a cheap toothpick.’
Cherry finished what he had been transferring from the drawer to the tray. He looked at the new Lord Easleigh. He nodded once, apparently to himself. His right hand, which had been doing something in the drawer, came out with a shiny revolver. He said, ‘You’re fly, Mr Denton—cuter than I thought.’ He jerked a hand towards the boy, the gesture suddenly violent and rude. ‘Denton’s got a gun in his side pocket. Get it!’
‘He won’t live to tell the tale if he tries,’ Denton said.
‘You move so much as a pinky and I’ll shoot your thick friend.’ Cherry-diToledano pointed the pistol at Maltby and took a step towards him. ‘I mean it.’
‘A shot will bring half of London.’
‘My arse. You could shoot off six-pounders in here and nobody’d twig. It’s live and let live in this poof alley.’ His voice became harsh. ‘Get the gun!’ he shouted at the boy, and Denton saw who the real master was.
Easleigh sidled towards him as if Denton were a dog that might bite. Denton looked at Maltby, who was looking into the barrel of Cherry’s pistol. Cherry could hardly miss at that distance; Denton would then have time to charge at him, he thought, but the derringer would be deep in his pocket and might snag on the lining. Cherry might even have time to shoot Maltby and then get one shot at Denton; the idea didn’t dismay him, especially because he thought that Cherry’s pistol was a cheap .22 calibre of the kind made for cyclists. They were turned out by the thousands in Belgium, larded with fake engraving, probably less accurate than his derringer at anything more than five feet. Denton didn’t fancy getting shot, however, even with a .22, although he knew from his experience in the American West that one shot from a .22 wouldn’t put a big man. Although it would hurt like hell.
‘Get his pistol!’ Cherry shouted again, and he took another half-step towards Maltby; he was now in a good spot to shoot Maltby in an eye.
Denton raised his right arm and allowed the boy’s trembling hand to slide into his jacket pocket. A few seconds later, he felt the weight of the derringer leave his side.
‘Give it me,’ Cherry growled.
Instead, Easleigh looked at the thing in his shaking fingers. He held it in both hands, then laboriously pulled back both hammers. Denton heard the click. He said, ‘There’s no safety on that thing; be careful.’
‘Shut your mouth,’ Cherry said. ‘I’m sick of you.’
‘How did you kill him? You broke his neck, didn’t you?’
‘The both of us, yes.’
‘I didn’t!’ the boy cried.
Cherry laughed. ‘You held him while I twisted, boy; to the law, you might as well of done it all yourself. Give me that gun.’
‘But you killed Harold Northcote by yourself,’ Denton said.
‘Cousin Harry?’ the boy squealed. ‘He didn’t!’
‘I think he did.’ He looked at the older man. ‘You pushed him in front of the underground train, didn’t you?’
Cherry shook his head. ‘Fly, very fly. You should of stayed out of it, Denton. Now it’ll cost you and your chick your last breath.’
The boy was agitated. ‘You never said anything about Cousin Harry,’ he cried. He looked at Denton. ‘Harry was killed in the underground.’
‘And then Cherry came to you and said you could be the new Lord Easleigh with just one more push.’
Cherry laughed again. ‘Me, was it! Yes, I come to him, but he was the one would do anything to get out of Brum! He was the one that said it wasn’t fair for an old fart to go on living while he wanted to live!’
‘I didn’t—I didn’t—’
‘You did, you sad little squit. You’d have sold your soul for ten quid if anybody’d offered.’ He looked at Denton. ‘He even had half a scheme for topping Mum and Dad, only he hadn’t the spunk. If I hadn’t dropped into his life, he’d still be rubbing himself up in the jakes and drinking his ma’s eau de colo-nee for his idea of a spree.’ He turned his head towards the boy. ‘You’re a useless little nit, ain’t you, my lord?’
‘You ruined my life,’ the boy moaned.
‘Yes, I did, and good on me! Because now I’m getting some of my own back for what was done to me. For my use, you’ll do just as well as him. I’ve been a long time about it, but I’ve got Lord Easleigh by the balls, and you’re going to lick my tool and let me up your arse just the way he did me.’ His eyes shifted to Denton. ‘And you ain’t going to stop me, Texas Jack.’
Denton heard a roar of outrage and saw Maltby charge. Cherry’s gun went off; then a howl of pain and another gunshot came at almost the same time and both Maltby and Cherry were down, and the thick, acrid smoke of black powder spread in the room. Easleigh was standing with the derringer stuck out in front of him, his eyes wide, smoke lingering at the end of one of the short barrels.
Denton leaped across the room and kicked Cherry, who was down on his right elbow and forearm, blood staining his white shirt high up near the right side of his neck. He went down on his back and tried to raise the little pistol; Denton whacked it aside with his left hand, then twisted it from his fingers as another shot from it ripped into a wall.
Denton turned to Maltby, who was sitting with his back against a chair. He had spread his right hand over his chest as if he were about to take an oath. His eyes met Denton’s. He looked surprised and insulted. The bullet had hit him somewhere up near the collarbone.
The young Lord Easleigh screamed, ‘He ruined my life.’
Denton looked up. The young man still had the derringer. He was pointing it at Cherry, and as Denton watched, he took a step to move closer, raising the derringer as he moved. Unlike the .22, the derringer fired a big slug of metal, and another bullet from it might kill Cherry.
Denton wanted Cherry to live. He said, rising, ‘Don’t do it, boy.’
‘He’s trash. He’s a criminal.’ He raised the little gun.
Denton moved almost between them, the .22 visible but not pointing at him. ‘Don’t do it. If you do, I’ll have to shoot you. Leave him for the police.’
‘No! No—he’s evil, he’s bad. I’m going to hang because of him. Because of him!’
‘No. You’re young—a good lawyer—’ He stepped right between them. If Easleigh fired now, he’d hit Denton. Denton held out his hand. ‘Give me the gun.’
The boy stared at him. His face was contorted with fear and with something that might have been triumph. He almost whispered, ‘There’s nothing left.’ He raised his voice again to a cry of pain. ‘He ruined my life!’ He put the muzzle against his chest, and Denton was not fast enough to stop him from pulling the trigger. He touched the wrist as the gun went off; the boy’s hand slammed against his fingers, and black smoke billowed back as if it had been exhaled from the falling body, and then Easleigh was on his back. Denton leaned forward. Easleigh went into sudden convulsions. His legs kicked; his back arched. Blood spurted from his chest, then fell to swelling right above his heart. Denton heard the boy’s feet thumping on the floor.
‘Help! Help!’ Denton had his head out a window. ‘Police! There’s been a shooting!’ He looked down through the bare branches of a tree. An elderly man with a dog was looking up at him angrily. ‘Get a policeman! There’s been a shooting!’
‘In the Albany?’
‘Please—a policeman. And a doctor. A man’s dying.’ Farther off, a young man was running towards them. A window came up across the lane. Denton shouted again, ‘Police! A shooting!’ and the elderly man tried to hurry in one direction as the younger one sprinted off in another.
Denton looked down at Maltby. Cold air poured in through the open window. Maltby looked up at him with that same affronted expression he so often wore. He took his hand away from his wound and looked at the blood on it, then up at Denton again.
‘This is my best suit.’
The noise in the CID room was muted because the hour was late. The shootings at the Albany had engaged, even amused, the detectives for part of the afternoon; now, most of them had gone off to a last duty or the pub or home. Munro, who looked as if he wanted to be heading home himself and who should have been, was still at his desk, Denton opposite him.
‘The boy died. He was alive when they got him to hospital, but the medicos couldn’t save him. Sorry.’
Denton, slumped in a hard chair with his hands in his trousers pockets, tried to shrug. ‘He said his life was ruined. Kids are damned stupid.’ He had been two hours at Division, explaining over and over what had happened.
‘He’d have got at most a year or two. Get him a good barrister—he’d inherited some money, hadn’t he?—he’d have been all right.’
‘At seventeen, you don’t see it that way. “Life” means the next six months.’
Munro made a sound that might have been agreement. He put the paper aside. ‘You’re satisfied this “Cherry” is one of the kids who sang in Naples?’
‘Edouardo diToledano.’
Munro nodded. ‘I got on to Birmingham by phone and gave them that name. Waiting to hear from them.’
Munro was looking at a pencilled sheet somebody had brought him. ‘As right as you or me. A .22 up high, they took the slug out like you’d pick a gooseberry—it was right there against the bone. Cracked the bone, of course.’
‘We knew that much at three o’clock.’
‘Well, nobody’s shot him again since. He’ll be fine. Sort of thing looks good on the police application—“Victim of shooting while trying to prevent a crime”. We may have to give him a medal.’
‘I’ll go see him. It could be argued that he saved my life.’
‘You mean you could have done it better without him.’
Denton shook his head. ‘I mean I’d rather have taken that chance myself. He’s just a kid.’ He eyed Munro from under his brows. ‘Make a good cop, Munro.’
Munro folded his arms and sighed. ‘I’d be home now if this hadn’t happened. It’d been a quiet day until I was told there’d been a shooting at the Albany. Then I find it’s three shootings. Then I find it’s you.’ He swivelled his neck and arched his back to stretch it. ‘I suppose I’ll get stuck with telling the Naples coppers about it. Lot of fun that’ll be, trying to explain it to a crowd of Dagos.’
‘Just the same fun it’ll be for them, trying to understand you.’ Denton looked moodily into the nearly empty room; his thoughts were turning again to Janet and his anger. ‘That boy’s room looked like the last act of Hamlet. At least nobody wanted to charge me with the shootings.’
‘Actually, they thought about it. It was your derringer, after all. And you admitted to having the .22 in your pocket when the coppers arrived. However, you seem to have weaselled your way out of it.’
‘I didn’t even have to call my solicitor this time. The law is a wondrous thing.’
They sat in silence for a long minute. Munro said, ‘You interested in supper? It’s going to be a long evening.’
‘I think I’d best go home. There are some things that—’
A telephone rang at the far end of the room. Both men waited. Somebody shouted Munro’s name and he got up, saying in a satisfied tone, ‘About time.’ He went off. Denton stared at his own boots. He would go home, he thought, and, painful as it would be, confront Janet. She had to be made to understand that she had wronged him. Humiliated him, although that was the least of it. She done him wrong. They had been going wrong for months; he had fooled himself into believing that they hadn’t. The fault was his as well as hers, but what had happened at the church was unforgivable; if it meant the end of their relationship, then—
‘The boys in Brum.’ Munro was falling back into his chair. ‘They actually got off their arses and did something. Sent a detective, an actual detective and not a bluecoat, out to see the real J. Cherry. Turns out Cherry collared an Edward diToledano twenty-two years ago for assault and robbery. DiToledano had almost killed a householder with a bludgeon. Brum jury took that seriously. Twenty years’ hard labour, reduced to seventeen and a bit for being a good lad. Maybe explains how Cherry speaks English with a Brum accent.’
‘How’d he get to Birmingham?’
‘No idea. Coppers are checking. Maybe we’ll find out from the man himself—he’s got a hole in his side, but it isn’t mortal. All doped with morphine at the moment.’
‘He’ll hang.’
‘He will if we can lay the steam underground death to his account, but unless he admits it—which he won’t—I doubt we’ll even go to court with it. I’ve got somebody checking to see if he was one of the witnesses, maybe used a different name. He must have been right there if he pushed the chap off the platform. From what you say, he has the ballocks to’ve given information that it was an accident and he saw the whole thing.’
‘He’ll hang in Italy if not here.’
‘Let’s hope so. But it’s a God-awful process, them being foreigners. You sure you have him dead to rights on the old man’s death?’
‘It’s one thing to be sure, and another to have proof.’
‘I saw the two of them the night they did it. It was dark; and defence counsel would make hash of it, maybe, but it’s a point. Second, there’s Spina, the photographer; he’ll remember Cherry. Third, there’s the cock-and-bull story of him being a detective and showing us his chemical, which was a complete swindle. Then there’s the morgue doctor, who would testify that the old man’s neck was broken with a twisting motion, and the lack of blood that points to him being dead when he went down the stairs. And finally, there’s me and Maltby, who heard Cherry as much as admit he and the boy murdered the old man.’
‘“As much as”.’
Denton dismissed the scepticism with an angry hand. ‘Once they’ve searched Easleigh’s flat, they’ll come up with more. I think there’ll be a photo showing Cherry and the boy in Naples—in the photo I had, it looks as if Cherry is pointing towards the photographer. I think he was dragging Easleigh along to have their picture taken together. He wanted it as proof they’d been there. More power over the kid.’
‘Self-incrimination?’
‘I don’t think he cared about that. He cared about making the boy helpless. The way he’d been helpless. It’s all about revenge, Munro. It’s Naples—when you’re helpless, the only justice you believe in is revenge. My guess is that if he could have, he’d have cut the old man’s cock and balls off and stuffed them into his mouth after he killed him, but they weren’t there to be cut off.’
‘Forty-five years is a long time to bear a grudge.’
‘As the old man wrote in his diary—his diary of his sins and his penitence—“It is a carnal sin to take childhood away from a child”. That’s what he’d done to diToledano. And to that poor drunken bastard Michele, who was also killed by diToledano, I suppose, but they’ll never prove it. Or give a damn.’
He uncoiled himself from the chair and stood, moving as if his weight had doubled, as perhaps it had: he was heavy with anger and hurt and the anticipation of what would happen with Janet. ‘I’m heading home.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Denton’s house felt cold and alien. His suitcase waited inside the front door, as if the house wanted him gone; over it, Atkins had draped an overcoat and placed a hat that he judged, Denton supposed, proper for travelling.
Denton called to Atkins. The cold house’s silence announced its emptiness. He looked at his watch. If he was to catch his train for Paris, he should leave.
He went upstairs and, still wearing his overcoat, went to his bedroom; there, as he expected, were fresh clothes laid out for the journey. Denton looked at them, touched them as if they were objects he didn’t understand, perhaps gifts from the so far hidden residents of the house. He looked at his watch again. He went down to Atkins’ floor, where Rupert, taking up most of the little sitting room by lying on his side, raised his head, looked at him and dropped his head again with an audible thud. Denton stepped over him and went out into the back garden, then across it to the door in the garden wall. The door was locked. He had no key: that had been their arrangement.
His rage flared again and he raced through his house and, hatless, out to the pavement and around and up her street, took her front steps two at a time and pounded on the door. Only a dim light was burning inside, something from an inner room. He leaned back and looked up, could see no lights on the floors above. He pounded on the door again.
‘Nobody home,’ a voice said from below. Denton looked over the railing. A one-eyed face looked up at him, light flooding from a door behind him.
‘Cohan!’ It was the former boxer who lived down there with his wife.
‘Oh, it’s you. Thought you’d gone off to Italy.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Gone.’ The eye looked up at him. As if grudging the information, Cohan said, ‘She didn’t say where. Not sure she knew where. She was here for maybe an hour, but she went away.’
‘When?’
‘Late in the afternoon.’
Denton swore and screwed his body around to put his watch in the light. She had been gone for several hours. He said, ‘Let me in.’ The eye looked at him, thought about it, disappeared. A full minute later, the front door opened. He went through her house in a kind of frenzy, found everything there except, he thought, her most severe clothes, the clothes she wore for business, for the university. The gaudy dresses she wore at home were still in her closet. Nothing that she might have cared for—books, music, mementoes—was missing. If she were truly gone, she had taken nothing of herself, of the self that he knew. As if, perhaps, leaving him, she had left part of herself as well.
He ran out of the house and got a horse cab to Westerley Street. The house there was locked, the curtains drawn. Black crape hung on the door. In a downstairs window was a sign: To Let. He knocked and knocked.
Nothing.
He found another cab and went back to her house and wandered through it and thought he was going to do something terrible and stupid, throw something down the stairs or put a fist through a window or a wall. His earlier rage had rotted into something softer and self-pitying. He tried to play a few notes on her piano, walked again, stopped at a window with his face in his hands. Scenarios of the future without her careened through his mind: back to casual affairs or the whorehouse, long bouts of loneliness and inertia, back to heavy drinking. He would sell his house, maybe go back to America. Or he would go looking for her. Or he would give up writing and lose himself in exhausting work. Farming again.
He looked at his watch. He had missed the boat train.
His mood changed again, still black but now angry again.
It was all a way of saying, How could she do this to me? He said it to himself in each of the rooms, and at last he heard the me. It made him croak out a laugh. The great me. It made him groan; it made him ashamed; it made him feel weak in the knees. If this was all about me, what was all that shit about love? He wasn’t nineteen: love wasn’t a search for a mirror.
It was as if the end of love affected only one of two. Yet she must be feeling something, too: relief, misery, joy, along with the grief over Ruth Castle, which must be entirely real and perhaps all-encompassing. He had to face the likelihood—no, the fact; he had been confronted with it for days—that she loved Ruth Castle. Perhaps her great me was being entirely spent on grief. Perhaps she felt nothing for him yet. And when she did?
He sat at her desk, surrounded with the neatly arranged residue of her university life—books, papers, pens, her inkwell. One pen lay at an angle, as if it had been thrown aside. The cover of the inkwell was open. One pigeonhole in the rank above the writing surface looked untidy, writing paper from which a sheet or sheets had been pulled, drawing out others an inch. He looked to see what she had been doing, found nothing, and looked in the wastebasket on the floor. A crumpled paper, balled small as if in anger, lay there.
He opened the paper on the desk’s green leather surface.
It was a letter—to him.
‘I am leaving you—when you read this, I shall be gone. I can’t bear the weight of what you call your love for me any more. I do not want to be loved. I want to be somewhere by myself and look at a different world.
‘I know you will be hurt by this—and this is part of the burden of being loved. I don’t want to be able to hurt you. You or anybody.
‘For God’s sake find yourself some woman who wants your love. Barring that, find yourself a whore who is a better liar than I am.’
She hadn’t signed her name. Nor had she sent it, of course. Because she had thought better of it? Or because she had thought worse?
The bitterness of her last sentence made him sick. Then he saw that it could be read two ways: find yourself a whore who will lie about what she feels and thinks; or find yourself a whore who can hide her own crippled self. Read either way, it was terrible.
He walked into the little parlour, white and pale grey with bits of her bright colours, and went to the front window, sightless, heedless.
A cab was standing at the kerb. She was just stepping down from it.
He ran to the door and wrenched it open. She was looking in her handbag to pay the driver, but when she heard Denton she looked up and, seeing him, squared her shoulders and stared at him. What was it she was expecting? His rage? His violence? Certainly he shouldn’t have been standing on her doorstep. The cab driver looked from one of them to the other, his expression saying that he understood that something was up and he wanted to leave before it overflowed on him. On his great me.
She gave the driver money and came a couple of steps towards Denton. She said, ‘I was going away. I got as far as Victoria.’
The cab driver went past her with her luggage, only two bags, and stood at the bottom of the steps and raised the bags a few inches to show Denton that it was his turn to take them. Denton went down and took a bag in each hand. Janet flushed. She went past him, pulling her skirt aside so it wouldn’t brush him. This was not the way she had thought her return would go, he guessed.
He went in behind her and dropped the bags in the peculiar little entry—lozenge-shaped in the rear because of the fireplaces behind the wall on each side—and followed her into the parlour. She hadn’t taken off her awful hat but stood there as if she were meaning to go away again.
He said, ‘I didn’t mean to…be here when—I didn’t think you’d come back.’ He was babbling. ‘I read the letter. In your wastepaper basket. I shouldn’t have—’
‘I sent you a nicer one in the post. You’ll have it tomorrow.’ She had great courage: she looked him in the eye, her back straight, made no apology. ‘The first one was too cruel.’
‘Some of it.’
‘I meant for you not to follow me. It’s been awful these last weeks. I thought I wanted to get away from you, but at Victoria, I knew it was wrong. I was sitting in the train. All that banging of doors. Like the end of the world. I couldn’t do it.’
Her eyes were crystalline with tears. Not for him, he thought, but for the implacable situation, from which there was no running away.
‘You love Ruth Castle,’ he said.
Her head went back; there was the same straightening of her spine he had seen at the kerb when she had seen him in the doorway and known she would have to deal with him. ‘I loved Ruth once. She was all I had. My anchor. Then I found she was shallow, and she drank too much, and I had to leave her.’ She winced. He could have said, As you left me, but he didn’t. She gave him time to say it or something worse and then said almost defiantly, ‘When she was dying, I loved her again. I’m sorry, Denton.’ Her face was haggard with, he realised, grief.
His rage had killed itself on that rock, his great me. Seeing her through the window, he had felt it revive, but it had gone for good now. ‘You’ve told me over and over you didn’t know what love is.’
‘I was wrong. Or I lied.’
‘I love you.’
Her face toughened, tightened; he knew the look. ‘Before, with Ruth—we were lovers. Do you understand?’
‘Was it all—with me—was that what you meant by a whore who was a better liar than you?’
‘Oh, God! That was stupid; it’s why I tore it up. No, I meant…you deserve better. You shouldn’t have read it.’
He felt himself flush, embarrassed, humiliated, having to know and humiliated because he had to know and couldn’t find the words.
She understood without his saying it. ‘Oh, the sex, you mean?’ she said. ‘No, it was real. No. I hadn’t been with anybody since Ruth’s house, and it was like…discovering something impossible, like a lost city or an ocean. I was genuine with you, Denton, but I loved Ruth.’ Her face softened. ‘You can’t change the past. You can’t improve me.’
‘I don’t want to improve you. I want you as you are.’
She came closer to him but stayed more than an arm’s length away. Her eyes were still shiny; so were his, he supposed. She tried to smile, then shook her head.
‘I’m going back to Naples,’ he said. ‘I’d be gone now, but I missed the train.’ He added, as if it would explain everything, ‘I have to apologise to DiNapoli.’ He swallowed, found it difficult. His voice was hoarse as he said, ‘Come with me.’
She smiled, not very happily.
So they stood, she in travelling clothes and a hat, he with his hair messed from his rage, looking into each other’s tears. They knew what we learn with difficulty: this is an imperfect world and we are imperfect creatures, and the great emotions that bring us our happiest moments always bring pain in their luggage. We are surrounded with the ghosts of our own imperfection.
He moved towards her.