Bohemian Girl, The (15 page)

‘Geddys. Geddys? Oh, dammit - I forgot—’ It seemed weeks ago that he’d said he’d talk to Geddys again about the man’s apparent lie about knowing where Mary Thomason lived.

‘No harm done. I’m off, then.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes, tomorrow, absolutely tomorrow.’

‘Kettner’s again?’ They were going down the stairs. Atkins, coming in, held the door for her. They made their arrangements and then she was gone. Denton went back to work.

Albert Cosgrove’s manuscript was a painful, sometimes bewildering thing to read. There was a story - or there had started out to be one - that had been infected by Denton’s outline, which the writer had apparently tried to blend with his own tale. The result was like a crossing of radically different strains, producing a monstrosity.

Or perhaps it would have been a monstrosity anyway. Denton guessed that Cosgrove wasn’t able to concentrate. This seemed contradictory in somebody obsessed, but the obsession, he thought, was not quite the same as what he was writing: that is, the story - novel, novella, whatever it was meant to be - was about obsession but it was not the object of obsession.

In the story with which Cosgrove had started, a young violinist who wants to know the ‘secret’ of greatness steals a violin bow. It belongs to a famous violinist who becomes a menace - never explained or defined - that looms over the young man. The bow does make him ‘great’ but it comes at a cost - a demon, who appears each time he plays. The demon takes a payment each time - first, the ability to sleep; then boils that appear on the violinist’s face; then the use of a foot. However, by that point (which, for Denton, happened far too soon - Cosgrove was having the non-writer’s problem ‘making it long enough’) Denton’s outline had been forced in, and a wife appeared, domestic scenes that had no connection to anything else were added, attempts at Denton’s sort of realistic detail were tacked on. Then the demon announced that he wanted the wife for himself, and then a page - the last - seemed to suggest that the demon and the ‘great’ violinist from whom the bow had been stolen were the same, or somehow connected, or at least in communication.

The prose was bad. Too many words, Denton would have said, too many long words, too much pretentious pseudo-philosophy. Some of it reminded him of Wagner, whom he despised. When Munro put his head in - Denton was reading, as promised, at New Scotland Yard - Denton groaned.

‘Not delighting you, is it?’ Munro limped in. ‘Getting anything? ’

Denton held up a list he had jotted down. Munro took it, raised it towards the gas, tipped his head back. ‘“Intelligent, incoherent, educated - Latin, Greek? reads books - knows mine well, also Shakespeare, poets; young - doesn’t know real life; never poor, never hungry, never married.” Sounds like most of the lads at our great universities.’

‘I think he’s unbalanced.’

‘I could have told you that without reading his slop.’

‘You’ve read it?’

‘Tried. That’s why we called on you.’

‘I think he’s trying to make a fable about himself and Art with a capital A - something about having ability but not making it because of some older fellow who’s in the way, the older one being there through magic. Except the magic is also the Art - he’s pretty confused. The idea might make it as a kind of horror tale - my editor’s speciality - but Cosgrove can’t do it. He wants to be a great writer - or thinks he wants to be - but people like me use our magic to keep him unknown. Does that make sense?’

‘He might try some honest work.’

‘He doesn’t know what work is.’

‘Well off?’

‘There’s a sinister female who wanders through it. I think she represents something, but I’m damned if I know what it is. But she’s always “richly dressed” and “glittering with jewels”. He hates her, but there’s no reason why.’

‘So you’re Harlequin, with the magic wand.’

‘Violin bow, in his case - not so far off.’

‘So, he’s spying on you to find your magic wand.’

‘He may have stolen a pen, in fact. Sort of like a wand.’ Denton stood and stretched. ‘He doesn’t really believe all that, at least not yet. I mean, he’s writing a tale he knows - has to know - is fantasy. So he’s sane, in that sense. But doing the other things he’s done - spying on me, following me, breaking into houses - they aren’t sane.’

‘We’ve an entire category of criminals who do nothing but break into houses.’

‘But they’re after things of value. Things they can sell for money. They’re sane - criminal but sane. We understand the motive - it’s the basis of society and the Empire, right? Make money. But not Albert Cosgrove.’

Munro put the paper in a pocket. ‘You done, then?’

‘Hell will be having to read that thing again.’

‘I’ll have your list copied, give it to Markson.’

‘It won’t help.’

‘What would help is an arrest. He hasn’t followed you, I take it.’

‘Ask your people. I see them behind me all the time. Call them off, will you? I’m sick of having somebody always looking over my shoulder.’

Munro laughed. ‘They were walked off their feet yesterday. One of them told Markson he was going to take up a collection to pay you to take a cab - hadn’t walked so much since he was a constable. I’ll talk to Markson about pulling them off - may be too soon yet.’

They trudged up the long corridor that led past the CID offices.

At the stairs, Munro asked again if he’d reported ‘that missing girl’. When Denton admitted he hadn’t, but it was a dead issue, anyway, Munro walked him back to the corridor where Denton had had the unsatisfactory conversation with Guillam, what seemed like years ago. Munro pointed at a door. ‘You want that one. Take you three minutes.’

‘You said to stay away from Guillam.’

‘Yes, but best to do things by the book.’ Munro walked away.

Inside the office was a young man with spots, wearing a thick wool suit that had belonged to somebody else ten years before. He looked up with what first seemed to be fright, then a stern expression that was ridiculous on his soft face - practising to be a bureaucrat, Denton thought. He explained what he wanted; the young man threw several imagined obstacles in his way; Denton got over them; the young man sighed and took out a form and a pen.

‘Name? That the given name or the family name? Given name? Wot d’you mean, you don’t use your given name? Address?’

They got as far as ‘relationship to the MP’. When Denton said there was no relationship and he hadn’t even known the young woman, the clerk looked around the little office as if help might be there somewhere, then bolted through the door. Munro’s three minutes became fifteen, and then the door opened again and Guillam came in. The clerk lingered behind with a look of ‘now you’re for it’ on his face.

Guillam said, ‘Oh. It’s you. What’s this, then?’

‘I’m reporting a missing person.’

Guillam looked at the form, on which of course he must already have read Denton’s name. ‘No relation? Not even a friend?’

Denton stayed dead calm and explained about the letter.

‘We’re the police. We have serious work to do. We don’t have time for you spinning tales out of nothing.’

‘Munro told me this is the right thing to do.’

‘Oh, it’s Donnie Munro, is it. I should have known. He cuts no ice here. This is my bailiwick.’ He handed the form to the clerk. ‘Finish it and file it with a note, “awaiting more information”.’ Guillam’s brutal face was red, perhaps only from bending to talk to the seated Denton. He said, ‘Don’t bother us with a lot of questions about it,’ and he slammed out.

The clerk went quickly through the rest of the form, almost sneering now, and said, as if he were dismissing a pensioner, ‘That’ll be all.’

‘I can go?’

‘Yes, you can go.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘What?’

‘I want you to be sure.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If you aren’t sure, I’d feel better staying here until you are.’

‘If you’re having me on, I’ll make trouble!’

‘So long as you’re sure.’

The clerk stared at him. The bureaucrat and the little boy in him struggled. Finally he said in an unsure voice, ‘I’m sure, then.’

‘Good. Then I’ll go.’ Denton went out.

On his way home, he stopped to talk to Geddys. Only a woman was there. She told him Mr Geddys had gone away on a buying trip and would be back in two weeks.

At home, Atkins greeted him with a dour face and ‘You’ve a letter. From
him.
’

Denton groaned.

He teased the paper out of its envelope with his pocket-knife and opened it without touching anything but the edges. It said:

‘Rather got the shoe on the wrong foot, hasn’t he,’ Atkins said. He had been reading over Denton’s shoulder.

‘He’s turning.’

‘Turning what?’

‘From adoration to dislike. You see it in hero-worship. What’s constant is the lack of balance.’

‘Loony, as I’ve said a hundred times now.’

‘This’ll have to go to the police.’ He laughed, a single bark that remained humourless. ‘I asked Munro to pull the followers off me. Just in time.’ He looked at the letter again. ‘“I must ask you to return what of mine has been stolen, I mean my BOOK—” He didn’t read about
that
in the newspaper. The bastard’s been back in that house!’

‘I thought the coppers were watching it.’

‘One posted in the front. How difficult would it be to get into that garden from Lamb’s Conduit Street - come along our passage and through our garden, for that matter?’

‘Rupert’d have heard him.’

Denton looked at the letter again. ‘Check over the garden first thing in the morning. He’s not above leaving something poisoned for the dog, just out of spite - or he won’t be in a little while.’

‘You think he’s getting worse?’ Janet Striker said. They were gathering themselves together to leave their table at Kettner’s after a long meal full of talk and an increasing mutual understanding. She liked to eat, he found; her affection for the ABC shops was, it appeared, entirely economic. ‘I’ve been living on twenty-six shillings a week for the last ten years,’ she had said at one point, ‘and fed and clothed my mother on it, as well.’ Without bitterness, she had added, ‘The drink, she bought herself.’ When he had asked how her mother was, she had said, ‘She’s dying. I want to get her into a better place before she does - it’s another reason I want my money so soon. Poor old bitch.’

He was counting out money to pay the bill. ‘I knew a man in a prison camp who started acting like a guard.’ He looked up at her to see how she would take it. ‘I was the officer in charge of the guards. This fellow started pushing other prisoners into line at meal time. He wound up killing one of them with a club he’d made from a broken branch.’

‘I didn’t know you’d been at a prison in the war.’

‘It was after the war. Right after. Only for a couple of months. But long enough.’ He got up. ‘Shall we?’

The rain was coming down on the streets in a steady fall, more than drizzle but less than a downpour, umbrellas hurrying through Soho with legs scissoring under them. Denton started to say ‘I’ll put you in a cab,’ but amended it to ‘Do you want a cab?’

She said, ‘I’d like to go to your house for a bit, if I may.’ She smiled. ‘I like your house.’

‘But—’

‘What I said the other day, I know. It’s dark and it’s raining, so nobody will see me - how is that?’

‘“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” An American said that.’

With the horse clip-clopping along, they were both silent for the first several streets. Then, as if the darkness allowed her to say certain things, she began to talk about her life in the ‘hospital’ for the criminally insane. Her husband had put her there to crush her, but none of her hatred of him showed. She simply told him about other women she’d known. The ‘mad’, the despairing. She had a point to make. ‘Lunacy isn’t always what we’re told it is. Lunacy depends on who gets to define it.’ By then, the cab had pulled up in front of his house. She said, ‘I’m not through. Have him wait.’

They ran to the front door; inside, he shook his hat and then his overcoat; she was shaking out the ugly cape-like thing she had had on over her unbecoming dress. Atkins appeared, said ‘Good evening, madam,’ as if he had known her for years, and took their things.

‘I shall want my coat shortly,’ she said. ‘Just leave it out here.’

‘Of course, madam.’ He hung the cape on a monstrosity that combined mirror, hooks and seat.

Upstairs, she refused drink. She kept her hat on. He sat in his chair; she walked up and down, slowly and silently, beating the palm of her left hand on her upturned right fist. ‘Do you know what I was talking about in the cab, Denton?’

‘You think I should be careful when I say that Cosgrove is insane.’

‘I want you to understand what it’s like to be called insane - and to be
helpless.
To have “normal” people look at you with that
look
. To have them laugh at you. Because you’re “insane”.’

She put her right hand on his left shoulder from behind. He was staring into the coals, thinking about what she’d said; unconsciously, he put his left hand up and over hers. ‘You feel sympathy for him,’ he said.