The Frightened Man (25 page)

‘Mr Denton - you know Mr Denton, one of our best authors, one of our
most successful
authors, Frewn - would like a cheque for the balance current in his account.’

The old man stared at Lang, then at Denton, as if he couldn’t believe his own rather large ears. ‘A
cheque
?’

‘Yes. Now, we’ve done this before, Mr Frewn - you remember, I’m sure, it can’t have been more than half a dozen years ago—’

Frewn shook his head. ‘Never heard of such a thing.’

Lang smirked at Denton and muttered, ‘We’ve done it again and again; it’s just—’ He smiled at Frewn. ‘Of course there’s a balance in Mr Denton’s account, Mr Frewn.’

‘No idea.’

‘There is, of course there is. So please, have Mr French write a cheque for the full amount for Mr Denton to take with him when he goes.’

The old man sucked in his breath. ‘
Today?
’

‘Now, Mr Frewn, this is too bad of you - of course, today - look here, I’m writing it out so you’ll have something on paper, eh? An authorization, all right? “Balance of account to this date, to be paid by cheque—” That’s quite clear, eh?’

He came around the desk and put the sheet of paper into the old man’s hand; he brought it close to his eyes, and his breath hissed in again. He muttered something, in which Denton caught only ‘ruin’, and patted off up the corridor, his voice mumbling on. Denton saw, as he left the doorway, that he was wearing carpet slippers that were almost hidden by remarkably long trousers, possibly somebody else’s, possibly his own from some earlier, longer-legged self.

‘Mr Frewn is rather a character,’ Lang said. ‘Quite the stuff of legend in the firm. I don’t know what we’d do without him.’

‘He’s the accountant?’

‘Ah, no, not—He’s actually a, mm, the—Mmm. Hard to explain - rather a vestige of an older way of—’ He smiled wanly. ‘He’s a kind of bottleneck for anything one wants to get done.’ Almost to himself, he added, ‘But things do get done. They really do. You’ll see—’ He tapped some more on his desk, looked at
The Nightmare
, and, apparently taking inspiration from it, said, ‘Well, this gets no books written. Not to pry, Denton, but - do you want to pay us back the advance on the book you’ve so rashly thrown away?’

‘Of course I don’t. I can’t.’

‘Then—’

‘Then I want to substitute
The Machine
for it.’

Lang made a face. ‘On the same schedule?’

‘Can’t be done. There isn’t time, Lang.’

‘No-o-o, there isn’t. Well, I suppose an extension of six months—’

‘During which I have to live.’

‘One would assume so, yes. Yes, quite.’ Lang squeezed the bridge of his nose between long, thin fingers. ‘You’re going to ask for more money, aren’t you?’

‘It won’t hurt you to raise the advance on the book I trashed to something like what my books actually command. ’

Lang rapped on the desk with a knuckle. Denton fell silent; it was as if the editor had called a meeting to order. Lang gave another, more decisive rap, and sat up very straight. ‘I told you I have an idea,’ he said.

Denton looked at him, thinking,
My God, not a book idea
—

‘Transylvania,’ Lang announced. He sat back. ‘There!’

‘Transylvania.’ Denton had the vaguest idea what Transylvania was. He lacked the British elite’s passion for travel, usually for sport - Norway for salmon, Switzerland and beyond for game - and lacked as well the Latin that might have led him to make a translation of the word. But he was honest. ‘What is Transylvania?’

‘Oh, my dear!’ Lang tittered. ‘It’s the far end of the Alps, the place everyone was thinking of when they used to write about haunted castles and ghastly vales and mountain peaks. A place of legend and lore - and peasants who speak unintelligible languages.’ He leaned forward. ‘Werewolves!
Vampires!
’

‘Fairy tales.’

‘My dear Denton, I’ve made a
study
of vampires. Hardly fairy tales, unless very grown-up ones. Did you know there was a play called
The Vampire
way back before our dear Queen was crowned? Now Stoker’s gone and written
Dracula
, and why, oh, why didn’t you get in ahead of him with the idea?’

Denton shook his head. ‘Sucking blood? Doesn’t interest me.’ Although the mind, he thought, of somebody who
believed
he was a vampire would interest him.

‘The vampire in the old play had to marry a virgin before sunrise or
die.
Doesn’t that touch a chord in you, man?’ It didn’t, and Denton let his stoic face say so, although he had a brief and bad moment thinking again about his wedding night. Lang put a pleading note into his voice. ‘They
rise from the dead
!’

‘So do my debts. I need money, Lang.’ He stuck out his lips under his drooping moustache. ‘I can try to finish
The Machine
in four months, how’s that?’ Lang made a face and Denton said without conviction, ‘I suppose I could write about this man who told me he’d seen a tart murdered - it was in the newspapers—’

‘You cannot! I won’t let you.’ Lang sounded like a petulant child. ‘Real crime’s been quite taken over by the lowest kind of journalist; you’d ruin your reputation by associating with it.
Prostitutes
. Oh! Unspeakable mutilations, I suppose.’ He shuddered. ‘No, no - I want
literary
material, Denton,
artistic
material. Like the vampire. You may say it’s sensational, and that of course is part of the point, but I believe that there is something in vampirism that
touches
us. Deeply. Blood - insatiability - the application of great force in pursuit of a perverse sort of desire—’ He sighed and leaned back. ‘You don’t see it, I can tell. Oh, dear.’ He groaned, then threw himself forward to try again. ‘Vampirism could do for you what She-who-must-be-obeyed did for Rider Haggard!’

‘Haggard is claptrap.’

‘But claptrap that touches our souls, Denton! There’s something
in
his fantastic stuff - something - repellent but irresistible—Something - forbidden—A profoundly desirable horror, how’s that?’

‘Like
The Nightmare
?’ Denton said.

‘Oh-h-h—’ Lang twisted in his chair in disappointment. ‘Look here, I’ll talk to Gwen -’ Gwen was Wilfred Gweneth, the publisher - ‘about your, ah, financial
crise
, and I think I can get his approval to offer you expenses plus your usual for a
travel
book about Transylvania.
The Land of Horrors
. We’d make up an itinerary to take you to the sites of legends and great tales - Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
, for example; now you’ll say that’s Switzerland, I know, but—’

In fact Denton didn’t know; he’d never read
Frankenstein
.

‘ - you could start there, poetic licence, and move through Bavaria - isn’t that Monk Lewis territory? - and so on, and then concentrate on Transylvania. You apply your great powers of description, that relentless honesty that makes your work so—’

‘Lang, I don’t give a hoot about legends and lore.’

‘You’re so very
vexing
sometimes. You
Realist
! Have you had lunch? We could walk to my club and have a late lunch and talk this over—’

‘I have to meet with some women about a girl who may have left school to get herself murdered. One of the desirable horrors of everyday life in London.’ He boosted his hat and coat back to his lap. ‘A travel book - me?’

Lang gave him a suddenly shrewd look. ‘Money, my dear - you need money.’

‘You told me once never to write for money.’

‘I am an idealist. But you are a Realist. And your creditors are literalists - they want twenty shillings in the pound. Come now, Denton - I’m sure I can get you the money for the right sort of book. A nice journey down the Rhine, some pleasant miles by train - Continental railways are perfectly acceptable, I believe - then, to be sure, a somewhat less luxurious mode of travel in Transylvania itself - colourful local carts, an ancient post-chaise, even a sledge—’

Denton was both angry and amused. He got up slowly and then went behind his chair and leaned his forearms on the back. Grinning none too pleasantly, he said, ‘A
motor car
to Whatsylvania.’

‘That’s an appalling idea.’

‘I’ll do it that way - but that’s the only way I’ll do it!’ Denton didn’t really mean it; it was simply something to say to vent his sense of outrage. ‘
By Motor Car to the Land of Vampires.
’

‘A motor car! That would ruin everything! It’s so - so disgustingly
modern.
’

‘All the more reason. Combine the new with the old, progress with legend and lore.’ He was improvising, atypically manic. ‘Start from Paris - I could pick up a car there; they’ve got thousands of them - and head east. Outrunning the werewolves in a Panhard Twelve! Flying over the steppe on a fuel of garlic and potato spirits!’

Lang was shaking his head and saying that Denton was being
too bad
, simply
too bad.
‘You’re ragging me; I see what you’re doing. This is your little joke. Well, laugh. Surely you don’t think we’d buy you a motor car. Gwen doesn’t mind taking a flyer, but he’s not an outright idiot.
Motor Car to the Land of Vampires
, indeed!’

‘Buy the machine, keep ownership while I do the trip, sell it after. Famous motor car, used in Mr Denton’s best-selling new book. You’d make a fortune, Lang.’

Lang sniffed. ‘I despise commerce and everything it stands for.’

‘But you want me to write a book about horrors because it will sell.’

Lang waved a hand. He put the left side of his jaw on the thumb and three fingers of his left hand, the index finger resting on his leathery cheek, and he said in a dry voice, ‘What I had envisioned was some colourful narrative of native carts toiling up the Alps.’

‘It might come to that. Motor cars aren’t much in mountains - you did say there were mountains?’

‘The Transylvanian Alps, which are always represented as the teeth of a saw.’

‘Motor-car enthusiasts would love it - conquering the mountains. Breakdowns while the werewolves howl. Tyre punctures in the dead of night. We run out of petrol and are pulled across the snow by a team of vampires!’

‘Yes, make a joke of it. You’re the one who needs money, not I.’

Denton hunched farther towards him over the chair back. ‘So I am.’ He’d forgotten. He shrugged. ‘Actually, it doesn’t seem such a bad idea, Lang.’

‘My dear Denton,
motor cars
—! They’re simply -
vulgar
.’

Denton heaved himself up, laughing. He saw Lang’s confusion and guffawed again. ‘So am I! So am I!’

Then Mr Frewn padded in with Denton’s cheque, which was for seven pounds, five and ninepence. Denton, having expected ten times as much, swore and rushed out.

The women whom Mrs Johnson had assembled in her meagre parlour were both sceptical and respectful - he had paid up, after all - and in their way not so different from the young whores he had met with Janet Striker. A similar embarrassment and distrust were plain. Denton tried to outline what he wanted, tried to guess what the Schools Board’s bureaucracy would be, but one of the women had worked there and could tell the others all about it, ignoring him.

‘The lists are handwritten, a lot of them in an appalling fist, and not at all up to date. The school heads aren’t held to the fire; they’ve too much else to do.’

When it was clear that he wanted them to search the lists for all of Greater London for the previous school year, one of them laughed outright. When he had difficulty explaining what he wanted, another muttered, ‘A local habitation and a name,’ and told the rest that what he meant was that they were to search for a girl named Ruth, who’d left school and who had a sister named Rebecca, who hadn’t.

‘And if we find them?’

‘Then you’ll find their last name.’

‘And then? We’ll have only their school. Only their town or village or ward.’

‘Then you’ll look for the family in the post office directories. ’

He suggested the census, but they pointed out that the last census had been taken in 1891. He went home and told Atkins not to talk to him. Using pantomime, Atkins pointed him to the mail, then took himself downstairs with his nose in the air, like a music-hall comedian playing a duke.

Among the bills was a note from Janet Striker. They could visit the Humphrey the next afternoon; she suggested that he bring a letter attesting to his character.

Tomorrow would be Thursday. It would leave him only one day to find the man who had now killed both the girl named Ruth and the man named Mulcahy. On Saturday, if he found nothing, they would rule that Mulcahy had killed himself while insane, and they would close the case. He could go on looking after that, but he sensed that he would not. He was about out of threads to wind on his spool.

And why did it matter? Mulcahy was nothing to him, nor the girl, either. Yet he thought of that thin body laid out on the table at Bart’s, the murderer’s crude gashes and the surgeon’s neat cuts, the men in rows around her watching, watching - and he cared.