The Bohemian Girl

Chapter SIXTEEN
Erasmus Himple, RA, lived in Chelsea, not particularly at that moment an artist’s neighbourhood - but then, as Augustus John might have said, Himple wasn’t particularly an artist. Denton liked Chelsea without wanting to live there, liked to walk its small streets and its embankment, although the place was, he was told, very different from the village of ‘little houses surrounded with roses’ that Stendhal and others had found. One of the art magazines reported that Himple had said that ‘he liked to live where my great namesake, Erasmus, visited, and where great painters have painted’ - presumably Holbein and Turner, if ‘great’ was to be taken literally, perhaps less so Rossetti and Whistler. At any rate, it was to Chelsea that Himple had come, leaving Melbury Road and the farther reaches of Kensington to other RAs.
The house was a fairly small one around the corner from All Saints Church. Denton approached it along the Embankment, pausing to look at the river - he still had thoughts of rowing on it, never seemed to turn them to reality - and the suspension bridge. He tried to picture it without the Embankment, a muddy tidal shore, here and there some steps to the water, but the idea of a distinct village where now this accessible part of London stood wouldn’t come clear. His mind was fuzzed by his book, anyway, now nearly done. There was a familiar sense of the sprint to the finish, already an anticipation of the mental slump after.
He had no eagerness to see Erasmus Himple. It was late on a sombre, cold day, although he was cheered by a flight of duck that came winging down the river to land splashily almost in front of him. The sky was iron overhead, the sun a slightly brassy brightness far down to the west; the bare plane trees rose against it in hard, black silhouette. The air smelled of the river and of soot; his breath steamed in it before drifting and dissipating.
‘Mr Denton to see Mr Himple, if he may,’ he said, handing in his card. He had expected, after the experience with Wenzli, some sort of potted grandeur, the same air of arty nouveau riche-ness, but the house was little more than a double cottage, the middle-aged woman at the door a housekeeper rather than a butler. She had an air of austerity, could have been housekeeper to some Irish priest, dedicated more to preservation of his celibacy than even her own; she wore black, some sort of white headgear like a mob cap, but in lace. She had bristling, hairy eyebrows and a nose almost as formidable as Denton’s own, the nostrils more hirsute than his.
Without looking at the card, she said, ‘Mr Himple is away.’
‘Oh.’ That didn’t surprise him, after what James had said. It did trouble him that Himple had been away so long. ‘Will he be back soon?’
Now she used a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles that hung on a ribbon to read his card. ‘Is this about having your picture painted, Mr Denton?’ She had a deep voice, almost mannish.
‘I wrote a letter. There’s a young woman who seems to have disappeared. I think she was a model for Mr Himple - the painting of Lazarus.’ He stood uncertainly, found he was speaking in jerks. ‘I’ve reported it to the police. I just learned about Mr Himple. Her modelling for him. I thought—’ He didn’t say what he thought.
‘Oh, yes.’ She looked him up and down. It was as well that Atkins had insisted he look like a gentleman that day. ‘Come in, please.’ No hospitality was implied by the tone.
She led him to the back of the house down a central hall, paintings on the walls, not Himple’s own, he thought (they seemed to him ‘older’, whatever that meant), and stood by an open door with her left arm extended as if to say, ‘If you must be here, go in this room.’ Inside was what he took to be her own sitting room, as austere as she, black-and-white engravings on the walls instead of paintings, an open Bible on a shawl-draped table.
She didn’t ask him to take off his overcoat. She told him she was Mrs Evans. When she sat, so did he; the chair was merciless. He told her the well-worn tale of Mary Thomason, abbreviated, trying to keep his voice from falling into the sing-song of a guide detailing some third-rate wonder for the thousandth time. He produced one of the copies of the Mary Thomason drawing. ‘I believe that Mr Himple did this drawing. Do you recognize it?’
She had as sharp an eye as Augustus John’s. ‘The little one in the corner looks like his Lazarus.’
‘Yes.’ He waited. ‘Do you know the woman’s face?’
‘Mr Himple’s studio is over the road.’
It took him an instant to guess what that meant. ‘You don’t see his models?’
‘I hardly pry into my employer’s business.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest that. You might have seen her, I meant.’
She handed the drawing back. Denton waited; nothing came. He said, ‘When will Mr Himple be back?’
‘Mr Himple has gone abroad.’
‘Ah. For how long?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. He made arrangements that would allow him to make an extended journey. You would do best to write to him, perhaps. Or not.’
‘I did. May I ask when he left?’
‘Some time ago.’
‘When?’
She enjoyed being a dog in the manger of information. No amount of niceness was going to get it out of her. Denton bore down, gave as good as he got, showed in a changed voice that he could be just as stern as she. Reluctantly, she admitted that Himple had gone some time ago, then that he had gone in August, then that he had left on 9 August.
One day after Mary Thomason had written to ask for help. Denton felt himself coming out of his end-of-book daze. ‘Did he go alone?’
She got her back up at that: what did he mean? What was he suggesting? She would have to ask him to leave if he was going to make insinuations.
Denton produced the drawing again. She said, ‘He would hardly travel with a young lady!’
‘Did he travel with anybody at all?’
‘His man, of course.’ She glanced down at the drawing, looked out of a window, said in a different voice, one for the first time suggesting - was it disapproval? Or some personal hurt? ‘A man. A servant, I mean.’
Denton had to figure this through - his man but apparently not his man, a man - and he said, ‘Not his regular man?’
Again, she didn’t look at him, spoke in the same aggrieved voice. ‘He wanted someone who could speak French.’
‘His regular man didn’t speak French?’
‘Brown does not speak French.’
‘Brown is his regular man? Can I speak with Brown?’
‘Brown lives in Strand-on-the Green. He comes in once a week to tend to the studio and do the pictures.’ Denton had no idea what this meant; it didn’t matter. She said, ‘Mr Himple made an arrangement with Brown for his absence - until he returns.’ She looked again at the drawing. Her expression was even more severe.
‘You didn’t approve of the man he took with him.’
‘It’s hardly my business to approve of my employer’s judgement.’
‘I thought perhaps you didn’t like the new man.’
‘I hardly knew him.’ She looked yet again at the drawing.
‘You recognize the drawing, don’t you.’
She handed it back. The edge of the paper vibrated; her hand was trembling. Looking at her again, Denton felt a sudden sympathy, had a glimpse into her life and its isolation, probably its loneliness. He said, ‘Did the new man look like the woman’s face in the drawing? ’
She sat very straight. ‘I believe he resembles the face in the corner, at least.’
‘Lazarus.’
She was silent. Her head may have trembled; maybe he was wrong. He said, ‘Have you seen the painting?’
‘Mr Himple kindly invited me to the studio to see it before it went to the Academy.’
‘Do you think the “new man” who went abroad with him was the model for Lazarus?’
‘I - thought that might be so when I saw the painting. It was not my business.’ She looked at him. ‘Nor yours, sir.’
‘I think the man who modelled Lazarus may be the brother of the missing girl. He may know where she is. Mrs Evans, this is quite important. I want to get in touch with the young man.’
‘You may write a letter, I’m sure.’
‘Where are they?’
She licked her thin, dark lips. ‘Brown - Mr Himple’s regular valet - is in touch with him. If I have anything to report about the house, I do it through Brown.’ She smoothed her dress; her fingers plucked at a square inch of fabric as if she saw something on it. ‘I had an address for him at the beginning, but it was only a poste restante. They’re long gone from there, so Brown says.’ Through tone alone, she made it clear that a housekeeper should not have to communicate with her employer through a valet.
‘Where?’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t know!’ As if she regretted her sharpness, she said, ‘They spent the first month painting in France, a village, Hinon. In Normandy. They were supposed to spend the summer there, but he changed his mind. Quite an unspoiled spot, Mr Himple said. That’s why he wanted a French speaker. But he moved on.’ Her expression changed, suggested malicious pleasure. ‘Perhaps it was too unspoiled.’
‘The “new man”, too?’
‘I assume so. Although—’ The expression, malicious, almost a smile, touched her mouth. ‘Brown said Mr Himple has discharged him.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t remember. The end of summer, perhaps.’
‘Then writing to him care of Mr Himple wouldn’t reach him.’
‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t.’
Denton was angry with her, made himself see her side of it. She had tried to fob him off at first with the idea of writing to the ‘new man’. She had wanted to get rid of him - Mary Thomason was nothing to her; why should she bother helping him? She wanted him to go, to leave her to her isolation and her loneliness. ‘But you’re sure you haven’t seen the young woman in the drawing.’
‘Quite sure, of course.’
‘But Mr Himple drew her.’
‘I don’t know that he did. Perhaps he did.’ She was looking towards the door, towards a black stone clock on the mantel.
‘Was the “new man” English?’
‘Certainly he was.’
‘You heard him talk, then.’
She compressed her lips. ‘Once or twice.’
‘What did he sound like - educated? Rough?’
‘He sounded like his class.’
‘But he spoke French.’
‘So Mr Himple said. I wouldn’t have known if he had. I don’t bother myself with foreign things.’
She didn’t know the new man’s name - he’d have to ask Brown. He asked if he could see the studio and was told he’d have to apply to Brown. She was eager for him to go now; she had said too much, he thought, not because she had anything to hide but because information was all she did have. Perhaps she got pleasure from treating as secrets things that were merely ordinary. He got Brown’s address from her and went away, glad to get into the gathering dusk and the cold.
The ducks were gone. The sun was gone, too, the dwindling light throwing everything into shades of lavender and dark grey-blue, the last light on the water like much-rubbed metal. On the Albert Bridge, the traffic rumbled and growled. A steam launch came down the river, its lights like tantalizing hints of certainty in the gloom.
Next day, he visited Brown in a tidy little house on the river almost as far as Kew. The valet was not yet forty, heavy-set, unintelligent. Yes, Mr Himple sent him regular letters. Yes, Himple and the ‘new man’ had stayed at Hinon for a month; yes, they had left there early and gone on to Paris and then ‘the South’; yes, Mr Himple had written that he had discharged the new man and was taking a villa with its own staff. No, he wasn’t sure of the villa’s location; he had been told only a poste restante address. But Mr Himple had moved again, heading for Italy incognito because of the crowds of English tourists, he said. He planned to winter in Florence, where he had a large acquaintance. He had sent back four paintings - ‘What artists call sketches in oil, sir.’ Mr Himple was ‘renewing his style’. It sounded like something Brown was quoting from one of Himple’s letters.
When would Himple be back? Brown didn’t know, didn’t know, sir, it was all a little puzzling - but Mr Himple was an artist, after all.
And the new man?
Gone. (Brown seemed relieved.) Never meant to be a permanent addition to the household, after all. (Brown hid his satisfaction at this pretty well.) His name was Arthur Crum. Yes, he was young. Thin, sir. Yes, the face in the drawing without a beard could be his. Yes, he believed the man Crum had modelled Lazarus. Brown knew nothing of a sister, however, either of the new man or of Lazarus. He was seldom at the studio when Mr Himple was painting, seldom saw the models. No, he was deeply sorry, but it wasn’t possible to see the studio in Mr Himple’s absence. Art was sacrosanct.
‘What did you think of the new man - Crum?’
‘It isn’t my place to think anything of him.’ Brown’s stolid, fleshy face closed up. ‘I have a very good position with Mr Himple, sir. My wages continue while he’s away. I don’t want to give any cause for Mr Himple to - think less of me.’
‘But this Crum, you said, has been discharged. Your opinion of him won’t matter now. You do have an opinion of him, I think.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Brown shifted uneasily. He cleared his throat, then burst out: ‘An upstart. He was an upstart, sir. He didn’t know his craft, between you and me, sir.’ Brown became almost animated. ‘I was a footman for nine years before I was allowed to even lay out my employer’s clothes. This Crum hadn’t done any of that.’ Brown was sitting in a small armchair. He stared at his large hands, then abruptly broke out again: ‘He couldn’t even speak good English, sir! He was a - a—He was of a very low sort, sir. Mr Nobody from Nowhere.’
‘Why did Mr Himple hire him, then?’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.’
‘Was there something personal between them?’
Brown simply looked at him. His worry seemed to increase: to say anything on this score was to endanger his place, he meant.
Denton said, ‘Do you know how Crum and Mr Himple got acquainted?’
‘Crum was a model, sir. As I say, he modelled Lazarus. I believe that’s how he came to Mr Himple’s attention.’
‘Did he know anything about painting? Was he an artist himself ?’
‘I think he knew the studio, sir - by that I mean, he could care for the brushes, and he knew how to make the varnishes and grind the colours. The rude work of the studio.’ Brown sniffed. ‘Hardly an artist. No idea of art, I suspect, although I’d never have engaged him in conversation about such a subject.’ Again, he seemed to have done talking and then abruptly realized he had more to say. ‘He was beneath me, sir! I wanted nothing to do with him. Mr Himple realized that, I think. If it hadn’t been for speaking French, there’d have been no thought of employing him, I’m sure. Mr Himple made that very clear to me when he continued my wages in his absence and put me in charge of the studio. Crum was merely temporary.’
‘Did Crum have some sort of hold over Mr Himple?’
Brown’s eyebrows drew together; a look of pain, almost of illness, took over his face. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’
‘It has a stink to it, Munro.’
‘Not my manor. It’s Guillam’s business, missing persons.’
‘Guillam won’t give me the time of day, and you know it. Don’t you think it’s peculiar?’
‘Peculiarity isn’t a crime.’
‘An artist just happens to draw a picture of a girl who’s missing. A man who looks like her, probably her brother, models for the same artist, then goes off to the Continent as his valet right after she writes me a letter and disappears. The artist and the man travel together, then the artist reports he’s fired the man. So the girl’s missing and now the brother’s missing.’
‘What makes you think he’s missing? What you mean is, you can’t find him. Not the same thing.’
‘I asked at the Slade about Arthur Crum. Asked a couple of the sister’s friends. Had somebody look in the Kelly’s. No Arthur Crum.’
‘What’re you suggesting - an RA took him to the Continent and did him in? Save it for a novel.’
‘Munro, you’re as hard to move as an elephant.’
‘And a good deal busier. Want a word of advice?’
‘No.’
‘We got enough crimes without you inventing them. Leave it.’
‘I can’t leave it. I thought I had; it came back.’
Munro looked up from his paperwork. ‘Where’d you get a picture of her?’
‘It turned up.’
‘Convenient.’ He went back to scribbling on a piece of typescript. ‘You hear that the docs sent in a report on your man Jarrold?’
‘“My man Jarrold” - my God!’
‘Guillam’s office filed it with the magistrate - “given to harmless childish fantasies but improving”. Docs recommend more of whatever they’re doing and a continuance of the charges. Guillam’s recommending to Mrs Striker that she agree.’ He raised his head. ‘She hasn’t told you?’
‘I haven’t seen her in a bit.’
‘Mm. Perhaps you should. Better than mucking about with missing persons.’ He started to lower his head to his paperwork again but lifted it and said, ‘Anyway, they’ve pulled the watchers off you because of the report on Jarrold. You’re on your own.’

When he saw her two days later, he said, ‘You didn’t tell me you’d heard about Jarrold.’
‘I haven’t seen you.’
‘You could have sent one of your telegrams.’
‘I didn’t think it was important.’
‘It’s important to me. Jarrold’s hoodwinked them. If they think what’s behind that moon face of his is a “harmless childish fantasy”, they should be disbarred or defrocked or whatever it is you do with medical men.’
‘Their report is quite positive. He’s “calm”. They’re giving him chloral at night and he’s sleeping. He’s given up wandering about in the dark, sleeps the night through. The Lady Astoreth has dropped out of his life.’
‘He’s pulling the wool over their eyes.’
‘Maybe the Lady Astoreth has run off with Arthur Crum.’
‘If Arthur Crum actually exists somewhere.’
‘Not to mention the Lady Astoreth.’ They were in his sitting room. Outside, it was crisp and cold; thin winter sunlight showed the sooty patterns on his windowpanes. She was wearing another suit, this one in a heavy rust-red wool; she had taken off the jacket to reveal a plain white blouse with a mannish necktie. She said, ‘Maybe Munro’s right about both Mary Thomason and Arthur Crum. They’re both much ado about nothing.’
‘I think the Thomason business is nothing, then I swing the other way and am certain something’s really happened. The coincidences - the drawing, Himple, Crum going off with him—’ He struck the velvet arm of his chair and dust motes jumped into the room. ‘The little drawings, the remarques - if they mean something, if they’re some sort of code - Augustus John and the housekeeper both recognized the one of Lazarus, so that one’s clear enough. If she drew it, she was referring to the man who drew her picture, to Himple. But the other one—’
‘You said nobody recognizes the other one.’
‘It’s a doorway, just a doorway.’ He put his legs out. He touched her foot with one of his, frowned at her small boot. ‘Heseltine looked funny when he saw it, but he said he didn’t recognize it. No, he didn’t say that - he just said something about - what? It was too small to see, or something. But he did look funny.’
‘Ask him again.’
‘I hate to bother him. He’s in a bad state.’
‘So are you.’
He looked at her with the same frown. He meant that he didn’t think his own frustration was anything like Heseltine’s despair. She reddened.
‘Anyway, I don’t like the docs’ report on Jarrold. And the police have pulled off their watchers because of it. Damn them.’
Next afternoon, he walked down to Albany Court when he was done working. He had had the satisfaction of writing ‘end’ below a final paragraph, then underlining it. He had got the whole book out of his head and on the page, now had only to wait for the typewriter to do the final sheets, then take them to bed, revise, edit, get them down to the publishers. The great anticlimax.
Heseltine opened his own door. He answered a question about Jenks with only a shake of his head. Heseltine hadn’t shaved; he was still in a dressing gown, again with an old woollen scarf around his neck. The place smelled of benzoin, as if he really had been ill. When they had talked banalities for a few minutes, Denton let a silence fall and then he said, ‘Do you remember the drawing I showed you?’
‘Drawing?’
‘The young woman.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘There were little drawings in the corners.’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘I thought you recognized one of them.’ Heseltine didn’t react. Denton pulled out a photographic copy and held it towards him. Heseltine hesitated and then took it.
‘The lower left one.’
Heseltine looked at it, but he spoke before he looked. ‘Afraid it doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
‘The light’s poor. I’d be grateful if you’d look at it in better light.’ Denton handed him a folding magnifier he’d brought on purpose.
Heseltine took it to a window. The Wesselons hung on the wall next to him; his shoulder almost brushed it as he leaned against the window frame. The light was colourless but bright. Denton got up and stood at his shoulder. ‘Recognize it?’
‘No - no—’ The corner of the paper quivered.
Denton said, ‘It’s important. It means something. You wanted to help me find this young woman, remember?’
Heseltine turned around him into the room and went back to where he had been sitting, a rather grubby love seat; he leaned over and put the drawing on the cushion of Denton’s chair, then dropped his head on the fingers of one hand and looked at the raddled carpet. He said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘You were talking about going away.’
Heseltine rubbed his forehead with his fingers as he leaned on them. ‘The little drawing is of a doorway in Mayfair. It’s a place called the Mayflower Baths.’ His eyes were shut. He kept rubbing. ‘I was taken there when I was a schoolboy. I didn’t know—A friend of my father’s took me. It was only the once, I swear. I’m not—’ He stopped rubbing, then put his thumb and first finger on his eyes and seemed to push. ‘It’s that kind of place, do you understand?’
‘You mean - women, or men?’
‘Men, of course, dear God - women!’ He threw himself back, his eyes still closed. ‘I was deeply ashamed. I’m still ashamed. And the man who took me was a friend of my father’s, I trusted him, but looking back I realize he’d said things earlier, made insinuations.’
‘You were a boy.’
‘I was seventeen. I knew enough. At school - there’s always a certain amount of that sort of thing. I won’t claim I was innocent.’ He sat up. ‘But it was only the one time!’
‘You’re sure that’s what the picture shows.’
Heseltine cackled. ‘It’s unmistakable. I used to pass that doorway before the war, going to a house where I often looked in after dinner. I could never see it without flinching.’ He swallowed. ‘I learned to look away.’ He laughed.
Denton stayed to talk about other things, but he knew when he left that he’d made Heseltine’s day worse, not better.
He wanted to talk to somebody about it, but Janet was off with her lawyer; Atkins’s was the wrong ear. What did it mean that Mary Thomason had drawn the doorway of a male rendezvous on her portrait? Did she know something about Erasmus Himple and thus was making a threat? Had she learned something from her brother, who then went off to the Continent with Himple? Did this make Himple the one she feared was going to hurt her?
He went in the Regent Street entrance of the Café Royal and then into the Domino Room. He was hoping for Frank Harris, but it was far too early. No Augustus John, either; he would be back in Liverpool by now. He sat, still wearing his hat and overcoat, and drank a milky coffee and tried to think it through. It was the same squirrel cage - round and round, too much suggestion and not enough fact.
A little after six, a disreputable figure shambled across his view of the room.
‘Crosland!’
Crosland was pushing fifty but looked older, untidy grey hair surrounding a pouched and lined face. He wore an enormous unfitted ulster that, like a magician’s cloak, had pockets both inside and out. Papers stuck out of them. His hat had once been a silk topper. His waistcoat, unmatched to anything else he wore, carried old egg yolk down it like candle drippings. Crosland was nominally a hack journalist, really a polemicist and an information peddler; he prided himself on being able to cobble up a fire-breathing pamphlet on both sides of any subject.
‘Got a minute?’
‘Buy me a drink?’
Denton signalled for a waiter. Crosland, never absolutely drunk, was usually on the way; beery breath blasted from him - always a sign that he was on his uppers, his preferred drink brandy - and, under and around it, an odour of wet wool and sour milk.
‘I need some information.’
‘Cost you.’
Denton dropped a shilling on the table. ‘The Mayflower Baths.’
‘Ha! Cost you more than that.’
Denton fished out another shilling.
‘Make it half a crown. Pricey part of town.’ When the other sixpence had gone on the pile, Crosland removed his hat and rubbed his dirty hair with his left hand, then put the hat on the table. A glass of brandy had appeared by then; he sipped. Denton’s own glass was empty; Crosland indicated the money and said, ‘Buy you a drink?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, then. The Mayflower Baths. Ah, well. Discreet spot for gents of a certain taste to find young ’uns, if you follow me. Mm? Used to be any evening after seven - very different during the day, ladies’ Turkish bath and so on - but at night, this other drama. Oscar was known to drop in. Had a taste for some of the rougher ones.’ He drank again. ‘Gone now, if you’d been thinking of stopping by.’
‘Gone?’ Denton had a vision of some sort of demolition, London nowadays gobbling up older buildings as if they were chunks of candy.
‘Closed. Coppers raided it. After Oscar’s trial, the Baths put out the word that it had gone out of the man-and-boy business entirely. I was told that as gospel truth. Maybe it was, for a bit. However, they started up again, Tuesday and Saturday evenings. Did regular business other days, other times. Perfectly respectable. But Tuesday and Saturday after seven, if they knew you, the old times were back. Never there myself, but my understanding is it was a bit like Smithfield Market. Very little love lost, if you follow me.’
His glass was empty. Denton ordered another, but Crosland insisted on paying for his own this time. ‘Sure you won’t have something yourself ? Always like to be hospitable. Failing of mine. Anyway. The police raided it last summer, probably to make an example. Some very well-placed people got snagged in the net. It never made the papers, except for “Closing of Mayfair Landmark” sort of pieces, kind of thing would let would-be patrons know that the cat was out of the bag. I wrote something m’self, “Memories of the Mayflower Baths”, that was as innocent as a maiden’s dream but capitalized on the moment - editors looking for stuff that would titillate. A dozen boys went up on charges, couple of minor gents - public indecency, that sort of thing, nothing huge - and the point was made. Owner doing time for endangering public morals. It’s going to reopen, I’m told, as a therapeutic spa for ladies. New name, of course.’
‘You know the names of the people arrested?’
‘Arrested, yes. Detained, no. The tale is the coppers swept up about thirty people but let most of them go at the door of the magistrates’ court. Some rather soiled drawers that night, they say. Names we’d recognize if we heard them.’
‘Himple? Crum?’
Crosland shook his head. ‘Himple the artist? Always rumours about him. You know anything I can use?’
Denton shook his head. ‘When exactly was the raid?’
Crosland raised a finger. He began to spread the coat’s big pockets with both hands, peering down into the messes of papers; at last, he drew out a small black notebook. He leafed through it. The pages looked like damp leather, thick and soft with use. ‘August the seventh.’
‘That was the day of the raid?’
‘Night. Coppers went in the door at nine-forty-five, August the seventh.’
Denton put out another shilling. ‘Worth every penny.’
A day before Mary Thomason had written her letter. Two days before Erasmus Himple had left for the Continent.
When he got home, there was a note from Janet Striker: ‘I am going away for a little. Ruth Castle will know how to reach me.’ He flushed and swore, then saw himself, a large man about to have an infantile tantrum. She has the right to do what she wants. It was difficult to tell himself that and mean it, yet he had to: sometimes when he looked at her, he saw a look of something like absence, and he knew she was away in one of the dark places to which he would never be admitted. He had them, too, those sinks into which the inevitable sorrows of being alive were poured and, for the most part, covered over. But it hurt that she had gone to get away from him, for that was what he was sure she had done. And damn Ruth Castle, of whom he was thoroughly sick and whom he didn’t want to see. Not now, anyway. Maybe it was not having a book to write, something to concentrate on. Maybe in a few days. Maybe Janet would come back quickly. Maybe—
He crushed the paper in his fist.
‘Do you speak French?’
Heseltine’s reactions were a semiquaver slow, as if he were thinking about something else. ‘A bit.’
‘I want to go to France for a few days. I need a translator.’
Again, the delayed response, and then a flicker of what might have been suspicion, some recollection perhaps of the discussion of the Mayflower Baths: what was Denton proposing? Heseltine’s cheekbones got some colour. Denton said, ‘It’s about the girl who sent me the note. You said you wanted to try to help her.’
‘In France?’
‘Her brother.’ He told him quickly about Erasmus Himple.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t either. Something happened in Normandy. They were supposed to stay the summer, but after a month they packed up and went to the South of France. Then Himple fired him. Something started in Normandy, I think. Maybe a lovers’ quarrel.’ He kept his eyes on Heseltine’s. The younger man’s cheeks got bright spots high on the cheekbones. ‘It might do you good to get away. Get a new perspective on things.’
‘I wouldn’t dare take Jenks.’
‘Neither of us needs to take anybody. We can be there in a day, back in another couple. It isn’t as if we’d be staying at the Ritz.’
‘My French is terribly rusty.’
‘Rust is better than no metal at all. I’d just get the spike and shout at them.’
Denton insisted that they could start the next day; he didn’t say that the post-partum depression of having finished the book now gripped him. Heseltine at first demurred, then became almost manic, swinging from torpor to excitement. Now he was sure he could be ready in an hour. They could take the night boat. Anything was possible.
Denton bought two tickets on the morning train and the Le Havre boat. Atkins made a face when he told him but didn’t ask to go. In fact, he made it clear he wouldn’t go on a bet. ‘Had enough travel, thank-you-very-much. Roast beef of olde England’s plenty good enough for me.’
‘You mean you have other plans. How’s the moving picture?’
‘As it happens, we’re scheduled to do the Battle of Ladysmith day after tomorrow, but that’s nothing to do with me and France.’
‘How’s the housemaid?’
‘An insufferable little monosyllable, is how she is. My pal with the picture machine has decided he’s sweet on her. Disgusting.’ He was picking up Denton’s supper tray to take it back to the Lamb. ‘I can get you somebody from an agency if you have to have an attendant on this jaunt.’
‘Much as I hate to hurt your feelings, I don’t need anybody.’
‘Hard to believe.’
‘I lived most of my life without somebody to pick up after me.’
‘That was then, General. Times change.’ Atkins cocked a cynical eye at him. ‘You going to a respectable hotel?’
‘There are no hotels. There’s some sort of village inn.’
‘Oh, well. Wear the old brown tweed. Frenchies won’t know any different.’
Denton didn’t dare let Atkins pack for him after that exchange. He got a somewhat chipped and scuffed pigskin valise out of a wardrobe and put a couple of shirts and collars and a set of woollen combinations in it - it was now almost December - and threw in extra stockings and then stood looking around the room, thinking about what else to pack. A flannel nightshirt, of course. What else would he need?
He decided that the answer was court plasters - he anticipated a lot of walking - and he found one in his desk, then remembered that he owned somewhere a small leather case of plasters, the perfect thing because it came with scissors. Where was it?
At the bottom left of the desk was a drawer he never used except as a place to throw things he wouldn’t want again but couldn’t quite throw away. He grasped the brass handle and pulled hard, because the drawer was always slow to open. To his surprise, it shot back towards him. He bent over it, seeing a lot of useless stuff, through which he tunnelled. Towards the bottom was a small basket in which he found the court-plaster case. Below the basket was only - or should have been only - a pistol almost as ancient as his Navy Colt, a Galland .450 with a curious contraption under the barrel that allowed barrel and cylinder to be moved forward for loading. The pistol was huge and heavy; he had got it for a few shillings from a pal of Atkins’s who had been ‘caught short’ for money. For a while, he had used the gun as a paperweight; then he had thrown it into the drawer.
Where it now most certainly was not. He understood why the drawer had opened so easily now - no mass of iron to weight it on the rails.
He searched the drawer again, then the entire desk.
‘Jarrold,’ he said aloud. Munro had asked him if Jarrold could have stolen any of his guns and he’d said no. He’d entirely forgotten the awkward old weapon.
‘Dammit!’
He wrote a note to Munro and left it with Atkins to be posted first thing in the morning. When he told Atkins about the missing pistol, he said only, ‘Crikey.’