The Bohemian Girl

Chapter TWENTY-ONE
Munro and Sergeant Markson came and were solicitous and gentle, but he knew that Munro thought he was behaving badly. Munro, at least, should have been allowed to see him.
‘I’ve said I’m sorry. At first they wouldn’t let me see you, and then I didn’t want to see you. Why didn’t you insist? You’re the coppers.’
‘Well, no harm done, I suppose.’
‘I still feel like hell.’
‘Two .450s, I’m not surprised.’ Munro sat in the metal chair, Markson in a Thonet that had been dragged in from the corridor. Outside his door, sounds that Denton had become used to - the clink of glass and metal, the clack of feet, voices - were distorted and funnelled by the tile-walled corridor. Every day now, he was pushed up and down this corridor in a wheelchair, then made to try to walk on his new crutches.
Markson cleared his throat. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, if we might, sir.’
Munro grunted. ‘Just get on with it, Fred, he knows where we stand.’ He frowned at Denton. ‘And we know where he stands.’
Denton frowned back. He felt as if he were going to jump out of himself somehow. He didn’t sleep at night now without chemicals, and the days were like this.
‘Well, sir—’ Markson cleared his throat again. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about the shooting.’
‘All right.’
‘What do you remember, sir?’
‘I don’t remember actually being shot. I have a kind of picture of looking up and seeing Jarrold. He looked beside himself with joy.’
‘He had a gun, sir?’
‘Of course he did. That old Galland.’
‘You recognized it, sir?’
‘You couldn’t mistake that contraption under the barrel.’
‘Could you swear it was your gun, sir?’
‘Well, of course it was—It looked like my gun, all right?’
‘But you can’t swear—’
‘It didn’t have my name on it, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Something like that, yes, sir.’
Munro leaned forward. Like everybody else who came, he had put his hat on the bed next to Denton’s dead leg. ‘Do you remember anything that Jarrold said?’
‘He said, “I did it, I did it, Astoreth.”’
‘You’re sure of that.’
‘I am now. I wasn’t at first. He sounded like a kid who’d caught his first trout. I can’t tell you how - pleased - he looked. What’s happened to him?’
Munro shifted his bulk, glanced at Markson, said, ‘He’s in a prison for the criminally insane.’
‘There’s been a trial?’
‘Not yet. Maybe never. Prosecutor wanted to hear what you’d have to say, and then he may not go to trial. Charge of attempted murder was laid, of course, but in fact Jarrold’s been committed on the earlier business with Mrs Striker’s rooms, and violation of the terms of house arrest. Either road, he isn’t coming out again.’
Denton, sitting up on a pile of pillows, his emaciated chest partly revealed by an unbuttoned nightshirt, stared at Munro. His interest in Jarrold now was rather theoretical, not at all a desire for justice or revenge. ‘Before he shot me, you told Janet Striker he was getting better.’
‘I didn’t; his bleeding doctors did. Any doctor who pretends to know what’s going on in another man’s mind is a bleeding quack. They had him on chloral, so he breaks out and when we arrest him he’s been drinking, and now the doctors tell us the combination of chloral and alcohol’s the sure way to lunacy. Well, they’re right.’
Denton stared at him some more. Not fully aware of his own state, his own motives, Denton sensed he was coming out of the anger and melancholy of the past weeks. He knew that he wanted to show himself to Munro - the gaunt face, the apparently haunted eyes - because he knew that his body was an accusation. Finally, when he could see that Munro was embarrassed and annoyed, he said, ‘Tell me what happened to Heseltine.’
‘Oh, that poor sod.’
‘Yes, that poor sod.’
‘Wasn’t our case; Division handled it. Still, Fred followed it once he found you’d had some connection with him.’
‘How did you find that?’
‘His man. Said Heseltine had been travelling with you.’
Markson was going through a notebook, licking a finger every two or three pages to turn them. ‘Man named Jenks,’ he said when he found the page.
‘I know Jenks.’
‘He found the body. Coroner’s jury ruled suicide, that was it.’ Markson looked up. ‘He was despondent.’
‘Like hell he was.’
Both detectives jerked; Munro looked offended. Markson said, ‘Division reported the man Jenks said his employer had been despondent. Just got chucked out of the army. Confirmed by interview with the victim’s father conducted by - mmm, local constabulary in—’
‘Jenks is a drunkard.’
‘Well, still—’
‘Heseltine wasn’t despondent!’
‘Leave it, Denton. It’s history now.’
‘He wasn’t despondent! I’d just spent three days with him. He was talking about going to Jamaica to take a job. When I left him at Waterloo, he was happy.’
Munro picked up his hat and leaned his forearms on his knees. ‘Leave it.’
‘How did he kill himself?’
Munro looked at Markson. The young detective looked at his notes, clearly marking time, and then said, ‘Slashed his wrists with his razor.’
‘It’s done,’ Munro said. He stood. ‘The coroner’s jury got the evidence, Denton; there was no doubt in anybody’s mind. He got in the bath with his razor and did it. I’m sorry, especially as you have to hear it in your condition, but it’s what happened.’
Denton tried to picture Heseltine’s cutting his veins with a razor. Lying in his own blood? He said, ‘Dressed or naked?’
‘Unh - I don’t have that, sir.’
‘With the water running? A man like Heseltine doesn’t make messes. He’d have known he’d be found by Jenks, who was incompetent; he’d have done everything to avoid leaving a mess. Find out.’
Munro shook his head. ‘It’s over. Don’t tell us how to do our job.’ He fanned a fly away with his hat. ‘Your job is to get well. It hurts me to look at you. I mean it - I want you to focus on getting your old self back; forget all this business. The young man who killed himself—’ He shrugged. ‘These things happen.’
Denton held his eyes and then, feeling the pain in his back, the discomfort of the sheet under his buttocks, used both hands to shift the position of his right leg. He said, ‘Sit down, Munro.’
‘Got a job to do.’
‘Not yet. I want to talk to you.’
Munro looked at Markson as if to ask if Markson should stay, too; Denton nodded. Munro lowered his backside into the chair as if he feared sitting on something. He made a demonstration of taking out his watch and looking at it.
Denton said, ‘I don’t remember everything that happened when I was shot. More of it comes back to me, but I’m still blank where the shooting itself is concerned. Also just before that. I think I was coming to see you—’
‘You’d been at Mrs Castle’s.’
Denton raised his head. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Somebody grabbed Jarrold before he could put another bullet into you. Happened to be a private detective.’ Munro glanced at Markson, who seemed engrossed in his notebook, slowly turning the pages from back to front. ‘He was following you.’
Denton frowned, bewildered. ‘I’d just got back from France.’
Munro laid his hat on the bed again. His hair was pressed against his scalp where the hat had rested; he stroked the sides with his palms. ‘This is an embarrassment for the Metropolitan Police, Denton. I was going to tell you in good time. It’s, mmm, not something we’re proud of.’
‘I remember now - I thought somebody was following me. I think I’d thought so before, but there was never anybody.’
‘Lady Emmeline - Jarrold’s mother - was having you followed. She sent copies of their reports to Georgie Guillam.’
Denton’s brain seemed slow. He had to remind himself who Guillam was. When he remembered, he was enraged. ‘Why?’
‘I told you that Georgie’d pulled Jarrold over into his bailiwick. I thought it was just to make the connection - get himself some credit with the upper crust. Maybe that was all there was, to start with. He told the super he’d gone to Lady Emmeline’s house and offered her his help. Because Jarrold was now his responsibility. That could have been just Georgie’s sucking up. But getting the private detectives’ reports from her—He wanted to get something on you. So did Lady Emmeline. She really hates you, you know - a lot worse than Georgie. So they scratched each other’s back.’
Denton felt out of breath. ‘That’s how Jarrold knew where I’d be when he decided to shoot me.’
‘His mother wrote to him at least once a day. Sent him telegrams - one the night before you came back from France.’ Munro rubbed his forehead and blew out his cheeks. ‘One of the detectives had tailed you to the Channel ferry and told Guillam. Guillam cabled the French demanding they tell him when you started back. When he heard from them—’ Munro shook his head. ‘He did what no copper should ever do. He notified Lady Emmeline. After, he said he did it just so’s her detectives could pick you up again. But she telegraphed Jarrold, so what Guillam did meant that Jarrold could find you, too. Jarrold’s mother - and therefore Jarrold - knew where you’d be twelve hours before your boat landed that morning. The dicks picked you up again at Waterloo.’
‘And so did Jarrold.’
‘That’s my reading of it.’
‘But—’ Denton was thinking of the logistics of getting from Lady Emmeline’s Sussex house to London, then to Waterloo. Twelve hours would be plenty of time. Still—‘But why?’
‘Why Georgie, or why Jarrold?’
‘Jarrold.’
‘Loony.’
‘Not good enough, Munro. He’s insane, but he’s sane enough to get from Sussex to Waterloo, avoid the detective following me and wait for the opportunity to shoot me.’
‘Well, he knew about the detective, so avoiding him wouldn’t take a genius. Anyway, the detectives didn’t know him. The rest—’ Munro shook his massive head. ‘He’s a loony.’
‘With all respect, sir—’ Markson had put his notebook away. ‘It’s true it’s never been established why he shot Mr Denton.’
Munro waved the comment away. ‘He shot him because he was a loony that had been pestering Denton for a long time. He couldn’t get what he wanted from him, so he took his revenge.’
Denton had put his head back. He wasn’t listening to them. He looked at the ceiling and tried to remember what had happened. The shooting was a gap, but the rest was there: Mrs Castle, his returning home, the parting from Heseltine at Waterloo. Before that, the night crossing, the journey down from Caen. The farm. The barn. The hay. He said, ‘Heseltine and I go to France. We come back. Jarrold is waiting for me in London. He shoots me.’ He sat up. ‘How soon after I was shot did Heseltine die?’
Munro groaned. ‘Oh, Judas—’
Markson got the notebook out again, wet his finger, went through the pages. ‘Um - hmm.’ He went to another part of the notebook, licked a finger. ‘Mmm. Looks like the Heseltine suicide was the next morning.’
Denton pushed himself up and leaned his weight on his right arm. He pushed his face out as close to Munro’s as he could get it. ‘Two men travel together and come home and within twenty-four hours one’s shot and one’s dead! What does that tell you, Munro?’
‘Aw, God, Denton—Don’t do this to me, man.’
‘It’s just coincidence?’
‘Look—Give us some credit for brains, will you? Heseltine was in a bad way. He went away with you because you’d befriended him; isn’t that the way it was? His dad said something like that. He comes back to London, the next morning he reads in the paper you’ve been shot and are near death. It’s the last straw. Don’t you get it?’
Denton did get it. He wavered: he hadn’t seen it that way. It could have happened like that. Maybe Heseltine’s cheerfulness had been the rise before an inevitable drop, the shooting the immediate cause. And yet—‘Why did Jarrold shoot me that day?’
‘Because it’s the day he slipped his nurses and headed for London. D’you think we didn’t interview them? His mother had two male nurses watching him, or so she said; well, what they were was two local ploughboys that could have been diddled by a ten-year-old. Turns out they let Sonny roam the grounds while they had their tea in the kitchen every day and played peeky-boo with the housemaids. He could have slipped them any time he wanted.’
‘Then why that day?’
Munro pounded the arm of the chair. ‘Because he’s a bleeding loony!’
Denton lay back again. He felt exhausted, jangled; his blood seemed to be pounding in his head. ‘Why did we go to France?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Then why didn’t you ask me?’
‘Because you were unconscious! Because you wouldn’t see us! Because it doesn’t matter! I suppose you went to give Heseltine a change of air. You’d taken him under your wing, hadn’t you? Who the hell cares?’
Denton closed his eyes. He was almost panting. ‘There’s a barn in Normandy. I think there’s a body buried in it.’
‘Oh, Jesus—!’ Munro clapped his hat on his head and stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He turned on Denton. ‘Look, I’m sorry you’re feeling poorly, but I’ve got a long ton of work to do. This is all old stuff, closed, finished. You get yourself better, that’s your job. Don’t complicate mine, will you?’
Denton kept his eyes closed. ‘Why would two men who found where they think a body is buried in France be dead or near-dead as soon as they get back?’
Munro started to say something. He looked at Markson. ‘You’re blowing bubbles. Denton, think about it - Jarrold tried to shoot you. The dick wrapped him up and put him on the ground and that was the end of him - he went right to the station and the lock-up, and he hasn’t seen the light of day since. Yes, Jarrold tried to kill you on the day you got back from France. But there’s no way he could have had a hand in this other fella’s suicide the next day - and no reason! Now get yourself better, and we’ll have a brew-up together and chew it over someplace friendly, all right?’ He jerked his head at Markson.
When the two detectives reached the door, Denton said, eyes still closed, ‘Munro? What’s happened to Guillam?’
‘He was busted down to detective and sent to East Ham - the whole way across London from where he lives. Satisfied?’
‘Wasn’t Guillam partly responsible for attempted murder?’
Munro sighed. ‘Georgie’s got friends, Denton.’ He and Markson went out, and the door closed.
Gallichan came that afternoon and made himself comfortable so that he could explore more of Denton’s dreams. Denton was tired of it. He said, ‘I read once about a doctor who found a man who’d been shot in the stomach. The man healed with a hole the doctor could look through. He learned all sorts of things about the stomach. It made him famous. I think you’re using these dreams as a hole to look into my mind.’
‘I resent the very idea that I’m doing this for some egoistical purpose of my own.’
‘It’s my mind. I don’t like you looking into it. And dreams aren’t much of a window.’
‘Well, they’re not meaningless, either. The German, what’s-his-name, says that’s the point - dreams aren’t some sort of accident caused by eating too much toasted cheese. They have profound meaning. It is our task to find that out.’
Denton was still smarting from Munro’s visit. To a degree, he had found Gallichan’s interest flattering, the exploration itself interesting, but it had run its course and his mood was bad. ‘Get out of my stomach,’ he said.
‘But we’re making progress! We have identified feeling - fear, guilt - and persons: your dead wife, the laughing child, the man with the shotgun.’
‘I never said I felt guilt, doctor. Sorrow, yes - the two aren’t the same thing. And I didn’t say the person with the shotgun was a man.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a woman, surely. Forgive me, but I think you are deliberately avoiding the obvious conclusion - that the man with the shotgun is yourself.’ He seemed very pleased with that.
Denton simply looked at him. Then he burst out laughing - real laughter. When he was done, he said, ‘I think you need to read another book. My dreams aren’t well-made plays, doctor. They’re a mess. I don’t know about your dreams, but mine are a train wreck - bodies on the track, wreckage everywhere, people staggering around with blood running down their faces. If mine have meaning, it’s for the feelings I have, not some neat tale that’s like King Lear reduced to a bedtime story.’ Before Gallichan could object, Denton raised a hand and said, ‘Enough. Get me out of here.’
The portly doctor shook his head. ‘Even your imagery is full of violence. You are a violent man, Mr Denton.’
‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’
Gallichan stood, not entirely willingly. ‘We could go so much deeper,’ he said.
‘Let’s not.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘What a pity.’
‘I want to go home.’
Next day, Munro came back. He was apologetic. Between the two men was a mostly unacknowledged respect, even friendship; if it was made difficult by Denton’s putting his oversized nose into police business, Munro still didn’t want the relationship to end. He said he was sorry about yesterday; he said he had been to some extent carrying on for Markson’s benefit. ‘I don’t like for a youngster to think we let the public make up our minds for us.’
‘Are you going to do anything about France?’
Munro sighed. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’ He lowered his bulk into the metal chair and put his bowler on the bed. It was raining out, and water dripped from it on the sheet. ‘Tell it to me - all of it.’
Denton tried. Munro groaned when he went all the way back to Mary Thomason, but there was no other way to tell it - the Wesselons, the note to Denton, the remarques on the drawing, the Mayflower Baths. The only thing Denton skimmed over was the trunk, because of Janet; Munro saw the omission, frowned, said, ‘About this drawing—’
‘Don’t interrupt.’
‘Where’d you get the drawing?’
‘What the hell does it matter? I got it and I know it was hers!’
Munro gave him a long look. ‘So you’re hiding something. Better to tell me, you know.’
‘No.’
Munro shrugged. ‘You’ll have to, if I really ask.’
Denton groaned with disgust and finished his story.
‘Are you telling me that you believe the missing woman and the servant who went to France are connected?’
‘If she did the little drawings of Lazarus and the Mayflower Baths, that’s all the connection that’s needed.’
‘And now you think the brother or Crum, or whoever he is, is missing?’
‘He disappeared from the scene.’
‘In France?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you have a man who may or may not exist, who did or did not disappear at some later time, but there’s a body buried in a barn in Normandy, and it may be his.’ Munro shook his head.
‘I don’t have all of it, Munro. But something happened there. And Crum’s disappearance later is a matter of one letter Himple wrote to his valet - Crum could have been dead for weeks. Who would know?’ When he saw Munro’s pained expression, he said, ‘If something happened to the brother in France, then maybe something happened earlier to the girl, as well. Ask the French to dig in the barn!’
‘You mean, I should do exactly what Georgie Guillam got sent to Siberia for - use the Metropolitan Police to forward a scheme of a private party.’ He picked up his hat and looked into it as if something that made him unhappy lived in there. ‘It just doesn’t hang together. It’s all speculation. Look - bring me somebody who knows this man Crum and misses him. Bring me a mother, the sister, a wife, a lover - anybody who’s close to him and knows he’s gone. You’re talking about a man you’ve never seen, and you want me to act as if he’s missing. Denton, he’s something you’ve created out of whole cloth!’
‘The valet knew him. The housekeeper knew him.’
‘Have they reported him missing?’
‘All right. I’m going home tomorrow. I’ll handle it myself.’
‘Don’t do it! Now, I’m warning you—!’
‘What are you going to do, break my other leg?’
Munro, standing now, looked down at him. He shook his head. ‘You get well. You look like death warmed over. Stop tormenting yourself with this business and get better.’ At the door, he said, ‘I think you’re on to about half of something. Keep it under your hat until you get the other half.’
Janet Striker came later the same day. She shook an expensive-looking waterproof cape and leaned a new umbrella in the corner. She looked almost pretty. She had come into her money. Rain was driving against the window, which shook from the power of the wind; distant lightning appeared only as a glow on the glass, as if a dim lamp had been turned on and off.
‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ he said.
‘The doctor wants to keep you here.’
‘No point. I can make my way about now. I think I’m ready for a walking stick, get me off those damned crutches. Gallichan just wants to keep on playing with my dreams.’ He told her about Munro’s return visit, his refusal to get in touch with the French police. ‘If I could handle a shovel, I’d do it myself!’
‘I’ll do it.’ She lifted her chin. Her skin was pink from the storm she’d come through; she’d put on a few pounds since she’d got her money, too, looked healthier and happier. ‘I’ll take the Cohans - he can dig, she can make me look respectable. What a good idea.’
‘Cohan can’t go near dead bodies - it comes with being kohanim.’
‘No matter. I’ll do the digging myself. Or I’ll find myself a labourer.’
‘You don’t speak French.’
‘Of course I do. It’s one of those things my mother thought would make me more saleable.’ Her mother had died, she told him, while Denton had been unconscious; the death made Janet neither more nor less outspoken about her. She stood. ‘There’s just time to pack and be off first thing.’
‘You just got here.’
‘And I’m leaving. I’ll confess it now; I hate places like this. I’m so glad you’re coming home.’ She pulled the cape over her shoulders. ‘Let’s move this matter forward, is what I say.’
‘You want to get away from me again.’
‘I don’t.’
‘The doctor told me I’m a violent man.’
‘And so you are, but I suspect he doesn’t have the slightest notion what that means.’ She gave him a quick kiss. ‘I’ll be back by the weekend. To stay. In London, I mean.’
‘I’ll want Cohan, as soon as I can have him,’ he said. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Once I’m home, I think they’ll try to kill me again.’
‘They.’ She held the cape open as if she might take it off again.
‘Jarrold’s in a prison for the insane.’
‘Jarrold was just the means. There’s somebody else. I thought they might try to get at me here.’
‘They - not he?’
‘I don’t know - I don’t know.’ He couldn’t keep his face from showing his fear of losing her. ‘You’ll really come back?’
She kissed him again. ‘Really.’