When he finally stopped in late afternoon his knees cracked when he stood. He felt dimly light-headed, as if he’d drawn in lungfuls of tobacco smoke. He expected to totter when he walked. It was almost five o’clock.
‘I’m thinking of going out later,’ he said to Atkins. The soldier-servant had picked up the photographic copies of the drawing that they’d found in Mary Thomason’s trunk; despite his telling Munro that the Mary Thomason business was over, he wanted to find somebody to identify the drawing. Ever hopeful, or stupidly persistent? Or obsessed? Or cracked?
‘Best do, unless you want supper from the Lamb.’
‘You could do eggs.’
‘Now, Colonel, we’ve been through this. I don’t mind the odd rasher and eggs at breakfast or a light lunch, but we agreed I don’t cook in the evening.’
‘We did, yes. I thought you might take pity on me.’
‘Got to draw the line somewhere. Give an employer an inch, he’ll take a you-know-what.’
Denton stretched, then bent to touch his toes. He poured himself sherry, sat, said to Atkins, ‘Have some yourself, if you like.’
Atkins shook his head. ‘I’m thinking. Might have stumbled on a new business interest.’ He had been standing there since Denton had come downstairs; pretty clearly, he had something on his mind. Denton hoped it was not about Mrs Striker; he didn’t have time for morals just then. He needn’t have worried, however, because Atkins surprised him by saying, ‘What d’you know about the kinema?’
‘Nothing. What’s there to know? And isn’t it cinema?’
‘We say kinema.’
‘We?’
Atkins cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling. This was a learned behaviour, the source East End melodrama — Making a Reluctant Suggestion. ‘Pal of mine has bought himself a kinema machine.’
Denton made a face at the sherry. He could guess what Atkins was leading up to. Atkins had a weakness for new technologies, what he called ‘business opportunities for a chap with vision’, into which he’d put small amounts of money, hoping for a big return that never materialized. ‘What happened to the vacuum cleaner?’
Before they had gone off to Transylvania, Atkins had got involved in a hand-pumped machine that looked like an oversized clyster and had been supposed to replace the broom. Now, Atkins said, ‘The enterprise died while we was away and I wasn’t here to manage it. Boon to women, but they complained they was getting muscles like a barrel-lapper from using it. Two housemaids developed elbows and had to have medical attention. Under threat of lawsuit, the firm dissolved.’
‘So now it’s cinema.’
‘Yes, well, yes — chap has a first-class Polish picture-taking machine, needed a bit of cash to grease the skids, as it were. Him and me are thinking of making what’s called a kinema picture.’
‘You’re going to make a moving picture?’
‘Something up to date and educational, yes.’
Denton put his chin in his hands. ‘What?’
‘The war. The Boer War, that is.’
‘It isn’t over yet.’
‘As good as. Anyway, it don’t have to be over. Point is to show it. Thrilling.’
‘The war’s been on for more than three years. How long will your picture last?’
‘I say five minutes, but my pal says we can’t get that much film in the machine, so maybe it’ll be two.
‘Makes the war a little compressed.’
‘Well, the high points. You know.’ Atkins cleared his throat again.
‘We thought we’d borrow some uniforms here and there, pick up some rifles at the markets. Can’t tell a Martini from a Baker at any distance, after all. Blank charges. Dozen men, maybe, let them run about, shoot off the rifles, they can be British troops one day, Boers the next — put the Boers in old clothes and Oom Paul beards and soft hats, can’t beat that for convincingness.’ When Denton said nothing, he added, ‘We’re looking for a cannon. Put a quarter pound of black powder in the snout, let the Boers run about, huge explosion — that’s the siege of Mafeking. Well?’
‘There’s a reason you’re telling me this.’
‘I, mm, thought you might allow us to, ah, make use of the front door.’
‘As what? Pretoria?’
Atkins chuckled the way adults chuckle at small children. ‘As the scene of the housemaid and the soldier. Idea of my own. Stunned my pal. I said, let’s put in something that the people watching will understand is like themselves. Well — The Soldier’s Farewell, eh? Our front door — pretty housemaid — there’s one up the street who’d be a marvel for it — soldier in his uniform — she waves — off he goes — eh? Then all the scenes of the war. Then — The Soldier’s Return! Our front door — the maid, looking out — he appears! — has a stick — limps — embrace! I call it a frame — around the picture. What d’you think?’
Denton stared at him. ‘You mean you’re telling a story!’ he said.
‘We are? Well, now-’
‘I’m impressed. I’m more than impressed. Atkins, you really thought of that?’
‘Well-It isn’t as if I haven’t heard you talk about such things. A frame, I mean. Well, yes, I thought of it. Can we use the front door or can’t we?’
It was both the daftest idea Atkins had so far had and the likeliest, Denton thought, to work. It was laughable — Hampstead Heath was to be South Africa — and neither Atkins nor his pal knew anything about acting or photography or saying things with pictures, but the ‘kinema’, so far as Denton could tell, was a rough-and-ready thing that was being shown in empty shops and rooms, the pictures projected on a bedsheet and the audience paying a farthing to stand behind a rope. ‘Where are you going to show your picture, if it gets made?’
‘We’re looking at a butcher’s shop that went bust in Finsbury. I say we ought to go south of the river — more people, less competition — but my pal says closer is better.’
‘You’d be wise to buy some insurance.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Running around shooting off guns, things could happen. Not to mention some householder who says he was so frightened by what he thought was a Boer invasion that he fell off the stepladder and is suing for a painful neck.’
Atkins put his lower jaw to one side. After some seconds, he said, ‘I’m glad we had this talk. Makes me think.’ He started for the back, turned around, thanked Denton again. ‘I’m grateful. The scales are falling from my eyes. You’ve got a head for these things. Invaluable.’
Denton thought he’d best take advantage of Atkins’s mood. ‘One thing.’
‘Sir?’
‘The lady who was here — Mrs Striker. A very private matter.’
‘I never thought otherwise.’
‘Not a word.’
‘I’m hurt you’d think it of me.’
A little later, Atkins brought up an almost high tea, lavish by the standards he usually set. ‘This’ll hold you until you get to the Criterion or some such posh spot for dinner.’ It was Atkins’s way of saying that Denton had told him something useful.
It was in fact to the Cafe Royal and not the Criterion that he made his way. He liked the Cafe Royal, its rather disorderly Domino Room, whose high-styled decor was so at odds with many of the patrons. Gold and blue-green, with caryatids near the ceiling and gilded pillars that evolved into acanthus trees as they grew upwards, it expressed an already dated idea of French archness. Upstairs, the Cafe Royal was fairly grand; down here at ground level, it was part bistro and part Bohemian hangout. The chicken pie and the milky coffee were famous, as were the shouting matches, the models, the touts, the odd fistfight, the philosophizing and pontificating that came and went through the place like a tide.
The waiter knew him. Or seemed to know him. The waiters were mostly Italian, rather cynical, given to ironic facial expressions. He never knew what they were really thinking.
‘Has Mr Frank Harris come in yet?’
