The Bohemian Girl

at the book shops, quite a long time ago. Half a dozen shops. I’ve been all over Charing Cross Road and Booksellers’ Row. It was an idea of someone else’s, told me by Mr Denton. And if it’s the right man, his name isn’t Albert Cosgrove, of course.’ She had a small handbag, which she opened to take out a notebook, from which she took a folded piece of paper. ‘Struther Jarrold — an address in Belgravia.’ She passed the paper across to Munro, who was sitting again. Munro looked at it and passed it to Markson.

Markson said, ‘We would have got to the booksellers on our own. Shortage of personnel.’

Munro shook his head and said to her, ‘We looked for you this morning, Mrs Striker. About the invasion of your rooms, most unfortunate-’

‘I went rather into seclusion, I’m afraid — hid in the house of an old friend. I was shaken.’

‘Anybody would have been.’ Munro was studying her, not without admiration. ‘You’re taking it wonderfully well.’

‘I didn’t yesterday. I work, Mr Munro, as I guess you know. I have — had — very little in those rooms to lose. Still, it was a shock. Even for a resident of Bethnal Green.’ She looked up at Denton and smiled.

It was the first time that Denton had known where she lived: he had guessed it was in a working-class part of London, but not one with a reputation for immigration and hopeless poverty and some of the city’s worst slums, the reputation now perhaps somewhat dated. Nonetheless, despite improvement schemes, ‘model’ housing, and a lot of good intentions, Bethnal Green still had an average income somewhere below fifteen shillings a week. He smiled back at her to show he didn’t care.

Munro asked how she had found Struther Jarrold’s name at the book shops.

‘Oh, I told them I had a set of signed copies of Denton’s books, and did they know anybody who’d buy them. They said they would, of course, and I said each time that I’d get more money from a collector. That was thought amusing; one of them said I ought to go into the book trade. But most of them looked through their lists of customers with special wants, and five of them came up with this Jarrold. I can give you a list of the shops, if you like.’

Munro looked at Markson, then at Denton. Denton said, ‘Well?’

Munro shifted his bulk, looked at Markson. The younger detective said, ‘We don’t want to, uh, take the wrong step-’

Denton plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets. ‘You’ve got enough now — the letters, the threat, the attack on me-’

‘And woe betide us if we’re wrong,’ Munro growled. ‘If this what’s-his-name — Jarrold — is like anybody else in Eaton Square, he’ll have a solicitor beside him before we can get our first question out, and if we try to take him up on a charge, he’ll walk because we can’t prove he attacked you, we can’t prove he wrote the letters, and we can’t prove he was ever inside the house behind yours.’

‘Search his lodging.’

‘I don’t know how you do it out West, sheriff, but here we have to get a warrant. Nobody on the bench is going to give me a warrant on a suspicion that there might be something in somebody’s lodging that had come out of your house. I grant you there’s a circumstantial case. I’ll take it to the prosecutor, but I know what he’ll say: get me the evidence.’

Markson gave Denton a pleading look. ‘Fingerprint Branch are at the lady’s now.’

‘My piano,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am, they’ll do the piano, too.’

‘No, I mean they must take extra care with the piano.’

The two detectives laughed, then saw too late she wasn’t joking. There was some lame fence-mending, some temporizing, and then Janet Striker said, ‘Do you mean, then, that you won’t be arresting him?’

‘Well — not at once, ma’am-’ Markson made the mistake of trying to explain the rules of evidence in a tone he’d have used to a child. Things started to get worse, and then Munro dragged Markson to his feet and the two detectives took themselves off.

When the street door had closed on them, Janet Striker gave a horrible laugh, pulled her hatpins out and threw her little hat as far down the room as she could. ‘Oh, the majesty of the law!’ she shouted.

‘They’re doing their job.’

‘Don’t patronize me! Bloody fools! At least they were stunned when they first saw me.’

‘I hardly recognized you.’

‘It’s the dress.’ She held out the sides of the skirt. ‘I borrowed it from one of Ruth Castle’s French girls.’

‘You look wonderful.’

She was going to say something angry, then caught herself. ‘It isn’t you; it’s them.’ She shook herself. ‘Damn them.’ Walking up and down, she quieted, then laughed, apparently at herself. ‘I had to go to Oxford Street for underclothes — oh, dear God, a corset! I haven’t worn a corset in ten years! I can’t wait to get out of it.’

‘Do.’ He knew at once it was a mistake; sexual innuendo didn’t work on her.

She looked angry. ‘I have to see my solicitor and I have to find a removal man and I said I’d have this dress back by six. First things first — appalling thing to say. I know it, I know it. Oh, God! Oh, damn the police! That they should make this fuss over my rooms in Bethnal Green, and they wouldn’t stir out of New Scotland Yard if my neighbours had had their throats slit!’ She began to stride up and down again. ‘I live in half of what used to be a weaving loft at the top of a ramshackle house. Now the weaving trade’s gone west and the room’s been divided, me on one side and three girls in the other. There’ve been robberies in that house, beatings, drunken abuse, and the only time the police have come is now — you know why? Because of you!’ She turned on him. ‘It isn’t your doing, I know, but if Cosgrove or Jarrold or whoever he is hadn’t painted his demon’s name on my wall, I’d have rated nobody higher than the local constable. But they connect him with you, and you’re well off and you’re famous! Don’t you see the unfairness of it? The comical, terrible unfairness of it? And then I present them with his name and they won’t charge him!’ As quickly as it had come, the mood vanished. ‘Oh, to hell with it.’ She laughed a little nastily. She snatched up the hat and grabbed his hand and started towards the door. ‘See me into my cab.’

While he was out getting dinner, a constable came with a message from Munro. Atkins met him with it at the front door: We have a fingerprint. Keep it to yourself.

Denton was at New Scotland Yard at eight the next morning. He felt guilty at not working; on the other hand, getting Albert Cosgrove out of his life would certainly make the writing go more easily. He expected to be told that Munro was not yet in; to the contrary, Munro was sitting at his desk in the CID room, the space mostly quiet now as a new shift began. Several men were gathered around a movable blackboard, talking and rubbing chalk from their fingers; a couple of others were at the desks. Munro looked grey, older, somehow handsomer because of his obvious fatigue.

‘You have somewhat the look of a Romantic,’ Denton said. ‘Not one of the ones who died young.’

‘Spent the night here. I was at the magistrate’s until half one, then back here to get it on paper. No way to get to Peckham that hour of the morning.’ He had a mug of tea, waved to somebody to fetch one for Denton. ‘Hope you’ve eaten. The canteen’s swill.’

‘Have you?’

‘Been eating all night — the only way to stay alive — if you can’t sleep, eat. Stopped at a coffee stall and got a bag of buns. Horrible sweet things — the staff of police life.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘You want to hear it?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘We picked Jarrold up last evening. Took his fingerprint. Matched the one on the piano lid. Like he’d dipped his finger in the paint to do it. Took him straight to police court; magistrate was an antique, but he was up on fingerprints — new Bureau has done its work. Got a warrant to search, too.’

‘What’s Jarrold like?’

‘Like a plant that’s been kept indoors too long. Pale, not so much fat as he doesn’t seem to have any muscles. Bag of jelly sort of thing. Perfectly amiable. Smiled, wanted to talk, but not about the case. Absolutely mum on that. Half an hour after he got here, two legal gents showed up, very high on the tree, one in evening dress, both making I’d guess about ten times what I do.’

‘You said that would happen.’

‘Yeah, well, what it turns out, Denton, is that Struther Jarrold comes from a very powerful and very rich family. He lives with his mother — that’s the Belgravia address — and she’s Lady Emmeline Jarrold.’