The Bohemian Girl

waterproof bowler.

The sense of being imposed on, of being ill treated, stayed with him. She should have written. She should at least have done that much. She was playing some game. He turned right at the end of Lamb’s Conduit Street and, instead of heading for New Scotland Yard as he’d said, walked straight on towards Westerley Street and Mrs Castle’s. He cursed his own inconstancy.

He turned back twice, once lingered by a shop window, feeling irrationally that he was being followed, but there was nobody. What was the matter with him? It was the sense of ill-treatment, he thought.

Fred Oldaston was not on the door at Westerley Street. It was not yet noon; the door was opened by a middle-aged maid in a perfectly proper black dress and white apron. ‘I’m so sorry, sir, we’re not receiving,’ she said.

‘I need to see Mrs Castle.’

‘She’s not receiving callers yet, sir. If you’ll come back-’

He produced a card and insisted she take it in. Something about him impressed her — frightened her, more likely — and she held the door for him, then left him in the little entry where Fred usually sized up the clientele. She wasn’t gone long, gave no sign that anything unusual was happening; she took his umbrella, thrust it into a gold and blue ceramic cylinder, said only, ‘This way, please,’ and led him through the public rooms and into the one with the William Morris paper where Ruth Castle usually received the male world, and then through it and into the cool blue-and-green sitting room where he had met Janet Striker after her rooms had been invaded.

‘Please wait, sir.’

Waiting was the last thing he wanted to do. He wished now he had gone straight to Munro’s. At least Munro would have given him an argument, stirred him up. If Munro was no help once he did get to New Scotland Yard, he decided, he’d go right back to Normandy and do what he should have done yesterday, dig up the damned barn and the hell with it. Buy off the farmer. He’d need Heseltine again. Catch the evening train out of Waterloo, be in Le Havre at-

‘Do take off your coat, Denton, you’ll catch your death when you go out.’

‘Where is she?’

Ruth Castle had touched her cheeks and lips with red, but she looked worn at this time of the morning; he thought the veins in her cheeks were starting to show, and serve her right. But her figure was still good, evident in the floor-length wrapper she wore, a blue-grey shot silk with an elaborate ruffle up the front and around the back of the neck. She stared at him and then opened her eyes wide and sat down on the love seat and extended her arms up the curves on either side. ‘I do want you to be civil, Denton.’

‘Where is she?’ He was still sick of Ruth Castle.

‘Well, she isn’t here, if that’s what you mean. Nor is she in London, so you can’t rush off and bedevil her when she wants to be by herself. Give her some breathing room, Denton.’

‘She hasn’t even written to me!’

‘Why should she? What is it you expect — comments on the weather, the news of what other ladies are wearing? Billy-doos?’

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘Hard not to, my dear. Men in love are so mockable. Where have you been, one might ask.’

‘France. Business.’

‘Paris — that business?’ She laughed.

‘Ruth, look-’ He put his hat on a table and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I’m sorry if I was rude. Yes, I suppose I’m a man in love. I don’t know what she wants from me. She’s avoiding me, isn’t she?’

‘She’s afraid of you.’

‘I’d never hurt her!’

‘That’s not what she’s afraid of. The world is full of women, my dear, and you picked one of the tetchiest. Well, that’s you — if you’d picked somebody else, you wouldn’t be yourself. So you must take the consequences.’ She lit a cigarette and stared at him, drawing in the smoke.

‘Meaning that I leap through whatever hoops she holds up for me.’ His impatience with Ruth Castle had attached itself to Janet, too.

‘That’s your way of looking at it, not hers.’ She exhaled the smoke and put her head back while it dissipated in the room. ‘Denton, she isn’t doing anything to you. She’s trying to do something for herself. She doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as love. She doesn’t trust men. She doesn’t believe she deserves anything, good or bad. She’d make a fine nun if only she’d knuckle under to the idea of a God who’s a very demanding old man.’

‘She’s told you everything?’

‘Janet doesn’t tell anybody “everything”. Until you came along, she was going to win her lawsuit and take her money and go away somewhere that nobody knew her, and she was going to be self-sufficient. No men, no women, no fears, no hopes. Now you’ve spoilt all that.’

‘I don’t think I’ve spoiled anything. God knows I didn’t mean to.’

‘Hell is paved with good intentions. Let her be, Denton. She’ll come back.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She always does what she says. She’ll come back. You may not like what she tells you when she comes back, but she’ll tell you to your face and she’ll be honest.’

‘You know what she’s going to say, then.’

‘I know nothing. But I know her. You must wait, and then you must listen, and then you must either try not to make a fool of yourself in your delight, or you must live with a loss.’ She put the cigarette out in a small China tray. ‘Now I want you to go. I have to dress, and I’ve the accountant coming. Be a man, Denton.’

He made a hollow laughing sound in his throat. ‘That’s what a woman who was throwing me over said to me once.’

‘Well, it’s good advice. Go away. Don’t forget your hat. You look quite nice, by the way.’

She rang a bell and the middle-aged maid appeared and led him back through the house. In one of the rooms, a young woman in a sleazy wrapper looked at him with a kind of horror and hurried away. The maid handed him his umbrella and opened the door.

He gave her a coin. She bent her knees an inch or two, a symbolic curtsey. Perhaps the coin was too small.

The clouds that had looked like meringues when he had come out of Waterloo station had darkened and congealed and now lay over London in layers, with darker streaks lower down that slanted on a diagonal towards the docks. Ahead of him in the gaps between the houses and the leafless trees, a sliver of blue still showed, closing as he watched it and becoming a pale grey with tendrils of darker colour hanging over it like vines.

He was angry, but in a sullen way now, angry with her and with himself. He wanted activity, action. He tried to rehearse what he would say to Munro — the journey, the farm, the barn, the hay-

He heard sound behind him, its meaning unclear — breathing? Scuffing feet? Then he was hit a stunning blow in his right lower back, and sound exploded around him. The sound hammered again and he felt an agony in his right shoulder, and he was falling forward. His face hit the pavement. His right arm had been useless to stop the fall; the left one was caught under him. He tried to speak, raising his head, rolling to his left side in a slow, seemingly drunken turn.

He couldn’t hear. He knew his mouth was open; was he making sound? He tried to raise his right arm to protect himself.

Ten feet away, Struther Jarrold was holding a revolver in both hands. Black-powder smoke drifted between them. On his face was a look of ecstatic glee. His mouth was open and moving, but Denton heard nothing. He knew that Jarrold was going to put another bullet in him and finish him, and then a big man in a checked overcoat put his arms around Jarrold from behind and lifted him off his feet. Denton’s head struck the pavement again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN