The Bohemian Girl

‘I asked Hannah where the female tenants washed out their rags. She knew exactly what I meant. There’s a sink for it in the basement; they dry them on a line down there.’ She met his eyes — no trace of embarrassment. ‘I asked her if Mary Thomason ever went down there. She said she couldn’t recall ever seeing her. She hadn’t thought about it, but now she thought about it and she said, “Ain’t that remarkable, ma’am.”’ She tapped his hand. ‘What did we find in her trunk?’

He’d have been a dunce not to know where she was going. ‘The depilatory, but-’

‘We at least have to ask ourselves, Denton, who doesn’t menstruate and would need a depilatory?’

‘You make it sound like a riddle for a parlour game.’ He frowned at her, looked away.

‘I want one of those cream-filled dessert things,’ she said. They were still eating in his sitting room, although Munro was long gone; a small plate of pastries sat on a tiered table nearby. ‘Anyway, it’s a possibility, isn’t it — that Mary Thomason isn’t a woman?’

‘Anything’s possible, but-I’ve heard of women masquerading as men — even as soldiers-’

‘Joan of Arc.’

‘Yes, well-But why would a man masquerade as a woman?’

‘Perhaps he prefers to be a woman. Perhaps he wants to be a woman. Or perhaps it’s simply a wonderful disguise.’

‘Even if he has sex with men — the baths, Himple — that doesn’t mean he wants to be a woman.’

‘Not that crazy, mmm? What sane man would be a woman if he had a choice?’

‘He’d have had to wear a wig. Where’s the wig?’

‘She’d have worn the wig when she left Fitzroy Street. Then got rid of it when she became a man.’

‘But-’ Atkins, who had appeared in response to a jingling bell, followed her pointing finger to a fat eclair. Denton asked for coffee and said when Atkins was gone, ‘What would make such a thing worth it?’

She shook her head. She ate, then pulled the fork between her teeth to scrape the chocolate off. ‘Living another life.’

‘Something to hide.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t see it.’

‘She wrote to you that somebody might be about to hurt her. Might that mean she was afraid she was about to be found out?’

‘Well, I’ve told you, I don’t think that letter was really for me.

It was to scare Wenzli, wasn’t it? And why would somebody hurt her?’

‘Well, if she was really a man-If Mary Thomason had a man — a man who wasn’t so, who wasn’t a puff, a man like Wenzli or Geddys — interested in her, then being found out could mean — outrage? Disgust? If they were, you know, physically involved-’

‘A man with a man? Oh, I see what you mean — the other man thinks he’s a girl — there could be a certain amount of play — like Wenzli-’

‘Kissing and so on, even well beyond that-’

‘But surely, the man would find out when he-’

‘Mmmm.’ She scraped chocolate and cream off her plate, licked the fork with a voluptuous extension of her tongue. ‘Mmmm.’ She put the fork down. ‘Perhaps that was the point Mary and Wenzli had almost reached.’

He shook his head. He watched her eat the eclair. ‘This is a long tale to have built on some missing rags.’ He accepted coffee from Atkins. ‘It would be so complicated!’

‘To the contrary, it’s simplicity itself. A double life isn’t necessarily like something in a Pavilion farce — going in and out of doors in different identities. It’s mostly a matter of keeping your lies straight — like being married and having an affair. You’d want your wits about you, is all.’

‘Not with separate identities — names, clothes, places to live-’

‘It wouldn’t have been that way. Mary was the identity; her way of life was the principal way. But sometimes he — he — was somebody else. Perhaps only occasionally.’

‘To do what?’

‘Something difficult, don’t you think?’ She smiled, but only a little. ‘Like making a middle-aged man fall in love with you?’

He shook his head again. ‘Let’s not tell Munro yet.’

‘Let’s not.’

Ten days later, Munro told him that the French expert had said that the bones were human and almost certainly male. He speculated that they belonged to a man in middle age but couldn’t be certain. However, one tibia had an old fracture.

‘We checked with Himple’s medical man. He’d broken a leg as a boy, falling off a wagon. The French are having local police ask after Himple and Crum at every place he posted letters from.’

Munro again demanded a copy of the drawings that Augustus John had made. A few days later, he sent a note to say that Mrs Durnquess had told Markson that John’s drawing was very like the young man who had come to get the trunk; the maid had agreed. Meanwhile, the CID, now accepting the probability of a crime, had found Himple’s bank and asked what arrangements he’d made for money while he travelled. He had carried a letter of credit, was the answer, and had used it in three places, for a total of more than three hundred pounds. The CID had also interviewed several of the young men who had been picked up in the raid on the Mayflower Baths. Two of them recognized the John drawing as somebody they called ‘Eddie’. He’d been at the baths off and on, but they hadn’t seen him, they thought, in a year. Several more of them recognized a photograph of Himple; he was ‘a regular’.

Munro had more copies of the drawing made and sent to France. After another week, the word came back that two people at the banks where the letter of credit had been used thought that John’s drawing was like the man who had cashed a letter of credit as Erasmus Himple, RA.

‘So he’s a forger as well as a murderer. Dear God.’ Denton was still shocked. ‘I was so sure he would turn out to be the victim!’

‘Why?’ she said.

‘Because-I’m still looking for Mary Thomason.’

‘Well, it isn’t a she, at least.’

‘No, of course not.’

The valet and the housekeeper, Mrs Evans, said that of course the John drawing wasn’t Himple; it was the young man known as Arthur Crum.

After another week, Munro said, ‘He’s skipped. Absolutely skipped. The trail’s cold — the last time he was seen was six months ago in Nice. He’s beaten us.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

By then, they were into April. Denton wanted to be out, walking in the city. Flowers were blooming; birds were arriving in flocks; some of the days were warm, almost summery. Janet Striker was waiting to move into her own house, with the Cohans to take care of her; she was living partly in his old bedroom, partly in a hotel. He was now sure that her concern for appearances was some irrational personal quirk: she had explained that it was all right for her to sleep on the floor above him so long as he couldn’t climb the stairs.

A doorway was being cut through the garden wall. He didn’t know what she made of the people who could look into the garden from the nearby houses. Perhaps she meant to wear a disguise when she used the new door.

Missing her, wanting to be out and about, he was restless. He was gaining his weight back, but his strength was coming more slowly. One night when she was staying at her hotel and he was lying awake — the nursing-home insomnia had returned — he got out of bed and limped on his stick to the foot of the stairs. He looked up them. They seemed endless.

‘The hell with it.’ He put his left foot on the first stair, grasped the banister in his left hand and pulled the right leg up. It was all right. He went another step, then another. He had to balance on the bad leg and the stick while he moved the good leg, but he was getting used to that; his shoulders were stronger. He went up another