The Bohemian Girl

week, he goes to the studio to “do the pictures”, which I think is what housemaids call dusting. He sent on the bills and letters to the poste restante boxes; they were still there when the French police went looking. He’s taken a job evenings in a pub — never misses a day. We all wanted Brown to have done the dirty, but he didn’t. Too many people vouch for him.’

‘Well,’ Janet Striker said, ‘somebody told them about Denton.’

Denton made a negative grunting sound. ‘That sounds pretty cold-blooded. Passed a message, more likely — something innocent like “Send me a picture postcard of the beach if anybody asks about me.” This was way back last September, remember. Himple was already dead — had been dead since at least the first week of September. Arthur Crum was travelling, presumably as Himple, forging demands on the letter of credit, forging reports about where they were going next, and then disappearing. He — they — had got off scot-free. Until the message comes that I’m asking questions.’ Abruptly, Denton laughed. ‘But what must they have thought when they first learned I was asking questions? Me! When they were the ones who had used me as the bugbear to scare Wenzli! I wonder if they ever learned somehow that it was their own letter that got me going. My God — do you suppose they saw the horror of it?’

Janet stirred. ‘At any rate, you were asking questions, and somehow they found out — horror or no horror.’

‘Then — I can show you the sequence in my charts — Jarrold savages your rooms and paints “Astoreth” on the wall. At that time, Astoreth exists only in his mind. Mary Thomason hasn’t yet thought of becoming his Astoreth. His attack on your rooms makes the newspapers with lip-licking mention of Jarrold’s possible involvement in the incident behind my house. My name is mentioned, Jarrold’s is trumpeted, and at least the cheap papers do follow-ups that manage to hint at his obsession with me. And they all mention Astoreth and imply that Jarrold is dotty. So Mary Thomason or Arthur Crum needed only to read the papers to see the possibilities of Struther Jarrold. Not as a certainty, but as a possibility. These people are seducers, both of them — Mary Thomason with Geddys and with the other painter, Wenzli; Crum with Himple. They’re like confidence men, able to play on their victims’ wants and needs, able to manoeuvre their victims into wanting to do things for them. Mary got Wenzli to almost give her the painting, the “little Wesselons”; Crum got Himple to make him his valet, to take him to France — to be his lover, I suppose. So I think they decided to have a look at Struther Jarrold and the situation at his mother’s country house, and I think that what they found was that the security was laughable and a woman as talented as Mary Thomason could con that poor, sick brain into believing she was his demon and wanting to do anything she told him to do. So that if I got closer, they had a weapon.’

Munro had put an elbow on his chair arm, and his head on that hand. He looked bored and sleepy, but Denton knew he was as alert as a cat. ‘And she didn’t tell him to do anything until you went to France?’

‘Why would she have? I hadn’t learned anything new in weeks. Not anything serious, anyway. I was writing a book; I had other things on my mind.’ He glanced at Janet, got a cool look from her through the cigarette smoke. ‘What’s more important, they must have been as much in the dark about me as I was about them. That’s why Guillam and the private detectives were a godsend to them, because that way they at least knew when I was getting warmer, as we used to say in the kids’ game. But I think that except for the detectives’ reports they couldn’t keep track of what I was doing. It’s also why I think they never went after Janet — they lost her after she moved out of her rooms in Bethnal Green. It must have made them nervous, maybe frantic, and they did a frantic thing when they got hard information about my going with Heseltine to France — they tried to kill me, and they did kill him. It was the kind of mistake you make when you’re confused and panicked. Even though, as it turned out, finding Himple’s body didn’t help us find them.’

‘Thanks to the incompetence of the CID,’ Munro growled.

‘You know I don’t believe that.’

Munro took his head off his hand and studied his fingers. ‘We tried to pick up that trunk at Biggleswade. It had been collected.’

Denton was surprised. ‘When?’

Munro glanced at a notebook. ‘Ninth of October.’

Janet said, ‘Not too long after I put it back.’

‘As apparently Mary Thomason’s still with us,’ Munro said, ‘why didn’t she pick up her trunk before?’

‘You’re sure it was she who picked it up?’

‘Not sure of anything. Clerk said a young woman; he thought the drawing “might have been her” but wasn’t sure.’ He turned to Denton. ‘But I want to hear what you think — why didn’t she pick up the trunk as soon as she could after it was sent?’

‘Maybe that’s exactly what she did. It depends, doesn’t it, on where she was and what she was doing between writing me the note in early August and picking up the trunk in October. And once she knew that Himple was dead, she had to disappear, because she was too connected to Himple — her face was in the Lazarus; her brother was the man who went to Normandy with Himple. She couldn’t go back to work for Geddys, couldn’t go back to the Slade, couldn’t go back to modelling and flirting with Wenzli. I suppose she was quite right in thinking that the trunk wasn’t going anywhere. And there was nothing in it worth a damn, anyway.’

‘Except the drawing,’ Janet Striker said. She was involved in handing a cigarette to Munro, who had been seduced by their smoke. ‘If she made the little drawings in the corners — but then she didn’t, did she! The bit from the Lazarus and the sketch of the baths were about Arthur Crum, not her.’ She smiled and took out another cigarette for herself. ‘Which might suggest to some that they were the same person.’

The remark hung in the room like the sonority of a bell. Denton knew he had caught his breath; he thought Munro had, too. Janet’s smile, faintly wicked, persisted. At last, Munro grunted and said, ‘I wondered when somebody would get to that.’

‘By God, Munro, you mean the idea doesn’t disgust you? Janet’s been pushing it for days. I thought you’d have a fit.’

‘Even at New Scotland Yard, we old fogies are now and then able to tell a hack from a handsaw.’ Munro ground out his cigarette. ‘I have to think of them as two people, brother and sister, Mary and Arthur. But, yes, I can see a version of the tale where they’re the same person.’ He pulled himself out of his chair, rose to his full height, like a bear on its hind legs. ‘I’m not saying you two are right. Not even saying I’m convinced that your ideas hold together. But I will say, it’s always a treat to hear you talk. Makes you understand the power of the storyteller in olden days of yore. Ring for my hat and coat, will you?’

‘You still don’t believe us?’

‘Just the opposite — I do. That’s what’s got me worried.’

On a balmy, breezy day, Denton and Janet Striker took a cab to Fitzroy Street. She said, ‘Are we starting here because it’s the likeliest? ’

‘Or the safest; I don’t know.’

They gave their names again to the harassed Irish maid and were shown into the same cluttered room, where the same plump woman sat in what looked to be the same clothes. She was shocked by the very idea that she might not have told them the entire truth. ‘The police have been here!’ she said. Her laces fluttered. ‘Do you think I would dare to lie to the police?’

‘We thought you might have forgotten something.’

‘Do you think I am senile? Do you think me incompetent? You are very insulting. Please to ring the bell and tell the maid to show you out.’

Denton bowed, winked at Janet Striker and limped out of the crowded, stuffy room.

When they had been standing in the central hall for more than a minute, the Irish maid appeared from somewhere below. Her sleeves were rolled up again, and sweat had stained her blouse. Pushing back loose coils of hair, she said, ‘I’m mangling. It’s hot work.’

Denton held up a shilling. She reached for it and he said, closing his fingers over the coin, ‘Do you remember we talked about Mary Thomason?’

‘Oh, that again.’

‘You remember.’

‘Of course I do.’

He held her eyes. Her look was what so-so novelists called ‘bold’, meaning she didn’t flinch. He said, ‘When Mary Thomason left, did she give you a way to get in touch with her?’