The Frightened Man

policeman; the man in the collarless shirt had no doubt already told them what had happened at the front door.

‘What’s the name of the landlord?’ Munro said.

Nobody spoke. After some seconds, a pretty, rather showy young woman said, ‘Never see him. Wouldn’t know him if he appeared in a car drawn by the royal family.’

‘Don’t make smart remarks, young woman! Who takes the rent?’

She looked at the others, blushing but apparently excited by her defiance. ‘His collector slithers in on Mondays. A charmer, I don’t think.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Clebbins,’ the other man by the stove said.

‘Just Clebbins?’

‘All I ever heard.’

They didn’t know where Clebbins lived or where he went or what other properties he gouged rents out of, although there was some sense that the owner might live in Chelsea, or possibly Hammersmith.

‘Who uses that cupboard up at the front?’

Four of the five didn’t seem to know that there was a cupboard up at the front. The fifth, an older, dour woman at the table, opined that nobody used it because it was always locked.

Denton pushed himself a little forward and gave them a quick description of Mulcahy. Had they ever seen him?

They had all seen him a thousand times, every day of their lives.

‘That’s all we’ll get out of this lot tonight,’ Munro said. He raised his voice to include them all. ‘City of London Police will be back tomorrow. See you’re ready to talk to them without a lot of lip.’ The collarless man dropped his eyes to his pot; the young woman flounced or shrugged and looked sideways at a woman who had never spoken.

Out in the court again, Munro said, ‘I wish you’d told Guillam.’ He was looking up into the steely sky, apparently studying the stars — six or eight now — with his hands behind him under his overcoat tails. ‘He’ll be annoyed.’

‘I can’t help that.’

‘You could have earlier.’ It sounded petulant. Denton didn’t respond. Munro straightened and put his hands into his overcoat pockets. ‘It’s possible to see it as a little too convenient — you finding it.’

‘Wouldn’t have been less convenient if I’d pointed it out an hour ago. What are you saying, that I’m a suspicious person because I found something the police missed?’

‘If they missed it. Willey’s people might have found it and not told anybody.’ He breathed deeply, as if he was inhaling the night air for its odour. ‘What d’you make of it?’

‘You said “voyeur”. That’s about it.’ He had been surprised that Munro had known the word, the sexual type. As this wasn’t fair to Munro, he felt vaguely ashamed.

‘Your man Mulcahy?’

‘“My man,” good God. Why don’t you work it out and tell me.’

Munro bounced on his toes and said ‘Mm’ a couple of times. ‘I’ll do that. But you know, if you’re so hot on your Mulcahy, you need to find him yourself. Nobody’s going to do it for you — there just isn’t enough in it. Enough likely information, I mean. We’re not perfect, Denton, and there’s not enough of us. We have to balance the likely gain against how many men and how much time.’ He led Denton out of the alley and up Vine Street, saying nothing, and at the corner of John Street he stopped and gripped Denton’s arm, this time while facing him. ‘Come and see me in the morning. Georgie and Willey’ll have it on paper by then. I’m on my way to the Yard now, file a report.’

‘Feeling like a detective again?’

Munro grunted. ‘Wife’s waiting, dinner’s waiting, kids’re waiting. A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’ Suddenly, he clapped Denton on the arm. ‘Good work. You’re all right, Mr Denton.’ He limped away on John Street and disappeared around the corner.

It was growing dark. Denton found he was hungry. The evening loomed — no Emma, no dinner out. His interest in Mulcahy, however, had revived; it had sunk to almost nothing after Guillam implied that Willey had made an arrest, but the closet and the peephole had revived it. He thought about what Munro had said about finding Mulcahy himself. It would be a matter of time and people — both things that money could buy, although money was something he was not flush with just then. Still-

Denton walked another street and then hailed a cab and told the driver to head for Lloyd Baker Street; once there, he pulled one of the three bells that hung by the door of a run-down but still respectable house. This was the lodging of his typewriter, who translated his scribbled-over, crossed-out scrawls into legible pages. She lived on the first floor and he saw a light, but it was now night and he felt awkward about being there, a male figure in the dark when she opened the front door.

‘Oh — Mr Denton.’ Not particularly welcoming, nor particularly relieved. She was a very proper woman, he remembered too late.

‘I know it’s late, Mrs Johnson.’

‘No, no — quite all right-’ She looked anguished. Wondering if he would want to come in, perhaps.

‘I won’t come in,’ he said. ‘I only wondered if you could organize a, well — a job of work for me.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Dubious. She was a stout woman, still fairly young, widowed. She earned her living by typewriting, gave off no signals about having any other life.

‘I need for somebody to go through the London directories to look for a man who came to visit me. He left no address, but it’s important that I find him. It would take several people to do it.’

‘I can’t take time away from my typing machine, I’m afraid.’ She had a shawl clutched tight at her throat with one hand, the other on the door as if she wanted to be sure she could close it on him.

‘I thought you might know other people, other women, who could use the work. It would be several days’ work. I’d pay them for a week — let’s say three people — even if they finished before that.’ He didn’t confess that his bank account was running down towards zero; paying several women would probably get it there.

She looked out at the cab, which she seemed to see for the first time. The cabman was holding a water bag under the animal’s mouth. ‘I’m keeping you,’ she said.

‘No, I’m keeping you from your, um, meal.’ Did you say ‘supper’ in this situation? Perhaps ‘tea’. What the hell. ‘I really need this to be done, Mrs Johnson.’

‘Well — I know a few other typewriters from the agency-They don’t get the work that I do.’ Said with pride. She was good, and very fast.

Denton wrote ‘R. Mulcahy’ on a card and held it out. ‘That’s the name. And of course, I’d pay you for getting things organized.’

She stared at the card, which she’d taken with the hand that had been holding the shawl. ‘I don’t have any time open-’ She clutched the shawl again, the card close to her chin. ‘Still, because it’s you-Can you pay them five shillings a day? They have to be assured it’s worth passing up typewriting jobs for.’

He said that yes, of course, that would be fine, although he was thinking that twenty-five shillings for a week’s work was more than working-men made. Still, he was in no position to bargain. ‘And a bonus of a shilling for each R. Mulcahy they find.’ He hesitated. ‘There may be more than one.’ If there were a lot of them, however, he’d done something stupid. But how many could there be?

She muttered a good night, and the door closed. Denton felt as he had with Guillam, suspected of something nasty and not exonerated.

Well, of course, he was male.

At home, Atkins had been grumpy because he was trying to recover from an uncomfortable hour with two detectives while Denton had been with Munro and Guillam. He had started complaining about it at the front door and had continued all the way through Denton’s stepping into the hot bath he thought he’d earned. In turn, while he dressed again, Denton had told Atkins about the visit to the dead woman’s room.

‘What do you make of it?’ Denton said now.

‘Nothing.’ Atkins jiggled the coat he was waiting for Denton to put on — the same brown suit he had worn