anything tonight.’ He sighed. ‘Not to mention what I had with lunch and the one or two before.’ He sat back in his chair and clutched his head.
Denton said, ‘I need a bit of advice.’ Harris was supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the darker side of London — indeed, of the darker side of a lot of things. ‘Who can tell me about vice in the East End?’
Harris turned his red eyes on him, looked at him for long seconds as if he’d forgotten who he was. ‘You’re talking to an expert,’ he said.
‘There was a girl murdered there last night. I want to know who she was — where she came from, who her-’
‘East End?’
‘Well, the Minories.’
With his head back, Harris looked at Denton as if he were looking into a too bright light. ‘What’s the allure of a murdered tart? Idea for a book?’
Denton mentioned Mulcahy, said only that the man had told him a wild tale and been terrified — his now- familiar recitation.
Harris wrinkled his nose and stuck out his lips, then rubbed his eyes. ‘You know Ruth Castle?’
‘Mrs Castle?’ She was a famous madam; of course he knew her. ‘We all know Mrs Castle.’
Harris laughed. ‘Could make a comic song of that. “Oh, we all know Mrs Castle here in London-”’ He sang it a bit tunelessly. ‘What the hell rhymes with London?’
‘Done-done. Undone.’ He looked at Harris’s empty glass. ‘Y ’know, you’d do best to go home.’
‘At this hour? My God, what would people say?’
‘Why Mrs Castle?’
‘Why not Mrs Castle? What are we talking about?’
‘Vice in the East End.’
Harris waved a hand. ‘She knows everything. Tell her I sent you. Better yet,
He left Harris trying to start an argument about Fabianism with a man he didn’t know and went out. He debated following Harris’s advice to talk to Mrs Castle that night but thought his own advice to Harris was best: early to bed.
Home again, he dropped his hat and coat on a chair, added coal to his living-room fire, stood there looking into the orange heat that was still deep inside the black pile, thinking of the stupidities people, himself included, do.
He poked the fire and put the poker back in its iron stand and heard a sound that might have been the poker hitting another piece of metal but that might have been something else. He stood still, listening. He really believed the sound had come from somewhere else. Outside? Most likely not; it had been too muffled. And closer.
‘Sergeant?’
They had had trouble with rats for a while. The sound was not unlike that of an animal dropping to the floor from a table. When they had had rats, a cat had got in once; it had made that sound, dropping in the dark on a rat to break its back.
Denton hated rats. He took up the poker again.
The gas light was on by the door nearest him, the only light in the long room other than the coal fire. If Atkins had been home, a lamp at the far end near his door would probably have been lit, too; instead, the room receded into darkness, past the dumb waiter, past the alcove on the left where the spirit stove and the makeshift pantry were, to the stairs and the window at their foot, now only a silvered reflection of the light.
Later, he would think he should have taken the derringer, but then he would think that it wouldn’t have mattered. When the attack came, it came so fast that he was unable fully to react, and it came from his left side; the derringer would have been in his right. The poker — well, it saved his life, if not his arm.
He had started to pass the opening to the pantry alcove. He was listening, his head slightly cocked, and he was thinking that the light near Atkins’s door should have been on, whether Atkins was there or not. He had reached the point of wondering why the light was out, and he was just beginning to appreciate an alien smell that was reaching his nose, when the attacker came in a blurred silver slash from the black alcove. Denton reacted away, turning, raising his left arm against that shining slice through the darkness, and his arm caught fire as something ripped through the coat sleeve and slashed him from elbow to wrist. He heard himself gasp in shock and something like indignation, then rage at himself for being so stupid, and then the blade, which had caught for an instant in the sleeve buttons, tore free and was being raked across his mid-section.
The attacker tried to move in closer; a hand grabbed at his coat, tried to pull him. Denton swung the poker against the man’s side, then higher against the back of his head. He caught the knife arm with his left hand somewhere above the elbow. The knife was being held for a downward blow — not a knife fighter’s grip, Denton would think later; a real fighter came in from below — and so, for the seconds that Denton could grip the upper arm before his own bleeding forearm weakened, the blade could only graze his ribs.
The attacker was a big man, and he stank. He stank of sweat and urine and of too long without washing. He had black hair, eyes that looked red in the thin light; his lower face was covered. The eyes were wide, frantic, as he tried to put the knife in and was held back. Then Denton dropped the poker and caught the face, his fingers trying to dig into the eyes, and pushed the head backwards as he brought his knee up.
The man roared. His weight came off Denton’s arms as he surged back, trying to free the knife hand. Denton, his feet planted now, pushed; the attacker slammed back against the pantry arch; Denton turned his body into the knife, grabbed the arm with his right hand and slid the left down to the wrist. He was suddenly aware of the blood that was streaming down his arm, making the other man’s wrist slippery.
Denton crashed the attacker’s arm down against his right knee, trying to break it, and the man moaned. Denton’s head was grabbed from behind and he was spun towards the wall, but he recovered and turned back, and, panting, the attacker fled down the long room towards the light, and then his steps thudded down the stairs and the front door slammed.
Denton was stunned. He leaned back against the wall, trying to clear his head. When he could think and move, he tottered down to the light, holding his left arm with a thumb in the crook of the elbow because he thought he could stop the bleeding. The light proved that idea foolish; the blood was coming from the outside of the arm; it had soaked the coat sleeve black and was running down his fingers and dripping in almost a stream on to the carpet. A trail of drops showed where he had come. He tried a crude tourniquet made from an embroidered runner from a table. It was a hideous thing; he felt a moment’s illogical satisfaction in seeing it soaked with blood. Still, twisted around his upper arm, it slowed the flow only a little.
He would get light-headed and then weak, he thought. He needed a doctor.
He headed down the stairs and out to the street. The Lamb was closed, the street empty. Somebody described to him as ‘a foreigner’ had a surgery down opposite Coram’s; would he be there at this hour? Denton began to walk in that direction, then broke into a trot. It was at that point that he saw a figure turn the corner and head his way.
It was Atkins.
Denton hurried towards him, his arm held out like an offering, blood behind him in round spatters right to his front door.
‘Was it robbery, sir?’ The constable was earnest and not tremendously bright. Dogged, at best.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You’d just got home. You heard a noise. You went to investigate.’
‘Yes — as I’ve told you.’
Denton was lying in the ‘foreigner’s’ surgery; the doctor proved to be a Polish Jew who spoke English with a music-hall accent but who was skilled at his art. He was swabbing Denton’s arm with carbolic and then taking stitches while the constable made notes and another policeman stood at the door, as if either Denton or the doctor might try to run away. Atkins was slumped in an armchair, fanning himself with his bowler and looking desperate.
