The Frightened Man

house.

Denton heard a male voice, not Atkins’s, some sort of negotiation, the slamming of the door. More voices, so whoever it was had been allowed in.

The sergeant clumped back up the stairs. Pulling the door closed behind him, he said, ‘Rum sort calling himself Mulcahy. If I say a bowler hat and a cheap suit, will you get the picture? Wants to see you in a desperate fashion.’

‘Why?’

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have him down in the hall, would I? Just said he must see you, mentioned life and death, looked awful. I can tell him to come back tomorrow.’

Denton glanced at the clock again, thought about half an hour of solitude, said, ‘Send him up.’

The man who called himself Mulcahy was small, one of a million Britons — Atkins was another — from the manufacturing cities who hadn’t been fed the right things when they were children. He had a sharp face, vaguely rodent-like, narrow shoulders, a pot belly just beginning to show. Denton, standing, judged him to be about five-six, weak, forty, bad false teeth, and felt an immediate sympathy, then a kind of revulsion. When the sergeant tried to take his hat, Mulcahy held on to it as if stopping a theft; then he let go, and Atkins exchanged a look with Denton, rubbing his fingers over the greasy brim and making a face.

‘Uh-hum,’ Mulcahy said, clearing his throat. He was intensely nervous, his fingers moving constantly, one knee jerking inside his baggy trousers. Denton went through the courtesies, got the man seated, established that neither cheese nor biscuits nor port was welcome. ‘You wanted to see me,’ Denton said.

‘Yes, ah — yes — alone.’ Mulcahy’s eyes slid aside towards the sergeant. ‘Confidential.’

Denton raised one eyebrow. Atkins picked up the empty tray and went on down the room, pausing to open the door of the dumb waiter, installed by a former owner when the rear half of the space had been a dining room, thus allowing the sergeant to hear what was said from the floor below. He went out.

‘Well, now,’ Denton said. ‘I have to go out soon, Mr Mulcahy.’

‘Yes. Well.’ Mulcahy hunched in his chair, his nervous fingers joined over his middle. The chair was too big for him, made him seem a child called in for punishment. ‘Something terrible happened. To me. I’m in a right state.’

‘You should go to the police.’

‘No!’ Red circles showed on his grey cheeks; the word heaved his body up and then let it go. ‘That’s why I came to you. I can’t-’ He looked into the shadowed corner towards the street, licked his lips, said, ‘Just can’t.’

‘Well-’

‘I know who you are, you see? I mean, everybody knows. Fact, right?’

Not everybody, but many people, indeed knew ‘who he was’, which was to say not who he was but what he had been for barely six months, twenty-five years ago — the American marshal who had shot four men and saved a town. It was part of his myth despite himself, despite his having come to England to get away from it. Newspapers loved it, regularly trotted it out if he wrote a new book or even so much as had tea with the Surbiton Ladies Literary Society.

‘Well-I don’t see what I can do, but tell me what’s happened and maybe I can advise you.’

‘I need protection, I do.’

‘Tell me what happened, Mr Mulcahy.’ He made a point of looking at the clock.

Mulcahy looked at his trembling fingers. ‘I seen-I saw the man they call — ’ he clenched his hands — ‘Jack the Ripper. And he seen me!’

Denton’s interest sagged. The Ripper had been gone for fifteen years; people who saw him or heard him or got in touch with him in seances were loony. Denton managed a tight smile that was meant to lead to ‘Goodnight’.

‘And he recognized me! I know he did; I could see it in his eyes. He’s after me!’

Ripper stories popped up like daffodils in spring. They were trotted out by the newspapers for space-fillers. Denton, aware that he was dealing with one of the (he hoped) harmlessly deranged, said gently, ‘How do you know it was the Ripper, Mr Mulcahy?’

Mulcahy worked his mouth, studied his hands again. ‘We was — were — boys together.’ He looked up. ‘In Ilkley.’ Then, ‘There!’ he said, as if he had scored a point.

Denton had heard of a woman who said she’d been married to the Ripper. Also one who claimed to be his love child. If Mulcahy had not so clearly been terrified, he’d have eased him out right then. He looked at the clock again, then at the little man, felt again revulsion but also a somewhat clinical interest. A psychological case study, in his own parlour. He could spare seven minutes more. ‘Tell me all about it,’ he said.

Mulcahy needed to look at the door twice before he began; he seemed to need to know that the door, the way out, was still there. He did look shockingly bad, his face sallow in the gaslight, his cheeks grey where his beard was beginning to show. He touched his forehead, then his nose, and said in spurts and starts with many pauses, ‘We was boys together up north. He was never right, but I kind of palled about with him, I did. He was older. Nobody else would, because he was-A kid like me maybe didn’t notice what he was. I don’t mean I was with him all the time, you know, but off and on like. Couple of years. Just — somebody, you know — we’d walk out to where there was some green, you know, and he set snares, for rabbits, he said, but he never caught nothing. Birds — prop a box on a stick. Nothing ever came into the box. Anyways.

‘I was, maybe, fourteen. I was fourteen. He got himself a girl for walking out, he did. He made jokes about her to me but they walked out. Elinor Grimble. She was fat, not a pretty girl, glad even to have him, I suppose. He told me things about her — said he, you know, did things to her-’ Mulcahy looked up to make sure that ‘did things to her’ was understood. ‘She let him do things, if you follow.’

Denton wondered if Mulcahy’s was some sort of sexual insanity. The kind of man who bothered women? Some form of compulsion, like exhibitionism? A number of the books on Denton’s shelves were about such men.

‘He said — he said I could watch if I wanted. There was a place they went to outside of town, down a railway cutting, a kind of little grove sort of, trees. In there. So I hid there and he brought her and they were in the trees and she let him, you know — he put his hands on her, you know, up top. And she didn’t like it, I could see, but he got quite excited, and when she said that was enough, stop, and so on, he got more excited and more excited and he hit her.’ He didn’t look at Denton but seemed lost in the tale — and excited by it. ‘He hit her.’

Too late, Denton had a sick sense that he was being used. Like being forced to watch a man masturbate.

‘He got rougher and took some of her, you know, her upper clothing off, and she got nasty and he hit her again, and that went on, I mean him hitting her, and he took out his pocket-knife and he cut her.’ Mulcahy paused. The idea of cutting a woman seemed to astonish him. He was sweating. With his eyes closed, he said, ‘First, he did it to her. He violated her. And while he was still — you know, he was, um, inside of her, he cut her. Throat.’ His voice was hoarse.

‘All right, all right-’ Denton stood.

‘And then — it was awful, oh, God! — he went to stabbing her and cutting her and him half-naked, his thing hanging down, cutting her and cutting her-! He cut right into her female place and cut through the skin of her belly and then he reached up inside and-!’ He was bug-eyed. Shaking with what seemed like real fear now, but somehow excited. ‘It made me puke!’

Mulcahy must be eased out; even a little man could be dangerous if he was crazed. Mulcahy was, he saw, using him to arouse himself — maybe hoping to arouse him, too. Perverse. He went to the door.

Mulcahy didn’t seem to notice him. ‘Then he run off. Right off. Disappeared.’

‘So you were well rid of him.’

‘Not half.’ Mulcahy’s voice was a whisper. ‘I didn’t hear nothing for six years. Then-Then comes a letter from Germany with bits of newspaper in it — that funny-looking lettering. They was about three murders. Women. I knew it was him.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see how you could know that.’

‘Couple more years, I got a letter from France. Nothing but clippings — more women cut up, murdered. Then Holland!’ He looked up. ‘He was keeping me up to date, see?’