The Frightened Man

‘Oh-h-h-’ Lang twisted in his chair in disappointment. ‘Look here, I’ll talk to Gwen — ’ Gwen was Wilfred Gweneth, the publisher — ‘about your, ah, financial crise, and I think I can get his approval to offer you expenses plus your usual for a travel book about Transylvania. The Land of Horrors. We’d make up an itinerary to take you to the sites of legends and great tales — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example; now you’ll say that’s Switzerland, I know, but-’

In fact Denton didn’t know; he’d never read Frankenstein.

‘ — you could start there, poetic licence, and move through Bavaria — isn’t that Monk Lewis territory? — and so on, and then concentrate on Transylvania. You apply your great powers of description, that relentless honesty that makes your work so-’

‘Lang, I don’t give a hoot about legends and lore.’

‘You’re so very vexing sometimes. You Realist! Have you had lunch? We could walk to my club and have a late lunch and talk this over-’

‘I have to meet with some women about a girl who may have left school to get herself murdered. One of the desirable horrors of everyday life in London.’ He boosted his hat and coat back to his lap. ‘A travel book — me?’

Lang gave him a suddenly shrewd look. ‘Money, my dear — you need money.’

‘You told me once never to write for money.’

‘I am an idealist. But you are a Realist. And your creditors are literalists — they want twenty shillings in the pound. Come now, Denton — I’m sure I can get you the money for the right sort of book. A nice journey down the Rhine, some pleasant miles by train — Continental railways are perfectly acceptable, I believe — then, to be sure, a somewhat less luxurious mode of travel in Transylvania itself — colourful local carts, an ancient post-chaise, even a sledge-’

Denton was both angry and amused. He got up slowly and then went behind his chair and leaned his forearms on the back. Grinning none too pleasantly, he said, ‘A motor car to Whatsylvania.’

‘That’s an appalling idea.’

‘I’ll do it that way — but that’s the only way I’ll do it!’ Denton didn’t really mean it; it was simply something to say to vent his sense of outrage. ‘By Motor Car to the Land of Vampires.’

‘A motor car! That would ruin everything! It’s so — so disgustingly modern.’

‘All the more reason. Combine the new with the old, progress with legend and lore.’ He was improvising, atypically manic. ‘Start from Paris — I could pick up a car there; they’ve got thousands of them — and head east. Outrunning the werewolves in a Panhard Twelve! Flying over the steppe on a fuel of garlic and potato spirits!’

Lang was shaking his head and saying that Denton was being too bad, simply too bad. ‘You’re ragging me; I see what you’re doing. This is your little joke. Well, laugh. Surely you don’t think we’d buy you a motor car. Gwen doesn’t mind taking a flyer, but he’s not an outright idiot. Motor Car to the Land of Vampires, indeed!’

‘Buy the machine, keep ownership while I do the trip, sell it after. Famous motor car, used in Mr Denton’s best-selling new book. You’d make a fortune, Lang.’

Lang sniffed. ‘I despise commerce and everything it stands for.’

‘But you want me to write a book about horrors because it will sell.’

Lang waved a hand. He put the left side of his jaw on the thumb and three fingers of his left hand, the index finger resting on his leathery cheek, and he said in a dry voice, ‘What I had envisioned was some colourful narrative of native carts toiling up the Alps.’

‘It might come to that. Motor cars aren’t much in mountains — you did say there were mountains?’

‘The Transylvanian Alps, which are always represented as the teeth of a saw.’

‘Motor-car enthusiasts would love it — conquering the mountains. Breakdowns while the werewolves howl. Tyre punctures in the dead of night. We run out of petrol and are pulled across the snow by a team of vampires!’

‘Yes, make a joke of it. You’re the one who needs money, not I.’

Denton hunched farther towards him over the chair back. ‘So I am.’ He’d forgotten. He shrugged. ‘Actually, it doesn’t seem such a bad idea, Lang.’

‘My dear Denton, motor cars-! They’re simply — vulgar.’

Denton heaved himself up, laughing. He saw Lang’s confusion and guffawed again. ‘So am I! So am I!’

Then Mr Frewn padded in with Denton’s cheque, which was for seven pounds, five and ninepence. Denton, having expected ten times as much, swore and rushed out.

The women whom Mrs Johnson had assembled in her meagre parlour were both sceptical and respectful — he had paid up, after all — and in their way not so different from the young whores he had met with Janet Striker. A similar embarrassment and distrust were plain. Denton tried to outline what he wanted, tried to guess what the Schools Board’s bureaucracy would be, but one of the women had worked there and could tell the others all about it, ignoring him.

‘The lists are handwritten, a lot of them in an appalling fist, and not at all up to date. The school heads aren’t held to the fire; they’ve too much else to do.’

When it was clear that he wanted them to search the lists for all of Greater London for the previous school year, one of them laughed outright. When he had difficulty explaining what he wanted, another muttered, ‘A local habitation and a name,’ and told the rest that what he meant was that they were to search for a girl named Ruth, who’d left school and who had a sister named Rebecca, who hadn’t.

‘And if we find them?’

‘Then you’ll find their last name.’

‘And then? We’ll have only their school. Only their town or village or ward.’

‘Then you’ll look for the family in the post office directories. ’

He suggested the census, but they pointed out that the last census had been taken in 1891. He went home and told Atkins not to talk to him. Using pantomime, Atkins pointed him to the mail, then took himself downstairs with his nose in the air, like a music-hall comedian playing a duke.

Among the bills was a note from Janet Striker. They could visit the Humphrey the next afternoon; she suggested that he bring a letter attesting to his character.

Tomorrow would be Thursday. It would leave him only one day to find the man who had now killed both the girl named Ruth and the man named Mulcahy. On Saturday, if he found nothing, they would rule that Mulcahy had killed himself while insane, and they would close the case. He could go on looking after that, but he sensed that he would not. He was about out of threads to wind on his spool.

And why did it matter? Mulcahy was nothing to him, nor the girl, either. Yet he thought of that thin body laid out on the table at Bart’s, the murderer’s crude gashes and the surgeon’s neat cuts, the men in rows around her watching, watching — and he cared.

Lang wanted horrors. This would be horror, indeed — meaningless, dehumanizing death, and his own failure to do anything about it.

He went out again to Hector Hench-Rose to ask for a character letter. Hench-Rose surprised him by being abject, ashamed of his behaviour of the other day and pathetically ready to do anything Denton wanted. Denton thought it odd — Hench-Rose was now wealthy, presumably powerful or about to be, with a parliamentary seat at his bidding, an estate, tenants, forelock-tugging ghillies, as Denton imagined them — but Hench-Rose seemed desperate for Denton’s approval. Odd, very odd — a need to have the world without exception approve of him? Or something special about Denton? Or was he, as Denton was with Atkins, caught in some snare of pride? Denton, at any rate, liked him better for his discomfort; the truth was, he had felt more comfortable with Hench-Rose the modestly poor ex-officer than Hench-Rose the wealthy baronet.

‘My distinct pleasure, old man,’ Hench-Rose said as he scrawled a note under the letterhead of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Want me to order the populace to cooperate or ask them? Asking’s probably better — flies and vinegar, and so on. Hmm?’ Hench-Rose proposed supper, promised no jokes, but Denton said he couldn’t, had too