The Frightened Man

‘Just keep feeding him biscuits, Maude; he’ll follow you around like a, mmm, dog.’

Maude picked up the coin. ‘Is this in addition to my wages, sir?’

Denton sighed, muttered that it must be.

Maude went down the room with the tray; behind him, Rupert kept pace, anticipating a feed before they reached the bottom of the stairs.

Denton could do nothing until other people brought him information. It was no good to say that he should have done the work himself; in fact, he had neither the knowledge nor the patience to do what Mrs Johnson’s five women were doing. Nor could he cause them to work faster, although he now tried to do just that: he walked over to Mrs Johnson’s and asked how the work was coming, then muttered that today was their last day.

‘They’re entirely aware of the day, Mr Denton!’ Mrs Johnson, although she depended on him for work, was not going to suffer him gladly. ‘It does no good to try to hurry them along.’

‘I wasn’t trying to, mmm, hurry … Only thinking, maybe something had, you know, uh-’ He held out a ten- pound note. ‘This is for the earlier, um, bonus.’ She seemed relieved to get it but didn’t encourage him. He said, ‘If you hear anything-’

‘Mr Denton, I will send you a message by hand the instant I know something! Until then-’ She stood in her doorway like a guard, her chin out.

‘Yes, mmm, of course — you’re right, yes-But the instant, the moment — as soon as you know something- Time really is of the-’

She thanked him for the money and closed the door.

So Denton walked. He thought he walked aimlessly but found himself outside the building that housed Mulcahy’s Inventorium. No policeman was visible, so he crossed the street, at first merely pacing along the building’s front, then going in and retracing his steps of days before. The massive locks were gone from Mulcahy’s door, replaced by two smaller ones and a sign that said ‘Metropolitan Police Premises — Keep Away’. The broken lock to the roof had been replaced, as well, the new one sealed with a police tag. Nobody was about, however, and nobody approached him either coming in or going out: the press had lost any little interest it might once have had in R. Mulcahy.

He walked some more, now down City Road to the warren of old streets around Finsbury, then found himself standing in the Minories and going on to look again at the door behind which Stella Minter had been killed. The constable and the police sign were gone; the room, he was sure, was as yet untenanted by anybody else. Might never be, in fact, its legend now too grim.

He turned away and walked through the new terraces south of Victoria Park, the great bustle of the city nowhere more visible than in these places where building was going on — carts moving in and out, carpenters on scaffolding, a monstrous machine driving piles somewhere with a sound like that from the forge behind Mulcahy’s building — a sense of impending event, of something coming for which great hurry and noise were necessary. The event being, he supposed, the building of the next London terrace, and the next, and the next.

Then he walked back to Mrs Johnson’s (‘I haven’t been home; I thought you might have-No? I’m so sorry-’) then west, then north on York Road along the cattle market and into Kentish Town and another plain where new houses would soon stand. At the moment, it was a field of rubble, devastation as if after a war, with, near the centre, a raw, new building rising alone — a pub. This one was faced with green tile that shone in the white winter light. As he watched, two wagons, looking like centipedes, crawled in from the farthest corner, and men the size of ants began to unload iron pipe, the rattle and clink of the pipes reaching him long after he had seen them dropped. Then he headed south again, paralleling the Great Northern and Midland lines, the trains pounding along the tracks towards the depots in Camden and Somers Towns, their whistles like screams. He wondered how anybody in the new houses that would rise could tolerate the noise, then realized that they could and would: this was London, where there must be always more noise, more houses, more workers — cram them in, stuff them in, subject them to noise and dirt — they will accept it and then love it. He thought of Harris’s We need a revolution and thought, No, he’s wrong; this is what we want, this world, this noise, this bustle. This is the revolution.

In the midst of which a murderer, eating his morning sausage, laughs.

I could do with a revolution that took him with it, Denton thought, heading homeward. But perhaps, then, the murderer was the revolution Harris wanted, an eruption of violence from within. It would be a grim revolution, then. Harris, he thought, had something more dramatic and final in mind.

He stopped again at his own house to ask Maude if any messages had come, learned none had, went off to Privatelli’s to eat Italian food he didn’t taste; then he walked on, down into the City, across the river (looking north, trying to see where Mulcahy’s roof must be), crossing back over Waterloo Bridge, his legs tiring now, grateful for clocks that told him that the day was looking towards its end: grateful because it would be over soon, failure looked in the face, something else waiting up ahead.

And so he came back to his own house about four. He let himself in, took off his coat and hung it, walked up and down the long room, put water on for tea. Only then was there a sound from below — slow footsteps on the stairs (he whirled around, startled despite himself), then the door opening. It was Atkins, much chastened.

‘My very own Isandhlwana,’ he said. ‘Disaster.’

Denton watched his last hope die but smiled to reassure him. ‘Well — you tried.’

‘Oh, yes, the saddest words of voice or pen, “I tried.”’ Atkins looked under Denton’s arm. ‘You making tea? Maude’s got tea downstairs. Want some?’

‘No, the water’s hot; I’ll make fresh.’

‘Well, then. Pour me a half cup, if you will. My confidence in myself is shaken.’

They sat by the cold fireplace, Denton in his armchair. Atkins had dragged the hassock to the hearth and sat with his chin on his fists, staring into the cold grate. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

‘No Stella Minter, then?’

‘If you wanted grown women, maiden name of Minter, Stella, I could provide you with two! But neither had a girl child between 1883 and 1886, did they? I could provide you with several dozen ladies, maiden name Minter, who had girl children between 1883 and 1886, but none of them by name Ruth! And none of them match to any woman, maiden name of Minter, what had a baby girl she named Rebecca between 1885 and 1888. Now, I can give you two Rebeccas born to women whose maiden names were Minter, born in the right years, but they don’t have older sisters, do they? Oh, brothers, oh, yes! They got brothers enough to relieve the siege of Ladysmith, but they don’t have sisters! You follow me, General? My idea about the maiden names was bleeding stupid!’

‘Now, now-’ Denton made comforting noises that he didn’t feel. He let Atkins sputter and run down, and, as sop to Atkins’s vanity, he said, ‘She lied. Not your fault.’

‘Who lied?’

‘Stella Minter. I suppose her real name wasn’t Ruth any more than it was Stella — she lied when she used it at the Humphrey, and she lied when she told the other tart it was her name. She was a really frightened girl — not trusting anybody. It isn’t your doing, Sergeant.’

‘What, I spent the day looking for Ruth and there ain’t no Ruth?’

‘Ain’t no Ruth and ain’t no Rebecca, I suspect, and ain’t no Stella Minter, either.’

Atkins pushed his chin harder against his fists and growled. ‘Yes, that one there is! A Stella Minter there is.’

‘Two, you said. Wrong age — they’re mothers?’

‘One yes, one no. A girl, born — I’ve got it written down someplace — it’s in me dispatch case — born in the right years. Named Stella Minter — there she was, plain as currants in a cake. You do all those names, column after column, you forget what you’re looking for. I’d already done the Minter maidens; I was doing baby Ruths, but I got confused or sleepy, God knows, and there’s a Stella baby, father’s name Minter, and I wrote it down. Stupid, I’m just stupid. It’s a wonder you put up with me, Major.’

Denton stared at the angry servant’s profile. The room was cold; he’d been feeling it for a quarter of an hour, only now realized it. ‘Light the fire,’ he said. He stood. ‘I’m going out.’

‘You just came in.’

‘I want the information you took down about the infant Stella Minter. Chop-chop.’

Atkins looked up at him. ‘What for?’