‘How is Atkins?’

‘He’s had his head bashed in.’ Detective Sergeant Guillam looked angry, apparently his normal expression. He glared at Denton with what seemed to be disgust. ‘Didn’t the constables even come into the house with you?’

Denton moved his head from side to side. He felt as if he’d ploughed a forty-acre field. ‘I didn’t ask them to.’

‘It isn’t your business to ask them! They’re supposed to use their bloody heads!’

It was a little after eight in the morning. Atkins had been carried away to a hospital before daybreak; since then, the place had swarmed with police. Two of them were posted now, one in front and one in the back garden, through which, presumably, the man with the knife had escaped - classic closing of the door after the horse was gone. The window by the stairs, all its glass broken out except for sharp triangles along the frame, was hung with a blanket until the glazier arrived.

‘You didn’t see his whole face either time. He smelled. You say he looked frightened - what the hell does that mean?’

‘He was sweating. His eyes were frightened.’

‘Of what? You were there in your drug stupor; what’d he to be frightened of ?’ Guillam was a Puritan, Denton decided; ‘drug stupor’ was a deliberately outrageous moral statement. ‘Why didn’t he kill you if he had the chance?’

‘The gun went off.’

Guillam glanced at the hole the bullet had made in the plaster. ‘You’re a brilliant marksman,’ he muttered.

‘I want my gun back.’ The local detective had made off with it before Guillam had got there.

‘You’ll get it back, you’ll get it back. You’re going to get into trouble, having guns about.’ Guillam was grumpy: it was early; he had been got out of bed to take the case. Without Atkins in the house, nobody was offering him even tea.

Denton used his good hand to point towards the pantry. ‘There’s an alcohol stove in there. Water. You could make us tea.’ His throat was sore, his mouth dry. ‘All of us.’

‘That where he attacked you the first time, is it?’ Guillam lumbered down the room and looked. He still had his bowler and his overcoat on. It was raining again; the smell of wet wool had come in with him. A certain amount of banging from the pantry indicated he was trying to make tea. He cursed. While the kettle heated, he pulled the now wet blanket aside and looked out of the broken window. ‘Probably cut himself,’ he said. ‘Not enough to matter, I suppose.’ He came towards Denton, looking at this and that in the room, sizing it up. ‘You sure it was the same man both times?’

‘Yes.’

‘No burglar stays inside once he’s been seen. He skedaddles, he does.’

‘Not a burglar.’

‘I know he’s not a burglar! Judas Priest.’ He had his hands deep in his coat pockets, dragging his shoulders down. ‘You think it’s him, don’t you.’

‘Him?’

‘You know who I mean! Don’t get cute.’ He went past Denton, looked at the books beyond the fireplace, took one down and riffled its pages. ‘Because of your Mulcahy.’

‘My Mulcahy.’

‘Well, nobody else’s claiming him. You think it’s the man killed the Minter girl, you do. Hooked up somehow through your Mulcahy. Well, I won’t have it. Anyway, Willey’s got his Cape Coloured in custody; they’ll move to a charge as soon as he gets a confession. You look disappointed, Mr Denton. Myself, I’m happy with a nigger sailor.’

‘Don’t use the word “nigger” in my house.’

‘This is a police investigation! I’ll use any bloody word I want! What’re you, the society for the improvement of bloody Africa?’

‘I heard enough of that talk during the war. Cork it, Guillam - I mean it.’ Denton stared him down; Guillam shrugged and looked away. Denton said, ‘Find Mulcahy. He can tell you at least whether the murderer was a black man or not.’

Guillam put the book back and turned on Denton. ‘Very cute of you to spy out that peephole in the girl’s room. Terrifically cute of you not to tell me about it yesterday.’ He loomed above Denton. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the peephole yesterday?’

‘You would have made some joke about Sherlock Holmes.’ Denton pulled his blanket closer; he was in the green armchair again. ‘If Mulcahy was behind that peephole when the girl was killed, you’ve got a witness, you know.’

‘I have to be told about the peephole by Munro, who’s got a bee up his arse because he fell off his own roof and isn’t in CID any more, and he’s just delighted to know something that I don’t! Well, it was well done, and my congratulations to you, Mr Denton!’ Guillam took his hat off and made a deep bow. ‘Brilliant, brilliant! The coppers look like idiots again, and the amateur sleuth finds the clue!’

‘Go suck eggs.’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that! I’ll put your arse on the floor as soon as look at you!’

‘Well, do it while I have one arm in a sling; it’s your best chance.’

Guillam stared at him and burst out laughing. He went back up the room shaking his head, and two minutes later he came out with a pot of tea and two cups without saucers. ‘Sugar’s coming.’ He went to the window and called something down, and a minute later one of the policemen came up. By then, Guillam was laying out more cups and the sugar bowl and some vaguely suspicious-looking milk.

‘Yesterday’s milk,’ Denton said.

‘Smells all right. Oh, hell!’ Guillam had poured some into his tea, and apparently it had separated. ‘Forget the bloody milk.’ He muttered to the constable to take a cup down to his pal and get a move on, and then he brought his own cup and lowered himself to the hassock near Denton’s feet.

‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it that the bastard was so determined to kill you that he came back, and I don’t like it that it’s you, with your interfering and your nose into everything. Nothing personal, Denton, but you’re not a helpful part of the landscape.’

‘I didn’t invite him to come and try to kill me.’

‘Put an advert in the newspapers, did you, trying to reach your Mulcahy?’

‘I did not.’

‘“If R. Mulcahy will reply to this address, he will hear something to his advantage”? None of that? It would explain how the bastard found you.’

‘Sorry I can’t make it easy for you.’

Guillam sipped. Slurped. ‘Damned hot tea.’ He pushed his hat back on his head. ‘Could be he followed your Mulcahy.’

‘Then waited a night and a day?’

‘You don’t know what else he was doing. Maybe things didn’t come together for him until yesterday. You don’t know what else was going on in his mind. You don’t know but what he’s certifiably lunatic. Normal rules don’t apply.’

‘You agree, at least, that it has something to do with Mulcahy.’

‘I do not. I’m only playing your little game to see where it leads me. I can give you a dozen reasons for somebody coming after you. He read one of your books and thinks he’s the demon of the plains.’ Denton’s first book had been titled The Demon of the Plains - astonishing that Guillam knew it. ‘Or he’s part of a secret conspiracy that originated in Salt Lake City, Utah. Or he’s trying to avenge a crime you committed in India. The theft of a fabulously valuable jewel.’

‘I’ve never been in India.’

‘But the valet chap who got knocked on the head has. Told my boys that yesterday.’

‘I’m not in a humour for jokes, Guillam.’

‘Glad to hear it. We’ll stop the games then, shall we? I’m only trying to show you how stupid the idea of your Mulcahy is. Think of it from my point of view - I have to consider all the reasons for somebody knifing you that I’ve come across over the years. Such as, he saw you with a woman he fancies. Or he’s got an old grudge against you that you haven’t told us about yet. Or he owes you money. Or you owe him money. You rogered his wife. He blames you for something you don’t even know you did. Crikey, there’s more reasons for people to go slashing each other than Mudie has books.’

‘Or, he saw me at Stella Minter’s yesterday with you.’

‘There you are. Which wouldn’t mean he murdered Stella Minter, but only that he didn’t like your face or your hat.’

‘I’ve given you a reasonable motive for his coming after me.’

‘Motives be damned. I like facts I can send to court to hang the bastards.’ He finished his tea and hitched the hassock closer. ‘Now, see here. He came in your skylight, must have been while you and your man were both out. Between nine and eleven p.m., was it? He waits in the pantry, tries to knife you, does half a job but you fight him off. Then he pretends to run but hides again, whacks your man with an iron doorstop, and comes up here and tries it on again. Which you end with a gunshot. I see two things that don’t hang together: one, he’s a determined chap; and two, he scares off easy. You tell me.’

Denton had been trying to think about it through the fog of the laudanum. ‘He isn’t a natural killer.’

‘What the devil’s that mean?’

‘He didn’t use the knife on Atkins, didn’t kill him. He didn’t try to kill me with—There was none of the frenzy he used in killing Stella Minter.’

‘There you go again!’

‘None of the frenzy somebody used in killing Stella Minter.’

‘So what? He didn’t really want to kill one of his fellow men?’

‘Oh, wanted to, yes. But had to - I don’t know.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Whoever killed Stella Minter would have done it no matter what. If it was the same man here, he had less - passion.’

Guillam looked disgusted. ‘We’ll put out a call for men six feet and above, twenty stone, don’t kill with passion.’

‘Don’t kill men with passion.’

‘Oh, no you don’t! Now you’re saying it’s the Ripper. I won’t have it. The Ripper’s ancient history, he is!’

‘Isn’t that why they gave this to you? Because it might be connected to the Ripper, and you’re their Ripper man?’

‘They gave it to me because I’m in CID and you were already part of a matter I investigated.’ Two detectives from E Division had been there before him, had turned it over to him and left. They hadn’t wanted to hear about Mulcahy and Stella Minter; they had looked for evidence of burglary - footprints in the back garden. Glad to leave it to somebody else.

Guillam heaved himself up and collected the cups. ‘Anything else you want to tell me before I leave to write this up? You been making trouble for me anywhere else?’

Denton told him about hiring Mrs Johnson to look for Mulcahy in the city directories. ‘He’s a potential witness, Guillam.’

‘Yeah, we thought of that, but it would take detectives off other cases and it isn’t worth it because frankly we think you’re spinning us a tale. Nevertheless, when you get the results, you’ll give them to me - understood?’

‘You going to reimburse me what it cost?’

‘I am not! But you’ll give it to me, otherwise you’re withholding evidence.’ He lumbered to the pantry, returned. ‘Anything else?’

‘I thought of trying to find the kid who’s supposed to have photos of Stella Minter. Her pimp.’

‘So are we, so give it up.’ He flexed his arms, a motion oddly like a rooster preparing to crow. ‘I don’t want interference. We clear on that point? If you don’t give up all this amateur-detective crap and I find out about it, I’ll come down on you like a hod of bricks.’ He pulled his hat forward and shrugged himself deeper into his coat. ‘I want to have a look at your attic for form’s sake, and then I’m off. Might be as well for you to get away for a rest somewhere, wouldn’t it?’

‘I live here.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve got no man, your window’s broken, and between laudanum and loss of blood, you’re a sorry spectacle. Find yourself a nice spot in the country for a week or two. Let us do our work. You get my meaning, Denton?’

‘Mind my own business.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ He laughed, turned away. ‘Gentleman detective!’

Guillam went off up the stairs. He was down again so quickly that Denton wondered if he’d even walked the length of the attic. Still, he’d certainly been up there, because he said, ‘Intruder smashed a pane of the skylight. If you hadn’t been out, you’d have heard him. Floor’s wet now. He didn’t see the guns you’ve got up there, else he might have used one. No light, I suspect. Daring chap. Dark house he’s never been in before, and so on.’ Looking at a notebook. ‘You’ve a lot of guns about, I must say.’

‘Mind your own business. Some wise advice I had recently.’

‘My business if you shoot somebody.’

‘I won’t tell you if I do. Anyway, I’m not likely to do it with a parlour pistol.’

‘Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you loaded that Colt and kept it by you.’ He’d hardly been up there for three minutes, but he knew the Colt wasn’t loaded, meaning he’d opened the case. Impressive. Guillam began to button his coat. ‘I don’t believe he’ll come back, but you never know for sure. You really might think seriously about going elsewhere for a bit.’

‘Worried about me, Guillam?’

‘Yeah, you’ve touched my heart-strings.’ He pulled at his hat brim in a gesture that might have been a salute or might simply have been a clothing adjustment, and he went out.

‘He’s at University College Hospital in Gower Street. I can’t find out a damned thing from here.’ He touched the doctor’s shoulder as the man was bending over him. ‘Can I hire you as his physician?’ He flinched at ‘hire’, knew he should have said ‘retain’.

‘I am not being of the faculty,’ Bernat said. ‘I have no hospital.’ He gave a smile, more resigned than amused, no need to say to what. ‘Except the Jewish in the East End.’ He meant the hospital for indigent Jews.

‘I can write you a letter. They can’t object to that.’ Bernat had to fetch paper and pen from Denton’s bedroom. Denton wrote the note, trying to make it florid and stuffy - ‘my personal physician,’ ‘to advise on the condition of my man Harold Atkins,’ ‘yours most very sincerely.’ Bernat took it without reading it and then shook a pudgy finger at Denton and said he was to go to bed; he was not to think of going out; he was to drink beef tea, apparently by the gallon. ‘Replacing the blood,’ Bernat said, shaking his finger. ‘We are replacing the blood, Mr Denton!’

When Bernat went off, the policeman came up with a nervous-looking, very young man and said apologetically that he wasn’t put there to answer the door, he was sorry, sir, it was job enough to keep the press away, as they was flocking like pigeons around an old lady with a bag of breadcrumbs.

‘Name is Maude, sir,’ the nervous young man said the moment the constable stopped talking. He was wearing a new suit, new round hat, new overcoat, none of the best but not the worst, either. ‘Sent by the Imperial Domestic Employment Agency, sir. Recommendation of -’ he peeked at a card - ‘Mr Harris.’

Denton’s head was still muzzy, his vision filmed. He was quitting the world of laudanum and entering one of something like influenza. ‘What for?’

‘I’m filling in currently. Until something permanent transpires. Sir.’

The policeman was still in the room, waiting in fact for Denton to tell him to go. ‘He’s a valet, sir,’ he said, making it ‘val-it’ but clear enough. ‘Can I go, sir?’

Denton was putting it together in the fog. Harris, valet, employment agency: Frank Harris had sent him a servant to replace Atkins; therefore, Harris knew what had happened. Harris was famous for knowing all sorts of things; he was also famous for doing all sorts of things, many of them scandalous, scurrilous, or actionable, but sometimes - like now - inexplicably generous. Denton waved the policeman away and said to the young man, ‘I’ve got no room for you. His - the permanent man’s - rooms are a crime scene.’

‘Only coming in by the day as a temporary, sir. Accustomed to making do.’ Seeing, probably, that Denton was unconvinced of the need for him, he said, ‘Somebody to answer the door in this trying time quite important, sir. Not proper for the cop - policeman. Not well yourself, if I may say so, sir, helpful to have somebody about. There’s also the matter of clothing, your morning newspaper, letters and calling cards—’ He held out the morning mail and the newspaper, which he had been holding all the time he had been there.

‘Can you cook?’

‘Oh, no, sir! But I can serve a proper dinner.’

Atkins could cook. After a fashion. What he called ‘curries’, mostly meaning that he threw some things together and used spice from a tin he bought at the Army and Navy Stores. Plus eggs, gammon, toast, coffee and various sandwiches, always served with chutney and pickle. The Indian background.

‘But you can make a pot of tea.’

‘Why, yes.’

‘Good. Do it. Your hat and coat go in that closet. When the tea’s made, take a cup to each of the coppers outside - one’s at the back. Then I want you to go up to the attic and get some things for me, and then we’ll talk about drawing me a bath. You’ll get lunch for both of us from the Lamb, plus anything the officers want. Can you do that?’

With the air of a man of parts, the boy - for he was only a boy, perhaps sixteen - said, ‘Of course, sir.’ Leaving Denton to wonder why Frank Harris, who was only an acquaintance, had gone out of his way to help him. And what he would want in return.

Denton found the confirmation of what Guillam had told him buried on an inner page of the newspaper:

‘I’d like you to see him again this evening. If you have time.’

Bernat bowed, a curiously courtly and old-fashioned gesture. He raised one of Denton’s eyelids, then the other, then looked inside Denton’s mouth. ‘Laudanum was new to you. It is very forceful that way sometimes. The brandy was not wise.’

‘I know that now.’

‘The doctor cannot predict is coming in a burglar to kill you. Sleeping is what I wanted for you, not knifing. But the brandy was foolish.’ He waved a finger at Denton. ‘Now you know better.’

‘I’m learning.’

Bernat gave him the smile, then rattled through advice - sleep, lots of liquids, red meat if he could eat it; rest, rest, rest. And no spirits. ‘You have no wife? No woman?’ A look of disapproval. ‘The man without a woman is prey to mental vexations. Woman is soothing and also is love, as well the conjugal activity of pleasure. Every life needs softness!’ Then he laughed, and Denton laughed, and he went away.

By then, Maude had handed the tea around, answered the door four times (three newspapermen, one Christian Scientist), brought Denton the late newspapers (Famous Author Wounded in Dastardly Attack, which made Denton ask himself why, if he was so famous, he wasn’t rich), and made himself a tiny space at the top of the stairs that ran down to Atkins’s rooms and the kitchen - inside Atkins’s space, as it were, but not inside the crime scene.

‘Bath, sir?’

‘Attic first.’ Denton explained exactly what he wanted and made the boy repeat what he had said. ‘Now help me up to my bedroom and bring me the stuff there. Then the bath.’ A few minutes later, he was lying against three pillows on his own bed, loading the Colt. Then he had the bath. And his third cup of beef tea.

‘Ah, the author’s lair!’ Harris’s eyebrows went up and down. He had a lot of self-mockery, for surely he included himself in the idea of ‘author’. ‘How’s the temporary valet working out?’

‘Well enough that I want to thank you for him. I’m pretty much marooned here; it wasn’t working, having a copper for a doorman.’

‘I thought something like that. Plus it gave me an excuse for paying you a visit.’ The eyebrows went into their act again. ‘You ought to get away.’

Denton made it clear that he was sick of hearing about getting away.

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well, but you need to get away. You’ve been stabbed; a madman is after you. Your house is practically uninhabitable. Paris is the place for you!’ He grinned as if they shared a joke.

‘You’ve something in mind.’

‘Well. Yes. It’s this way, Denton—’ Harris hitched his chair closer, leaned in as if to share a secret. ‘Somebody from the Café Royal crowd, somebody literary, has to show the flag at Oscar’s funeral. We have to be seen to send somebody of some gravitas, don’t you agree? It’s the day after tomorrow.’ His eyebrows went up and stayed there. ‘All sentimental crap aside, Oscar Wilde can’t go into the ground with the world thinking nobody in literary London cared!’

It was typical Harris. Two days ago, he might not have been ready to subscribe two-and-six to a fund for Oscar Wilde, but a combination of contrariness and old friendship now made him Wilde’s champion. Plus he had once set up a famous meeting with Wilde and Shaw at the Café Royal, trying to persuade Wilde to skip his trial. Plus his bravura performance at the Café, in which Denton had supported him, probably appealed to his sense of self-dramatization.

And now Denton knew what he was supposed to do to repay him for the valet.

‘I’d go myself,’ Harris said, ‘but I’ve got a magazine going to hell under me, and anyway, the Paris authorities are not, mm, quite happy with me yet.’ He reached out and tapped Denton’s calf. ‘It’s about art, man. About art and this ridiculous, stuffy, suffocating, hypocritical society we live in! Everything’s regulated; everything’s marked out ahead of time - whole lives! - except for art. An artist can go anywhere - until he goes too far. Then the bastards turn their backs on him and sneer. We can’t let Oscar go like that, Denton. We owe it to ourselves as artists.’ Then he guffawed - a sound loud and abrupt enough to make Denton flinch - and said, ‘Heard the one about the tart who gave service à la bouche while playing “The Lost Chord” on the pianoforte with her toes?’

Denton said he hadn’t. Perhaps he had, but he could never remember jokes, and he had a puritanical distaste for off-colour ones, a leftover from his New England boyhood.

‘Well,’ Harris said, settling into it with a grin. ‘Fellow goes to this tart, et cetera, et cetera, and she has the speciality as noted, so she begins, and he’s delirious with pleasure, and she’s swinking away, playing Sullivan with her toes, and he’s just a jot short of a climax when she stops dead and says, “I can’t remember how this part of the music goes.” Well, the man is beside himself! He shouts, “Play anything - anything - make something up!”’ Harris roared with laughter, and Denton, thinking this was the end, smiled; Harris, however, wiping his eyes, said, ‘So - so the tart rears back, and she says - she says -’ he couldn’t keep from laughing - ‘she says, “Make something up! Sir - I’m an artist!”’ And he became helpless, laughing.

Denton at least chuckled at that, but when Harris had recovered, Denton made the mistake of asking what à la bouche meant, and Harris became glum and said the joke was ruined. ‘I don’t know which is worse, Denton, your utter lack of humour or your sexual prudery.’

‘I don’t think that not knowing French makes me a prude.’

‘Ever hear of a man named Havelock Ellis?’

‘The Psychology of Sex. Downstairs on my shelves. Volume one, anyways.’

‘You astonish me. Well, how can you read that book and still be a prude?’ Harris leaned forward. ‘I suppose German and Latin would be too much for you, or I’d put you on to Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis. Set you straight.’

‘Ever occurred to you, Harris, that sex isn’t all that important?’

Harris looked poleaxed.

‘I mean,’ Denton said, ‘it’s fine in its place. Pleasure is nice. But it’s not worth writing whole books about. Maybe you have sex a bit too much on the brain.’

‘You’re the one who’s mad about murdered tarts and voyeurism and sexual mutilation!’

‘But not because of the sex.’

Harris stared at him, shook his head, and sighed, like an actor trying to make a point to a particularly stupid audience. He looked at his watch; then he pushed his hands down into his trouser pockets and sank even farther down in his chair, his legs out. Then he shook his head. ‘Thesis, antithesis, synthesis,’ he muttered.

To cheer him, Denton said that he supposed he could go to Paris, but—‘Why me?’ he said, although he knew why. Because there was nobody else. ‘Are they all so afraid?’ he said.

Harris sighed. ‘Since Oscar was jailed, everybody with a lingam behind his flies has been terrified to so much as own a copy of Dorian Gray. Actually, you’re the perfect one - you are, if I may say so, the epitome of the hairy masculine. Not a hint of English neurasthenia about you. Come on, Denton - if not for Oscar, then for me.’ He grinned - much show of teeth - and said, ‘After all I’ve done for you!’ It was both a joke and a solipsistic plea.

All Denton could say was that he’d think about it. He didn’t say that he wasn’t going anywhere until Atkins was out of danger. Otherwise, the idea of a flying visit to Paris was not unattractive. Except that, of course, it was doing exactly what Guillam had advised him to do. And he shouldn’t spend the money just now. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said again - grumpily, as he realized when he heard himself. ‘I can’t leave Atkins unconscious in a hospital.’

‘Better in a hospital than somewhere else.’

‘I’ll let you know tomorrow. There’ll still be time to take the night mail and get there.’ Harris looked at him with the terrific frown that had made him feared - sheer uncivilized ferocity, as if he planned to club you to death and eat the remains. Denton wasn’t impressed, but he wondered how sane Harris was. He reminded himself that he didn’t know Harris at all well; they were Café Royal acquaintances, and not very frequent ones, at that. In fact, his only contact with Harris outside the Café had been when the man had asked him to provide ‘anything on American fiction’ more than a year before, and Denton had written something on Stephen Crane. So far as Denton could remember, he’d never been paid. Which wouldn’t have been much to begin with, its being Harris. To forestall more talk about Paris, Denton now said, ‘Did I ever get my money for that piece on Crane?’

He should have said ‘Where’s my money for the piece on Crane?’ because Harris, given the possibility of its already having been paid, said, ‘Of course you did!’

‘I don’t remember it.’

‘Shock. Loss of blood.’

‘I think you gave me the loose notes from your pocket when I asked for it. I think it was about ten pounds short.’

Harris became magisterial. ‘I don’t think we should bicker over money when Oscar is barely cold.’

‘I’m not bickering - I’m asking—’

‘Crane just died, of course. How about doing a piece on that? We could split the difference.’ Not getting encouragement for that idea, he rushed on to say, ‘Oh, another thought I had.’ Harris smiled, then touched his forehead and frowned. ‘Would it be possible to get a drink, do you think? Something is always welcome at this time of the day.’ It was not yet one o’clock.

There was no bell, and Denton had forgotten the boy’s name. ‘Bellow down the stairs. Tell him what you want.’ What Denton wanted was for Harris to go; he was feeling disoriented, floaty, weak. Not up to the Harris personality. ‘Or you could just go next door to the Lamb.’

‘A public house? Good God! Only an American would suggest it.’ Harris went out and, instead of bellowing, said something in a low voice and then went on down the stairs. He was back in two or three minutes with brandy; Denton was almost asleep, and the smell woke and nauseated him. Harris drank, sighed, massaged his temples. ‘You really need to get away for a day or two, Denton. The boy isn’t to be here at night, he tells me; you’ll be alone.’

‘I’ll think about it, I said.’

‘Of course, I’ll cover your expenses - take up a collection. ’

‘Take up one for the Crane piece, while you’re at it.’

Harris finished his brandy with great briskness and banged the glass down. ‘You disappoint me.’ He paused at the doorway like an actor with an exit line. ‘The Café Royal is counting on you.’

Later, Maude - by then, Denton had remembered the boy’s name - brought up a lunch from the Lamb and more beef tea, of which Denton was getting noticeably weary. Denton asked him if Harris had paid his wages.

‘Oh, no, sir, that’s for you to do.’

Of course it was.

‘Now?’

‘When better?’

Denton had had enough beets in his childhood to last a lifetime, but he didn’t want to offend Bernat. Mentally holding his nose, he drank - and liked it. Borscht, he found, when made by the right cook, was very different from boiled beets. He smiled. Bernat smiled. They both laughed. Bernat said Denton was ‘very game’, an Englishism of which he seemed proud. He had been to see Atkins again. There had been a period of consciousness, he had been told, some indications that Atkins could see, move his limbs and ask questions, or at least say, ‘What the bloody hell?’

‘Now, he will improve, but he is having a nasty wound. Some days yet he must be in hospital.’

‘Can I visit?’

‘Tomorrow, maybe yes, maybe no. But you need rest yourself. Today, absolutely no.’

Denton looked grim. ‘Somebody wants me to go to Paris. A trip to University College Hospital won’t compare.’

‘Paris!’ Bernat frowned. ‘Paris is not a restful place. I trained in Paris. During the—’

Maude was standing in the doorway. ‘Now there’s a gentleman named Munro to see you.’ He looked aggrieved. His work day had ended two minutes earlier, and here he was, announcing yet somebody else. Denton said to show him up, and the boy said that then he was leaving the house, sir, and he clattered downstairs.

‘I am going,’ Bernat said.

‘No, no, stay.’ Bernat had a half-finished glass of sherry. He looked uncertain, probably embarrassed. Munro, however, seemed unfazed by either patient or doctor. He was carrying his hat and coat and grinning. ‘Your man flew out of the house before I could give him my things.’

‘My man’s a kid, hardly out of short pants. Sling them on the bed.’ He introduced the two men, said that Bernat was a doctor and Munro a policeman. ‘Two professional visits in one,’ he said. ‘Munro, if you want a drink, you have to get your own. Atkins got his head broken.’

‘So I heard. Nothing for me, anyway.’ He looked at Bernat. ‘Well, how is he?’

‘Our host? Generally in excellent health, his wounds stable, still weak and I think a little shocked. But promising. ’

Munro looked at Denton. ‘I’d like to hear your tale of what happened. Guillam’s keeping his own counsel - his prerogative; he’s being a good cop. Tell me what happened.’

Bernat said he shouldn’t listen to private police business; no matter how much both men insisted, he drank off his sherry and left. He had seemed at ease with Denton, clearly was not with Munro, or perhaps only with two other people instead of one. ‘Shy,’ Denton said. ‘Been through the pogroms; maybe it’s because you’re a policeman.’

‘Coppers have that effect. Part of the job.’

Then Denton told him the story of the two attacks, ending with Guillam’s visit and Guillam’s disdain for the Mulcahy story. ‘Guillam hates my guts,’ he finished.

‘That’s just Georgie. He wants to be a superintendent, at least; always on the make. To him, you’re a rival. I know, it’s stupid, but he’s like that. He doesn’t want anybody else to have an idea. Down on me because I had your observation about the peephole before he did.’

‘He wants me to “get away”.’

‘Yeah, that would suit him. Plus you must admit, he has a job to do.’

‘Which I don’t prevent him doing.’

‘Yeah, you do, if you get in the newspapers and spout ideas that the coppers then have to deal with - which he’s afraid you will if a reporter ever gets hold of you. It’s really hard enough being a London copper without civilians saying it should be this way or that way. As if you had to listen to Guillam tell you how to write books.’

Denton grunted. ‘Somebody else wants me to go to Paris.’

‘Happy to go in your place. You’ll buy the ticket?’

Denton laughed. His visitors had made him feel better. ‘How about you go next door to the Lamb and get yourself some beer and a couple of plates of beef? The boy servant seems to have forgotten that I eat in the evening.’

Munro stood. ‘I’ll get beer for me and beef for you. Mrs Munro expects me at home, and she expects me to eat what’s put before me. If you’re eating to help that arm, you should have liver.’

‘Beef. The redder the better.’

Munro was whistling when he came back. The whistling got breathy as he struggled up the last flight of stairs with the tray, but he made it - a little red-faced, a little winded - and laid out the beer pitcher and a glass, roast beef (not very red), mash with sprouts, a bottle of some sort of sauce. ‘Barman at the Lamb sends his best. Shocking you’re hurt. Crime is a scandal, and the police should all be sacked.’

‘You didn’t tell him you’re a copper.’

‘Didn’t seem friendly to disabuse him.’ Munro took a long pull at the beer and sighed happily and began to cut up Denton’s meat for him. ‘So - you think it was him?’

‘The attack? Yes, I think it was him.’

‘Well, you’ve seen his face now. He’ll either come again or go to ground.’

‘I saw half his face.’

Munro glanced at the Colt. ‘You expect him back, I see.’ He put the plate on Denton’s legs. ‘Constables going to be kept at your door?’

‘A few days.’ He ate some of the roast beef. ‘I might as well go to Paris.’

‘And give up on Mulcahy?’

‘Mulcahy’s dead by now.’

‘You surprise me. Why?’

‘There’s no point in attacking me unless he’s already got rid of Mulcahy. I think he was afraid that Mulcahy had told me something.’

‘What?’

‘I wish I knew.’

Munro drank his beer and frowned at the wall and said, ‘Willey’s got a solid case on the Cape Coloured he grabbed. They kept a lot of it out of the papers, but the long and the short of it is that the poor bastard was covered with blood and drunk as a lord when they found him, plus he gave them a confession. Willey laid charges a couple of hours ago.’

‘What’s that to me?’

‘Willey’s got the girl’s killer. Whatever your Mulcahy and the man who attacked you do or don’t have to do with the great scheme of things, they didn’t murder the Minter girl.’

‘Because Willey has a South African sailor who’s too frightened to know what’s happened to him? Munro, you know either of us could get a confession from a man in his situation even if we knew for a fact he was innocent - black man in a white country, found drunk and bloody, probably can’t remember what the hell he did that night, afraid they’ll hang him and so willing to say anything. And who made the peephole - the black man?’

‘The peephole’s neither here nor there. Denton, there’s no evidence that it had any connection with the murder at all! Or with your Mulcahy, for the matter of that. Fact, Willey’s people tracked down the landlord of the house in Priory Close Alley - lives out in Staines, never goes near his property, has an agent to do all the dirty work. The agent rented the closet to a man who gave the name Smithers, can’t remember anything of what he looked like. Paid six months in advance. Smithers may have been Mulcahy, but it’s wasted time to Willey.’

‘It means he probably has a witness.’

‘It means there’s an outside chance of a witness, but Willey has a confession, and if the coloured boy’s lawyer wants to go hunting for Smithers-Mulcahy, he’s welcome to do so, but Willey can’t spare the resources!’

Denton swigged borscht and chewed beef and shifted his position in the bed. ‘The girl,’ he said. ‘We have to learn more about the girl.’

Munro grinned and shook his head and, finishing his beer, clumped down the stairs and let himself out.