The Frightened Man (14 page)

‘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.

Denton had fallen into an exhausted sleep, to be woken by the constable from the front door, who wanted to know if he should let in a Dr Bernat, a Jew, sir. Denton said of course, and Bernat examined him, put on fresh dressings and asked after Atkins - word of the second crime had travelled through the neighbourhood.

‘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:

CAPE COLOURED SEAMAN ARRESTED IN MUTILATION MURDER

Confession Imminent, City Police Say

Joseph Abrahams, a Cape Town seaman, has been detained for the violent murder of a woman in the Minories two nights ago. Abrahams was found in an inebriated state and covered in blood, City police say. Detective Sergeant Steven Willey said he expects to lay charges tomorrow. Abrahams’s ship, the
Ladysmith Castle
, will sail from the Port of London today.

‘Mr Atkins is comatose,’ Dr Bernat said several hours later. ‘Very bandaged, so I could not examine the wounding, but the resident was helpful.’ He tut-tutted. ‘A bad blow to the back of the head.’ He touched his own large dome behind his bald spot. ‘Concussion for certain. But not to despair yet. I am seeing many woundings of the head in Poland.’ The resigned smile again; no need, it said, to tell him who had been wounded and who had done the wounding.

‘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.

Frank Harris turned up in the early afternoon. He looked pretty much as bad as he had the night before, but cleaner. Denton received him in his bedroom. ‘Informal but understandable, I hope,’ he said.

‘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?’