‘Just the opposite — I do. That’s what’s got me worried.’
On a balmy, breezy day, Denton and Janet Striker took a cab to Fitzroy Street. She said, ‘Are we starting here because it’s the likeliest? ’
‘Or the safest; I don’t know.’
They gave their names again to the harassed Irish maid and were shown into the same cluttered room, where the same plump woman sat in what looked to be the same clothes. She was shocked by the very idea that she might not have told them the entire truth. ‘The police have been here!’ she said. Her laces fluttered. ‘Do you think I would dare to lie to the police?’
‘We thought you might have forgotten something.’
‘Do you think I am senile? Do you think me incompetent? You are very insulting. Please to ring the bell and tell the maid to show you out.’
Denton bowed, winked at Janet Striker and limped out of the crowded, stuffy room.
When they had been standing in the central hall for more than a minute, the Irish maid appeared from somewhere below. Her sleeves were rolled up again, and sweat had stained her blouse. Pushing back loose coils of hair, she said, ‘I’m mangling. It’s hot work.’
Denton held up a shilling. She reached for it and he said, closing his fingers over the coin, ‘Do you remember we talked about Mary Thomason?’
‘Oh, that again.’
‘You remember.’
‘Of course I do.’
He held her eyes. Her look was what so-so novelists called ‘bold’, meaning she didn’t flinch. He said, ‘When Mary Thomason left, did she give you a way to get in touch with her?’
The bold look wavered. ‘Why would she?’
‘She might have wanted to know when somebody came asking after her.’
‘Well, what if she did?’
‘How did you let her know after we were here asking?’
The young woman hesitated, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and settled back on her spine and looked straight at him. ‘She left me a card with a stamp to post to her — what of it?’
‘You didn’t tell us that when we were here before.’
‘You didn’t ast me.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
She snorted. ‘The English polis can go suck eggs for all of me.’
He held out the coin. When she took it, he said, ‘Which of them came back — Mary Thomason, or her brother?’ He had caught her fingers and held them as they held the shilling.
The girl’s voice fell almost to a whisper. ‘How’d you know somebody come back?’
‘Which?’
‘Her.’
‘She wanted to know who’d been here?’
‘Yeah. Just that.’
‘You had our names?’
‘Your cards, yeah. I give them to her.’ She flared up. ‘Where’s the harm, then? She was a poor lone thing like me; she had somebody meaning to hurt her! She give me a sixpence — be like a sovereign to you! She was a sweet, harmless little thing that wanted to know who was after her!’
‘So she left you a stamped card to send to her. What was the address on the card?’
‘You think I can read?’ She made a contemptuous, snorting sound in the back of her nose. ‘I grew up in a house no better than a pigsty that was a dozen miles from the nearest school — you think the old folks sent me there? I was needed to home! Reading’s for you fine English people.’
‘Did you send her a card or anything after Mrs Striker was here the other day?’
‘She left me oney the one card. It was oney the once!’
‘And after we leave here today — are you going to tell her somehow? ’
‘I ain’t, I ain’t, I got better things to do! I ain’t seen her in half a year and I got no more cards with stamps to them! Now leave me be.’
She started back for the stairs, but Denton caught her arm and held her. She was frightened, but she was angry; he thought that if he spoke one wrong word, she’d punch him. ‘If Mary Thomason or her brother comes back again, Hannah, you have to tell me. I’m going to give you a card. If either of them comes back, you take the card to Mrs Durnquess and have her read my address to you. Mary and her brother are involved in some very bad business. You don’t want to help them.’ He let her go and gave her one of his cards.
When they were out on the street, Janet Striker said, ‘I hope you don’t believe she’ll do what you told her to.’
‘No. She thinks Mary’s a victim, and she’ll side with her. Still, it was worth a try.’
Walking down Fitzroy Street, Janet said, ‘You thought all along she was the one?’
‘Since I thought there had to be somebody, yes. She seemed the likeliest. I’d rather it was Geddys — I don’t like him, and I like her — but I’ll take what I can get.’
‘You going to tell Munro?’
‘Mmm. Maybe. Not yet.’
She squeezed his arm. He told her he wanted to walk, to help his recovery; they went on down Charlotte Street. The bad leg dragged and had to be favoured, with much use of the walking stick, but he got around well on it now, not as fast as he used to but well enough. At Oxford Street, she suggested they stroll along past the shops. ‘If you’re not too tired.’
‘Being tired isn’t the problem; it’s being slow.’ They turned into Oxford Street. ‘You have shopping to do?’
‘I come to places like this to look. To see what I’m not missing, perhaps. Mrs Cohan is making curtains at the moment; I’m shopping for ideas.’
‘Which you won’t buy?’
‘She knows the remnant houses in the East End. We’ll go there when I know what I want. She has fantastic taste. One of her places has bolts of old Liberty silks and cashmeres, magnificent things that are out of fashion. I intend to surround myself with it.’
The shop windows were full of coronation goods, the coronation itself still almost two months off. They saw coronation chocolates, coronation cakes, the Coronation Tea Set with Spirit Lamp and Kettle, coronation platters and plates and bone china cups with portraits of the new king and queen. A coronation corset was being advertised.
‘The Socialists say that the coronation is a trick, a very large piece of advertising for capitalism and the Empire,’ she said.
‘What do you know about the Socialists?’
‘I go to the Reading Room. I read about everything! Because I know nothing, Denton — nothing! I’m as ignorant as that Irish girl, except I can write a ladylike hand.’
‘Atkins has got himself into the truss business. They’re going to call it the Coronation Model if they can get it ready in time.’
They stopped at a window where a portrait of the king was displayed on a carved easel and surrounded with velour draperies. She said, ‘A fairly common type in a whorehouse.’
‘Kings?’
‘Fat men with stinking cigar breath and plenty of money to pay people to do things that humiliate them.’
‘You don’t have respect for your new sovereign?’
‘None.’
They turned back at Oxford Circus. She said, ‘What would you think of my attending University College?’
‘If it’s what you want to do.’
‘I’m so ignorant. Truly, I don’t know anything. I might even take a degree. Would you mind?’
‘If you became learned? Of course not. A degree in what?’
She hesitated as if she feared his answer. ‘Economics,’ she said. ‘I so like having money.’ They both started laughing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
April turned into May, May into June. Heseltine had been dead six months, Erasmus Himple even longer. Mary Thomason and Arthur Crum or whoever they were had vanished.
The Boer War stumbled to an end. Janet Striker moved into her house, with the Cohans to take care of her. Atkins’s vegetable garden produced baby lettuces and early peas and threatened courgettes. Denton rowed on the river every other day from a boathouse above Hammersmith Bridge. The first time, he had worn old trousers and a shirt without a collar but had been surprised to see that most of the men who were serious about it wore some costume of the sort Janet Striker had given him. They seemed unembarrassed by the mid-calf trousers and the collarless shirts, even by the little caps. They looked distinctly silly to him, but he had long since resigned himself to a culture in which the well-off wore different kinds of clothes for every activity and didn’t feel ridiculous in them. Thereafter, he carried his rowing clothes in a little satchel, changed in the boathouse with the rest and rowed in what he called ‘my funny duds’. Warmer weather proved their value: he sweated buckets — so much so that he had to buy two more outfits.