‘Or he thinks his neighbours are thieves,’ Denton said. He paid the man but asked him to come back in fifteen minutes ‘just in case’, as he murmured to Janet Striker. ‘We don’t want to get marooned in the wilds of Kilburn.’
‘I can’t make a living hanging about,’ the cabbie said.
Denton gave him one of the coins he’d got from Harris. ‘Find the pub, have one on me, come back.’
Mrs Striker was looking at the electric motor car. ‘It’s quite unusual,’ she said.
‘Small.’
‘Look — there’s not another on the street.’
‘Maybe accountancy pays.’
‘And likes to declare itself. I wonder, does he ever drive it, or does he leave it here to remind the neighbours of how successful he is?’
They turned to the house, a yellow brick in a terrace of identically built houses, now rather hysterically individualized by touches of paint, the occasional bit of sawn fancy-work under an eave, names like ‘The Cedars’ (next door, though there were no cedars). Denton had already seen the lace curtain in the front window of number 27 twitch; in that house at least — perhaps all up and down the street — an arrival by cab had been noticed.
‘You do the talking,’ Denton said.
‘In heaven’s name, why?’
‘You do it better than me. Anyway, people trust a woman.’
They went up the short walk between two rows of bricks half-buried on the diagonal, two rows of rigorously trimmed box beyond them, English ivy and a monkey puzzle tree in each ten-by-twelve-foot plot. ‘You expect too much of me,’ she said.
‘You can do anything, is what I think.’
She gave him a look — amused? annoyed? — and rang the bell. The door opened too quickly; the middle-aged woman behind it had been waiting. She was wearing a nondescript dress, but Mrs Striker seemed to know she was the maid (and would be the only maid in this house, and would live out somewhere) and wasn’t the mistress. Denton wanted to say that this was a perfect example of her abilities, because he’d have got it wrong and thought her the mistress.
‘We should like to call on Mr and Mrs Minter, if you please. Will you show us in?’ She held out a calling card.
The maid frowned. Her face said that she was neither bright nor well paid, so why should she be forced to make a decision in such a matter? Then her face more or less collapsed, as if to say, It’s beyond me, it really is. She said in a whisper, ‘Wait, please.’ And closed the door.
Janet Striker rolled her eyes. ‘Not done,’ she said softly. ‘Poor frightened soul-!’ A murmur of voices came from inside the house; Janet Striker smiled unpleasantly and said, ‘Now she’s being scolded. Mrs Minter will be saying, “What will the neighbours think? Everybody’s seen them come by cab; we can’t leave them on the doorstep, Alfred! It will cause the most awful gossip! They’ll think, oh, what will they think-!”’ She displayed a talent for mimicry he hadn’t expected, then remembered her contempt for ‘nice’ women. ‘And he’ll be saying, “Can it be the religious canvassers, do you think? At this hour?”’
With that, the door opened again and the maid, now red-faced, whispered, ‘Come in, please, miss,’ and stood aside. They passed through into a tiny vestibule with a tiled floor, beyond it a narrow hall with oppressively dark but very shiny woodwork and a staircase. At the far end of the hall a man was standing, pulling at the bottom of his waistcoat and looking severe. In the middle of his tea, Denton thought.
‘Show our guests into the front parlour, Mrs Wick,’ the man said in the voice of a clergyman welcoming somebody to a funeral.
The room was small — twelve feet on a side — with a coal grate, unlit, and the same dark and brutally shiny woodwork, and dark furniture, vaguely Eastlake, that could be dated to the beginning of the Minters’ marriage. Antimacassars everywhere; on the walls calligraphic certificates in which the name Stella Minter could be made out, and on the dark mantel a tinted photograph (not one of Regis Mulcahy’s — wrong pose) of a plump young woman holding a book.
‘I’m afraid I am not cognizant of the reason for your visit,’ the man said. He was short, bald, plump and entirely sure of himself. ‘I am Alfred Minter,’ as if to say, I am the reason for all this magnificence.
Janet Striker smiled as brightly as the woodwork and held out her hand. ‘I am Janet Striker of the Society for the Improvement of Women. And this,’ indicating Denton as the prize item in the menagerie, ‘is Mr Denton, the famous author.’
Minter touched her hand and inclined his head, moving it in a quarter-circle to take in both of them. ‘And the reason for-?’ he said.
‘The matter is rather delicate.’
He looked at her, then Denton.
‘Your daughter-’ she said. Minter’s head snapped up. ‘We’d like to ask you about your daughter.’
‘This is most unusual.’ He tugged again at his waistcoat. ‘Most surprising. I fail to see why you — why anyone — would ask me about my-’ He made a gesture, as if the word ‘daughter’ was too sacred to pronounce.
‘Do you have a daughter named Stella?’
He pulled himself up to his full five feet six inches. He raised a hand and moved it slowly past the row of calligraphies on the wall. ‘An accomplished young woman. Thoroughly accomplished. The apple of our eye! I don’t understand your interest, madam.’
‘Might we see her?’
‘Certainly not. She is a girl, a sensitive and good girl. I see no reason to, mm, expose her to the-’ He frowned. ‘To strangers. Who, I must say, give me no reason to entertain, mm, to have confidence in, mm, to know who or what they are! I don’t know you, madam. Or you, sir.’
Janet Striker gave Denton a look; he got out a calling card, then searched his pockets for Hench-Rose’s letter, now somewhat battered. He handed both over. Minter took them, held the card low and well away, tipping his head back, then went to the front window and studied them there. After that, he held the letter at arm’s length and read it. He looked back at Denton, perhaps to determine if he could really be the Sir Galahad described by Hench-Rose, then returned to the letter and apparently read it again. At last, he came back to them and stood in the same spot in front of his fireplace, defender of the hearth. ‘What is all this about?’ he said a little hoarsely.
Janet Striker sat, the chair dark and overwrought, both hideous and uncomfortable-looking; she took up only the forward two or three inches of it. ‘A young woman using the name Stella Minter has met her death. We are looking for her parents.’
His left hand went unconsciously to his chest; the idea of his daughter’s death caused a spasm of pain on his face. ‘But she is alive and well!’ he gasped. ‘In this house. At this moment!’
‘May we see her?’
Minter’s lips moved; he hesitated, decided, went to the door and called into the darkness of the hall, ‘Mother! Please to bring our Stella to the front parlour. At once — please.’ He turned back to them. ‘You will see-’ He touched his forehead. ‘You gave me a turn. To suggest that our Stella-’
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Minter. I didn’t mean to suggest that your daughter was the victim. Only that we are looking for her parents.’
He went back to his place by the hearth and stared at the floor. ‘That was cruel,’ he murmured.
A middle-aged woman paused in the doorway, then came into the room; behind her, holding the woman’s hand, a young but very large girl followed, clearly the girl in the photograph. Both were taller than Minter, neither ‘good-looking’ by most standards, the girl’s face broad and long, her colour good, her hair lank. Both, Denton thought, were overdressed: did they put on their best to welcome Papa home to tea? Or were the clothes a declaration of status, like the little motor car?