The Frightened Man tds-1 Page 7

  She had been killed on the bed, and most of her blood had soaked into the sheets and the mattress. Some blood, now dry, also lay on the wood floor like ink.

  ‘She was laying this way, feet towards the door,’ Guillam said. He sliced his right hand through the air, index finger up, palm to the left, parallel to the long axis of the bed. ‘Legs were partly drawn up, arms-’ He scrabbled for another paper. ‘Got the City Police drawing somewhere-’ He unfolded it — a stick figure on a rectangle. The arms were above the head. ‘Could have arranged the body somewhat, our killer could. One foot off the end of the bed a little; maybe moved her, or maybe that’s just the way she placed herself.’ He glanced up at Denton. ‘Notion is that he was a customer and all she was wearing was the wrapper; she opens the door, lets him in, lays herself down, and there you are.’

  ‘He hit her in the face,’ Denton said. ‘Twice.’ He met Guillam’s stolid look. ‘Post-mortem — two contusions on the right side.’

  ‘Report didn’t say that he did it and didn’t say there was any damage to the brain or any of that. Whores get whacked all the time. Or, all right, she lets him in, he whacks her, she lays herself down.’

  ‘Somebody she knew?’ Denton said.

  ‘Wouldn’t have to be somebody she knew; she was a cheap toss, move them along and get them out, next chap in. Except this one killed her. What you driving at?’

  ‘Nothing. Only if she knew him, it would have been easier for him. Where’s the wrapper?’

  All three looked at the inventory, then at the floor. Guillam muttered, ‘Damn them,’ and got on his knees and looked under the bed. He got up breathing hard, brushing his knees, muttering, ‘Mistakes, mistakes-’ He looked at the list again. ‘Must’ve been taken as evidence.’

  ‘Why that?’

  ‘Blowed if I know.’

  ‘Anything else taken as evidence?’

  Guillam looked at him. ‘You ask a lot of questions, you do.’ Surprisingly, he grinned. ‘Yeah, they took the washbowl, the soap dish and the pitcher because the killer might have handled them. Washing himself. Find maybe blood on them or his fingers’ marks. Don’t think much of the finger-mark business — not much to it.’ He was going through the sheets. The last one was headed ‘Seized for evidence at 7-A Priory Close Alley’ and listed the toilet articles and the wrapper. ‘Bit sloppy, putting the wrapper down twice. Damn them.’

  Denton was trying to picture the jet of blood from the severed carotid artery. It would have sprayed the murderer, apparently had also sprayed the wall at the head of the bed. There was a line of blood down the wall beside the bed, as well, as if one spurt had struck it. Had he rolled her that way? Or had Stella Minter moved? He thought of the corpse he had seen at Bart’s, the stab wounds in the breasts and the tearing incisions in the pelvis. Parmentier with one leg up on the table, miming intercourse and cutting her throat. ‘He must have been drenched with blood,’ he said. The two detectives looked at him. ‘Even if he wore an overcoat — it would have been all over him.’

  ‘He may have killed her from behind, then arranged her after.’

  ‘What, while she was standing?’

  ‘Yeah, a big man, easy to do — reach around, he’s holding her with his other arm.’

  ‘He’s left-handed, then. Post-mortem made it pretty clear how the cut was made — right side of her throat to the left.’ He hesitated. ‘Mulcahy said he — the man he knew — murdered a woman while he was inside her.’ Again, the two detectives looked at him, their faces unreadable. ‘Killing from the front, his clothes’d have been covered with blood. Wouldn’t have taken his clothes off, I suppose. Wash himself afterwards, or at least wipe himself down. Maybe with the wrapper?’

  ‘“Mulcahy said.”’ Guillam folded up the inventory. ‘Your Mulcahy was talking about something donkey’s years ago, and anyway he made it up, if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s what he said, that it was long ago.’

  ‘You got Mulcahy on the brain, excuse my rudeness, sir.’ Guillam winked at Munro, who turned away. Guillam looked back at Denton, saw that he’d seen the wink, moved his whole torso inside the big tweed coat in what might have been a shrug. ‘I’m about done here,’ he said.

  Munro was moving slowly around the outside of the room, apparently studying the bed and avoiding the stain on the floor. Denton, feeling that he didn’t want the visit to be wasted, began to look at the walls. What had he missed? He looked at the ceiling — cracks, discoloration, a moulding that ended halfway along the wall nearest the bed and reappeared on the front wall as if there had once been an opening there, now closed in.

  ‘No opening into the house?’ he said. Guillam, staring at the dress, shook his head.

  ‘Used to be.’That got no response. ‘What’s over there?’

  ‘Number Seven — lodging house,’ Munro said. ‘Nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything. Right, Georgie?’

  ‘Nobody, nobody, nobody,’ Guillam muttered.

  Denton looked at the walls. Nothing — more cracks, more discoloration. Over the head of the bed, an engraving from a magazine of two young women, one praying and one ascending up what appeared to be a beam of light. Halfway down the bed, on the near wall parallel to it, a reverse painting on glass, much the worse for wear, of a castle in an exaggerated mountain setting. Denton stepped across the stain as Munro had done and worked his way down the narrow space between the bed and the wall to study the blood-splashed picture. ‘Balmoral’ was painted on a grey-green lawn that swept away from the castle, most of whose middle had flaked away, leaving a dark hole where the royal apartments might have been. Denton leaned closer.

  ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes has found a clue,’ he heard Guillam say.

  If he hadn’t said it, Denton might have spoken up. Instead, anger rising, he pushed his hands into his overcoat pockets and stared some seconds longer into the bowels of Balmoral and then turned back to the room, silent about what he’d seen. ‘Not waiting for me, I hope,’ he said.

  Guillam was grinning. ‘An admirer of Mr Sherlock Holmes, are you?’

  Denton was still standing behind the bloodstained bed. ‘I think it’s claptrap.’

  ‘You astonish me.’

  ‘I liked the stupid doctor, what’s-his-name. Reminds me of people I’ve known.’

  ‘Coppers, probably.’ Guillam’s grin became tight. ‘Coppers are stupid, that’s the tale, isn’t it? Stupid coppers can’t solve a crime, call in the gentleman detective, all will be resolved with the application of one cigar ash, a baby’s wail and eighteen generalizations. Brilliant!’

  Denton worked his way down the bed, the space so narrow that he had to go sideways. ‘I don’t know any gentleman detectives.’

  ‘Neither does anybody else — in real life!’ Guillam guffawed, stopped abruptly and said to Munro, ‘You done? I’m fair sick of this place, I am.’

  Munro and Denton stood in the court while Guillam locked up. Munro said in a low voice, ‘Don’t mind him.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Georgie’s overworked. This is on top of everything else he has to do. He’s a good copper.’

  Guillam came to them. ‘Talking about me?’ he said. He gripped Denton’s arm. ‘Didn’t mean to come down hard on you, Mr Denton. It’s frustration. Always afraid I’ll see something in these places that could be the Ripper. My nightmare.’

  ‘Do you think it was the man Willey’s holding that did it?’

  Guillam held on to his arm, even massaging it slightly with his thumb. His eyes were fixed on nothing. ‘I think it’s a man. I think he’s vicious. I think he owns a clasp knife with a five-inch blade. Or did own — may not any more, if he’s got any brains.’ He let go of Denton’s arm. ‘That’s what I think. What I think isn’t worth two tinker’s dams in a pisspot until I know something different.’ He winked. ‘But I can report that in my judgement it wasn’t the Ripper, thank God.’

  The constable saluted them as they went out, his eyes meeting those of each of them in turn a
s a mark, Denton supposed, of respect. They walked around to the Minories and Guillam got into a cab and, after thanking Denton in a slightly ironic voice, rattled away.

  It was almost seven. Munro said he was expected at home. He was heading towards Aldgate station for the steam underground, why didn’t Denton walk with him a bit? But he hesitated, looking down the Minories, hunched, and finally he said, ‘I apologize for not supporting you better, Denton. Georgie can be hard sometimes.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to support me.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I didn’t know he was going to come that rough. I really did think it was a tale, that about seeing how you’d react. He wasn’t quite straight with me.’ Munro looked at him. ‘He’s going to want to know where you were the night the girl was killed, you know. He didn’t ask you yet, but I know him. He will.’

  ‘My God, Munro, that’s what the whole Mulcahy business was about! I was home!’

  ‘He’ll want to know about the whole night.’

  ‘The girl was already dead by the time Mulcahy came to my house.’

  Munro frowned as if he was worrying about Denton’s situation, then took Denton’s arm much as Guillam had, perhaps some sort of policeman’s grip, and began to walk him north up the Minories. ‘You could argue it was a good deal later. Office of Prosecutions can make that argument. Food in her stomach may not tell so much; as for rigor — all the blood run out, rigor’s guesswork. Guillam’s men will have talked to your servant by now, so they’ll know about that night. You go out?’

  He had gone to Emma’s at eleven and she’d thrown him over. Then he’d gone to the Café Royal and got drunk.

  ‘I’m not going to answer you, Munro. It’s my business.’ He didn’t want to tell them about Emma. If he did, they’d question her. It occurred to him that she might even be angry enough to deny he had been there. No, surely not. Frailty, thy name is-

  Munro made an unsatisfied grunt and muttered that the time would come when he might have to say something, want to or not. They turned into Aldgate High Street, and Munro, letting go of Denton’s arm, said, ‘This is where her pimp worked — here and up Whitechapel Road.’ He nodded at the street ahead of them.

  ‘I didn’t know she had a pimp.’

  ‘Kid himself, they say, name of Bobbie. No last name. City police can’t find him. Not that they’re trying what I’d call hard. Short on men, of course.’ He fell silent for several steps and then said, ‘Very modern pimp — used a photograph. It appears he had three, possibly four girls; he’d walk up and down, use that “Want my sister, sir? still a virgin but wanting a man, sir,” and show ’em the picture. Customer says yes, he leads him around to Priory Close Alley and the thing is done.’

  ‘Couldn’t be that he’s really her brother, could it?’

  ‘Only if he’s got several sisters, and I doubt they’re all virgins, night after night. Damnable leech.’

  ‘The girls are as much to blame.’

  Munro glanced at him and looked away. Defensively, Denton said, ‘You know what I mean. The girls aren’t prisoners, after all. The oldest profession.’

  ‘Might as well be, a lot of them.’ He stopped. ‘I’m over there.’ He nodded across the street, where the underground station stood, next to it a chop house called the Three Nuns.

  ‘What sort of photographs?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘French?’

  ‘Probably not that bad, they’re actionable, but — suggestive, you know. Revealing. Kind of men who come birding here, it doesn’t take a lot of female flesh to please them, all they get to see usually is the wife’s shoulder when she’s undressing in the closet.’

  They shook hands. Before he turned away, Munro said, ‘Georgie doesn’t really suspect you of anything worse than muddying the waters. But don’t annoy him, all right?’ He touched a finger to his hat and moved away into a stream of pedestrians.

  Denton watched him go, feeling that he was betraying Munro by keeping what he had seen in the girl’s room from him — Munro a decent man, for all he’d allowed himself to be overawed by Guillam.

  ‘Munro!’

  Denton dived into the street, dodging a hansom and getting shouted at, then running past and around pedestrians like a footballer. He caught Munro at the door of the Three Nuns; somebody opened the door to go in and the warm smell of food was sucked out.

  ‘Munro!’

  Munro looked startled, then guilty, as if Denton had caught him at something.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Walk back there with me.’

  Munro was clearly puzzled, thrown off by his sudden appearance. ‘We could go inside.’

  ‘No, I want to go back.’ He set his face. ‘I’m going back whether you do or not.’

  ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘I’ll tell you as we go.’

  Munro made a face — displeasure, disapproval — but turned back, and they crossed the High Street together, Denton for a moment thinking how crazy it was that this had actually once been a ‘high street’, the spine of a village. London like a monster child that ate its mother and never stopped growing. He checked his watch and wondered where he’d get dinner.

  He led them back the same way they had come, Munro always a few inches behind him as if reluctant. ‘I saw something in her room,’ Denton said. ‘I didn’t say anything in front of Guillam; he’d got under my skin — as he meant to.’

  ‘That’s suppressing evidence.’

  ‘Oh, come on! It isn’t his case, anyway.’

  Munro grunted. They were walking back down the Minories, fewer people out now, everybody seeming in a great hurry. Denton said, ‘There’s a picture on her wall. The frame is fastened to the plaster.’ He waited for a response; none came. ‘Not hanging out from the wall at the top, flat against it.’ Again, nothing. Denton said, ‘Never saw that done except in a sporting house, for looking through from the other side.’ They had almost reached John Street. ‘I want to see what’s on the other side.’ He didn’t say how he knew the finer points of sporting houses.

  Munro, interested now, came even with him, and they walked shoulder to shoulder, Munro actually in the gutter because of the narrow pavement. ‘Let me handle this,’ he said when they could see the constable at the opening of Priory Close Alley.

  ‘Sir,’ the constable said, touching his helmet.

  ‘I wanted to check something.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Munro held something up and the constable shook his head and said, ‘Remember you from before sir — sir,’ this last to Denton. He suspected that what the policeman was really there to stop were journalists and souvenir-seekers, anyway.

  Munro led the way into the court, the sky overhead now slate-blue-grey, several stars quite bright against it, as if seen up a stovepipe. The court itself was gloomy, lit only by the faded end of day and a single gas lamp on the wall at the back. The curtained windows in the former warehouse were unlit.

  Munro crossed the court quickly and tried the larger door in the house where Stella Minter had died. It was locked. He knocked. The first knock brought no response, the second only more silence, but the third caused a rumble of footsteps, a clatter of locks and the appearance of a red face above a collarless shirt.

  ‘It’s unlocked, i’n’t it?’ the man bellowed. He turned the outer handle to demonstrate that the door was unlocked. ‘Unlocked every night seven to half-eight, as everybody knows because you forget your bloody keys!’

  ‘I have a few questions.’ Munro held up his badge.

  ‘Oh, crikey! We’ve had you lot for two days now, give it a rest!’

  ‘See here, my man-’

  ‘Come in, then, but give me a rest, I just got home; let me eat my dinner, good God, I ain’t the fount of wisdom!’ Then, knowing he’d given a policeman lip, he hurried off. off. Inside, a long, dirty corridor ran away from the door; the man fled along it and disappeared where it made a jog to the right — another result, Denton thought, of some shift in the building
’s destiny.

  Denton and the detective stopped just inside the door, Denton closing it firmly behind him and then leaning back on it. He studied the moulding at the top of the left-hand wall, on the other side of which was Stella Minter’s room.

  From the wall in which the front door stood to a place six feet along, no moulding existed; then, at a slight, not quite right-angle corner, the moulding began, turning again to run the length of the corridor. Denton pointed at it and said, ‘There used to be an opening here into her room.’ He was almost whispering, no rational cause.

  In the wall below this gap was a door, narrower by a lot than the front door, narrower even than the two doors he could see along the corridor on the other side. It had a thumb-latch and a D-shaped handle, an apparently new Yale lock above it. With the front door open, this door would be partly hidden. Denton opened the front door to demonstrate.

  Munro put his hand on the worn iron handle, his thumb on the latch above it. With a clank, the latch opened, and the door swung out, and Denton felt a stab of disappointment, because a door that hid anything important would have been locked. A smell, sour and disquieting, oozed out.

  Over Munro’s shoulder, he saw a narrow space whose floor was about the size of the inside of a coffin, its long rear wall made of open studs with strips of lath and clumps of horsehair plaster protruding between them — the back side of a plastered wall. Munro leaned in, began to rummage around in the darkness of the closet’s farther end. So far as Denton could make out in the gloom, there were two long-empty night-soil buckets, apparently no longer used; a five-step ladder; a straight chair with a spindled back, missing three spindles; and a broom so worn that the bound-together straws had been reduced to a kind of club, the broom found only by touch while Munro was stumbling around. The smell proved to be recent vomit, now dry, from somebody who had eaten kidneys.

  It made me puke, Mulcahy had said.

  Munro backed out, forcing Denton out of the closet doorway, then standing aside to let the faint light from a fan over the outer door try to penetrate inside. ‘What we need is a dark lantern. Can’t see my own shoes in there.’ Munro bent forward again and felt over the lath, down to the floor, then got on his knees and passed both hands over the old boards. ‘Puke,’ he muttered. ‘Somebody lost his dinner. Kidneys, for sure — can’t see enough.’ He got up and wiped his fingers on a handkerchief. ‘I hate to ask this lot for so much as a candle.’