The doorbell rang.
Denton went to the window and looked down. A cab was waiting at the kerb. When he turned back, he could hear Janet Striker’s voice as she came up the stairs. Atkins would already have told her that the police were there, he knew.
The effect of her coming into the room was as if some loud sound had jolted both policeman to their feet. They shot up, then stood there staring at her, Markson even with his mouth a bit open. Denton said ‘Mrs Striker,’ in a voice that seemed to have been hit almost as hard.
She was transformed.
She was wearing a dress in the nominal colours of autumn — ‘fillemot’, the pale brown of dead leaves, grey-green, dusty yellow — but an autumn that was autumnal only in its muting, the total effect lively and almost summery. The cut was of the moment, perhaps a step in advance of the moment, the skirt above her shoe-tops, the sleeves tight, the fall of the silky fabric almost clinging. Even the usually livid scar seemed to have been muted; he thought that somebody had dusted powder on it. Her hat, which matched the dress, was jaunty, pretty, with a wisp of veiling. Atkins followed behind with her coat and umbrella, both coordinated with the dress. ‘I came,’ she said, smiling at their reaction, ‘to tell Mr Denton something, but as you gentlemen of the police are here, I shall be delighted to tell you, as well. I believe I have found Albert Cosgrove.’
Munro grunted; Markson twitched; Denton ordered tea and put her in his own chair and then retired to the fireplace to look at her. She raised her bit of ecru veil and all but winked at him, then smiled again at the detectives. ‘Do sit down, gentlemen.’
‘You’ve found him, Mrs Striker?’
‘I’m not sure I’ve found him, but I think I have.’
‘Where, ma’am?’
‘In a bookseller’s. That is, he isn’t in the book shop. He left his name and address at the book shops, quite a long time ago. Half a dozen shops. I’ve been all over Charing Cross Road and Booksellers’ Row. It was an idea of someone else’s, told me by Mr Denton. And if it’s the right man, his name isn’t Albert Cosgrove, of course.’ She had a small handbag, which she opened to take out a notebook, from which she took a folded piece of paper. ‘Struther Jarrold — an address in Belgravia.’ She passed the paper across to Munro, who was sitting again. Munro looked at it and passed it to Markson.
Markson said, ‘We would have got to the booksellers on our own. Shortage of personnel.’
Munro shook his head and said to her, ‘We looked for you this morning, Mrs Striker. About the invasion of your rooms, most unfortunate-’
‘I went rather into seclusion, I’m afraid — hid in the house of an old friend. I was shaken.’
‘Anybody would have been.’ Munro was studying her, not without admiration. ‘You’re taking it wonderfully well.’
‘I didn’t yesterday. I work, Mr Munro, as I guess you know. I have — had — very little in those rooms to lose. Still, it was a shock. Even for a resident of Bethnal Green.’ She looked up at Denton and smiled.
It was the first time that Denton had known where she lived: he had guessed it was in a working-class part of London, but not one with a reputation for immigration and hopeless poverty and some of the city’s worst slums, the reputation now perhaps somewhat dated. Nonetheless, despite improvement schemes, ‘model’ housing, and a lot of good intentions, Bethnal Green still had an average income somewhere below fifteen shillings a week. He smiled back at her to show he didn’t care.
Munro asked how she had found Struther Jarrold’s name at the book shops.
‘Oh, I told them I had a set of signed copies of Denton’s books, and did they know anybody who’d buy them. They said they would, of course, and I said each time that I’d get more money from a collector. That was thought amusing; one of them said I ought to go into the book trade. But most of them looked through their lists of customers with special wants, and five of them came up with this Jarrold. I can give you a list of the shops, if you like.’
Munro looked at Markson, then at Denton. Denton said, ‘Well?’
Munro shifted his bulk, looked at Markson. The younger detective said, ‘We don’t want to, uh, take the wrong step-’
Denton plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets. ‘You’ve got enough now — the letters, the threat, the attack on me-’
‘And woe betide us if we’re wrong,’ Munro growled. ‘If this what’s-his-name — Jarrold — is like anybody else in Eaton Square, he’ll have a solicitor beside him before we can get our first question out, and if we try to take him up on a charge, he’ll walk because we can’t prove he attacked you, we can’t prove he wrote the letters, and we can’t prove he was ever inside the house behind yours.’
‘Search his lodging.’
‘I don’t know how you do it out West, sheriff, but here we have to get a warrant. Nobody on the bench is going to give me a warrant on a suspicion that there might be something in somebody’s lodging that had come out of your house. I grant you there’s a circumstantial case. I’ll take it to the prosecutor, but I know what he’ll say: get me the evidence.’
Markson gave Denton a pleading look. ‘Fingerprint Branch are at the lady’s now.’
‘My piano,’ she said.
‘Yes, ma’am, they’ll do the piano, too.’
‘No, I mean they must take extra care with the piano.’
The two detectives laughed, then saw too late she wasn’t joking. There was some lame fence-mending, some temporizing, and then Janet Striker said, ‘Do you mean, then, that you won’t be arresting him?’
‘Well — not at once, ma’am-’ Markson made the mistake of trying to explain the rules of evidence in a tone he’d have used to a child. Things started to get worse, and then Munro dragged Markson to his feet and the two detectives took themselves off.
When the street door had closed on them, Janet Striker gave a horrible laugh, pulled her hatpins out and threw her little hat as far down the room as she could. ‘Oh, the majesty of the law!’ she shouted.
‘They’re doing their job.’
‘Don’t patronize me! Bloody fools! At least they were stunned when they first saw me.’
‘I hardly recognized you.’
‘It’s the dress.’ She held out the sides of the skirt. ‘I borrowed it from one of Ruth Castle’s French girls.’
‘You look wonderful.’
She was going to say something angry, then caught herself. ‘It isn’t you; it’s them.’ She shook herself. ‘Damn them.’ Walking up and down, she quieted, then laughed, apparently at herself. ‘I had to go to Oxford Street for underclothes — oh, dear God, a corset! I haven’t worn a corset in ten years! I can’t wait to get out of it.’
‘Do.’ He knew at once it was a mistake; sexual innuendo didn’t work on her.
She looked angry. ‘I have to see my solicitor and I have to find a removal man and I said I’d have this dress back by six. First things first — appalling thing to say. I know it, I know it. Oh, God! Oh, damn the police! That they should make this fuss over my rooms in Bethnal Green, and they wouldn’t stir out of New Scotland Yard if my neighbours had had their throats slit!’ She began to stride up and down again. ‘I live in half of what used to be a weaving loft at the top of a ramshackle house. Now the weaving trade’s gone west and the room’s been divided, me on one side and three girls in the other. There’ve been robberies in that house, beatings, drunken abuse, and the only time the police have come is now — you know why? Because of you!’ She turned on him. ‘It isn’t your doing, I know, but if Cosgrove or Jarrold or whoever he is hadn’t painted his demon’s name on my wall, I’d have rated nobody higher than the local constable. But they connect him with you, and you’re well off and you’re famous! Don’t you see the unfairness of it? The comical, terrible unfairness of it? And then I present them with his name and they won’t charge him!’ As quickly as it had come, the mood vanished. ‘Oh, to hell with it.’ She laughed a little nastily. She snatched up the hat and grabbed his hand and started towards the door. ‘See me into my cab.’