of two dry pebbles until the mouth smiles and the wrinkles form above the cheeks; then you may relax a little and know I won’t bite.
‘What a mess,’ the sergeant groaned, coming through the door. He hadn’t seen the remains of the supper tray yet; saying it was a mess was merely habit. Now he was halfway down the room and could see the tray; ‘A right mess,’ he said with gloomy satisfaction. He was carrying another tray in both hands, on it two kinds of biscuits, Stilton, Cheddar, something smelly that proved to be an Italian cheese he identified as pecorino, meaningless to Denton.
‘Join me?’ Denton said.
‘Not tonight, thanks. Port?’ Atkins unfolded a two-tiered biscuit table and began to lay things out.
‘Have some yourself, if you like.’
‘You finished with me, then?’
‘You’re in a great hurry to be gone. What’ve you got down there, a woman?’
‘I’m writing me memoirs, Thirty Years a Soldier-Servant. Some of the scenes of polishing boots are quite exciting. Actually, I’m having a good read through Lever again. You lonely, want my company?’
‘I’m going out.’
‘I know that! I’ve laid out your clothes, haven’t I? What time - half-ten?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Opera don’t let go easily, does it?’ Denton was meeting a woman named Emma Gosden after the opera, but he wouldn’t sit through it with her. The sergeant was nibbling a biscuit now. He said, ‘See here, General.’ A typical Atkins opening.
‘Now what?’
‘What would you say to a mechanical safety razor?’ Atkins, unlike many ex-soldiers, didn’t believe that buying a pub was the key to heaven: he saw his future as a captain of industry, preferably in domestic goods. He was attracted by ‘getting in at the start’ of some money-making business.
‘I’d say it was daft.’ Denton had already heard about a self-sealing chamber pot, a carpet sweeper that sprayed scent and a bicycle-powered mangle.
‘Winds up with a key, like a clock. Put it to your face, turn it on, does all the work.’
‘And then you send for the ambulance service.’
‘Ten pounds, I can have a third of the business. The latest thing.’
‘You’d do better with a tip on a horse race.’
Atkins nibbled another biscuit and said, ‘Hmm,’ and then, ‘Faint heart never won fistfuls of money.’ He picked up a third biscuit. ‘Coming in later or shall I double-lock?’
‘I’ll be back, but I’m not sure exactly—’
The outer bell rang. The sergeant threw down the biscuit. ‘What the H?’ He went to a door, almost opposite the fireplace, that led down to the street entrance. ‘Shall I answer it, or am I off duty?’
Denton looked at the mantel clock - ormolu, ugly as sin, came with the house - saw that it was only a few minutes before ten. ‘Better see.’
The bell rang again; Atkins groaned. ‘Oh, Chri - crikey.’ He opened the door. ‘All right, all right, I’m coming, don’t put the bell through the bleeding door—’ His voice dwindled down the stairs. Cold air blew in from the lower hall, a depressing space that existed only to give an entrance to Denton’s rooms at the side of the house, the rest of the lower storey being rented to a draper, as it had been when he had bought the place. Denton had put a carpet and a settee down there to no avail; a marine painting on the wall hadn’t helped, nor a bit of Scottish genre picked up cheap; the space remained an excuse for the stairway and the door under it to the sergeant’s part of the house.
Denton heard a male voice, not Atkins’s, some sort of negotiation, the slamming of the door. More voices, so whoever it was had been allowed in.
The sergeant clumped back up the stairs. Pulling the door closed behind him, he said, ‘Rum sort calling himself Mulcahy. If I say a bowler hat and a cheap suit, will you get the picture? Wants to see you in a desperate fashion.’
‘Why?’
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have him down in the hall, would I? Just said he must see you, mentioned life and death, looked awful. I can tell him to come back tomorrow.’
Denton glanced at the clock again, thought about half an hour of solitude, said, ‘Send him up.’
The man who called himself Mulcahy was small, one of a million Britons - Atkins was another - from the manufacturing cities who hadn’t been fed the right things when they were children. He had a sharp face, vaguely rodent-like, narrow shoulders, a pot belly just beginning to show. Denton, standing, judged him