once, but he knows he has to find whoever was in the closet. It’s too late to try to follow him. What does he do?’
He looked up at Atkins. The sergeant let himself be looked at, shrugged, stood there. ‘Runs like H, I suppose.’
‘Well, yes. But suppose he finds something that Mulcahy has left in the closet in his terror - and that has his name on it.’
He was still looking at Atkins, who said, ‘Well, it ain’t his hat, because we had that, at least until the coppers took it away for evidence this afternoon. His coat? Unlikely to have his address in it, any more than his hat. All right, I’ll bite - what did he take away that had Mulcahy’s name on it?’
Denton shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing.’ He saw Atkins’s frown. ‘I think that Mulcahy’s a voyeur. He saw the crime. He was there, Sergeant - that’s why he told us all those lies. He didn’t want to confess what he was, but he wanted help.’
‘No reason to want help unless he looked back and saw the murderer, covered with blood and gore, running at him with an axe, is there?’ Atkins was being distinctly sarcastic. ‘What I mean is - if he was so scared he come to you, he had a reason for thinking the murderer was on to him. Right?’
Denton was fastening his cuffs. He made an equivocal sound, like a small machine starting up.
‘If you ask me, General, he’s a damned lucky voyeur if he isn’t dead by now. The man who butchered the Minter bitch wouldn’t rest until he’d got Mulcahy, too, if he knew where to find him.’
Denton stood still to have his coat put on. ‘That’s what’s got me worried. And there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. Except - I put Mrs Johnson on getting some women to search the directories for him.’ He saw Atkins frown - more money going out - but he ignored him and pulled his shirt cuffs down inside the coat sleeves. ‘You going out?’
‘It’s one of my nights, isn’t it?’ Atkins had two nights a week off, part of the generous deal he had made for himself with Denton. There was much to be said, from his point of view, in serving a man who felt guilty about being served. ‘Yes, I’m going out!’
Denton sighed. ‘Enjoy yourself.’ It was more than he expected, in his present mood, to do himself.
Chapter Seven
He walked again, enjoying the night but chewing moodily on the problem of Mulcahy. The streets were quieter, the city now a background roar, the hard sounds of digging and drilling ended for the day. He made his way to Glasshouse Street, looked in the bar of the Café Royal, then went around to the Piccadilly entrance and into the Domino Room. Unlike his visit of the night before, it was still early and the place was half empty.
There was an easy camaraderie to the Domino Room that belied its showy décor - high ceilings, mirrored walls, pillars like great trees in a fanciful forest, an overall colour scheme of peacock blue and gold. Bookies, artists, journalists, tarts, models, the would-bes and the has-beens, all mixed here with people from their own worlds and from that genteel one in which nobody worked but everybody was well off. Generosity, in the form of the casual invitation or the standing of drinks with somebody’s last shilling, was the rule. Denton had learned to love the place. He loved to keep his hat on, to lounge against a banquette. You could do that in the Domino Room, and a good deal more - like last night.
Denton looked around and saw Frank Harris in his usual place; he moved to him and stood until the man looked up with hangover-reddened eyes. Harris groaned.
Denton collapsed beside him, ordered a milky coffee - a house speciality - and choucroute, part of the Royal’s French past. When he said, by way of making conversation, how much he liked the Café, Harris growled, ‘This place is the boue in nostalgie de la boue. It appeals to the worst in all of us, and we all respond with a joy bordering on indecency.’
‘Like last night.’
Harris groaned again. ‘Did you drink as much as I did?’
‘We stood on a table and bullied people into drinking to Wilde.’
Harris put a hand on his forehead. ‘There’s a stage after you’ve been drunk where you think you’ll kill yourself,