do it with a parlour pistol.’
‘Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you loaded that Colt and kept it by you.’ He’d hardly been up there for three minutes, but he knew the Colt wasn’t loaded, meaning he’d opened the case. Impressive. Guillam began to button his coat. ‘I don’t believe he’ll come back, but you never know for sure. You really might think seriously about going elsewhere for a bit.’
‘Worried about me, Guillam?’
‘Yeah, you’ve touched my heart-strings.’ He pulled at his hat brim in a gesture that might have been a salute or might simply have been a clothing adjustment, and he went out.
Denton had fallen into an exhausted sleep, to be woken by the constable from the front door, who wanted to know if he should let in a Dr Bernat, a Jew, sir. Denton said of course, and Bernat examined him, put on fresh dressings and asked after Atkins - word of the second crime had travelled through the neighbourhood.
‘He’s at University College Hospital in Gower Street. I can’t find out a damned thing from here.’ He touched the doctor’s shoulder as the man was bending over him. ‘Can I hire you as his physician?’ He flinched at ‘hire’, knew he should have said ‘retain’.
‘I am not being of the faculty,’ Bernat said. ‘I have no hospital.’ He gave a smile, more resigned than amused, no need to say to what. ‘Except the Jewish in the East End.’ He meant the hospital for indigent Jews.
‘I can write you a letter. They can’t object to that.’ Bernat had to fetch paper and pen from Denton’s bedroom. Denton wrote the note, trying to make it florid and stuffy - ‘my personal physician,’ ‘to advise on the condition of my man Harold Atkins,’ ‘yours most very sincerely.’ Bernat took it without reading it and then shook a pudgy finger at Denton and said he was to go to bed; he was not to think of going out; he was to drink beef tea, apparently by the gallon. ‘Replacing the blood,’ Bernat said, shaking his finger. ‘We are replacing the blood, Mr Denton!’
When Bernat went off, the policeman came up with a nervous-looking, very young man and said apologetically that he wasn’t put there to answer the door, he was sorry, sir, it was job enough to keep the press away, as they was flocking like pigeons around an old lady with a bag of breadcrumbs.
‘Name is Maude, sir,’ the nervous young man said the moment the constable stopped talking. He was wearing a new suit, new round hat, new overcoat, none of the best but not the worst, either. ‘Sent by the Imperial Domestic Employment Agency, sir. Recommendation of -’ he peeked at a card - ‘Mr Harris.’
Denton’s head was still muzzy, his vision filmed. He was quitting the world of laudanum and entering one of something like influenza. ‘What for?’
‘I’m filling in currently. Until something permanent transpires. Sir.’
The policeman was still in the room, waiting in fact for Denton to tell him to go. ‘He’s a valet, sir,’ he said, making it ‘val-it’ but clear enough. ‘Can I go, sir?’
Denton was putting it together in the fog. Harris, valet, employment agency: Frank Harris had sent him a servant to replace Atkins; therefore, Harris knew what had happened. Harris was famous for knowing all sorts of things; he was also famous for doing all sorts of things, many of them scandalous, scurrilous, or actionable, but sometimes - like now - inexplicably generous. Denton waved the policeman away and said to the young man, ‘I’ve got no room for you. His - the permanent man’s - rooms are a crime scene.’
‘Only coming in by the day as a temporary, sir. Accustomed to making do.’ Seeing, probably, that Denton was unconvinced of the need for him, he said, ‘Somebody to answer the door in this trying time quite important, sir. Not proper for the cop - policeman. Not well yourself, if I may say so, sir, helpful to have somebody about. There’s also the matter of clothing, your morning newspaper, letters and calling cards—’ He held out the morning mail and the newspaper, which he had been holding all the time he had been there.
‘Can you cook?’
‘Oh, no, sir! But I can serve a proper dinner.’
Atkins could cook. After a fashion. What he called ‘curries’, mostly meaning that he threw some things together and used spice from a tin he bought at the Army and Navy Stores. Plus eggs, gammon,