do that, then.’
Atkins made a face. ‘Any kid I can find on this street would have your coat and hat, not to mention a gold-headed walking stick, at the Jew pawnbroker’s quicker than I could say Gog and Magog. I’ll go for them myself.’
‘No!’ Denton had shouted the word; he pulled himself back. ‘Sorry. Just—’ He made a patting motion, palm down, in the air between them. ‘Leave it.’
Atkins shrugged.
Denton finished the water. ‘I’ll be going out later.’
‘To make some money, I hope. The bills ain’t been paid yet this month.’ Atkins, always nervous about money, knew that Denton was, as he put it, ‘a little close to the edge.’ ‘Better spend your time finishing a book, I say.’
‘Don’t say!’
‘If I might suggest—’
‘Don’t suggest!’ Denton lay back in the chair. ‘Bring up a couple of eggs at eight and, oh, you know - bacon. Gammon, whatever the hell you call it. Bread - plenty of bread!’
Atkins said no more but went out on tiptoe, as he had come in earlier. He had run into the savage mood before. Inside every gent, a savage. Lost his honey, is it. Bloody murder.
Two hours later, Denton still lay collapsed in his easy chair. The back pages of the newspaper lay tented next to him on the floor. Atkins was standing, a breakfast tray and the front section of the newspaper in his hands, wearing an ancient velvet robe given him in India by some long-dead officer.
‘You look like a down-at-heels maharajah,’ Denton said.
‘Happy to give you the name of my tailor. You want tea?’
‘No, I want to know what you think of Mulcahy’s story now. What he said was very like what happened to this tart.’
‘I think it’s bollocks, just like I did eight hours ago, no, ten hours ago, how time flies when you’re up early waiting on the master. Eight o’clock, you asked for eggs.’
‘Put them down and sit, you make me tired standing there. Why bollocks?’
‘It doesn’t hang together.’ Atkins hooked a straight chair over with his left foot and sat in it, the newspaper still in his hands. ‘What’ve we got here?’ He rattled the paper. ‘Some poor bint got her throat slit and other unmentionable damage inflicted, and so we’re supposed to believe it was the reincarnation of the Ripper, so as to sell more papers. Mulcahy barges in here and gives you a long tale about cutting up women and being boys together with the Ripper, so you jump to the conclusion he was telling the truth. It’s bollocks!’
‘Coincidence, that he told the story last night, and last night the woman gets murdered?’
‘Maybe he’s one of them psychics. More likely getting his jollies by telling tales.’
‘He was really frightened, though.’
‘Probably scares himself for the fun of it. Like a kiddie. Why didn’t he bring them newspaper clippings he talked about? Why didn’t he give you this boyhood chum’s name? Eh?’
‘He did give me the name of the town and the man’s first victim. I could tell somebody I know in the police.’
‘“First victim,” oh, yes! My hat! You going to some pal in the coppers because of Mulcahy? Name of God why?’
‘Maybe it’s evidence.’
Denton slouched deeper into the chair and began to peel his right boot off by pushing on the heel with the toe of the left one. Atkins said he would ruin his boots and bent down to help, and Denton swung his legs away, muttering that he could take off his own damned boots. ‘Give me that,’ he said, meaning the paper. He read as he went on ruining them, then flexing his toes when they were off. ‘“Young woman of evil reputation named Stella Minter.” Evil reputation, good God.’
‘In short, a tart.’
Denton grunted. ‘“Discovered about midnight in a horribly mutilated condition in the squalor of her bloodstained room in the Minories.” I wonder when she was killed.’ He was eating the eggs and the bread with one hand, holding the newspaper with the other.
‘Because you’re thinking that Mulcahy could of done it and then come here, right? That’s far-fetched. I’ll have some of that tea, myself. Was Mulcahy bloodstained? Had he just washed all his clothes, including that suit that looked like it was made out of old blankets? Was his hat red with gore? I think not.’
‘But his story makes a kind of sense in one way, Sergeant - it puts a man who mutilates women in London so that he and Mulcahy see each other; then Mulcahy comes to me and