rows of bricks half-buried on the diagonal, two rows of rigorously trimmed box beyond them, English ivy and a monkey puzzle tree in each ten-by-twelve-foot plot. ‘You expect too much of me,’ she said.
‘You can do anything, is what I think.’
She gave him a look - amused? annoyed? - and rang the bell. The door opened too quickly; the middle-aged woman behind it had been waiting. She was wearing a nondescript dress, but Mrs Striker seemed to know she was the maid (and would be the only maid in this house, and would live out somewhere) and wasn’t the mistress. Denton wanted to say that this was a perfect example of her abilities, because he’d have got it wrong and thought her the mistress.
‘We should like to call on Mr and Mrs Minter, if you please. Will you show us in?’ She held out a calling card.
The maid frowned. Her face said that she was neither bright nor well paid, so why should she be forced to make a decision in such a matter? Then her face more or less collapsed, as if to say, It’s beyond me, it really is. She said in a whisper, ‘Wait, please.’ And closed the door.
Janet Striker rolled her eyes. ‘Not done,’ she said softly. ‘Poor frightened soul—!’ A murmur of voices came from inside the house; Janet Striker smiled unpleasantly and said, ‘Now she’s being scolded. Mrs Minter will be saying, “What will the neighbours think? Everybody’s seen them come by cab; we can’t leave them on the doorstep, Alfred! It will cause the most awful gossip! They’ll think, oh, what will they think—!”’ She displayed a talent for mimicry he hadn’t expected, then remembered her contempt for ‘nice’ women. ‘And he’ll be saying, “Can it be the religious canvassers, do you think? At this hour?”’
With that, the door opened again and the maid, now red-faced, whispered, ‘Come in, please, miss,’ and stood aside. They passed through into a tiny vestibule with a tiled floor, beyond it a narrow hall with oppressively dark but very shiny woodwork and a staircase. At the far end of the hall a man was standing, pulling at the bottom of his waistcoat and looking severe. In the middle of his tea, Denton thought.
‘Show our guests into the front parlour, Mrs Wick,’ the man said in the voice of a clergyman welcoming somebody to a funeral.
The room was small - twelve feet on a side - with a coal grate, unlit, and the same dark and brutally shiny woodwork, and dark furniture, vaguely Eastlake, that could be dated to the beginning of the Minters’ marriage. Antimacassars everywhere; on the walls calligraphic certificates in which the name Stella Minter could be made out, and on the dark mantel a tinted photograph (not one of Regis Mulcahy’s - wrong pose) of a plump young woman holding a book.
‘I’m afraid I am not cognizant of the reason for your visit,’ the man said. He was short, bald, plump and entirely sure of himself. ‘I am Alfred Minter,’ as if to say, I am the reason for all this magnificence.
Janet Striker smiled as brightly as the woodwork and held out her hand. ‘I am Janet Striker of the Society for the Improvement of Women. And this,’ indicating Denton as the prize item in the menagerie, ‘is Mr Denton, the famous author.’
Minter touched her hand and inclined his head, moving it in a quarter-circle to take in both of them. ‘And the reason for—?’ he said.
‘The matter is rather delicate.’
He looked at her, then Denton.
‘Your daughter—’ she said. Minter’s head snapped up. ‘We’d like to ask you about your daughter.’
‘This is most unusual.’ He tugged again at his waistcoat. ‘Most surprising. I fail to see why you - why anyone - would ask me about my—’ He made a gesture, as if the word ‘daughter’ was too sacred to pronounce.
‘Do you have a daughter named Stella?’
He pulled himself up to his full five feet six inches. He raised a hand and moved it slowly past the row of calligraphies on the wall. ‘An accomplished young woman. Thoroughly accomplished. The apple of our eye! I don’t understand your interest, madam.’
‘Might we see her?’
‘Certainly not. She is a girl, a sensitive and good girl. I see no reason to, mm, expose her to the—’ He frowned. ‘To strangers. Who, I must say, give me no reason to entertain, mm, to have confidence in, mm, to know who or what they are! I don’t know you,