Part 4 (2/2)

Outside, the day was close. A dull sky suggested rain. The air smelled of horse dung and urine. The city's clatter and hum filled Albany Court.

The old man let Denton out to Piccadilly. He made his way to Burlington Arcade and strolled through, looking at the shops and seeing nothing, wondering how many horrors and sufferings there were just then in London, and how an attempt to resolve one simply led to another.

He hadn't intended to push things any farther that day. Or any day - he had enough without a possibly missing woman. He felt sluggish since he had seen Heseltine, drained of the hangover-derived energy that had driven him when walking. But, because it was raining and he was standing outside a shop that said in dull gold letters on black, 'D. J. Geddys Objects of Virtue', he went in.

The public part of the shop seemed small, over-filled with things that even Denton sensed were good - Oriental vases, Wedgwood, Georgian silver, several shawls, many enamelled and decorated surfaces, antique lace, mahogany end tables and tapestry fire screens; on the walls, oil paintings large and small, either safely pre-Victorian or intensely Royal Academy. Denton's experience of art had been only with big Scottish paintings of sheep and hairy cattle - he had bought by the yard, not the artistry - and had left him indifferent to all of them.

'May I help you, sir?'

The man had materialized from a dark corner. He was small, so hunched that he was barely five feet, his neck dropped forward and down so that his face had to be turned to the side and up to speak. He had very thick gla.s.ses, a beard cut short, the upper lip shaved. He might have been sixty, suggested some near-human, faintly sinister creature, gnome or troll, with a nasty sense of humour kept bottled in, perhaps to come out as practical jokes. His voice was hoa.r.s.e and very deep, coming out of his pigeon chest in a ba.s.s rumble.

Denton debated pretending to be a customer. What might he have been looking for? He knew nothing about 'objects of virtue'. Not a field in which he could pretend.

'Mr Geddys?'

'The same.'

'I'm trying to locate a woman named Mary Thomason.'

The name had a strange effect on Geddys, as if he'd been b.u.mped. He rolled his head as if to get a better look at Denton, but the movement might have been a cover for something else. There was was something wrong with his neck, Denton thought, almost as if he had been hanged. Unlikely, however. There was also something wrong with his expression - a false disinterest, perhaps. Geddys said, 'Yes?' something wrong with his neck, Denton thought, almost as if he had been hanged. Unlikely, however. There was also something wrong with his expression - a false disinterest, perhaps. Geddys said, 'Yes?'

'I believe that perhaps she worked here.'

Geddys looked away from him. 'I can hardly be expected to talk to a stranger about employees.' He glanced over his shoulder at Denton. 'If she worked here.' she worked here.'

Denton produced a card. 'Did she?'

'I don't understand your interest.'

'I want to know if she's missing.' He was irritated; he said deliberately, 'I've already been to the police.'

Geddys looked at the card. He flicked it with a finger. 'This is simply a name. You could be anybody. Are you a relative?'

'Mary Thomason wrote me a letter, asking for my help. She missed an appointment with me.' That wasn't quite true, but he found himself wanting to squelch Geddys. 'Is she missing?'

Geddys put the card down on a table. 'She left us.'

'But she did work here.'

'For a while.'

'What did she do?'

Geddys got cautious again, argued privacy, said that Denton could be anybody, his real feeling perhaps exasperation that Denton wasn't a customer. Then they got as far as Geddys's saying that Mary Thomason was young and naive and had framed prints and drawings for him when they were interrupted by a genuine customer, a lavishly got-up woman dripping ecru lace as if it were a skin she were shedding. Denton had to retire to a safe zone between two virtuous objects while they murmured about a 'sweet bit of pave' in a case. But she didn't buy, and she swept out with a vague promise to look in again, and Geddys smiled his ironic smile, twisting his head at Denton.

Then Denton had to go through it all - the little Wesselons, the note, his absence - leaving out only the things he didn't see any point in telling. And Geddys admitted he had been annoyed that Mary Thomason had left him without notice, only a note instead of coming in one day in August pleading 'a family crisis at home'. He was almost too voluble now, too helpful.

'Where was ”home”?'

'I've no idea. She seemed more or less genteel.'

'You didn't know where she lived in London?'

'Ask at the Slade.'

'What's the Slade?'

Geddys stared at him. 'The Slade School of Art.'

'She was an art student?'

'So she said.'

He persuaded Geddys to find the precise date when Mary Thomason had gone away. Geddys had in fact kept her note. It was dated the same day as the letter to Denton that she or somebody had tucked into the back of Heseltine's painting.

'I don't understand about the painting,' Denton said.

'Neither do I. Most irregular. If I'd known, I'd have stopped it.'

'But why would she do it?'

Geddys sighed. 'People, especially young people, do things beyond the comprehension of the mind of man. I hardly knew the young lady.' He didn't look Denton in the eye when he said that.

Other questions got only repet.i.tion, as of a well-rehea.r.s.ed story, and the information that Mary Thomason had been clean, prompt, shy and inarticulate. No, she seemed to have no young men, no 'followers'. No, he had no idea where she had lived, and would Mr Denton forgive him, but he had a business to manage.

Mr Denton didn't forgive him, because Mr Denton didn't entirely believe him, but Mr Denton left. Outside the arcade, it was still raining.

He took a cab to Victoria Street, was surprised to have the doorman at the Army and Navy Stores recognize him, the more so because he was only an a.s.sociate member, and that because Atkins - an actual veteran of the British army - had got him in. He went directly to the gun department and bought a Colt New Pocket revolver in .32 nitro. It didn't have the feel of the old Colt, but he knew it was quicker and more powerful, far faster to reload. It was smaller and with a shorter barrel, but it weighted his overcoat pocket like a bag of coins.

Munro had the reports for him from the divisions. They had nothing about a Mary Thomason. He complained that Denton should be getting all this from Guillam's Missing Persons office, not from him.

'I get along better with you,' Denton said.

'Hmp.' Munro gave him a rather dead stare. 'Coroner's office has three unidentified corpses for the day the ”missing” woman wrote you the note, seven for the week following, five for the week before. Five female, ten male. Autopsies performed on two - suspicious causes - and the lot buried after the statutory period because you can't keep dead bodies indefinitely.'

'Foul play on any of the women?'

Munro shrugged. 'Two of them taken out of the river, ditto five of the men, all but one been in too long to know much. Nothing caught the eye.'

'What does that mean?'

'Didn't strike anybody as justifying investigation.' Munro folded his hands on his desk. 'Fact of life, Denton - some folk are worth the trouble, some aren't.'

'You mean they were poor.'

'I don't make those judgements. If a middle-cla.s.s householder with two kids and a wife and a job as a senior clerk turns up in the Thames, we investigate. If somebody in rags with no way of knowing who she was washes up, well-'

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