Kenneth Cameron: The Frightened Man

‘And never will.’

Hench-Rose showed his teeth in a tight smile, seemed about to say something, thought better of it and turned to the question of weekend parties. ‘You shoot?’ he said.

‘Nobody recently.’

‘Oh — ha! Ha-ha! Meant birds, man. Grouse, partridge, like that.’ He talked about shooting driven birds, which Denton found about as interesting as the opera — shooters stood at assigned posts and waited while a small army of beaters drove everything that could run or fly past them to be slaughtered. ‘Make some fantastic scores,’ Hector said. ‘Certain royal party knocks down hundreds in an afternoon.’

‘And then eats them all that night.’

‘Hmm? Oh, ha-ha. No, actually, the birds go off to the markets. Very important part of the process, selling the kill.’

‘The purpose of the exercise, in fact.’

Hector frowned, a rare expression on his smooth face. ‘Well-Yes, in a sense.’

‘The shooting party is in fact a cog in an economic machine.’

‘What have you been reading? You sound like an anarchist, Denton. Is this for a new book?’ In fact, Denton had figured out the economics of shooting for himself because he was an American, an American who had started with nothing and was always near ruin; it gave him a point of view. And earned him some insults — parvenu, nouveau . He wasn’t sure why there was recourse to French when ‘Johnny-come-lately’ or ‘counter-jumper’ would have served so well. Something about the upper-class English and French: they decried French morals but envied French culture, adopted French words, even when they couldn’t pronounce them. Soi-disant, beauté de singe, nostalgie de la boue, elle s’affiche .

Hench-Rose waited while an overweight young man brought in a tea tray and poured two cups, even though Denton had already refused it. ‘I like something going down the gullet,’ Hench-Rose muttered. He helped himself to scones.

Denton said, ‘I’ve come on a kind of business.’

‘Oh, really?’ Hector seemed astonished that such a thing as business might even exist.

‘The newspapers are full of a new tale about a prostitute being murdered.’

Hector groaned and said he knew it; it was terrifically boring. He held up a buff-coloured file. ‘I don’t have time for the interesting stuff. I’m supposed to respond to an endless minute on the cost of helmets written by that dried-up dog’s leavings Mortimer Asperley, the Permanent Under-Secretary. He’s written five pages to do with a three-page file.’

‘How accurate are the newspaper accounts of the new murder?’

Hector looked blank. ‘ The Times is always accurate.’

‘Hector, I mean I want to know the details of the crime.’

‘Ah, aha. Writer’s curiosity, eh? Well, you’ve come to the wrong shop for anything having to do with police work; I might as well be in Whitehall monitoring the clothing regulations for other ranks in hot climates as here, for all I know about what the police are doing.’ He rang the overweight young man back into the room, told him to ask Detective Sergeant Munro to step round, looked pleased with himself for moving so briskly. ‘Munro will set us straight,’ he said. ‘Munro knows everything.’ He smiled the brilliant and open smile that made up for many failings. ‘Munro is a real policeman, not an ex-army officer dropped into a sinecure, like me.’ He beamed.

‘I was an ex-officer, once,’ Denton said.

‘Yes, but you hadn’t cousins in the senior civil service, had you? You mustered out and went to work — lucky you, Denton. Look at you now.’

Denton grunted. He had mustered out as a temporary lieutenant (three months’ worth, a sergeant jumped up to demobilize what was left) after the American Civil War; ‘going to work,’ as Hector put it, had meant going to an unploughed piece of prairie and trying to turn it into a farm. Going to work, indeed.

Detective Sergeant Munro was huge and walked with a limp. His massive face widened as it went downwards from his eyes; the jaws, seen straight on, were enormous, as if he could have chewed up iron bolts. He had a trace of a Scots accent, something else unidentifiable. His contempt for Hench-Rose was clear, even to Hector, who seemed amused by it.

‘Mister Denton is a famous author,’ Hench-Rose began. ‘He’s interested in a lady of the night who was murdered yesterday.’

Munro looked at Denton, expanded his circle of contempt to include him. ‘Yes?’ he said.

Hench-Rose smiled more fiercely. ‘I thought the first paperwork might have made its way up to us, and we could share it with him and send him on to the right people in CID.’

Munro’s great jaws widened, the effect of a smile. ‘Not our crime, Mr Hench-Rose.’ Dripping with contempt. Hector, not the swiftest of intellects, stared at him. ‘Crime was apparently committed in the Square Mile, sir.’

Hector frowned. ‘Oh, dear,’ Hector said. He looked at Denton. ‘Mr Denton’s American.’ Munro grinned at Denton, offering not a drop of pity for his being American. Hector explained. ‘The Square Mile is the City of London, Denton. My fault for not having realized it; I paid no attention to the location when I read the tale in the paper. We don’t get crimes from the City; the City of London Police get them.’ He looked up. ‘Sorry, Munro.’

‘I can go, then?’

‘Well-Perhaps you know somebody over there Mr Denton could go to see.’

‘Not very hospitable to journalists right now,’ Munro said. He apparently meant the City Police.

‘Mr Denton’s not a journalist.’

Munro looked him over, apparently concluded that Denton was no better than a journalist, whatever he was.

‘Oh, come on, Munro!’ Hench-Rose’s voice was wheedling. Denton could imagine his using it on a sergeant major, one of those invaluable men who do the real work of a regiment. ‘You must know somebody over there who can lend a hand.’ Hench-Rose smiled, the kind of smile that would remind even a sergeant major which of them was the superior officer. ‘Munro, I insist.’

Denton had been making small noises, but neither of the others paid any attention. He had muttered that it wasn’t important, that he would go, that he’d been stupid. No good. He was left feeling embarrassed, as he always was by British displays, however subtle, however polite, of upper-class leverage.

‘I’ll just see what I can do then, sir,’ Munro was saying. ‘If you’re ready to go, Mr, um, Denton, perhaps you could come along with me.’

‘There!’ Hench-Rose displayed his wonderful teeth. ‘You see, Denton?’

Denton made a face — lower lip pushed up, corners of the lips pulled down, eyebrows raised — and thanked Hector for his help and went out behind Munro, turning to cock an eyebrow again at Hench-Rose, who seemed vastly amused.

They paced along a dark corridor that looked as if it ran the length of the building, perhaps of several other buildings as well, a smell of coal and drains just noticeable. The corridor was bitterly cold. Munro seemed determined to say nothing, and Denton, who had lived among all sorts of people, felt no impulse to change things. They came at last to a varnished door much like all the others they had passed, and Munro grasped the handle as if he were going to yank it out of the wall and threw the door open. Several clerks looked up with frightened faces.

‘This is where we shovel the paper,’ Munro said. He led Denton towards another door. ‘Raw police reports find their way up here; we copy them out in a fair hand, three copies each, and send one to Files, one to Prosecution and one to your friend.’ He jerked his head towards the north, the direction meant to include Hench-Rose. ‘No idea what he does with them. In ten years or twenty the gods may see fit to give us a typewriter.’ Munro went through the door into a dismal office piled high with faded brown folders, fell into a chair behind the only desk and began to rummage in a drawer. ‘I’ll give you a message to somebody I know in City CID. That’s all I’ll do. Coppers don’t like civilians much.’