The Frightened Man Read Free

Germany with bits of newspaper in it - that funny-looking lettering. They was about three murders. Women. I knew it was him.’
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t see how you could know that.’
    ‘Couple more years, I got a letter from France. Nothing but clippings - more women cut up, murdered. Then Holland!’ He looked up. ‘He was keeping me up to date, see?’
    Denton had his hand on the doorknob. ‘I’m afraid this is all the time I can give you, sir.’
    ‘My mum was dead by then, nothing to hold me. I moved on to a couple of places, and the letters they stopped. Couldn’t find me, and good riddance! I was free of him, see? And then, tonight—’ He put his face in his hands. ‘Tonight - oh, my dear God! - I’m walking on the street and—’
    ‘Well, sir, you know, we see people who look like people we used to know, but—’
    A crash sounded from below and the house shook. Denton heard the sergeant curse. Mulcahy jumped to his feet, shouting, ‘It’s him—!’
    Denton strode to the dumb waiter. ‘Sergeant - sergeant, you all right?’
    ‘What d’you think, bloody silver tray on my head?’ Over the words was the sound of running steps on the stairs, two at a time, going down, and then the front door crashed. Denton walked back down the room. Mulcahy’s chair was empty, the door open. Denton looked down, saw that the hall was empty, too. Mulcahy was gone.
    ‘Mental case,’ Denton muttered. He shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’m just stepping out, Sergeant - then I really have to dress—’
    Denton trotted down the stairs and opened the door. It was two strides to the gate, which was open; beyond it, Lamb’s Conduit Street was dark. Denton looked to his right; not until he saw one of the whores who gave the street its reputation did he see another human being. She hadn’t seen anybody, she said, worse luck. He strolled back the other way. Somebody coming out of the Lamb had seen a man running up towards Holborn.
    ‘Damned little loony.’
    The sergeant was waiting at the top of the stairs. ‘Left his hat,’ he said. He waved it. ‘Valuable object.’
    ‘How much did you hear?’
    ‘A lot, until the dumb-waiter clutch gave way and dropped the dishware on my head. Mad story, I thought.’
    ‘Mad, yes.’
    ‘You don’t believe him!’
    ‘I believe he was really frightened, but I think it’s all inside his own head. And maybe he really did see something as a kid - although it could be the sort of fantasy a certain type might invent to entertain himself.’ He looked at the clock. ‘Men like that pull a lot of details out of the newspapers.’
    ‘One more crackpot trying to climb on the tired old Ripper’s back.’
    ‘Why come to me?’
    ‘To be able to say he’d laid his mad tale on you. Good story with the girls. “How I Met the Sheriff.” You’re going to be late.’
    ‘Mmmm.’ Denton doubted that Mulcahy told this story to ‘the girls’. Mulcahy, he thought Krafft-Ebing would say, was one of those men who had difficulties with women. Probably impotent. He started towards the stairs at the rear. ‘Still, these cases are interesting.’
    ‘And you say you don’t like opera!’
    ‘Well, he didn’t sing.’
    As he dressed, he thought about the story, the obvious inventions. The newspaper clippings, for example - Mulcahy hadn’t said anything about getting them translated, but surely he didn’t read German, French and Dutch. And not a word about the uproar that would have followed such a murder as that of - what was her name? - Elinor Grimble. Of Ilkley.
    There didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be done about Mr Mulcahy, and as for his tale that the Ripper was back, that was merely stupid. Mulcahy was a sad freak, to be forgotten, at least until he returned for his valuable hat.
    Denton went off to Emma Gosden’s. He carried a derringer in his coat pocket out of habit. A certain caution, never lost. The rain had stopped, leaving an occasional misting drizzle that was