'No, of course you should.'

'It was addressed to you.'

'Of course. But you didn't open it.'

'No!' It was like a groan of pain. 'No, I swear I didn't!'

'I didn't mean to suggest you had. I just wondered if you knew what was in it.'

'No!'

Denton was afraid the young man was going to weep. He became gentle. 'Could I ask you a question?'

'Yes. Of course. Should you like tea? Coffee?' Heseltine looked around vaguely. 'My man is out.'

'The date on your note to me was some weeks ago. How long had you had the painting then?'

'Oh - oh, let me see - I got to London in August. The twelfth.' He gave a sudden, unexplained laugh. 'The Glorious Twelfth. Do you shoot? I used to. Now I can't-The noise upsets me.'

It came to Denton slowly: the twelfth of August was the opening of grouse season, a very big event in the lives of sporting people. He waited for the young man to go on; when he didn't, he murmured, 'So you got to London on August twelfth.'

'Yes.'

'And bought the painting? I mean, how long after did you buy the painting?'

'Oh-The date would be on the receipt. If I still have it. They could tell you at the shop. In the arcade. It was - oh, a while ago.'

'It's now the twenty-sixth of September. You sent me your note and the envelope on August twenty-ninth.'

'Oh.'

'So, it must have been pretty soon after you bought it.'

'Yes, it was while I was hanging it. My man was hanging it, I mean. He, mmm, brought it to my attention. I put it in an envelope and wrote that silly note the same day. "Little Wesselons"!' He laughed a bit hysterically. 'a.s.s.'

Denton waited several seconds for him to get calm. 'The letter inside the envelope was dated more than two months ago.'

'What did it say?'

'It must have sat sat in the back of the painting - or somewhere - for several weeks before you found it.'

'I was in the war.'

That meant South Africa - fighting the Boers, a war that had gone on far too long and had reached a vicious stage where the British army was building concentration camps. It probably explained Aubrey Heseltine. Denton had seen young men like this after the Civil War, young men who were never the same, young men whose lives had been taken over by war. 'Are you on leave?' he said.

'No, I've been-I'm invalided home. You reach a point-Then it's no good going on. You're no good. They don't trust you any more.'

'I was in the American Civil War.'

'Then you understand.'

'A little, maybe.'

'You've seen it, then. You've seen them.' His face twitched. 'Boys. Men with families. My sergeant said we'd get them out. He told them that. Then he was dead.' The right side of his mouth pulled down in a tic. 'They sh.e.l.led us. Our own guns. The line was cut. I sent a runner back-A boy, one of mine, he was eighteen, then he was just a tunic, you know, and one leg. A nice boy. Lancashire. I pulled them back. Against orders. I admitted it at the investigation. Why should they die like that from their own guns? That isn't right, is it, Mr - Denton? Is it?'

Denton shook his head.

'I'm on medical leave.' The side of Heseltine's face pulled down again. 'But they're going to court-martial me. For pulling back.'

The soldier in Denton wanted to judge him harshly; on the other hand, his older self said, nothing was proven yet. 'Is it bad?'

Heseltine gave him the half-smile again. 'They'll cashier me.' 'You have dreams about the war?'

'Yes.'

'You remember all their names.'

'Yes, yes-'

'You don't want to go out.'

'No.' He hardly voiced the syllable.

'I shouldn't have bothered you.'

'I'm glad you came.' Heseltine put his face in his hands, then sat up very straight. 'I'm afraid you must think me weak.'

Denton stood. 'Thank you for your help.'

'I thought there might be - something-'

Something what, Denton wondered. Something more? Something for me? Something to be done? He said, 'The envelope had a note asking for my help.'

'I'm so glad I sent it on, then.'

'Was there a woman at the shop where you bought the painting? '

'Only the man in the front, but I think in the back - where they framed and so on - I think there was someone else. But I - didn't-'

'I wanted to see if the sender of the note was all right.'

'Yes, oh, you must! Yes, it's so important to help people when they ask you for - protection - help-' The side of his face pulled down. 'Will you keep me informed?'

'It's been so long, I'm not sure it's worth pursuing.'

'But you must! Yes - please. I'd like to feel I had a part.'

So Denton took the name of the shop in Burlington Arcade where he'd bought the painting and promised that he'd report back, and each of them said again how important it was to follow things through and to help when help was asked for. As Denton was leaving, he said, 'Why did you buy that particular painting?'

'The Wesselons? Because - it was a bargain, he said; somebody else had put down money on it and then not taken it - and-It was the idea of the menagerie, the animal so far away from his own kind-' He was looking at a bookcase, not at Denton, frowning in concentration. 'He must have been a wretchedly unhappy animal, but he looks so stalwart! As if he'd come through. Do you know what I mean?'

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-'