Bohemian Girl, The by Cameron Kenneth Read Free Book Online Page B

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 glasses, 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 hoarse and very deep, coming out of his pigeon chest in a bass 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