saw the light. ‘Oh, my heart, it’s two months old.’
‘Two and a bit.’ He picked up the heavy notepaper that had enclosed the small envelope. ‘“Dear Mr Denton, I found this missive behind a recently purchased little Wesselons. As it is addressed to you, I send it on like a good postman. Yours most sincerely, Aubrey Heseltine.”’ He handed the note to Atkins. ‘Pretentious - “little Wesselons”! Some Albany idiot who wants everybody in London to know he bought a painting.’
‘A Wesselons is a painting?’
‘Don’t play the dunce, Atkins! What’s got into you?’
‘My mind’s on higher things.’
Denton sighed. Atkins had had some sort of religious experience in prison, the source of a new dourness. ‘Does piety have to be humourless?’ he said.
‘I don’t think humour comes into it.’
‘Surely there are jokes in the Bible.’
‘I certainly hope not!’
‘God ought to be allowed to laugh, surely. Jesus laughs somewhere, doesn’t he?’ Denton thought of telling Atkins an American joke - a rabbi and a priest are almost run down by a carriage, and so on - but he wasn’t sure it was relevant. ‘Is this about a woman?’
‘Now you’re offending me.’
‘It’s like you to have been led into the tent by a female. Was it Katya?’ Katya had been some sort of hanger-on at the prison (actually, Denton thought, Colonel Cieljescu’s - the commandant’s - mistress), but Atkins had been much taken with her.
‘I’ll give notice if you keep this up.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with hearing a call to God just because the voice is a woman’s. Read Adam Bede.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘That’s the title. Upright man who falls in love with a lady preacher. Not your usual, however.’ Atkins was a great reader of Charles Lever. ‘George Eliot.’
‘I thought it was Adam Breed.’
‘The author.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘It’s a her. England’s greatest novelist.’
‘I haven’t had your advantages.’
‘You’ve had exactly my advantages; you just made different use of them.’ This was only roughly true: both men had been in the army, both had been poor, but one was English and one American, and one was a servant and one was a figure of some notoriety, even fame. Denton indicated the notepaper. ‘Wha’dyou think?’
‘I think he’s a gent who’s coming it a little high, as you say, but I don’t see nothing suspicious. He buys a painting, finds an envelope, sends it to the person it’s intended for. Trail’s cold after so long; female has either had harm done to her or not by now.’
Denton read the woman’s letter aloud. ‘“Dear Mr Denton, I should like to come by one evening to seek your advice. I believe that someone threatens harm to me and I do not know quite what to do. If I may, I will call and if you are not in I will return. Mary Thomason.”’ Atkins had been pouring coffee and now put it down next to him. Denton said, ‘No salutation - simply “Mary Thomason”. Suggestive. Have some more coffee yourself.’
‘Don’t mind if I do. Suggestive of what?’
Denton shrugged. ‘Unconventionality?’
‘Ignorance, more likely.’
‘No, it’s a good hand, trained, and she says “I should like”. Mmmnmh. Maybe in a hurry or maybe wanting to seem businesslike, but maybe unconventional.’
‘You’re off on a hare because the thing was found behind a painting - arty stuff. You think, “Art, Bohemians, unconventionality, that’s for me!” Rushing your fences, Colonel.’
‘And how do you find something “behind a painting”?’ Denton sipped his coffee. By now, Atkins was sitting in the other armchair. ‘He can’t mean on the wall behind a painting, because he says he bought it, and I can’t believe he bought the wall, too. What he probably means is “in the back of a painting”.’
‘Not my line of work.’
‘Nor mine, but we’ve both turned paintings over.’ There were four or five on the walls, two more in the downstairs hall, both stinkers he’d bought because they were big and he was trying to fill a lot of space. ‘I suppose Aubrey Heseltine could tell us.’
‘You’re intrigued.’
‘I am. I’m guilty, or bothered, or something. A woman thinks she’s appealed to me for help, and I don’t hear her cry until too late.’
‘Hardly your fault, is it? She never sent the letter, did she? There wasn’t no stamp on it, was there? The back of a painting isn’t exactly the Royal Mail, is it? No on all counts. She thought better of it; you’re free and clear.’
‘Why did she put the letter in the back of a painting?’