to be about five-six, weak, forty, bad false teeth, and felt an immediate sympathy, then a kind of revulsion. When the sergeant tried to take his hat, Mulcahy held on to it as if stopping a theft; then he let go, and Atkins exchanged a look with Denton, rubbing his fingers over the greasy brim and making a face.
‘Uh-hum,’ Mulcahy said, clearing his throat. He was intensely nervous, his fingers moving constantly, one knee jerking inside his baggy trousers. Denton went through the courtesies, got the man seated, established that neither cheese nor biscuits nor port was welcome. ‘You wanted to see me,’ Denton said.
‘Yes, ah - yes - alone.’ Mulcahy’s eyes slid aside towards the sergeant. ‘Confidential.’
Denton raised one eyebrow. Atkins picked up the empty tray and went on down the room, pausing to open the door of the dumb waiter, installed by a former owner when the rear half of the space had been a dining room, thus allowing the sergeant to hear what was said from the floor below. He went out.
‘Well, now,’ Denton said. ‘I have to go out soon, Mr Mulcahy.’
‘Yes. Well.’ Mulcahy hunched in his chair, his nervous fingers joined over his middle. The chair was too big for him, made him seem a child called in for punishment. ‘Something terrible happened. To me. I’m in a right state.’
‘You should go to the police.’
‘No!’ Red circles showed on his grey cheeks; the word heaved his body up and then let it go. ‘That’s why I came to you. I can’t—’ He looked into the shadowed corner towards the street, licked his lips, said, ‘Just can’t.’
‘Well—’
‘I know who you are, you see? I mean, everybody knows. Fact, right?’
Not everybody, but many people, indeed knew ‘who he was’, which was to say not who he was but what he had been for barely six months, twenty-five years ago - the American marshal who had shot four men and saved a town. It was part of his myth despite himself, despite his having come to England to get away from it. Newspapers loved it, regularly trotted it out if he wrote a new book or even so much as had tea with the Surbiton Ladies Literary Society.
‘Well—I don’t see what I can do, but tell me what’s happened and maybe I can advise you.’
‘I need protection, I do.’
‘Tell me what happened, Mr Mulcahy.’ He made a point of looking at the clock.
Mulcahy looked at his trembling fingers. ‘I seen—I saw the man they call -’ he clenched his hands - ‘Jack the Ripper. And he seen me!’
Denton’s interest sagged. The Ripper had been gone for fifteen years; people who saw him or heard him or got in touch with him in seances were loony. Denton managed a tight smile that was meant to lead to ‘Goodnight’.
‘And he recognized me! I know he did; I could see it in his eyes. He’s after me!’
Ripper stories popped up like daffodils in spring. They were trotted out by the newspapers for space-fillers. Denton, aware that he was dealing with one of the (he hoped) harmlessly deranged, said gently, ‘How do you know it was the Ripper, Mr Mulcahy?’
Mulcahy worked his mouth, studied his hands again. ‘We was - were - boys together.’ He looked up. ‘In Ilkley.’ Then, ‘There!’ he said, as if he had scored a point.
Denton had heard of a woman who said she’d been married to the Ripper. Also one who claimed to be his love child. If Mulcahy had not so clearly been terrified, he’d have eased him out right then. He looked at the clock again, then at the little man, felt again revulsion but also a somewhat clinical interest. A psychological case study, in his own parlour. He could spare seven minutes more. ‘Tell me all about it,’ he said.
Mulcahy needed to look at the door twice before he began; he seemed to need to know that the door, the way out, was still there. He did look shockingly bad, his face sallow in the gaslight, his cheeks grey where his beard was beginning to show. He touched his forehead, then his nose, and said in spurts and starts with many pauses, ‘We was boys together up north. He was never right, but I kind of palled about with him, I did. He was older. Nobody else would, because he was—A kid like me maybe didn’t notice what he was. I don’t mean I was with him all the time, you know, but off