Read Online Bohemian Girl, The by Cameron Kenneth - Free Book Online

that was the light’s only switch, careful of his batteries.
    Up the ladder, belly on the curved top of the wall, he felt downwards and found another ladder on the other side. Grim discovery: somebody seemed to have made himself a route between Denton’s garden and that of the house behind.
    And if into the garden, therefore into the house? He felt the sickening lurch of disgust at the idea of somebody’s invading him.
    He was clumsy going over. He felt the ladder’s fragility as he put his weight on it but got down to find a real garden shed on that side, wood not brick, and no tangle of weed trees - a true garden that had been the real thing until a couple of months ago. Crossing it was easy - something rigid and crotch-high, a sundial or a statue, was a temporary discomfort - and then he leaned against the back wall of the house between the cellar door and the back door and waited for his man.
    And waited.
    And waited.
    At half past ten, a distant church bell sounding, he felt his way along the house wall to the back door and tested it, found it locked. No such luck.
    He gave up at half past eleven. The lights were out in the adjoining houses. The rain still fell; the city glow burned on; the city’s growl was muted.
    He went home the way he had come, wet, angry, like a cat who’s been shut out in the rain.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘Anything?’ Atkins said, not without scepticism.
    Denton was in his own entrance hall. Atkins, wearing the bedraggled robe, pyjama bottoms visible between the hem and the floor, was standing in the doorway to his quarters. A staircase ran up the wall on Denton’s left to his own part of the house. Around them, the oversized Scottish genre paintings were inscrutable in the dim light.
    Denton shrugged himself out of the mackintosh and handed it over, hat to follow. ‘Your intruder’s either a figment of your imagination or he’s got another home.’
    ‘Figment? Who chased somebody because he thought he was being followed? Who saw a man with a funny upper lip at New Scotland Yard?’
    Denton grunted. ‘Maybe we’re both seeing things.’ He stopped partway up the stairs. ‘I almost tripped over a shovel in the back. Was that you?’
    ‘Ha, ha. I hired a layabout that was recommended by the ice-man; he started digging and half an hour later told me the back garden was concrete, not dirt, and I could take my spade and put it in a certain place. Which reminds me, I mean the ice-man does, the ice-cave is leaking again, and I’m sick of mopping up around it.’
    ‘We just had it soldered.’
    ‘Well, it’s leaking. We need a proper modern ice-box. Ice-caves went out with the bustle.’
    ‘Keep mopping.’
    He went up to the long sitting room, walked its length without turning up the gas and looked out of the high window at the back. The house behind was mere blackness, a peaked hole in the night. It was almost midnight - no, four minutes to; there was the bell of Holy Trinity, never on time.
    He went back to his chair by the near-dead coal fire, tossed on a pitchy stick or two and several chunks of coal and sat in his chair. He opened a book but didn’t read, sat instead with his fist against his lower lip, thinking of Janet Striker.
    Later, Atkins came up to clear things away. Putting glasses on a tray, he said, ‘Jesus never laughs.’
    ‘“Jesus wept.”’
    ‘Exactly. I been through the gospels and through them. He don’t laugh. He weeps, as you say - the miracle of Lazarus. Wouldn’t hurt him to laugh, would it?’
    ‘Blasphemous remark.’
    ‘We’re told he’s the divine made flesh, aren’t we? Flesh laughs!’
    ‘Katya losing her hold?’
    ‘Don’t get personal, please - not in our contract.’
    ‘Go to bed.’
    ‘I was in bed, and then you come back and now some of us have to wash up the glasses that others have used. Go to bed, my hat.’
    Denton smiled at his back. He closed the unread book, turned down the light and walked again to the long window. The rain was a