The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (5 page)

‘Lord Hurstmonceux was a scientist?’ asked Lestrade.

‘Not quite,’ came the answer. Cairns pointed to an oblong box in one corner of the room. At one end of it was a series of black and white keys and the box was divided into compartments with piano wires strung across the base to the keys themselves. Lestrade felt it was legitimate to admit that he did not know what this was.

‘The Cats’ Piano,’ said Cairns grimly.

‘Er … the cats’ … er …’

‘The cats are placed into the compartments and locked in. Then the … scientist … plays a tune on the keyboard with the result that the wires spring up and lash the cats from below and the hammers hit their heads.’

‘So this is not a laboratory?’ said Lestrade, the light beginning to dawn.

‘No, Inspector. This is a torture chamber.’

Lestrade noticed for the first time that the walls and door were heavily padded. Cairns caught his eye. ‘Noise-proof,’ he said. ‘The animals around you in the jars, I’ll wager any price you like that they were operated on while very much alive.’

Cairns crossed to a desk-drawer and produced a ledger. ‘Here – a record of his “experiments”.’

‘Vivisection,’ mused Lestrade.

‘Oh, no, Inspector. The public might not like the idea, but true vivisection is at least for scientific purposes. But this – this is sheer sadism. Torture for pleasure’s sake. And Unnatural Acts,’ he added cryptically.

Lestrade flicked through the ledger. Boiling hedgehogs, skewering thrushes on needles, snapping the front legs of foxes, castrating horses with dressmaking scissors, blinding goats with hatpins. Hardly the usual pastimes of a scholar and a gentleman. And what Lord Hurstmonceux attempted to do with the sheep on his estate was very definitely best left to the imagination.

‘How does this help us, Sir Bertram?’ asked Lestrade.

‘I’m not sure,’ answered Cairns. ‘But we all know why you’re here, Lestrade. This is not a simple death in the morning. It’s murder.’

‘By dog or dogs unknown,’ added Lestrade.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let me explain something about murder, Sir Bertram. When I am called in to investigate foul play, I usually have a victim and no murderer. The average killer does not stand over the corpse obligingly with a gun or knife in his hand until I arrive. I piece together the evidence – like the parts of a jigsaw puzzle – and I arrive at conclusions. Now, in this case, I have my murderer – or murderers, I should say. Forty of them. But they are foxhounds, sir and a foxhound cannot stand trial before one of Her Majesty’s Justices. There is no precedent for it.’

‘Good God, man, I’m not an idiot. Freddie Hurstmonceux was one of the most unpopular men in the country. There must have been scores of people who would not have been sorry to see him dead.’

‘Very possibly, sir. But unless you can tell me how they did it, I cannot proceed further.’

Lestrade slept little that night. In his room tucked away in the west wing, he paced the floor. The oil-lamp cast a lurid glow on the heavy Chinese wallpaper. His bed was appallingly uncomfortable and the room cold. He had not come with the intention of staying but in view of the deceased’s no longer wanting them, Sir Henry Cattermole had lent him a nightshirt and a dressing gown of Lord Hurstmonceux’s. They were a trifle large perhaps and decidedly ornate by Lestrade’s rather drab standards, but they would do. He looked out from time to time across the lawns and caught the scurrying moon flickering on the waters of the lake. Occasionally the baying of a hound bore in on him the extent of his exasperation. But as dawn began to creep over the low trees below the house, a theory began to emerge. Well, after breakfast, Lestrade would see whether or not it paid off.

Cairns was all for it. Cattermole had his doubts, but would do a great deal for the good of the family name. Rosebery wished he wasn’t there. Within an hour after breakfast, the pack was out with their handlers and the house guests, including Lestrade, mounted and ready to go. Standard police procedure, he had assured them – the reconstruction of a crime. He kept as far as he could from the hounds and each man carried a loaded revolver in case they ran amok again. Lestrade was a fair rider, but he wasn’t used to rough country and five-barred gates. He hoped they would encounter neither.

It was a misty morning, raw-cold for early April and totally unlike the clear night. The ground was heavy with dew like tears as Cattermole sounded the horn and the pack moved off. A suicidal groom was riding far ahead with a dead fox over the cantle of his saddle, to draw the hounds the right way. It was an odd sight. A hunt, now rather out of season, if only by a day, with too few men, too few horses, no real quarry and an odd, gloomy silence. There was no jollity, no bantering and even Cattermole’s horn sounded chilly and alone. They crossed the ploughed fields of the South Meadow, the horses sliding in the morning mud. Lestrade felt faintly ridiculous in Lord Hurstmonceux’s spare pink and the ghastly uncomfortable hat bouncing around on his head. But the fields were a joy compared to the woods. Branches lashed at him as he doubled up to stay in the saddle. Splashed with mud and the dew from leaves he swung away from the path in an effort to find solid ground. His horse plunged and reared, snorting with annoyance at the increasingly less competent man in its back. Fleetingly, Lestrade saw Bertie Cairns across to his right, at the head of a scattered field. Fleetingly, because he saw him at a curious angle while somersaulting over the horse’s head.

Lestrade landed squarely on his back, badly jarring his spine as he did so. He had the sense and training to cling to the reins as he fell, so was able to haul himself upright using the horse. There was no sign of the others. He hoped no one had seen him. Two or three of the straggler hounds rushed past him, leaving him firmly alone. He remounted with difficulty and made for the light at the edge of the woods. Below him, he saw that the hounds had reached the spot where he presumed Lord Hurstmonceux had been killed. Beyond a low, dry-stone wall, unusual for the area, the dogs milled around, sniffing, yelping, obviously having lost the scent. The groom with the dead fox had done his job well and had effectively lost his pursuers. Cattermole, Cairns and Rosebery sat on their horses, looking around them for Lestrade.

The inspector urged his mount down the furrowed slope. The view in front of him bobbed and leaped. He dug his knees in hard and clung on as majestically as he could. The horizon dropped before him and he was down, wheeling his horse sharply in a circle to join the others.

‘Bravo, Parapet,’ called Rosebery. The name had lost all semblance of reality so that for a while Lestrade assumed he must be talking to somebody else. ‘A yard or so to the left, however, and you would have caught that harrow.’

Lestrade just had time to catch sight of the implement, when it started. The hounds howled and snarled, springing up at Rosebery, jaws snapping as they turned in air. Cairns and Cattermole drew their revolvers, firing wildly to left and right. Rosebery clung to the saddle for dear life, trying to extricate his plunging horse from the melee of dogs. Three or four grooms were hurrying down the slope towards the wall shouting harshly at the dogs. Lestrade drove his horse through the bedlam, caught Rosebery’s rein with a deftness which surprised him and led him away over the furrows. By the time Rosebery had taken stock of himself and was controlling his horse, Lestrade swung back with his revolver cocked, but Cairns and Cattermole had done their business well and the hounds were recoiling, calmer now and stunned by the gunfire and the corpses by the wall.

The horsemen rode to higher ground as the grooms and handlers took charge of the pack. Rosebery, gashed and bleeding, slumped in his saddle in shock. ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ he said, staring blankly ahead.

‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ said Cairns, handing Rosebery his hat.

‘At least that lead hound won’t attack anybody else,’ said Cattermole. ‘I just shot him.’

‘It wasn’t the lead hound,’ mused Lestrade, almost to himself.

‘I saw it,’ said Cattermole, ‘exactly like poor Freddie.’

‘Tell me, sir,’ Lestrade turned in the saddle to face him. ‘When you shot the dog, Tray, who killed him – you or the gun?’

‘Eh?’

‘I mean that the hounds killed Freddie Hurstmonceux. But who trained them to?’

‘Trained?’ snapped Rosebery. ‘You can’t train dogs to go for a man.’

‘Yes, you can,’ said Cairns. ‘But they must have been trained to go for Rosebery, too.’

‘No, sir, I don’t think so. If my assumption is correct, then this morning’s incident was merely an accidental repetition of the original. Lord Hurstmonceux must have been unhorsed. You were lucky, My Lord.’

‘We’ve got to get you back to the house, Rosebery,’ Cattermole urged. ‘I don’t know what you’ve achieved, Lestrade, except for nearly killing someone else.’

‘Sir Henry, please bear with me. I believe I have the answer, but I must see the tenants first. Can that be arranged?’

‘Good God, man, there are nearly two hundred of them. Can you spare that time from the Yard?’

It took Lestrade just over a week to interview all the Hurstmonceux tenants. With two or three sergeants to help him he might have halved the time, but Cattermole was insistent for the sake of the family honour that the incident must be hushed up. Lestrade knew all too well that whatever he uncovered here would never become public. Freddie Hurstmonceux had been notorious enough in his lifetime, but no one would be able to make matters worse after his death. The ‘laboratory’ would never see the light of day. Lestrade wasn’t even sure if Cattermole knew about it.

Of the one hundred and eighty-three adults on the Hurstmonceux estate, one hundred and eighty-three had the motive and opportunity to kill their former master. Even some of the children looked murderous. But Lestrade only asked one question- at least he was only interested in the answer to one question: who placed the harrow against the wall in the Lower Meadow?

It transpired that none of them had. Lestrade prided himself on his judgement of men – and women. There were many tenants who would have split Lord Hurstmonceux’s head with a hoe, blown it off with a shotgun or sliced it apart with a sickle, but who among them had the ability to kill him in this way? Trained policeman that he was, he noticed the tenants’ reactions to the harrow question. They told him the truth. No one had moved it.

He then interrogated, with all the subtlety at his disposal, the handlers of the pack. It was a new pack to the hunt, they told him. Lestrade toyed with the question of whether the seal had been broken, but the situation prevented it. Another gem, he mused, lost forever. Where had they been bought? At auction, of course. Lestrade broke the silence he had promised by sending a telegram to the Yard to check. As he guessed, the former owner could not be traced.

The inspector had one last card to play. Rosebery had gone, nursing his wounds, back to London to wait for his Garter. The funeral for Lord Hurstmonceux was due on the following day, in the family chapel a mile or so from Hurstmonceux Hall. Lestrade would not be there. His presence would not be welcome. The night before he left them, Lestrade crept from his room after dark. He crossed the moonless courtyard to the kennels. Once inside, his heart raced. Once or twice his nerve left him, but each time he turned back. The dogs slept more or less soundly despite his entrance. But he knew, even in the dark, that one or two of them were awake, watching him. He levelled the revolver, a heavy Smith and Wesson and prayed. His heart pounded in his ears. Flashing before his eyes he saw again the lacerated corpse of Freddie Hurstmonceux, the congealed blood on his throat and clothing, the dried trickle on the baize of the billiard table. He cocked the pistol, once, twice, and somewhere from the depths of his throat came the whispered word – ‘harrow’.

The kennels roared into life, hounds snarling and snapping. Lestrade threw himself back through the door, sliding the bolt and collapsing against the wall. He was right. He had proved it. But the house was coming to life, lights appearing in the servants’ quarters. Voices and shouts in the yard. Lestrade saw no point in advertising himself. He put the gun away and crept via the shrubbery to the relevant wing. Up the stairway and into his room, before the house returned to an uneasy slumber. On the night before the funeral of the master, everyone was uneasy.

Lestrade travelled back to London by train. The newspapers had carried the headlines – ‘terrible hunting accident’. Everything was neat, vague and unexceptional. Lord Hurstmonceux might simply have fallen from his horse. Only Lestrade knew
how
. Someone had placed the harrow by the wall in the Lower Meadow. They had then led the hunt that way, probably as Lestrade had done, getting a beater to carry a scent over his saddle. Hurstmonceux had leapt the wall, hit the harrow or narrowly missed it. What would have been his reaction? ‘What’s that bloody harrow doing there?’ or something similar. Whoever had arranged this had already sold the pack to Freddie and had taught them to react, viciously and blindly, to anyone who spoke the word ‘harrow’.

Well, there it was. All the same, it was fantastic. It was astonishingly risky, uncertain. The murderer ran a risk in drawing on the hunt. He could easily have been seen. How did he arrange the sale? How could he be sure that Freddie would reach that wall first? And that he would use the essential word ‘harrow’. That he was alone at the time was the good luck of the others who rode in the hunt. Lestrade realised that he should have talked to them. But by the time he had arrived, most of them had gone and they could probably have added nothing to the facts of the case. Still, there it was. Risky, uncertain, fantastic, yes. But it had worked.

So Lestrade knew how. What he did not know was who. He would put the evidence before McNaghten, who would brush his moustaches and straighten his cravat and consign the information to the bowels of his incomprehensible filing system. He would then compile a list as long as his arm of those who knew Freddie Hurstmonceux for the cad and bounder that he was. It didn’t help him a great deal.

The letter was waiting for him when he got back. A mourning letter, lying square in the centre of his desk. Lestrade enquired why it was separate from the week’s mail pile which stood to one side. The desk sergeant explained it had come this morning and looked personal, addressed to Lestrade himself. The inspector opened it. And then he placed it alongside the first. There was no doubt about it. They were written on different typewriters. But the doggerel sounded familiar, if this time more informed: