The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (8 page)

It was nearly dark now and the housekeeper and the policeman ascended the stairs by the light of an oil-lamp. Lestrade once again insisted on overriding the Vicar’s newfound aversion to naked flames. Harriet Wemyss’ body had been removed to Congleton mortuary, accompanied by Swallow and one or two curious cats. Lestrade viewed the landing area where Mrs Drum had found the blazing girl. There were bad scorch marks on the carpet, through to the floorboards underneath. They formed a visible trail from a door down the corridor towards the dead girl’s bedroom.

‘What is that room?’ asked Lestrade.

‘The Chapel of Ease, sir,’ replied Mrs Drum, showing signs of being overcome once again at standing on The Very Spot Where Poor Miss Harriet Died. Lestrade opened the door on to a conventional, middle-class lavatory, complete with blue-flowered porcelain bowl. Much to the distaste of Mrs Drum, he peered into the pan. There was a coloured film floating on the water, he noticed, as he lowered his lamp towards it and burn marks on the wooden seat.

‘Has this lavatory been used since the accident?’

‘Why, no, sir. Inspector Swallow told us not to touch or move anything. There is another on the other side of the house, as well as the privy in the yard.’

Lestrade was grateful that Swallow was enough of a policeman for that.

‘Stand back, Mrs Drum, you are in for another shock.’

Lestrade poised himself, then flipped a lighted match into the pan. It exploded with a roar as a column of livid flame ripped upwards, illuminating the room, the landing and the terrified Mrs Drum.

Lestrade threw towels over the fire and it died, slowly, reluctantly.

‘Is that the noise you heard, Mrs Drum, before the screaming started?’

Mrs Drum was standing back against the wall, visibly quivering, nodding silently the while.

‘In the kitchen you would have not heard the cigarette – the furtive, clandestine cigarette that Miss Harriet was smoking – hit the water. But it wasn’t water, Mrs Drum. Or at least the surface of it was not. It was petroleum spirit, instantly inflammable to a match or a lit cigarette. The poor creature must have gone up like a torch, and in her shock and agony, must have rushed headlong towards the sanctuary of her bedroom. But such was the power of the flames that she never got there. Not in this world.’

By now, the Reverend Wemyss, startled by the noise of the flames and the cry of terror from Mrs Drum, had joined the couple in the almost total darkness on the stairs.

‘Come, sir,’ Lestrade said to him. ‘You and I must have a little talk.’

It did not unduly bother Lestrade that in telling Wemyss all he knew he was betraying an implied confidence to Miss Spink. His priorities were right, he felt sure. What was domestic tension compared with murder? The Vicar of Wildboarclough listened with an evertightening lip to the whole sorry, bizarre story. He could shed no light. He knew of no man. He assumed that Harriet’s increased visits to Macclesfield were due to an increasing interest in the newly extended lending library. It had never occurred to him that his daughter had become a libertine and that she had been seduced into the ways of the devil by an anonymous ‘seducteur’. He would not tell his wife – the further shock would kill her. When she had overcome her immediate need for Miss Spink, he would dispense with the woman’s services – Miss Spink’s, that was, not his wife’s. Dorothea had after all been ‘in his service’, so to speak, for too long. Miss Spink had not been vigilant. She had known Harriet’s secret and had said nothing. It was tantamount to murder. Even Lestrade fleetingly contemplated issuing a warrant as accessory, but he guessed that the governess’ conscience was sentence enough.

The night at the Vicarage was cold and gloomy. A morbid stillness lay over the whole house. At one point, Lestrade fumbled with a lucifer to light a cigar, but he had to admit that the sudden flare of flame in the house of death seemed unfitting, blasphemous almost. He blew it out and huddled beneath the blankets, chewing the tobacco instead. The cold water in the morning and the iced coffee and cold ham did nothing to cheer or warm him. He ate alone. Even the maid came nowhere near him. He could not find his grief-stricken host to say his farewells. He trod finally on one of the cats and left.

Dr Marsden was in mid-surgery when Lestrade found him.

‘Breathe in.’ The instruction was issued to an elderly gentleman stretched out corpse-like on a bed in his consulting room.

‘I can’t be of much help, Inspector.’ The doctor blinked at his visitor through a screen of cigar smoke. Ash dropped sporadically on to the patient’s stomach, causing him to wince somewhat. ‘Shock or first-degree burns or both were the cause of death. Oh, it’s all right,’ he coughed through the fumes, noting Lestrade’s concerned glance at the patient. ‘He’s deaf as a post. We’re quite alone.’

‘I was trying to draw your attention to his colour, Doctor. I believe he may have died.’

‘Good God.’ Marsden brought his hand down sharply on the chest of the recumbent form. ‘Breathe out, man!’

Lestrade was relieved to hear the patient gasp and cough.

‘Could I ask you a delicate question, Doctor? We are, after all, men of the world. In our professions we both see humanity in all its most naked forms.’ He was rather proud of that line.

‘Do.’ Marsden forced the old man over so that his nose buried itself in his trousers. The look on the doctor’s face evinced surprise that the patient could do this.

‘Where would you say the worst burns were? Where was the point of impact of the flame?’

‘Bum,’ snapped the doctor.

‘Doctor?’ said the policeman in surprise.

‘No, no, I’ve lost my cigar.’ Both men peered into the hair of the old man and their eyes met above his head. ‘Ah.’ Marsden recovered it from the collar of his patient’s shirt.

‘It was the rectum that received the full force, I’d say. The burns on the upper torso, upper limbs and head were less severe. It must have been the inflammable material of her dress that proved her undoing.’

‘The rectum, then,’ repeated Lestrade, making for the door.

‘Bum!’ roared Marsden.

‘Thank you, Doctor. I am aware.’

‘No, no. I’ve lost my cigar again.’

Lestrade was sitting in his office when the letter arrived. He had his feet in a bowl of hot water and a towel over his head. For three days he had lost all sense of taste and smell. For three nights he had not slept. Sir Melville McNaghten had told him to go home, but he was too busy. The ever-solicitous Miss McNaghten had sent him hot toddies and cordials. Lestrade had responded with alternate shivers and fevers. In his bed at night he felt himself consumed by the flames which in seconds had engulfed Harriet Wemyss. In the day, he felt as dead and cold as the man in the Chine.

It was unquestionably another letter in the series he realised, as he laid the towel aside. A click of his fingers brought Constable Dew with the goose-grease. He looked at the grey slime in the cup and sent Dew away. A mourning letter – the third such he had received. The same untraceable postmark, the same untraceable typewriter. The same untraceable verse.

Lestrade slammed his fist on the desk. He was being played with. This was a game of cat and mouse and he didn’t care for it. Three murders, scattered over the country. Bizarre, vicious. What were the links? The common factors? Poetry of a sort, sent to the Yard. Sent to him. Lestrade had come to regard whoever was out there doing these thing as a personal enemy. This was a duel of wits and so far, Lestrade had come off second-best.

Three of Spades

‘I do think Dew will do, sir,’ Lestrade was saying.

‘That’s easy for you to say, Lestrade,’ McNaghten was answering, ‘but this new chap is damned clever. His references are excellent. Dew is all right, but he’ll never amount to anything. No finesse. No style.’

‘But Eton, sir? A copper from Eton?’

‘Oh, I know it’s not the usual recruiting source, but you mustn’t be an inverted snob, Lestrade. He may not have had the advantages of the Blackheath crammer, but you mustn’t hold that against him.’

‘I’ll try not to hold anything against him,’ said Lestrade reaching the door.

‘Bandicoot?’ repeated Lestrade.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Sir?’

Lestrade paced the floor. He looked again at the young man before him. He stood, Lestrade guessed, at six-feet-four, broad, handsome even. His suit was crisp in grey check and his bowler perched neatly in the crook of his arm. Lestrade was temporarily lost for words. ‘Your name is Bandicoot?’

Bandicoot began to take just a pinch of umbrage. ‘Bandicoot is a well-established name in some parts of Somerset, Inspector. I, for example, have never met a Lestrade before.’

‘Well, you have now.’ Lestrade’s morning was not going well. Twice on his way in he had collided with the scaffolding still around New Scotland Yard which was in the final stages of being built. His tea resembled something one of the Reverend Wemyss’ cats might have done. And now this – a novice constable from a public school. Lestrade sat at his desk and crossed his ankles on the polished, uncluttered top.

‘How long have you been in the Force?’

‘A little under one year, sir.’

Lestrade looked wide-eyed in the direction of McNaghten’s glass-fronted door away down the corridor.

‘Have you ever seen a body?’

‘I’m not exactly a virgin, Inspector.’ Bandicoot found himself smirking, a little surprised by Lestrade’s question.

‘A
dead
body, idiot!’ Lestrade shot upright, bringing his hand down on the desk.

‘No, sir.’ Bandicoot’s smirk vanished and his eyes faced front.

‘What made you join H Division, Bandicoot?’ Lestrade’s tone was now patience itself. ‘No, don’t answer that. Why did you join the police?’

‘Well, sir, it’s rather silly really.’

Lestrade somehow knew it would be.

‘I joined the Officer Training Corps at Eton. A few chaps ragged me into believing it was the Police Officer Training Corps. It was three years before I found out otherwise and by then I’d rather set my heart on it. In the process I became something of a crack shot, a first-rate swordsman – and my military fortifications defy belief.’

‘I’m sure they do, Bandicoot, but, you see, we don’t have much call for a
beau sabreur
at Scotland Yard. Tell me, I always thought gentlemen wore top hats, especially Old Etonian gentlemen.’

‘Oh, we do, sir, but never before luncheon.’

Lestrade stood corrected.

‘Can you make tea?’ he asked.

‘Er … I think so. You use one of those kettle things, don’t you?’

Lestrade applauded with a slow, staccato handclap. ‘I’ve always found it helps. In my outer office you will find a constable. Ask him to show you how. And then, when you’ve made me a cup, I’ll show you what a filing cabinet looks like and we’ll start some
real
police work.’

Bandicoot was about to go, when Lestrade caught his arm. His stare down the corridor caused the younger man to freeze as well. An ample young woman in electric blue was bustling towards them. Lestrade flattened himself against the wall, then raced for the window and the fire escape.

‘Bandicoot,’ he hissed as he was departing, ‘convince Miss McNaghten with that Etonian charm of yours that I am away on a case for a few days, and I’ll make you the most famous detective in London.’

It was the beginning of the season and London was already full of weasel-eyed Mamas and blushing daughters; gauche, flat-footed youths and lecherous old men. After the severe winter that had passed, the fashionable areas of Belgravia and Mayfair came alive again in the endless round of balls and soirees. But this season was even more colourful than the last, for a new celebrity had arrived – the ex-slave Atlanta Washington. The press reported his every move. He had been made an honorary member of White’s and Crockford’s, had stayed at Sandringham with the Prince and Princess of Wales and was rumoured to be having an affair with all three of the Duchess of Blessington’s daughters as well as the Duchess herself. He was not without his critics, however, for there were many who shared their white American contemporaries’ views that an ‘uppity nigger’ had no place in polite white folks’ society. Washington revelled in the limelight. He wrote equally offensive replies to the offensive letters in
The Times
, and when spat upon in the street, proceeded to horsewhip the culprits in full view of lookers-on and at least four Metropolitan policemen, apparently cowed by the prospect of a wealthy, educated coon. When they at last moved in, Washington accompanied them willingly enough – in fact, led the way – to Cannon Row Police Station where he was bound over to keep the peace. Three men in particular hounded him – the three men whom Lestrade was called in to see in Battersea Park on a Wednesday morning early in June. The three men had two things in common – they were all dead and they were all covered from head to foot in black paint.

Their identity did not become apparent until the paint had been removed, and long before their cold corpses had been laid out for final examination by the Scotland Yard surgeon, their families were screaming out for revenge, or if that could not be arranged, justice. McNaghten was being pressurised from above. All three men came from eminently respectable families. Every effort must be made, no stone must be left unturned, etc. etc.. Lestrade had heard it all before, but he needed no exhortations. He had received no letter as yet but he didn’t need to wait. This was precisely the sort of bizarre behaviour he had come to expect. It was another in the series, all right, and the body count had now reached six.

‘Asphyxiation was certainly the cause of death, Lestrade,’ the surgeon told him. ‘These men had the pores of their skin filled with paint and it was that which killed them. Lungs alone won’t do it. The skin must breathe too.’

‘How long would it take?’

‘Hours, days possibly. You can see the marks on their ankles and wrists where they were tied. Ghastly way to go.’

‘They weren’t killed in Battersea Park, then?’

‘Oh, no. They were placed there, but they died somewhere else.’

Once again, Lestrade had his means. He lacked any notion of those other essentials of the detective’s art – opportunity and motive. He looked at the names of his victims on his desk. Their families and friends would run into hundreds. It was time to despatch constables, but constables had notoriously flat feet and lacked finesse. He could give Dew and Bandicoot the basics, but the serious questioning must once again come from him.

Bandicoot peered over Lestrade’s shoulder. ‘Edward Coke-Hythe!’ he shouted. Lestrade hurled the contents of his tea cup over his hand and rushed to the restroom as decorously as he could so as not to alert the whole of Scotland Yard to his accident. Bandicoot pursued him.

‘A
little
more care,’ hissed Lestrade, wincing as he ran his hand under the cold tap. The water suddenly stopped with a harsh, gurgling thump.

‘Damn this new plumbing,’ the inspector snapped. ‘Bandicoot, get me some bicarbonate of soda and hurry, man. I’m about to lose the skin off my hand.’

When the excitement was over, Lestrade placed his bandaged hand carefully on the desk. Dew brought them tea this time and Lestrade made sure Bandicoot was in front of him as he drank it. ‘Why,’ he began, much calmer now, ‘when reading over my shoulder, did you cry out the name of one of these victims?’

‘I know him, sir. Or, rather, I knew him. Edward Coke-Hythe. I was his fag at Eton. Capital sort of chap. Captain of Fives – and a Double First at Cambridge.’

‘Popular?’

‘Oh, rather, sir. Poor old Teddy. Dear, this will be a blow to his uncle.’

‘Uncle?’

‘Doctor John Watson.’

‘Watson? As in Watson of Baker Street?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘I know him. I have been an acquaintance of his associate, Sherlock Holmes, for some years.’

‘Ah, the Great Detective.’ Bandicoot beamed.

‘If you say so,’ replied Lestrade. ‘What about these others? William Spender and Arthur Fitz.’

‘Fitz what?’ asked Bandicoot jovially.

‘I’ll do the jokes, Constable,’ murmured Lestrade.

‘No, sir. Sorry. They’re not Etonians, or at least, they must have been years my senior if they were.’

Lestrade shook his head. ‘They were all in their twenties, healthy, strong young men. All right, Bandicoot. Time you won your spurs. If you knew Coke-Hythe, get round to his family – they have a town house in Portman Square. Be circumspect, but find out the deceased’s movements on or about last Tuesday. Contacts, friends, enemies. It’ll probably mean some shoe-leather before this case is over. Oh, and Bandicoot …’ the constable turned in the doorway, ‘it’s nearly luncheon. Don’t forget your topper!’

Lestrade took the Underground to Baker Street Station and a brisk walk to 221B. Outside he saw a wizened old flower seller, toothless, haggard, with iron-grey hair matted over an iron-grey face. ‘Pretty posies, sir?’ she squawked at him.

‘Really, Mr Holmes, what would I be doing with posies?’

The flower-seller stood up to his full six feet and threw the matted hair savagely on to the pavement. ‘Damn you, Lestrade, it took me nearly two hours to get that lot on.’

‘Sorry, Mr Holmes. Is the good doctor in?’

‘Who?’

‘Watson.’

‘I suppose so. Tell Mrs Hudson to put the kettle on, will you? I’ve sleuthed enough for one day.’ He set to, sorting out his merchandise, while Lestrade went in search of his quarry. Mrs Hudson, the housekeeper, dutifully scuttled away to do her master’s bidding. Watson was asleep over the newspaper in front of a roaring fire.

‘Doctor Watson.’ Lestrade cleared his throat. The doctor did not move. Again, ‘Doctor Watson.’ Louder still, ‘Watson.’ Then, in a stage whisper, ‘Your publishers are here.’ Watson leapt to his feet, newspapers flying over the carpet.

‘Damn you, Lestrade.’ It began to sound like the refrain from a phonograph. ‘That blighter Conan Doyle keeps publishing articles under my name and all you can do is make jokes at my expense. Can’t the law touch him?’

‘Whichever of you refers to me as “imbecile” and “ferret-faced” will discover what the law can do soon enough,’ Lestrade felt it his duty to remind him. ‘In the meantime, I fear there is more pressing business.’

Watson replaced himself on the armchair and the papers on his lap. ‘Ah, yes, my nephew. Dreadful, dreadful.’

‘My condolences, of course. What do you have for me?’

‘Not a great deal, Lestrade. We are not a close family. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t seen Edward for some years – not since his fifteenth birthday, in fact. Recently, of course, one has read various unfortunate things in the papers. This business of that black fellow, that slave johnnie. But I could have seen it coming.’

‘Oh?’

‘At Eton he was something of a hellion, I believe. His father threatened to cut him off, stop his allowance and so on, but incidents still occurred. There was some business with a tweenie and talk of a missing hundred pounds. I didn’t pry too deeply.’

‘Did your nephew have enemies, Doctor?’

‘Dozens, I should think. My family have a knack of annoying people, Inspector.’

‘You never spoke a truer word, Watson.’ Holmes entered with armfuls of flowers, wigs etc.

‘Good God, Holmes, you look damn silly in that frock,’ Watson chortled.

Mrs Hudson brought the tea. ‘Here, Holmes,’ Watson went on, ‘you’d better be mother. Ha ha.’ His laugh fell a little hollow in the face of Holmes’ cheerless scowl.

‘Look at this fire, Lestrade,’ he said. ‘Flaming June and Watson has a roaring fire.’

‘I’ve been in India, Holmes. I feel the cold more than somewhat.’