Lestrade and the Brigade
Page 1
Lestrade and
the Brigade
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Five
Table of Contents
Title Page
Lestrade and | the Brigade | The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Five
M. J. TROW
Caveat lectorum – Let the Reader Beware! | From Police Constable to Political Correctness
❖ A Day To Remember ❖
❖ The New Broom ❖
❖ Beastie ❖
❖ To the Lighthouse ❖
❖ Hell Broth ❖
❖ Daisy, Daisy ❖
❖ Soldier Old, Soldier New ❖
❖ Fatima’s ❖
❖ The Back of Beyond ❖
❖ Mad Houses ❖
❖ Balaclava Revisited ❖
❖ End Game ❖
❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖ | 1879 | ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’
❖ The Sign of Nine ❖ | 1886 | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’ | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’ | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’
❖ The Ripper ❖ | 1888 | ‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’
❖ The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade ❖ | 1891 | ‘Such as these shall never look | At this pretty picture book.’
❖ The Brigade ❖ | 1893 | ‘And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade.’
❖ The Dead Man’s Hand ❖ | 1895 | ‘There was no 9.38 from Penge.’
❖ The Guardian Angel ❖ | 1897/8 | ‘And a naughty boy was he ...’
❖ The Hallowed House ❖ | 1901 | ‘Quid omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur.’*
❖ The Gift of the Prince ❖ | 1903 | ‘Lang may your lum reek, Lestrade.’
❖ The Mirror of Murder ❖ | 1906 | Beyond the mountains of the moon ...
❖ The Deadly Game ❖ | 1908 | ‘The Games a-foot’
❖ The Leviathan ❖ | 1910 | ‘To our wives and sweethearts – may they never meet!’
❖ The Brother of Death ❖
❖ Lestrade and the Devil’s Own ❖
❖ The Magpie ❖ | 1920 | ‘There was a Front; | But damn’d if we knew where!’
❖ Lestrade and the Kiss of Horus ❖ | 1922 | ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
❖ Lestrade and the Giant Rat of Sumatra ❖ | 1935 | ‘So, Sholto, let me and you be wipers | Of scores out with all men, especially pipers!’
❖ The World of Inspector Lestrade ❖
Lestrade and
the Brigade
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Five
M. J. TROW
Copyright © 2021 M. J. Trow.
ISBN 978-1-913762-78-0
First published in 1992 as ‘Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade’
This edition published in 2020 by BLKDOG Publishing.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Andy Johnson.
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The moral right of the author has been asserted.
www.blkdogpublishing.com
Caveat lectorum – Let the Reader Beware!
From Police Constable to Political Correctness
In 1891, the year in which The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade is set, Thomas Hardy had his Tess of the d’Urbervilles published in serial form by The Graphic, one of the country’s leading magazines. The editor was not happy with certain scenes which he felt would upset Hardy’s genteel readership. In one instance, when Angel Clare has to carry Tess over a minor flood, Hardy had to write in a handy wheelbarrow so that Tess and Angel had no bodily contact. When it came to Tess’s seduction by the dastardly Alec d’Urberville, the pair go into a wood and a series of dots follows ...
Even with all this whitewash, reviews of the revised version were mixed and it was many years before some of the Grundyisms* were restored to their original glory and Tess of the D’Urbervilles was established as another masterpiece of one of Britain’s greatest writers.
In the Lestrade series, I hope I have not offended anyone, but the job of an historical novelist – and of an historian – is to try to portray an accurate impression of the time, not some politically correct Utopian idyll which is not only fake news, but which bores the pants off the reader. Politicians routinely apologize for the past – historical novelists don’t. we have different views from the Victorians, who in turn had different views from the Jacobeans, who in turn ... you get the point. When the eighteenth century playwright/actor Colley Cibber rewrote Shakespeare – for example, giving King Lear a happy ending! – no doubt he thought he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t.
That said, I don’t think that a reader today will find much that is offensive in the Lestrade series. So, read on and enjoy.
*From Mrs Grundy, a priggish character in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough, 1798.
Reviews for the Lestrade Series
‘THIS IS LESTRADE THE intelligent, the intuitive bright light of law and order in a wicked Victorian world.’
Punch
‘A wickedly funny treat.’
Stephen Walsh, Oxford Times
‘... M.J. Trow proves emphatically that crime and comedy can mix.’
Val McDermid Manchester Evening News
‘Good enough to make a grown man weep.’
Yorkshire Post
‘Splendidly shaken cocktail of Victorian fact and fiction ... Witty, literate and great fun.’
Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘One of the funniest in a very funny series ... lovely lunacy.’
Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
‘High-spirited period rag with the Yard’s despised flatfoot wiping the great Sherlock’s eye ...’
Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
‘Barrowloads of nineteenth century history ... If you like your humour chirpy, you’ll find this sings.’
H.R.F Keating, Daily Telegraph
‘Richly humorous, Lestrade has quickly become one of fiction’s favourite detectives.’
Yorkshire Evening Post
‘No one, no one at all, writes like Trow.’
Yorkshire Post
❖ A Day To Remember ❖
❖ The New Broom ❖
❖ Beastie ❖
❖ To the Lighthouse ❖
❖ Hell Broth ❖
❖ Daisy, Daisy ❖
❖ Soldier Old, Soldier New ❖
❖ Fatima’s ❖
❖ The Back of Beyond ❖
❖ Mad Houses ❖
❖ Balaclava Revisited ❖
❖ End Game ❖
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
❖ A Day To Remember ❖
A
lex Dunn took Edwin Cook’s hard-boiled egg and peeled it carefully. He watched the pieces fall away beyond his stirrup leather and munched the egg gratefully. He’d had no breakfast, nor indeed any dinner the night before. His stomach was telling him loudly that his throat had been cut. Then, suddenly, there was a stir r
ight front and he wished he hadn’t made that mental analogy. A staff officer – Louis Nolan, wasn’t it? – galloped past the waiting lines to where Lucan sat his horse. He was the fourth galloper that morning, but Louis Nolan usually meant business. Dunn finished his egg and turned in the saddle. Away to his left, Roger Palmer was scribbling a note on the smooth surface of his sabretache.
Dear Father, Palmer’s pencil was a stub and his hands were cold. Just a hurried note . . . His pencil snapped. He tucked the paper in his sabretache and followed Dunn’s gaze along the line. Harrington Trevelyan was wrapping his sword knot around his wrist. Palmer did not approve of Trevelyan’s forage cap. It was not regulation and Palmer was ever a man for regulations.
Henry Wilkin was delighted. He’d never really known why he’d become a surgeon. Up to the armpits in other people all day, what sort of life was that? A serving officer now, that was different. Mind you, if Yates hadn’t reported sick, he wouldn’t have been here this morning. If Nolan’s gallop meant action he’d have to rely on his sword because his bullet pouch was full of laudanum – the legacy of a medical man. He really must quit the medical service. As if to take the first step in that direction, he urged his horse forward to the front of F Troop. Cook glared at him, snorting something about damned quacks, and Wilkin backed up a little. George Loy Smith was too old a hand to let a horse’s arse in his face bother him. He was adjusting his stirrup leather when Wilkin attempted his backward manoeuvre. He straightened up and tilted his busby back into position, tucking the chain under his great auburn beard and snarled at Bill Bentley to spit out his tobacco. No soldier of his troop was going into action with black spittle on his chin. Bentley hadn’t really heard him, until he felt the sergeant-major’s hand sting him smartly on the shoulder. He had been day-dreaming. Today was his Emma’s birthday. She was eleven. And Bentley had been remembering the day of her baptism at Kilmainham. He had been a private soldier then, but proud in his regimentals carrying the baby to the font. She had been the most gorgeous baby in the world, snuggling into her dad’s pelisse.
Seth Bond sat on the wing of C Troop. He was shivering from cholera and couldn’t keep his horse still. He tried to keep his mind occupied by watching the altercation at the front. The staff officer was waving his hand behind him, scarlet in the face and defiant. Lord Look-On seemed bemused, uncomprehending. The staff officer wheeled away to join the Seventeenth to the left. It was the first time Bond had seen the generals actually talking to each other – Look-On and the Noble Yachtsman. He couldn’t catch more than a muffled conversation, what with the champ of bits and the muttering of the men behind him.
John Kilvert on his right was wondering why he had enlisted at all. He too had spent most of the night throwing up over his boots and was glad no one had offered him any breakfast. He wished he was back in Nottingham, selling wines and spirits. He wasn’t likely to become mayor now, and the chance faded by the moment as he saw Cardigan walk his chestnut to the centre of the brigade.
It was not Cardigan’s appearance that worried William Perkins, unless of course His Lordship were to place a beady blue eye down his trumpet this morning. He had traded some of his French photographs for Bentley’s tobacco, but was dismayed to find that Bentley had used the photographs to fix a gap in his tent. He was even more dismayed to find that someone – he thought immediately of Jim Hodges – had wedged a plug into his mouthpiece. Still, Joseph Keates was trumpet-major for the Eleventh. If called upon to sound, he would have to hope Keates would cover for him. In the noise of an advance, no one could tell.
William Pennington was new to all this. Was the Mercantile Marine, he mused now as he sat his horse in B Troop, so awful that he should have left them? Perhaps it was the porter in Dublin that day in January, perhaps it was the glittering uniform of the Bringer, perhaps the bounty of £9, perhaps . . . but the moment for self-doubt had gone. John Parkinson nudged him in the elbow and nodded to the front. Cardigan nodded stiffly to John Douglas, tall and silent in the saddle in the centre of the Eleventh. They were going. Alex Dunn slid his sword upwards so that its extra three inches flashed in the sun breaking weakly on the tattered brigade below. Loy Smith barked as he saw that idiot Hope gallop into place to his right. The cripple was riding a troophorse of the Greys. Where the bloody hell had he been? Having a fit somewhere, he supposed. Well, he’d give him hell for it when this was over.
Stillnesses and sudden hushes don’t happen, Pennington was telling himself. But he was sitting in the middle of one anyway. Ahead stretched a long valley, parchment-coloured sand and rubble. On the hills to the right, a line of guns, Russian guns. On the left, more of the same. What was ahead? He couldn’t see, but he felt panic grip his heart. Loy Smith turned in the saddle.
‘All set, Mr Pennington?’ and he gave a fatherly glance to Edwin Hughes, sixteen years old and less than regulation height. He’ll outlive us all, the sergeant-major thought to himself.
‘The Brigade will advance,’ came Cardigan’s hoarse, chesty bark. ‘First squadron of the Seventeeth Lancers direct.’
And the shrill notes of the trumpet drowned his words. For a second, three, perhaps four, the Eleventh, Prince Albert’s Own Hussars sat motionless, each man a prisoner of his private thoughts and fears. Then they broke forward, shifting position as on the parade ground at Maidstone, at Lucan’s order for the Eleventh to fall back and the Seventeenth to take the lead. The dark-coated Lancers fronted the brigade, their pennons snapping in the wind that crossed the valley. It was the noise that Pennington remembered most, the snorting of the horses and the jingle of bits and from time to time above the incessant sound of hoofs, the growling of Loy Smith to his men.
‘Draw swords.’ It was Colonel Douglas, freeing his own weapon as Cardigan increased his pace. He could see the leaders – Mayow and FitzMaxse – beyond the line of the Seventeenth. The swords of the Eleventh shot clear.
‘At the slope,’ Loy Smith reminded his troop. Bentley cradled the blade against his shoulder and tightened his rein. They were at the trot now, rising and falling as a man. Still the lances were upright. Still Cardigan was leading. Like a church, thought Palmer. He moved neither to left, nor right, the sun flashing on the gold lace of his pelisse. He felt the line quicken, following the last of the Brudenells.
Loy Smith saw it first, as his wise old eyes saw any irregular movements in the line. The staff officer, the one who had brought the last order, was spurring ahead, out from the left wing of the Seventeenth, chasing Cardigan, but cutting across to the right. He was waving his sword arm and yelling, but Loy Smith couldn’t catch the words. The Seventeenth began to waver. They were turning. Douglas checked his horse. Dunn began to pull his charger to the right. Was the Brigade turning? There was no trumpet call. Why wasn’t there a trumpet call?
A whistle, moaning high above the wind. Louder. Louder. A crash and a burst of flame and smoke. The staff officer crumpled, hooked over like a crab in the saddle, but his right arm was still upright. The terrified horse swerved, wheeled round, reins hanging loose, and charged back through the lines. The Seventeenth negotiated the mêlée and the lines reformed. One by one the serrefiles and troop sergeants and the centre men saw it and heard the unearthly scream. What was left of Louis Nolan flashed past them all. His face was a livid white, his eyes sightless and his lungs and ribs visible where his gold-laced jacket had been.
‘Look to your dressing,’ Loy Smith reminded his troop, knowing the damage that sight could do to his callow boys. The moment was past. Nolan had gone and the Thirteenth saw him fall under their hoofs.
The trumpet sounded the gallop. Swords came up from the slope, ready and vertical in men’s fists. The crash of artillery fire increased, drifting along the lines of horsemen. And those lines were steady now. Dunn held his sword arm out to his side to correct the pace of the horsemen behind him. Was Cardigan mad? he found himself wondering. The enemy was visible now, despite the smoke – a row, perhaps a double row of reeking guns ahead, more on the hills on
each side. It was a trap. A valley with a closed end. The Seventeenth’s lances came down, level, thrusting, twelve feet of ash and steel slicing through the air. The wind cut through the horsemen, each man now bracing himself for the impact. The roar of cantering horses moving into a gallop drowned the noise of the guns. But in the centre, where Pennington and Parkinson were riding knee to knee, the guns were evident. Charles Allured, on Parkinson’s right, went down, his horse bucking and screaming. On Loy Smith’s flank, Joseph Bruton slumped over the neck of his troophorse. Isaac Middleton caught him momentarily, but lost his grip and the soldier fell.
‘Mend your pace. Watch your dressing.’ Loy Smith’s calming words rang out above the slaughter. A shot smashed into a horse’s head at Bond’s elbow and the blood spattered over his jacket and face. He could hear Robert Bubb to his left crying as his horse went down.
How long, thought Douglas, how long can we endure this? The Seventeenth were closing ranks in front of him, as the murderous shot tore into them.
‘Keep together, Eleventh!’ he shouted, but knew as always it was his troop sergeants who were the steadying influence, the backbone. The roar of hoofs and cannon was unbearable. Horses were racing now, vying with the riderless mounts to get to the Russian guns and silence them. Cardigan had vanished into the smoke, the lances of the Seventeenth jabbing the blackness ahead. Behind Bentley, Pennington’s horse staggered, reeling to the left. Pennington struggled to keep him upright, but couldn’t see where he was going. Men were standing in their stirrups, sword arms extended, yelling themselves hoarse in the confusion and noise. Loy Smith swore he heard Hope, that mad Welsh bastard, singing ‘Men of Harlech’, but it could have been Keates’ trumpet notes, lost in the din. David Purcell was blown out of the saddle on his right, and he saw Tom Roberts fall back, clutching his leg.