Lestrade and the Brigade

by M. J. Trow

  ‘You say it was sighted here?’

  The sergeant nodded and, attempting to modify his broad Cornish for Lestrade’s benefit, replied, ‘Three times, sir. Once there, in the woods. Once on the banks behind us and the parson seen it in the crypt.’

  ‘In the crypt?’ Lestrade was incredulous.

  ‘’Ere’s parson now.’ The sergeant indicated an elderly gentleman striding manfully with the aid of a stick over the earthworks.

  ‘Neolithic,’ shouted the vicar.

  ‘Lestrade,’ the inspector answered.

  ‘Ah, yes. My name is Ashburton.’ Lestrade must have misheard earlier. ‘Yes, this earthwork,’ the vicar went on. ‘It’s Neolithic, you know. Where the church stands now was probably part of a Celtic fortress, of prodigious size, wouldn’t you say?’

  Lestrade would.

  ‘If you’ve finished with the constables, Inspector, I can take you and show you around. And then you’re welcome to partake of some supper. My good lady wife makes a marvellous Cornish pasty.’

  Marvellous it was, but the Reverend Ashburton’s brandy was better. In the mellow study of the parsonage that evening, Lestrade found himself becoming mellower with each moment. But he did have a job to do.

  ‘Can we go over it again, sir?’

  ‘Certainly, Inspector, but tell me, are you familiar with Gilbert White of Selborne?’

  ‘Gilbert White the forger?’

  The vicar chuckled. ‘Well, he may have been, but he is best remembered as a naturalist. A long time before all this nonsense of Darwin’s and Huxley’s, the Reverend White collected specimens and made drawings of all the flora and fauna of his native Selborne. With far less skill, I have attempted to do much the same here in Mawnan. Around you, you see the fruits of these labours.’

  Lestrade had thought the plethora of birds’ eggs, stuffed newts and mounted butterflies a little zoological for an Anglican priest, but it took all sorts.

  ‘I am familiar with all the animals native to Cornwall and Devon, Inspector, but I have never seen anything like the creature I saw in my churchyard last week.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘As I said, it was dusk. I had just finished bell practice. Are you a campanologist?’

  ‘Politics aren’t encouraged on the Force, sir.’

  Ashburton gave Lestrade an odd look. ‘Anyway, I was crossing the South Gateway – the entrance to the Old Fort, that is – when I heard this . . . well, unearthly scream. Fortified by the fact that the Lord was with me, I went to investigate. I was carrying a stout walking stick at the time. I heard noises in the shrubbery and saw a shape – huge.’ The vicar swigged his brandy. ‘It was a lion, Lestrade.’

  ‘Have you had a travelling circus pass this way?’

  ‘Er . . . I don’t know. I don’t follow such things. If there was a circus, I assume Exeter would be its likely venue. You think the beast escaped from a circus?’

  ‘Unless you or Gilbert White know of Mawnan or Selborne lions, sir, I am forced to that conclusion. What I cannot understand is why I should be sent here.’

  ‘Inspector,’ the Reverend Ashburton refilled Lestrade’s glass. ‘Although I would not wish you to repeat this to a living soul, I do not have the greatest respect for the County Constabulary. It was I who contacted Scotland Yard, although, I must admit, I did not think anyone would come. Over thirty sheep have been slaughtered, Inspector. Most of my parishioners are farmers. Their life blood is being drained away on the moors.’

  A commotion in the hall brought the two men to their feet. Sergeant Winch of the Cornwall Constabulary almost fell in through the door.

  ‘Sorry, sir, Mr Ashburton, to disturb you, sir. Inspector. You’d better come. The thing’s attacked again, over at Constantine.’

  Lestrade looked at the vicar.

  ‘A village about four miles away. We can take my trap.’

  ‘No need, sir. I’ve got the station wagon,’ offered the sergeant.

  The night had chilled. April was like that. Winch, Lestrade and the vicar found themselves bouncing off each other in the cheerless interior of the Maria. They jolted, past midnight, through the sleeping Cornish countryside, through the deserted main street of the curiously named Constantine, to the scene of the slaughter.

  ‘I hope you’ve got a strong stomach, Inspector,’ was Winch’s parting shot as he jumped out of the Maria. With the aid of bull’s-eyes, the little party stumbled and cursed – apologising to the vicar all the way.

  ‘Over here!’ a voice called in the darkness.

  Lestrade and his party scrambled over the ling to a crouching figure.

  ‘Good God.’ The vicar crossed himself. Rather a Papist gesture, Lestrade thought.

  Spread-eagled on the escarpment lay the body of a man. In the wavering light of the bull’s-eyes it was obvious his throat had been torn out. There was blood everywhere, from the chin to the waist.

  ‘I thought you told me lambs had been killed.’ The sergeant rounded on the crouching figure. ‘You didn’t say nothing ’bout a man.’

  ‘No, no, you blitherin’ idiot,’ the other riposted. ‘I told you Lamb was killed. William Lamb, my shepherd.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Lestrade, content to leave the body until later. William Lamb was going nowhere by himself.

  ‘Who are you?’ The other man was equally straightforward.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh.’ The attitude changed. ‘I’m John Pemberton. I own this farm. William Lamb, ’e works . . . worked for me.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was on my rounds. Lambin’ time is always busy. Most of ’em have borned by now, but it pays to watch, crows and foxes an’ all. Well, I was just goin’ home, when I heard this snarling and snapping, then a scream. My pony shied and by the time I got up here, William was lyin’ like this.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘No. But ’e were goin’.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Well, it were difficult to hear . . . but . . .’

  ‘But? Come on, man. Out with it.’

  ‘’E said one word, Inspector. Tiger.’

  Lestrade looked at the assembled company one by one, as if for confirmation of what he had heard.

  ‘“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,”’ the Reverend Ashburton was soliloquising,

  ‘“In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”’

  ‘A tiger?’ repeated Lestrade.

  ‘It could have been,’ the vicar answered.

  Instinctively, the men on the hillside huddled closer together. The bull’s-eyes threw shafts of light over the ling and tufts of grass.

  ‘Whatever it was, it’s gone now.’ Pemberton motioned to the ghostly grey shapes of sheep, munching, calm and oblivious in the distance.

  ‘Even so, we’d better not risk spending a night in the open.’ Lestrade longed for the claustrophobia of the city. ‘Sergeant, get the blanket from the Maria. We’ll take him back to your station. Mr Pemberton, we shall need a statement. And, Sergeant . . .’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘By morning, I shall have a note for your Chief Constable. We’ll need guns issued to your men.’

  THEY LAID WILLIAM LAMB out, appropriately enough, on the slab in the local butcher’s shop. The Sanitary Inspector was a rare enough visitor and as it was Sunday, no one was buying their viands that day. As the bell of Mawnan Church summoned the faithful to prayer, under the solemn auspices of the Reverend Ashburton, Lestrade stood alongside the deceased.

  He was used to the sights. A hardened copper like him, he’d seen it all. Forget it’s human, he told himself for the umpteenth time. It’s a job. That’s all. Do it. Have done. He laid his bowler down in the throat wound. It just fitted. Pretty massive jaws must have done that. Tiger? Perhaps. Lion? Perhaps. There were scratches, deep, parallel on the chest and face. There was something else. Hairs. Not Lamb’s. Too c
oarse, too light in colour. Sort of tan. He held them up to the light. Tan colour with a hint of darker brown at one end. He put his nose to the corpse. A smell of wet grass, of sheep (the smell which had haunted Lestrade since he arrived) and something else. Was he sniffing tiger? Lion? Always the same vicious circle. The plain truth was the men of the Yard were not well equipped to deal with big cat spoors. Their training did not give them the edge against the call of the wild. Dead lurkers in Seven Dials, Gonophs in Whitechapel. All that was in a day’s work, but tigers in Cornwall? No, that strained credulity. It just didn’t fit.

  He folded Lamb’s arms, limp now after rigor mortis, across what was left of his chest. He looked briefly at his face. He was an old man. Small, weak. A curious scar ran across his forehead and dipped across his left eye. Not a recent wound. Not the mark of the beast. That was old. Years old.

  There was no camera available at Mawnan police station. Lestrade doubted if there was room in the place to set up a tripod. He had sent for one from Falmouth. A photographer would chronicle the injuries later that day.

  Lestrade had a mug of tea with Sergeant Winch before returning to the parsonage. He left word with the station to send a message to the Yard to tell Frost of the developments. His return would be delayed. On the way, the inspector met the faithful returning, shocked and gabbling, from church.

  ‘Inspector,’ Ashburton hailed him. ‘Have you made any headway since last night?’

  ‘A little, sir.’

  ‘May I introduce my brother, Percival?’

  Lestrade found himself blinking in disbelief. The two men before him were virtually identical. Percival was a little taller, leaner, certainly more tanned.

  ‘Sir.’ Lestrade collected himself.

  ‘Yes, it has that effect on most people. Percival is recently back from Australia. Sheep farming.’

  Lestrade did not have time for pleasantries.

  ‘Did I see a microscope in your study, Mr Ashburton?’

  ‘Yes, you did, Inspector. Do you wish to use it? Have you a clue?’

  ‘We have those gadgets at the Yard, sir. Unfortunately, I do not know quite how they operate . . .’

  ‘That doesn’t present a problem, Inspector. Be my guest. But do tell me. What have you found?’

  Lestrade produced the tuft of hairs from the paper bag in his pocket.

  ‘These.’

  The brothers Ashburton peered closer. Percival broke away, a little sharply, Lestrade thought.

  ‘Must be going, Thomas. Inspector,’ and he tipped his hat.

  ‘Oh, really? Well, don’t forget tonight. Dinner after evensong. The inspector will be there, won’t you, Inspector?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, sir, but I could not impose . . .’

  ‘Nonsense. Come on. Modern Science awaits,’ and linking his arm through Lestrade’s, the vicar led the way beyond the Neolithic earthwork, striding for the parsonage.

  OVER THE VICAR’S BRANDY that night, Percival Ashburton became decidedly morose. Apparently, although there was money to be made sheep-farming in Australia, a few sharp years of drought and endless attacks by dingoes had taken their toll. It took Lestrade a while to realise that the Alice Springs Ashburton had left behind was not an old flame. But the night was drawing on and the conversation was moving to the altar, how Cardinal Manning had gone too far, and the significance of the ivy in Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World, all of which sailed sublimely over the inspector’s head.

  He made his excuses and decided to walk to the inn where he was staying. It was a chill night after a warm day, but the moon was bright and shone silver on the ribbon of road ahead of him. Dogs barked in the distance, answered as in a dream by the remote call of the curlews and the sibilance of the sea. Of these, Lestrade recognised only the dogs, and he didn’t like dogs. The Reverend Ashburton’s microscope had not proved very helpful. It showed what Lestrade had thought it would – a very large tuft of hairs. But he was absolutely no nearer tracing the animal from which it came, still less catching it. And what had possessed Nimrod Frost to send him on this wild goose chase? It couldn’t be a wild goose, could it?’

  Lost in thought, it was a little while before Lestrade noticed him. It was only the moon that betrayed his presence, for he made no sound. A wizened little figure, small, like a monkey, was moving at a trot along the road towards him. As he neared, Lestrade saw that he wore no shoes. He also saw he had loose, straggly hair and a bone through his nose. Hardly a native of Cornwall, Lestrade mused and hailed him. The little man stopped and straightened up, his flat nose level with Lestrade’s tie-knot. He grinned broadly, a row of yellow teeth appearing in the burnt umber of his face.

  ‘’Ello, boss.’

  Lestrade had never heard an accent like it.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Uku, boss. Mis’ Ashburton’s abo.’

  ‘Abo?’ Lestrade was lost.

  ‘I ’is man, boss. ’Is slave.’

  ‘Slave?’

  ‘Yes, boss. I do work for Mis’ Ashburton.’

  The light of realisation began to dawn on Lestrade’s knitted brow.

  ‘You are an Aborigine? From Australia?’

  ‘Australia. Yes, boss. I come back with Mis’ Ashburton. I was hunter in bush.’

  ‘Were you, now?’ Lestrade was interested. ‘Can you track for me?’

  ‘Track? Track what, boss?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lestrade admitted.

  ‘You crazy, boss?’

  ‘Probably. Where are you going now?’

  ‘Message for Mis’ Ashburton, boss. I take to brother’s house.’

  ‘All right – er – Uku, is it? If you come here tomorrow early, at dawn – I want you to track for me – I will give you . . .’ he fumbled in his pocket, ‘a shilling.’

  The abo snatched the coin, bit it and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘All right, boss. Sunarise. ’Ere. But you crazy, boss. No dingo ’ere,’ and he padded off into the night as silently as he had come.

  No dingo, eh? From the conversation earlier in the evening, it seemed as though the Australian wild dogs could easily bring down a sheep. And a man? Particularly an old man, slow, weak, a little deaf, maybe? Yes, it was possible. But first, he must get back to the parsonage. That library of the vicar’s. There was some research to do. The vicar was bound to have a book on it.

  ‘MY DEAR INSPECTOR, charity may begin at home, but it is nearly’ – the Reverend checked his half-hunter – ‘two thirty. Contrary to popular belief, I do work on other days than the Sabbath, you know.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir. I have imposed on your hospitality too long.’ Lestrade snapped shut the last of several tomes. ‘But I think I have what I require.’

  ‘A solution to the death of Lamb?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Lestrade raised a solemn hand to the start from Ashburton. ‘As you say, sir, it is late. And at the moment what I have is circumstantial and speculation. And even to say that at two-thirty in the morning is no mean achievement.’

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG time since Lestrade had seen a country sunrise. He was tired and cold and the bed at the inn had been far from comfortable. The abo was waiting for him as he turned the corner, crouching, sniffing the wind.

  ‘’Ello, boss.’ The same inane grin.

  Lestrade found himself staring at the bone which ran through the elongated fleshy part of his nose between the nostrils. ‘What we track?’

  ‘What?’ Lestrade came to. ‘Ah, yes. Can you find me a dingo?’

  The abo laughed, a short, sharp cackle, rather like the kookaburra Lestrade had been reading about in the vicar’s library the night before.

  ‘Dingo, boss. ’Ere? You crazy all right.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Lestrade produced the tuft of hair. ‘Dingo, Uku?’

  The abo looked, felt between his fingers, smelt the strands. He looked puzzled. ‘No boss. No dingo.’ Then his face cracked into a wide grin. ‘No dingo, boss. Tammanwool.’

 
; ‘Tammanwool?’ Lestrade was back to his usual repetition.

  ‘You lucky, boss. I been Tamman. No abos there now. I seen tammanwool.’

  The conversation left Lestrade behind, which was exactly what the abo was about to do. ‘Can you find the tammanwool for me?’

  ‘Sure, boss. We go now,’ and he took to his heels, moving off at a low run down the road, Lestrade staggering in his wake. Probably, thought Lestrade, the wake of the long white cloud. Or was that somewhere else? The sun began to climb as the abo took to the moors, padding silently through the yellow fields of mustard around the village and up on to the greyness of the hills, splashed here and there with the white of the heather and the yellow and green of the gorse. Lestrade prided himself on being a fit man, but his temples and lungs felt as if they were going to burst. Always, the retreating figure of the abo ahead was like a needle in his flesh, forcing him on. God, thought Lestrade, the black bastard’s going all the way to Constantine. Four miles. God, he thought again, perhaps he’s going all the way to Australia? His shirt was hanging out in an undignified flapping at his waist. He had long since lost his bowler and his collar stood out at an angle from his neck. He hoped to God he didn’t meet anyone who knew he was an inspector of detectives from Scotland Yard, as his image would never recover.

  Then he realised the abo had stopped. He was crouching, like a coiled spring in the low, twisted trunks below Mawnan Church, where the vicar had seen his lion weeks earlier. The bastard wasn’t even out of breath and Lestrade was on his hands and knees, fighting to keep the pain out of his tortured lungs.

  ‘There, boss. Tammanwool hole.’ The abo pointed ahead, to an overgrown outcrop of Neolithic earthwork. Lestrade saw nothing but an overgrown outcrop of Neolithic earthwork, but the abo was adamant and Lestrade followed him through the undergrowth to a concealed opening. Even in the nostrils of a city copper, unused to country airs and wide now with the exertion of the run, could fail to notice the stench. Lestrade pulled back, almost gagging. The abo chuckled, seemingly revelling in it. ‘Tammanwool,’ he said, triumphantly.