by M. J. Trow
‘Remember, Dew,’ Lestrade called to the hooded figure sitting atop the Maria. ‘You’ve seen nothing. Heard nothing.’
‘I shall be as silent as the grave, sir.’ Lestrade and Beeson looked at the constable, now feeling rather silly and small on his high perch. At a signal from Lestrade, he slapped the reins and the wagon lurched forward, Croydon-bound.
It was nearly dawn as Joe Towers lay on the kitchen table at 20, Sanderstead Road. The gaslight flickered green on the walls.
‘I never got on with post-mortems,’ Beeson was saying, ‘but there’s something don’t sit right with old Joe.’
‘Tell me again,’ said Lestrade, as he undid the linen shroud. ‘From the beginning.’
Beeson sat back in the chair and lit his pipe.
‘Like I said, sir. Me and Joe was mates, from way back. Went through the army together, India. Then I was transferred to the Twelfth Lancers and he stayed with the old mob. We lost touch for a while, and I joined the Force. That would be in’ – he paused to count his fingers – ‘early ’sixty-seven. Well, I was a copper on the beat for years, and one day – I’ll tell you when it was, it was the day old Dizzy died in ’eighty-one – one day, I was patrolling along the Ratcliffe Highway.’
Lestrade was grateful the sergeant had not used the immortal ‘Proceeding in an easterly direction in the execution of my duty’.
‘And I saw Joe Towers, me ol’ mate. Well, we had a jar aplenty that night, I can tell you – after my duty hours, of course, sir.’
Lestrade smiled mechanically, loosening the funeral tie of Joseph Towers and unfastening the collar stud. There was a mild smell of putrefaction. Not bad. Lestrade had smelt worse, but he must remember to tell Beeson to open his kitchen window once this was over.
‘Joe was working in the Royal Albert. Stevedore, he was. Well, we saw a lot of each other after that. ’Is missus was a good sort and she gave us breakfast many a time after a session. He did like ’is pongolo, did Joe.’
‘His missus still with us?’ asked Lestrade, checking the blackened, numb fingers for signs of a struggle.
‘No, guv’nor. She went of the diphtheria four years back. Salt of the earth, she was.’
‘How did Joe die?’
Beeson began to prowl the length of his meagre kitchen, glancing sadly every now and again at the yellow-black face of ’is ol’ mate, staring sightlessly up from the kitchen table at the bowl of the gas light.
‘’E was the fittest man of ’is age I knew. ’E’d work all the hours God and Ben Tillet sent. Never missed a day.’
‘Ben Tillet?’ As he opened the striped shirt, Lestrade’s nostrils quivered. There was something else.
‘Joe was ’is right-hand man in the Dock Strike. “Tanner” Towers, they used to call him. Course, that was a bit awkward. You know we used to be called out then, truncheons, cutlasses an’ all.’
Lestrade knew.
‘I found ’im, in ’is parlour. Sittin’ in ’is armchair, ’e was. I thought ’e was ’aving me on, at first, you know. Then I realised. ’E was dead.’
‘How long do you think it had been, Ben?’
‘Well, ’e was as rigid as a board,’ offered the sergeant.
‘Rigor mortis,’ mused Lestrade, quietly enjoying the role of coroner as he lifted Towers’ eyelids. ‘About twelve hours, then.’
‘If you say so, sir. I was never very good at that scientific sort of thing. Leave that to the jacks. Oh, beggin’ your pardon, sir – the detectives.’
Lestrade looked at Beeson under his eyebrows. ‘Come here, Ben.’ The sergeant dumbly obeyed. ‘What do you smell?’
‘Death, sir,’ came the answer.
‘Yes, that’s what I smelt too, at first. But sniff deeper. Here, under the shirt especially. Something else.’
Beeson virtually buried his nose in ’is ol’ mate’s chest. ‘No, sir. Nothing.’
‘Bitter almonds, Beastie. Can’t you smell it?’
Beeson shook his head.
‘And I’ll lay you five to one the coroner couldn’t either. Nor the doctor who signed the death certificate.’ Lestrade paused. ‘Was there one?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. Poor Law doctor, name of . . . I can’t remember.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lestrade plunged his hands into the water bowl on the draining board. The water was freezing to the touch. ‘You were right, Beastie. You didn’t know why, did you? What was it you said? “Something didn’t sit right”. Well, it’s paid off. Joe Towers was murdered, Ben. Cyanide.’
‘Straight up?’ exclaimed Ben.
‘I don’t know how it was administered,’ answered Lestrade. ‘When you found him, did you notice any foam or spittle around his mouth?’
Beeson hadn’t.
‘Signs of a struggle? Convulsions?’
No.
Lestrade realised after the first flush of triumph that he had saturated the bandage on his finger. It would take hours to dry.
‘What happens now, sir?’
‘Now, we put him back, Beastie. It’ll have to be tonight. And Beastie . . .’
‘Sir?’
‘We’ll get him. Make no mistake about that. But because of the . . . er . . . unorthodox way we lifted old Joe, there’ll be too many questions asked. I’ve got a new guv’nor myself now, one Nimrod Frost. He’s very much a man who does things by the book. We’ll have to tread softly, softly.’
THAT NIGHT, WITH THE same ease as before, Lestrade and Beeson reburied ‘Tanner’ Towers. It was so smooth, so simple, that Lestrade felt vaguely uncomfortable. Perhaps he’d joined the wrong side after all.
SO LESTRADE TROD SOFTLY, softly. And before he could tread at all, he had a visit from one John Watson, MD, of Baker Street.
‘But it’s here in black and white, Lestrade. In The London Charivari for April eighth – “The Adventures of Picklock Holes”. And they’ve the nerve to make a pun on Conan Doyle’s name – Cunnin Toil! Pathetic!’
‘So what has you miffed, Doctor, is that they haven’t mentioned you?’
‘Nonsense! In fact, they have.’ Watson drew himself up to his full height. ‘I am referred to as “Potson”. Puerile nonsense!’
‘Your Sherlock Holmes stories?’
‘No. The Charivari’s plagiarism. Damn you, Lestrade, you are deliberately goading me.’
The inspector chuckled. ‘No, no, my dear Watson. Dew. Tea,’ he shouted through to the corridor, waving his bandaged hand by way of explanation of his own inactivity. ‘Tell me, do I appear in this plagiarism?’
‘No,’ Watson snorted as he subsided into Lestrade’s other chair.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Lestrade. ‘At least I won’t have to charge the editors of Punch with libel.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For the past two years, you and Dr Conan Doyle have been taking my name in vain. You have done your best to undermine the confidence of the people in Scotland Yard. And in particular, me.’
Watson blustered, sweeping his grey whiskers from side to side in embarrassment. ‘But it’s all done in the best possible taste, Lestrade. Holmes and I . . .’
‘Sherlock Holmes is dead, Dr Watson. As I recall he hurtled over the Reichenbach Falls eighteen months ago, struggling with an innocent bystander whom he mistook for you.’
‘Sssshhh!’ Watson spun around in all directions in case of Ears.
‘It’s all right. Dew is deaf and dumb. Isn’t that so, constable?’
Dew placed the tea on Lestrade’s desk and went about his business as though he hadn’t heard. ‘See what I mean?’
‘Good God, Lestrade. It’s terrible that a man so depleted as that in natural functions should be allowed in the Metropolitan Police!’
Lestrade’s resigned look would have withered a brighter man.
‘Lestrade. Sholto. You promised . . .’
Lestrade waved aside the doctor’s mute protestations.
‘In all seriousness, though, Dr Watson. I cannot take any action against
Punch. They have their little jibes at the Yard, too, you know. In any case, there are more pressing matters.’
‘Oh?’ Watson examined his tea carefully before taking his first sip.
‘Are you living now in Baker Street?’
‘Yes,’ said Watson. ‘221B. I . . . I’ve tried to keep Holmes’ spirit alive. I’m afraid Mycroft was no help.’
‘Mycroft?’
‘The Great Detective’s brother, at the Foreign Office.’
Lestrade winced at the description of the dead addict. ‘And Mrs Hudson?’
‘It’s all lies, I tell you.’ Watson realised he had been a little too vehement. He checked his pulse, momentarily. Lestrade sensed a raw nerve and took a different tack.
‘You have a surgery in Butcher Row, off Ratcliffe Highway?’
‘I have.’ Watson began to feel uneasy.
‘You are what is known as a Poor Law doctor?’
‘I believe it is my Christian duty to—’
‘Quite. Quite. And did you attend a death at eighteen, Havering Court on March the seventeenth last?’
‘March the seventeenth? Er . . .’
‘A docker named Joseph Towers.’
‘Oh, yes, now I remember. Natural causes.’
‘Cyanide poisoning.’
‘What?’ Watson was on his feet again.
‘Can you smell almonds, Doctor?’
Watson looked around him, sniffing maniacally.
‘Not at the moment,’ said Lestrade. ‘In the natural course of things.’
‘Almonds? Of course.’
‘But you can’t smell them on a corpse, evidently. What about the pupils?’
‘Whose pupils?’
‘The deceased’s pupils.’
‘Er . . . God, Lestrade. You’re talking about three weeks ago.
‘I’m talking about murder, Doctor. Were the pupils dilated?’
‘No.’ Watson was as emphatic as he could be, bearing in mind he hadn’t the faintest recollection. ‘But how do you know it’s murder?’
Lestrade wasn’t going to compromise his career before the good doctor, so he resorted to all the subtlety at his command. ‘We’ll ask the questions, sir.’ Lestrade began to wander the confines of his office. He had time again to glimpse the grandeur of Norman Shaw’s architectural style as the view of the blank wall from his window met him. If he craned his neck a little and stood on Dew’s shoulders and then stooped, he could catch a flash of the water in the morning sun on the river. But he had seen the river before and it wasn’t really worth the contortions.
‘So there was nothing about the case that led you to suspect foul play?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Watson was doubting not only his many years as a medical practitioner, but his many years in association with the Great Detective.
Lestrade decided to let the matter drop. Watson sensed it and pursued a new tack.
‘I read about your West Country adventure, Inspector. How you found the . . . er . . .’
‘Tasmanian wolf.’
‘Yes.’ Watson thumped his knee and strode to the door. ‘Er . . . I hesitate to mention it, Lestrade. Especially in view of the Charivari, but . . . well, I’ve been’ – another glance round to see that Dew was still deaf – ‘I’ve been thinking that I might resurrect Holmes, give him a new case. How about . . . “The Wolf of the Ashburtons”?’
‘You’re going to give Holmes my case?’ snarled Lestrade, even his bandaged knuckle turning white.
‘Well, no, not exactly. But . . .’ Watson was edging through the door, ‘how about “The Beast of the Aborigines”?’ and he dodged out as Lestrade threw his bowler at him.
The inspector called out as the doctor fled the building, ‘You may as well call it the Hound of the Baskervilles.’
BEN TILLET SAT AS IN a studio portrait, in his waistcoat, sleeves rolled up, flanked by two heavies from the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union, who Lestrade thought he recognised from innumerable editions of the Police Gazette. Either of them, Lestrade surmised, could have cracked walnuts with his elbows.
‘I’d lost touch with him, Mr Lestrade,’ Tillet was saying, never a man to acknowledge titles. ‘The last time I saw Joe Towers was . . . oh . . . three years ago.’
‘You’ve moved on to higher things?’ ventured Lestrade.
‘I don’t consider being an alderman of the City of London, a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and a prospective Member of Parliament “higher things”. No, I’m still a man of the people, as I was in ’eighty-nine. Aren’t I, boys?’
‘Yes, Mr Tillet,’ chorused the heavies, as though he had pressed the switches on two automata.
‘And what of your work with the Independent Labour Party?’ Lestrade thought he might as well get in a bit of fishing while he was there.
‘Forgive me, Mr Lestrade. I thought you were enquiring into the death of Joe Towers, not my political affinities. If I am wrong, then of course I must have my lawyer present.’
‘Towers, then.’ Lestrade returned to the point. ‘The man worked closely with you. How well did you know him? Did he have any enemies?’
‘We all had enemies in ’eighty-nine, Mr Lestrade – the pillars of society, the wealthy, the bourgeoisie in their smug, middle-class houses – not to mention the boys in blue.’ Lestrade ignored the jibe. ‘But we had friends too – thousands of dockers in the Port of London, engineers like Tommy Mann and John Burns. We even got thirty thousand pounds for our cause from our brothers in Australia. Now that’s working class solidarity, Mr Lestrade. Something I’m proud of. Joe Towers was part of all that. I remember the first time I met him in the main yard at the West India. He was a casual, Mr Lestrade, one of those countless numbers who drifted to work each day until ’eighty-nine, hoping for a ship to unload. He told me he hadn’t worked for four days and hadn’t eaten for three. It’s funny, but Joe Towers, as much as anybody, is why I called the Dock Strike. It was for men like him we fought for the “Tanner”. I can see him now, standing in the Committee Room alongside Cardinal Manning, his face a picture of rapt attention to the great man speaking on our behalf.’
‘But he didn’t have any specific enemies?’
‘No, he was a mild man. Everybody liked Joe.’
Lestrade felt Tillet could help him no longer and rose to go.
‘Of course,’ the Alderman went on, ‘we are all mild men and there are thousands of us. There is a Union of Clerks and Teachers, of Shop Assistants, a Miners’ Federation with two hundred thousand members this year. Altogether we number over one and a half million. How many Metropolitan Policemen are there, Inspector Lestrade?’
‘Enough, Mr Tillet.’
‘Of course,’ the Alderman began again, ‘if you can’t beat us, you could join us. Think of it, a Police Federation. Full pension rights, sick benefits, funeral expenses, strike pay. It’s got to come.’
But Lestrade was already on the stairs whence he had come, out into the warm sunlight, where the air was fresh.
WALTER DEW WAS A COPPER of very average ability. There was nothing disparaging in that. Wasn’t it a fact, regularly voiced by the Charivari itself, that the vast bulk of the Metropolitan Police were of average ability? But on the subject of vast bulk, Nimrod Frost, the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, was anxious to weed out the weak ones in his department. So it was that Constable Dew, hair macassared to perfection, moustaches combed just so, stood in Frost’s office that day at the end of April, unusually for a plainclothesman, bedecked in his full uniform, helmet glittering in the crook of his arm. Perhaps crook wasn’t the right term and he shifted it as the thought struck him. Lestrade had told him to box clever, to be circumspect (something which Dew thought only happened to Jews) in that the evidence pointing to foul play in connection with the death of Joe Towers without Lestrade’s unofficial post-mortem findings was thin indeed. Even so, Frost was impressed with Beeson’s suspicions, based on long service within the arm of
the law, as Lestrade had been, and so sanctioned Dew’s depositions taken from all and sundry who had known Joe Towers and who were among the last to see him alive.
‘All right, Dew, let’s have the last of them.’ Frost rested his podgy hands on the enormous velvet area of his waistcoat.
Dew flipped the page of his notepad and began. ‘On the twenty-fourth instant I had reason to attend a public house . . .’
‘A public house, Dew?’ Frost interrupted him.
‘In the pursuance of my duty, sir.’ Dew was quick to reassure him. ‘A public house called, appropriately, the Pig and Helmet.’
‘Appropriately, Dew?’
Dew cleared his throat to cover his failure at levity and went on. ‘. . . where at twelve thirty p.m. I met one Abel Seaman . . .’
‘Abel Seaman, Dew? Are you trying to be funny?’
Dew noticed that Nimrod Frost’s face was slowly turning the purple of his waistcoat.
‘I’m sorry, sir, that was the man’s name – or so he claimed.’
Frost’s eyebrows disappeared under what was left of his hairline, but he said nothing.
‘Who told me that he had seen the deceased Joseph Towers at approximately three thirty on the day of his death and accompanied him some little distance towards his destination, viz and to wit . . .’
‘To wit, Dew?’ repeated Frost, doing a passable impression of a barn owl.
‘Er . . . Mr Lestrade told me to put that in, sir.’
‘Go on.’
‘This Abel Seaman is known to us, sir. He was a one-time cash carrier, known to be a bug hunter and cly faker, who . . .’
‘Dew!’ Frost rose with all the speed and majesty his paunch would permit. ‘Could we have this in English, please? It is, after all, the language of the Queen.’
Dew looked a little shamefaced. ‘Of course, sir. He was a one-time prostitutes’ manager, who has done a little bit of pick-pocketing and stealing from drunks.’
‘Not a man whose word is reliable?’ Frost took a pinch of snuff from the elaborate silver box on his desk. Dew could read upside down (in fact, rather better than the right way up) the inscription ‘From the grateful people of Grantham’ before Frost snapped shut the lid and proceeded to inhale violently the orange-coloured powder from the back of his hand.
