Lestrade and the Brigade

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I rather think in this instance, yes, sir.’

  Frost waited for him to go on.

  ‘Seaman talked with Towers about this and that and Towers had told him that he was expecting someone that afternoon and declined his offer of a gatter . . . er . . . beer. Seaman was on his way to the penny gaff . . . er . . . Punch and Judy show, and spent perhaps five minutes in Towers’ company.’

  ‘A grown man attending a Punch and Judy show, Dew?’ Frost was incredulous.

  ‘Well, if you ask me, sir, it was probably an Under and Over,’ and as Frost spun round with the speed of a laden sloth, Dew corrected himself. ‘A fairground swindling game, sir.’

  ‘Did Seaman learn more of Towers’ visitor?’

  ‘No, sir, except that he was Trasseno.’

  ‘An Italian?’ Frost felt he was learning the lingo quite well.

  ‘No, sir, a bad person.’

  Frost harrumphed his indignation at being wrong and continued to strut round his office.

  ‘So it is likely that Seaman – if we can accept his word at all – was the last person to see Towers alive – if indeed he was murdered at all, and of course we only have ex-sergeant Beeson’s sixth sense on that.’

  Dew felt the ground shifting beneath him. Box clever, Lestrade had said, box clever.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ was the height of Dew’s wit and repartee.

  Frost took Dew’s notepad and thumbed through the pages. The man was barely literate, he thought. The lines could be the work of a deranged chimpanzee.

  ‘Tell me, Dew, what do you want to be when you grow up?’

  ‘Sir?’ Dew frowned at the unusual levity from the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department.

  ‘What are your ambitions, Dew?’ he said, by way of an explanation for the feeble-minded.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Dew was grinning at the prospect, ‘I’d like to be a chief inspector one day, sir . . . and . . .’

  There was an ‘and’ Frost realised. As if the first hope wasn’t forlorn enough.

  ‘And?’ He leaned over towards Dew’s right ear.

  ‘And I want to write a book, sir, a biographical account of my greatest case. It will be called “I Caught . . .” and then the name of the arch-criminal.’

  Frost sat silently down in the folds of his leather armchair, whence he only ever rose with difficulty.

  ‘That will be all, Dew,’ he said, and as the ambitious young constable turned to go, he said, with all the sympathy and encouragement at his disposal, ‘I think you’d have difficulty catching a cold.’

  ❖ To the Lighthouse ❖

  J

  oseph Towers had been dead for exactly one month. He had been buried for three weeks. And reburied for nearly two. Lestrade reflected again, as he had so often in the past, how difficult it was to reconstruct the last hours of a man’s life. Particularly an old man, a man with few real friends. And in a way, Joe Towers had been lucky. He had a good friend in Ben Beeson, whose nose had smelt a rat, if not bitter almonds. How many more old men, and young ones too, and women, mouldered in paupers’ graves or the elegance of Abney Park, apparently dead of natural causes, precisely because they did not have Ben Beeson for a friend?

  And had one such case now landed on Lestrade’s desk, in the form of a plea from the Norfolk Constabulary? It was Sergeant Edgar Bradstreet who brought it to Lestrade’s attention – Gregson’s blue-eyed boy.

  ‘The inspector thinks it’s anarchists, sir,’ Bradstreet was saying. ‘He suspects the Russians, perhaps using Irish agents provocateurs.’

  ‘Inspector Gregson always suspects the Russians, Sergeant, and he usually throws in an Irishman or two, for good measure. After all, he does help run the Special Irish Branch. What would we do without Irishmen, eh?’

  ‘Do I detect a note of cynicism, sir?’

  Well, thought Lestrade, Gregson had chosen a bright one this time.

  ‘Realism is, I think, a better word, Bradstreet. Do I understand I am to have the pleasure of your company on this little visit?’

  ‘I have been seconded to your division, sir.’

  ‘Not enough anarchy in London at the moment, hmm? Well, never mind. If you’re right, we’ll smoke a few out in the fleshpots and opium hells of Cromer, eh?’

  LESTRADE WAS SUFFERING from a superfluity of sergeants. In addition to Bradstreet, a new boy was thrust upon him – one Hector Charlo, by special recommendation of His Nims. ‘He has friends in high places,’ Frost had said. ‘He looks to be a good boy, Lestrade. I think you can rely on him in a crisis.’

  In the event, Lestrade couldn’t. Sergeant Charlo stood before the inspector in the angle of the Yard’s plumbing that passed as Lestrade’s office, a cherry nose swathed in a muffler, and eyes swimming with all the signs of terminal pneumonia.

  ‘I’b sorry, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘Not good forb, I know, and by first assignbent with you, but I’b afraid I . . . I . . .’ and his whole body shook with the violence of his sneezing.

  ‘You don’t fancy the Norfolk air, then, Charlo?’ Lestrade proffered.

  ‘With respect, Inspector, the ondly place I fancy dow is by bed.’

  ‘All right,’ sighed Lestrade, never impressed by physical illness. ‘Get your head under a towel and dose yourself up. You’d have thought they could have cured the common cold by now.’

  ‘There’s nothing common about by cold, sir,’ said Charlo, with a brave stab at some dignity. ‘It’s probably turning to bronchitis as we speak.’

  ‘We should be back in a day or two,’ Lestrade went on. ‘Report bright and early Monday morning.’

  BRADSTREET HOPED THAT Lestrade had been joking about the fleshpots and opium hells, but he had never been to Norfolk before and he didn’t know quite what a hell-hole Cromer was. The representatives of Her Majesty’s Detective Force caught the train from Liverpool Street, Lestrade having made some quip about Bradstreet’s railway guide, which fell on professionally deaf ears and they journeyed without incident to Norwich. Thence by another train to Cromer, where they found, with surprising difficulty for two men trained to know their way around, the Police Station.

  The chief constable, no less, informed them that the body was still in situ. Lestrade allowed a whimsy to enter his mind that had Dew been with him he would now be searching his gazetteer of Norfolk to find the village of Situ. He was grateful that Bradstreet seemed to have a smattering of Latin, or perhaps it was just that he hid his naivety better than Dew. The deceased was one William Bentley, lighthouse keeper, and the cause of death was natural. The only reason that the Yard had been called in was one of mere formality since one of Her Majesty’s lighthouses constituted an area of strategic importance. Should a French or even a German fleet appear in the Wash, Cromer lighthouse constituted an area of strategic importance. Should a French or even a German fleet appear in the Wash, Cromer Lighthouse could be instrumental in their landing. As such, and as a matter of course, an officer of the rank of inspector or above from the Metropolitan Police was duty-bound to carry out the aforementioned formalities. In view of the threat from possible espionage, that some dastardly foreign power was eliminating lighthouse keepers one by one, presumably before starting on the garrisons of the Martello Towers and Palmerston’s Follies around the south coast, it was natural that the Special Irish Branch and its most noted bloodhound, Tobias Gregson, should be involved. Gregson however had larger problems. It was rumoured that William F Cody was staging another British visit at the closing phase of his Continental tour and if there was a nation other than the Russians whom Gregson suspected, it was the Americans. So Bradstreet had been sent instead. Lestrade wondered why he too had been sent. The reason that appealed most was that he hoped Nimrod Frost shared his suspicion of the Special Branch and daren’t let Bradstreet out alone.

  The little party of policemen picked their way across the cliffs that evening. The dying sun lent a magical glow to the small town clustered below them, gilding the great grey tower of St Peter and St Paul. Below to
their right stretched the sand and shingle of Foulness, nearly dry now at low tide. The light flashed with its inevitable regularity above the whitewashed building. No one spoke. They were greeted at the door by the head keeper, Nathaniel Blogg, whose family, the Yard were told, had for years been rescuing sailors and fishermen from the jaws of the sea. The skin of his weathered face was the colour of the crab shells which littered the rocks. There was no trace of humour, no trace of warmth. It was the face, thought Lestrade, of a man who had looked too often on death. It was like looking into a mirror. Shifting the metaphor mentally, it was the face that saved a thousand ships.

  Blogg led the way, with a series of grunts and rustic growls, to one of the upper rooms. On a makeshift bunk inside lay the body of William Bentley, dead these four days. The sea air through the window had removed the smell of death. Lestrade looked at the body, checked the eyes, having removed Blogg’s pennies first. Something. What?

  ‘Bradstreet,’ he motioned to the sergeant. ‘Your views?’

  The sergeant looked carefully. He was not used to whole bodies. Most of the corpses he saw in his current line of duty had been eviscerated by explosives. Cause of death seemed a little academic after that.

  ‘Age about seventy, sir. Height, five feet eight inches or so. Colour of eyes, hazel. Not much hair. I would have to remove his clothes for distinguishing marks. Dead about four days.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Lestrade looked at the chief constable for confirmation. He nodded. ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Natural, sir. Old age?’

  ‘Mr Blogg, you found the body?’

  ‘Ar.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ar,’ said Blogg louder, assuming the moustachioed Londoner with his distinctly inland pea-jacket to be deaf.

  ‘Who else has been in this room?’

  ‘Er – until today only me, young Emma and ’er fella and Jem.’

  ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Jeremiah Rook is the local constable who Mr Blogg sensibly summoned,’ offered the chief constable. ‘Emma Hopkins, née Bentley, is the daughter of the deceased. She arrived from York yesterday with her husband. Is any of this relevant, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is. You see, my sergeant’s description of the corpse is admirable, but he did get one thing wrong.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bradstreet thought it best to straighten himself so that he was a full inch taller than Lestrade.

  ‘Your lighthouse keeper was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ The word was echoed round the octagonal room, chorused by all but Lestrade and the corpse.

  ‘Who has examined the body?’

  ‘Er . . . only me and Jem,’ Blogg answered, as the one-most-likely-to-be-in-possession-of-that-information.

  ‘No doctor? No death certificate?’

  The chief constable blustered. ‘A matter of security, Lestrade. You know as well as I do that lighthouses are of strategic importance.’

  Yes, Lestrade knew that.

  ‘Look here.’ Lestrade lifted Bentley’s eyelids, first the left, then the right. ‘You see these tiny specks of blood? Mr Bentley was suffocated. Oh, expertly, certainly. One of the neatest I’ve seen. Normally you’d expect blood at the lips and nose and more discolouration of the face.’

  Lestrade mechanically sniffed the various cups and glasses in the room. ‘He was probably drugged first. Quite a painless way to go, actually; if you must go at all, that is.’

  ‘I want to go at sea,’ Blogg informed the company, ‘with a good nor’ easter blowin’.’

  The chief constable looked at him curiously. ‘Well, each according to his taste, I suppose.’

  ‘You and Bentley took turns about on duty here?’ Lestrade put the question to Blogg, still gazing into the middle-distance of his vision of a Viking’s funeral.

  ‘Ar.’ He recollected himself.

  ‘So you wouldn’t know if he had any visitors, say, within the last five days?’

  ‘No, I . . . Although . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ The word was chorused by the policemen assembled. They all looked at each other a little sheepishly.

  ‘Well, it’s probably nothin’ really.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that, Mr Blogg,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Well, I did see a ship moored ’ere. Must of been last Sunday.’

  ‘The day before Bentley died,’ Bradstreet said aloud.

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘Was that usual, Mr Blogg?’

  ‘No, not really. Oh, boats come alongside now and then. Nosey parkers from Lunnun, mostly.’ He scrutinised the present company.

  ‘Was it a supply boat?’ Bradstreet was getting above himself.

  ‘Of course not,’ Blogg said flatly. ‘What do we need with a supply boat when you can walk to the bloody lighthouse?’

  The chief constable and Lestrade turned to Bradstreet with an I-told-you-so expression on their faces. The sergeant had an inclination to follow this up by asking Blogg if the craft had been a submersible, for it had been rumoured for some months at the Yard that such an infernal machine was being manufactured for a forthcoming invasion. In view of his superiors’ faces, he decided against it.

  ‘Did you see anyone in the boat?’ the chief constable asked, desperate to prove that the weight of silver braid had not diminished the incisiveness of his enquiry-making.

  ‘No,’ said Blogg.

  ‘What sort of craft was it?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘A ketch.’

  ‘Did you see a name?’

  ‘Ar.’

  The company waited.

  ‘Well, out with it, man. What was it?’ Lestrade’s patience only extended so far.

  ‘Furrin.’

  ‘Furrin?’ the inspector repeated.

  ‘Ar. You won’t find it registered in an English port, I’ll wager.’

  ‘So,’ mused Bradstreet, ‘Gregson and I were right. It is foreign power, bent on eroding British manpower gradually here and there, whittling away the watchful eyes on the coast, ready for the great onslaught when there were no watchers left. Diabolically cunning.’

  ‘Bradstreet.’ Lestrade’s voice snapped the sergeant back to reality. ‘Mr Blogg is about to tell us the name of the boat, aren’t you, Mr Blogg?’

  ‘No,’ said Blogg, being as obtuse as possible, ‘but I’ll tell you the name of the ship. As near as I can, anyhow. It was somewhat like . . . like . . . “Ora Rosa”.’

  ‘Spanish,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Italian,’ said Bradstreet.

  They had spoken simultaneously.

  ‘Bradstreet,’ said Lestrade. ‘Wear out some leather along the coast here. Check all the boats,’ he glanced at Blogg, ‘. . . and ships . . . in harbour.’

  ‘You won’t find it ’ere. I never seen it roun’ before or since.’

  ‘We shall need to talk further, Mr Blogg,’ said Lestrade.

  AND SO IT WAS WITH Nathaniel Blogg that Lestrade and Bradstreet began their enquiries. Unfortunately for them both, Blogg was only a part-time lighthouse keeper. The rest of the time he was a fisherman, when he wasn’t manning the lifeboat, that was, saving souls from the deep. And Bradstreet in particular, looking every inch the city gent in his bowler and Donegal, kept hearing that word ‘deep’ each time the boat took a plunge into the grey of the North Sea. Looking back at the land was worse. The line of cliffs at Cromer yawed up and down like a demented seesaw, the spire of the church leaning at a rakish angle. It wasn’t long before Bradstreet had turned the colour of the sail creaking tautly overhead – the colour of old parchment.

  True, Lestrade was more suitably attired. Whenever his job took him to maritime areas, he tried to dress the part, but the jaunty black sailor’s peaked cap and the matching pea-jacket could not disguise the landlubber’s inability to roll with the ship. Most of the time, in fact, he rolled against it, barking his shins on lobster creels and smearing his sleeve with tar and foul-smelling bait. The smack bellied and plunged on the roaring surf, making interrogation of a crucial witne
ss well-nigh impossible.

  Bradstreet’s task was to commit the vital deposition of Blogg the fisherman to his notebook, but when he looked the page of jottings, he realised that it would do justice to Mr Isaac Pitman, except that it wasn’t shorthand. When Lestrade saw it later, in the relatively tranquil surroundings of the Fisherman’s Arms, he pronounced it unintelligible. As well, then, that Lestrade’s memory served to record the conversation. William Bentley, it transpired, was a native of Yorkshire, had served some time in the Army, and had been lighthouse keeper for eight years. He was past retiring age really, but nobody else wanted the job. It didn’t pay well and most of the younger men were either fishing or moving into the new profitable tourist trade that was becoming the vogue along the coast. Folk from Lunnun mostly and it was the railway that brought ’em there. Blogg spat volubly and contemptuously into the hurtling waters, in scorn of both institutions. The act alone was enough to send Bradstreet over the edge, not literally, but metaphorically, and he vomited copiously over the side.

  Friends? Only one really – a royal coachman from Sandringham, the Prince of Wales’ estate, who came over once a month to play chess with Bentley. Enemies? Well there was the Tuddenhams. Tough bunch they were. Bentley had fell foul of ’em almost as soon as he arrived. Blogg didn’t rightly know why. The Tuddenhams, it transpired, were family of fishermen from nearby Mundesley whose names were well known to the local constabulary as trouble makers, drunkards and shifters. Jem Rook had had his nose broken by one of them only last year, simply because the constable had smiled at him funny one morning. Yes, the Tuddenhams were the boys. If anybody had murderous inclinations in the area and bore Bill Bentley a grudge, it was them.

  The conversation ended there, as nets were cast and hands dashed here and there, flinging ropes, hauling weights. Bradstreet was quietly wishing he was dead. Even Lestrade felt a little green round the gills, much like the wet, flapping mackerel that flopped down on the slippery deck. There were shouts and laughter and it was well into the afternoon before Bradstreet’s prayers were answered and Blogg turned his smack for home.