Lestrade and the Guardian Angel

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Oh, heavens!’ She covered her mouth.

  ‘Then I realized as we talked that Harry hadn’t the motive or the expertise for the job.’

  ‘So you came to me.’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade confessed, ‘I came to Letitia.’

  ‘Oh, my baby.’ She stood up and the glass fell from her hand.

  ‘Calm yourself, Miss Balsam,’ he said, it was then I came to you. How did you kill the bicyclist, Hughie Ralph?’

  She sat down, calmer now if a little slurred. ‘I knew he had swindled a boy called George Elliott – another colleague’s old charge. I discovered, on my sojourn in London, that he took a drug to keep himself fit for his daredevil exploits in the saddle. I was able to doctor his dose while posing as a Salvationist. While he placed his hypocritical pennies in my tambourine on his way to the Tottenham Court Road, I persuaded him that my elixir was just the tonic he needed. Odd that such a ruthless businessman should be so gullible.’

  ‘So it wasn’t lunch at the Rose, Tewin?’ Lestrade said, half to himself.

  ‘No, it was breakfast at Cambridge Circus.’

  ‘And Gerald Mander?’

  ‘I waited for my chance and followed him. He took evening constitutionals near his home in Epping Forest. I must admit,’ she turned a shade greyer, ‘his death was the most unpleasant. I am not a strong woman, Mr Lestrade, I had to reach up – he was taller than I – and he half turned as I struck him. I shall never forget,’ she closed her eyes as though to blot out the memory, ‘the look on his face as he went down.’

  ‘The aluminium?’

  ‘The . . . ah, yes, I didn’t know what that was. It was in his pocket. I assumed it must have something to do with ballooning, since that was the man’s cursed passion. The passion that killed young Parmenter. I had been baulked of my chance to leave my calling card with Mr Ralph. I searched his rooms for some sign of the swindle against poor Elliott – I found none.’

  ‘And you were the . . . lady . . . who visited Sally Mander the night before he died?’

  ‘I was badly disguised again, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Chocolates?’

  ‘Of course,’ she smiled.

  ‘And The Sheep, le Mouton? The man on the omnibus? While you claimed to be resting in your room at the Grand?’ he asked.

  ‘I was in reality catching the same omnibus and sat behind him, knitting. I got off at the Tower. The rest you know.’

  ‘It must have been difficult to find him,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘Not really. I engaged the help of a private detective . . .’

  Lestrade groaned. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘you shopped at Liberty’s?’

  ‘Yes. That unspeakable wretch Chesney was the last little job I had to do. I knew of his dastardly game from another old colleague. Her ex-charge was Mr Hamilton’s lady friend. She felt terribly guilty about her . . . indiscretion . . . and I felt for her. I contacted Chesney, through her, and invited him to stay at the Grand as I had some business to transact. He obviously smelled money, as I knew he would, and duly arrived. He wasn’t much of a chocolate nibbler, but I coaxed him and added some contrived nonsense about Mr Gladstone which I knew a blackmailer could not resist.’

  Lestrade’s mind boggled. The Grand Old Man was eighty-eight.

  ‘I’m sorry he had to die at Liberty’s though. Such a nice shop, don’t you think? Well,’ she looked at him, ‘there it is. My confession. What do you have to say to me, Mr Lestrade?’

  ‘Justice,’ he said. ‘That’s why you did it?’

  She closed to him. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ she said, ‘hasn’t there been a time in your life when you have seen a man – a really evil man – get away with a crime, be it blackmail or murder, and you couldn’t do a thing about it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘I’m afraid there has.’

  ‘Then there you have it,’ she said.

  ‘But what gives you the right, Miss Balsam, to be jury, judge and executioner?’

  ‘Claptrap!’ she said, ‘I am a nanny.’ She sat bolt upright. ‘And English law has a long way to go before it can match the simple purity of the law of the nursery. Transgress and be punished. It’s that straightforward.’

  ‘I suppose to you it is,’ he said.

  Nanny Balsam rose and crossed to the lattice window that looked out over the covered courtyard and the lake beyond. ‘You, Mr Lestrade, in your career, admit you have felt powerless because of the law. There were felons who slipped through your fingers because those fingers were made slippery by the rule of law. You see,’ she smiled at him, ‘the law really is an ass, I’m afraid. Oh, you might have caught Howard de Lacy for the murder of his wife, in time. But the Manders? Hughie Ralph? Willie Hellerslyke? And Archie Fellowes? Not to mention Richard Tetley? No, their crimes were over and done. And yet they were scot free in the eyes of men.’

  ‘But not in the eyes of Nanny Balsam?’ Lestrade asked, smiling at her.

  She sat quietly in her nursing chair. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ she said, ‘look into those eyes now.’

  The inspector did so. His brow furrowed. He edged forward. The grey old eyes were tired. Bright with tiredness and a long day done. But he saw something else. The pupils were small – as all Nanny Balsam’s pupils were once small – and they were getting smaller. He threw down his glass and gripped her shoulders.

  ‘What is the time?’ she asked him, a little slurred now.

  ‘I . . . don’t know. Er . . . eleven, or thereabouts. Nanny, tell me . . .’

  She held up her hand. ‘In the bureau,’ she said, waving towards the corner. Lestrade turned, steadying her swaying little frame with one arm, and found the envelope inside.

  ‘It tells all,’ she said. ‘My confession. I only wish . . . I only wish Lettie didn’t have to know.’

  She pitched forward into Lestrade’s arms and he gently loosened her collar. The prim, still graceful old lady did not complain. It had been a long time since Coquette had lain in the arms of a man. And now it didn’t matter.

  ‘I discovered this . . . other poison,’ she said, her breathing more difficult. ‘Silly me not to have found it earlier. And only ninety-one years after it was discovered.’

  He looked again at the pinpoint eyes and he smelled the opium on her breath. ‘Morphine,’ he said.

  ‘Look after dear Lettie for me,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘Goodbye, Mr Lestrade. “Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven”,’ and she slipped sideways, her blurred eyes focusing for a moment. ‘Tsk, tsk,’ she whispered, ‘frayed cuffs. Nanny would never allow that. . .’

  HE WENT DOWNSTAIRS as the grandfather clock struck the hour. Eleven o’clock. Nanny Balsam would not be there for Christmas that year. Nor for any other Christmases to come.

  In the drawing-room, Harry was sitting with Letitia and Chief Inspector Guthrie was coming round for the second time. Lestrade stood between them. ‘It’s Miss Balsam,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Letitia stood up, shocked by the yellow face and the sad eyes, so weary of the world.

  ‘It must have been the excitement of the morning,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid she’s gone, Letitia.’

  The men heard an inrush of breath and gathering her skirts Letitia Bandicoot ran through the house, bounding up the stairs much as her husband had done when Nanny Balsam had slapped the backsides of their boys the day they were born. Harry moved after her, but Lestrade held his shoulder. ‘Better not,’ he said. ‘Leave Letitia alone with her memories. Just for a moment. She’ll need you later.’

  He patted Bandicoot’s arm and the big man sat down. Lestrade crossed to Guthrie and hauled him upright. He pulled a cigar out and forced it between the man’s lips. He clamped his on another and for a light he dipped Miss Balsam’s letter into the flames and lit first his cheroot, then Guthrie’s.

  ‘About this murder,’ Guthrie was nursing his neck. ‘This series of murders, then.’ He had caught Lestrade’s surprised look. ‘It’s Mrs Bandicoot, isn’t it? That’s why Bandicoot clocked me.’
He scowled at the squire. ‘Which reminds me . . .’ and he staggered towards Harry.

  Lestrade placed an avuncular arm around the man’s shoulder and led him to the door, shaking his head. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, ‘and I will go with you to the station now to prove it. You know, Chief Inspector, you were right.’

  ‘You mean it is Bandicoot after all?’ Guthrie persisted, ever hopeful.

  ‘No, I mean my own incompetence.’ Lestrade fanned the burning envelope in the air. ‘My own incompetence and, yes, the arrogance of the Yard. Oh, I’ll pursue my enquiries elsewhere, of course. We never sleep. No stone unturned, no quarry unpursued, no opportunity missed. But frankly . . . Well, you know how it is . . .’

  ‘A dead end?’ The blows to Guthrie’s head must have done some good. The man was curiously mellowed.

  ‘You might say that,’ Lestrade said. ‘Anyway,’ he threw the curling brown paper into the fire as he passed, ‘we won’t find our guilty party here. Harry, go to Letitia now. I must accompany the chief inspector here to the station.’

  ‘Sholto, I don’t understand. Are you coming back?’

  Lestrade looked at him, at the stairs to Nanny Balsam’s room. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s no need. Merry Christmas, Harry.’

  At the sight of their lord and master, the men of the Somerset Constabulary returned warily to the station trap. One by one, Tom Wyatt, Old Jack, Young Jem and the rest broke formation and wandered away across the frosty fields.

  Lestrade rode in the jolting Maria alongside the still dizzy chief inspector. At the fork in the road below the old orchard he leaned out to see three little children with their nanny, laughing and squealing as they rolled over on the ice. ‘Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.’ The inspector smiled.

  Other titles in the Inspector Lestrade series for your consideration:

  ❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖

  1879

  ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’

  Walk up! Walk up! This way for the greatest show on earth! It is 1879. Disraeli is at Number Ten. The Zulu are being perfectly beastly to Lord Chelmsford. And Captain Boycott is having his old trouble again.

  What has this to do with the young Detective-Sergeant Sholto Lestrade? Absolutely nothing. Or has it? He has his work cut out investigating mysterious goings-on at ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie, the dwarf, dies an agonizing death under the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this after two bodies have been found with multiple slashes ...

  And what is the link with Mr Howard Vincent, founder of the CID? And has the Prince Imperial really been caught by the Impis? A trail of murder is laid among the llama droppings as the World’s Second Greatest Detective goes undercover to solve the Case of the Sawdust Ring.

  ❖ The Sign of Nine ❖

  1886

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  It was a puzzle that faced Scotland Yard from its very beginning – whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another – what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiaristic novelist have in common? Answer: they’re all dead, each of them with a bloody space where his skull used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings the perpetrator to book.

  But 1886 was a bad year for the Metropolitan Police. The People of the Abyss have heard the whisper and the spectre of Communism haunts the land. There is a new Commissioner, a regular martinet, at the Yard. And then, there is that very odd couple, sometime of Baker Street ...

  Lestrade braves haunted houses, machine-gun bullets and two Home Secretaries in his headlong hunt for the truth. And at last, this is the book that chronicles his now legendary impersonation of the Great Sarah Bernhardt. The Police Revue was never the same again.

  ❖ The Ripper ❖

  1888

  ‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’

  In the year 1888, London was horrified by a series of brutal killings. All the victims were discovered in the same district, Whitechapel, and they were all prostitutes. But they weren’t the only murders to perplex the brains of Scotland Yard. In Brighton, the body of one Edmund Gurney was also found.

  Foremost among the Yard’s top men was the young Inspector Sholto Lestrade and it was to his lot that the unsolved cases of a deceased colleague fell. Cases that included the murder of Martha Tabram, formerly a prostitute from Whitechapel, and that of the aforementioned Gurney.

  Leaving no stone unturned, Lestrade investigates with his customary expertise and follows the trail to Nottinghamshire, to a minor public school, Rhadegund Hall. It is his intention to question the Reverend Algernon Spooner. What he finds is murder.

  As the Whitechapel murders increase in number, so do those at Rhadegund Hall and so do the clues. What is the connection between them all? As if it weren’t confusing enough, Lestrade is hampered by the parallel investigations of that great detective, Sherlock Holmes, aided by Dr Watson. Who is the murderer of Rhadegund Hall and are he and the man they call ‘Jack the Ripper’ one and the same?

  ❖ The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade ❖

  1891

  ‘Such as these shall never look

  At this pretty picture book.’

  It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade (that ‘ferret-like’ anti-hero so often out-detected by the legendary Sherlock Holmes) is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine.

  But this is only the start of the nightmare. It is merely the beginning of a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and, apparently, so random, that only a warped genius – and a master of disguise – could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern behind the crimes from the anonymous poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the sinister, self-styled ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man’.

  It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back, resulting in a portfolio of suspects which covers the entire range of late-Victorian society.

  ❖ Brigade ❖

  1893

  ‘And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade.’

  There is a new broom at Scotland Yard; Nimrod Frost. His first ‘little’ job for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a supposed savager of sheep and frightener of men. Hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigations Department.

  Yet even as Lestrade questions a witness, a man is reported dead, horrifically mauled. Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to another suspicious death and then another ... All old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection – is there a mass murderer at work?

  Lestrade’s superiors discount his speculations and he finds himself suspended from duty, but that is a mere technicality to the doughty Inspector. He moves from workhouse to royal palace, from backstage at the Lyceum to regimental dinner in search of clues and enlightenment.

  When can his glory fade?

  ❖ The Dead Man’s Hand ❖

  1895

  ‘There was no 9.38 from Penge.’

  Anon.

  The London Underground Railway, in 1895, was described as ‘dark, deadly and halfway to Hell’. Only too true, for as the last train rattled into Liverpool Street, the one remaining passenger did not get off. How could she, when her eyes stared sightless and her heart had stopped?

  There was another corpse at the Elephant in the morning, wedged between the seats
like an old suitcase. And another had missed the late-night connection at Stockwell. What was left of her lay on the floor of the ‘padded cell’, her shoes kicked off in the lashings of her agony as she died.

  There is a maniac at large and Inspector Lestrade is detailed to work with the Railway Police, something he needs a little less than vivisection. Heedless of warnings to ‘mind the gap’ and ‘mind the doors’, the doughty detective plunges through a tangled web of vicious deviants to solve a string of murders so heinous that every woman in London goes in fear of her life.

  Who is the legendary Blackfriars Dan? What are the secrets of the Seven Sisters? Whose body lies at Ealing? Will the London Transport System survive, or will Lestrade run out of steam?

  ❖ The Guardian Angel ❖

  1897/8

  ‘And a naughty boy was he ...’

  He was in his forty-third year and knee-deep in murder. Well, what was new? Sholto Lestrade wouldn’t really have it any other way.

  The first fatality in a series of killings which was to become the most bizarre in the celebrated Inspector’s career, was a captain of the 2nd Life Guards, found battered over the head in the Thames at Shadwell Stair, an Ashanti War medal wedged between his teeth. Lestrade’s next summons was to the underground caves of Wookey Hole where the demise of an Egyptologist – a scarab clamped between his molars – prompted the question; can a man dead for a thousand years reach beyond the grave and commit murder?

  The further death from a cadaveric spasm of an enobled young subaltern whilst on picquet duty (this time a locket is his dying mouthful) forces Lestrade to impersonate ‘Lt Lister, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry’ and into becoming a barrack-room lawyer of incisive command.