by M. J. Trow
Lestrade and the Dead Man’s Hand
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Six
Table of Contents
Title Page
Lestrade and the Dead Man’s Hand | The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Six
M. J. TROW
Caveat lectorum – Let the Reader Beware! | From Police Constable to Political Correctness
❖ 1 ❖
❖ 2 ❖
❖ 3 ❖
❖ 4 ❖
❖ 5 ❖
❖ 6 ❖
❖ 7 ❖
❖ 8 ❖
❖ 9 ❖
❖ 10 ❖
❖ 11 ❖
❖ 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.’
❖ 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 Dead Man’s Hand
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Six
M. J. TROW
Copyright © 2021 M. J. Trow.
ISBN 978-1-913762-77-3
First published in 1992.
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
❖ 1 ❖
❖ 2 ❖
❖ 3 ❖
❖ 4 ❖
❖ 5 ❖
❖ 6 ❖
❖ 7 ❖
❖ 8 ❖
❖ 9 ❖
❖ 10 ❖
❖ 11 ❖
❖ 1 ❖
T
he snows lingered long that year. And the iron hand of winter lay like a vice over the mountains of the Hindu Kush. By day, only the tiny khaki column moved, like a foraging party of soldier ants, over the great white wilderness. By night, only the wind held sway below the shrouded peaks of Tirach Mir. Until the dawn came again. And the bugle shattered the stillness and the pack animals strained and the rifle butts thumped into buckets. And the little column moved on.
Lieutenant John Sleigh commanded the skirmishers of the Thirty-second who fanned out on the rocky outcrops, their fur-mittened fists tight on their Lee-Enfields. They moved like ghosts, grey against white, their copper faces tinged with blue and icicles hanging in their ringlets.
They’d seen it long before the Lieutenant’s hand shot skyward. A single horseman winding uphill towards them. Their senior officer, a Havildar of particularly fawning disposition, scuttled through the snow to Sleigh’s side.
‘What do you make of it, Havildar?’ The Lieutenant’s breath snaked out on the morning air.
‘O illustrious one, your eyes burn brighter than the temple heights of Kashmir; your vision is as far-seeing as the kite . . .’
‘Yes, yes, Sanji,’ Sleigh muttered. ‘Stop buggering about and answer the bloody question, will you?’
‘It is a horseman, omnipotent one.’ The Havildar squinted through the snow.
Sleigh sighed. ‘That much I’d managed,’ he said, fiddling with his field-glasses. ‘Remind me never to buy Zeiss again. It’s like looking into a fog.’
‘I will remind you, O great and wise purchaser.’
Sleigh abandoned the binoculars and took off his Wolseley helmet to use as an eye shield. It didn’t help either. So much for the fatherly chat the old man had given him at Meerut when he’d first arrived in India. So far none of it had been any use at all, especially that bit about carnal relations with the sacred baboons. The animals inflamed his manly passions scarcely at all.
But by now the horseman had ridden within rifle range.
‘Havildar.’ Sleigh thought it best to dismount. Alone among his infantry men, he presented too easy a target in the saddle. ‘Get Gupta over here, will you?’
The Havildar barked an order in his native Hindustani and the Sepoy the Lieutenant had singled out dropped his pack and Pioneer’s pick, and saluted briskly at the white man’s side.
Sleigh returned it. ‘Stout fellow,’ he said. ‘Havildar, tell Gupta to fire a warning shot over the rider’s head. He is not to hit him. Merely let him know we’ve seen him. All right?’
The Havildar turned to his private and jabbered in the lilting, wheedling tone common to the Frontier tribes. ‘The son of a harlot wants you to shoot at that poor bastard coming up the ridge.’
‘Why doesn’t he do his own dirty work?’ the Sepoy asked in the same tongue.
‘Because you, Gupta my son, are the best shot in the Thirty-second and because that dromedary’s prepuce couldn’t shoot his own foot with any degree of certainty.’
‘Flattery will get you a reasonable way, Havildar,’ the Sepoy said. ‘Couldn’t I just take an ear off?’
‘What’s the fuss, Havildar?’ Sleigh broke in, agitated in the freezing morning by all this jabber.
‘Gupta is extolling your virtues, illustrious one,’ the Havildar said. ‘He draws blessings on your house for allowing him to show his humble skill and thanks Allah for the opportunity of serving you . . . oh, Jesus Christ Almighty!’ The Havildar reeled sideways as Gupta’s rifle crashed by his ear. He screamed at the man, ‘You know what this bloody Afghan cold does to my eardrums, you jackal’s nipple!’
‘Oh, good shot, Gupta.’ Sleigh focused again with the field-glasses. ‘Yes, Havildar. You did right to praise him. Wait a minute. What’s he doing now?’
Several pairs of eyes squinted at the solitary figure on the slopes below. Gupta’s shot had stopped him short and now he had swung from the saddle and was shouting out, waving something frantically.
‘It is a flag of truce, powerful one,’ the Havildar said. ‘Either that or the worst bit of semaphoring I’ve ever seen.’
‘Is he a Pathan?’ Sleigh steadied his binoculars on the Havildar’s shoulders.
‘If he was,’ muttered Gupta in his native tongue, ‘you’d have a jezail bullet where your forehead used to be.’
‘What’s he say, Havildar?’
‘He asks whether he will have the pleasure of kneeling beside your Excellency’s horse so that he will feel the exquisite pressure of your boot on his neck as you mount, unparalleled one.’
‘I say, steady on, old man.’ Sleigh’s blue face turned a shade of magenta rarely seen this far north of the Chitral ranges. ‘One thing they taught us at Sandhurst was “Never step on a chap’s neck.” I believe it’s in the Articles of War. What’s that fellow shouting down there, Havildar? Can you make it out?’
‘You have the ears of a flitter-mouse, all-hearing one. There is no one in the Thirty-second Pioneers with your lobes.’
‘Oh, come off it, Havildar.’ Sleigh scuffed the snow with his boot. ‘I bet you say that to all the Subs.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Gupta trilled in Hindustani. ‘That poor sod down there is speaking English.’
‘English?’ the Havildar said in English.
‘What?’ Sleigh turned to him.
‘He is speaking that most superlative of tongues, O elocuted one. The Mother Tongue of all the Empire. The language of diplomacy and of the law. The Pax Britannica
‘That’s Latin, Havildar.’ Sleigh was still trying to focus his glasses. ‘The language of the Romans.’
‘Ah yes.’ The Havildar placed his hands together. ‘And were not the Romans taught their Latin by you English! You still teach it in your public schools, I know. Amo, amas, amat. What a thrill! What a culture! This is why you are the rulers of a quarter of the world, sophisticated one – because you have mastered Latin gerundives.’
‘Shut up, Havildar, and get down there with a squad of the chaps. If that fellow speaks English, he could be useful to us. And juldi, juldi.’
The Havildar saluted and pointed to Gupta and four of the others. ‘Come on, lads. The chinless wonder’s trying out his only word of Hindustani again. Let’s get down there before he tries Hither Lao. That Kipling bloke’s got a lot to answer for, you know.’
‘HAY-WINTHROP, THIRTY-seventh Dogras.’ The officer held out his gloved hand.
‘Good Lord, you’re English!’ Sleigh caught it.
‘Well I was the last time I looked. I’m bally glad I found you chaps. Didn’t fancy gasping my last on a bally mountainside in the Chitral. Lieutenant . . . er . . . ?’
‘Oh, sorry. Forgetting my manners. The cold does that to a chap, doesn’t it? Sleigh, Thirty-second Pioneers. You’re not from the column?’
‘Lord, no. Out from Peshawar week last Thursday. Had a touch of frostbite and couldn’t march with my unit. But as soon as the swelling went down, orff I set. And here I am.’
‘Alone?’ Sleigh fumbled for a cigar.
‘Oh, thanks.’ Hay-Winthrop accepted it. ‘Alone save for a native bearer, a cholera belt and a packet of Janos Hunyadi’s laxative powders, yes. I seem to have lost him somewhere, the bearer that is, not Janos Hunyadi. I expect he’ll turn up around tiffin. Good chaps, your Punjabis?’
‘The best,’ said Sleigh. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed to the flag of truce that Hay-Winthrop had waved at them from the lower slopes.
‘Oh,’ the officer of the Thirty-seventh snorted. It was what passed in the Dragoons for a laugh. ‘It’s The Times! I always knew the bally thing had a purpose. Think I’ll take out a patent when I get home.’
‘Can I have a look?’ Sleigh took the tattered thing between freezing fingers. ‘I haven’t seen a white newspaper since I left Meerut.’
‘Be my guest,’ Hay-Winthrop told him, struggling to put some feeling into the blackened toes of his left foot. ‘It’s rather old, I’m afraid.’
Sleigh could just make out the date, 16 February. ‘I’ve a tin of Mrs Gittings’ Bread and Butter Pudding in my saddlebags. If one of your chaps wouldn’t mind . . .’
‘No. Of course not. Havildar.’
The NCO snapped to attention. ‘I am the servant of your merest whim, O unblemished one.’
‘Yes, yes. Send Gupta to bring up Mr Hay-Winthrop’s horse, will you? Rather stupid of him to leave it down there, actually.’
‘Indeed it was, great judge of men. I shall personally remove his kneecaps.’ He turned to Hay-Winthrop. ‘May I ask the Dogra Sahib if he speaks the lowly language of Hindoostani?’
‘Lord, no,’ Hay-Winthrop said. ‘No need in the Thirty-seventh. All my people speak English like natives. Except Major McPherson of course, but he went to Haileybury.’
‘Ah,’ Sleigh nodded. That said it all.
The Havildar smiled. ‘Right, Gupta. I bet you never thought you’d find a wonder as chinless as
this one, did you? But lo, Allah has directed another idiot to cross our paths.’
‘What is this tinned stuff of which the other idiot speaks, Havildar?’ the Sepoy asked, shouldering his rifle ready for the run.
‘Bread and Butter Pudding? Allah knows! Some repulsive spiceless sap, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Sleigh stood as though transfixed by a Pathan tulwar, staring at The Times.
‘Oh, yes, it’s true, I’m afraid.’ Hay-Winthrop sensed the trouble at once. ‘Rosebery’s Prime Minister. I thought of returning my Suakin medal in protest.’
‘Rosebery be buggered!’ Sleigh said. ‘Hay-Winthrop, you’ve come from Peshawar. Is the road clear to Gilgit? And the telegraph intact there?’
‘It was when I took it, yes. My dear fellow, are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
Sleigh looked at his man, the cool public school eyes, the frozen moustache like a dead hedgehog lying across his lips. ‘Perhaps I have, Hay-Winthrop,’ he said, ‘perhaps I have.’
THE OLD MAN’S TELEGRAM to Lord Roberts was curt enough.
‘Lieutenant Sleigh gone. Stop. Berserk. Stop. Probably gone berserk. Stop. Command of his company of the Thirty-second Pioneers temporarily taken by Lieutenant Hay-Winthrop, Thirty-seventh Dogras. Stop. Sleigh’s Havildar says he’d been expecting it. Stop. Weather getting better. Stop. Hope this finds you as it leaves same. Stop. On campaign. Stop. Chitral. Stop.’
SLEIGH HIMSELF, HIS uniform hanging on the back of an old, one-eyed bazaar dealer in Gilgit, the copy of Hay-Winthrop’s Times stuffed into the Afghan coat he’d swapped it for, sent a telegram too. To Australia.
YOU COULD HAVE HEARD a jumbuck drop that morning in the Dandenong. And the air so thick in the outback it could choke a man. The next train wasn’t due until Thursday and in the purple clouds of dawn a tiny spiral of dust was all that told of the horseman’s approach.
