by M. J. Trow
‘Russell?’ He twitched his regulation moustache at the new man.
‘Yessir.’ The lad was all of twenty.
‘This can’t be right.’ Dew peered closer at the pro forma. ‘Lordjohn? Is that your name, Russell? Lordjohn?’
‘Yessir. My grandad was a staunch Whig, sir.’
‘Don’t call me sir, lad,’ Dew said, though he only pre-dated the man by seven or eight years. ‘If we take a shine to you here, we’ll be colleagues in an odd sort of way. Experience?’
‘Two years on the beat, s . . . Constable.’
‘C Division?’ Dew looked at his man through narrow eyes.
‘Yessir . . . er . . . Vine Street.’
‘Precisely,’ growled Dew. ‘Never known an honest copper out of Vine Street.’
‘But I . . .’
‘All right, son.’ Dew raised an already avuncular hand. ‘No cause to get hot and bothered. You’re on probation, so to speak. And we speak as we find. Next.’
Next was another man, but altogether older and greyer than the boyish Russell.
‘Bromley,’ he said. ‘Ex-Essex Constabulary.’
‘Essex, eh?’ Dew stroked his chin. ‘That’s that place north of here, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, Constable.’
‘Just call me Mr Dew, lad.’ Mr Dew ignored the fact that Bromley could have been his father. ‘Well, twenty years in Chipping Ongar nick doesn’t exactly fit you for a career living on the razor’s edge, does it? Why did you leave it until now to transfer to the Met? And why so long before you transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department?’
‘Well, I may be slow,’ Bromley mused, ‘but I’m thorough. There isn’t a horse trough or public urinal in Ongar which I am unfamiliar with.’
‘Oh good,’ sighed Dew. ‘Credentials enough for any man, I’m sure. All right. Perhaps for the first and last time in your careers, Russell and Bromley, you may sit down in the presence of a senior officer of Scotland Yard, vit and to wiz, me. There are a few little rules you need to know.’
The new boys did as they were told, wedged between the piles of shoe boxes as they were, rapt in their first-day attention, sticky in their regulation suits.
‘The guv’nor,’ said Dew, leaning back with his boots on the scarred leather of the desk; he always took them off on hot mornings when the guv’nor wasn’t in, ‘he isn’t in. So now is a good time to talk about him. His name is Lestrade. His second name, that is. His first name needn’t concern you at all. For the record, it is Inspector. You call him “Mr Lestrade” or “sir”. He’s got the mind of a razor, the memory of an elephant and the pugnacity of a pug. You cross him at your peril, I’m telling you. Oh, by the way,’ he leaned forward, ‘he likes his tea from a little emporium in the Strand and is partial to a quick dunk of the Bath Olivers. Your first important jobs will be to provide huge quantities of both. And if ever you go out on a recce with the Inspector, be sure to carry plenty of spare change ’cos he’s never got any. Any questions?’
Bromley shrugged and shook his head. He had enough years on a Force to know you never asked questions of superiors. Russell was altogether greener. ‘Is he married, Mr Dew, the guv’nor?’
Dew’s bovine face darkened. ‘Was, laddie, was. His wife was a Mrs Manchester – before she became Mrs Lestrade, that is. She passed away now, ooh, two years last January. He still wears a black bowler in her memory. So don’t you go mentioning his wife, God rest her, or the name of Manchester. Got it?’
‘Yes, Mr Dew,’ Russell promised. ‘The name shall not pass my lips.’
THE MAN IN THE BLACK bowler made his way to the second floor. He padded down the worn corridor carpet past cluttered offices from which the keys of Remingtons rattled in the morning. The hat of which Dew had spoken was in fact in the crook of his arm and the heat of that spring meant that it was soon to be replaced by an altogether more suitable boater. And since, at least in the 1890s, they didn’t make boaters in black, there went another of Constable Dew’s theories out of the window.
He knocked on the frosted glass marked ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER and waited. Nothing. He knocked again. A tiny, grey-haired woman in grey opened it, greyly.
‘Ah, Miss Featherstonehaugh, radiant as ever this bright spring morning.’
‘Inspector Lestrade.’ She peered at him through her pince-nez. She’d know that missing nose-tip anywhere. ‘I’m afraid the Assistant Commissioner is . . . out.’
‘Out? But I got a memoranda.’ He shook a piece of paper at her. ‘It is Wednesday, isn’t it?’
She consulted the calendar thing on the Assistant Commissioner’s desk. ‘Indeed.’ she concurred.
‘Well,’ Lestrade slapped his leg with his bowler, ‘I’ll be downstairs. If His Nims returns, perhaps you can trot down with that curious way of going of yours, can you? I’m up to my dickie in cases.’
‘No, no.’ She held his arm, a curiously passionate gesture for one who was of her generation and had been hacked from a block of pure granite. ‘I don’t mean Mr Frost is out, exactly. He’s in.’
‘In? Out? Come on, woman, is he shaking it all about?’
There was a tell-tale gurgle as the Yard’s plumbing was put through its paces. A grocer’s son from Grantham with a girth the length of the Embankment emerged from a side door, buttoning up his flies. ‘Ah, Lestrade,’ he said. ‘Just popped out for a pee. Oh, sorry, Miss F. Tea, Lestrade?’
‘I wouldn’t say no, sir.’ Lestrade noticed that the old woman had turned even greyer, clutching various parts of her frock. She took a deep breath, summoned up the blood and swept from the room, her chatelaine rattling in disgust.
‘The trouble with that woman,’ Frost said, ‘is that she doesn’t believe people should have private parts, let alone use them.’ He sat heavily, and at nineteen stone he had no choice, in the great leather Chesterfield he’d inherited from his predecessor, McNaghten. Then it had been a magnificent piece of furniture. Now it hung like an old sack, horsehair trailing on the floor. Lestrade perched on the only other chair in the room, so hard that it made his eyes water and so narrow that his buttocks draped over each side.
‘Tell me about that railway murder.’ Frost fixed him with his old Grantham grocer’s stare.
‘Er . . .’
‘The one back in February.’
‘Er . . .’
‘L Division had it. Inspector Julius Greatorex.’
‘Oh, Julie. Yes, I remember now. What can I tell you about it?’
Frost frowned at him. ‘Well, nothing apparently. I thought it was referred to you.’
‘No, sir. Chief Inspector Abberline.’
‘Abberline?’
‘Yes, sir. Frederick Abberline. Chief Inspector. You must know him. Thinning hair. Dundreary whiskers. Lovely wife.’
Frost was slowly turning purple. ‘Don’t be flippant with me, Lestrade. A man hoping for a pension one day should be careful how lippy he is. Am I getting through?’
‘Loud and clear, sir,’ Lestrade beamed.
‘All right, then.’
There was a rustle of grey clothing beyond the partition and Miss Featherstonehaugh emerged like a ghost, rattling her teacups.
‘Three sugars, Mr Lestrade?’ she asked.
Lestrade looked aghast. ‘Will there be room for any tea?’ he asked.
‘Mr Frost always has three,’ she told him.
Lestrade groaned inwardly. Another giant leap for idiotkind.
‘No éclairs, Miss F?’ the Assistant Commissioner asked.
‘The éclair man hasn’t been this morning,’ she said. ‘Would you settle for a muffin?’
‘No,’ scowled Frost, ‘but I could hide my acute disappointment by eating three.’
‘Mr Lestrade?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, thank you, Miss Featherstonehaugh. Your tea, as always, is sheer nectar.’
She simpered at him and scuttled away in search of muffins.
‘Don’t butter her up, Lestrade,’ Frost said. ‘I’
ve got to pay her two-thirds of a man’s wage as it is. Where was I?’
‘Three sugars?’
‘No, the railway murder. I was going to tell you.’
Lestrade unglued one numb buttock from the chair. ‘I’m sitting comfortably,’ he lied.
‘Then I’ll begin,’ said Frost. ‘Fourteenth of February, wasn’t it? St Valentine’s Day. The gentlemen of the Press called it the St Valentine’s Day massacre. Erroneously, as always. I don’t think one victim can be called a massacre, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.’ Though it had to be said that Lestrade had missed the lecture on Semantics for Policemen. But it didn’t matter; he’d had plenty of experience of the Chosen People anyway.
‘Her name was Sarah Culdrose. She was twenty-eight years of age; married; childless.’
‘That’s right,’ Lestrade remembered. ‘The husband did it.’
‘Or did he?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll get round to Mr Culdrose in a minute. Her body was found in the early hours of the morning at Liverpool Street in a carriage from Aldgate. Her purse was still in her handbag and she’d been strangled.’
‘And Abberline got his man within three days. It’s all coming back to me now.’
‘That’s right. Except he didn’t.’
‘Ah.’ Lestrade was not surprised. Abberline’s track record was not what it might have been.
‘Ask yourself – why would a husband who wants to terminate the relationship he has with his wife go to the extraordinary lengths of taking her on the Inner Circle of the Metropolitan line’s Underground, where he would have been seen by scores of people, strangling his wife, having carefully disarranged her clothing first, and leaving her corpse for anyone to find?’
‘Fair question, sir,’ Lestrade ruminated. He’d had no breakfast. ‘But if this doubt has crept into your mind, may I ask why Mr Culdrose is still in custody? If I remember rightly, he’s in the Scrubs on remand.’
‘He is. And that’s where you’re going this morning, Lestrade. To ask him a few more questions – this time from a totally different angle.’
‘And that angle is?’
‘As though he were innocent.’
Lestrade frowned. ‘I thought all men were until proven guilty.’
It was Frost’s turn to frown. ‘I’m seriously worried about you, Lestrade,’ he tutted, shaking his bulldog head. ‘You are not as other policemen. Still, we’ll have to hope for an improvement.’
‘May I ask two questions, sir?’ Lestrade said.
‘You may ask, certainly,’ Frost told him.
‘First, why aren’t you giving this back to Chief Inspector Abberline, whose case it actually is?’
‘That’s simple. He’s on extended surveillance on the omnibuses of Penge, looking for the pervert who haunts the public transport in that district. So far the cunning swine has eluded the police, thwarting Abberline’s efforts at every turn. Your next question?’
‘Second, why are you sending me to interrogate a murder suspect, when you have no less evidence against him now than when Abberline arrested him?’
‘No less evidence? Well, not quite. You see, the Railway Police found another one this morning.’
Lestrade blinked. Another one?’
Frost nodded grimly. ‘Her body is at the Old Montague Street Morgue. When you’ve seen Culdrose, get along there.’
‘I’d prefer to go there first, sir.’
‘Why, Lestrade? She isn’t going anywhere for the moment.’
‘But there may be vital . . .’
‘I’m sure there will be, Lestrade. And you’re wasting time nattering about it. You know how serious a matter it is to waste the police’s time. Cut along. Oh, when you’ve finished your tea, of course.’
Lestrade gulped down the cup’s dregs and made for the door. He paused. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve considered,’ he said, ‘why the Penge pervert has so far eluded us, sir?’
Frost scowled at him. ‘I smell a theory in the wind, Lestrade,’ he said. ‘Go on. Out with it.’
‘Well, sir,’ the Inspector said, ‘it’s unprofessional of me to say it, I know, but have you considered the possibility that Chief Inspector Abberline is the Penge Flasher?’
‘Get out, Lestrade,’ Frost told him, levelly. And wipe that smile off your face. Culdrose’s barrister is a shifty bastard called Marshall Hall. God help you if he’s got wind of this morning’s little discovery.’
THE VICTORIAN PILE of Her Majesty’s Prison Wormwood Scrubs lies in the borough of Hammersmith on the twenty-two acres beside the recreation ground. Once a lung of London, it now stood dumb in the unseasonal heat of that spring, the sun beating mercilessly on its slated roofs and the grilles of its little windows through which the hopeless stared in vain.
Inspector Sholto Lestrade and Constable Walter Dew took the tram to Shepherd’s Bush and walked the rest of the way through the great lunchtime throng to the great studded gates. Beyond these, the sun never shone. They followed a rattling warder down endless bleak corridors, in regulation chipped green and cream, past the treadmill that counted 930 steps to nowhere and the crank that broke the back and the spirit. On up to the first floor overlooking the grey exercise yard where years of hobnailed boots had worn a tight and ghastly circle. In the centre was the flagpole where they ran up the black flag on execution days and they passed the execution shed where men died crying or cursing their God or asking for forgiveness. Calcraft, Berry, the Billingtons, public executioners past and present were deaf and blind to such entreaties. The white hood. The pinions on the legs. The noose. The trap. Scientific death in nine seconds.
The cell door crashed back as the prison clock struck eleven. A hollow-faced man, his skin parchment yellow above the rough arrow-grey, sat curled on the plain iron bedstead in the corner. The remains of an indescribable meal lay on the wooden plate on the table. There was no knife, no fork, only an ancient spoon. And there were no laces in the man’s boots.
But it was someone else who held Lestrade’s attention. A man of nearly his own age, but boyish, clean-shaven and in an immaculately cut suit. The Apollo of the Bar.
‘I am Marshall Hall,’ he said, hands on hips. ‘Who are you?’
It was what Frost had feared. The Persians had sneaked around the pass at Thermopylae, the Scots were late at Glencoe, General Custer had forgotten his sabres at the Little Bighorn. It all added up to one thing – defeat.
‘I am Inspector Lestrade,’ said Lestrade. ‘This is Detective Constable Dew.’
Marshall Hall nodded. ‘You have the papers for my client’s release?’
‘I have no instructions as to that,’ Lestrade told him.
Marshall Hall crossed to his man, the grey eyes cold and lethal. Lestrade had seen him in action before, at the Bailey. He delighted in destroying policemen when it suited his book and it was unfortunate that the two policemen on the case of Sarah Culdrose were Julius Greatorex and Frederick Abberline. It was as though Marshall Hall read Lestrade’s mind.
‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘Inspector Greatorex. L Division. Made sergeant at thirty-eight after nearly nineteen years on the Force. Number of arrests – two hundred and sixty-eight. Number of convictions – sixteen. Promoted to inspector one month after marrying the least eligible daughter of Sir Charles Warren, late Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – a lady whose face has been known to frighten horses. Chief Inspector Abberline. Consistently promoted to the level of his own incompetence. Signally failed to catch the Whitechapel murderer seven years ago. Consistently succeeds in catching his own tail, but then he’s had a great deal of practice. Has faced a string of paternity suits since the spring of 1874 since which point he has become increasingly estranged from the increasingly strange Mrs Abberline, she who almost took the title “London’s Most Homely Woman” from the aforementioned Mrs Greatorex.’
‘To what conclusion is this going?’ asked Lestrade, perfectly able to use court-room jargon whe
n the devil drove.
Marshall Hall looked at him oddly. ‘To establish the incompetence of the police officers in charge of my client’s alleged case,’ he said.
Lestrade breathed a silent sigh of relief.
‘Unless of course I choose to believe the literary ramblings of Doctors John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle in the Strand Magazine.’
‘Which you don’t,’ Lestrade checked.
‘I’d be a solicitor’s clerk if I did,’ the barrister said. ‘But if ever you’re tempted to sue, I’d be delighted to act for you. No one can accuse me of partisanship. Now come, Lestrade, I’m a busy man. Time is money and my client has been wasting away in custody here for three months.’
‘I have come to ask your client some questions.’
‘Come off it, Lestrade,’ Marshall Hall chuckled. ‘The sole reason you are here is to eat humble pie on the part of your superiors. The case against my client is circumstantial at best. And the little discovery this morning of a woman’s body at Blackfriars Station has left you with an entire omelette on your face. Admit it.’
‘Some have cases thrust upon them,’ Lestrade said. ‘That is my position this afternoon. I know nothing about the woman at Blackfriars, nor will I until this afternoon. But if your client intends to get out of here, I suggest that he cooperates.’
Marshall Hall perched himself on the corner of the table. ‘George,’ he said, ‘you aren’t obliged to say anything to these . . . gentlemen.’
Culdrose nodded slowly. ‘I know, Marshall,’ he said. ‘But as I have said repeatedly since February, I have nothing to hide.’
‘Very well, Lestrade,’ said Marshall Hall, ‘but rest assured I shall interfere if I find your questions improper.’
Lestrade nodded. ‘Constable Dew will take notes,’ he said.
‘And I will see his notebook,’ Marshall Hall said.
‘You will not,’ said Lestrade.
