Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand

by M. J. Trow

  Lestrade blinked, trying to take in the scene. Time enough to cope with the dead. She wasn’t going anywhere. Perhaps the live one was a witness. He took off his bowler as a mark of respect. ‘Please don’t be alarmed, madam,’ he said. ‘I am a police officer.’

  The woman looked anything but alarmed and slowly pulled the tousled hair from her head. ‘So am I, Lestrade,’ she said.

  ‘Good God,’ Lestrade sat down heavily, ‘Johnnie “Upright”. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Trying to stop this, would you believe?’ He jerked his head in the direction of his travelling companion.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve gone underground on the Underground, Lestrade. Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘Not a dickie bird.’ Lestrade clicked his teeth. ‘Abberline?’

  Johnnie “Upright” nodded. ‘Do you know, I’ve been undercover now in various guises since 18 bloody 88. The Ripper Case – that was my first one.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Lestrade ignored the NO SMOKING sign and lit up a cigar. With a generosity rarely paralleled, he passed it to the posing policeman. ‘I remember it well. You haunted the Ten Bells in Whitechapel.’

  ‘Damn near took my liver, that little job. D’you know, I was downing ten, eleven pints a night.’

  Lestrade tilted back the bowler he’d put back on. ‘Get away,’ he said. No wonder the Whitechapel murderer had never been caught. ‘So how long have you been on this one, then?’

  ‘Two days.’ He eased a lump of wadding out of the left breast of his bodice. ‘Ooh, that’s better. How these women carry these things around with them, I’ll never know.’

  A young constable put his head round the door. ‘Mr Lestrade, the line Inspector wants to know . . . Oh, my God . . .’ and Russell lolled over the metal tail gate, depositing his supper on to the City and South London line.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Johnnie “Upright” asked.

  ‘It gets some men that way, Johnnie,’ Lestrade explained, ‘especially the young green ones. Seeing a bloke like you in a frock; well, it’s their natural bigotry, I suppose. Gives rise to a certain revulsion, don’t you think?’

  ‘If you think I’m enjoying this . . .’ Upright moaned.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. Constable Russell,’ he called to the still-heaving detective, ‘if I can drag you away from all the fun for a minute. This is Detective Inspector Thicke; he’s one of us.’

  Russell didn’t need to turn round to be apprised of that.

  ‘If I read the sentence you so gamely started aright, the line Inspector wants to know when he can have his train back. The answer to that is when I’m good and ready. Tell him he can play with his armatures until then. Now, John, let’s have the details. And take your time with that cigar. There aren’t any more where that came from.’

  The policemen turned their attention to the only real lady in the carriage.

  ‘I was in the next cell, would you believe?’ Thicke said. ‘If only I’d chosen to ride in this one.’

  ‘If you had, Johnnie, he’d only have waited until later and killed somewhere else. What made you take the City and South London in the first place?’

  ‘A hunch.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A spinal curvature I’ve had since childhood. The seats on the Metropolitan line stock are bloody agony, I can tell you. I thought a padded cell of the C and SL would be comfier.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘No. Rather worse, in fact.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lestrade observed, ‘the corsets don’t help. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Well, I was just going off duty actually.’ Thicke took Lestrade’s proffered bowler as a matter of course as the more senior of the inspectors peered into the bodice of the dead woman. ‘I’d been to Stockwell and back three times today already.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  Thicke shook his head. ‘Not unless you count the old boy on the eleven-seventeen up line.’ He gave Lestrade an old-fashioned look and the more senior inspector thought it best not to press the matter.

  ‘The lights went very dim as we took the Elephant gradient. There was a family of four in my carriage. It was like bloody Bedlam, I can tell you. I blame the government of course. It’s stopping those school fees that’s done it. Kids these days have no respect. They were climbing all over the seats, pulling faces at the guard, God knows what. Bloody railway children! When one of ’em told his mother he was going to be sick, I got out.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Right here, at the Elephant. I changed carriages and here she was.’

  Lestrade felt the dead woman’s hand. ‘Still warm,’ he murmured.

  ‘I must have walked right past the bloke,’ Thicke ruminated.

  ‘You don’t remember anything?’

  Thicke shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘Whoever our man is, he’s a cool bugger. I don’t think I could strangle a woman feet away from a potential eyewitness and get off a train as if I was . . . getting off a train.’

  Lestrade patted Thicke’s fol-de-rols. ‘That’s why you chose to become a policeman, Johnnie,’ he said, ‘and not a homicidal maniac. Have you . . . er . . .’ he nodded to the corpse’s lower limbs, ‘has she been . . . er . . . ?’

  ‘Come off it, Lestrade,’ Thicke said. ‘I’m a married man. Oh . . . sorry, Sholto. I heard about your wife. Bad luck, eh?’

  ‘Damn bad luck,’ Lestrade nodded and carefully lifted the lady’s skirts. ‘Nothing untoward here,’ he said.

  ‘Still, there wouldn’t be time, would there? The platform was pretty busy at Kennington.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anybody getting on or off this carriage there?’

  ‘That’s the trouble with these padded cells – no windows to speak of. Our man would have had an easier time of it here – no windows to overlook him. No communication cord to pull for emergencies.’

  ‘But two guards,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘Ah, that’s why he struck in the middle of the three coaches,’ Thicke realized. ‘With the doors closed at both ends, you can’t see through, at least not all the time.’

  ‘So how do you know where you are?’ Lestrade asked. ‘I usually take a cab.’

  ‘The guard flicks up a next-station sign at that little window at the end. Without that, you’d be going round for ever. You can’t see the station name on the platform for the bloody advertisements. Some American bloke asked me yesterday where Fry’s Cocoa was. I said “Eh?” And he said, “Fry’s Cocoa.” He couldn’t find it on the map of the Underground, but he’d definitely passed through it at least three times.’

  ‘That’s why I take a cab,’ said Lestrade. ‘Do we know who she was, John?’

  ‘I found these in her handbag.’ Thicke held up a wad of paper.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Three pounds eighteen and sixpence three farthings.’

  ‘She wasn’t robbed, then?’ Lestrade left no stone unturned.

  ‘I wouldn’t say so. Quite well-heeled to look at her shoes.’

  Lestrade had. Everything about the body smacked of opulence and good taste. The senior Inspector riffled through the contents of the dead woman’s bag. ‘Emily,’ he said. ‘Her name was Emily.’

  ‘My deductions entirely,’ nodded Thicke. ‘But who’s the William who’s writing to her?’

  Lestrade took in the address. ‘Albany,’ he said. ‘A bachelor’s address if ever there was one. Dew!’

  The Constable of that name had been swapping suicide stories with the railway police on the platform and popped his macassared head inside the ‘cell’. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get over to Albany. You’re looking for someone called William.’

  ‘William who?’

  ‘Just William, Dew,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Isn’t the Albany a pub, sir?’ Dew said.

  ‘No, it’s a rather nobby tenement building, Constable. No doubt you’ll need some help, so take those rookies with you. And be circumscr
ibed. Upset any of the inmates there and you’ll be on the horse troughs for the rest of your natural. Got it?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And make sure you do the talking. Your unparalleled eloquence will take you far.’

  ‘Yessir. Er . . . it’s nearly midnight, sir.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The lads and I went off duty nearly an hour ago, guv’nor.’

  Lestrade got up and crossed to his man. There’s a woman dead, Dew,’ he said solemnly. ‘And we never sleep, do we?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Dew, a little shamefaced, ‘we never do.’

  ‘Get along, then,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘What do you make of the letter, then, Lestrade?’ Thicke asked.

  The senior Inspector perused it again, ‘Not a love-letter.’ he said, sniffing it. ‘Too cordial – “Your ever-loving . . .” – what is that? Father? No. He’d sign it “Papa” or “Dad”. Brother perhaps? What’s all this about a match? Grace? Who’s Grace?’

  ‘Some friend of hers, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Thicke surmised.

  ‘“I’m playing with Grace on Saturday”,’ Lestrade read. ‘Hallo, hallo, hallo.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Thicke. ‘Bit forward if you ask me. Doesn’t that count as an obscene publication?’

  ‘My God.’ Lestrade read further.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Huish Episcopi,’ Lestrade said.

  If this was an ejaculation, it was a new one on Thicke. ‘What?’ he repeated.

  ‘He’s invited her to Huish Episcopi for Saturday’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s a village, Johnnie, in Somerset.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Thicke was impressed. ‘I can see why you Yard blokes get on,’ he said. ‘Minds like gazetteers, you’ve got.’

  ‘Not really,’ Lestrade smiled. ‘I have every reason to know this particular village very well indeed.’

  IT WAS THE WEE SMALL hours when Lestrade’s knuckles barked painfully on the door of Melville Lavender’s rooms in Maiden Lane.

  A rather dishevelled figure in a nightcap peered round it at him. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ he said, ‘have you any idea of the time?’

  The Inspector flicked out a half-hunter. ‘It’s nearly two-thirty, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Lavender. ‘The milk train will just be limbering up at Budleigh Salterton now. Cocoa?’

  ‘That’s extraordinarily kind, Mr Lavender,’ Lestrade said, ‘bearing in mind my intrusion.’

  ‘Ah, I couldn’t sleep anyway. There’s been another, hasn’t there?’

  Lestrade paused in the passage. ‘How did you know?’ He collided briefly with a GREEN FOR GO signal arm that jutted out from the wall. The miracle was that he had missed it on his first visit.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been half expecting it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t suppose you’d knock me up at this hour to inquire into the braking capacity of a Beyer Peacock 4-4-OT.’

  ‘How right you are.’ Lestrade patted the blood from his forehead where the signal had drawn it.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Elephant and Castle,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Oh, the City and South London.’ Lavender looked perplexed.

  ‘You look perplexed,’ Lestrade observed with the eagle eye of a born detective. The other one was already beginning to close where the signal arm had caught it.

  ‘Well, it’s just that . . . oh, never mind.’

  ‘No, no.’ Lestrade removed a scale model of Mr Greathead’s tunnelling shield from the sofa before he landed on it. ‘Please go on. I could use all the help I can get at this stage.’

  ‘Well, I did have a little theory,’ Lavender said, ‘about the Jane Hollander murder. And that of Sarah Culdrose. This one’s rather blown it, though.’

  ‘Yes?’ Lestrade was not too proud to pinch someone else’s theories. He’d done it all his working life.

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ Lavender caught the rising, bubbling milk in the pan on the embers of the fire in the nick of time, ‘you told me Mrs Culdrose was found at Liverpool Street?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And Mrs Hollander at Blackfriars?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lovely Moorish facade at Blackfriars,’ Lavender mused.

  ‘Indeed. Your theory?’ Lestrade harried his man.

  ‘Theory? Oh yes. Well, that means that both ladies died on the Metropolitan and District line.’

  ‘So?’ It was half past two in the morning and for Lestrade it had been a long day.

  ‘So I did have a little surmise that perhaps someone was out to discredit that company.’

  ‘What? By committing murders on them?’

  ‘Exactly. But this new one has spoilt it. Sugar?’

  ‘Two please. Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Lavender explained as though to an idiot, ‘the latest was committed on the City and South London. If someone from the City and South London wanted to discredit a rival, he’d hardly commit a murder on his own line.’

  ‘Ah,’ Lestrade was ahead of him, ‘but shitting on one’s own doorstep could be a clever ploy,’ he said, ‘to divert suspicion. Thank you, Mr Lavender, you’ve been very helpful.’ He rose to go, his cocoa untouched.

  ‘Have I?’ Lavender asked. ‘I hardly think so.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Lestrade said. ‘The guards.’

  ‘Guards?’

  ‘Unlike the Metropolitan and District, there are guards on the City and South London, aren’t there?’

  ‘Well,’ Lavender sipped the froth off his cocoa, so that it settled like foam along the iron-grey line of his moustache, ‘as you know, I’m no expert on the Underground, but yes; I believe there are two, one at the end of each carriage.’

  ‘Well, they must have been short-staffed tonight, because there were only two per train as I understand it.’

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Lavender said, ‘but they’re quite meticulous about the calibre of chap they employ, of course. No one who has failed to reach Grade III in the National Schools has any chance at all – and those with the rudiments of calculus are preferred.’

  Lestrade shrugged. That was clearly why he had become a policeman all those years ago. The City Force was not that choosy. Still less the Metropolitan. ‘You’ve intrigued me, Mr Lavender, with your theory of the City and South London. Thanks for the cocoa – perhaps some other time? Don’t worry,’ he swung under the signal arm, only grazing himself this time, ‘I’ll see myself out.’ He opened his blacking eye gingerly. ‘Just about.’

  ❖ 4 ❖

  L

  estrade caught the 4.50 from Paddington. Billycock-hatted men in workers’ overalls carrying tin flasks of tea trudged grumbling along the platform towards him, longing for the Independent Labour Party to come of age and for Mr Keir Hardie to do something in the House of Commons. These were a new race – the commuters of the metropolis – for whom special cheap trains were run which arrived with the milk from Budleigh Salterton.

  By the time the locomotive had whistled and hissed its way out of Praed Street, Lestrade was asleep. Through his dreams a phantom floated, with hideous grin, howling ‘Mind the doors’ at him. It turned through the endless chill tunnels of the Underground, where rats played leapfrog with the live rail of the City and South London screaming ‘Mind the gap’, and he was trying to lift his feet to do just that when a bemused ticket inspector woke him, demanding to see his ticket.

  By now the sun was up and threatening another hot day, ridiculously hot for April, turning as it was into May. Lestrade had cast a clout or two already despite the adage advising against it, and his suit was now a natty lightweight serge and his bowler was left at the Yard. Tilted on the back of his head was a regulation straw boater, Inspectors, for the use of, 1 May to 30 September. The ghosts of the Great Western’s broad gauge still lay by the trackside where three years ago, on a frenzied Sunday, the 7-foot 1/4-inch sleepers had been hacked and sawn to the regulation Stephenson length. Everyone knew it had t
o come, but even so, Isambard Kingdom Brunel must have been revolving slowly in his grave.

  At the Georgian city of Bath that the Romans had called Aquae Sulis for reasons best known to themselves, the Yard man changed trains and travelled south-west through the mid-morning, blowing billows of cigar smoke at the prominent NO SMOKING signs and ignoring the looks of contempt from a clergyman and his wife. He alighted at Street on the Fosse Way and found a cabman dozing in the sun on his perch. For a trifling amount at which Lestrade felt faint and for which he demanded a receipt, the growler rattled over the tortuous, rutted roads of Somerset, across the King’s Sedge Moor, through the Hams (and Lestrade felt every jolt of this), over the battlefield of Langport where Roundhead buggers and Cavalier buggers had clashed long ago (or so the cabman told him) and over the Parrett into the charming little village of Huish Episcopi.

  He found the Bandicoot and Piglet without difficulty as the only hostelry in the village and took a jar of his host’s excellent West Country cider while deciding on his plan of attack.

  ‘Here for the match, sir?’ his host had the temerity to inquire.

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ Lestrade lied.

  ‘Ar. Mr Bandicoot’s eleven, I’ll be bound.’

  Now this was something of a facer for Lestrade. He had known Harry Bandicoot, the local squire, man and boy for four years. Ever since he turned up where Russell and Bromley stood now, as rookies at the Yard. There had been a misunderstanding while young Bandicoot was at Eton. He had joined the cadet force there and the chaps had told him that it was a sure way into the police force later. Chump that he was, he had believed them. But although Harry Bandicoot’s deductive powers were limited, he was a crack shot, had boxed for his school, had saved Lestrade’s life and was now bringing up the Inspector’s motherless daughter. Wouldn’t it therefore be a little uncharitable to agree with the landlord’s estimation of Harry’s mental age?

  ‘Twenty-five, surely,’ Lestrade said.