Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Well, he definitely said husband, guv’nor.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about this, Dew?’

  The young Constable was clearly a little flustered. ‘I’m sorry, sir. What with Mr Bayreuth’s confession and all, I sort of forgot about it. All he did was identify her.’

  ‘As Emily Bellamy?’

  Dew nodded.

  ‘What did he say – precisely?’

  ‘Er . . . he said he’d come to look at the body and I said, “Who might you be?” And he said, “The husband of the deceased.” And I said, “She didn’t have a husband,” and he said, “Oh yes she did,” and I said, “Oh no she didn’t” . . .’

  ‘All right, Walter,’ Lestrade cut in. ‘Perhaps “precisely” was a trifle strong. Just give me the gist.’

  ‘Well, he gave his name as William Bellamy. Said he didn’t have the marriage lines exactly on him, but he’d read in the papers about the woman on the City and South London line and it fitted his wife’s description. He hadn’t seen her since Tuesday last.’

  ‘So you showed him the body?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What was his reaction?’

  ‘Seemed fascinated by the throat marks,’ Dew remembered. ‘I thought that was a bit peculiar, but you know how it takes them in different ways. Remember that woman who brought a change of underwear for her old man? The one who’d been run over by that tram? Not a lot of point, really. She said she’d brought it in in case he was involved in an accident.’

  ‘Yes, yes. What time was this?’

  ‘What, the tram accident?’

  ‘No, no. Bellamy’s visit to view the remains. Do try to stay with it, Dew.’

  ‘Oh, yes. This would be about three o’clockish yesterday afternoon, sir. Sergeant Dixon will have logged the exact time.’

  Lestrade grunted. He could see it now in old Dixon’s immaculate copperplate: ‘William Bellamy. About three o’clockish.’ Well, you couldn’t get the staff. ‘At more or less the same time he was going down to a particularly clever yorkie from W. G. Grace,’ the Inspector said. ‘What did this man look like, Dew?’

  ‘Er . . . about my height, sir. Blond. Clean-shaven. Had a slight accent.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Well, think, man. This is important. What was it? Close your eyes. Right. You’re in the morgue in C basement, West Wing. What do you smell?’

  ‘Formaldehyde.’

  ‘And?’

  Dew screwed up his nose. ‘The river.’

  ‘Good. Now. Bellamy’s talking to you. He’s saying . . . what’s he saying?’

  ‘“Yes, my God, yes. It’s her. It’s my wife.” Something like that.’

  ‘Fine. Now, how’s he saying it?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Well, is he shouting? Crying? Whispering?’

  Dew’s face relaxed and his moustache slumped. ‘He’s just . . . saying it.’

  ‘Right. No emotion. Odd for a man who’s staring at the light of his life stretched out on a marble slab. Now what’s the accent? Bermondsey? West Ham?’

  Dew shook his head, the mental effort too great.

  ‘All right.’ Lestrade held the man’s arm. ‘Class. Did he have a plum in his mouth? A silver spoon? Was he gentry? A nob?’

  ‘Sort of . . .’

  ‘Right. Public school, then. Did he sound like Harry Bandicoot?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Harry Bandicoot, sir.’ Dew opened his eyes. ‘I’d know Harry Bandicoot.’

  ‘I know it wasn’t Harry Bandicoot, Dew, you nincompoop! I mean, could he have gone to Eton, this Mr Bellamy?’

  ‘Possibly. Wait a minute.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His address. He’d have left an address with Sergeant Dixon.’

  ‘Yes. And it would have been a false one. That’s the trouble with the bloody newspapers in this country. They printed the dead woman’s name. Any maniac can crawl out of the woodwork and claim all sorts of connections. Look at Bayreuth. And I haven’t forgotten the Ripper Case . . .’

  Neither had Dew. He shuddered.

  ‘Two hundred letters all signed “Jack”. I’d give Bayreuth’s right arm to know who leaked her name to the Press.’

  Dew hoped his blush wouldn’t show in the darkened confines of the snug of the Horse and Collar. Lestrade blew a hearty sigh. He was rather as he had been the day before, totally stumped.

  ‘I know this sounds ridiculous, sir . . .’ Dew began.

  ‘It does, Walter, but I’m getting used to it. Go on.’

  ‘Well, if anything, the accent sounded . . . Australian.’

  ‘Australian?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘Does that make any sense?’ Dew asked hopefully.

  ‘No, Walter,’ Lestrade said, ‘no sense at all. But I know one thing.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  Lestrade lifted his empty glass. ‘It’s your shout.’

  ❖ 5 ❖

  S

  he lay where the murderer had left her, on the ridged floor of the padded cell, her bonnet beside her. She’d turned her head, as though to watch out for the guard’s posting of the next station. Her left hand had clawed the leather of the seat in her death throes, and in the lashings of her agony she’d kicked off both her shoes as she died.

  Lestrade knelt before her, wedged between the seats. Around him, on the platform at Stockwell, policemen stood in knots, muttering darkly.

  ‘This is number three, isn’t it?’ The voice made him turn.

  ‘Who’s there?’ In the flickering gas lights, all the Inspector saw was a shape.

  ‘Melville Lavender. You sent for me?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Thanks for coming so promptly.’ Lestrade shook his hand. ‘We must stop meeting like this.’

  Lavender stared at the corpse at Lestrade’s feet. He was shaking imperceptibly and had turned a whiter shade of pale. ‘Are you all right?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘I think so,’ the Railway Police’s expert said. ‘Perhaps we could sit in the adjacent car?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Bromley’

  The Constable of that name popped his head round the double door. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get Litchfield at the double.’

  ‘Who, sir? Where, sir?’

  ‘Police photographer at the Yard. Tell him I want this car covered. All angles, with the body in position.’

  ‘Won’t he be in bed, sir?’

  ‘We were all in bed an hour ago, Constable,’ Lestrade snapped. ‘This isn’t sleepy Essex, lad – and I use the word advisedly. It’s Scotland Yard. We never sleep. And tell Litchfield I can do without the studio backdrop and the aspidistras. No frills. Got it?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Lavender plodded past caped policemen to the car nearest the locomotive.

  ‘Verity True,’ said Lestrade, ‘or so her pelisse label says. What sort of person writes their name in their clothing, I wonder?’

  Lavender leaned heavily on the metal balustrade that enclosed the entrance to the car. ‘Soldiers, sailors, domestic servants, anyone who’s attended boarding school or doesn’t have a very trusting nature.’

  For a rhetorical question, Lestrade hadn’t done badly in terms of an answer. ‘And it’s number four, by the way,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Lavender gulped something sedative from a hip flask.

  ‘Miss True. She’s the fourth victim of the Underground.’

  Lavender shook his head. ‘This is awful,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not safe to use these lines any more. It’s funny, a few weeks ago, I’d have said there was no safer form of travel in the world.’

  ‘I’ve heard rickshaws have a very low accident rate,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Ah, that’s because there are so many Chinese,’ Lavender informed him. ‘The very magnitude of their population means that it’s impossible to fall over in China. The throng keeps you upright.’

  ‘I’ve heard that the whole o
f the world’s population could stand upright on the Isle of Dogs,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘That’s the Isle of Wight, surely,’ Lavender said.

  ‘Nobody stands on the Isle of Wight, do they?’ asked Lestrade. ‘At least not after closing time.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lestrade,’ Lavender smiled.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The very banality of your conversation has a marvellous soothing effect. I feel better now.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Lestrade grinned through gritted teeth. He’d never been accused of banality before and anyway, the law against it had been repealed in the 24th of George III if he had remembered that lecture on Hansard for Policemen correctly.

  ‘I’m not used to seeing murder victims, that’s all,’ Lavender explained.

  ‘Of course not,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’m afraid it’s something we get manured to in our business. Feel up to a spot of sleuthing?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Miss True’s body was found here a little over an hour ago. I estimate she died a little before eleven.’

  ‘The last train,’ Lavender nodded.

  ‘On the down line from King William Street.’

  ‘Correct. How long would . . . that . . . have taken?’

  ‘The killing? It depends,’ Lestrade said, ‘on the strength of the attacker, the strength of the victim, the element of surprise. Probably between two and four minutes.’

  ‘A bit dicey from the Oval, then?’ Lavender observed.

  ‘Really?’

  The railway expert pointed to the locomotive. ‘Number eleven,’ he said, ‘a four-wheeled frame, fourteen feet wide over the central buffers. Driven by two series-wound engines with Gramme armatures. Fifty horsepower at three hundred and ten revolutions per minute.’

  That sounded rather like the Balkans to Lestrade, ever the man of current affairs thanks to the editorial excellence of the Sun.

  ‘Both motors are connected in series and controlled by a plain rheostat switch and a reversing switch.’ Lavender was in full flight. ‘The starting current is one hundred and fifty amperes and the drawbar pulls two thousand and fifty pounds. On the Kennington level it would be managing twenty-five miles an hour.’

  ‘God, that’s frightening,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘On average, of course, it would slow to eleven and a half miles an hour.’

  ‘Why the difference?’

  Lavender’s flask contents had given him the joie de vivre to chuckle. ‘Human nature, Mr Lestrade,’ he said. ‘It’s knocking-off time. Ever seen a fire engine late at night, and no fire?’

  Well . . . yes.’

  ‘An ambulance and no accident?’

  ‘Well ..:

  ‘What better way to get home fast through the streets? Just lash the horses and ring the bloody bell. People leap aside and thank God it isn’t happening to them. No need of a bell down here. Just open the throttle full up and hang on to the dead man’s hand.’

  ‘The . . . er?’

  ‘The brake. That lever over there.’ Lavender pointed to it. ‘There’s no air pump for it, but two reservoirs under the sides of the cab. They’re recharged every night on the down run from the Stockwell reservoir. But in case they fail, or in case the driver collapses with apoplexy or anything, he has to keep his hand on that lever at all times. As he falls, his weight will slide it forward and the train will stop.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lavender looked into the nearest car, ‘it would have been dark.’

  ‘It would?’

  ‘Of course. The Stockwell gradient drains the power considerably. About where Spurgeon’s orphanage stands in the Clapham Road, the City and South London had to use cables to haul the cars up the gradient until last year. Well, it is one in three and a half. They’ve got over it now by more juice.’

  ‘Juice?’ Lestrade was confused.

  ‘Electric current. But it still knocks out the lights, if only for a few seconds.’

  ‘Time enough for our man to strike?’

  ‘If he waited until after the Oval, yes. But that’s only a journey of three minutes. Would that give him time?’

  ‘It would if he struck north of the Oval, say after Kennington.’

  ‘After Kennington,’ Lavender obliged thoughtfully. ‘But what if someone got on at the Oval? Wasn’t that taking a hell of a chance?’

  ‘What if they didn’t?’ Lestrade asked. ‘You said yourself it was the last train. All murder is chance, Mr Lavender. You show me the perfect murder and I’ll show you a good time. What if he’s seen? What if he’s left a clue at the murder scene? What if the victim fights back? What does he do with the body? It’s all chance. All luck. We’ve just got to weigh our luck with his and hope for the best.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Lavender asked, horrified. ‘Is that all modem detection is all about?’

  ‘Modern detection?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘That’s a rather silly phrase invented by Dr Conan Doyle, isn’t it? Some of us live in the real world, you know.’

  CAMBERWELL LIBRARY stood in Camberwell Church Street. Within it, that bright May morning, a ferret-faced little man in regulation serge stood at the Romantic Fiction counter, his features dappled by the shafts of sunlight that threw red and amber rays on to the shelves through the stained glass.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a frosty-faced woman the wrong side of the counter asked.

  ‘Do you have periodicals?’ the ferret-faced man asked.

  The frosty-faced woman’s eyes filled with loathing and she shrieked and fled through Gardening and Taxidermy in search of a male superior. The ferret-faced man was aware that the avid readers had looked up sharply at the intrusion, had indrawn their respective breaths and had read on.

  ‘Do you have a ticket?’ a much less severe woman asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have not come to borrow a book.’

  She glanced at his suiting. He seemed respectable enough. At least he wasn’t wearing a long raincoat with his trousers tied at the knee with string. All seemed in order. What could have so frightened her colleague?

  ‘Is there a particular book you wish to borrow?’ she asked.

  ‘I am here on another matter,’ he told her. ‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. I am looking for Miss Agnes True.’

  ‘You’ve found her,’ the librarian said.

  ‘Trottie!’ A male voice shattered the quiet.

  A dozen fingers shot to a dozen lips and the common cry of ‘Ssshh!’ rent the air.

  ‘Get away from that man,’ the male voice went on. ‘He just asked Miss Dalrymple an improper question.’

  Miss True took a step backwards.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Lestrade asked her.

  ‘Mr Hathersuch, the Chief Librarian,’ she whispered. ‘He means well.’

  ‘And I assume Miss Dalrymple is the one with the moustache General Kitchener would be proud of?’

  Miss True giggled.

  A large, balding man squeezed himself between Horticulture and the slim section marked Humour of the Medes and Persians, and made boldly for the Inspector. The frosty-faced woman with the moustache bustled at his elbow. ‘We get undesirables like you, fellow, from time to time. If they are not publishers’ representatives, they are ruffians from the Elephant and Castle. Well, let me tell you, this is a respectable neighbourhood. John Ruskin used to live up the road.’

  ‘Ah, I must pop in on my way home.’

  ‘I would like you to leave.’ The librarian stood at the height of his dignity. ‘Indulge your animal instincts elsewhere. This is England, sir. More – It is Camberwell. Is librariankind safe nowhere?’

  ‘Certainly not in Romantic Fiction.’ Lestrade winked at Miss Dalrymple who shuddered and clutched her date-stamper convulsively. ‘I think Miss Dalrymple may have misheard me. I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and I have business with Miss True here.’

  ‘Trottie?’ Hathersuch rounded on her. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘Well.’ Th
e girl was a little nonplussed. ‘He showed me his card.’

  ‘I’m sure he did!’ Miss Dalrymple shrilled.

  ‘Look, do you mind?’ a crotchety voice called. ‘I’ve read the last line three times already’

  ‘What are you reading?’ Hathersuch instinctively asked.

  ‘Who Killed Lady Agatha?’ the reader told him.

  ‘It was Samson the gardener,’ said the Chief Librarian. ‘Bashed in her head with a hoe after forcing her to change her will. I’d got it by page eight.’

  ‘Well, really!’ The reader slammed shut the book and stormed out.

  ‘I think he’d find All About Chartered Accountancy marginally more gripping. Mr Lestrade – if that is your name – I am afraid Miss True is still on duty until five of the clock. I cannot . . .’

  ‘Is there a back room?’ Lestrade asked her.

  There was a further inrush of breath from Miss Dalrymple.

  ‘Follow me,’ Miss True said.

  She led him down a spiral staircase where his hobnailed boots rang and scraped on the treads to a basement wall-to-wall with remaindered copies that no one read any more. There were an awful lot of Marie Corellis, Lestrade couldn’t help noticing.

  ‘Trottie?’ Lestrade said. ‘Is that what they call you?’

  ‘Well,’ she smiled at him, ‘Agnes is rather awful, isn’t it? I don’t mind being called after a pigeon.’

  Lestrade saw, in the dim light as she put a match to an oil lamp, how like her dead sister the girl was. But this one was bright, vivacious. A smile played around her mouth. Her eyes danced. She was alive.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve met a real Scotland Yard detective before.’ She offered him a chair.

  ‘I’m not sure you’ve missed much, miss,’ he said.

  ‘Call me Trottie,’ she said. ‘Everybody does.’

  ‘Are you all right down there?’ a stentorian voice called from above.

  ‘Fine thank you, Mr Hathersuch,’ she called back. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘are you any relation to the Inspector Lestrade who crops up from time to time in the Strand Magazine? In those Sherlock Holmes adventures?’

  ‘No,’ said Lestrade, ‘none whatever. Now, you tell me Trottie. Who is Verity True?’

  ‘Verity? She’s my sister . . .’ The girl’s face darkened. The bright eyes lost their shine for a moment. ‘What’s happened?’