by M. J. Trow
‘Fill me in, then.’
The detective consulted his notebook as the wagon jolted, despite Lestrade’s express instructions to the contrary, round the bend by the Elephant and on in the direction of Vauxhall. Where the Pleasure Gardens used to be, Bromley applied the brake and parked illegally, willing a uniformed man to try to move him on. As always in these situations, there wasn’t one to be seen.
‘David Dunwoody Appleyard. Aged twenty-five. Address – “The Trossachs”, Sussex Gardens. He’s a printer’s devil. Or he was.’
‘I’m sure he was. Any printer in particular?’
‘Anybody who’d ask, according to Mr Abberline,’ Dew told him. ‘You know how he feels about Maryannes.’
‘Yes, well, be sympathetic, Walter. When you’re married to a man in drag, as Mr Abberline undoubtedly is, it must be grating. Where did Appleyard hang out?’
‘Well.’ Dew’s lips tightened. He was essentially a man of his times and thanks to Henry Labouchere’s Criminal Law Amendment Act, the times ran against unnatural practices. So therefore did Walter Dew. ‘If my experiences are anything to go by, a little below the waist.’
‘No,’ Lestrade smiled, ‘I mean did he ply his trade in the Dilly? Underneath the arches?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Which way was he going?’
‘On the westbound train,’ Russell said.
‘Last train?’
‘Last but one.’
‘No witnesses, I suppose?’
Dew shook his head.
‘Who found him?’
‘General labourer on the Metropolitan. He was going off shift,’ said Dew.
‘Cause of death?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Strangulation, same as usual.’
‘Was he a big man, Walter, our Mr Appleyard?’
‘No. Skinny. Couldn’t have been more than five foot two.’
‘An easy target, then?’
‘Except that he was armed.’
‘Armed?’ Lestrade looked at his number two. ‘With what?’
‘A chiv.’
‘You found it?’
‘Lying next to the body. It had blood on the blade.’
‘Where is it now?’ Lestrade asked.
Dew smiled. ‘I thought you’d never ask, guv,’ he said, and produced the weapon from his back pocket. ‘Ooh, that’s better.’
‘Tsk, tsk,’ Lestrade chuckled, ‘that’s tampering with evidence, Walter. If Mr Abberline found out, you’d be back on the horse troughs.’
‘Oh, I’m just borrowing it, sir,’ Dew assured his guv’nor, wide-eyed, ‘using a little initiative, you know.’
‘Bless you, Walter,’ said Lestrade. He cradled Appleyard’s knife in his hand. It was an unusual type, with a tortoiseshell haft and a curved blade that slotted into it.
‘Spanish, Mr Abberline says,’ Dew commented.
‘Well, who are we to doubt it?’ Lestrade asked. ‘How do we know this isn’t the murderer’s knife, Russell?’
‘Not his modus operandi, sir,’ the rookie said. ‘Nor even his method of working. There were no cuts on the body of the deceased, were there, Mr Dew?’
‘Nothing recent,’ Dew said.
‘So Mr Abberline thinks this is Spanish, does he?’ He tossed the knife and caught it a few times.
‘It says “Saragossa” on the blade, sir,’ Russell pointed out.
‘So it does,’ Lestrade said, ‘but isn’t there a company with that name in the north somewhere? Walter, you remember it from the Cutlery Case?’
‘Er . . . no, sir.’
‘Yes, yes. Where was that? Sheffield? No. Rochdale?’
‘Manchester, sir?’ Russell piped up and as he did so, it was as though he felt the dead Maryanne’s knife plunged into his own vitals. He’d said it. The one word in all the world that Constable Dew had told him to avoid. And he’d said it to the one man in all the world to whom it mattered.
‘That’s it.’ Lestrade clicked his fingers. ‘Well done, lad. Now, Walter, about this blood, the stuff on the blade.’
Dew had not forgiven the enormity of Russell’s faux pas, even if Lestrade had feigned indifference. ‘It was red, sir.’ He scowled at the rookie.
‘Yes, well,’ Lestrade sighed, ‘at least we know, then, that Appleyard was not of the aristocracy or it would have been blue. No one, I suppose, thought to have it tested?’
‘Tested?’ Dew and Russell chorused.
‘I’m not surprised at you, Russell. Your knees aren’t brown yet, but Dew, really! Time you attended a few lectures, my lad. They could at least have had a look under an Inspectorscope. Were you in at the kill, either of you? Did you visit the scene of the crime?’
‘No, sir,’ Dew said. ‘Mr Abberline took his own lads along.’
‘Right. So we don’t know whether there was a trail of blood or which way it went or how much there was.’
‘No, guv,’ Dew admitted.
‘You see, Russell, the thing about blood is that a little goes a long way. The head bleeds like buggery – especially, I suspect, in Mr Appleyard’s case – though the wound itself may be slight. In other words, if the knife is Appleyard’s and he fought back against his attacker, our man might be slightly, very or even fatally wounded. Nobody’s reported a bloodstained man, I suppose?’
The constables old and new shook their heads.
‘No, well, that was too much to hope for. All right.’ Lestrade narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘So our man made another mistake. Fanny Chattox tried to get away and if she hadn’t fallen on to the live rail, could have survived and fingered him. David Appleyard is altogether the wrong kidney. Either it was blind panic or Appleyard was a damned convincing woman. I must have a word with John Thicke.’
Lestrade stuck his head out of the wagon window. ‘Bromley, off your perch. Get in here.’
The old rookie duly obliged. ‘Are you a married man, Constable?’ Lestrade asked him.
‘I am, sir.’
‘What are your views on Maryannes?’
‘Sir?’
‘Homosexuals, Bromley. Those Who Are Not As Other Men. You must have them in Essex, surely? How do you feel about them?’
‘I’d string ’em up, sir. Normally, I’m a live-and-let-live sort of policeman, but that’s one thing I can’t abide.’
‘As I thought. Right, you and Dew sit this one out. It’s a policeman’s excuse me and Russell and I are partners. Walter, I want you to go home and borrow Mrs Dew’s lipstick.’
‘Mrs Dew doesn’t wear lipstick, sir.’ The Constable was outraged. ‘She’s a respectable woman.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Lestrade realized the social gaffe he had made. ‘All right, Russell. Go to Lugley and Butterworth in the Strand. “Everything For Today’s Thinking Woman”. Buy a lipstick. Something like Love Lies Bleeding or Scarlett’s Three Hundred should do the trick.’
‘You know an awful lot about lipstick, sir.’ Bromley’s eyebrow was definitely raised.
‘I know an awful lot about an awful lot of things, Constable,’ Lestrade told him. ‘That’s why I’m an inspector and you’re a constable.’
‘May I ask what this is for, sir?’ Russell said.
‘Of course, dear boy’ Lestrade fumbled for a cigar. ‘This evening, as the sun goes down, you and I will take a little walk down Villiers Street, past that shop that sells artificial limbs and other marital aids and we shall mill underneath the arches. We shall be wearing a particularly eye-catching shade of lipstick of the type you will have bought earlier. We will mingle with the Maryannes and keep our ears to the ground.’
‘Won’t that leave our backsides rather high in the air?’ Russell asked. ‘Besides, you haven’t asked me my views of Maryannes yet.’
‘You’re too young to have views on anything yet, Russell. Besides, I need you. A half-dead old man like me wouldn’t elicit much interest – you just might; among the silent community, I mean. One of them must know something about the late Appleyard.’
‘Guv’nor,’ Dew was deferential, as always, ‘I don’t want to pick flies, but bearing in mind what you look like already is it sensible to go . . . there . . . alone?’
‘I was just telling a man the other day, Walter, how nice homosexuals are.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they are, sir. But you remember Gervaise Hamilton, the Nasty Homosexual of High Wycombe . . .’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do, Walter, and with good reason. But there are exceptions to every rule. Most coppers are half-way intelligent – but look at Abberline. And anyway, I won’t be alone. Young Russell here will be with me.’ And he winked at him. ‘By the way,’ the scarred face became grim, ‘I want to thank you, all of you, for doing this. We all know that if the Yard found out, it would mean instant dismissal for you all. Just to be seen with me . . .’
‘Oh, don’t worry, guv,’ Dew grinned. ‘We don’t intend to be seen.’
A helmeted face appeared at the window of the wagon and saluted. ‘Mr Lestrade, Mr Dew, Russell, Bromley, good morning gentlemen. Do you mind tellin’ me what you’re doin’ ’ere, parked in a no-waitin’ area?’
THE PRESS OF COURSE had a field day. All the late editions had it, blazoned across their frontages – ‘Another Tube Slaying’. Some were quite discreet – ‘Man In Compromising Costume’ said the Financial Times; ‘Colt Or Filly?’ posed the Horse and Hound. Others were rather more forthright – ‘Marjorie Gets Hers!’ brayed the Sun. And it was surely a typographical error in The Times which had Chief Inspector Abberline quoted as saying that ‘a Maryanne was helping police with their inquiries’. But there was, in these frightened days, only one letter of complaint. It was from a gentleman who preferred to remain anonymous, but he gave his address as Reading Gaol.
Sunset over the City. A middle-aged man with what appeared to be eyeshadow and a superfluity of rouge walked down Villiers Street from Charing Cross Station. A younger man with him was more discreet on the make-up but drew attention to himself with the wiggle; to the extent that a trio of urchins ran behind with their hands down their trousers and their index fingers sticking out of their flies. It had been so for generations and no Act framed by that arch-hypocrite Henry Labouchere MP was going to make the slightest bit of difference.
The odd couple paused briefly outside the shop that sold artificial limbs and other marital aids, craning their necks in disbelief and then swept right, underneath the arches. The trains shook, rattled and rolled overhead as fashionable young men rubbed shoulders and other things against street urchins and mudlarks, and strange twilight creatures of an indeterminate sex undulated through the gathering darkness.
‘You’re sure you want to go through with this?’ Lestrade hissed out of the only corner of his mouth still open.
‘My only regret,’ whispered Russell, ‘is this bloody lipstick. I wish I’d bought Scarlett’s Three Hundred now.’
The gas lamps flickered green and sent strange reflections around the glazed tiles of the caverns. In the gloomier corners, lovers entwined in semi-secrecy or stood whispering, their fingers locked, their eyes flaming.
‘Welcome to the London nobody knows,’ Lestrade said.
‘Just as well,’ a voice wheedled beside him, ‘we haven’t seen you here before, ducky.’
He turned to face a willowy young man with aesthetic blond hair that lingered for just a second on his velvet shoulders.
‘No, we’re new to the area,’ Lestrade said, nudging Russell forward, ‘Julie and I.’
‘Oh,’ the young man’s face fell, ‘my mistake, ducky. Three’s a crowd.’
‘Not at all.’ Lestrade placed a hand on the man’s chest. It was light enough to be friendly, but versatile enough to be turned into a police armlock if needs arose. ‘I’m Phyllida.’
‘Georgina,’ the young man said. ‘Well, what brings you to these parts? If you take my point?’
The look from Lestrade said it all and a jab from his elbow to Russell’s ribs prompted him to look the same.
‘Oh, I see,’ Georgina trilled. ‘Well, of course the place isn’t the same these days. I don’t know. The Naughty Nineties. It’s about as naughty as saying “bother”. Would you like to buy me a drink at the Gaiety? I’m parched.’
The Gaiety it was; opulent and gilded and candelabra’d. Lestrade was devastated. He’d forgotten his wallet. Luckily, young Julie had brought his and so all was well. He and his guv’nor stuck to halves, just to keep up appearances while Georgina had a crème de menthe with a dash of absinthe. When he bent low over the table, there was a real risk that all their eyelashes might have got entangled.
It wasn’t the cosiest of tête-à-têtes. The management of course had long ago turned blind eyes to such unnatural goings-on. Indeed, Georgina spent most of the time blowing kisses to waiters. Lestrade on the other hand kept an eye out for any sign of Queensberry’s toughs. It was well known that earlier in the year they had roamed the West End smashing cafés and restaurants frequented by the Wilde set. And they didn’t come much wilder than the patrons of the Gaiety that night. Russell was on the look-out for any plainclothes presence except his own. Glad to help the guv’nor as he was, he knew he was sticking his neck out a long, long way and should there be a visit from the boys in blue or any other colour, he wanted to be sure he got to the door first.
At last Lestrade steered the conversation away from the price of mascara and what fun it had been at prep school and got on to the late departed.
‘David Appleyard?’ Georgina repeated. ‘Oh, yes, we all had his number.’
‘Shocking what happened, wasn’t it?’ Lestrade’s lisp was all the easier to do with a thick lip.
‘Awful. And of course it could be any one of us, couldn’t it? Am I right, Julie, pet?’
‘Oh,’ Russell began in his usual timbre until a timely toe from Lestrade sent him an octave higher, ‘oh you are, you are.’
‘Look, Phyllida, love,’ Georgina edged closer on the semicircular seat, ‘I don’t want to pry, but . . . your face. Did you misread a situation? A certain sign? A flutter of the hand?’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘Oh, please.’ He held up a hand with a glittering bracelet. ‘You don’t have to say a word, pet, not a word. I know.’ He patted Lestrade’s hand. ‘I’ve been through it, you see, myself.’ And he wiped a large, glistening tear from his eye. ‘No one understands the hurt, do they? Oh, I’m not talking about your superficial wounds, your cuts, your bruises. It’s only flesh and it’ll heal . . . in time. No, it’s the lacerations, the contusions to the soul; that’s what hurts. Hurts and never heals. I know. I met this bargee once in Birmingham. Well, I know it sounds unlikely, but he had an ear-ring . . .’
‘How well did you know David?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Not very,’ Georgina said. ‘Underneath the arches he was known as Davinia, of course.’
‘Of course,’ baritoned Russell, then higher, ‘that’s nice.’
‘Well,’ Georgina continued to edge nearer to Lestrade, ‘I don’t care a fig who knows it. I go for the older man. There, I’ve said it. I’ve come out of the water closet. I have to say, pets both, that Davinia wasn’t exactly my type. I mean the full corsage, the corsets and so on – it’s a bit tasteless in broad daylight, isn’t it? I mean, in the privacy of one’s own boudoir and then the colours should be hushed tones, all very well. But he was camp as a row of tents.’
‘Even so,’ Lestrade said, ‘somebody had it in for him.’
‘Oh yes, well, it’s as I was saying – he asked the wrong question of the wrong person. You know what wouldn’t surprise me?’
At that moment, Lestrade couldn’t think of a single thing.
‘That a policeman did it.’
‘A policeman?’ Russell and Lestrade outdid each other in terms of falsetto.
‘Yes. Oh, they’re rabid, you know. Trying to pretend they’re oh-so-normal, whereas we know different. But if you’re new here, loves, look out for them. The Metropolitans are the least understanding Fo
rce in the country.’
‘In the world, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Russell added, frowning.
‘One of them did for him, I’d stake my virginity on it,’ Georgina said.
‘Er . . . by “one of them”, you mean . . .’ Lestrade wanted to be clear.
‘A peeler, pet. A policeman. You show me a nice policeman and I’ll show you anything you like. My shriek, I believe. Clarence,’ and he flicked his carmine finger-nails at a waiter, ‘same again, lover, and a small one for yourself.’
‘It’s his family I feel sorry for,’ said Lestrade.
‘I don’t believe he had any,’ Georgina said. ‘Some of us don’t, do we? We even lose our nearest and dearest because of the way we are. Well, it’s the way God made us. I wouldn’t change a thing. Mind you, I’m lucky, I am. My dear old mum has always stood by me with never a cross word. She, poor old white-haired thing that she is – even makes my frocks – oh, only for indoors, of course.’
‘Of course,’ nodded Lestrade. ‘Well, his friends, then.’
‘Yes, I expect Aubrey’s taking it hard.’
‘Aubrey?’ Lestrade squeaked, trying to look casual.
‘Aubrey Beardsley. He’s an insurance man or something, but what he can do with a pen and ink would make your garters quiver.’
‘Comes here, does he, Audrey?’
‘Aubrey, love, Aubrey,’ Georgina corrected him. ‘Bless you, no. But I can give you his address if you like.’
And he wrote it down on a napkin. It was at that moment that Clarence returned with a dimpled cheek and a tray of drinks, but Russell and Lestrade had gone, the Inspector’s cigar still smouldering in the diamante holder he had acquired years ago in the Case of the Diamante Cigar Holder.
‘Oh dear,’ Georgina wailed, ‘and I was going to take him home to meet mum.’
IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING that Inspector Sholto Lestrade took advantage of his new-found freedom and hopped off the garden-seat omnibus and sauntered in the sun to Royal Arcade, off Old Bond Street. The door of No. 4 was opened by an extraordinary young man, no more than twenty-three, with a pudding basin haircut and a centre parting. His face was long and gaunt and his pallor deathly. The brightness of the sun at that hour of the morning seemed to dazzle him and he invited Lestrade in quickly.
