by Trow, M J
Lestrade thought he had better change tack before the dialogue got beyond him.
‘When Madame Slopesski – Isaac – whoever that was in there,’ he said, ‘told us that the murderer was present, whom did you have in mind?’
‘Inspector, I have known all these good people for five years. I would stake my life on the fact that not one of them is capable of such a deed. When you share the shadows of the night with a fellow human being you get to know these things.’
Lestrade interrogated all of them and he had to admit that Hasdrubal Carlton was probably right. He spoke to six anxious people, deep believers all in what they were doing. He saw gullibility, sincerity, hope, but he didn’t see a murderer. But he still had two to go, to his mind the most likely of all – Podmore and the medium. It was by now well past midnight. As the genial host, Carlton, had asked if those who had been questioned might be allowed to go home. Lestrade saw no reason why not. He asked the dark, silent, Karim Khan, who understood but spoke no English, to show Madame Slopesski into the anteroom. In the event, it was Podmore who appeared and seeing Lestrade’s annoyance at having his instructions misunderstood, said, ‘I’m afraid she’s gone, Inspector.’
‘Gone?’ Lestrade was furious.
‘Yes, I didn’t think you’d be pleased, but, I beg you, don’t be hard on poor old Carlton. She is a very eminent lady in our field. If she pleaded tiredness due to her tour and the strain of tonight, how could he do other than to let her go?’
‘Go where, exactly?’
‘To her hotel. I believe she told me it was the Postgate, here in Dymchurch.’
Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have been in this town for four days.’ The clock struck one, ‘Correction, five days,’ he went on, ‘and I have not seen an hotel called the Postgate here. In fact, I have not seen an hotel at all. Which is why I am staying at the pub. Did any of the Circle overhear this conversation?’
Podmore stretched out on the sofa in front of the dying fire, chuckling to himself. ‘No, Inspector, they did not. And suddenly, it’s all fallen into place.’
‘What has?’ Lestrade sensed that Podmore was playing games with him. He didn’t like it.
‘Have you attended a séance before, Inspector?’
‘I have not.’
‘Watch.’ Podmore sat bolt upright. ‘Put your hands on the table between us,’ he said. Lestrade did. Podmore turned out the oil lamps and resumed his seat opposite Lestrade. ‘I’m going to place my fingertips against yours. Can you feel them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Now be still. Absolutely still.’
Silence.
Podmore broke it first. ‘Is anyone there?’
Silence.
Again, the repeated question.
Then, a thump, muffled, far off.
‘Isaac, is that you?’
A louder thump.
Lestrade’s heart was racing.
‘Is your murderer here?’
A series of thumps, rocking the table.
‘You did that with your knee,’ Lestrade shouted.
‘Yes, that wasn’t very good, was it? Madame Slopesski was better.’
‘She was a fake?’
‘Please relight the lamps, Inspector. I haven’t finished my exposé yet.’ Lestrade did so and returned to his position. ‘You noticed how the thumps were soft, then loud?’
Lestrade nodded.
‘The soft thumps were done like this,’ Podmore produced them again. ‘I am merely pressing my toes against the soles of my boots. The harder knocks, as you guessed, are done with the knee. It is easier through skirts, of course,’ Lestrade wondered in passing if Podmore ever wore them, ‘and with the atmosphere so carefully created in the other room.’
‘So Carlton was in on it?’
Podmore chuckled. ‘What a marvellously quaint way you policemen have of putting things, Inspector. No, I don’t think he was. Like all other members of the Circle, he is a true adherent. Just like the hundreds I have met all over the country. It’s just part of the ritual which mediums insist on. The darkened room, the soft music. Oh yes, and the spitting fire.’ Podmore threw a handful of something into the dying flames. They crackled into life. ‘Salt,’ he said to Lestrade’s surprised look. ‘Common table salt. Most mediums carry it in a purse attached to their wrists.’
‘But the circle of fingers was unbroken,’ said Lestrade.
‘Indeed so,’ Podmore smiled. ‘As you see.’
Lestrade could not believe it. Podmore appeared to have three hands.
‘This one is wax,’ said the ghost-hunter. ‘Most mediums are essentially conjurors. They cheat people as surely as your – what’s the phrase – confidence tricksters do. Most of them in fact are just that – frauds who dupe innocents for money or the limelight. I am looking for the one who is not. For the one who is genuine.’
Lestrade was examining the wax hand.
‘There is ample room in a lady’s nether garments to hide one of these. I always carry a spare. It’s sometimes fun to confuse the medium by slipping it in. Henry Sidgwick and I both did that once and the medium was exposed with five hands – two of her own and three wax ones.’ Podmore laughed at the memory. ‘In the darkness a dexterous medium can usually switch one of these for her own fingers. In the charged atmosphere of a séance, no one will notice when the light is turned off.’
‘Why didn’t you turn the light on?’ Lestrade asked. ‘I thought you ghost-hunters made your living by exposing frauds.’
‘I don’t know about a living, Inspector. Curious choice of words, really. But certainly, I would normally have done that.’
‘And tonight things were not normal?’
‘No. To begin with, whoever that medium was tonight, she was not Madame Slopesski.’
Lestrade found his jaw behaving as it was frequently supposed to in the dubious literary concoctions of Doctors Watson and Conan Doyle, while Holmes suavely unmasked a villain. ‘Not?’ he repeated stupidly.
‘Not.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My dear Inspector. I know Madame Slopesski. Oh, not well, I grant you. But I have been introduced to her on three or four occasions. Our impostor must have known that. She was visibly rattled when we met in the forecourt and blamed her surprise on the chill night air. Mind you, the disguise was good, very good. The stoop, the make-up, the hair, all excellent. Three things however gave the game away.’
‘Oh?’ Lestrade was beginning to wonder why Podmore had not followed a career in the Force.
‘First, the tricks were not quite so slick. Madame Slopesski – the real one, that is – is a genuine adept and, although she plays to the gallery, she does it better than our guest this evening. You must remember of course that she did not expect to find me here.’
‘Second?’
‘Second, her eyes. Madame Slopesski’s are a dull grey. Our impostor’s were a clear blue.’
‘How observant of you.’ Lestrade was exhibiting a tinge of pique.
‘You policemen do not have a monopoly in these things, Inspector.’
‘Thirdly?’
‘Thirdly, the voice. It was a shade too deep. So much so in fact that …’
‘Yes?’
‘Inspector, I can’t explain this, but I think our Madame Slopesski was a man.’
Silence as the two men looked at each other. Lestrade sank back in his chair.
‘Could I be right?’ asked Podmore. ‘It’s a sense I have – and it is what made me let her … him go. It was not a conventional fraud. Does that make sense to you?’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Podmore,’ said Lestrade. ‘The murderer was in that room. He was Agrippa, the long, red-legged scissor-man. He was Madame Slopesski … and I missed him again.’
Madmen and Fairies
It was nothing that Lestrade hadn’t said to himself a thousand time as he rode in the train back to London. Even so, it came hard from McNaghten.
‘It’s out of my hands,’ said the Head of
the Criminal Investigation Department, folding down the cravat and sweeping up the ends of his neatly waxed moustaches. ‘The Commissioner has asked that you be given a week’s leave, Lestrade. Take it and be done.’
Lestrade looked at his sullenly. McNaghten felt even more acutely uncomfortable than usual. ‘Look, Sholto,’ the approach was softer, the tone more wheedling, ‘you’ve had your share of bad luck in this case, I know. But God knows, man, you’ve made no headway.’
‘And who will?’ Lestrade asked. ‘Who has my case when I’m thrown off it? Abberline? Gregson? Not Jones, surely to God?’
‘No one, Lestrade.’ Lestrade was pacing his office. ‘I’m not taking this case off you, man. I’m merely saying, have a rest, come fresh to it in a few days’ time.’
‘By that time, another three men may be dead. Remember the book – I’ve got Philip, Johnny and Robert to go. And I don’t know where and when Agrippa will strike next.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ McNaghten railed on. ‘With rest, you’ll see things more clearly – connections, clues. This Agrippa – he isn’t superhuman. He’s made mistakes. Look, Sholto,’ again the avuncular tone, ‘you’re tied, you’re on edge. What do you do in your spare time? Fish?’
Lestrade grimaced.
‘Well, whatever you do,’ McNaghten blustered, annoyed at revealing his lack of knowledge of his subordinates’ lives, ‘for the next seven days you are to do it. That is an order.’
In his own office, Lestrade packed a few things into a Gladstone bag. He saw little point in looking at the mourning letter lying on his desk, but Bandicoot and Dew hovered, waiting to see what he would do, how he would play it. No surprises, no clues. Typewritten, London postmark, the final verse –
Look at him, now the fourth day’s come!
He scarcely weighs a sugar-plum;
He’s like a little bit of thread,
And on the fifth day, he was – dead.
‘Gentlemen, I am ordered to take a week’s leave. During my absence you will do nothing, talk to no one. And if any senior officer asks, you know nothing. Understand?’
They understood. Lestrade had summed it all up perfectly. They did know nothing.
‘What will you do, sir?’ asked Bandicoot cheerfully. ‘Go fishing?’
Lestrade looked at him. He smelt conspiracy for a moment, but dismissed it. Bandicoot wasn’t good enough.
‘I have friends to visit, Bandicoot. I think a turn by the sea will do me good.’
It didn’t do Lestrade good. On the contrary, he staggered against the squalls and gusts which threw spray over the promenade at Southsea. Somewhere beyond the mist and the endless grey that was the Solent and the sky lay the Wight, where all this had begun, an eternity ago. He pulled up the collar of his Donegal and sank his hands gratefully into its pockets. Urchins ran by, shrieking and squealing in the fierce rush of the elements. It was Sunday, wet and dismal. Behind the white respectability of the houses he heard a church bell. Surely, he couldn’t be much longer. He had been waiting half an hour already. A carriage hurtled from nowhere, smashing through the puddles and spraying Lestrade from the landward side. At least now he was wet all round. There was a sort of resigned comfort in that.
Then he was there. Respectable, prim, proper. Neat bowler, upturned collar. He wrestled manfully with his umbrella. Agrippa? The long-legged scissor man? Or a doctor-turned-author going to church of a Sunday morning? Lestrade followed him with the effortless casualness of fifteen years of such surveillance. He sat four rows behind him in church. His quarry seemed popular. People greeted him, laughed, joked. He was on his home ground, careless, off his guard, perhaps. But this wasn’t the time or the place. Lestrade had watched him for two days. It was time to make his move.
The afternoon brought the opportunity. Lestrade had followed his quarry to the Sally Lunn Tea Rooms. Odd that it should be open on a Sunday, out of season. But Lestrade was grateful enough for the roaring fire and the pot of tea that cheered. Apart from the waitress, a sour spinster with a head of hair the colour of barbed wire, they were alone.
‘Lister,’ said Lestrade, extending his hand and approaching the other man.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My name is Lister. Er … may I join you? So hate to partake of tea alone.’ Lestrade wasn’t sure whether he could keep this plumminess up. Still, there were enough frauds and snobs in the world; a slip would betray his background, but not his occupation.
‘Yes, do. Conan Doyle.’
Lestrade shook the proffered hand. ‘Not the writer chappie?’
‘Why, yes,’ the doctor beamed, basking in the warmth of recognition. ‘Have you read my work?’
‘My dear chap, I am your most ardent reader. I never miss a copy of the Strand when I am up in town.’
Conan Doyle’s face fell a little. ‘Oh, I thought perhaps you meant The Micah Clarke – or The White Company?’
Lestrade looked confused. ‘Er … oh, yes, yes, of course, very good. But better than the … White Micah, I like your stories of detection – that fellow, what’s his name, Burdock Holmes.’
‘Sherlock,’ said Conan Doyle, a little irritated. ‘Sherlock Holmes. If you are in London regularly, you must have heard of the man.’
Conan Doyle chuckled. ‘No, indeed. Mr Holmes is a celebrated amateur detective, but I fear he falls rather short of my hero. After all, my Holmes is superhuman.’
‘I’ve often wondered, Mr Conan Doyle, this Doctor Watson, Holmes’s friend and confidante – is he real?’
‘Why, yes. He and I were at medical school together. At least, that’s not quite true. He was attending a refresher course on comparative anatomy while I was a student. It was on his suggestion that I met Mr Holmes.’ Conan Doyle sank his teeth into a Chelsea bun. Lestrade was glad to see that he was getting into his stride. ‘It was Watson’s idea to write a biography of Holmes, to do for him what Boswell did for Johnson.’ Lestrade didn’t know what that was, but he doubted whether it was legal. ‘The snag was that poor old Watson isn’t the world’s best writer. So we agreed that I should write the thing – the old flair, you know, and he would feed me the information. Well, somewhere along the line, the serious biography went out of the window and the fiction started. Between you and me, Mr Lister, it has worked out very well. It appeals to Holmes’s monstrous vanity, to Doctor Watson’s need to idolise the man – and it pays my bills now that I’ve given up medicine, at least on a full-time basis – I too am visiting here as a change from Town.’
‘I’ve always thought,’ said Lestrade, sipping his tea with a certain elegance, ‘you and Watson are a little hard on the police force.’
Conan Doyle chuckled. ‘Oh, Mr Lister, they do what they can, but you must realise, they are hampered by bureaucracy.’
Lestrade had realised this many, many times.
‘And then of course, they are not among the brightest people in the world. Take Inspector Lestrade, for instance.’ The inspector buried his slightly stiffening moustache in his tea cup. ‘According to Watson, the man’s a buffoon.’
Lestrade coughed, spraying the table with his tea.
‘My dear chap,’ consoled Conan Doyle, ‘have a care.’
Lestrade was profuse in his apologies.
‘Another cup?’ the doctor asked.
They talked casually of this and that. Of the likelihood of Mr Gladstone’s re-election now that Home Rule was the burning issue. Of the weather, threatening a repetition of last year’s winter, of the return of the Ice Age. And as dusk threw long gloom across the silvered clutter of the tea-table, Lestrade edged the conversation around to spiritualism.
‘I read somewhere,’ he said, ‘that you were convinced of the existence of another world hovering a little above our own.’
‘A quaint way of putting it, Mr Lister, but yes, I am a spiritualist.’
‘I attended a séance recently.’ Lestrade was watching the good doctor’s every reaction. ‘The Sensitive was Madame Slopesski.’
Lestrade did not. ‘I would have thought that such an ardent follower would have at least seen his idol.’
‘Alas, no. But, great as Slopesski is, my “idol” as you put it, is Daniel Dunglass Home – the levitationist.’
‘I thought he was dead.’
‘Please, Mr Lister, we of the persuasion do not use such a phrase.’ Lestrade had been here before, too.
‘Do you know Albert Mauleverer?’ he asked.
‘Mauleverer. Mauleverer. No, I don’t believe so. Is he a spiritualist? I don’t recall the name in the SPR lists.’
‘No, he isn’t a spiritualist. What about Edward Coke-Hythe? Harriet Wemyss? Isaac Prendergast?’
A shake of the head to all these. Lestrade was fishing, but in very shallow waters. Either Dr Conan Doyle was as innocent as the day was long or he was an accomplished liar. But then, Agrippa was an accomplished everything. The red, long-legged scissor man was a master of the ancient art of murder. It was to murder that Lestrade now turned, introducing it via the vehicle of detective fiction.
‘How would you kill a man, Mr Conan Doyle?’
The doctor was a little taken aback by the question, but answered anyway. ‘Suffocation,’ he said, after a moment’s deliberation.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It seems quiet, particularly while the victim is asleep. I’ll let you into a little secret, Mr Lister. I don’t like blood. A poor admission from a doctor, eh? But it’s a fact. No, I couldn’t kill anyone if it meant a lot of blood.’
‘Not a shotgun, then,’ prompted Lestrade, remembering Mauleverer’s blasted head.
Conan Doyle shuddered.
‘Not a hat pin, followed by removal of thumbs?’
Conan Doyle grimaced.
‘Nor a hound pack to tear and rip the corpse?’
