by M. J. Trow
Lestrade and the Ripper
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Three
Table of Contents
Title Page
Lestrade and the Ripper | The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Three
M. J. TROW
Caveat lectorum – Let the Reader Beware! | From Police Constable to Political Correctness
False Trails
Mary Ann
Leather Apron
Long Liz
The Double Event
‘From Hell’
Barnaby and Burgho
The Russian Agent
M.J.Druitt
Mary Kelly
The Highest in the Land
Train of Events
❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖ | 1879 | ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’
❖ The Sign of Nine ❖ | 1886 | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’ | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’ | ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’
❖ The Ripper ❖ | 1888 | ‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’
❖ The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade ❖ | 1891 | ‘Such as these shall never look | At this pretty picture book.’
❖ Brigade ❖ | 1893 | ‘And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade.’
❖ The Dead Man’s Hand ❖ | 1895 | ‘There was no 9.38 from Penge.’
❖ The Guardian Angel ❖ | 1897/8 | ‘And a naughty boy was he ...’
❖ The Hallowed House ❖ | 1901 | ‘Quid omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur.’*
❖ The Gift of the Prince ❖ | 1903 | ‘Lang may your lum reek, Lestrade.’
❖ The Mirror of Murder ❖ | 1906 | Beyond the mountains of the moon ...
❖ The Deadly Game ❖ | 1908 | ‘The Games a-foot’
❖ The Leviathan ❖ | 1910 | ‘To our wives and sweethearts – may they never meet!’
❖ The Brother of Death ❖
❖ Lestrade and the Devil’s Own ❖
❖ The Magpie ❖ | 1920 | ‘There was a Front; | But damn’d if we knew where!’
❖ Lestrade and the Kiss of Horus ❖ | 1922 | ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
❖ Lestrade and the Giant Rat of Sumatra ❖ | 1935 | ‘So, Sholto, let me and you be wipers | Of scores out with all men, especially pipers!’
❖ The World of Inspector Lestrade ❖
Lestrade and the Ripper
The Inspector Lestrade Series – Book Three
M. J. TROW
Copyright © 2020 M. J. Trow.
ISBN 978-1-913762-58-2
First published in 1988.
This edition published in 2020 by BLKDOG Publishing.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Andy Johnson.
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The moral right of the author has been asserted.
www.blkdogpublishing.com
Caveat lectorum – Let the Reader Beware!
From Police Constable to Political Correctness
In 1891, the year in which The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade is set, Thomas Hardy had his Tess of the d’Urbervilles published in serial form by The Graphic, one of the country’s leading magazines. The editor was not happy with certain scenes which he felt would upset Hardy’s genteel readership. In one instance, when Angel Clare has to carry Tess over a minor flood, Hardy had to write in a handy wheelbarrow so that Tess and Angel had no bodily contact. When it came to Tess’s seduction by the dastardly Alec d’Urberville, the pair go into a wood and a series of dots follows ...
Even with all this whitewash, reviews of the revised version were mixed and it was many years before some of the Grundyisms* were restored to their original glory and Tess of the D’Urbervilles was established as another masterpiece of one of Britain’s greatest writers.
In the Lestrade series, I hope I have not offended anyone, but the job of an historical novelist – and of an historian – is to try to portray an accurate impression of the time, not some politically correct Utopian idyll which is not only fake news, but which bores the pants off the reader. Politicians routinely apologize for the past – historical novelists don’t. we have different views from the Victorians, who in turn had different views from the Jacobeans, who in turn ... you get the point. When the eighteenth century playwright/actor Colley Cibber rewrote Shakespeare – for example, giving King Lear a happy ending! – no doubt he thought he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t.
That said, I don’t think that a reader today will find much that is offensive in the Lestrade series. So, read on and enjoy.
*From Mrs Grundy, a priggish character in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough, 1798.
Reviews for the Lestrade Series
‘This is Lestrade the intelligent, the intuitive bright light of law and order in a wicked Victorian world.’
Punch
‘A wickedly funny treat.’
Stephen Walsh, Oxford Times
‘... M.J. Trow proves emphatically that crime and comedy can mix.’
Val McDermid Manchester Evening News
‘Good enough to make a grown man weep.’
Yorkshire Post
‘Splendidly shaken cocktail of Victorian fact and fiction ... Witty, literate and great fun.’
Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘One of the funniest in a very funny series ... lovely lunacy.’
Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
‘High-spirited period rag with the Yard’s despised flatfoot wiping the great Sherlock’s eye ...’
Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
‘Barrowloads of nineteenth century history ... If you like your humour chirpy, you’ll find this sings.’
H.R.F Keating, Daily Telegraph
‘Richly humorous, Lestrade has quickly become one of fiction’s favourite detectives.’
Yorkshire Evening Post
‘No one, no one at all, writes like Trow.’
Yorkshire Post
‘Ruthless, red-handed Murder sways the scene,
Mocking of glance and merciless of mien.
Mocking? Ah yes! At law the ghoul may laugh,
The sword is here as harmless as the staff . . . ’
‘Blind Man’s Buff’
Punch 22 September 1888
False Trails
Mary Ann
Leather Apron
Long Liz
The Double Event
‘From Hell’
Barnaby and Burgho
The Russian Agent
M.J.Druitt
Mary Kelly
The Highest in the Land
Train of Events
False Trails
T
he two men sat in the silence to which they had become accustomed as they waited for their breakfast to arrive. Only the rustle of newspaper and the shooting of cuffs broke the stillness. The stockier of the two, nodding in the direction of middle age and with the unmistakable stoop of a man who had been hit by a jezail, probably in Afghanistan, raised his head and flared his nostrils as though scenting the breeze.
‘Eggs, I’ll be bound,’ he said triumphantly.
‘Mmm?’ the other man mumbled in distant response beh
ind his paper.
‘Breakfast,’ said his partner. ‘Mrs Hudson’s been boiling eggs.’
The paper fell. ‘Ah, no, that’s my current experiment – hydrogen sulphide, Doctor. A little something you may have come across in your career. It’s kippers.’
‘Hydrogen sulphide?’
‘No, breakfast.’ The paper reader was the epitome of a man inches from neurosis, teetering on the brink, a martyr to jangled nerves. He reached elegantly for the yellowing meerschaum in the rack near his head.
The other man coughed as if to warn him of Mrs Hudson’s arrival, starched and bombazined, with the breakfast tray. He humphed as the kippers met his gaze.
‘Right again, Holmes,’ he said.
The taller man allowed a smile to flit across his lips.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said the housekeeper.
‘Any post today, Mrs Hudson?’ Holmes asked.
‘Nothing today, sir.’
Holmes clicked his tongue and flicked his napkin into position.
‘Surely Miss Adler would not have had time to catch the post . . .’ his companion began and shrank into silence as Holmes’s eyes slashed through him, cutting him to ribbons.
‘Will you be mother, Watson?’ he asked icily.
The Doctor dutifully poured the coffee and tackled his kipper with gusto. ‘Anything in the paper this morning, Holmes?’
‘The usual trivia, Watson. I must admit, The Thunderer isn’t what it was.’
‘I’ve never trusted them since they carried that article on Lestrade’s promotion to inspector.’
‘Who?’ Holmes paused before the porcelain hit his lips.
‘Quite.’
‘There’s a little piece . . . oh, of no significance of course. And yet . . . ’
‘Ah?’ The Doctor reached for his notebook.
‘Finish your breakfast, my dear fellow. The game is not yet afoot, I fancy.’
‘Tell me, Holmes,’ Watson urged.
‘Very well.’ The taller man leaned back, running an elegant finger around the rim of his cup. ‘Page eighteen, column three, sixteen . . . no, seventeen, lines down.’
Watson’s jaw hung slack for a few seconds and then he ferreted in the paper. ‘By Jove, Holmes, capital. How do you do it?’
‘Come, Watson, would you have me betray all my secrets? What do you make of it?’
Watson buried himself in the article. Holmes poured more coffee, then, looking directly at the paper, said loudly, ‘Doctor, you are moving your lips again.’
Watson dropped the paper. ‘How did you know that? I was behind The Times, dammit!’
‘You certainly were,’ sighed Holmes, ‘and you still are. The tiepin alone . . . Well, what of it?’
‘A present,’ Watson bridled. ‘From a lady friend, if you must know.’
Holmes slammed down his cup. ‘Not the tiepin, man. The article,’ he roared.
‘Ah, yes. The article. Some woman called Martha Tabram or Turner murdered.’
‘What do you make of her?’
Watson laughed. ‘Good God, Holmes, the whole thing is only half a dozen lines long. What am I to make of her? The poor soul was done to death.’
‘Poor soul, Watson? So you have formed a judgement of her?’
‘No, I . . . merely a figure of speech.’
‘What of her profession?’
Watson checked the paper again. ‘It doesn’t say.’
‘But it does, my dear fellow. Look again.’
He did. ‘No, Holmes. I have to disagree with you.’
‘That is your prerogative, Watson. It is also your tragedy. Let me help you. The deceased had two names.’
‘So?’
‘In your experience’ – Holmes actually chuckled – ‘what sort of person has two names?’
‘A schizophrenic?’ Watson guessed.
Holmes raised the eyebrow of derision.
‘A criminal?’
‘You’re getting better, Doctor,’ said Holmes. ‘What sort of criminal?’
‘Oh, really, Holmes . . .’
‘She lived in Whitechapel, Watson.’
The Doctor sat with his mouth open again.
‘According to Church of England estimates, there are eighty thousand prostitutes in the East End of London, most of them concentrated in Whitechapel.’
‘Martha Tabram was a Lady of the Night?’ Watson positively rubbed his hands together.
‘Bravo, Watson. That would be my guess. How did she die?’
‘Er . . . throat cut. God, how awful.’
Holmes placed a spidery finger to his thin, dark lips. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what sort of person cuts the throat of a prostitute?’
‘A maniac,’ was the best Watson could offer.
Holmes dismissed it: ‘Glib nonsense, Watson. When it comes to murder, no one is a maniac. There are degrees of mania, levels of insanity. Some men you would call mad are in fact geniuses. I myself have walked that narrow ledge that separates genius from insanity, brilliance from bedlam . . . ’ He was suddenly aware of his own rhetoric. ‘I shall be away for a while, Watson,’ he said.
‘In Whitechapel?’ Watson pressed forward clutching the notebook convulsively.
Holmes looked at and through him. ‘Do not press me, dear friend. This case interests me strangely. Perhaps, though, I will find out Lestrade as Sherlock Holmes and rather more as . . . ’
‘Yes? Yes?’ Watson bubbled like a schoolboy with his first cigar. ‘Which disguise is it to be?’
Holmes wagged a finger. ‘Ah, no, Watson. That would be cheating. I shall be in touch, fear not.’ He whipped the napkin from his lap, downed the last of his coffee and stood up. ‘Have a nice day,’ and he vanished into his room, humming manically.
Morley was dead. ‘Nervous exhaustion,’ said his friends. ‘Drink,’ said his enemies. ‘Cirrhosis of the liver,’ said the official findings. Whatever the truth, his caseload devolved on his brother officers at Scotland Yard. And all through the early summer, while the rain filled his basement, Assistant Commissioner Munro dithered first this way, then that. There was Frederick Abberline, the senior man, experienced, ruthless, capable. But something about the way his gardenia hung did not appeal. And then there were the unfortunate rumours surrounding Abberline and the fair sex. If he had the chance of sex, anywhere, anytime, then that was entirely fair. Then there was Frederick Wensley, gifted, dedicated, but he had this obsession with the City, talked to undesirables like Jews, Croats and constables. To get him to the Yard at all needed a team of dray horses. There again, there was Tobias Gregson. He’d been a good copper once, but since they’d put him with the Special Irish Branch he and his reason had continually parted company. Rumour had it that his filing cabinet was devoted to one letter only: O. O for O’Brien, O’Shaughnessy, O’Banion, oh God. It was slander of course. The other drawer bulged with dossiers on men whose names ended in ‘ski’ or ‘ovitch’. He and Wensley were not speaking – the Jew-lover and the Jew-hater. Rumour had it that ‘Mr Vensel’, as the Chosen Community knew him, was among Gregson’s dossiers too. There was also Athelney Jones, newly taken aboard the River Police. ‘A good all-rounder’ was how Howard Vincent had described him, but the creator of the Criminal Investigation Department had a reputation for generosity. The roundest thing about Athelney Jones these days was his stomach. Strapped into his regulation patrol jacket, it plied the river from Chelsea to Wapping with Athelney Jones just behind it. He was altogether, Munro decided, too wet behind the ears. And in front of them, too, come to think of it.
And then, of course, there was Sholto Lestrade . . .
The inspector of that name peered over the rim of the chipped cup. The chipped face said it all: the skin of parchment, the nose of the ferret, the moustache of the walrus. Only the eyes were sad. Only the jaw was set. He had not taken off his Donegal and had thrown his bowler at the wall where the hat stand had been before the economies had taken their toll. The new Commissioner had much to answer for. Lestrade scruti
nised the two men before him.
‘Which of you is Derry?’ he asked.
‘Sir!’ The taller constable stepped forward. ‘Five-four-six-three-two, Derry, William, sir!’
Lestrade steadied his cup and his head and whispered, ‘Tell me, Constable, have you ever been in the army?’
‘Three years, sir. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, sir.’
Lestrade shuddered as the boot thudded down again. ‘Yes,’ he said, wiping his face as though to obliterate it. ‘Not light enough, apparently. How long on the Force?’
‘Six years, sir.’
‘With Mr Morley?’
‘Two months, sir.’
‘All right, Constable. Er . . . stand easy or something, would you?’
Lestrade noticed the feet slide outward, but the shoulders and the ramrod back moved not a jot. He looked at the other man.
‘Don’t tell me you’re an army man, Toms?’
The constable looked at the Inspector with some distaste. ‘No, sir!’ The boot came down on the uncomplaining floor. ‘Royal Marines, sir. Four months.’
‘Four months?’ Lestrade raised an inspectorial eyebrow.
The Royal Marine crumbled a little. ‘I couldn’t stand the basic training, sir’ and he ignored the snort of contempt from his colleague.
‘Edward, is it?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ – a pause – ‘Edward Marjoram.’
Another snort.
‘Do you have a cold, Constable?’ Lestrade asked him.
‘No, sir!’ Derry snapped to attention again, eyes staring straight ahead.
‘How long with Inspector Morley, Toms?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Nearly a year, sir.’
‘Good. You may be of some help. Gentlemen, be seated.’
Derry looked startled. ‘Sir?’ The old habits died hard.
‘That wooden thing behind you,’ Lestrade explained; ‘you probably don’t have them in the army. We put our arses on them. Quaint, isn’t it?’
It was Toms’ turn to snort.
‘I picked two short straws this morning,’ Lestrade told them. ‘I have been given the late Mr Morley’s cases and the late Mr Morley’s men. The only thing that’s familiar to me is this office. Tell me, Derry, did they drink tea in the Yorkshire Light Infantry?’
