by M. J. Trow
‘Dr Nails,’ said Lestrade. ‘When I was here last I was not able to talk to your boys. May I do so now?’
Nails looked at him. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘though I must again insist on being present. And you’ll have an additional problem, Lestrade.’
‘Oh?’
‘When that washerwoman died there were thirty boys in attendance. Now, in full term, there are nearly four hundred. And Lestrade . . .’
‘Sir?’
‘On no account must this – any of it – be allowed to leak. The Chief Constable was the very soul of discretion. One death here might be regarded as carelessness. Two could close the place. This is St Rhadegund’s. Are you with me?’
‘All the way, Dr Nails,’ said Lestrade.
Dr John Watson had not seen his friend and confidante Sherlock Holmes for nearly a month. The Great Detective had gone underground, via Baker Street and then east in the direction of Aldgate. In that time, Holmes had impersonated a number of costers and petty thieves, a Sandhurst professor, a London University professor and was now swinging his way down the Minories in all the tawdry finery of an East End slut. Watson was going his way too, not in the sense of female impersonation, but coming back from the surgery of his old colleague, Lionel Druitt.
‘Are you feeling good-natured, dearie?’ Holmes croaked, flashing the teeth with the ‘gaps’ created by black gum.
Watson bridled. It was not the first time he had been importuned, neither, probably, would it be the last. It was, after all, a natural hazard east and indeed west of the Temple.
‘How dare you, madam!’ He coloured crimson and tipped his bowler.
‘Oh, go on, ducks. Only cost you fourpence,’ and Holmes threw his dingy petticoat over his head.
For a moment, Watson found himself looking, but only in a professional capacity of course, and he tapped the doxy firmly with his cane.
‘My good woman, stop pestering me at once or I shall call a policeman.’
‘I’ve just ’ad two of ’em over there,’ cackled Holmes, then, to save the good Doctor’s blood pressure, dropped into his suave, normal tones. ‘Steady, my dear fellow.’
Watson visibly jumped. ‘Holmes!’
The Great Impersonator stamped heavily on the Doctor’s spats and the medical man howled in pain and shock so as not to draw attention to himself.
‘Good God, Holmes. For a moment there . . .’
‘No, no,’ Holmes chuckled, ‘you probably haven’t the change.’
Watson coloured again. ‘How goes it?’
‘Slowly, Watson, but I am making progress. Here,’ he stuffed a piece of paper into the Doctor’s pocket, ‘that’s the address of one George Lusk of Whitechapel. I cannot reach him either as myself or . . . otherwise. You’re a Poor doctor . . .’
‘Steady on, Holmes.’ Watson was easily affronted.
‘I mean, old friend,’ Holmes hissed murderously, ‘you are a Poor Law doctor, carrying out your treatment at reduced rates . . .’
‘For nothing, Holmes,’ the humanitarian medico reminded him.
‘Quite. So you have every right to be in the vicinity.’
‘So who is this Lusk?’
‘He is in the process of forming a vigilante committee to protect the citizens of Whitechapel from the beast who walks among us. As such, he could be important to my plan.’
‘Which is?’ Watson lifted his coat to search for his notebook.
‘Ooh,’ Holmes reverted to his harlot as a potential eavesdropper passed by, ‘you are a one!’
‘Perverted beast!’ roared the passer-by, eavesdropping as she went.
‘Madam, I appeal to you . . .’ Watson could not allow his honour to be so impugned.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ the lady assured him and hurried on her way, regretting her lack of chaperone.
Holmes tapped the side of his nose. ‘Not now, Watson. You shall be privy to my plan in due course. Who’s on the Whitechapel case? I haven’t seen a paper for days.’
‘Well, the City Force are doing the usual pas-de-deux,’ Watson chuckled, ‘round in circles. The Yard have put Abberline on it.’
‘Where’s Lestrade?’
‘No mention in any of the dailies,’ Watson shrugged.
‘Thank God,’ Holmes muttered. ‘Right, Watson. Go to Lusk and find out all you can. I’ll be in touch. Thank you, dearie,’ he suddenly shrieked. ‘Mind ’ow you go.’
‘Holmes,’ Watson followed the swaying figure for a while, whispering, ‘was it true about those two policemen?’
Lestrade sent George George to Maidstone. Kent wasn’t the Inspector’s favourite county and he felt the sergeant should have the dubious pleasure of pirouetting through the less-than-salubrious streets of the town that housed England’s largest cavalry depot. It was double unfortunate for George that the deceased Denton’s grandfather, his only living relative, was not particularly helpful on his grandson’s death, nor concerned about it. He was, however, an antiquarian and amateur archaeologist and by the time he caught the London train George was intimately acquainted with the Shire Moote, the paper-making mills at Tovil, and knew every member of the Woodville and Wyatt families who had made the town great since Domesday. Of the demised Denton he could glean little. He had been a solitary boy, a martyr to his sniff and had been rather short-sighted. The old man had not seen him for well over a year. When George told him the boy was dead, he assumed it was a bronchial spasm and turned unflinchingly to the great tome he was penning: ‘Maidstone and its Importance in Western Civilisation as Evinced in the Life of William Hazlitt, Essayist. Born in Maidstone 1778. Left Maidstone 1780.’ George treated himself to a hipflask on his way to the station. He thought he’d earned its contents.
All in all, Lestrade didn’t fare much better in Oxford. He passed the Radcliffe Camera but it was a dull day and he hadn’t time for photographs. The Warden of All Souls was a kindly soul himself, shocked to hear of the departure of Denton from this vale of tears. ‘We get very fond of our undergraduates, Mr Lestrade,’ he said, blowing his nose with the delicacy of a walrus. ‘There are only four of them, you see.’
‘Can’t get the students, Professor?’ Lestrade asked him.
‘No, no, we have students aplenty. For in truth when does a man stop being a student? When does he ever really know himself?’
‘Quite,’ was the most erudite answer Lestrade could give.
‘But all but four of our students are Fellows.’
‘You take women?’ Lestrade was surprised, but perhaps under his gown even the Warden sported a pair of blue stockings.
The Warden turned a little pale and had to steady himself by an ogee arch for a minute. ‘No, they are graduates,’ he explained when his colour had come back. ‘Fellows of the College.’
‘I see. How well did you know Anthony Denton?’
‘As well as any academic ship that passes in the night of ignorance, riding the seas of scepticism.’
‘You know he’d been appointed a master at St Rhadegund’s?’
‘Yes. Tell me, Inspector, did you know St Rhadegund’s husband was a murderer?’
‘No, I didn’t’ Lestrade said, crossing the quad. ‘Do you think there’s a connection?’
The Warden chuckled. ‘I hardly think so. St Rhadegund did die rather a long time ago – nearly thirteen hundred years to be exact.’
‘Ah, we’re getting there,’ Lestrade beamed, attempting to lighten the moment.
The Warden ignored him, standing still in awe of the huge grey façade that reared up before him. ‘I never cease to be impressed.’ He clasped his hands. ‘Founded in fourteen thirty-eight by Henry Chichele.’
‘Bless you,’ offered Lestrade, and instantly regretted it.
‘Yes,’ the Warden went on unchecked, ‘in memory of Agincourt, Deo gratias.’
The conversation was deepening rapidly. Lestrade sensed the current carrying him away.
‘The College of the Souls of all the Faithful Departed,’ the Warden was in fu
ll flood, ‘including my Bible clerk, Anthony Denton.’ He turned from the sweep of the Gothic magnificence to the shabby little man in the Donegal. ‘I can’t help you, inspector. I wish I could. The Anthony Denton I knew had no enemies and probably very few friends. This is all too shocking. Too shocking. You must see these things all the time. We don’t. Ours is a cosy, sheltered world. Unreal in a way, but we cannot change it.’ He sighed and clasped his hands again, smiling at the stone monument to Henry Chichele. ‘Nor should we.’
Lestrade left him to his academic seclusion and vanished through a medieval archway into Catte Street, pausing only to have his shin lacerated by the college cat. Clearly it was a custom initiated by Henry Chichele.
Midnight found the policemen together, the Inspector and his sergeant, sagging under the oil-lamps as the cocoa steamed and Lestrade wreathed himself in smoke. The clock on the wall clanked the hour of twelve and the Inspector told himself again he must get a new striker for it. In distant corridors the clash of steel on stone could be heard as Sergeant Derry marched off duty. Lestrade stood up, twisting his head in the hope he would hear the click that told him his spine had reunited, but there was nothing.
‘You’re asleep, George.’ He looked down at the wreck in the corner.
‘Sorry, guv’nor. You’re right.’
‘All right. One more time and we can all go home. What do the laws of coincidence say?’
George forced his eyelids to stay somewhere near his eyebrows. ‘The laws of coincidence do not stretch to two accidental deaths in one place within a month of each other.’
‘Especially?’
‘Especially if that place is a school.’
‘Murder one we know about. Murder two?’
‘Deceased is a young man, one Anthony Denton. Twenty-two, a new teacher. Been at the school for a few weeks. One grandfather. Doesn’t care whether he’s dead or alive.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Er . . . strangulation.’
‘Yes,’ Lestrade stopped him, ‘done with the chain around his spectacles, but . . .’
‘But?’ George, even in his less-than-immaculate state of wakefulness, knew when his guv’nor’s nose was twitching.
‘But there’s something about that. The neck was broken.’
‘By a spectacle chain? Why didn’t it break? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘That’s what I like about you, George,’ Lestrade sighed. ‘You have this knack of coming up with unanswerable questions. Of raising awkward issues. I wonder you’re not Commissioner.’
‘What do you make of it, then?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Not a lot, at the moment,’ Lestrade confessed. ‘The coroner’s report might help.’
George guffawed and Lestrade shrugged. ‘Well, it’s late,’ he said, ‘but this much we know. Whoever killed Denton was waiting for him in those woods.’
‘A passing maniac?’ George suggested. ‘What about gypsies? Was he robbed?’
‘That’s three questions for the price of one,’ Lestrade said, looking at his reflection in the window and searching vaguely for his collar studs. ‘Maniac, possibly. You and I know the Northamptonshire countryside is teeming with them, all set to leap on peeing classics masters and throttle them before flinging them in a river. All this in broad daylight and totally unobserved. Gypsies? Getting warmer? Colder? I don’t know. The only reason they’ll kill is for gain, but no, as far as we know, Denton wasn’t robbed. When we fished his body out in the morning his wallet was still in place, and his watch. He had four and threepence-halfpenny on him.’
‘Oh?’
‘His yearly salary,’ Lestrade said.
‘What do you reckon to this old codger, then?’ George asked.’
‘Saunders-Foote?’ Lestrade asked. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Could he have done it?’
Lestrade had pondered this one himself, several times. Saunders-Foote would not have been the first murderer to draw attention to his crime. It was the lurid compulsion of the killer to boast, to taunt his would-be executioner by leading him into the very pit itself and to fling his expertise in his face – for some men, it was the very thrill of it, the whole point of the exercise. And it had taken him some hours to report the incident.
‘He’s old,’ Lestrade was talking to himself really, ‘quite frail. Denton was a young man, strong . . .’
‘But from behind? Sudden. And with a bit of luck?’ George was an old hand at probing every avenue with his guv’nor.
‘All right. What’s his motive?’
George thought. He was better at that than most policemen.
‘Is he a Mary-Ann, this Saunders-Foote?’
Lestrade shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Go on.’
‘What if he makes advances to Denton? Takes him into the woods for a few surprises?’
‘And?’
‘Denton is as other men. Saunders-Foote has made a mistake, but Denton gets annoyed, threatens to tell the guv’nor.’
‘Nails?’
‘Yes. He wouldn’t like that, would he? His school and all?’
Lestrade chewed the ends of his moustache. ‘It’s thin, George,’ he said. ‘Where’s your proof?’
‘Ah,’ said George, ‘that little knack you say I’ve got, sir? Well, you’ve got it too.’
‘What about coincidence, George?’ Lestrade stubbed out the last of his cigar in the last of his cocoa. ‘What’s the link between these two?’
‘Ah,’ mused George again. ‘The missing link.’
Lestrade turned. ‘I didn’t see the Commissioner come in,’ he said.
‘Was he . . . was he her lover?’ George had suddenly woken up. ‘The dead girl – Maggie Hollis – was pregnant. What if Denton was the father? He killed her to avoid the scandal . . . ’
‘And then kills himself with remorse?’ beamed Lestrade. ‘Most determined case of suicide I ever saw.’
‘All right, sir,’ grinned George. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘It has that, George. Let’s go home.’
The Yard men stumbled out into a drizzly night, buttoning up against the cold.
A mile or more from them Elizabeth Stride – Long Liz – shivered against a wall in Whitechapel. A knife flashed in the darkness.
The Double Event
A
diminutive Cockney was waiting for Lestrade as he staggered out of the hansom the next morning.
‘Are you the copper what’s in charge of the case?’ he asked, jabbing him in the waistcoat with a finger less than respectful.
‘Not exactly,’ said Lestrade. ‘Who are you?’
‘George Lusk, Builder. My card.’ The little man produced the grubby object from his pocket.
‘Thank you, Mr Lusk. If I ever need a portico or an annexe, I shall make a point of calling on you.’
‘I’ve been called on already,’ said Lusk, following Lestrade through the alleyways, as policemen on corners snapped to attention. ‘A Dr Watson has been to see me.’
‘Watson?’ Lestrade stopped in his tracks. ‘What did he want?’
‘I couldn’t make it out. ’E arsked if I’d seen a tall prostitute in a red dress, rather mannish lookin’, by all accounts.’
Lestrade mused. ‘I wonder what Watson wants with a prostitute?’
Lust guffawed. ‘Well, if you don’t know, mate, there’s no point in me tellin’ yer.’
‘But a mannish-looking one?’ Lestrade was talking to himself.
‘Maybe the Doctor’s a bit that way,’ Lusk suggested, inclining his neck. Then he realised that that was the inclination of Lestrade’s neck too and kept his back to the wall. ‘Of course,’ he suddenly said, ‘there is another possibility.’
‘Oh?’ Lestrade was mentally elsewhere, looking for signs of a detective. He’d come to the wrong city.
‘Who is this Watson? You sound as if you know him.’
‘After a fashion,’ Lestrade admitted.
‘Well, then, wassis game?’
�
�Medicine,’ replied Lestrade.
‘Yeah, but ’e kept on about ’ow there was ’elp at ’and. The greatest detective in London, ’e said. Who did ’e mean?’
‘Me.’ A voice down the alley made them both turn as Chief Inspector Abberline appeared. ‘What are you doing here, Lestrade, and who’s this?’
‘Passing,’ said Lestrade, ‘and this is Mr Lusk, Builder.’
‘Builder?’ Abberline repeated.
‘I am wearing my huvver ’at vis morning, gentlemen.’ Lusk stood to his full five foot one. ‘Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilante Committee.’
‘Vigilante?’ snapped Abberline. ‘You’ve got a nerve, Lusk.’
‘It’s you wot’s got the nerve. You coppers. There’s annuver one of ’em over there – that’s three.’
‘Thank God for the Ragged Schools,’ muttered Lestrade.
‘I’ll Ragged School you!’ screeched Lusk. ‘You coppers. If you’d done your job proper, she wouldn’t be lyin’ there.’
‘And if we’d let you do yours,’ Abberline rounded on him, ‘you’d have hanged John Pizer and half the slaughtermen in Whitechapel.’
‘We still might, don’t you worry.’ Lusk stared at his man’s tiepin with menaces.
‘What did you mean when you said there was another possibility?’ Lestrade asked, by way of breaking up two sparring partners.
‘What?’ Lusk came down off his toe tips. ‘Oh, that. Well, it’s obvious, innit? The reason your blokes and my blokes ’aven’t caught the poxy bastard is that ’e dresses up as a woman. And ’aven’t we bin lookin’ for a man? And this bloke, this Watson, ’e’s a doctor, inne? Well, there you are; stands to reason, don’t it? ’E dresses up as a tart and ’acks ’em wiv ’is knife. ’Is surgeon’s knife.’
All three men fell silent, then Abberline turned to Lestrade. ‘I’m looking for Fred Wensley.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Lestrade and the Chief Inspector went their separate ways.
‘Well, never mind about that!’ Lusk screamed. ‘We’ll do it our bloody selves, my blokes an’ me. We’ll get this Wensley, ’ooever ’e is and that bloody doctor, walkin’ around in women’s clothin’. It ain’t natural.’
