by M. J. Trow
‘I’m afraid I must beg leave to differ,’ Honeybun persisted. ‘God made them all in His Own Image, I grant you. But they have turned their backs on Him, Mr Wensley. They have cursed God and they shall die.’
‘So you think it’s one of our own?’ Lestrade asked. The thought, he had to admit, had occurred to him before, and it made him uneasy.
‘It’s part of our duty, Mr Lestrade. God is working through us to cleanse the world of its excrement. We are His instruments.’
Wensley’s fist clenched tight with realisation of what the maniac from Cheltenham was talking about. Lestrade patted his hand, smiling sweetly. ‘Do you have anybody in mind?’ he asked.
‘Not as yet,’ said Honeybun, ‘but God is with me. Oh,’ he scooped out his half-hunter, ‘is that the time? I must away to Saint Botolph’s. Bellringing. Goodnight, gentlemen. The Lord Make His Face To Shine Upon You,’ and he left.
The silence was audible, or it would have been had not Honeybun’s vocal cords rendered it otherwise with a rousing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ as he made for the stairs.
‘Sholto,’ Wensley looked at Lestrade. ‘Is it me or was that man mad?’
‘It’s you, Fred. Here.’ Lestrade rummaged behind the Depositions for the Year 1887, Volume XXI and poured half the contents of a hip flask into Wensley’s mug. ‘This might dim your brain, but it won’t give you indigestion.’
Wensley swigged gratefully. ‘But he really means it, Sholto. He sees himself as some sort of avenging angel . . . You don’t think it’s him, do you?’
Lestrade should have laughed, but he didn’t. ‘What do you suggest, Fred? We put a man on Inspector Honeybun? And shouldn’t we then put a man on that man, just in case? Where would it end? I’d be surveilling myself!’
‘Ah, yes,’ chuckled Wensley grimly. ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ He had been to a good school.
‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Lestrade lit them both a cigar. ‘Come on, then, let’s have it. How’s he doing it, this lodging policeman? This Jew who wears a leather apron and drinks ginger beer and writes badly in red ink? How does he kill these women?’
‘My guess would be from behind.’ Wensley watched the blue smoke rise.
‘The coroner’s report says from in front. Strangled first or suffocated, and that the murderer has medical knowledge.’
‘Well, you’ve seen more sights than I have, Sholto,’ admitted Wensley, ‘but where are the signs of a struggle? These ladies may have had some gin inside them. It was dark. But even so they’d been around. They could take care of themselves. Not one of them would have taken it lying down.’
‘Up against a wall, then?’ Lestrade asked.
‘For my money,’ nodded Wensley.
‘I’ll forget you said that,’ Lestrade beamed.
‘Turn round, Sholto.’ Wensley clamped his cigar firmly between his teeth and placed his knee in his fellow inspector’s back, catching him around the jaw with his left hand and jerking him back.
‘Like so,’ he said. ‘My fingers would leave bruises exactly where we found them on Chapman, Nicholls, Stride and Eddowes, and their throats would have been open to the knife.’ He drew his finger across Lestrade’s epiglottis.
‘Right-handed, then?’ Lestrade gulped. ‘Are you going to put me down?’
‘Oh, sorry, Sholto.’ Wensley relaxed his grip. ‘Got a bit carried away there. Didn’t nick you, did I?’ He inspected his fingernails.
‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ said Lestrade, ‘which reminds me. I’ve got a visit to make. Fancy a trip upstairs?’
‘Special Branch? No thanks. I’d rather go bellringing.’
They had given the Special Irish Branch the whole of the top storey. A little extravagant, perhaps, for seventeen coppers, but with Fenians you couldn’t be too careful. Inspector Tobias Gregson did not want another Phoenix Park Murder on his hands and rumour had it that the loft at Scotland Yard was full of pigeons trained to fly swift and true between Gregson and Liverpool and Gregson and Haverfordwest, watching the mail packets from the Emerald Isle and depositing droppings on likely agitators so that they were marked men.
Not a pigeon could be heard, however, as Lestrade entered the loft on that Wednesday morning. Only the erratic click of Gregson’s Remington.
‘Well, well, Lestrade. We are honoured. Are you lost?’
‘No, no,’ came the reply, ‘just passing through.’
Gregson was a large, square man with greying hair and deep-set eyes that spoke of single-mindedness bordering on obsession. ‘You’re snooping!’ Gregson spat accusingly. A clutch of constables looked up.
‘No, no,’ Lestrade remained rise-resistant. ‘I always walk that way.’
‘I hear you’re back on the Whitechapel case. Like a bloody yo-yo, eh?’
‘Just one of life’s little ups and downs.’
‘You know it’s the Jews, don’t you?’ Gregson swung away from his desk, pocketing his Waverley.
‘Abberline thinks it is, yes.’ Lestrade began to bend his already bent neck around various doors.
‘I’ve been working with Athelney Jones,’ beamed Gregson.
‘Each to his own,’ smiled Lestrade.
‘We’ve narrowed it down. Possibility of three foreign ships in the Royal Albert on the nights in question. Each of them with largely Jewish crews.’
‘I thought we’d cleared up Leather Apron.’ Lestrade paused in his search.
‘Ah, that was a false clue, Lestrade. Your old friend Wensley fell for that one, didn’t he?’
‘So did Abberline.’
‘Yes, well, he’d fall for anything, wouldn’t he? You and I are men of the world.’
‘How many people has Abberline arrested so far?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Up to last Saturday, thirty-eight.’
‘Didn’t he do well?’ Lestrade asked.
‘What do you think of this doctor theory?’
‘Tobias, I’d love to talk nonsense with you all morning, but unfortunately I have a murderer to catch.’ He found the right door and waved goodbye to the Special Branch man. Quietly fuming as he was, under the shock of hair, Gregson kicked a constable and got back to his work.
‘Ah, Inspector,’ the little man in the corner of the room adjusted the thick-lensed spectacles above his hairline and stirred his cocoa purposefully with his pencil, ‘I think I’ve got something.’
Lestrade didn’t venture too close in case he caught it.
‘Do have a seat. This letter of yours . . .’
‘I didn’t write it,’ Lestrade was quick to assure him.
The boffin’s spectacles plummeted down to the bridge of his nose. ‘Indeed not,’ he said, eyeing Lestrade curiously, ‘it was written by a child.’
‘A child?’ Lestrade wasn’t sure he had heard right.
‘Various things affect our handwriting, Lestrade, and it’s all there in graphology – graphein, ‘to write’; logos, ‘discourse’. The state of health of the writer, the emotions, the inner self. Or, of course, external circumstances. When Lord Nelson lost his right arm, for instance . . .’
‘I assume this letter was not written by Lord Nelson?’ Lestrade may not have been an expert, but he was no fool.
‘Indeed not,’ smiled the boffin, ‘unless our postal service is rather worse than I feared,’ and he emitted a series of donkey-like brays which Lestrade could only assume was laughter.
‘You are familiar with M Michon’s definitive Système de Graphologie?’
‘No.’
‘Or the work of Michon’s pupil, Crépieux-Jamin?’
‘No.’
The boffin sighed. What sort of inspectors were they appointing these days?
‘Let’s get to business.’ The boffin and Lestrade closed over the papers on the desk, the oil-lamp glaring fiercely in the darkened corner. ‘No punctuation, do you see?’
‘I do,’ Lestrade admitted. ‘What does that tell us?’
‘That the writer is only semi-liter
ate. Or is he?’
‘I thought I was asking the questions.’
‘A semi-literate would never spell “knife” with a k. And this quaint phraseology – “real fits”, “till I do get buckled”, “just for jolly” – it’s stage Cockney, Lestrade. Artificial. Nobody in the East End really talks – or writes – like that.’
‘So what is your conclusion?’
The boffin shuffled the papers, turned them this way and that. Then he sat back and looked Lestrade in the eye. ‘They were written by a male, between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one, of above average intelligence. He’s right-handed but has tried to disguise his letters, possibly by taping his fingers together.’
‘I see. Well that’s very interesting,’ mused Lestrade, drawing back into the shadows. ‘That certainly narrows the field down to a few million people.’
‘Indeed not,’ asserted the boffin, somewhat hurt. ‘Your young man is almost certainly attending – or has attended – an English public school and is a Rajput, Jat or just possibly . . .’
But Lestrade had gone, bounding down the rickety stairs past the bewildered Tobias Gregson as fast as his neck could carry him.
‘. . . a Sikh!’ He finished the sentence for the boffin as he bounded into the lift. The mad jigsaw was beginning to fit.
The three policemen sat in the library, almost certainly the first time in their varied lives that they had been near so many books. Lestrade entered quietly, not wishing to wake them. It was well past midnight and the oil-lamps burned dimly at George’s table. Lestrade picked up his reading matter. Depositions. Scores of them by the look of it. The sergeant had been busy. Snoring next to him, though still acutely at attention in the upright chair, Constable Derry had been dipping into Plutarch’s Lives. Even in translation he had not got beyond the first page. Constable Toms lounged in a more relaxed manner, his head beside a stone gargoyle that had caught many a schoolboy a nasty one as he rushed, at the sound of the great Rhadegund bell, for the door. Lestrade edged the last volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall from the man’s nerveless fingers, only to reveal a rather lurid penny dreadful and American to boot. The author’s name was bizarre enough – Ned Buntline – but the title Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal was totally ludicrous. Lestrade cleared his throat and read aloud, ‘“Make your play, Earp!”’
Three policemen leapt to their feet, truncheons akimbo as Lestrade raised an indulgent eyebrow and read on, ‘“Earp’s Peacemaker roared into life as three-fingered Jake grabbed his Thumb-breaker” . . . I should have thought Decline and Fall was more your cup of poison, Toms.’
‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir,’ the shaken constable looked pale.
Lestrade threw the Buntline Special onto the table, followed rapidly by the Donegal and bowler.
‘Where is Singh Minor?’ he asked them.
Derry riffled through his notes, lurking as they had been under Plutarch. ‘I didn’t talk to him, sir,’ he said.
‘Toms?’
‘No, sir.’
‘How many boys have you talked to, George?’ Lestrade asked.
‘All of them’ the sergeant yawned. ‘That’s why we were less-than wakeful just now, sir. It’s been a long few days.’
‘Indeed it has.’ Lestrade pulled up a chair for himself. ‘Was Dr Nails present throughout?’
‘Throughout,’ grunted George. ‘Or another old master, Gainsborough.’
‘I had the Chaplain,’ said Derry. ‘Is he all right, that bloke?’
‘Perfectly,’ smiled Lestrade. ‘It’s just that his cousin is Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that’s all.’
‘I had the Bursar,’ Toms told him. ‘Talk about mean. I had to interview the boys by candlelight after dark. He’d have a fit if he saw us using oil-lamps.’
‘And what of Cherak Singh?’ Lestrade asked George.
‘That’s the damnedest thing, guv’nor,’ the sergeant said. ‘He’s gone to ground. Vanished.’
‘Has he now? You’ve looked?’
‘Haven’t had the time, sir. We’ve been working round the clock . . .’
‘Yes, all right.’ Lestrade recognised the onset of a complaint when he heard it. He’d suffered from a few himself, in his time.
‘The boys carried out a full search.’
‘Did they?’ Lestrade looked up. ‘On whose instructions?’
‘Dr Bloody Nails. That bloke’s the end, he really is.’
‘Who organised it?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Mercer the Bursar.’
‘And no luck?’
The three policemen shook their heads.
‘Why the interest in Singh, sir?’ Toms asked. ‘Is he involved in this case, do you think?’
‘In this case?’ Lestrade pulled out a cigar. ‘I don’t know, but I think he’s involved in my case.’
‘Your case, guv’nor?’ queried George.
‘All right.’ Lestrade misunderstood the inflection. ‘Abberline’s case. The Whitechapel murders.’
‘Whitechapel?’ the three policemen chorused.
‘Seems to be an echo in here.’ Lestrade threw glances around the panelled walls from which long-dead headmasters glanced back.
‘How?’ George asked.
‘When I first came to this school,’ Lestrade blew smoke rings to the ceiling, ‘Singh Minor was the first lad I met. His East End patter was astonishing. Spoke it like a native, he did.’
‘How come?’
‘That’s what I’d like to find out. There’s a connection with Whitechapel, there’s got to be.’
‘Well, it’s odd, I’ll grant you,’ George ruminated, ‘but it’s pretty flimsy, sir.’
‘It would be, George, were it not for the fact that I think Singh Minor – or perhaps Singh Major – wrote the letter you smuggled out for me.’
‘What? The one signed “Jack the Ripper”?’
Lestrade nodded.
‘Do you mean the little nigger minstrel is the Whitechapel murderer?’ Derry asked, feeling the hairs on the nape of his military neck crawling.
‘I mean nothing of the sort, Constable,’ said Lestrade. ‘But that lad knows more than he’s letting on. Mind you, he’s not exactly letting on anything at the moment, is he?’
‘Dollery!’ Toms suddenly shouted.
‘Stub your toe?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Sergeant, let me see the depositions. Number one-o-six if I remember right.’
Lestrade and George exchanged glances. Neither of them for a moment intended to let Toms know they were impressed. The constable riffled through the pages. ‘Here,’ he said after a moment’s riffling, ‘Dollery, T.U.R.D.’
‘What?’ Lestrade asked.
‘His initials, sir. Thomas Ulric Rufus Dollery.’
‘Dollery Dollery?’ George grunted in disbelief.
‘That’s public schools for you,’ sighed Lestrade, never quite able to shake off the stigma of Mr Poulson’s Academy, Blackheath. ‘Almost as bad as George George. What about him?’
‘He was decidedly nervous, sir,’ explained Toms. ‘Chewed his nails a lot.’
‘Ah,’ murmured George. ‘Perhaps he’s been lighting up behind the temporary buildings.’
‘Or meeting Matron in the shrubbery,’ Derry suggested.
Lestrade read Dollery’s statement. He looked up at Toms. ‘He carried a rabbit’s foot?’ The Inspector’s eyes narrowed.
‘And held it in front of throughout our little chat, sir,’ said Toms. ‘Sort of stroking it, he was.’
‘What did the Bursar make of it?’
‘He didn’t comment at the time, but when I asked him afterwards he said Dollery was a rum type, given to solitary vices.’
‘Ah,’ nodded Lestrade, ‘and when you asked about the Singhs?’
‘He became very agitated, sir, twisting the foot around his fingers like his life depended on it.’
‘All right, Toms – and good work to remember, by the way – I’ll talk to young Dollery in the morning. Gentlemen,’ he sto
od up, ‘it’s been a long day and tomorrow will be worse. I want every inch of these grounds combed for Cherak Singh. We meet at dawn,’ he made for the door, ‘and Toms . . .’
‘Sir?’ The constable was on his feet.
Lestrade drawled in what he imagined to be an American accent, ‘Better pack your thumb-breaker.’
The guffaws died in the darkness.
It was a little before three that Lestrade heard it. At first it was part of his dream. He was back at Poulson’s Academy again and the Great Man was bending over him shouting, ‘Remember, boy, when you stand for the Queen, put your hands down your trousers!’ The clanging in his head was the dinner gong, the nourishing oxtail that old Mrs Poulson daily served and reserved. True, it may have seen a few tails in its time and could not doubt tell a few as well – but it had been no nearer to an ox than the floor of a cowshed But the smell in Lestrade’s nostrils was not the broth. It was more acrid. Penetrating. The spotted dick? No, it was smoke. And as he sat bolt upright the clanging in his head became the Rhadegund bell, Ruffage whirling the great rope for all he was worth. There was a crackling and a fierce glow outside his attic window and a frantic knocking at his door.
‘Mr Lestrade, sir, the library’s on fire.’
The Inspector hauled his Donegal over his nightshirt and yanked open the door. A dishevelled George stood there, quaking.
‘Come on, man.’ Lestrade rushed past him. ‘Get Derry and Toms. It’ll be all hands to the pumps.’
He reached the top of the stairs and somersaulted gracefully down them, bouncing off each landing with an agility rare in a man whose neck was already several degrees to larboard.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ George reached the bottom more slowly, having come down in the conventional manner.
‘Of course,’ snorted Lestrade, his pride among the things that were dented. ‘Have you never seen the Yard Fire Roll?’ he bluffed. ‘Remind me to show it to you sometime.’
They raced across the quadrangle, already scurrying with boys of all ages in flapping nightshirts and caps. Flames shot skyward from the Victoria Gothic shell of the library, spitting and cracking in their greed for the fan-vaulted timbers and the stars. Over the panic and the noise one voice was louder, calmer. Dr Nails, haughty in scarlet bed-cap and matching slippers strode among the boys like a Colossus.
