by M. J. Trow
‘What about the elder Singh?’
‘I sent him a note to meet me in the boat house. Such trysts are common, Lestrade. Singh was Maggie Hollis’s lover. I knew that and I pretended to be a member of her family who had some information relating to her death. I did. I’d killed her. The thuggee noose, especially in the dark, is a match for any Sikh. The disciples of Kali proved that in India thousands of times. What I enjoyed most was laying false trails for you. The suggestion of untoward practices between Denton and Saunders-Foote, the muscular Christianity of Spooner. I didn’t need to do anything to involve an overt pig like Hardman. And, of course, the bestiality of Nails spoke for itself.’
‘And you a former civil servant.’ Lestrade shook his head.
‘Ah, yes,’ Mercer smiled. ‘But was the Indian Civil Service. That’s where all my training came in. The need for strict accountability, precision, everything to the letter. I even put the elder Singh’s clothes back in the pile in the store for reselling,’ he chuckled. ‘I wonder if the luckless Dollery realises whose blazer he’s wearing?’
‘Talking of blazers,’ Lestrade went on, ‘your own “death” was clever.’
‘If hard,’ Mercer sighed, leaning back with a picture of Skegness behind him. ‘Not only did I have to resurrect old Adelstrop, not the easiest nor the most pleasant of tasks, but I shaved off his beard just in case. I knew his eyes would go and his features would blur, but stubble can be so stubborn, can’t it?’ He looked with some distaste at the grey shadow around Lestrade’s parchment features. ‘His leg of course was no problem. I knew that would disintegrate along with his real one. Getting him up there, on top of that bonfire, was the worst of all. I had to hide the straw guy in the stack itself. When all that was done, of course, I watched the whole thing from a safe distance. Splendid show, wasn’t it?’
‘But that was nearly three weeks ago,’ said Lestrade. ‘Have you been at Rhadegund all this time?’
‘I reckoned without Ruffage and his prefects. He’ll go far, that lad, you mark my words. They’d ringed the grounds pretty tightly. Then there was Hardman and the House prefects, not to mention the three brass monkeys you’d left behind.’
‘And of course Captain Wilson,’ Lestrade reminded him.
‘Who? You perhaps remember, Lestrade, when we first met. Young Singh appeared in my office through a panel in the wall. Rhadegund is full of such panels and corridors of course. It’s a veritable rabbit warren. I merely laid low there and crept along to the kitchens after lights out. I am really quite fit after three weeks of cheese and prunes. Cook has had a field day with her traps, but I fear she’d have to invent a better one entirely to catch me.’
‘Why Saunders-Foote?’ Lestrade asked. ‘Surely, once we were all convinced you were dead . . .’
‘Call it bravado if you like. I didn’t think anyone would be looking for a dead man as a murderer. It would be fun to risk it. Anyway, it was a kindness, really. Saunders-Foote had been genuinely fond of young Denton. He was a nice old boy. He didn’t suffer unduly.’
‘And so tonight . . . last night . . . was the first chance you had to escape?’
‘It occurred to me the only way was to pose as someone else. Who better than Nails? The stride and swagger, the booming voice. All the boys can take him off. Why not me? All I needed was the gown and mortarboard and they’re ten a penny at Rhadegund. The whiskers I’ll grant you were a little theatrical, but they served their purpose. At night. In the dark. No one would query them. They certainly fooled you.’
Lestrade had to admit they had. ‘And Balham?’ he said.
‘Ah, yes, Balham. You were right on that point of course. It was Whitechapel. I confess I didn’t know of the dear Headmaster’s peccadillo in that district. But then I suspect Matron was not as forthcoming with me as she appears to have been with you.’
‘Life has its ups and downs,’ observed Lestrade, swaying now as the train reached top speed.
‘Cherak Singh was blackmailing me. And the terrible secret?’ Mercer smiled. ‘You know, after all that’s happened, it doesn’t seem so terrible now. Was it chance or design that brought the little Sikh into that yard that fateful night?’
‘Yard? Night?’ Lestrade was not following.
‘It was George Yard,’ he said, ‘and the night was August the seventh.’
Lestrade’s eyebrows knotted in a frown. ‘Martha Tabram!’ he shouted.
Mercer nodded. ‘Martha,’ he said.
‘So Lees was right,’ Lestrade muttered.
‘What?’
‘A clairvoyant friend of mine,’ the Inspector told him. ‘When I handed him a portion of Martha Tabram’s dress he said . . . what was it . . .? “I see boys. A rope. A gown.” And he said I knew the murderer.’
‘Well, that wasn’t much help, was it?’
‘He said something else,’ Lestrade remembered. ‘He said the name “Edmund”.’
Mercer leaned back as the grey fields sped by, the train rattling and lurching over the points.
‘Oh, Lestrade, Lestrade. You really haven’t grasped this at all, have you? It’s funny really. When you first came to Rhadegund, I talked to Spooner. He’s a garrulous fellow, once you’ve learned to translate for him. He told me why you’d come – looking into the death of Edmund Gurney. You could have knocked me over with a cassock when I realised Spooner was a friend of his.’
‘You knew him too?’
‘Indirectly. You see, Lestrade, Martha Tabram was not her real name. She was once Martha Mercer.’
Pennies dropped loudly in Lestrade’s tired brain.
‘Your wife? Who left you?’
Mercer’s smile vanished for the first time on the journey. ‘Yes, she left me, Lestrade. Oh, we were happy once, in India. Then the flirtations started. With my colleagues, with officers in the local garrison. There was even talk of regimental bhistis . . . Imagine the shame, Lestrade. My wife was prepared to sleep with natives. We had a row – lots of rows – and she walked out. For good. I learned she’d come home to London, and I followed her. I discovered she was living with a man named Edmund Gurney, a spiritualist and philosopher. I found her, tried to talk to her, asked her to come back. She fled from me, Lestrade, and from Gurney. I spent months searching for her. Whenever I could take leave from Rhadegund I did so. Always coming south, always combing the hotels.’
‘And you found her again?’
‘Yes, I did. The hotels got seedier and seedier as she moved east. I realised that Gurney was looking for her too. He must have loved her, Lestrade. Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘Ironic?’
‘That I found her first. In George Yard on the night of August the seventh. Oh, I suppose I wanted to ask her to come back one last time. In the shadows she didn’t recognise me any more than you did, earlier. All she saw was the top hat, the cape. She said to me, “Are you good natured, dearie?” and lifted up her dress. She’d become a common whore, Lestrade. An East End doxy. I’d picked up some new equipment for Nails earlier in the day. I had a crampon in my hand. A sort of . . . red mist rose before me and I swung out. I remember her look of disbelief as her throat spouted all that blood.’
Mercer sat there in the carriage, shaking a little and pale. ‘Then I turned, leaving her lying on the stairs, and I came face to face with Cherak Singh. He had noticed me earlier, he said, by chance. He was intrigued to know why I had been there in that place, at that hour. I suppose it would have been easier if I’d killed him there and then but I didn’t. When I returned to Rhadegund, the blackmail started. Oh, he was open about it. And he wasn’t greedy. But I couldn’t live like that, Lestrade. He knew about Martha, you see. I don’t think I’d have minded the world knowing I’d killed her, but the hideous thought of everyone knowing about her, what she had become. No, that I could not stand. And Cherak Singh I could not trust.’
‘So it became an academic exercise?’ said Lestrade.
‘It did. When Spooner told me that Gurney was dead I couldn’t believe i
t. Had he contacted Martha? Had they arranged to meet? Did her failing to keep their appointment drive him to suicide? Or had he too found out the depths to which she had descended? I don’t know.’
Lestrade began to take stock of his situation and Mercer sensed it.
‘Don’t worry, Inspector. There aren’t any stops on this line now until King’s Cross. You forget, I know the route well. Which gives me a chance to capitalise on your second mistake.
‘Which is?’ Lestrade asked.
‘To ride alone in a carriage with me,’ and Mercer leapt forward, twisting a rope around Lestrade’s neck as he did so. Instinctively, Lestrade grabbed for the brass knuckles in his Donegal pocket, only to remember that he had flung that somewhere in the Northamptonshire countryside and he was in fact unarmed. With the sinewy arms of a practised mountaineer and strangler, Mercer forced his man round and down, so that Lestrade was kneeling on the floor with Mercer’s knee jammed into his back. The Inspector was powerless to move. All he could do was to make odd clicking noises with what was left of his larynx and claw convulsively at the hemp biting deep into his throat.
‘Goodbye, Lestrade,’ Mercer hissed. As a numbness spread over the Inspector there was a crash of glass and a splintering of wood and Lestrade was thrown forward, face down on the upholstery. When he managed to scramble to his knees, desperately freeing the noose and fighting for breath, he saw the far carriage door swinging open and felt the wind of the Essex countryside whipping through it. The other side of the carriage was all but caved in, as though a meteor had hurtled past. Lestrade leapt to the open door and looked back. Lying yards below the line, like a bundle of rags in the field, lay all that was left of Charles Mercer, his head beaten to a pulp by the quarter-past six from King’s Cross which continued to whistle and rattle its way north.
Lestrade turned to the other occupant of the carriage.
‘Is it really you this time, Dr Nails?’ he asked.
‘Of course!’ the Headmaster bellowed. ‘Did my eyes deceive me, Lestrade, or was that Charles Mercer with a rope around your neck?’
‘It was,’ Lestrade croaked, slamming the door and falling back exhausted into the seat. ‘Tell me, were you just passing or . . .?’
‘I’ve been following you since Rhadegund,’ Nails told him. ‘I saw you running like the very devil after the Rhadegund trap. Since no one had orders to leave the premises I knew something was afoot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a cab for a while – uncivilised hour and all. I realised you’d caught the train, and I followed on somebody’s bicycle. Bounder didn’t want to part with it, but he came round in the end. Or at least he probably will.’
Lestrade pointed at the wrecked door. ‘But . . .?’
‘I got to one of the bridges and jumped on. Must say, it’s quite exhilarating. I’ve never been on a moving mountain before.’
‘You could have been killed,’ Lestrade growled, rubbing his neck.
‘So, it seems, could you. I was clumping around up there for quite a while. By the time I reached the right compartment it looked nearly up for you. Look, oughtn’t we to pull the alarm cord or something? I mean, that’s my Bursar back there, who appears to have caught the quarter-past six.’
‘I don’t think there’s much point, Headmaster. I’ll contact the Essex Constabulary when we get to King’s Cross. In the meantime, there’s a little story I’d like to tell you . . .’
The Inspector and the Headmaster alighted at Platform Three. In the steam and noise of a great station, they shook hands.
‘I owe you my life, Dr Nails,’ Lestrade said.
‘And I owe you my school, Inspector Lestrade. I believe that makes us quits.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lestrade, hailing a police wagon as it passed the entrance way, ‘but if I can ever repay you . . .’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, you can. Could you ask your chappie here to give me a lift to Balham?’
Assistant Chief Constable Melville McNaghten, the ex-coffee-planter, sat at his new desk and admired his new carpet. He checked his new calendar, the one that marked the new year, 1889. He twirled his faintly waxed moustaches and adjusted his cravat.
‘Come!’ he called as the door responded to an Inspectorial knock.
‘Inspector Lestrade to see you, sir.’ The constable saluted and left.
‘Ah, Lestrade, is it?’ McNaghten shook the man’s hand. ‘I’ve just read your report on the Rhadegund business. Good work. Good work.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Lestrade brushed his new bowler with a hint of smugness and adjusted the Donegal, returned to him by ex-Sergeant and Mrs George from Northamptonshire.
‘So we’ve resolved the case of the unfortunate Martha Tabram. But what of the Ripper murders, Lestrade? Did Mercer commit those too?’
‘I think not, sir.’
McNaghten looked at him. ‘Then who did, Lestrade, who did?’
‘Er . . . It’s Chief Inspector Abberline’s case, sir.’
‘I am well aware whose case it is, Lestrade . . .’
A second knock interrupted him. ‘Come!’ he bellowed.
A large young lady with long dark hair and dancing eyes swirled into the room. ‘Papa, I’ve just bought this darling little board game called “How to Catch Jack” . . . Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were busy . . .’
‘That’s all right, my dear.’ McNaghten was clearly a little embarrassed. ‘This is Inspector . . .’
‘Lestrade,’ he said.
‘Lestrade,’ McNaghten repeated. ‘My daughter, Miss McNaghten.’
‘Arabella,’ she said, pulling him gently to her with a gloved hand. ‘I look forward to seeing much more of you, Inspector.’ She stroked his sleeve while her father fidgeted with his cravat. And then in lowered voice she said, ‘I do so love men in Donegals . . .’
Sir William Withey Gull, Physician in Ordinary to Her Majesty, died in an asylum for the incurable insane on 27 January, 1890, supposedly of a cerebral haemorrhage. His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence – Eddy – died of influenza in the bitter January of 1892. Montague John Druitt was found floating in the Thames near Chiswick on 31 December, 1888, with small change and a bus ticket in his pocket.
And Jack the Ripper, he haunts us still . . .
Other titles in the Inspector Lestrade series for your consideration:
❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖
1879
‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’
Walk up! Walk up! This way for the greatest show on earth! It is 1879. Disraeli is at Number Ten. The Zulu are being perfectly beastly to Lord Chelmsford. And Captain Boycott is having his old trouble again.
What has this to do with the young Detective-Sergeant Sholto Lestrade? Absolutely nothing. Or has it? He has his work cut out investigating mysterious goings-on at ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie, the dwarf, dies an agonizing death under the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this after two bodies have been found with multiple slashes ...
And what is the link with Mr Howard Vincent, founder of the CID? And has the Prince Imperial really been caught by the Impis? A trail of murder is laid among the llama droppings as the World’s Second Greatest Detective goes undercover to solve the Case of the Sawdust Ring.
❖ The Sign of Nine ❖
1886
‘Hello, hello, hello ...’
‘Hello, hello, hello ...’
‘Hello, hello, hello ...’
It was a puzzle that faced Scotland Yard from its very beginning – whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another – what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiaristic novelist have in common? Answer: they’re all dead, each of them with a bloody space where his skull used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings t
he perpetrator to book.
But 1886 was a bad year for the Metropolitan Police. The People of the Abyss have heard the whisper and the spectre of Communism haunts the land. There is a new Commissioner, a regular martinet, at the Yard. And then, there is that very odd couple, sometime of Baker Street ...
Lestrade braves haunted houses, machine-gun bullets and two Home Secretaries in his headlong hunt for the truth. And at last, this is the book that chronicles his now legendary impersonation of the Great Sarah Bernhardt. The Police Revue was never the same again.
❖ The Ripper ❖
1888
‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’
In the year 1888, London was horrified by a series of brutal killings. All the victims were discovered in the same district, Whitechapel, and they were all prostitutes. But they weren’t the only murders to perplex the brains of Scotland Yard. In Brighton, the body of one Edmund Gurney was also found.
Foremost among the Yard’s top men was the young Inspector Sholto Lestrade and it was to his lot that the unsolved cases of a deceased colleague fell. Cases that included the murder of Martha Tabram, formerly a prostitute from Whitechapel, and that of the aforementioned Gurney.
Leaving no stone unturned, Lestrade investigates with his customary expertise and follows the trail to Nottinghamshire, to a minor public school, Rhadegund Hall. It is his intention to question the Reverend Algernon Spooner. What he finds is murder.
As the Whitechapel murders increase in number, so do those at Rhadegund Hall and so do the clues. What is the connection between them all? As if it weren’t confusing enough, Lestrade is hampered by the parallel investigations of that great detective, Sherlock Holmes, aided by Dr Watson. Who is the murderer of Rhadegund Hall and are he and the man they call ‘Jack the Ripper’ one and the same?
