by M. J. Trow
‘What are you saying, Sholto? That Anstruther was murdered?’
Lestrade nodded slowly. ‘It had occurred,’ he said.
‘Impossible,’ said Bland. ‘You’re forgetting one thing.’
‘Oh?’
‘The locked door.’ Bland was triumphant.
‘Ah,’ said Lestrade. Collapse of stout party.
‘Are you seriously saying to me,’ Bland was in full flight, ‘that the murderer got into the room – yes, he could have been let in by Anstruther without Botley knowing about it. That he killed Anstruther – yes, he could have done, I grant you that, but what then? Did he arrange for Anstruther to get up with half his head missing and neatly lock the door behind him?’
‘The window.’ Lestrade stumbled to it.
Bland joined him and they peered down. A sheer drop of three storeys, no ledge; and bars six inches apart.
‘Joachim the Human Fly?’ Bland smirked.
‘The walls?’ Lestrade began tapping them furiously, listening for a hollow, a concavity that promised a secret passage. All he got was the disappointing pat pat of solid, Georgian brick.
‘There’s always the chimney, of course.’ Bland was in his element. ‘Perhaps it was the orang-utan from that bloke’s Rue Morgue story. Rather apt, isn’t it? Monkey jumps down chimney in Berkeley Square, loads antique gun and kills Fitzgibbon, returning whence he came. The Daily Mail will have a field day!’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Lestrade muttered.
‘I’m sorry, Sholto,’ Bland laughed, ‘but you can’t pin a murder on this one. It’s open and shut. Anstruther took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. And if it wasn’t before, it bloody well is now.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘Vine Street Mortuary. Want to look?’
‘I’d better. If this hot weather goes on, he’ll be walking to the funeral by himself.’
Lestrade limped painfully to the door. His fingers strayed again to the polished bolt and he shook his head. ‘An open and shut case,’ he said. And he was gone.
Two to be Steady
‘B
ourne, sir,’ said the young constable, standing rather awkwardly in front of Lestrade.
‘Years on the Force?’ the superintendent asked.
‘Nearly three.’
‘What’s this?’ Lestrade perused the paperwork. ‘Julius?’
‘Julian, sir.’ Bourne giggled.
Lestrade glanced at Dew whose eyebrows arched a little. ‘Married?’ said Lestrade in an unusually dark brown voice.
‘Bless you, no,’ giggled Bourne. ‘Who’d have me?’
Lestrade could think of several people, from Cleveland Street to the Dilly.
‘That shirt,’ said Lestrade. ‘It’s a particularly nasty shade of pink. Here at the Yard we’re a little more conservative than that. And that check . . .’
‘Gingham, sir,’ Bourne corrected him.
‘Yes, well, it’s got to go. A detective must blend into the background, so to speak. Merge with his fellow man.’
‘Ooohh.’ Bourne frowned and pursed his lips.
Lestrade threw down his pen. ‘Rookies,’ he muttered. ‘Tell me, Bourne, can you make tea?’
‘Certainly, pet . . . er . . . sir. Learned it at my mother’s knee.’
‘Yes, I thought you would have. Dew, show him the ropes. I’ll give you a week’s trial, Bourne. At the end of that time, we’ll review you. If I’m not satisfied . . . er . . . with your progress, it’s back to Lost Property with you.’
‘Thank you, sir, I’m so grateful. You won’t regret it. Now, Chief Inspector,’ the tall, blond lad said, ‘where do you keep the pinnies?’
The body of the late Anstruther Fitzgibbon was lying on marble slab four, in a particularly unprepossessing corner of the Vine Street Mortuary. Above, at street level, the myriad sights and sounds of a busy city, the largest in the world. The well-to-do shopped in the expensive arcades between Regent Street and Piccadilly, while Eros, slowly turning green from the exhausts of the new motor buses, aimed casually at them. The haut monde took tea at the Trocadero and liveried flunkeys ran hither and thither, colliding with scurrying errand boys and street pedlars. A hundred yards or so to the south-east, the demimonde plied the shady side of Jermyn Street and both sides of the Haymarket, studiously ignored by constables and clergymen alike.
Yet down here, in the basement of C Division, in the busiest police station in the world, all was curiously silent. The only sound was the ticking of the clock, its massive institutional face the only object to break the dark, institutional green of the wall. From somewhere, a fly droned, heavy with the meals of an Edwardian summer.
A ferret-faced man in a brown suit and an unseasonal bowler peered over the corpse.
‘Can I help you, Superintendent Lestrade?’ A voice rang around the echoing marble corridors.
The ferret-faced man glanced up, briefly, and continued his inspection. ‘Dr Hillyard, is there to be a post-mortem?’
‘Tricky one, that.’ Hillyard took off his spectacles and polished them with the grubby hem of his white coat. He spat copiously with a perfect aim into a nearby slop bucket. ‘Coroner says yes, father says no.’
‘What do you say?’
Hillyard smiled, revealing a row of broken, brown teeth. ‘As we medical students used to say at the Scalpel and Haemorrhoid, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”’
‘Meaning?’ Lestrade looked up, tilting back the bowler. Old English proverbs were not his métier. No doubt C Division were well versed in them.
Hillyard closed to him. ‘Meaning, Lestrade, that I was a Poor Law doctor until your dear Commissioner took pity on me and gave me a job for which I actually got paid.’
‘So there will be a post-mortem?’ Lestrade was better on inferences.
‘No. Probably not. You see, Lord Bolsover is one of the richest men in England, He’s promised me a pension for life if I release this body for burial, no questions asked.’
Lestrade looked sourly at his man. ‘The law’s the law,’ he reminded him, with that dazzling gift of erudition for which he was famous the length and breadth of the snug at the Horse and Collar. ‘Whether it’s suicide or murder, it is an unexplained death. There has to be a post-mortem.’
Hillyard smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just testing, Lestrade. What would I need with a pension from Bolsover when I can get one only one thousandth of the size from Lloyd George? Actually, of course, there’s no need for one – a post-mortem, that is.’
‘Your views then?’ Lestrade circled the naked corpse as the doctor spoke.
‘Shot to death.’ Hillyard growled in his throat to summon up his next deathless aim. ‘This damned sputum.’ He spat. ‘With this.’
The partner of the Egg pistol appeared from a side drawer which was full of false teeth and glass eyes.
‘You’ll know more about this than me,’ the doctor confessed, ‘but this is what it puts into people.’
Another side drawer scraped open and, hidden amongst jars which seemed to contain people’s grey bits floating in brine, was a misshapen lead ball, about the size of a small marble.
Lestrade caught it expertly, for a man with an inflamed knee joint, and held it to the light. ‘Some bullet,’ he murmured.
‘Ball,’ Hillyard corrected him.
Lestrade saw no reason, in this sickly silence, to raise his voice merely on the suggestion of a rather-less-than-successful Poor Law doctor and he continued to murmur. ‘Do I gather from your remarks earlier that the Marquess of Bolsover has been to see you?’
‘He has. Or rather to see Superintendent Hawkins. They both came down here to see me.’ He spat volubly again. ‘Tell me, Lestrade, is the sun shining up there? I’m like a bloody mole these days. Haven’t seen daylight in a fortnight.’
‘Tsk, tsk and it is,’ Lestrade commiserated with him. ‘So Bolsover wants his son buried quickly, then?’
‘Wouldn’t you?
Only son, heir to the estate. Old family name. Oh, God. I’m even talking like the old aristocrat now. Funny old cove, isn’t he? Didn’t show any emotion at all.’
‘He saw the body?’
‘He insisted on it. We’d already had three people identify him positively – and one negatively; rather odd that – so formal identification wasn’t necessary.’
‘Did the old man make any comment?’
‘None. Except that he said he wanted the boy’s body out of here by nightfall and he was going to the Yard. I thought old Hawkins would explode.’ He spun sideways to spit into a container. ‘It’s that bloody pipe. I’ve got to give it up, Lestrade.’
‘Try a cigar,’ the superintendent said. ‘They’re better for you.’
‘No thanks,’ Hillyard declined, unaware what a rare opportunity he was passing up. ‘I’ll suffer in silence,’ and he hawked again.
‘So he shot himself in the temple,’ Lestrade muttered, running his fingers over the neat, circular hole near the hairline. The other side of the head was a mass of matted hair, dark brown with congealed blood. But there was no disguising the fact that a large section of the cranium had gone.
‘Occipitally speaking, it’s a mess,’ Hillyard shrugged. ‘You’ll note the blackening around the hole?’
To Lestrade, the whole body was blackening.
‘Powder burns,’ Hillyard explained. ‘Because the muzzle was pressed against the skin.’
‘And if the gun had been fired from further way?’ Lestrade was exploring every avenue.
‘That depends on how much further,’ Hillyard said. ‘If it was more than a few feet, there’d be no traces of powder.’
‘Doctor,’ Lestrade tilted the bowler back into position. ‘I have reason to believe that young Fitzgibbon here may not have been as other men. Is there any way of proving that, medically, I mean?’
Hillyard frowned. ‘Well, not really, Lestrade. Even a dose of the clap could have been picked up from a doxy.’
‘Did he have the clap?’
‘No, I was merely postulating.’ He spat again. Postulation was obviously a habit of the good doctor’s. ‘Of course, I haven’t checked his sphincters. But this long after death, well, I don’t hold out much hope.’
Lestrade tipped his bowler and hobbled for the stairs that led to the light.
‘I’d get that seen to,’ Hillyard advised him. ‘And that limp.’
‘Powder burns!’ Lestrade suddenly shouted. Only Hillyard in that basement was mildly surprised by the outburst. The others were past caring, in their labelled lockers with tags tied to their toes.
‘I doubt if that’s the cause of it.’ Hillyard peered at him over his glasses.
Lestrade hobbled back to the slab in the corner. ‘This pistol,’ he said. ‘It works with black powder, doesn’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ Hillyard said. ‘Why?’
Lestrade took up the dead man’s hand, dangling limp at his side. ‘Shot himself in the left temple, did he?’ He was talking to himself. ‘Take a good look at this – the space between his thumb and forefinger. What do you see?’
Hillyard rubbed his lenses again, peering intently, twisting the hand this way and that. ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged.
‘Precisely.’ Lestrade tapped his nose, tipless though it was. ‘Nothing. No powder burns. Wouldn’t you say, doctor, that if a man fired one of these, he’d have black powder all over his hand?’
‘Er . . . yes, I suppose I would.’
‘Let’s try it. Got any gunpowder?’
‘Well, I . . . er . . . here, I think.’ And a little drawer produced a bag of the stuff.
‘Right. Now if I remember my Antique Gun Classes, as well as what John Bland reckons you do, you put some of this in here, then you pull this back and press this down. At all times, of course, remembering to keep this . . .’
Suddenly there was a deafening explosion, enough to wake the dead. Lestrade stood transfixed to the spot, invisible in a pall of smoke, while plaster rained down on the head of Dr Hillyard.
‘You bloody fool, Lestrade,’ the good doctor snarled, coughing and gurgling in a mixture of terror and asphyxiation. ‘You might have killed us all.’
‘Well, you and me perhaps, doctor.’ Lestrade was more accurate in his summation of the situation. ‘But you see, it doesn’t really matter. As we rookies used to say in the Truncheon and Cly Faker, you can’t break a few eggs without making omelettes. Look!’
He thrust his right hand under the quivering doctor’s nose.
‘What?’ Hillyard asked, still visibly shaken.
‘Nothing!’ said Lestrade. ‘Except black powder.’
‘Which tells us what, precisely?’ Hillyard snapped, pulling masonry from his tousled hair.
‘That whoever pulled the trigger on the late Anstruther Fitzgibbon, it was not the late Anstruther Fitzgibbon. Unless of course he got up and washed his hands afterwards.’
‘How do you know I haven’t washed the corpse?’
‘Come on, doctor, this is C Division. Good-day.’
Lestrade made again for the stairs where a bevy of constables almost collided with him.
‘What is it, sir?’ the first one asked, truncheon rampant. ‘Fenians? Suffragettes? Anarchists? Members of the Boilermakers’ Union?’
Lestrade patted his arm. ‘There, there, constable. Only one of Dr Hillyard’s little experiments.’ He reached for his half-hunter. ‘But well done. Only one minute and thirty-eight seconds for you to respond to the noise.’
The constable beamed, pocketing his truncheon. ‘Well, sir, here in C Division . . .’
‘I know, old chap,’ Lestrade beamed back. ‘I know.’
And he heard the metallic tang of the spittoon as he reached the door.
That was the hottest June that Durham city had known. Lestrade had rarely ventured that far north and it had taken all his powers of persuasion to get Mr Edward Henry to let him leave London at a time when the predicted scum of Europe were arriving by the cartload. Their first heralds were the hommes and herren of the Press, bulging with notepads and stubs of pencils. They made exclusively for Fleet Street as though to eye up the opposition among home-grown reporters. They also took up valuable elbow space along the mahogany of several printers’ taverns. But, as Lestrade pointed out to Henry, there had been no punch-ups yet and there was still not a single athlete in sight. Henry had said very well, but Lestrade was not to be accompanied by the usual swatch of sergeants and clutter of constables, the entourage that normally befitted an itinerant superintendent. Young Bourne alone could be spared.
Lestrade tried to ignore the constable’s jaunty boater in French grey raffia and the waistcoat of organdie. He could not, however, ignore the constable’s tendency to wander into haberdashers’ and milliners’ as they crossed the Framwellgate Bridge. The flies droned heavily around the hansom ranks and the sun shone white and blinding on the solid towers of the cathedral, silent on its Norman granite. In the market-place the giant statue of Lord Londonderry glowered at them in his hussar finery of yellow stone. Bourne stopped to admire the cut of his pelisse and the svelteness of his Nankeen boots before being reminded by his guv’nor that they were here on business.
The Adjutant of the Durham Light Infantry was of little help. A man from the ranks, rather like Lestrade himself, he did not suffer fools gladly – and constables in objectionable mufti, not at all. He was cagey about Second Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, deceased, but he felt sure that a military funeral was out of the question. After all, he’d only been with the regiment for three months; barely time to cut cards with everyone in the Mess. The regimental chaplain whom Inspector Bland had mentioned was on sick leave and in retreat. Lestrade was given to understand that he was prey to nervous disorders and cried a lot in an Anglican, soldierly sort of way. Chances were he would not be back. The regimental goat was saying nothing. She chomped loudly on the lush, green grass of Northumbria, her blue eyes cloudy and shifty. She shook her hairy head at Lestrade a
nd when she saw Bourne, spread her hind legs and peed up the wall of her compound. Lestrade walked away. He had learned to be wary of nannies.
Their next port of call was altogether more promising. And for this one, Lestrade went alone. He left Detective Constable Bourne window shopping in Margery Lane while he made for Ward’s Waterloo Hotel, still vying, after all these years, with Thwaite’s Waterloo Hotel. It came as a source of irritation to him and fury to the management, to know that his quarry was in fact staying at the other one.
‘The Hero of Mafeking!’ thundered the manager. ‘At Thwaite’s? I always said he was overrated. I’ll tell ye summut,’ his Geordie was showing in his anger, ‘I shan’t Mafick again, I can tell ye.’
The Hero of Mafeking stood square on to a billiard table in Thwaite’s games room.
‘Polo’s my game, of course,’ he said, absent-mindedly chalking his cue. ‘Never could get the hang of this.’ He crouched suddenly, like the Wolf Who Never Sleeps, and slammed home a ball.
Lestrade blinked. He hadn’t seen play like this since he’d arrested George ‘The Tweezers’ Weidenfeld in The Nichol. And that was a long, long time ago.
‘Now then,’ said the dapper little Lieutenant General, steely eyes glinting for a second shot, ‘Fitzgibbon. I don’t really know what I can tell you, Superintendent. He was my ADC for less than two months, you see. Dicky Haldane asked me up here to set up the Northumbrian Terriers and suggested young Fitzgibbon as my errand boy.’
‘You formed no opinion?’ Lestrade shouted over the staccato rattle of Baden-Powell’s whizzing balls.
‘None really,’ He of the Big Hat said.
‘There was some talk in the Durham Light Infantry . . .’
‘There’s always talk in the Durham Light Infantry,’ Baden-Powell said. ‘That’s infantry for you. Wouldn’t happen in the cavalry, of course. And anyway, it was a female goat, you know.’
