Lestrade and the Deadly Game

by M. J. Trow

‘Eight people are dead. Countries are pulling their teams out. We’re losing money. What are you people doing at the Yard?’ someone called out.

  ‘Is it a question of sport? Jimmy St James, Ball’s Weekly.’

  I’m sure he does, thought Lestrade. ‘That would seem to be the link, yes,’ he said.

  ‘When are you going to get answers?’ Richard Grant was on his feet. ‘Never mind the questions.’

  The cries of ‘Here, here’ were deafening. Henry raised his hands for quiet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we can only say we are doing our utmost. My force is stretched to capacity . . .’

  ‘We’re not talking about the Tug o’ War team,’ someone shouted. There was braying laughter.

  ‘I have absolute confidence in Mr Lestrade. A more thoroughgoing professional I have yet to meet. . .’ and Henry’s sentence was drowned in hilarity. ‘What I would ask, gentlemen, nay, beg, is that you stop this perpetual sniping at the Metropolitan Force in your articles. You are the voice of the people. If the people lose faith in their police force, then the writing is surely on the wall.’

  ‘Like it was in the Ripper case,’ Liesinsdad shouted. ‘Lestrade didn’t catch that bugger either!’

  The policemen made their getaway. As he reached the outer lobby, Lestrade was stopped by two people.

  ‘Sholto.’ It was Marylou, the only woman in the room. She held his arm. ‘They were pretty rough on you in there,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He looked at her. ‘Hello, Marylou,’ he said. And then at her companion. ‘Goodbye, Hart.’

  ‘No need to adopt that tone, Lestrade. Just doing my job.’

  ‘Well, that’s a first.’ Richard Grant rounded the corner.

  ‘Bitch!’ sneered Hart.

  ‘Better get back to the Remington, Sam. Old Harmsworth got out of bed the wrong side this morning. He’s screaming for fresh blood. Woe betide the hack who isn’t chained to his stall by eleven,’ and he watched him go. ‘Mr Lestrade, I’m sorry too,’ said Grant. ‘Couldn’t let the chaps down, though. Ink’s thicker than water and all that.’

  Lestrade wasn’t sure that it was.

  ‘Well, it seems we’ve all drawn blanks,’ said Grant. ‘Marylou and I are no further forward. I’ve turned Fleet Street upside down looking for a connection. Just something that ties these victims together. You must be at your wits’ end. At least for Marylou and me it’s just a job. There’ll be another story tomorrow.’

  ‘You forget, Richard,’ she said, ‘Hans-Rudiger is personal. And I mean to get my man.’

  She hooked his arm through hers. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ she said, ‘would you join us for lunch? There’s a little proposition I’d like to put to you.’

  Mr Edward Henry sorted the mail in a desultory sort of way. Rather the way the General Post Office sorted it, in fact.

  ‘Paper, dear?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Tons of the stuff.’

  His wife nudged him. ‘No, dear. The daily paper. Would you like it?’

  ‘Oh.’ Henry filed the letters between the egg cosy and the marmalade. ‘Thank you, my dear. Good God!’

  Cups jumped in all directions. Little Helen, all cheeks and curls and liberally daubed in egg yolk, burst into tears.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ his wife gasped, saving the coffee jug with a lifetime of expertise born of alarums and excursions. ‘Mr Lloyd George again?’

  ‘Damn and blast Mr Lloyd George,’ snarled Henry. ‘There’s been another one.’

  ‘Another Lloyd George, dear?’ his wife frowned. ‘No, surely not. It must be a misprint. After all, it is the Daily Mail.’

  ‘Another murder, woman!’ the Assistant Commissioner barked.

  ‘Daddy,’ piped up Hermione, mechanically mopping up her little sister, ‘why have you gone purple?’

  ‘Mrs Henry,’ he said to her, a sure sign his temper was fraying when he forgot her Christian name, ‘take your children away. Don’t they have lessons to attend to?’

  ‘Not today, dear, it’s Saturday.’

  ‘Well, then, a walk. Perhaps thirty laps around Hyde Park. I must have time to think.’

  ‘Of course, dear.’ She poured him more coffee. ‘But Hermione’s right. You do look a little mauve. You must watch your blood pressure.’

  Henry ignored them all and scanned the lines feverishly. ‘Discus. Greek Style. Tragedy Struck. Horrified Bystanders. American Athlete Martin Sheridan Killed Outright. Kent Icke’s Sports Comments on Page . . .’ American athlete,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ mused his wife, ‘it is rather a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?’

  ‘What? Oh, do stop prattling, woman. Don’t you see? It’s broken the pattern. This fellow – Sheridan – he’s the first actual athlete to have been killed who isn’t British. Hesse and Hugo were repulsively foreign too, but they weren’t athletes. At least, not any more. Hugo no longer and Hesse never had been. Why wasn’t I told?’ He sat bolt upright. ‘What does Lestrade think he’s playing at? I told him I wanted to be informed. I have the Home Secretary on my back. His Majesty is said to be deeply concerned. What?’ he suddenly screamed.

  Little Helen screamed with him, being patted by her mother and sister.

  ‘What is it now, dear?’ his wife asked. ‘Have they misspelt your name again?’

  ‘Walter Dew!’ Henry roared.

  ‘Oh, now, dear,’ his wife chuckled, ‘not even the Mail could get it that wrong. You’re reading the gardening page.’

  ‘Gardening page, my left testicle!’ roared Henry. ‘Lestrade’s put Dew on the case. That’s like trying to open a tin with this newspaper.’

  ‘Well, they do talk about the power of the Press, Edward,’ his wife tried to be helpful.

  ‘Daddy?’ Hermione chirped. ‘What’s a left testicle?’

  Henry burst angrily from the room.

  ‘I was wondering that myself, darling,’ said her mother.

  He unhooked the wire that speaks from the wall. ‘Operator. Get me Scotland Yard. Yard,’ he repeated. ‘Y.A.R.D. Y for yellow. A for aardvark. Aardvark. It’s an animal. A for . . .’ and he slammed the receiver down. ‘I’m going down to the Yard,’ he shouted through to his family.

  ‘I’ll saddle Rover, Daddy,’ said Hermione.

  ‘Haven’t time. I’ll get a cab.’ and he was gone.

  ‘Well, dears,’ sighed Mrs Henry, ‘how about those laps around Hyde Park?’

  Chief Inspector Walter Dew stalked the corridors of power, his shadow dancing on the green and cream of the institution paintwork. About now he wished he was back in the sergeants’ stews again, in the basement. He even wished he was a damned constable, shivering in horror outside the dingy slaughterhouse at Miller’s Court where they had found the last of the Ripper’s victims. He had risen at Lestrade’s elbow. The same elbow that had dug him in the ribs the day before and whose owner had said, ‘Come on, Walter, what do you say? For old times’ sake, eh?’

  Yesterday, it seemed like a good idea. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Luv a duck, guv.’ Constable Hollingsworth hove into view, looking curiously like the least comforting of the men around Job. ‘What a boat race! Come on, it’s a nice sunny morning. Cheer up.’

  ‘I’ll swing for you, Hollingsworth,’ Dew muttered. ‘Is Mr Henry in yet?’

  ‘Oh, the Policeman’s Policeman, is it? Yes, he went through the Rory O’More in a cloud of smoke. Got up the wrong side of the skein of thread if you ask me.’

  ‘Hollingsworth, I wouldn’t ask you the time of day. Haven’t you got any criminals to catch?’

  ‘Oh, I wanted to ask you about that, Insp. This Martin Sheridan bloke, knocked brown bread with that discus . . .’

  ‘The day you learn to speak English, Hollingsworth,’ Dew swept on along the gloomy passageway, ‘I’ll discuss cases with you. That and when you’ve made Detective Inspector. Which will be about the same time as Hell freezes over.’

  ‘Dew!’ The chief inspector’s polished boots skidded to a screeching halt o
n the polished floor. He knew the assistant commissioner’s voice of old. The wrong skein of thread indeed. He knocked on the frosted, bevelled glass.

  ‘Come!’ The response echoed through the second floor. ‘Well, well. Walter Dew.’

  ‘Sir.’ The chief inspector stood erect.

  ‘They tell me in the canteen, Dew, that you have a certain literary flair.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, sir,’ Dew chortled, shifting his feet uncomfortably.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s right.’ Henry emerged from behind the huge mahogany desk with its leather and brass and memoranda. ‘But of course, here at Scotland Yard, we are detectives, aren’t we? Our job is to detect.’ He circled his man several times, then stopped abruptly. ‘Do you know you’re going grey, Dew?’ he asked.

  The chief inspector shifted uneasily again. ‘It has been pointed out to me, sir,’ he said, ‘on more than one occasion.’

  ‘Yes, well, our line of work gets you like that, doesn’t it? Especially if there are no results. Why did Lestrade put you on this discus case?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  Henry turned to the window where the morning sun streamed across the gilded towers of Westminster. ‘Come on, Dew. You’ve known Lestrade man and boy. What’s he up to? Something smells!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. It is August.’

  Henry spun back to his man. ‘Right,’ he sighed. ‘Martin Sheridan. What happened?’

  Dew fumbled for his notebook.

  ‘Without notes, man!’ Henry insisted.

  ‘Righto, sir.’ Dew cleared his throat. ‘Martin Otis Sheridan, aged twenty-eight. Found dead at the corner of Bayswater High Street yesterday morning. His head had been bashed in by a blunt instrument. Viz and to wit . . .’

  ‘You sound like a bloody owl, Dew. Get on with it.’

  ‘A discus, sir.’

  ‘A discus.’

  ‘Yes, sir. You know, those round things. Apparently the hancient Greeks used to practise by throwing plates at their wives,’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Henry, ‘not a bad idea. They knew a thing or two, those Greeks. How can you be sure it was a discus?’

  ‘It was lying next to the body, sir. Covered in blood, it was.’

  ‘Prints?’

  ‘Stockley Collins is working on it now, sir. But it doesn’t look good. Gloves, we think.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Mr Lestrade and I, sir.’

  ‘Which brings me back to my earlier question, Chief Inspector. Why did Lestrade pass this case to you?’

  ‘Oh, I was first senior officer on the scene, sir. I discussed it with Mr Lestrade, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Henry, sitting heavily in his high-back chair. ‘The point at issue, surely, is that this is one of the series. It’s another athlete. It must be part of the same case. And yet . . .’

  ‘Yet, sir?’

  ‘Yet this time the victim is not British. Where is Lestrade?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. The last I heard he was following up a lead in the Dover case.’

  ‘All right. Look, Dew, no offence to you, old chap, but I want Lestrade on this discus business. Understand?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Right. If you see him before I do, you might tell him that.’

  ‘As you will, sir.’ Dew all but saluted and, transferring his regulation boater from one hand to the other, marched smartly to the door.

  As he rounded the corner, he suddenly felt his sleeve being yanked sideways and he found himself nose to nose in a broom cupboard with his guv’nor.

  ‘Hello, guv’nor,’ he said. ‘Cramped in here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well?’ Lestrade asked. ‘Did he fall for it?’

  ‘I believe so, sir. He said he wanted you on the case. I must confess, I find it a little hurtful.’

  ‘There, there, Walter.’ Lestrade patted the man’s cheek. ‘You’ll get over it.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me what all this is about, sir? Why do you want Mr Henry to think I’m on this case?’

  ‘Not just Mr Henry, Walter,’ Lestrade whispered. ‘Everybody.’

  ‘Who’s in there?’ a voice shouted from beyond the door. Lestrade released the catch behind Dew’s left buttock and the door swung open to reveal a rather puzzled Detective Constable Hollingsworth.

  ‘And this, Dew, is where we keep the brooms at the Yard,’ said Lestrade. ‘Now, come with me and I’ll show you the ablutions.’

  Dew smiled weakly at Hollingsworth, who stood there with his mouth open. He watched them saunter down the corridor in earnest conversation.

  ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?’ he asked himself.

  The nightjars called to each other in the low woods and the last heron flapped noisily from the reeds. The gold of the day had become a livid burning crimson, paling now as night came. A boat wound its way through the reeds, out past the yards and locks, under the five-arched bridge, watched by the silent stones of Father Thames and Isis which Anne Damer carved a hundred years ago.

  Against the dark of the river edge, two men walked their dogs that late August evening.

  ‘Here’s a boat, George. It looks adrift.’

  ‘Hang on, we’ll hook her up. Must have come loose from upstream somewhere.’

  They crouched by the path and grabbed at the prow, snatching the rope that trailed in the water, and they pulled it to the bank. Then they both stood up sharply and the dogs scampered away. In the boat, lay a dead man, propped half upright, as though he were cox for a sculling team of ghosts. The oars were gone. The rowlocks slid silent. Only he lay there, strapped in by a rope that had slipped, staring intently ahead, as if to guide the oarsmen along the Henley Straight.

  ‘Good God,’ whispered George. ‘You’d better call the police. This is no boating accident.’

  Nine Men’s Morris

  ‘T

  he guv’nor and the guv’nor?’ Bourne asked incredulously.

  ‘As I live and breathe,’ nodded Hollingsworth.

  ‘Lestrade and Dew?’ Bourne was making sure there could be no misunderstanding.

  Hollingsworth nodded.

  ‘Get away.’ Bourne took off his pinny and sat down with the nearly brewed tea. ‘In the same broom cupboard? Well, I never.’

  Hollingsworth wasn’t so sure of that. ‘Bloody weird, I call it,’ he said. ‘Pretending to show the Insp around like he doesn’t know the place like the back of his German band.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bourne crossed his knee to reveal just a hint of mauve sock, ‘there isn’t a Mrs Lestrade, is there?’ He sipped the nectar daintily.

  Hollingsworth shook his head. ‘There’s a Mrs Dew though. Rumour has it they’re crawling with kids.’

  ‘Well,’ Bourne tapped him with the napkin his Bath Olivers were wrapped in, ‘don’t believe everything you see. Anyway,’ he pursed his lips, ‘they’re both at a very funny age.’

  The door crashed back and an ox of a man stood there.

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’ Bourne asked.

  The man looked him up and down. ‘Where’s Lestrade?’

  ‘I’m afraid Superintendent Lestrade is not here at present. Can I help? I’m Julian Bourne.’

  ‘You’re a faggot,’ the man growled.

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve met.’ Hollingsworth stood up. ‘Julian, this is Mr Maddox. He’s an animal from Washington. To be precise, a Pinkerton Animal.’

  Maddox’s hand shot out, but Hollingsworth was faster and he brought his boot smartly into the American’s shins. Maddox snarled and his coat flew back as in one fluid movement he drew a heavy-looking Colt from his shoulder-holster.

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Bourne said. ‘Temper, temper. Now why don’t we all have a nice drink?’ He proffered a cup to Maddox, nudging the revolver’s muzzle with it.

  ‘What is it?’ snapped Maddox, not taking his eyes off Hollingsworth.

  ‘Mint-flavoured tea,’ said Bourne.

  ‘Varmint-flavoured, more like,’ Maddox growled. �
�Touch me again, Yard man, and you’ll be brushin’ your teeth with your balls.’

  Hollingsworth unleashed the truncheon strapped to his outside leg. ‘Come over here and say that, son, and you’ll have to change places in the choir.’

  ‘Now, boys, boys,’ Bourne intervened. ‘Tadger, you put that truncheon away and Mr Maddox, please. We don’t carry firearms in this country.’ He gingerly moved the barrel aside. ‘They’re so messy. Mr Lestrade is on a case at the moment. You’ll find him in Bournemouth.’

  ‘Bournemouth?’ Maddox blinked.

  ‘That’s down south, shitface,’ Hollingsworth explained. ‘You know, below the Mason-Dixon line.’

  Maddox uncocked the revolver. ‘Bournemouth,’ he said. ‘Ain’t got no time for no cockroaches now. But when I get back, asshole, you and me’s goin’ to have a little spat.’

  ‘Any time, son,’ Hollingsworth said casually. ‘Don’t forget your handbag.’

  But Maddox had whipped in his revolver and crashed back down the stairs. He didn’t hear Bourne and Hollingsworth laughing hysterically above him.

  While Maddox was catching a cab to go south, Sholto Lestrade sat in an imposing front parlour in a house in Bloomsbury Square.

  ‘Anyone for Tennyson?’ a voice called from the French windows.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be “Tennyson, anyone?”?’ the hostess retorted. ‘Do go away, Giles, we have more pressing concerns at the moment. Another cup, Mr Lestrade?’

  The superintendent eyed the hostess with something akin to hatred. It wasn’t so much the taste of the contents of the cup he’d just somehow managed, it was the things floating in it. ‘Thank you, no,’ he said. ‘Now, Lady Rivers, about Hilary Term.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘A dear boy.’ She adjusted her lariat of pearls. ‘A little effete perhaps, as these young men will be nowadays.’

  Lestrade made a mental note. It was obviously Term’s little feet that made his balance so good for lunging. ‘How long had he been a member of the Circle?’

  ‘Oh, let me see, about three years, wasn’t it, Gervase? Gervase!’ She tapped a young man with her fan.