by M. J. Trow
‘We’ve got a windage problem, gentlemen. Come on, Fairbrother. Catch the beginning from the stretcher. Throw the weight from feet to blade. Now, slide back. Body swing. No, no. Missed it again.’
‘There’s an imbalance in the centre,’ Fairbrother called.
‘Yes, I know. It’s the Superintendent, but he can’t help it. We have to face it. Things aren’t going to be the same without dear Lin.’
‘Poor Lin,’ Blackstaffe said. ‘He was a sculler and a gentleman. What can we tell you about him, Superintendent?’
Lestrade’s chest was rattling like an old kettle. ‘Well,’ he wheezed, ‘what indeed? Who saw him last?’
‘Blade. Feather. Blade. I suppose I did,’ said Reggie, leaning back to do something or other to the wind. ‘Last Thursday.’
‘That would be . . . the day before he died.’
‘Yes, I suppose it would.’
‘How . . . did he seem?’ Lestrade gasped.
‘Happy. No, not happy. Elated. Yes, that’s the word.’
There was a honking sound from the right bank. The coach was pedalling like a man possessed and calling incomprehensibly through a loud-hailer.
‘What’s he saying?’ Blackstaffe asked.
‘Don’t know. Can’t make it out,’ said Reggie. ‘Harry, I know one wants to do one’s bit for the disabled, but did we have to have a coach with a cleft palate?’
‘Bear with him, Reggie. Horace knows what he’s doing.’
‘Not a lot of good if he can’t tell us, though, is it? Yes, Mr Lestrade, elated.’
‘Wasn’t he normally, then?’
‘What? Elated?’ Reggie asked. ‘Rather more of a taciturn disposition. Wouldn’t you say, Benjie?’
A man at the front grunted.
‘Takes one to know one, you see, Superintendent.’
‘Poor as a church mouse, of course,’ said Blackstaffe.
‘Oh?’ wheezed Lestrade, reduced now to monosyllables.
‘Will you get your nose out of my backside, sir?’ roared the man in front of Lestrade. ‘It’s like being back at Uppingham again.’
Lestrade was happy to oblige. The flannel was chafing anyway. But it put him off his stroke and his oar banged into the one behind. ‘Sorry!’ he hissed through gritted teeth.
‘Yes,’ said Blackstaffe. ‘Scruffy beggar, was Lin. We called him the Sculler Gypsy.’ Everybody but Lestrade laughed. ‘What’s Horace saying now, Reggie?’
The cox put his mouthpiece to his ear. Any port in a storm. ‘Bridge,’ he said. ‘Is one of you chaps due to play bridge with Horace tonight?’
‘No. He’s saying Bilge,’ said Blackstaffe. ‘We are veering a little, Reggie. Do get a grip.’
‘Is there anyone,’ Lestrade forced his tortured lungs to manage a complete sentence, ‘who would want to see him dead?’
‘Horace?’ Reggie frowned. ‘Just because a chap has a speech defect, Lestrade . . .’
‘No, no.’ Lestrade hacked and spat. ‘Lin.’
‘Ah, I see. Blade. Stop tickling it, Fairbrother. You aren’t at Magdalen now, you know. Pull. That’s it.’
The honking from the bank grew urgent. Lestrade glanced sideways to see Valentine vanishing down the path. Horace the coach was gesticulating wildly, while Walter Dew struggled in the rear, his front wheel wobbling under duress.
‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ somebody grunted on the boat, but he couldn’t have been referring to Walter Dew.
‘May I remind you, gentlemen, that we are supposed to be averaging forty strokes a minute. Harry’s getting there, but Fairbrother, you’re a joke. Benjie’s on form. Mr Lestrade’s getting in three or four, but he’s shipping a lot of water. Feather. Feather.’
Horace was now positively screaming, but they all steadfastly ignored him as the pace increased.
‘Listen to that,’ said Reggie. ‘For a man with a cleft palate, he’s got a magnificent pair of lungs.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Blackstaffe, ‘what fervour. Makes a chap proud to be an oarsman. Eek!’ He glanced up as the bend bared the river beyond the Henley Straight. ‘My God, what’s that?’
‘It’s a pontoon bridge,’ shrieked Reggie.
‘As I was saying,’ panted Lestrade, his knuckles white around the oar, ‘can any of you think of anyone who wanted to see Lin dead?’
‘Blade! Blade! Blade!’ Reggie roared. Lestrade was hit in the mouth by the head of the man in front. He glanced to his right because that was the way his neck had been wrenched. He saw Valentine, Horace and Dew, standing astride their bicycles akimbo, staring in horror.
‘They’ve got no right to be here. Who the bloody hell are they?’ Blackstaffe was hauling frantically on his oar, pulling it out of the water.
Lestrade saw a moving flotilla of little boats roped to the bank at one end and little boys in long shorts and loose scarves scurrying hither and thither. And in the centre, he saw a wiry little Lieutenant General in a Big Hat, issuing commands as though in the breach at Mafeking. Thank God, he mused as he heard the crunch and felt his spine jar, thank God he wasn’t wearing a frock.
The apparition in splints hobbled down the mortuary corridor. ‘Sholto Lestrade as I live and breathe,’ a voice hailed him.
‘Dr White, I’m not sure I do. I’d shake your hand, but I can’t feel my arm.’
‘Good God, you look as though you’ve gone down with the Abercrombie Robinson.’
‘Whoever he is, I probably did.’ Lestrade eased himself into a chair.
‘Not there, Lestrade. My sandwiches.’
The superintendent grunted and removed his highly polished trousers from Mrs White’s bloomer.
‘Well, well. I know why you’re here. Linlithgow Morris.’
‘The same.’ Lestrade tried to turn his head above the surgical collar. ‘What can you tell me?’
White pulled off his green, smeared apron. ‘Poison. Quite nasty. Want a look?’
‘Why not?’ Lestrade staggered across the room. ‘I couldn’t feel worse than I do now.’
‘No,’ said White and he studied the superintendent carefully. ‘And actually, he looks a bit better than you do. You’ll have to hold your nose, though. What with the heat and the blasted crane flies, I’m afraid things in the garden aren’t exactly rosy.’
He slid back a trolley and pulled back a grey sheet. The dead man was naked but for a pair of rowing shorts. His skin was a pale flesh colour, the hair long and still lustrous.
‘Arsenic,’ said Lestrade.
‘Correct. Except for the shrunken face, there’s not a mark on him. I cleaned up the vomit, of course.’
‘Thanks. Administered?’
‘Oh, definitely.’ He put back the makeshift shroud.
‘No, I mean how was it administered?’
‘Oh, I see. Well, his last meal seems to have been prunes. Keeps one regular, I understand.’
Lestrade nodded. ‘Is there a family?’
‘Elderly grandparents, I believe. Live at Pancho Villa here in Henley. The local bobbies have broken it to them. Pity, he was a damned good oarsman, I understand.’
‘Yes, so do I. I saw his cups at the boathouse.’
‘So? I know you of old, Lestrade. Once the Yard’s been called in, it’s all hands to the pumps. What’s your theory?’
‘This is one of many,’ Lestrade told him, turning away in a desperate search for a chair.
‘Aha!’ White chortled. ‘I do love a mystery.’
‘It’s no mystery.’ Lestrade winced as his numb buttocks hit mahogany. ‘Some maniac is going around killing athletes. The Press have had the story for weeks. I’m surprised there are any of ’em left in London.’
‘So it is the Turks.’ White twirled round another chair and straddled it before tucking avidly into Mrs White’s bloomer. ‘Bite?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lestrade, shifting slowly. ‘Blister. Do you know the Foreign Secretary?’
‘Sir Edward Grey?’ White asked. ‘Good Lord, no. Should I?’
‘No.’ Lestrade shrugged, his most volatile movement. ‘It’s just that you and he have the same theory.’
‘And what’s yours? From the horse’s mouth, so to speak.’
Lestrade tried to laugh, but the effort beat him back into a hollow wheeze. ‘I deal in evidence, doctor, not theories. Did you know the deceased?’
‘No. Heard of him, though. He’s a local legend here in Henley. Always opening public urinals and so forth. Nice chap, they say.’
‘Yes, that’s just it. I’ve got seven other nice chaps, not to mention one nice woman, lying in assorted graves and slabs all over the country. Oh, and two of them out of the country I expect, by now. Now, you tell me, doctor, who kills nice ordinary people?’
White reflected for a moment. ‘Another nice, ordinary person who has something to gain from their deaths,’ he said.
Mr Edward Henry toyed with the marmalade, the extra thick sort to which he was so partial. He flicked the paper over on to the back page. His eyes fell on the small print, tucked away discreetly at the bottom of Kent Icke’s column.
‘Where’s today’s paper, dear?’ he asked his wife.
Mrs Henry looked a little alarmed. All those years arresting people in the hot sun of Ceylon and all those years scrutinizing the tiny lines at the ends of people’s fingers. Perhaps they were beginning to take their toll.
‘It’s there, dear,’ she said.
‘Where?’ He looked bemused at the array of breakfast things before him. Little Helen’s crushed and scattered boiled egg, her toast soldiers looking as though the square had broken, the gleaming silver of coffee jug and tray.
‘In front of you, dear.’ Mrs Henry instinctively reached for the thermometer in her chatelaine. ‘You’re looking at it.’
‘No, no,’ smiled Henry, ‘it can’t be today’s. There’s a tiny article here about Martin Sheridan winning a gold medal.’
‘Well, if it’s in the Mail dear, it must be true.’
Henry turned the paper over. He read, incredulous, that day’s date.
‘Damn and hell fire!’ he thundered. Little Helen burst into tears and slightly bigger Hermione began to hose down the milk that had gone everywhere.
‘Not again, dear.’ Mrs Henry looked up at him, pleadingly. ‘I thought you’d taken Mr Dew off the Sheridan case?’
‘Don’t you understand, woman?’ he roared. ‘There is no Sheridan case. Unless, that is, a dead man can throw a discus further than a lot of live men.’
‘Let me see, dear.’ She adjusted her reading glasses. ‘It says “Greek Style”,’ she read. ‘Perhaps that’s some kind of posthumous award. Rather like the Queen – God Bless Her – gave that cup to that plucky little Italian chappie.’
‘The only thing posthumous about all this,’ snarled Henry, ‘is the obituary I’m going to write on Sholto Lestrade. Will you shut up?!’ he screamed at his younger snivelling daughter and dashed for the door. ‘I’m off to the Yard.’
Mrs Henry rose to comfort the hysterical child. ‘Never mind, darling,’ she said. ‘Daddy’s rather upset this morning because that nice Mr Lestrade has died. But don’t worry. He can always get another rat-faced, sallow, rather limited Superintendent.’
There was no doubt about it. Linlithgow Morris, like all the others, was essentially a nice chap. One or two of the Henley people to whom Dew and Valentine spoke when they had hauled their mangled, waterlogged guv’nor from under Baden-Powell’s raft of boats, had said he was something of a bore and it was generally agreed that Inspector Tom Gregory was the man to follow up that lead. Others found him rather taciturn. Morris’s parents had died of the diphtheria when he was a baby and he had been raised by his paternal grandparents, kindly old folk who had scrimped and saved to buy a good education for the boy and who had stood and cheered along with everybody else at the water’s edge as he rowed his way to certificate after certificate, medal after medal. All very exciting if you liked to spend your time eight and a half inches above water with someone else’s body between your knees. What was it, Lestrade wondered for the umpteenth time as the cab dropped him outside the Wig and Pen Club, what was it that people saw in sport? It was cheaper than Maxim guns, he supposed, to trounce the foreigners in the field. That must be it. A cheap war. And, he thought darkly, as he tottered up the steps, his surgical collar large and gleaming in the street lights, a bloody season.
He shuffled past the doorman, snoring at his post. Faithful unto death, mused Lestrade, and padded down the deserted halls. He caught his reflection in the mirrors that twinkled in the candle-light – a bizarre apparition in lint and gauze, his face shiny with bruising, his lips bulging and split. From somewhere he heard the desultory smack as the last balls of the evening kissed the cush.
‘Mr Grant.’ Lestrade saw his man sprawled out in the leather-bound corner of the dining-room.
‘Mr Lestrade.’ The newspaperman struggled to his feet, extending a hand. ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve had rather too much to drink. Brandy?’
‘I am still on duty sir,’ Lestrade reminded him. ‘Though I fear not for much longer.’
‘Well, then,’ Grant steadied the decanter, ‘one for the road. Thank you for coming. Cigar?’
Lestrade accepted and the two men sprawled on either side of the table. ‘The message was that you wanted to see me,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Grant downed his brandy and poured another. ‘It didn’t work,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The ruse about the murder of Martin Sheridan. It didn’t work.’
‘I know,’ said Lestrade. ‘I read Mr Icke’s report in the newspaper.’
‘The silly bloody idiot!’ said Grant. ‘I begged him, Mr Lestrade. I even told him why. I said,’ he leaned forward, whispering earnestly, ‘I said we needed to fool our man. I said that if he thought we were playing with him – inventing a murder he hadn’t committed, taking you off the case and putting Dew on it – he’d come out of the woodwork. He’d write to the paper. He’d ring the Yard. Something. Maniacs are like that, Kent, I told him. Vain. This fellow thinks he’s damned clever. This will draw him out. You know what he said? Icke, I mean?’
Lestrade shook his head.
‘He said, “Over ’ere, son. On me ’ead.”’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ve no idea. Absolutely no idea. These sports commentators, they’re a bloody race apart. No pun intended. As journalists, they make damned good lavatory attendants. Good God.’ Grant frowned in the dim half-light. ‘You’re pretty banged up, aren’t you?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Lestrade, ‘that a fortnight flat on my back wouldn’t cure. And please, don’t feel badly about the Sheridan idea. It was a good one. It might well have worked. What will Mr Harmsworth say?’
‘Who?’ Grant grunted. ‘I don’t give tuppence for that bugger, Lestrade. There’s more to life than working for a halfpenny trash sheet.’
Lestrade could believe that.
‘Anyway,’ Grant dropped his head into his hands and played with a cigar butt absent-mindedly, ‘it couldn’t have worked.’
‘Why not?’ Lestrade asked, wincing as the brandy passed his lips. ‘Because Martin Sheridan is still alive?’
Grant looked at him. ‘No,’ he said and his eyes were rimmed with tears. ‘Because there is one person, in this whole, wide world, apart from you and me, who was in on our plan from the beginning.’
Lestrade straightened slowly. ‘You mean . . .?’ Grant stood up, collecting his brandy balloon and quaffing the last of its contents. ‘And you can’t prove a thing,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can understand why I’m glad about that,’ and he wavered towards the door.
Sholto Lestrade was fifty-four years old. He stood in the warm night air under the black turrets of the Temple Law Courts. Here he stood thirty-four years ago, a green copper on the beat. And on his first day, a photographer had parked his tripod in front of him and snapped him there and then for posterity. In ye
ars to come, perhaps, they’d look at that photograph, yellowed and cracked, and look at that eager young face under the helmet and say, ‘What a funny-looking bugger he was, that Sholto Lestrade.’
Now it was time to do it one last time. To go on the last beat. But the years and the pontoon bridge had taken their toll. He couldn’t even manage the steady pace of two and a half miles an hour this evening. He’d take a cab. Mr Edward Henry must have seen the paper by now. Or someone with promotion in their eyes at the Yard – there were plenty of those. Or Abberline or Edgar-Smith or any one of them would have pointed it out to him. It wouldn’t take him long. Henry was sharp as a razor. He’d know it was Lestrade. Falsifying evidence. Obstructing police in the course of their duty. Not to mention casting another slur on the Daily Mail – but then, who would notice that?
Well, he’d beat him to it. He’d go to see the Policeman’s Policeman tonight. He checked the half-hunter. One o’clock. The Temple Bell confirmed it. He looked down the dark alleyway to the Crusader Church where he had walked with a lovely lady only weeks before. He’d go to the Yard and write out his resignation. In triplicate, of course. And he’d put it into one of Edward Henry’s blasted ‘In’ trays.
‘Are you good-natured, dearie?’ a hopeful street-walker called to him from the Temple Arches.
‘Not any more, ducks.’ He clicked his teeth and hailed a rattling hansom.
He did not go to the Yard. Something in him rebelled, recoiled like a dying cobra. He was a Yard man. Long in the tooth, maybe. Short of time and patience and salary, without doubt. But no newspaperman threw him a murderer and said, ‘You can’t prove it.’ There had to be proof. And he had one last place to go to find it. What was it old Bolsover had said? That first time they had met, when the old aristocrat had come to the Yard? He had been talking – briefly, for that was his fashion – about his son. ‘Nimbler than all my boys.’ All my boys? But Bolsover only had one and he was dead. Even with another one the wrong side of the ticking, that only made two. So what did he mean by ‘all my boys’?
