by M. J. Trow
‘Cabbie!’ Lestrade jabbed the roof with his stick. ‘Grosvenor Place. And step on it.’
Crossing the Tape
T
he little old man lay propped on a pillow. His breathing was sharp and erratic. The last of the Bolsovers had a journey to go. His Master called him. He probably couldn’t say no.
A large woman with a bust like a scullery ushered the ailing Lestrade into the aristocratic presence. She folded her arms and tapped her foot, much after the manner of the late Queen Empress.
‘I told you it was pointless,’ she shrilled, smoothing down her dressing-gown and adjusting her curlers. ‘Lord Bolsover has not stirred for nearly five weeks.’
‘You’ve never left his bedside, Miss . . .?’
‘Sister!’ she corrected him stridently. ‘Never. Except of course to sleep and attend the usual offices.’
‘Has he regained consciousness in that time?’ Lestrade asked, finding it increasingly difficult to tilt his head to the necessary angle to establish eye contact with the sister.
‘Four times,’ she said.
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Let me see.’ She whipped a thermometer from nowhere and inserted it into the recesses of the bedclothes. A less comatose man would have been dangling from the chandelier. ‘The first time, he asked me who I was. I told him I was Sister Plinlimmon of the Hospital for Rectal Disorders.’
‘That must have comforted him no end,’ Lestrade observed.
‘I like to think so,’ she smiled, whipping out the thermometer and shaking it vigorously. ‘Aha, I thought so.’ She flicked open Bolsover’s eyelids and pushed an extraordinary length of rubber tubing up his left nostril. ‘The second time the old so-and-so had the temerity to tap my posterior.’
‘And what did he say then?’
‘I’d rather not say.’ Lestrade fancied he saw her blush in the candle-light. ‘Except that in his condition what he proposed was medically impossible.’
‘The third occasion?’
‘Yes. That was only the other day. He said, “Bugger Buccleuch. He’s tied me laces together.”’ She dived under the covers again and wrenched out another length of tubing. ‘Aristocrat’s Friend,’ she explained the gadgetry to Lestrade. ‘A boon to the incontinent.’
Lestrade wasn’t remotely surprised. He felt sure you couldn’t buy that sort of thing in Britain. ‘His fourth comment?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Sister Plinlimmon frowned and sat down beside the four-poster. ‘That was very strange. He was quite lucid yesterday – for a vegetable, that is. He began to call out for his boys.’
‘His boys? Aggh!’ Lestrade jarred his neck anew with the shock of the moment. He closed to the woman, as far as he was able with the huge starched frontage between them. ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. The rest of it was rambling. Incoherent. The ramblings of old England.’ She looked down at him, affectionate in her own, psychopathic way. ‘Poor old boy. It’s astonishing he’s held on this long, you know. Something’s keeping him going, but I’m bothered if I know what. The breed, I suppose. They say a Bolsover rode up that hill with William the Whatsisname.’
‘It was probably him,’ mused Lestrade, looking at the yellow face and pinched features in the yellow half-light. ‘Bolsover!’ he suddenly shouted.
‘Are you mad?’ Sister Plinlimmon shrieked. ‘You’ll wake the dead.’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Lestrade. ‘Lord Bolsover!’
She tugged his sleeve. ‘Desist, sir,’ she snapped. ‘I won’t have the poor old man bullied.’
‘Do you know me?’ Lestrade did his best at a military sneer, though it had to be said he lacked the Big Hat and the frock. ‘It’s Bobby. Bobby Baden-Powell. Remember the Fifth? In India? What a fine body of chaps, eh? Are you listening? Bolsover? I’m talkin’ to you, don’t you know!’
The little old Marquess stirred, rolling sideways, his eyelids rolling.
‘Leave him alone, you boundah!’ Sister Plinlimmon roared, the massive forearms flexing as she grabbed the bedpan.
‘Madam,’ hissed Lestrade, ‘I’m up to my surgical collar in corpses. And this patient of yours is the one man in England who can help me. I’m desperate.’
‘I can see that,’ observed the nurse contemptuously, ‘but I cannot allow you to abuse a dying man by pretending to be General Baden-Powell.’
‘Baden-Powell?’ a scarecrow voice rattled from the corner. ‘Come closer.’
The superintendent and the sister rushed to him, one to each side. He looked at her first. ‘God, Bobby. You’ve put on weight. Breasts! Curse on Vishnu! Serves you right.’
‘My lord,’ Sister Plinlimmon sobbed, ‘my lord. It’s a miracle.’
‘Miracle, my arse.’
‘My lord,’ Lestrade shook the old man’s cadaverous shoulder, ‘do you remember me?’
Bolsover’s filmy eyes flickered again. ‘Remember you?’ He smiled and patted Lestrade’s hand. ‘Of course, vicar. Place in the Abbey. All dug? Not too near Poet’s Bally Corner, remember.’
‘No, no, my lord. Lestrade. Scotland Yard.’
‘Scotland Yard?’ Bolsover frowned. ‘Don’t want to be buried there, damn it. Too far north.’
Sister Plinlimmon sat sobbing, tears splashing liberally on to her heaving bosom. ‘I knew it was too good to be true,’ she wailed. ‘He’s going, Superintendent.’
Bolsover scowled at her. ‘Stop that snivelling, Bobby. Never gone superintendent in me life. Won’t start now.’
‘Your boys.’ Lestrade grabbed both the old man’s shoulders.
‘My . . .’ The old aristocrat tried to focus.
‘Your boys. Tell me about your boys.’
‘Where are they?’ he asked.
‘Who are they?’ Lestrade would settle for that at this stage.
‘Anstruther chose them. All athletes. All my boys. Even the girl.’
‘The girl?’ Lestrade’s head pounded. ‘Do you mean Effie Jennings?’
‘That’s her.’ Bolsover chewed his tongue. ‘From Derbyshire.’
‘What’s the connection?’ Lestrade shouted. ‘Why are they your boys?’
‘Select group,’ said Bolsover. ‘Get it all when I go. And when Anstruther goes.’
‘Anstruther’s gone,’ said Lestrade.
Bolsover hiccupped and raised himself up. ‘Gone?’ He turned incredulous to the nurse. ‘Bobby. Is that true?’
She nodded with quivering lip.
He fell back on the pillow. ‘My God. Muffed it. Had my chance. Goes to them then.’
‘All of them?’ Lestrade asked.
Bolsover nodded.
‘They’re all dead,’ Lestrade said levelly.
Bolsover’s face darkened. Then his fingers clutched the air. He caught Lestrade’s sleeve. ‘As ye sow, vicar,’ he whispered, barely audible now, ‘so shall ye reap.’ He turned to Sister Plinlimmon. ‘You’ve got to stop it, Bobby,’ he said softly. ‘This frock business.’
And he died.
Sister Plinlimmon let out a wail and stood up, sniffing. ‘Well, there it is,’ she said. ‘So passes the last of the Bolsovers. Who’ll inherit now, I wonder?’
Lestrade looked at her. ‘Is there a will?’ he asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘There’s no safe in the house.’
‘Who are his solicitors?’
‘Doesn’t have any. Legend has it he shot the last one to offer his legal services. He doesn’t – didn’t – approve of lawyers.’
‘Very wise,’ Lestrade concurred.
‘What was all that about his boys?’ Sister Plinlimmon asked. ‘And one of them being a girl?’
Lestrade stood up with a suddenness that brought tears to his eyes. ‘Sister Plinlimmon,’ he took her hand, ‘if I wasn’t in splints, I’d kiss you.’
She looked appalled. ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ she said.
Sholto Lestrade went walkabout. He saw dawn come up over Mungo Hyde’s river and nodded to the postman and paper
boys who trickled out in the gold of the dawn. A policeman saluted him as he hobbled down the Embankment. He had sat for an hour in the snug of the Coal Hole, sipping brandy with mine host long after hours as the bobbies patrolled the pavements above. He had written out his resignation and he passed it now, in its Yard envelope, to the beat man.
‘Mr Edward Henry,’ Lestrade had said. ‘On your way past.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the constable had answered. ‘Mind ’ow you’ve been.’
At the top of the steps, he saw her. A vision in white, gold curls dancing as she ran towards him. She threw herself into his arms, jarring his neck and back, and she kissed the bruised and battered lips.
‘Daddy, daddy.’ She buried her face into the lint of his collar.
‘Emma,’ he whispered, ‘little Emma.’ He lifted her down. ‘Not so little now, I see.’
She looked at him, tears trickling down her face. ‘Daddy, you’re hurt.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing. How have you been? Tell me all about yourself. How are things at Bandicoot Hall?’
She squeezed his hand and pressed herself against his good arm as they strolled along the Embankment. ‘Harry and Letitia and the boys and I are going home today. They told us at the Yard you’d been seen wandering about. What is it about this dirty old city of yours?’ she asked.
‘This one?’ asked Lestrade. ‘I don’t know.’ He smiled. ‘It’s all I know, Emma. Apart from you,’ he held her to him, ‘it’s all I love.’
‘I saw you at the fencing,’ she said. ‘How awful about that man.’
‘Yes, it was,’ he nodded. ‘Awful.’
‘Are you on a case, daddy?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I’m on a case.’
‘Is it a difficult one? A very difficult one?’
He shrugged. ‘Do you ever have a problem?’ he asked her. ‘At Monsieur Le Petomaine’s Academy? Do you ever have a problem and you’ve nearly solved it, but you can’t quite get the answer?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she beamed, ‘almost all the time. I’m not very bright, daddy,’ she confessed.
‘Now,’ he said sharply, ‘don’t ever say that. You’ve got your mother’s looks and your mother’s brains. That’s a winning combination, I’d say. What do you do?’
‘When?’
‘When you can’t quite get the answer.’
‘Well.’ She screwed up her freckled nose and sucked her teeth. ‘I really think about the last bit. The bit I can’t get.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. What’s your last bit?’
‘Mine?’ he said. ‘It’s a quotation from the Bible I think – “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”’
‘Silly, daddy,’ she scolded him, ‘that’s Galatians.’
‘Sorry,’ he apologized, ‘I thought it was the Bible.’
‘It actually says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”’
‘And what do you think that means, Emma?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she giggled, ‘it means that if you’ve done something naughty, retribution will catch up with you.’
‘Retribution?’ His eyes widened. ‘That’s a good word for a little girl.’
‘Less of the little.’ She nudged him in the ribs so that his eyes watered. ‘Oh, sorry, daddy. But you said so yourself, how I’d grown. This naughty thing.’ She nuzzled into his shoulder. ‘Is it something to do with sparking?’
‘With what?’
‘Sparking,’ she said. ‘Old Jem at the Hall said it was what made the world go round and when I was bigger I’d enjoy it. What did he mean, daddy? He wouldn’t tell me.’
‘I should hope he wouldn’t,’ said Lestrade. ‘I must have words with Harry about Old Jem.’
‘Is that what your case is all about, then?’ she asked. ‘Sparking?’
‘No,’ he laughed, ‘no, it isn’t . . .’ and he stopped short, the hairs on the back of his neck rising to brush the collar. ‘Emma Bandicoot-Lestrade,’ he held her shoulders, ‘did I ever tell you you’re the best girl a man could have?’
She beamed with pride. ‘Thank you, daddy,’ she said. Then she twirled him round and linked her arm with his. ‘Now, about this sparking business . . .’
‘Oh, look,’ said her father quickly, ‘there’s Harry, waiting for you. Come on. Race you to the steps.’
‘Don’t be silly, daddy,’ she scolded him, ignoring the physical wreck that staggered beside her. ‘Ladies don’t race.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Besides, the sparking in my case happened rather a long time ago.’
The White City Stadium lay bare and gaunt under the moon, peeping now in, now out of the clouds. The only sound was the patter of a thousand legs as the crane flies flitted here and there over the terraces and the gnats teased silently over the limpid waters of the pool.
The five policemen spread out across the track, walking along the strings as though in some grotesque parody of a race. The one with the stick and the white collar was trailing and the one in the chiffon scarf took an early lead. Then they stopped. A solitary figure approached across the turf, her step light, her pace measured.
‘Sholto.’ She stopped in front of them, and then, more warily, ‘Gentlemen.’
‘Marylou,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘You know us newsmen,’ she said. ‘Never could resist a cryptic note like yours. “Come to me by moonlight”. Alfred Noyes, isn’t it?’
Lestrade thought it was rather quiet. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Chief Inspector Dew here found it written on the back of a matchbox. He thought it rather appropriate.’
‘What is it all about?’ she asked.
Lestrade leaned against his stick. ‘It’s about murder, Marylou,’ he said. ‘Murder and money.’
She let her hand and her clutch bag fall to her side. ‘So you know?’ she said darkly, the sorrow heavy in her voice.
‘We know,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to hear it from you.’
She sighed and walked closer. ‘Sholto, I’m still not entirely sure of my facts. Perhaps we could compare notes. I’m not as good at this as you are.’
He chuckled. ‘Oh, come now, Marylou. You’ve had nine lots of practice.’
‘Excuse me?’ she blinked, thrown by his line.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you want to play it that way. For the benefit of these young impressionable policemen here, let’s play it by the book. Or would you rather do all this at the station?’
‘No.’ She glanced around her. ‘Here will be fine.’
‘Anstruther Fitzgibbon,’ Lestrade began, circling her slowly, the ferrule of his stick gouging holes in the Olympic turf. ‘He was your first obstacle.’
‘Mine?’ She straightened.
He nodded. ‘Correct me if I go astray on this one. You picked him up on some pretext and went to his room in Berkeley Square. You had your “back-up” as you called it – careless of you to drop that in conversation at Yelf’s Hotel. You were a little too cocksure of yourself there.’
‘Now, just a goddamn minute . . .’ She began. And he recognized the steel he had heard in her voice on Brownsea Island.
‘Please.’ He held up his hand. ‘This is my patch. Washington’s . . . over there,’ and he pointed in the wrong direction. ‘But you decided not to use the pistol – yours, that is. You decided to use his. It appealed to the romantic in you. The poetess. You saw Fitzgibbon’s antique guns and you loaded one. Coming from pioneer stock you managed the mechanical gubbins and you forced your victim to sit at his desk. That threw me, at first, but it was, what? Nerves? Is that why you fired from that angle, because you were nervous?’
‘You’re telling the story,’ she said coldly.
Lestrade was in full flight. ‘It certainly didn’t bother you later, when you shot Besançon Hugo and when you hit Tyrrwhit Dove with the arrow.’
‘They say it gets easier,’ she said, ‘with practice.’
He nodded. ‘Then, you worked your way through Bolsover’s boys,’ he said. ‘But there was a problem, wasn’t there? Ironic, really, that the one man who could have proved your undoing was an old friend. That’s what sickens me most, Marylou. That you were prepared to kill someone close to you to get what you wanted.’
‘Sholto, I . . .’
‘Perhaps you’d forgotten where you’d heard about the Beck case. Or the book Nena Sahib. It was from Hans-Rudiger himself, when you learned all there was to learn about journalism from the great man. Or perhaps you didn’t expect him to turn up in London for the Games. It was a little inconvenient for you, wasn’t it?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘Somehow, you heard he’d been to see me. You told me you hadn’t seen him recently. That was a lie. He must have told you of his visit to the Yard. And it was either then or sometime later – are you taking notes, Valentine? I’m sorry if I’m not going fast enough for you. You had the luck of the Irish, then. Gilbert Chesterton may be a brilliant man, but he doesn’t know what day it is. He thinks Napoleon lived in Notting Hill. And the only other neighbour was deaf as a diving board. You visited Hesse and stabbed him. Bloody, that. Not very nice, Marylou. Not very ladylike. But I remember Lizzie Borden.’
‘She didn’t do it,’ Marylou said.
‘She wasn’t convicted of doing it,’ Lestrade reminded her. He hobbled closer. ‘Then you went south. To cover the boat racing.’
‘Yacht, Super,’ said Hollingsworth.
‘It was you who gave William Hemingway the prunes, via Captain Őverland and Philip Hunloke, relying on the confusion at the start of the race so that no one would remember who’d done it. It took nerve, to hang around like that. But as I said, you were too cocksure. That business in the bedroom in Yelf’s Hotel
He felt four sets of colleagues’ eyebrows rise at the admission, but he ploughed on regardless. ‘You showed me the back-up weapon and you owned up to knowing about poisons, implying you’d doctored my brandy.’
‘Oh, come on, Sholto,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that a little obvious of me?’
‘I thought so,’ he nodded, ‘but not, I confess, at the time. You told me you hadn’t been there since the start of the race. That was a lie. But you said you’d been spending time with the Ladies’ Team. One lie merely compounded another. While my head was mending in the Isle of Wight, you went north.’
