Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘And when he did?’

  ‘He passed out.’

  ‘So you had two bodies?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. What could I do? I had Evensong in a few minutes. I dragged the Reverend Rodney into the Vestry and propped him in a corner of the pantry. I jammed him against the wall with the table and propped his back up by sticking a mop up his vestments. The door doesn’t fit too well. I thought if anybody saw through the gap they’d assume he was taking tea rather than sprawled dead.’

  ‘What about the constable?’

  ‘The Verger hauled him outside and ran him round the churchyard a few times. He soon came to.’

  ‘And you went ahead with the service?’

  ‘Why, yes. When two or three are gathered together, you know, Inspector . . .’

  ‘How many were there at the service?’

  ‘Two or three.’

  Lestrade’s eyebrow raised and the curate saw it.

  ‘Well, it was a vile night,’ Austin remembered. ‘The rain had already started by the time I reached the church the first time. Widger and the Verger nearly drowned out there. Besides . . .’

  ‘Besides?’ the policemen chorused.

  ‘Well, you’ll find out anyway,’ the curate said. ‘The Reverend Rodney was not the most popular of men. His congregation had been dwindling of late.’

  ‘Any special reason for that?’ Lestrade asked.

  The curate shrugged. ‘None that I can think of,’ he said.

  ‘Where is the body now?’ George relicked his pencil stub. It tasted a damn sight more appetizing than his dinner.

  ‘Grave number three one nine. Just left of the path.’

  ‘Ah,’ Lestrade frowned. ‘No chance of a quick re-opening of the coffin, I suppose?’

  The curate looked horrified. ‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘For that you’d need either the permission of the Bishop or a magistrate’s order. I doubt you’ll get either.’

  ‘So do I,’ Lestrade realized.

  ‘To that end,’ the curate fished about in his stipendiary bag, ‘I wondered if these might be useful?’ He scattered a host of sepia photographs on the table.

  ‘What are these?’

  ‘Various snapshots of the Reverend Rodney. They say these devices can capture the soul of the dead. What do you think, Inspector?’

  Lestrade glanced at the clock in the corner. ‘It’s nearly dusk, Mr Austin. I make it a rule never to think after dusk. Which one is Mr Rodney?’

  ‘There,’ the curate pointed to the first of the photos. ‘Third from the left in this snapshot.’

  ‘The one standing next to that serving girl?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him. Ever smiling. Ever beaming.’

  Lestrade squinted at it. The leer on the dead Rector’s face presented an altogether different picture of him.

  ‘Here he is on a village outing to Torbay,’ the curate said. ‘Oh, I know it’s a bit like coals to Newcastle, but even folk in a tourist village need an away day now and again.’

  ‘Hm,’ Lestrade mused, ‘he appears to be helping that young girl down from the coach. Or is he helping her up?’

  ‘Or is he helping himself?’ George muttered.

  ‘Ah, always the gentleman,’ Austin smiled. ‘You know, I can’t for the life of me think why the parishioners began to stay away in droves from his services.’

  ‘Perhaps his sermons were on the lacklustre side?’ George suggested.

  ‘Where was this one taken?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Oh, that was the Mevagissey Board Schools confirmation class of ’eighty-four.’

  ‘And is he . . . confirming this girl? The rather pretty one with the hour-glass figure?’

  ‘The curate adjusted his pince-nez. ‘I can’t really make this out. There appears to be a flaw in the film.’

  ‘What? Just where his hand is, you mean?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Yes, it was a hobby of the Reverend’s of course.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Er . . . what was?’

  ‘Photography. He got various people in the parish of course to take these, but he had a darkroom in the Rectory. Made Julia Margaret Cameron look decidedly average, I can tell you.’

  ‘On second thoughts,’ Lestrade slid his plate away, ‘it’s not too late after all. Perhaps you could take us to the Rectory, Mr Austin?’

  ‘Oh, of course. I’ll just get my bicycle. Oh dear, I’m not sure I can give you both a lift.’

  Lestrade couldn’t accept Curate Austin’s crossbar on account of his gammy leg. And George couldn’t on the grounds that even at the advanced age of thirty-one, he hoped to be a father one day; Mevagissey’s cobbles might well put an end to all that.

  So it was that all three men trudged through the night of driving rain, wrapped in wet mufflers against the maelstrom. The puddles were ankle deep in places and passers-by hurrying home to the huddled houses on the hill stared in frank amazement at the two Lunnon gen’lemen walking the wet cobbles arm in arm.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ the old cleric called cheerily to each one. ‘They’re policemen.’

  He left them at the Rectory gates. Old Mrs Riviera – known to all and sundry as the Cornish Riviera – was on her way to that great tourist resort in the sky and what with the Rector having gone before, all manner of parochial tasks fell on old Austin. He pedalled into the night.

  The Rectory was a great black pile in the darkness, framed by dripping rhododendron bushes and silent sentinel cedars. Its windows, like sad eyes, watched them come, hobbling up the drive, orphans of the storm.

  ‘Well, put it in, man.’ What with the wind, the rain and the pain in his leg, Lestrade was within hailing distance of the end of his tether. George was fumbling with the key the curate had lent them. It rumbled in the lock and the door swung wide.

  ‘Aaarggh!’ George knew his guv’nor’s scream anywhere.

  ‘Found something, sir?’ he called into the pitch blackness of the hall.

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade hissed, ‘the umbrella stand. Why didn’t you bring a bullseye, dammit?’

  ‘Sorry guv. Hang on.’ There was a fumbling of Lucifers and a scrape of sulphur and George stood there, beaming triumphantly in the match’s flare. ‘Ooh, I don’t like that.’

  Lestrade agreed. A rather revolting old goat stared down at them from a snowy landscape, looking sheepish. There was another one of the Rector a little higher up. Ever a man of infinite resource, George lit the oil lamp on the table and wandered through the cold silent house humming, subconsciously no doubt, ‘Lead kindly light’.

  Lestrade stumbled in his wake.

  ‘Where did the curate say the darkroom was, guv?’ George asked.

  ‘Off the bedroom at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘Right. Well, here are the stairs.’

  ‘Go on then,’ Lestrade snapped, listening to his Donegal dripping on the carpet.

  The lamp caught each brass stair rod like a flash of lightning. At the top a great black bear snarled at them in silence, the oil lamp’s glow sharp on his beady, wicked glass eyes. A family of moths flew out of his fur at the policemen’s approach.

  ‘This one then,’ George opened the door.

  A bachelor’s bedroom, single bedded, stark, and a hideous framed thing emblazoned with the motto ‘God Is Not Mocked’. The sergeant took in the sickly green of the washstand, the matching bowl and jug and the ecclesiastical fol-de-rols draped over the towel rail.

  ‘His second-best,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘How do you know that, guv?’ his sergeant asked.

  The Inspector shrugged, ‘I didn’t. But wouldn’t a Rector wear his Sunday best for the Third before Septuagesima? That’s the one he died in. What’s that door over there?’

  George tried it. ‘It’s locked, guv.’

  ‘That’s never stopped you before,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘Shoulder job?’

  ‘Why not?’ the Inspector shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose the Rector wi
ll complain.’

  ‘What about the sequestrators?’

  ‘Just rub some liniment on them,’ was the senior man’s advice. ‘They’ll be all right.’

  That was good enough for George. He squared up to the thing, pawing the carpet like a bull with a personality problem and hurtled against the frame. Lestrade wasn’t sure whether it was wood or bone splintering, but there was an almighty crash and the Inspector trod carefully over his prostrate partner and carried the lamp into the gloom. Around the walls of a small alcove were row upon row of glass phials, each one labelled in leaf of gold, dazzling in the flickering lamplight.

  ‘Nitrate of silver,’ Lestrade read aloud.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ a voice moaned.

  ‘Tincture,’ the Inspector read on, running the lamp around the shelves.

  ‘No, really,’ the voice droned. ‘It’s nothing, dislocation. Think nothing of it.’

  ‘Stop complaining, George,’ Lestrade answered unfeelingly, scanning more bottles of Windsor brown and midnight blue. ‘You knew when you joined that the job had its ups and downs. On your feet. Tell me, did you go to that lecture on Photography for Policemen?’

  ‘No, guv. I’d just broken my arm if you remember, tackling that Jehovah’s Witness in Threadneedle Street.’

  ‘Ah, the old lady. Yes, I did warn you she was a wrong ’un.’

  ‘You did, guv’nor, you did. I just wasn’t prepared for the brick in her handbag. Hello, hello, hello.’

  George was more or less upright by now, standing at his guv’nor’s elbow. He had, with the instinct of a born snooper, flicked open a little cabinet drawer. He was glad it was too dark for Lestrade to see that he was blushing.

  ‘Well, well, a little parish peccadillo if I’m any judge,’ the Inspector peered over the sergeant’s shoulder, the one that appeared to have dropped an inch or two. ‘Isn’t that the girl in the photo of the outing to Torbay?’

  ‘I don’t know, guv. I can’t make her out from that angle.’

  Lestrade glanced at the bottles again. ‘Developing nicely,’ he said.

  ‘How old would you say she is?’

  The Inspector shrugged. ‘Fifteen, sixteen. I haven’t seen a chemise that short since . . . well, never you mind when.’

  ‘This,’ George produced another one, ‘is the serving girl in the group photo. I didn’t recognize her at first without her clothes on. My, but she’s a strapping lass.’

  ‘Who was she strapping, that’s the question.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t care for that glint in her eye. Look, sir, there’s dozens here.’

  The sergeant was right. Dozens of scantily clad girls, not one of them over twenty, in a variety of lewd poses. There was no doubt about it, the Reverend Rodney had an eye for detail.

  ‘No chance of taking these back for the lads, I suppose?’ George asked.

  Lestrade gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘The inside of that locker door of yours is full enough already,’ he told him. ‘Besides, tomorrow you and I have got some other doors to knock on. I want names to these . . . er . . . faces. Get yourself another lamp, George.’

  ‘What am I looking for, sir?’

  ‘Letters, articles of clothing. Anything else that links the Rector with these girls. I have a shrewd suspicion that his interest in them wasn’t entirely ecu . . . ecu . . . ecumenical.’

  The sergeant stumbled into the passageway, clutching his aching shoulder. That was easy for the guv’nor to say.

  Widger and Smith came with the sunrise. One was a big copper, square of frame, as were all the sons of Polgooth. It was Constable Widger that came as a surprise, however. The curate had known him all his life. Curious then in a dynamic, go-ahead constabulary that the constable too was the wrong side of sixty.

  ‘Sixty-three, sir,’ he told the Yard men, standing before the empty grate in the Reverend Rodney’s library, ‘last Thursday.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Lestrade said. ‘Tell me, Widger, how well did you know the Rector?’

  ‘As well as can be expected, sir,’ the old man said. He was crimson of face, with a cheery grin and a little toothbrush moustache.

  ‘How long had you known him?’

  ‘Ooh, ever since he arrived sir. ’Bout . . . ooh . . . nigh on eight yearn.’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Man of the cloth, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade tapped his fingertips together as though in prayer. ‘I am aware of his occupation, Constable. What manner of man was he?’

  ‘I didn’t have much to do wi ’im, sir.’

  ‘You’re not a churchgoer then?’

  ‘Methodist, sir,’ Widger said. ‘I goes to chapel over at London Apprentice.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s a village, sir,’ Smith offered, ‘two miles north of here.’

  ‘Did the Rector have any enemies?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Not that I know of, sir,’ Widger said.

  Lestrade was less than impressed with this example of Cornish Constabulary. His buttons were bright enough, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. Not altogether the most helpful man to have at your elbow.

  George came in with the tea. For all his bruised shoulder, here was a copper – resourceful, dependable, brave. He’d smashed the lock on the Rector’s tantalus and he and his guv’nor had partaken of some excellent brandy before the sun was up. It streamed in now through the leaded panes as the sergeant was mother with the bevy he’d half inched from the Rector’s kitchen.

  ‘The Bishop of Exeter,’ Lestrade turned his attention to the Cornish detective. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘Name of Gordon,’ Smith told him. ‘Hubert Gordon. Signs hisself Hubert Damnoniorum.’

  ‘Tall man?’

  ‘Average.’

  ‘Elderly?’

  ‘Average.’

  ‘I’ve heard he’s seventy-one.’

  ‘Very like.’

  ‘Fit?’

  ‘Average.’

  Lestrade reached for George’s tea like a man clutching at straws and going under for the very last time. ‘Could he, in your opinion, stove in the head of one of his rectors and hotfoot it over a nine foot wall?’

  Smith pondered a while. ‘Not all the way from Matabeleland he couldn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Matabeleland. That’s where His Grace is now.’

  ‘For how long has this been the case?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Near on three months,’ the sergeant said. ‘I know because I saw him on the platform at Exeter and he said to me “Well, Smith, wish me luck.” And I said “Why’s that, Your Grace?” And he said “Cos I be off to Matabeleland on a fact finding tour and mission of goodwill. See you in March.” That’s what he said.’

  ‘And you’re sure he’s gone?’

  ‘Well, we had a postcard from there at the station.’

  ‘Is that usual?’ Lestrade’s eyebrow rose.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Smith replied. ‘We’re all his flock, you know. Aren’t we, Widger?’

  ‘You’ll have to speak for yourself, sir. I’m a Wesleyan deep down.’

  Smith shrugged. ‘You don’t seriously suspect His Grace, do you, Mr Lestrade?’

  ‘I seriously suspect everyone at this stage of the enquiry, Smith. Even you and Widger here. Right,’ he threw a scattering of sepia photographs onto the library table, ‘who are they?’

  ‘My God!’ Smith’s eyes widened. ‘Widger?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the constable was confident. ‘They’re not me.’

  ‘Clearly not,’ sighed Lestrade, ‘unless you’ve had fairly drastic surgery lately. I want to know the names of those young ladies. Now.’

  ‘Ar well,’ the constable fumbled in his top pocket for a flimsy pair of spectacles, ‘this yer’n,’ and he shook his head, ‘this is Daisy Porthluney from Trenarren way. This one – my, how she ’ave grown – is Hannah Tresilian. This one . . . she’ve left now. Went away to Lunnon if I rememb
er right. ’Er name were Emily Carrick. ’Er dad’s a carter in they parts.’

  ‘Yes,’ mused Lestrade, ‘the Rector was clearly interested in “they parts” himself. Have either of you seen these photographs before?’

  The Cornishmen shook their heads.

  ‘What about this?’ Lestrade handed over a slim volume that had lain on the table in front of him.

  Widger read the title aloud: ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel. What is that, sir?’

  ‘Well, if my memory serves me correctly, it’s a poem by a bloke called Scott. Only it isn’t. See for instance, page 38.’

  The constable flicked to it. ‘The page seems to be torn, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Teeth marks,’ proffered Lestrade. ‘Paragraph three, line six.’

  Widger’s eyes widened and his spectacles plummeted off the end of his nose. ‘That’s not possible, is it?’ he asked. ‘Not in Corn’all at any rate.’

  ‘It’s an obscene publication, sergeant,’ Lestrade filled Smith in as the Cornish detective took a look for himself. ‘There’s a false panel in the wall behind me and at the rear of The Parish in Fact and Fiction and the sixteen volumes of Canon Law: The Evidence there are another half dozen like that. They are all to do with older men who seduce young girls. Printed in Holland on some particularly nasty stationery. The Last Minstrel seems to have been particularly well endowed.’

  ‘Well,’ Smith tilted his regulation bowler to the back of his head, ‘I’ll be a clotted cream. Whoever’d have thought it of the Rector?’

  ‘Somebody did,’ Lestrade said. ‘And somebody killed him for it.’

  That day was very much like the last, the wind groaning with the trudging policemen up the winding streets and bobbing the little fishing boats on the heavy grey surface of the harbour below the town. Several times during their enquiries, Lestrade and George pondered where the wind came from. But as sure as God made little pygmies, they both knew where it was going to.

  By nightfall, even the cheerless gloom of The Happy Traveller had charms of its own and the gen’lemen from Lunnon huddled over the flickering grate as though their lives depended on it.

  ‘Right then, George,’ Lestrade said, massaging his gamminess, ‘Daisy Porthluney, from Trenarren way, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ George toasted his blue feet, ‘rather more of a way than I had imagined in fact.’