Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘You took a trap?’

  ‘Oh, I found the house all right. But she wasn’t in. Some deranged old relative told me Daisy and her dad were down at the cave.’

  ‘The cave?’

  ‘It’s a cleft in the cliff, sir, formed by years of geologized corrosion.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sergeant. I knew I’d regret missing the lecture on Rock Formations for Policemen. What were the Porthluneys doing in a cave?’

  ‘Well, that was the curious thing, guv.’ George was wringing out a sock so that the fire hissed and spat. ‘They appeared to be humping crates until I came along and then they started tapping the roof.’

  ‘Tapping the roof?’

  ‘Old Cornish custom I assumed, at first, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Lestrade nodded, frowning.

  ‘But it turned out they were fossil hunting.’

  ‘I see. And the crates?’

  ‘Well, they used them to stand on, so they could reach the ledges.’

  ‘Ah. Who was there?’

  ‘Well, I only saw the Porthluneys, man and girl, but judging from the scraping of barrels deeper in the cave, there must have been more of them.’

  ‘Barrels?’

  ‘They’re a bit taller than the crates, it expires, so they’re even better for standing on.’

  ‘I see,’ Lestrade was not convinced. ‘Well, to the matter of the Rector.’

  ‘Ah,’ George fumbled for his notebook. ‘Now that was a different kettle of fish. As soon as I told them who I was, they got quite agitated. Old man Porthluney started screaming how tapping rocks wasn’t against the law and whathaveyou. When I pointed out I wanted to ask the daughter about Rodney, he quieted down.’

  ‘What did the girl say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘The old man didn’t give her a chance. Did all the talking for her. Yes, the Rector was very kind to her. Yes, he’d taken photographs of her – of all her confirmation class at various times. Lots of vicars did that, apparently. There was nothing in it.’

  ‘So he didn’t appear to mind?’

  ‘No,’ George said. ‘Even when I showed him the snaps we’d found. Said he didn’t know anything about it, but he expected they’d be what was called “artistic”.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Lestrade mused. ‘A model of tolerance and liberalism then, our Mr Porthluney.’

  ‘Apparently so. How did you fare, guv’nor?’

  ‘The Tresilians were a different matter,’ Lestrade stretched himself out. ‘Mr Tresilian was killed at sea three years ago. Or rather at the shore. I couldn’t get much sense out of his wife. Inbred, I shouldn’t wonder. Something about barrels falling on him. That’s why I queried it when you mentioned barrels. I can’t for the life of me see how you can be killed by barrels at the water’s edge.’

  ‘Unless it’s dark, of course,’ George reflected.

  ‘On a wild night, you mean?’ Lestrade asked.

  The sergeant nodded.

  ‘But then what would he be doing at night, in a storm, on the beach?’

  The strange Western ways had clearly baffled the Yard men.

  ‘Anyway, I too showed the photos to Mrs Tresilian.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She just looked at them. Know what she said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘“Ain’t she a beauty, my Hannah?”’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘That was it.’

  ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘Ah, well, she was a little more forthcoming than yours, apparently. She told me the Rector was always taking photographs, not to mention liberties, of all the local girls.’

  ‘Poor little things,’ George mused. ‘Cut up, was she? Crying? Consumed with guilt and shame?’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ Lestrade said. ‘Offered to lift up her frock for sixpence.’

  ‘Really?’ George was aghast. ‘You didn’t . . .’

  ‘Please, George!’ Lestrade was affronted. ‘You know I don’t carry small change. Did you send the telegram to Tyrrell and Green?’

  ‘Yessir, but I have to say their chances of finding this Emily Carrick in London are about four million to one.’

  Lestrade nodded. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘no stone unturned. Mr Rodney will have our guts for garters if we don’t explore every . . . er . . .’

  ‘Avenue, sir?’

  Lestrade winked. ‘Quite right, Abberline.’

  ‘I don’t get it, guv,’ George was staring into the embers. ‘Two girls for certain – more possibly – well, three if you count Emily Carrick – all being interfered with by the Rector – and nobody seems to give a tinker’s damn.’

  ‘You forget, George,’ Lestrade said, ‘this is Cornwall. There’s none so queer as folk, especially fishing folk. Ours is not to reason why.’

  A cheerier fire altogether crackled in the hearth of 221B Baker Street. The taller of the two men was rosining his bow in an absent-minded sort of way when he glanced up and said to his colleague, ‘Have you ever wanted to murder anyone, Watson?’

  The good doctor’s left hand lost its grip on his newspaper. ‘Me, Holmes? Good Heavens, no . . . although, er, I did once, of course.’

  Holmes continued to rosin without breaking his stride. ‘I wasn’t referring to your professional incompetence on the operating table, my dear fellow.’

  Watson bridled, stung, not for the first time in his life, by his companion’s lack of tact. ‘Neither was I, Holmes,’ he blustered, ‘I was referring to Afghanistan, back in ’seventy-eight. Kill or be killed it was of course in those days. Pathans everywhere you looked. There we were, my orderly and I, with nothing but a dollop of laudanum and a Webley Mark Four. Or was it Three?’

  ‘I’d love to saunter down memory lane with you, Watson,’ Holmes said through gritted teeth, ‘but I fear the Pax Britannica isn’t what it was.’

  ‘Oh, there I must disagree with you, Holmes,’ the doctor rumbled. ‘Volume six on endocrinal complaints in the rationally disadvantaged was second to none.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Holmes mused, ‘you wrote that, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh,’ Watson blushed, ‘a fumbling, inept artifice if I say so myself.’

  ‘Yes,’ Holmes agreed. ‘Unfortunately you weren’t the only one to say so. I seem to remember The Lancet was less than kind.’

  ‘Editorially, they’re a joke, Holmes,’ Watson assured him. ‘What do a bunch of surgeons know about medicine?’

  Holmes arched an eyebrow. ‘You have a point there,’ he demurred.

  ‘However,’ Watson cleared his throat. ‘Talking of murder, I could murder a pint at this precise moment.’

  ‘Of good Cornish cider, Watson, I’d wager.’

  ‘Cornish?’ Watson was a little confused. ‘Oh, very well, but why Cornish, pray?’

  ‘Ah, well quipped, Watson,’ Holmes chuckled, although it was immediately obvious from the doctor’s face that he had failed to quip for some time.

  ‘Er . . . you’ve lost me, Holmes,’ he confessed.

  ‘Ah, wishful thinking, old man,’ the Great Detective beamed. ‘Do you absorb nothing from the pages of The Thunderer, old fellow?’

  Watson scanned the paper in question, re-gripping it anew. ‘South American mining isn’t what it was and the bottom seems to have fallen out of rubber.’

  ‘No, not the article on the world crisis in incontinence pads. Page sixteen, fourth column.’

  Watson riffled to it. ‘Rector of Mevagissey bludgeoned to death in his own pulpit. Good Heavens! Didn’t I read that in the Church Times yesterday? The Thunderer must be slipping.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Holmes commented, his elegant fingers executing quick pizzicato on the strings. ‘Any news source with an editor named Buckle can hardly be worth the paper it’s printed on.’

  Watson ignored the mixed metaphor and the lack of syntax, knowing as he did that his companion’s brilliance shone elsewhere. ‘Isn’t Lestrade on that one?’ He read on.<
br />
  ‘Who?’ Holmes yawned.

  ‘Yes, by Jove, he is. Listen to this . . .’

  ‘I’ve read it, Watson.’

  ‘“The Reverend Hereward Rodney is a distant cousin of Assistant Commissioner Rodney . . .”’

  ‘I’ve read it, Watson,’ Holmes screamed, so that the veins stood out, throbbing with pure genius, at his temples.

  ‘Sorry, Holmes,’ Watson mumbled.

  But Holmes was already in control. ‘What does it say – sergeant now, is he, Lestrade?’

  ‘Inspector, Holmes,’ Watson corrected him. ‘Play the white man.’

  Holmes snorted. ‘Right. A little exercise for you, my dear fellow. Close your eyes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your eyes, Watson, close your eyes.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Watson did as he was told.

  ‘Now, page three of The Thunderer. I calculate you read it exactly eight minutes ago.’

  ‘Er . . . oh.’

  ‘What was on it? No, no, keep your eyes shut. It’ll help concentration.’

  ‘Er . . . there was a rather ravishing picture of a girl.’

  ‘No, that was the Sun, Watson, last Friday’s issue. She was Mary Clary, voted Miss Billingsgate for the fourth year in succession. Do concentrate, please.’

  ‘Um . . . it wasn’t that story about the Chinese ambassador?’

  ‘No, that was page eight, second column and in any case it has nothing to do with murder.’

  ‘Oh, murder,’ Watson clicked his fingers. ‘It was that review of Lord Hartington’s speech before the Select Committee on overcrowding of the shipping lanes off the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘No,’ Holmes corrected him. ‘“Solent Abuse” was second column on page four.’

  ‘Got it!’ Watson’s eyes flicked open. ‘Er . . . “Spy Network Uncovered in Rangoon”.’

  ‘No, dear fellow,’ Holmes was patience itself, ‘that was the fifth column. You want the first. Although at least now you’re on the right page.’

  ‘Er . . . um,’ Watson had reached the end of his span of concentration. ‘No, it’s no good. Give up.’

  ‘South Mimms,’ Holmes hinted.

  ‘Ah, of course,’ the doctor ejaculated. ‘Squire Ralston, bludgeoned to death . . . oh, my God.’

  ‘Yes, Watson?’ Holmes leaned forward.

  ‘Well, something of a coincidence, surely, Holmes. First the Reverend Rodney, now Squire Ralston. How many bludgeonings can there be in the space of a fortnight?’

  ‘And how many bludgeoners carrying out their vicious trade in an area the size of England?’

  ‘Er . . . give up, Holmes,’ Watson said again.

  ‘No, Watson, it’s not a conundrum, my dear fellow, merely a philosophical introspection.’

  ‘Do you suppose Lestrade is involved in South Mimms too?’

  ‘I hardly think so, Watson. First there is no mention of him in the item concerned. Second, I happen to know that the good Inspector is less than popular with the Herts Constabulary and third, The Thunderer seems a little more up to date on this one. It happened the day before yesterday – barely time for Lestrade to down his breakfast pasty and get to a railway station.’ He consulted the grandfather in the corner. ‘With luck, we’ll be half a day ahead of him.’

  And he flung down the bow and swept from the room.

  ‘But we haven’t been engaged, Holmes!’ Watson called after him.

  ‘Of course we haven’t Watson,’ the Great Detective replied above the rumble of 221B’s plumbing. ‘People would talk.’

  ‘I mean, no one has taken us on to solve the crime.’

  ‘Tosh and fiddlesticks, Watson,’ Holmes re-emerged with foam all over his face and a cut-throat in his hand. ‘I’m not having some blockhead from the Detective Branch solving cases ahead of me,’ and Watson didn’t at all care for the gleam, either on Holmes’s razor or in Holmes’s eye. ‘By the way,’ the Great Detective paused, ‘that doctor friend of yours, what’s his name? Lives in Southsea?’

  ‘Conan Doyle.’

  ‘That’s the chappie. Is he still pestering you about writing some damned novel about me?’

  ‘Indeed he is, Holmes,’ said Watson enthusiastically. He even has a working title – A Study in Scarlet.’

  ‘What is he,’ frowned Holmes, ‘a novelist or an interior decorator?’

  ‘Well, he’s a doctor at the moment, Holmes,’ Watson told him, ever a stickler for accuracy.

  But Holmes had gone. ‘Mrs Hudson,’ Watson heard the Great Detective bellow, ‘where the deuce is my Harris tweed deerstalker?’

  And a muffled lowland-Scots answer came from the kitchen. ‘You’re the Great Detective, Mr Holmes, you find it.’

  ‘Where away, Holmes?’ Watson called, desperately ferreting under cushions for his Webley Mark Whatever it Was.

  ‘South Mimms, old fellow,’ came the reply. ‘The game’s afoot.’

  Yes,’ groaned Watson, ‘I feared it might be . . .’

  ❖3❖

  ‘H

  ave you seen this, guv?’ George shook a nasty little pamphlet at his Inspector. The Great Western locomotive lurched at that moment, rattling east and said pamphlet embedded itself momentarily in Lestrade’s right nostril.

  ‘What is it?’ the Inspector rearranged his moustache.

  ‘Punch, sir – the Charivari.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Lestrade mused. ‘Guaranteed to get right up my nose. In what way have they outraged your constabulary sensibilities this time?’

  ‘Well, it’s this,’ George fumed, ‘this so-called “Song for Scotland Yard”.’

  ‘Hum me a few bars, I’ll try and pick it up.’

  ‘For instance . . .’ George cleared his throat.

  ‘Er . . . you’re not going to sing, are you sergeant?’ Only I remember with a little less than delight the Police Review of last year.’

  ‘Ah,’ George turned an odd shade of cerise. ‘Perhaps the oratorio was a little ambitious.’

  ‘Just say it, then,’ Lestrade advised.

  ‘I won’t bore you with the rest, guv. It’s this coupling that gets me – “Policedom’s honour is at stake, Policedom from its drowse must wake.” What a bloody cheek!’

  ‘Hm,’ nodded Lestrade, ‘we’ll close that rag down one of these days.’

  ‘And look at this – “The Police of the Future”.’

  Lestrade peered at the upside-down picture of an officer in riot gear, armed with a wicker-work shield, a spiked quarter-staff, water tank and hose pipe and ‘mob-persuaders’ – spikes on knees.

  ‘I like the bags of money for bus fares idea,’ he nodded approvingly. ‘Let’s hope none of our more zealous colleagues get hold of the electric-wires-up-the-sleeves gadgets. Enough people are shocked by police behaviour already.’

  ‘You know the Pall Mall Gazette called the Yard a dodo the other day?’ George bridled.

  Lestrade held an appalled hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, tell me it isn’t so,’ he groaned.

  ‘Well, guv,’ George jutted his jaw forward a few times, ‘I’d just like a few minutes alone with these bloody editors, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Lestrade smiled, ‘but they’d only have more ammunition for charges of police brutality. Let’s get back to the matter in hand, shall we?’

  George shrugged and threw the Charivari out of the window.

  ‘Mevagissey, then, sergeant,’ Lestrade lolled back, closing his eyes. ‘Tell me all.’

  ‘An old world fishing village, sir,’ the sergeant summarized, ‘narrow streets, alleyways as devious as its inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be related to each other and couldn’t quite manage the Queen’s English. In fact, I’ve got to be honest with you, I haven’t exactly understood very much over the last four days.’

  Why break the habit of a lifetime? Lestrade thought.

  ‘The village is renowned for its capture of the pilchard, supplying Italy and the West Indies in bygone days. Apparently the record year was 1724 when
over four thousand tons of pilchards were dispatched. Can you imagine that? Four thousand tons of pilchards?’

  Lestrade and his sergeant sat shaking their heads in sheer wonderment.

  ‘Fishermen on the pier head told me – I think – they caught mackerel and conger.’

  ‘I thought that was a dance,’ Lestrade frowned.

  ‘So did I, guv,’ George said. ‘And when I said that very thing to one of them, he said they also caught pollocks. At least, I think that’s what he said.’

  ‘Yes, well, this is all very fascinating, George,’ Lestrade yawned. ‘But I rather had in mind discussing the case.’

  ‘Ah, right you are, guv, the case. Well, the parish church is dedicated to St Peter, built on the site of an old wattle and daub oratory belonging to a monk called Moroch. The Saxons built a wooden church and this was rebuilt about 1100 by the Norman Bishop of Exeter.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, George, I’m sure your grasp of the gazetteer is admirable, but it’s the present Bishop I’m a little more interested in.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Hubert Damnoniorum.’

  ‘That’s the Johnnie.’

  ‘In Matabeleland.’

  ‘According to Detective Sergeant Smith.’

  ‘Seems a good man.’

  ‘Salt of the earth. What did you make of Constable Widger?’

  ‘Moron, wasn’t he?’

  Lestrade nodded. ‘A fair bet,’ he agreed. ‘Now, the Reverend Rodney.’

  ‘Right. Hereward Sacheverell Rodney. Educated Charterhouse and King’s College, London. Bachelor of Divinity, Third Class, 1864. Curate at Congleton for three months. Left rather abruptly.’

  ‘Do we know why?’

  George raised an eyebrow, ‘I could make an educated guess, sir.’

  ‘Indeed. And after Congleton?’

  ‘Six months at Godalming.’

  ‘Left abruptly?’

  George nodded. ‘Seems to have gone through parishes like you and I go through stations.’

  ‘When did he get the Mevagissey job?’

  ‘Eight years ago. Popular at first. Congregation dropping off lately.’

  ‘All right, then. Married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Housekeeper?’

  ‘A Mrs Bunn.’

  ‘Yes, you talked to her, didn’t you?’