Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Soft? What, on the lads?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Slack was sure. ‘Hard as nails on us, he is – and rightly so. No, he’s a bit soft on trassenoes for my liking.’

  ‘Ah, it’s the new approach, constable,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Softly, softly, catchee baddie. Now, I gather Lisson Grove is in your patch?’

  ‘It is, sir. Know it like the back of my elastic band.’

  ‘Your report, then.’

  ‘Well, I was proceedin’ in a sarf-easterly direction . . .’

  ‘That’s down the Grove.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Ah, let me stop you there, constable. Detective Green here has been busy perfecting the constabulary art of tea-making since Sergeant George and I have been away. If I may say so myself, he’s not half bad at it now. Get it down your weasel and stoat.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Slack took the handleless cup with alacrity.

  ‘I can’t offer you a Bath Oliver to accompany it because Detective Tyrrell has not picked up the buying of biscuits with the same aptitude. Where is he, by the way, George?’

  The sergeant stuck his head around a particularly large stack of shoe-boxes. ‘Said he had a lead on the Carrick girl, sir, the one from Mevagissey.’

  ‘Tsk,’ muttered Lestrade. ‘Fancy allowing a little thing like police work to get in the way of life’s essentials. Can you bear it dry?’

  ‘Fine bevy, sir. Thank you, Mr Green.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr Slack,’ the detective staggered past carrying a Remington of absurdly heavy proportions.

  ‘So,’ Lestrade went on, ‘down Lisson Grove way. What was your beat roster?’

  ‘I was filling in for Henry Blenkinsop, sir. He was down wiv his young ’uns.’

  ‘His young ’uns?’

  ‘Scarlet fever, sir.’

  ‘Where’s his trouble and strife?’

  ‘Gone, sir.’

  ‘Scarlet fever?’

  ‘Houndsditch, sir. Wiv a winder-cleaner.’

  ‘Ah. Even so, you know the beat?’

  ‘Oh, yessir. I pass the King Arfur eighteen times on the road.’

  ‘At what time did you find the body?’

  ‘A Mr Dickson sir, ’e found it. That would be about six-thirty.’

  ‘You’d been on since midnight?’

  ‘Yessir. Bleedin’ cold it was, saving your presence.’

  ‘What did you make of it?’

  ‘Well, there was blood all along the railings and down the step. It’s my guess that whoever ’it ’im did it along Lisson Grove, rahn abaht Number 32 and ’e didn’t finally go down until the pub.’

  ‘The gate above the steps, the one that led to the cellars of the King Arthur, is that normally open?’

  ‘On Wednesday mornin’s, sir, yes. Delivery day. Old Dave at the Arfur always leaves it open so’s the drayman can get in.’

  ‘And what time is that?’

  ‘Varies sir, but usually abaht seven.’

  ‘All right, now think hard, constable.’

  A furrow of effort appeared on the ancient face of ‘Nutty’ Slack. ‘Ready, sir.’

  ‘What time did you pass the Arthur before you bumped into the carter, Dickson?’

  ‘That would be abaht . . . ooh, six fifteen, sir.’

  ‘You turn round below the Arthur?’

  ‘Yessir, then proceed in a north-westerly direction.’

  ‘Up the Grove?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘So,’ Lestrade tried to visualize the frog and toad in his mind. ‘At the furthest point, how far are you away from the Arthur?’

  ‘Ooh, I’d say abaht six hundred yards, sir.’

  ‘Six hundred yards. Do you mind me asking, Slack, how old you are?’

  ‘I’m sixty-one, sir. Retiring soon.’

  ‘Good for you. Do you mind if we try a little experiment?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Put your cup down and face the wall, there’s a good chap. With your back to me. That’s it.’

  Lestrade bent down as best he could with a stiff leg and whispered into one of his drawers. George looked at him oddly. ‘What did I say then, Slack?’

  ‘You said “Put your cup down and face the . . .”’

  ‘No, not then. I whispered something. What did I whisper?’

  ‘“I’ll be with you in apple-blossom time”, sir.’

  Lestrade smiled. ‘And I didn’t think you cared. One last thing, constable. You didn’t, I suppose, see anybody? Lurking in the shadows, perhaps, under the stairs at the Arthur?’

  ‘Not a soul, sir. I reckon chummie had scarpered long before I got there.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Lestrade. ‘No doubt he had. Well, thank you, constable. I just wanted to clarify those few points from your report. Give my regards to Mr Berkeley.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I will, sir.’ He saluted and saw himself out.

  ‘What was all that abaht . . . about, guv?’ George asked.

  ‘The Drawer Test?’ Lestrade asked. ‘First trick I learnt at the knee of old ‘Dolly’ Williamson back in the ’seventies, George. Whisper into a container of muffled paper and if anyone can hear you, they’ve got bloody good ears.’

  ‘So, sir?’

  ‘So that bothers me,’ Lestrade chewed his pencil end. ‘Hypothermical though this obviously is, George, if somebody swiped you several times around the head so hard that your false teeth fell out and your cranium caved in, wouldn’t you scream, just a little?’

  ‘The odd whisper might escape my lips, sir, yes.’ George mused. ‘Along with my false teeth of course.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps it was just a whisper, then.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Because if our fractured friend had screamed, Constable Slack, at six hundred yards away, would have been bound to have heard him. So would half of Lisson Grove, come to that.’

  ‘That assumes, sir, that the deceased had full possession of his vocal cords at the time.’

  ‘No sign of cut throat, was there?’

  ‘No, I was thinking more of your laryngitis, sir. Lots of it about at the moment. Mr Abberline hasn’t said a word in four days.’

  ‘There’s a blessing,’ said Lestrade. ‘All right, George. It’s your shout at the Clarence in a few minutes. Before then, let’s solve a crime or two. First, the ball of paper tucked neatly into the dentures of the deceased.’

  ‘Placed there after death, sir.’

  ‘How do we know?’

  ‘The paper was almost dry, sir. It was a clear night, but no frost. And no trace of saliva.’

  ‘Right, so whoever killed him left a calling card, viz and to wit the aforementioned. What is it?’

  ‘Ah well, that’s the sixty-four quid question, guv. It appears to be a drawing,’ and he looked at the crumpled paper again, ‘of a series of squares, one inside the other.’

  ‘And where’ve we seen it before?’

  ‘In the pocket of Fussock, the butler at Ralston Hall, sir. He gave it to you in loo of a guest list the other day.’

  ‘You sent the telegram?’

  ‘An hour ago, sir. But I don’t like it.’

  ‘Sending telegrams? Fairly harmless pursuit, surely?’

  ‘No, sir, tipping Fussock off. He’ll do a runner, sure as eggs is eggs.’

  ‘No he won’t, George,’ Lestrade perused the green board with its flappings of paper. ‘It isn’t that simple. Fussock had difficulty standing, I noticed, never mind stoving in the skull of two men twenty miles apart on two successive nights.’

  ‘Are you not including the Reverend Rodney in the killer’s list, guv?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lestrade said. ‘I had a word with Will Tattenham in the canteen over breakfast.’

  ‘The bookie? What was he doing here?’

  ‘His usual. Helping us with our enquiries. I asked him what were the chances of more than one person being responsible for these killings.’

  ‘What did he reckon?’

  ‘Well,
you know Will. He wanted to know angles of blows, positions of bodies, directions of blood stains, distances between crimes, etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then he said – “Two hundred and sixty-nine to one”.’

  ‘Well,’ George raised both eyebrows, ‘there’s a comfort.’

  ‘Come on,’ Lestrade growled. ‘We’ve faced worse odds than that! Remember the Pillow Case?’

  ‘Do I ever! Sixteen thousand and forty-three to one.’

  ‘The Justin Case?’

  ‘Er . . . Forty four thousand and eight.’

  ‘The Case of the Lengthening Odds?’

  ‘Er . . . No, I’ve forgotten that one.’

  So had Lestrade. ‘Even so, you catch my drift. What’s this?’ He found a memorandum on his desk, tucked away under his teacup.

  ‘Oh, that came while you were having a pee, sir. It’s from Assistant Commissioner Rodney.’

  ‘But he’s got our report on his cousin.’

  ‘This is on the Opera House torso, sir. Any breakthroughs, he wants to know.’

  Lestrade aimed the missile carefully at the bin and missed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘None whatever. But we’re on to the bastard who knifed the Duke of Buckingham, tell him.’

  ‘When was that, guv? Must have been before my time.’

  ‘Mine too. 1625. Right, George. My throat tells me your shout at the pub is imminent. Let’s assume that Rector Rodney is the first of the three. Let’s look at the victims. Common ground?’

  ‘All men,’ George said. ‘All middle-aged.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well, we don’t yet know who the third man is, sir.’

  ‘No, that’s true,’ Lestrade said. ‘But this,’ and he held up the letter he’d half-inched from the latest corpse, ‘would seem to whittle it down to two. In effect, from the fact that there is no postmark on the envelope and that the envelope was sealed in his pocket, I think it whittles it down to one.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘The letter is addressed to a Mr Archer of the Minories. It is written by a Mr Batchelor, of the Quiver magazine. It’s my guess that our friend of the crushed cranium is the latter.’

  ‘. . . And is murderer is Mr Archer!’ George’s fingers clicked at the sudden brilliance of it.

  Lestrade sighed. ‘I’ll tell you what, George. That’s enough sleuthing for one morning. You can buy me several drinks at the Clarence and then we’ll go and see what the Minories look like in the spring, shall we?’

  The Minories in the spring looked like the Minories at any other time of year. The raw cold and snows of February had given way to the gustier squalls of March, but the tall tenements precluded the wind and the Yard men found Number 89 without difficulty.

  A florid man with a waxed moustache and a towel over his arm appeared at the tinkle of his door bell. ‘What’ll it be, gents? Trim? Short back and sides? Ah,’ he caught sight of Lestrade’s parchment features, ‘the full facial, I see.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Lestrade couldn’t place the accent. ‘We’re looking for Mr Henry Archer.’

  ‘’Enry!’ the florid man roared, ‘’ow many times ’ave I tol’ you. No visitors at ze chop.’

  ‘Sorry.’ A rather ashen-faced man appeared from behind a faded curtain. Standing beside the barber himself, the two of them made an effective pole.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the barber snapped. ‘That’s all I geeve hou.’

  ‘Five minutes, Seňor Alfonso, thank you. Thank you.’

  He led them down a flight of stone steps into a basement kitchen of indescribable dinginess. In front of a green, spotted mirror stood a row of wigs of varying degrees of moth. Archer took up a pair of tweezers and began to work on one, threading horse hairs back into place in the half light.

  ‘Please forgive him his rudeness, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘He’s from Seville.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ George said. ‘That’s where the oranges come from, isn’t it?’

  ‘Got a light, Mr Archer?’ Lestrade asked, clamping a new Havana between his lips.

  ‘Please,’ the wigmaker shouted, then gentler. ‘No naked flames here. It’s the glue, you see. We’ll all go up like a tinder box.’

  George had wandered off to examine the ceiling.

  ‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard,’ Lestrade said, ‘Sergeant George here . . . there . . . and I would like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Oh? I thought you’d come about a wig.’

  Lestrade ignored this slur on his tonsure. Obviously, what with the bowler and the half light, his leonine head of hair had passed the wig-maker by.

  ‘George,’ Lestrade muttered, ‘what are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry, guv’nor,’ the sergeant scuttled to his side. ‘I was reminded of old Sweeney Todd, you know. Looking for the apparatus that tipped the chairs from the floor above.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s keep this within the bounds of plausibility, can we?’ Lestrade said. It had been a long time since his days in the old H Division; he’d forgotten how many steps there were in Fournier Street. ‘Mr Archer, do you know a man named Byngham Batchelor?’

  The Inspector saw the wig-maker turn paler yet. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘He . . . was nearly . . . might yet be my publisher.’

  ‘Your publisher?’

  ‘He works as an editor for the Quiver. Look, if it’s about “The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring Tra La” I can explain.’

  Lestrade eased himself down into a leather swivel. ‘I wish you would,’ he said. George put stub to paper, perched on the pile of old, well-thumbed Graphics in the corner.

  ‘Well, it was more or less my story,’ Archer’s fingers fidgeted with the curls of the wig he was working on.

  ‘More or less?’ Lestrade’s eyebrows raised a notch.

  ‘Well, let’s say it was an adaptation.’

  ‘You submitted it to Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘For inclusion in the April edition, yes. Oh dear, does this mean he doesn’t like it?’

  ‘Is it usual for editors to send Scotland Yard detectives if they don’t like authors’ work?’

  ‘Well, no . . . er . . .I shouldn’t think so. I’m rather new to all this.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Archer,’ Lestrade pulled a letter from his inside pocket, resting the gammier of his legs on a handy stool, ‘all modesty aside, how would you describe “The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring”?’

  ‘Tra La,’ George added.

  ‘As my colleague so rightly says,’ the Inspector smiled.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It had its moments, I think. It’s a little difficult . . .’

  ‘You wouldn’t, for example, call it “quite the most appalling piece of trash I’ve seen in twenty three years”?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Nor yet “Reminiscent of the early Stevenson – George Stevenson”?’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Perhaps “Codswallop of an unprecedented type. Never have I seen such dreadful sentence construction, so weak a plot, such undelineated characters. The denouement is like chewing a wet rug.” Familiar so far?’

  Archer had sat down, visibly shaking. ‘Perhaps it needs a little beefing up,’ he said, but he even failed to convince himself.

  Lestrade dropped the letter into his lap. ‘Tell him, George,’ he said.

  ‘The body of Byngham Batchelor was found in Lisson Grove this morning,’ the sergeant said, leaning towards his man. ‘His head had been smashed in from behind. There was an awful lot of blood.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Archer’s voice was barely audible.

  ‘Where were you, Mr Archer, at about six fifteen this morning?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Er . . . here, in bed. I live at the back of the shop. Through there,’ he pointed to a beaded curtain that led into a tiny alcove, barely big enough for a single bed.

  ‘Were you alone?’ Lestrade asked.

&n
bsp; ‘Oh yes,’ Archer said, obviously shocked that Lestrade could have thought otherwise.

  ‘So we only have your word for that, don’t we?’ George said, cracking his knuckles in the time-honoured tradition.

  ‘Um . . . look,’ Archer summoned up his courage from somewhere. ‘You don’t think I had a hand in this, do you?’

  ‘A hand?’ Lestrade chuckled. ‘Oh no, Mr Archer, it’s not your hand that interests us, it’s your foot. Would you raise your left boot please?’

  ‘My . . .?’ and he did so.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Lestrade peered at it closely. ‘What size do you take, Mr Archer?’

  ‘Er . . . size eight. Why?’

  ‘Well, as my sergeant so gratuitously informed you a moment ago, there was an awful lot of blood at the scene of the murder. And going off in a south-easterly direction, as it were towards the Minories, was the crimson track of a size eight boot.’

  The Yard men watched the epiglottis rise and fall, quickly followed by its owner, as the barber’s assistant cum wig-maker crashed gracefully to the floor.

  ‘’Ey,’ an accented voice called from above, ‘’Enry, what ees going on? Your five minutes, zey are up. Gentlemens up ‘ere want a shave.’

  ‘All right, Seňor Alfonso,’ Lestrade called. ‘Keep your hair on.’ Then to George, ‘all the same, these bloody Italians. Take advantage of the moment, George. Have a shufti around friend Archer’s boudoir. There may be something that will help.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ George stepped over the prone prose-writer, ‘I didn’t know about those bloody footprints, by the way. D’you think we can nail him on that?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Lestrade rummaged through drawers. ‘I made them up. Well, you never know. I’ve got confessions with less than that before now.’

  ‘What are we looking for guv?’ George felt compelled to ask.

  ‘A miracle, sergeant,’ sighed Lestrade, lighting his cigar with his own Lucifer. ‘A bloody miracle.’

  It didn’t of course compare with the Great Fire of Tooley Street; still less with the four-day conflagration that began in Pudding Lane and ended with Sir Christopher Wren laughing all the way to the bank. Even so, the blaze that began mysteriously in the basement of Seňor Alfonso’s Barber-And-Something-For-The-Weekend Shop in the Minories was one of the celebrated events of that year. No one, thankfully, was hurt. Seňor Alfonso himself managed to drag his unconscious assistant to street level before the macassar-oil went up and the florid old Spaniard told the Daily Standard that it was just as well. If the fire had started any earlier, two Scotland Yard detectives on a routine enquiry might have gone up with the building.