Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  Instead, by the time the bells were clanging and the brigade was thundering its way along Flower and Dean Street, those selfsame detectives were in Fleet Street, at the offices of the Quiver magazine.

  ‘Ambrose Matters.’ A rather dour individual stood before them.

  ‘Er . . . does it?’ Lestrade felt constrained to ask.

  ‘No, no,’ a flicker of disbelief disturbed the clear eyes. ‘I mean, I am Ambrose Matters.’

  ‘Ah, of course. Inspector Lestrade and Sergeant George, Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Ah, yes, poor Byngham. Of course, I half expected it. Will you take tea, gentlemen?’

  ‘Thank you no, sir,’ Lestrade answered for them both. ‘But personally I’d kill for a seat.’ He transferred his weight from one leg to the other.

  ‘Yes, of course. How crass of me. It can be a terrible thing, gout. Killed an old uncle of mine.’

  The detectives lowered themselves into the leather of the chesterfield. George whipped out his notebook, black, CID for the use of.

  ‘Did I hear you correctly, Mr Matters?’ Lestrade checked, ‘that you “half expected” the murder of Mr Batchelor?’

  ‘Well, you know how it is. A young life cut short in the bloom of manhood’s pride.’

  ‘I would put Mr Batchelor at forty-eight or so,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Well, there you are. He’d had one brilliant success, but was on the way to another with his latest piece.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Matters,’ the Inspector said, ‘but I understood that the late Mr Batchelor was an editor.’

  ‘A sub-editor, yes. The Quiver can only have one editor, Mr Lestrade – without wishing in any way to be pretentious; moi.’

  ‘So he was a brilliantly successful sub-editor?’

  ‘As sub-editors go, he was competent; no more. But as a writer, in his own right, he could have been another Wilkie Collins – Dickens even.’

  ‘Wilkie Collins?’ Lestrade was unfamiliar with that name. Dickens, of course, was a household word.

  ‘The crime writer and novelist. Funnily enough, Byngham had been to see him last night at his house in Blandford Square.’

  ‘That’s around the corner from Lisson Grove, guv,’ George chirped.

  ‘Thank you, sergeant,’ hissed Lestrade, ‘ever my faithful gazetteer. Do you know why?’

  ‘Why yes. Mr Collins had been kind enough to submit a piece for the magazine. He doesn’t get about much any more so Byngham went to him – oh, a few minor editorial changes.’

  ‘What sort of man was Byngham, Mr Matters? Was he, for instance, married?’

  ‘No, no,’ the editor lit a cigar, but declined to offer one to his visitors. ‘Batchelor by name and bachelor by nature.’

  Lestrade raised an eyebrow. ‘He . . . er . . . didn’t . . . er . . . incline, did he?’

  ‘Incline?’

  ‘Well, what I mean is, did he have preferences?’

  ‘If you mean was he a pederast, Mr Lestrade, why not come straight out with it?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Lestrade, now that the air had cleared. ‘Was he a pederast?’

  ‘How dare you suggest such a thing?’ Matters roared. ‘The Quiver is a family magazine, Mr Lestrade, lovingly conceived in the ethic of Protestant work and Christian brotherhood. I leave it to Truth to employ all manner of deviants. You only have to look at Henry Labouchere . . .’ he stopped suddenly, leaning back, and the purple veins ceased to throb in his forehead. ‘But I digress. Byngham Batchelor was as straight as a die – I’d stake my reputation on it.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Matters,’ Lestrade changed tack. ‘But we policemen don’t get much time for reading – other than criminal record sheets that is. What is the great success that Mr Batchelor had?’

  ‘It was two years ago,’ the editor said. ‘We published it in serial form first and then Blackwoods turned it into a book. Instant bestseller, of course. It was called Record-globe, an exciting parallel to our own universe but set at some indefinable time in the future.’

  ‘Weird,’ commented George.

  ‘Brilliant,’ countered Matters. ‘It made Messrs Blackwood very rich men.’

  ‘And Mr Batchelor,’ Lestrade added.

  ‘That too, of course. But Byngham was never interested in money, Mr Lestrade. “Ars Gratia Artis” was always his motto.’

  Ever a chap of the first declension only, Lestrade had no choice but to accept that. ‘I believe you mentioned his latest piece?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Matters fumbled through a drawer at his elbow. ‘Here it is. A short story for the magazine. I have no doubt that he intended to flesh it out for a full-blown book. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece, even better than his first and in a totally different style. For some reason, Byngham didn’t like the title. He was very insistent that we should change it. But I think we’ll keep it as it is for the April issue – “The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring . . .”’

  ‘Tra La,’ George added.

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’ Matters frowned.

  ‘Intuition, sir,’ the sergeant told him.

  Lestrade took the manuscript, immaculately typed on a Remington. ‘This has been immaculately typed on a Remington,’ he observed.

  ‘It’s the way publishing’s going, Mr Lestrade,’ Matters said. ‘I predict by 1992 we won’t accept any more hand-written manuscripts; the processing of words is just too complicated. Mind you, I was quite happy to accept this in Byngham’s own hand, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Said it would strain my eyes, didn’t want to be a burden, etc. etc. That was the sort of chap Byngham was.’ He trumpeted editorially into a handkerchief. ‘We shall miss him round here.’

  ‘Was he a kind man, Mr Matters?’

  ‘Kind?’ Matters echoed. ‘Kind and considerate in the extreme.’

  ‘If, for instance, he had to reject a writer, turn down a piece, he’d do it gently?’

  ‘“The quality of mercy is not strained”, Inspector. You’ve no idea the rubbish sent in to us by members of the public, but it is my policy, as it was Byngham’s, to deal gently with the idiots. Funnily enough, I had a puerile piece from a policeman the other day – a Constable Walter Dew, I believe. Know him?’

  Lestrade and George shook their heads.

  ‘Just as well. With a style like his, his only hope of publication is to catch a famous murderer. Which is what I presume you gentlemen are hoping to do.’

  ‘In theory, sir,’ Lestrade nodded.

  ‘Well, I wish you luck gentlemen. A good man like Byngham Batchelor could have had no personal enemies, but there must be thousands out there who envied his fame. Good morning.’

  And they saw themselves out.

  Night came to the city as it did with extraordinary regularity. The lamplighters shouldered their poles and trudged home through the gutters, while the gay whirl of Theatreland opened up and the streets became congested anew with cabriolets and landaus and gigs. A routine Thursday, March 1886. Monro was still in his Heaven and all was nearly all right with the world. Even the new Opera House was showing signs of being finished before the end of the century. Its bricks rose waist high in the black of the evening.

  ‘Right then, Tyrrell,’ George lolled back in the guv’nor’s chair now that the guv’nor had gone home. ‘Tell me again about Emily Carrick.’

  ‘Well, I never saw her, sir . . . er . . . sarge.’

  ‘No, I realize that, lad, but even so.’

  ‘Well, Pad and I . . . that is, Constable Green and I sorted through nearly four thousand carters, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’ll get no medals for that around here, sonny. It’s routine policework. Paper, paper and more paper. And when you’ve finished that, it’s the shoeboxes. Sixty-three thousand known felons operating the Greater London area. And when you’ve sifted that lot it’s the shoe leather – miles and miles of bleeding pavements; not to mention your bleeding feet.’

  ‘Quite. Well, anyway, sarge, having done all that, we located the Carricks at Number 2
4 Jacob’s Street, Bethnal Green.’

  George rocked back, aghast. ‘You went into the Nichol? On your own?’

  ‘Well, Pad . . . er . . . Green was with me, sarge. Why? What’s the Nichol?’

  ‘It’s a collection of streets in that Godforsaken parish, lad,’ the sergeant told him. ‘Old Nichol, New Nichol, Half Nichol. The Met only patrol there in fours. You had no trouble?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  George reached for the hipflask in Lestrade’s top drawer, reserved for just such moments as these. ‘Well, you’re bloody lucky, son. The last man the guv’nor sent in there had to have his right leg off.’

  ‘Blimey!’

  ‘That’s right,’ George swigged. ‘Wouldn’t have been so bad, but he’d already lost his left one at Sebastopol. Which reminds me,’ he put the flask away, ‘I’d better leave off this before I end up legless too. What about the Carricks, then?’

  ‘Well, he was a bit funny, the old man.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He wouldn’t talk to us at all. So we had a go at his missus. Well, in between the tears, it perspired that her daughter . . .’

  ‘Emily.’

  ‘Emily . . . she was expecting an unhappy event.’

  ‘The Reverend Rodney’s unhappy event?’

  ‘Nobody’d say. I got the distinct impression, sarge, that the Carricks are God-fearing people who couldn’t abide the shame of their only child being in the family way out of wedlock.’

  ‘It’s common enough,’ George shrugged, ever the guardian of the nation’s morals. ‘This is 1886 for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Ah, but the Carricks are of the Methodist persuasion, sarge. That makes the difference.’

  ‘If you say so. So how did you find out about the girl?’

  ‘A neighbour – in the tenement below. She said two huge blokes in white coats came and took her away one night soon after the Carricks had moved in.’

  ‘Took her away to where?’

  ‘She didn’t know, sarge. But the wagon they bundled her into had “Colney Hatch Asylum” painted on the side.’

  ‘It’s common enough,’ George shrugged again. ‘If you was to have a shufti through any asylum in the country, you’d find half the inmates were wayward girls like Emily Carrick, Tyrrell.’

  ‘But she’s not a loony, sarge,’ the rookie protested.

  ‘Neither are you,’ countered George, ‘but you work for the Metropolitan Police. Enough said?’

  ‘Er . . . I suppose so, sarge.’

  ‘Right,’ George tapped the side of his nose. ‘The guv’nor will want that report in triplicate before you go home tonight. Savvy?’

  ‘Savvy, sarge,’ the constable moaned.

  ‘Right then. Best be at it. Oh and Tyrrell . . .’

  ‘Yes sarge?’

  ‘Well done. Good bit of basic policework. I’m proud of you boys.’

  ‘Thanks, sarge,’ and the constable almost skipped out of the guv’nor’s office.

  ‘That’s it,’ George mused half to himself. ‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em work.’

  Lestrade took the pretty way home via Number 38 Blandford Square, just around the corner from Lisson Grove. The door was opened by a fresh-faced woman of about Lestrade’s age, perhaps a shade younger.

  ‘Not today, thank you,’ she said, having decided that whatever Lestrade was selling, she’d already got plenty of it. She hadn’t reckoned with the foot in the door, however, Metropolitan Police Manual, page sixty-one.

  ‘Aarghh!’ Lestrade had used the wrong leg.

  ‘My dear man,’ the woman caught him as he staggered. Beneath those mutton-chop sleeves bulged a deceptively powerful pair of biceps. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so,’ Lestrade hobbled into the hallway. ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She showed him into a drawing-room heavy with flock, photographs and fussy furniture. ‘Well, I’m afraid if it’s literary advice you want, you’ll have to make an appointment. Mr Collins doesn’t see just anyone, you know.’

  It was Lestrade’s turn to see. ‘I see,’ he dutifully said. ‘And with whom do I have to make an appointment?’

  ‘With me,’ she said. ‘Oh, I do apologize; I’m Elizabeth Graves. My mother isn’t in at the moment, but she’s the Woman in White.’

  ‘Oh, good. May I make an appointment, then?’

  ‘Of course,’ she consulted a diary on a table. ‘Perhaps the eighteenth of the month?’

  He consulted his half-hunter. ‘Perhaps in two minutes?’

  ‘Really, Mr . . . um . . . Lestrade, I don’t think . . .’

  ‘Ah well, Miss Graves, that’s where we differ. You see, I do.’

  ‘But Mr Collins isn’t well. He’s in bed.’

  ‘No matter,’ beamed Lestrade. ‘Even with a gammy leg, I can manage the stairs.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘If it is a matter of some urgency . . .’

  ‘It is a matter of total urgency,’ Lestrade assured her.

  ‘Very well,’ and the frost positively crackled as she left the room.

  He waited, accompanied only by the ticking of the clock, for some minutes, taking an opportunity to place his foot higher than his head. Then the door opened and he nearly fell off the armchair with shock. Miss Graves had returned and, as Lestrade had expected, she was not alone. What he did not expect at all was that the person with her was sitting in her arms, like a rather outsized baby. But the baby had a massive head to counter his tiny pale hands and slippered feet, with one bulging right temple and a correspondingly depressed left, as though someone had had a damned good try at kicking his head in. His beard was nearly to his waist and he squinted at Lestrade through rimless, opaque spectacles.

  ‘Lizzie tells me you’re from Scotland Yard,’ he wheezed.

  Lestrade staggered to his feet, ‘Correct, sir. You are Mr Wilkie Collins?’

  ‘I believe I am.’ She put him down on the sofa and arranged cushions around him. ‘You’re sure you’re a detective?’ he checked.

  ‘There are those who would question it,’ Lestrade confessed, ‘but it’s what they pay me for.’

  ‘Ah, no, it’s just that I haven’t seen the Graphic today. Have you?’

  ‘Er . . . no,’ Lestrade returned to his chair. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Well, no, I suppose there’s no reason why you should. Only I have to check every day, you see.’

  ‘In the Graphic?’

  ‘In every newspaper.’

  ‘You follow current affairs, Mr Collins?’

  ‘No. I have to check that no one’s written my obituary.’

  ‘Er . . . is that likely?’

  He leaned forward, peering at the Yard man. ‘You have no idea what it’s like,’ he said. ‘The abject terror of it all.’

  ‘Er . . . quite. Of what all?’

  ‘Of reading your own death. It’s quite ghastly.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. Now, Mr Collins . . .’

  ‘Lizzie,’ the crime writer interrupted, ‘what time is it?’

  ‘Half past eight, Wilkie,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring them through,’ and she swept away.

  ‘I believe you had a visitor last night,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Collins tried to bury his huge head under a blanket.

  ‘Er . . . well, actually it was Mr Ambrose Matters of the Quiver.’

  ‘How does he know?’ Collins whispered. ‘My God, I didn’t know it was common knowledge.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about common . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Collins checked that the coast was clear by squinting severely right and left. ‘Lizzie says it’s the laudanum, you know.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘But I know she’s real.’

  ‘Lizzie?’

  ‘The green woman,’ Collins hissed, on the edge of something akin to hysteria. ‘She of the tusked teeth.’

  It was obviously Wilkie Collins’s lot in life
to be surrounded by women of various hues.

  ‘She was certainly here last night,’ he took off his glasses and wiped them on his blanket. ‘On the stairs.’

  ‘I see,’ Lestrade said, shifting a little less easily than he did. ‘I was referring to your other visitor – Mr Batchelor of the Quiver.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Lizzie saw to him. Didn’t you, my dear?’

  The young lady had returned with a tray full of bottles. ‘What, Wilkie?’

  ‘You saw to Mr Batchelor.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she threw a withering glance at Lestrade. ‘He didn’t have an appointment either.’

  ‘What had he come to discuss?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘He wanted to pick Mr Collins’s brains on a detective novel he was writing. I made him an appointment for the seventeenth of the month.’

  ‘I fear he will have to cancel,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Why so?’ Collins asked.

  ‘I thought you read the papers every day, sir,’ the Inspector reminded him.

  ‘I only flick through them for the sight of my own name,’ Collins said. ‘What else can be of import?’

  ‘The death, by blunt instrument, of Byngham Batchelor, Mr Collins. It was widely reported in all the Evenings.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ the firelight flickered eerily on the writer’s glasses. ‘Blunt instrument,’ he muttered. ‘What would Sergeant Cuff have done?’

  ‘Who?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘No one,’ Collins said quickly, rocking gently back and forwards. Lestrade noted that his legs failed to reach the floor. He turned to his secretary. ‘Thank you, Lizzie, I’ll manage the doses tonight.’

  ‘No, Wilkie,’ she warned, but she went all the same.

  He reached across for a bottle and helped himself. ‘For my neuralgia,’ he wheezed. ‘What is your hypothesis on Mr Batchelor then, Inspector?’

  ‘We aren’t allowed to hypothesize at the Yard, sir,’ Lestrade said. ‘Tell me, does the name Hereward Rodney mean anything to you?’