Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Hobby of yours, constable?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Oh, duw, no,’ Williams chuckled. ‘Not since I was in Calvaria Road Segregated Infants. Dab ’and I was, min’, in those days.’

  ‘Five bob says it wasn’t on that quarry face when we foun’ the body,’ Mortimer said. ‘’Ow big was it, sergeant?’

  ‘Big enough not to be missed,’ George told him.

  ‘It was raining,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Well, aye,’ said Mortimer, to whom the pluvial state was eternal. ‘Yew show me two fine days together in the valleys and I’ll show yew my left nipple – assumin’ I was a mason, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ Lestrade explained. ‘The maze might well have been there when the body was, and it may have been drawn by the murderer. The point is that chalk would have been washed away.’

  ‘Why redo it, then?’ Mortimer pondered.

  ‘Because,’ Lestrade said, ‘whoever our man is who is so consistent with his blunt instrument, he wants us to know it’s him; wants us to take his calling card.’ He got to his feet. ‘Inspector, the sergeant and I must away. We need to get back to the Yard before we forget where it is. You’ll keep “Happy” Lewis under observation?’

  ‘Oh, duw, aye,’ Mortimer assured him. ‘Like a Bactrian under a microscope.’

  But Lestrade and George barely had time to rest their backsides on the Yard benches, before a memorandum came down from Assistant Commissioner (Traffic) Rodney. It was addressed to Inspector Abberline, but Rodney’s runner knew his chief’s habits, so it found Lestrade after all. It read – ‘Any joy with cousin Hereward? What about the torso at the Opera House? Is there a connection? What is the missing link? Get on to it soonest, Monro. And take Sergeant Henderson with you.’

  Clear as mud, Lestrade observed, but the memorandum from Assistant Commissioner (Crime) Monro was more to the point – ‘There’s been another one, Lestrade. Borley in Suffolk.’

  Borley in Suffolk was scarcely a village at all. It stood on a hillside overlooking the Stour which wound its way lazily through the otherwise flat country below the fenlands, making in its typically English way the squiggly border between Essex and Suffolk.

  They caught the train to Bury St Edmunds and a carter’s trap to Long Melford. Pausing only to sample the local ale, they followed the old fen road to the village.

  Borley Rectory was a hideous building, red brick and multi-roomed with tall gables and deep shadows. It was a far cry from the mellow Cornish stone of its opposite number in Mevagissey, but this time, it was not the vicar who was dead.

  ‘Reverend Bull?’ Lestrade asked the hunched old figure who answered his bell pull.

  ‘No,’ said the figure. ‘I’m Hettie, the maid of all work – and I do mean all work. Who are you and what you botherin’ the vicar for at a time like this?’

  ‘Inspector Lestrade,’ he told her without tipping his bowler, ‘Scotland Yard. This is Sergeant George. And we’re here because we’ve been sent for, I gather. A man is dead.’

  She scowled at him and then up at the churchyard, lying at a rakish angle above the house. ‘There’s a good many,’ she observed from her rather peculiar angle on life.

  ‘Who is it, Hettie?’ a melodic voice called from within.

  ‘Some coppers, Master Harry. Shall I send ’em packin’?’

  ‘No, no, Hettie. You mustn’t do that. We are all God’s children. Jesus loves us, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’

  She scrutinized Lestrade carefully. ‘He don’t love ’im,’ she was sure. A rather jolly young man with twinkling eyes and a walrus moustache bustled her out of the way.

  ‘Luncheon for sixteen, please, Hettie. Oh, eighteen?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ Lestrade said, wondering what the old crone might lace his repast with if he accepted. ‘Would you be the Reverend Bull?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to be,’ he sang. ‘And all being well, when Papa goes to that great pulpit in the sky, I shall be. Until then, I am his curate, awaiting the laying on of hands. Harry Bull, at your service. Oh, that’s a little joke we have in the C of E by the way.’

  Yes, Lestrade had already approximated the size of it. ‘Lestrade,’ he said. ‘This is George.’

  ‘Er . . . George . . . er?’

  ‘Just George,’ Lestrade said. ‘It was the vicar we’d actually like to talk to.’

  ‘Walk this way,’ Bull said and led them through a cold mausoleum of a house, where the plumbing clanged and gurgled and they could hear Hettie crooning a dirge in the kitchen; through a dark courtyard at the back where a few hens barely scratched a living and beyond it into a wild garden dotted with giant yews.

  ‘You could have knocked me over with a brass lectern when Papa found the body,’ Bull said.

  Lestrade stopped, his shoes already caked in chicken droppings. ‘Why did you say that, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Bull had lost the thread already.

  ‘A brass lectern.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Familiarity, I suppose. We have one in the church, of course, and one in the library. It’s merely a figure of speech, Mr Lestrade, a quip, a bon mot. Nothing more. This way.’

  They waded through the knee-high grass to a little wooden summer house lying beneath the arms of a curiously dead-looking elm. Spring had reached the Home Counties, but it seemed to have skipped this garden entirely. They heard the snoring long before they reached it and saw an elderly man sprawled on a bench inside, his carpet-slippered feet soaking wet, his face hidden under a copy of the Church Times that rose and fell as though on a tide.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse him, gentlemen,’ Bull said. ‘Narcolepsy.’

  Instinctively, Lestrade and George took a step back, but when the younger Bull removed the newspaper, his old man was scarcely disfigured at all. ‘Papa,’ the curate bellowed. ‘Papa.’

  The old Bull leapt into a sitting position. ‘Hymn Number 161,’ he intoned, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’

  ‘He can say that again,’ muttered George. It was to no avail however. Years of hearing the organ thunder had left the Reverend Henry Bull curiously bereft in the hearing department.

  ‘No, no,’ the old man waved his hands. ‘I’ve told you people before, it God had wanted us to have electricity, he’d have created Michael Faraday a few centuries earlier.’

  ‘No, Papa,’ the curate helped him upright. ‘The electricity chappies came yesterday. These fellows are here about the murder.’

  ‘What girder?’ the old man was more confused than ever.

  ‘I did warn you,’ the curate told them. ‘Give me a minute.’ He sat the old man back down again and joined him on the bench. ‘The body, Papa,’ he said slowly. ‘Old Amos.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the old vicar remembered. ‘Bad show, bad show. But he’s dead, y’know.’

  ‘Precisely, sir,’ bellowed Lestrade. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  The vicar looked at him oddly. ‘There’s no need to shout, young man,’ he said. ‘But I fear you are too late. Our undertaking arrangements are always undertaken by Messrs Audubon of Long Melford.’

  ‘No, Papa,’ the young Bull was patience itself. ‘These men are policemen. From Scotland Yard. They are trying to find out who killed Old Amos. You’d better sit next to him, Inspector, he’s better when you’re on his level.’

  ‘When did you discover the body, sir?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘Er . . . ooh, it must have been Wednesday.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  The old man fumbled in his cardigan pocket for the hunter. ‘It’s eleven thirty-one,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Lestrade persisted. ‘Not now. Then. On Wednesday, when you found the body. What time was that?’

  ‘Ooh, it must have been about mid-morning.’ Bull remembered. ‘I’d come out here to the summerhouse for a snooze.’

  ‘And where was the body?’

  ‘Mine or his?’

  ‘Er . . . his,’ Lestrade answered.<
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  ‘Here,’ said Bull. ‘Where mine is now.’

  Lestrade looked at his sergeant. ‘I hope you’re getting all this down, George,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, sorry, guv,’ muttered George, whisking out his notepad, ‘I didn’t think we’d started.’

  ‘No,’ sighed Lestrade. ‘I’m not sure we have. Do you mean, Mr Bull, that the body was lying on the floor of this summerhouse?’

  ‘No,’ said the old man. ‘Sitting. On the bench, just as I am now.’

  ‘But dead?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Old Amos was dead?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Utterly.’

  ‘And did you see anyone else in the garden?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said “Did you see anyone else in the garden?”’

  ‘Only Marie.’

  ‘Marie?’

  The old Rector looked at the detective. ‘Tell me, young man, are you by any chance hard of hearing?’

  ‘I?’ Lestrade was thunderstruck by the wrong of it all.

  ‘Ah, I thought so,’ Bull said. ‘I can always tell. You’ve had to repeat everything I’ve said for the last few minutes. Now, I hate to be unsociable, but I do have a sermon to prepare. What do you think, Henry. “But I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue”?’

  ‘You did Exodus last week, Papa,’ his son told him.

  ‘So I did. How about “He fell off the seat backward by the side of the gate and his neck brake”?’

  ‘Ah, perhaps a little unfortunate, Papa, bearing in mind old Mr Quinlivan.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the old man agreed. ‘I was only reading last week in the Occupational Injuries Monthly how common an accident that is, falling off a horse-hoe. Well, I suppose it will have to be “My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins”. Nothing like a bit of comparative anatomy for the first before Septuagesima.’ He turned, beaming, to Lestrade, ‘I am aware that I have been of inestimable help to you already, but if there is yet more you wish to know, do not hesitate to call back after luncheon. I shall be in the Vestry, Harry.’

  ‘Very well, Papa,’ the curate helped him up. ‘Have a care crossing the road.’

  And they all watched the old man teeter away, humming something canonical.

  ‘Perhaps you can explain, Mr Bull, how old Amos’s body came to be here.’

  The curate sat down and stood up again quickly as he realized he was sitting on George. ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘just checking the woodwork.’ There were dark brown smears on the panels behind the seat and long sienna runs down to the floor. George shook his head. ‘It didn’t happen here, guv,’ he said. ‘Not enough blood.’

  ‘Tsk,’ muttered Bull, ‘I thought I told Hettie to clean all this up. It’s not very pleasant for the children, you see.’

  ‘Your children, Mr Bull?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. My siblings. There are fourteen of us, Inspector. I am the eldest.’

  ‘Fourteen?’ Lestrade’s eyebrow rose. No wonder the old man was rather vague. ‘Do they all live here?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘And Amos?’

  ‘He was the gardener. Aptly named Flower.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Since he was born, I suppose. Oh, I see. Oh dear, let me see. Eight, no, nine years.’

  ‘He lived in the village?’

  ‘No, in a cottage over at Puttock End. It’s about three miles away.

  ‘And how often did he work for you?’

  ‘Once a week, rain or shine, he’d be over here, snipping and pruning.’

  ‘Really?’ Lestrade surveyed the long grass. ‘Was he efficient?’

  ‘Well, oddly enough, no,’ said Bull. ‘For all he wore a smock and carried a scythe everywhere, he really wasn’t very good. I asked him once what he thought about marl and he said he didn’t like German composers. Didn’t seem to have much of an action with the scythe either. Curiously intellectual I thought for a son of the soil.’

  ‘Did he have references when he arrived nine years ago?’

  ‘I suppose so. I really don’t know. You’d have to ask Papa.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Lestrade, ‘I feared I might. So, old Amos came to work on a Wednesday?’

  ‘No, Saturday.’

  ‘But his body was found on a Wednesday – or is your father a little confused?’

  ‘A little confused what? Oh, I see, well, yes, he is, but in this particular instance, no; he’s right.’

  ‘Did anyone else see Amos this week? Alive, I mean. Your mother?’

  ‘Oh, good Lord, no. Mother hardly ever ventures out these days. She’s of a rather nervous disposition.’

  Lestrade was not surprised, what with having had fourteen children and all. ‘What about your sister . . . er . . . Marie?’

  Bull looked confused. ‘I don’t have a sister Marie.’

  ‘I’m sorry, your father said he’d seen Marie. I assumed that was your sister.’

  ‘A sister, certainly,’ Bull explained. ‘Obviously Sunex isn’t on the right plane this week.’

  ‘The right . . . er . . .?’

  ‘Look, Inspector, I know you’ll think us strange, but . . . do you believe in spirits?’

  Lestrade blinked. ‘Ghosts, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at George. ‘Well there was that peculiar figure on the balcony at the Lyceum a few years ago.’

  ‘Henry Irving?’ George asked.

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘I like to think I keep an open mind,’ he said. As minds go, few came more open than Lestrade’s. As if to prove it, he swept off his bowler and placed it on the seat beside him.

  ‘Well,’ Harry Bull squirmed uneasily on the bench. ‘The thing of it is, Mr Lestrade, some rather odd goings on go on at Borley Rectory, especially after dark.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lestrade was all ears. ‘What sort of goings on?’

  ‘Well, look, I think it would be best if you spent the night. Could you do that?’

  ‘We have a body to examine,’ Lestrade said. ‘I understand they’ve got him at Sudbury; haven’t they, George?’

  ‘Yes, in the back room of the International Tea Company’s premises in Market Hill. Odd place for a post-mortem.’

  ‘That’ll be Dr Trefussis,’ Bull said. ‘I’m afraid he’s rather peculiar. He’s a constant visitor.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Lestrade stood up and fetched himself a nasty one on the summerhouse’s lintel. ‘Sergeant George and I will be back this evening.’

  ‘I shall wait up,’ the curate assured them.

  The rather peculiar Dr Trefussis was poring over the body when the Yard men arrived. He had a scalpel in one hand and a cup of the International Tea Company’s bevvy in the other.

  ‘Now,’ he barked, ‘are you local or Metropolitan?’

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ Lestrade said. ‘Are you the police surgeon?’

  Trefussis shuddered. ‘I’d rather vote Liberal,’ he said. ‘You’re the senior man, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lestrade. ‘But I’d like my sergeant to examine the corpse. If he intends to acquaint himself with the Detective Department, he’ll need more acquaintance with mortality.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Trefussis approved. ‘Help yourself.’

  Lestrade took a seat around the wall of the dark room, opposite the good doctor, who rolled down his sleeves, having balanced his cup on old Amos’s chest.

  ‘I hear you chappies have a new Commissioner,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Sir Charles Warren.’

  ‘Hm. Intelligence Quotient vaguely synonymous with a parsnip.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe all that you hear, sir,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Dammit, man, The Lancet is never wrong. Warren features prominently in an article on village idiocy. There’s another example there.’

  George was about to protest about the doctor’s pointing finger when he realized that he meant Amos and not his good sergeant self.
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  ‘Well, George,’ Lestrade said, ‘what have we got?’

  ‘Reasonably nourished male, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Five foot ten. Aged about sixty or so. Good deal of scarring to the arms and upper body.’

  ‘Recent?’

  George looked at the white weals in the grey flesh. ‘Old,’ he shook his head.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Can I turn him over?’ George asked the doctor.

  ‘Indeed you can, sergeant,’ Trefussis said. ‘When I’ve retrieved my tea.’ And he did so.

  George sucked in his breath. ‘Blow or blows to the skull, sir. Fractured all over the shop.’

  ‘Anything to add, Doctor?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Not really. The cranium is completely shattered. I understand the police were picking up bits of bone for hours afterwards. This happened in the garden of Borley Rectory, didn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lestrade said. ‘I gather you know the Bull family.’

  ‘For my sins, yes. They’re all rather peculiar, you know. Hallucinations.’

  ‘Halli . . .’

  ‘They see things.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lestrade raised an eyebrow. ‘For example?’

  ‘Old Fanny, that’s the vicar’s wife, saw a huge bat in the back passage once. Well, it takes one to know one. She’s as stable as quicksilver, that one. The old man of course is narcoleptic.’

  George shook his head. ‘Terrible thing, tobacco,’ he said. ‘I never touch the stuff.’

  Lestrade had just lit up. ‘Did you know old Amos?’ he asked Trefussis.

  ‘Only by sight. He used to flit between the conifers of a summer’s evening. I was going to employ him at the Ramblings, but I realized his fingers were anything but green.’

  ‘The Ramblings?’

  ‘My home,’ Trefussis said. ‘I do a little surgery in the front room and a little tea-planting in the back. That’s what comes of a lifetime of medical service in India, of course.’

  Lestrade crossed to his number two and glanced down. It was the hands that caught his eye first. He lifted the fingers. ‘Anything but green indeed,’ he murmured. ‘These aren’t the hands of a tiller of the soil.’

  ‘I did say he wasn’t very good,’ Trefussis reminded him.

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘So did Harry Bull. My God.’