Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘What is it, guv?’

  Lestrade was staring into the dark, dead face of the corpse. The eyes bulged with livid bruising and a mark of brown blood was caked on the forehead.

  ‘Yeah,’ muttered George. ‘Not pretty, is it?’

  ‘Funny you should say that, George,’ Lestrade said. ‘You see, if this man is Amos Flower, I’m a Chinaman. This is – or was, if my memory serves me aright – Pretty Boy Partridge, otherwise known as Sir Algernon Pilsbury, Rear-Admiral Ponsonby and the Maharajah of Gwalior.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘Indeed,’ mused Lestrade. ‘I’ve heard him described in amateur detective circles as the Napoleon of Crime.’

  ‘But I thought he was dead,’

  ‘Full marks, George,’ Lestrade patted the man’s shoulder. ‘He is.’

  ‘Suuppertiiime,’ murmured the Reverend Bull. ‘And the living is easy,’ he collapsed back to his slumbers again.

  ‘You do realize,’ Sergeant George whispered to his guv’nor, ‘that this is the second time we’ve been in a creepy old Rectory after dark?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ Lestrade muttered. ‘But if you were afraid of the dark, George, you shouldn’t have joined the force. The colour of the uniform alone . . .’

  They sat in the Blue Room. ‘And this is the second Blue Room we’ve come across an’ all.’ George was fidgeting. ‘I’m beginning to get what the Frogs call Day Ja View – and it’s not a view I’m particularly fond of.’

  The short March day had dwindled to dusk after a magnificent sunset and the last glow still lingered on the appalling wallpaper that spoke volumes for the taste of Mrs Bull. A tiny fire smouldered in the corner, but everywhere there was a chill; a coldness that seeped through jackets and souls. George’s teeth were on edge, like the rest of him, as they watched the old vicar’s waistcoat rise and fall in time with his snoring.

  Lestrade wandered to the window. ‘Good view of the summerhouse from here,’ he said and glanced back to the bed on which the Reverend had sprawled.

  ‘Is this his bedroom?’ George asked.

  ‘No, the curate’s.’

  ‘What do you make of him, guv?’

  ‘I don’t know, George, yet. But there’s something not quite right about this place. Who haven’t we seen?’

  ‘Er . . .’ George tried to read his notebook in the gloom, ‘Haven’t they got any lamps up here?’ he tutted. ‘Candles?’

  ‘Come on, George. This is the Styx. Ask old Bull who the Prime Minister is and he’ll probably say Robert Peel. Who are we waiting for?’

  ‘The daughters . . . er . . . Millie and Ethel.’

  There was a tap on the door.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ George visibly jumped in his nursing chair.

  ‘Come in,’ Lestrade said. The Reverend Bull snorted in his sleep.

  Two girls, one big and buxom, the other like a willow, peered round the door, giggling.

  ‘Millie?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘No,’ said the big one, ‘I’m Ethel.’

  ‘I’m Millie,’ the skinny one piped and squeezed into the room beside her sister.

  ‘Right,’ Lestrade said. ‘I am a policeman.’

  ‘We know,’ they chorused.

  ‘Good. Now, I’d like to ask you some questions. Except . . . I rather thought your mother would be present.’

  ‘Oh, Mama doesn’t see anyone,’ Millie said, flouncing on to the bed. She vaguely noticed the figure lying there. ‘Good Heavens, Papa looks quite dead, doesn’t he? What do you want to know, Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t know anything,’ Millie said, bounding across to sit on the other side from her sister. She crossed her father’s legs at the ankle. ‘There,’ she giggled, ‘he looks like a crusader now.’

  ‘Er . . . how old are you, Ethel?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ she said.

  ‘Oh no, she isn’t,’ Millie snapped.

  ‘Oh, yes I am.’

  ‘Oh . . . ‘

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ Lestrade held up his hand, ‘it really doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to break the ice.’

  ‘I suppose it is quite cold in here,’ Ethel looked around her. ‘Old Hettie is useless at fires.’

  ‘It’s not the fire, silly,’ Millie said. ‘It’s the Presence.’

  ‘The . . . er . . .?’

  ‘The spirit,’ she looked at him with wide eyes. ‘Hasn’t Harry told you?’

  ‘Well, he did mention . . .’

  ‘Well, he’s silly,’ Ethel said. ‘He hasn’t seen it as often as we have, has he, Mill?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ the thin one concurred.

  ‘Um . . . how well did you know old Amos?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘The gardener? Hardly at all, really. I didn’t like him.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Lestrade. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Well,’ Millie pondered. ‘He was silly.’

  ‘Silly?’

  ‘He was always talking about poetry and music.’

  Lestrade could quite see why that was silly.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Ethel said. ‘He was always talking about London.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Millie contradicted.

  ‘He was to me,’ Ethel said. ‘I quite liked him, actually.’

  ‘He was nice to you?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘What do you mean, “nice”?’ the girl frowned.

  ‘Well, er . . . pleasant, friendly.’

  ‘Mrs Shubunkin says you shouldn’t say “nice”.’

  ‘Mrs Shubunkin?’

  ‘Our governess. She’s dead now, of course.’

  ‘Really?’

  The girls nodded. ‘Last year,’ Millie said. ‘Went of the influenza. Just as well. I hated her.’

  ‘I quite liked her,’ Ethel said.

  ‘Er . . . to get back to old Amos . . .’

  ‘No, Mrs Shubunkin always said “Don’t use the adjective ‘nice’ dears. There are far better words”.’

  ‘She also said,’ Ethel wobbled and her eyes twinkled, ‘there are other words with four letters that we mustn’t use.’

  She and Millie collapsed across their father’s legs, shrieking with hilarity.

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ said Lestrade, glancing in desperation at George. ‘Quite.’

  ‘Of course, Harry uses those words.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Millie. ‘Especially when he dropped that hammer on his foot. Do you remember, Eth?’

  ‘It was a pick,’ Eth remembered.

  ‘No,’ Millie was certain. ‘It was definitely his foot.’

  ‘Er . . . George,’ Lestrade felt his knuckles whiten on the windowsill, ‘I’ve got to see a man about a dog. Perhaps you could carry on?’

  The sergeant’s jaw fell slack, but the guv’nor’s word was law. In any case, before he could re-lick his pencil, the guv’nor had gone.

  ‘What man?’ Ethel asked. ‘We haven’t got a dog.’

  ‘What’s he really going to do, sergeant?’ Millie sidled over to him. ‘Are you married, by the way?’

  The sergeant felt his collar tighten. ‘Er . . . no,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Millie looked earnestly into his face. ‘I expect that’s because you’re so very old.’

  Lestrade found the downstairs privy after several false turns in the near darkness. Old Hettie had put the shutters up now and all the younger children were in bed. He was just buttoning up when he felt a blast of cold air. He spun round, but saw nothing. It was as though the door had opened, but the door was shut fast. He turned to the washstand, poured the icy water over his hands and fumbled for the soap. As his fingers neared it, the bar leapt through the air of its own volition and imbedded itself on the rim of the basin. There was a gurgling noise, though the privy had no flush system. He poured the water into the pan and unlocked the door.

  In the hall stood a grey, wizened woman, the light, such as it was from the single oil lamp, at her back. Her hair appeared as so many snakes writhing in the twi
light. Lestrade felt his own hair crawl.

  ‘Mrs Bull?’ he said, since this was the only member of the household he had not met.

  The figure slid noiselessly past him and as it did, a sense of deep cold hit him like a wall. He felt his chest gripped like a vice and he bounced back against the dado. When he looked again, the figure had gone behind the velvet curtain that hung at the end of the hall. He shook himself free and followed it, plucking up his courage to whisk aside the curtain. The brass rings rattled on the pole and he found himself staring at a blank wall. Except that it wasn’t quite blank. There, just above his eye level in a childish scrawl, was a pattern he’d come to know quite well – a maze, like a square spider’s web, studded with dewdrops. His throat was iron-hard and his skin frozen. How he got back up to the Blue Room he could never afterwards remember.

  It wasn’t the prettiest of pictures he’d ever seen. It may of course have been a trick of the light, but he could have sworn that just before George George leapt to his feet and came rushing over to his guv’nor, he appeared to have a teenaged girl on each knee. The daughters of the vicar were still giggling, this time even more hysterically and Lestrade sensed that George had never been so pleased to see reinforcements in his life.

  ‘Anything untoward, George?’ Lestrade raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No, guv,’ the sergeant gasped, ‘thanks to you. Blimey, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Come with me,’ the Inspector ordered and the two of them padded through the house to where the figure had vanished into thick brick.

  ‘Recognize that?’ Lestrade whispered.

  ‘The maze,’ said George. ‘How did you find it?’

  Lestrade looked at his sergeant. The man was already as windy as the Thames Estuary. No point in disturbing him still further. ‘You know my methods, George,’ he said. ‘No stone unturned, no curtain not pulled aside. Got a Lucifer?’

  George did the honours. Resourceful for a man who did not smoke.

  ‘What, in your opinion, made that?’

  ‘What?’ George frowned. ‘Don’t you mean “who”, guv?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Lestrade feigned absentmindedness. ‘Yes. Yes of course. What did I say?’

  ‘You said “what”.’

  ‘Haha,’ the laugh was short and brittle. ‘Silly.’ And he checked himself. Five minutes in the company of the Misses Bull could have changed his vocabulary for ever.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  The Yard men spun round at the voice and their heads cracked together painfully.

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry.’ It was the curate, padding towards them with oil lamp in hand. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. Good Heavens, that’s a new one.’

  ‘What is?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘The wall writing.’

  ‘You’ve seen these before?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, yes, dozens of times. All over the place. In the Blue Room, the dining-room, Millie and Ethel’s room. Incidentally, are those girls in bed yet?’

  ‘Not quite,’ George muttered gratefully. ‘But it was touch and go there for a minute.’

  ‘Must bed the old man down too. He will doze off all over the place. Seems to prefer any bed in the house to his own. Still, bearing in mind Mama, it’s not surprising.’

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ Lestrade walked a little way with him. ‘Your mother. Is she a short woman? About five foot? Grey hair, rather unkempt?’

  ‘No,’ the younger Bull said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ Lestrade said. ‘It is a little game we have at the Yard. It helps with observation, criminal identification, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ chuckled the curate. ‘I’m not sure Mama counts as an identifiable criminal. Besides, she’s been asleep for a couple of hours. I just looked in on her. Snoring like a train.’

  ‘This wall picture,’ Lestrade shook himself free of the unpleasantness that lay over him like a shroud. ‘You said “That’s a new one”.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s usually messages. Look, let me get Papa to his own room and I’ll meet you in the library. That’s just below the Blue Room and has the best view of the garden.’

  ‘A little late for views, isn’t it, Mr Bull?’ George asked. ‘Must be nearly eleven by now.’

  ‘Nearly eleven?’ Bull repeated. ‘Ah, no, Mr George. It’s actually too early. The best views of all tend to be witnessed around midnight.’

  Around midnight, three men sat bolt upright in the firelight of the library. The dying embers threw a soft, red glow on to the dancing figures of monks that gambolled around the fireplace, their enamel eyes strangely manic in the gloom.

  ‘Of course,’ said Harry Bull, ‘I’ve grown up with this. All my life odd things have happened in this house. Papa sees Marie often in the garden, just behind the summerhouse, where the stream runs underground.’

  ‘Who is this Marie, exactly? You said she was a sister.’

  ‘Well, she certainly appears in a habit. She looks . . . sad, lonely, wringing her hands and glancing anxiously up and down. I’ve never seen Sunex, but I’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘Sunex?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘Ah, yes, the one on the other plane, I think you said. You’ll have to forgive us, Mr Bull, I don’t believe we have a file marked “Things That Go Bump In The Night” at the Yard.’

  ‘No,’ chuckled the curate. ‘I don’t suppose you have. Well, Papa and I have a theory – and Sunex confirms this at séances.’

  ‘Séances?’ It was too dark for George to take notes and in any case, he couldn’t trust his hand on a wobbly pencil against a trembling pad.

  ‘Discussions with the dead, sergeant,’ Bull said matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve often held them. Sunex is quite talkative.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Lestrade asked again.

  ‘Well, Papa has seen his entirety,’ the curate explained. ‘Millie and Ethel have both seen his legs – I’m not sure what to make of that.’

  ‘I am,’ muttered George, but it went unnoticed.

  ‘We’ve all seen the coach and four, except old Hettie, but then she won’t stay in the house after dark. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a servant who will.’

  ‘Get away,’ Lestrade mused. ‘So this Presence your sisters referred to . . .?’

  ‘Well, Papa and I think that long, long ago, perhaps in the thirteenth century, there was once a monastery on this site. When Papa had the house built back in ’sixty-three he seems to have found bits of tile and so on indicating a fair-sized House. Dominican, perhaps.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Papa has, or had before he got a bit dopey, quite an affinity with the Spirit World. From the time I was a boy, we’ve held séances and eventually got through to a monk called Sunex Amures. Now, via a series of raps and knocks, old Sunex told us a rather tragic story. He met and fell in love with a nun from the nearby convent at Bures, about eight miles away. Well, as you know in the Catholic Church, and especially then, such things are frowned upon.’

  ‘Quite,’ Lestrade had met this situation in the Confirmation Case, years before.

  ‘So Sunex and Marie Lairre – that was the nun’s name – eloped.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Lestrade. ‘In a coach and four.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the curate. ‘But unfortunately, they were discovered and brought back. Poor old Sunex was beheaded and even poorer old Marie was walled up alive.’

  George shuddered.

  ‘The curious thing is,’ Bull went on, ‘that we think she was walled up here, in the monastery, not in her own convent at Bures. Nasty beggars, of course, the Dominicans. Rather a vicious twist of irony, don’t you think? Putting the poor girl within feet, perhaps inches of the place where her lover had walked and talked only days before? You must remember, these were essentially the same chappies who organized the Inquisition later on. I always think they’d have made jolly fine policemen, don’t you?’

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘So the nun?’

  ‘Usual
ly walks just out there.’ The curate pointed to a stand of elm trees through which a little stream slid blacker still in the surrounding pitch. ‘She’s still searching, you see. Still peering anxiously up and down the road, watching for her lover’s coach. All terribly, terribly sad.’

  ‘And the wall-writing?’

  ‘Ah, yes, well that’s what convinced us that Marie was walled up here rather than there. She’s crying out to us, you see, a genuine cri de coeur. The writing is usually words. Something to the effect of “Help. Light. Mass”. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Which means?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Well, obviously, if you were walled up somewhere, wouldn’t you need help? The poor, frightened girl is in total darkness, without food or water and her air is running out. She wants help and she longs for the light – to see the sun again, the sky. But most of all, she wants God’s help, a Mass to be said for her, to cleanse away her sins. Pretty rotten, I think we can say, being a promiscuous nun in the thirteenth century.’

  ‘Hmm,’ nodded Lestrade. ‘A bitch. But the maze design you hadn’t seen before?’

  ‘No, no,’ Bull admitted. ‘But I’ve been thinking about that. It’s probably a map of the monastery. She’s drawing us a map to tell us where she is.’

  ‘Is?’ George felt his throat brick-dry. ‘You mean her body is still there . . . behind one of these walls?’ he glanced wildly around him.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, George,’ Lestrade scolded. ‘This house is . . . what . . . twenty years old? Dammit, man, you’ve seen as many cadavers as I have. Show me a body that’s survived for six hundred years and I’ll show you the contents of my wallet. Get a grip, man.’

  ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio . . .’ Bull wagged a finger at Lestrade.

  ‘Sholto, sir,’ the Inspector corrected him. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t arrest a ghost for loitering in the garden and it doesn’t get us any nearer to who killed old Amos.’

  ‘Maybe it was old Sunex, guv,’ George whispered, his eyes bulging.

  ‘George,’ Lestrade gripped the man’s sleeve, ‘this is 1886, the forty-seventh year of her Majesty, God Bless Her. The British Empire is the biggest in the world and there’s a bloke in Canada who can talk to another bloke miles away through a series of wires connected to a lump of celluloid. That’s the real world.’