Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘So that’s it,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Aye, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Or is it?’

  Swanson looked at Lestrade over his tea cup. ‘You know something,’ he said.

  ‘Does the name Amos Flower mean anything to you, Gloria?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Swanson said. ‘Should it?’

  ‘Add it to the list of Algernon Pilsbury, the Maharajah of Gwalior and one you missed I think, Rear-Admiral Ponsonby.’

  ‘Ah yes, neat con that, selling that warship to the Russians. Especially as it was one of theirs. Wait a minute, are you saying you’ve found him?’

  Lestrade nodded, rather as the cat with the cream.

  ‘Well, you wee bastard,’ Swanson slapped his back. ‘Fancy you getting the collar after all this time. That’s Chief Inspector for you, laddie. Not that I’m green at all, y’ken. Just don’t turn your back on me when you try to leave this café!’

  Lestrade laughed. ‘No, it’s nobody’s collar, Gloria,’ he said. ‘You see, somebody found Pretty Boy before I did. Bent something blunt and heavy over his head a few times. What I want to know is why.’

  ‘Well, he must have made more than a few enemies in his time.’

  ‘For instance?’ Lestrade asked.

  Swanson guffawed. ‘Half the Metropolitan Police for a start, not excluding my good gentleman self. Then there’s anybody he’s stolen from or swindled.’

  ‘Not to mention, presumably, the Maharajah of Gwalior?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Swanson concurred. ‘Still, head bashing isn’t their style. For that I’d try Chiv Eagle in the Nichol.’

  ‘The Nichol?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘Och, it’s a tea party in comparison with the Gorbals on a Saturday neet.’

  ‘Why this Eagle?’

  ‘He’s still the big pancake among the High Rips, though he’s fifty if he’s a day. He’s held a grudge against Pretty Boy ever since they fell out over a girl back in the old days. Vowed to cave in his head if he ever saw him again.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lestrade. ‘It’s a start. Thanks, Gloria. And thanks for the lunch. Shame about the cheese.’

  ‘Aye. I shan’t be frequenting this emporium again, I can tell you. By the by, what are you doing on April the eighteenth?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Lestrade. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, Assistant Commissioner (Traffic) Rodney’s put me in charge of the Police Revue this year. I’m doing “My Heart’s in the Heelands” with the Glee Club and PC Corbutt of F Division is doing his gymnastics again, but I’m short of comic turns. I thought perhaps your Sarah Bernhardt . . .?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Lestrade held up his hands in horror. ‘Once was enough. I still haven’t got the rouge off.’

  ‘One good turn deserves another,’ Swanson said, waving the bill at Lestrade. ‘And if that High Rips tip pays dividends . . .’

  Lestrade twisted his lip in scorn. ‘All right,’ he moaned. ‘Pencil me in. But the moustache stays, understand? And you get the usual slander clearance.’

  ‘Consider it done, Sholto, m’boy, consider it done.’

  ‘Where, Holmes?’ Watson dabbed a little more boot polish on to his cheeks.

  ‘The Nichol, Watson, a knife’s throw from Bishopsgate.’

  ‘Isn’t that the most dangerous quarter of a mile in the country?’

  ‘No, my dear fellow,’ Holmes assured him. ‘You’re thinking of the Palace of Westminster.’

  ‘I wish I knew what we were about,’ Watson complained.

  Holmes glared at him. Why was it, he wondered, and not for the first time, that he had the bad luck to be saddled with a congenital idiot for friend and foil.

  ‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ he sighed. ‘Let me take you through it one more time. You remember you purchased a copy of that most atrocious rubbish the Sudbury Recorder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s rather like that other dreadful rag the Kincardine Intelligence – a contradiction in terms. Just as there clearly is no intelligence in Kincardine, neither does the Sudbury Recorder record anything of note, except one small item.’

  ‘Ah,’ Watson raised an aware finger, ‘that fascinating little piece on thrombosis in the over seventies.’

  ‘No, Watson. The sketch of the late Amos Flower.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It was poor, I’ll grant you, but enough of a likeness to stir something in this stupendous differencing machine I call a brain.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, I remember now. The “Napoleon of Crime”, I think you called him.’

  ‘Precisely. Grandiose, perhaps, and I’m not sure von Clausewitz would agree.’

  ‘Well, those Jews don’t know everything.’

  ‘Funny you should mention Jews, Watson, because that’s precisely what our Napoleon was.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Levi Partridge, known as Pretty Boy. From underworld rough to brilliant cracksman and confidence trickster. If the man had had any moral fibre at all, he’d be in the House of Lords by now. Come to think of it,’ he arched a demonic eyebrow, ‘since when has moral fibre anything to do with the House of Lords? Got your service revolver?’

  ‘Yes,’ Watson patted his threadbare pocket, ‘no thanks to Lestrade. I really took umbrage his laying about me like that.’

  ‘The man’s a vegetable, Watson. You have to make allowances. He won’t have made the connection between Flower and Partridge. It isn’t likely he ever will.’

  ‘But if Partridge was clubbed to death in a garden in Suffolk, why are we going to the East End?’

  ‘There are those who sought his blood, Watson, back on his own turf. If there’s a clue to the death of Pretty Boy Amos, we’ll find it in the Nichol.’

  A horrified Mrs Hudson arrived back from shopping at that moment, her hair awry in the gusts of April. She stared in disbelief at the ragged pair before her. ‘Look at this,’ she handled Holmes’s collar with some distaste, ‘and clean on this morning.’

  Fournier Street. Midnight. That time on the shift that every copper dreads. The old day not dead and the new day as yet unborn. The People of the Abyss lurched from pub to pub, chatting drunkenly at street corners, nipping up back passages to make the beast with two backs. Or, because the night was chill and the ground dank, the beast with one back. The world of the Abyss looked halfway bearable with your head down and your skirts up over your arse.

  ‘Are you feeling good natured, dearie?’ a creature of the night accosted the youngest of four men.

  ‘I’m not feeling anybody,’ he admitted.

  ‘Run along, there’s a good girl,’ grunted the older man and batted her aside.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she wagged her backside after them. ‘After a bit of brown, are we?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Tyrrell?’ Lestrade asked. He noticed the boy looked pale in the pawnshop window’s reflection.

  ‘I’ll be all right, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade said, ‘first time in the Nichol can be unnerving. Green?’

  ‘Here, sir.’

  Lestrade looked along the line of men. ‘Yes, I am aware of that. Put that bloody life-preserver away and stop looking so much like a copper. Fancy a pint at the Britannia? I seem to have left my wallet at the Yard. George?’

  The sergeant patted his pocket and sighed. ‘I’ve got the wherewithal, guv,’ he said.

  It was Lestrade who saw them first, as they turned into Nichol Street, their boots clattering on the cobbles. The gaiety from the Horn of Plenty around the corner died away. There was no light here at all, only a fitful moon appearing and vanishing in a huge puddle at their feet. He brought the strolling squad to a halt and tucked his fist into his brass knuckles.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ a Cockney-Jewish voice called from the darkness. ‘Toffs, Ezra. Slummin’ it. Come to gloat at the poor people.’

  There was a snigger and scrape of steel. Tyrrell tensed.

  ‘Easy, boy,’ Lestrade muttered out
of the corner of his mouth. ‘Remember what I told you on the ’bus coming over here. Scare tactics. How many, George?’

  ‘Three I see.’

  ‘That’s at least six, then,’ Lestrade said softly. ‘We’re going to walk a few paces forwards. If we can just reach that fire-escape . . .’

  ‘That’s far enough,’ another voice called. It came from behind them.

  ‘All right,’ Lestrade kept up his whisper. ‘George, you and Green turn, slowly, now. No sudden moves. Tyrrell, you and I will keep looking ahead. At all times, I want to feel serge at my back. Understand, Green?’

  ‘Got it, sir,’ the constable swallowed. ‘But there’s eight, nine of ’em.’

  ‘“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”,’ murmured George.

  Now it was Lestrade’s turn to worry. His number two had got religion.

  ‘The hands,’ said the first voice. ‘I want to see all the hands.’

  Eight of them appeared from pockets and climbed slowly for the air.

  ‘Right. Ezra. Hymie. Feel some linings.’

  ‘Pretty Boy Partridge,’ shouted Lestrade.

  There was a silence; then scuffles at the far end of the alley and muttered voices. Lestrade lowered his hands as he heard boots scrape on the cobbles towards them. A middle-aged Jew with a black wideawake on his head emerged into the gleam, his reflection black in the moonpuddle, his coat nearly to the ground.

  ‘“Chiv” Eagle?’ Lestrade did as the Jew did, placed his hands in his pockets again.

  ‘Who wants to know, already?’ Eagle asked.

  ‘I smell Miltonian,’ Hymie whispered at his elbow.

  ‘I got a nose,’ Eagle stated the obvious.

  ‘Not local though,’ Ezra peered through the gloom. ‘I’d remember a mug like that.’

  ‘Not local,’ Chiv mused. ‘But a Miltonian, nonetheless. That can only mean one thing.’ He called to Lestrade, ‘You from the Yard?’

  ‘Second floor,’ Lestrade nodded.

  Chiv spat in the moonpuddle, sending little rippling moonlets out to its edge. ‘Not even top brass they send me. What do you want, copper? Out collectin’ for widows and orphans? ’Cos there’ll be a few more come mornin’.’

  ‘They say you own this patch,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘They say quite right,’ Chiv grinned, his teeth flashing silver. ‘From here to the Chosen People’s Cemetery.’ He walked forward, his hand-tooled shoes splashing through the puddle, Ezra and Hymie close by him. ‘An’ I don’t like it when coppers, Miltonians even, come saunterin’ across my turf. An’ what’s all this about Pretty Boy Partridge? He’s long dead.’

  Lestrade walked forward too. The serge of Green’s jacket had gone from his back, but he cradled the knuckles in a fold of the Donegal and he felt the catch that would release the blade in an instant. ‘He’s been dead about six days,’ he said.

  He saw the Jew’s composure crack. A rubbery tongue lashed his thick lips in the gloom. ‘Six days? What you givin’ me, six days?’

  ‘All I want is the man who caved in the back of his skull,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘So do I,’ said Chiv. ‘I’d give ’im a medal. A gong, already. The Freedom of the City. ’Cos you know, copper, me ’n’ the Mayor, we’re like that,’ he held up entwined fingers.

  ‘Come off it, Chiv,’ Lestrade said. ‘It’s common knowledge you wanted Pretty Boy dead.’

  ‘I may ’ave said so,’ Chiv lisped. ‘But that was a long time ago.’

  ‘What was it about?’ Lestrade asked.

  Chiv tapped the side of his nose. ‘That’s your trouble, copper. Typical Commissioner’s Office. You’ve poked it in too far tonight.’ He stepped back. ‘Ezra. Hymie,’ and he snapped his fingers.

  A blade flashed in the darkness and Lestrade had leapt over the puddle, the four inches of steel glinting wickedly under the Jew’s ear. ‘One more step from anyone,’ Lestrade shouted, ‘and the High Rips will be electing a new leader.’

  ‘He’s bluffin’,’ the Jew rasped, but his head was thrown back at a painful angle and his wideawake had rolled in the dirt.

  ‘Four inches,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Is he boasting again?’ George asked Green, their life-preservers ready for the attack.

  ‘Four inches of steel,’ Lestrade shouted. ‘If I push, just a teensy-weensy bit harder, the point of my blade will be tickling old Chiv here right between the eyes. But it’ll be from the inside.’

  The scream of a police whistle shattered the moment. At both ends of the alley, the High Rips broke and ran, their boots dying away on the cobbles. Chiv tore himself free and stood in the darkness, the long, slim-bladed knife from which he took his nickname gleaming in his hand.

  Lestrade had never taken the fencing option at school, but he came to the on guard position and waited. Three burly Miltonians clattering to his rescue gave Lestrade an edge all his own.

  ‘Another time, copper,’ Chiv spat. ‘You and me. Another time. I’ll wear your guts to keep my socks up, believe me.’

  ‘Quick, Chiv,’ Lestrade slid the blade home into the knuckles. ‘Shabbas soon. The Rabbi won’t like you being out.’

  ‘Mind how you go!’ George called after him.

  ‘Brilliant, George,’ Lestrade slapped his arm. ‘The whistle. Inspired. I didn’t know you carried one.’

  ‘I don’t, guv,’ George said. ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind,’ Lestrade led them back to the relative light of Fournier Street. ‘Don’t be ashamed of being upstaged by a rookie. You, Tyrrell?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I thought not. Well done, Green. Stout fellow.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, sir.’

  The police whistle shrilled again, urgent, frantic.

  ‘Over there,’ Lestrade shouted. ‘Someone’s in trouble.’

  There were as many people running away as were running towards the sounds of chaos. A bullseye lantern flashed in a dismal court off Jacob Street and the detectives hurtled to it, Lestrade’s leg playing him up with the exertion of it all.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  ‘Constable 319, Chingford, J Division. Who are you?’ An overweight, over-aged copper crouched in the darkness.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard. What’s up?’

  ‘Murder, sir. I saw the blokes who done it running that way.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘In a north-easterly direction.’

  ‘Tyrrell, Green. At the double. What are they looking for, Chingford?’

  ‘Two men, sir. One tall wiv a ’awk-like nose, the uvver short, little moustache. Workin’ men, but wiv posh accents.’

  ‘How posh?’

  ‘Er . . . Baker Street, I’d say.’

  ‘Oh God . . .’

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘Nothing, Green. Pray that I’m wrong and get after those men.’

  The constables dashed away.

  ‘Constable,’ Lestrade squatted beside the body. ‘Your bullseye if you please.’

  The shaft of light fell on the glistening head of a middle-aged man. Dark blood trickled over his astrakhan collar and was forming a growing pool under his face. His eyes stared sightless, his face creased in a frown, as though something lying in the courtyard didn’t please him at all. It didn’t please Lestrade either. He swivelled the lantern to the right and the flickering beam fell on a symbol crudely daubed in blood on the nearby wall. It was the board of Nine Men’s Morris.

  ‘Blimey, guv,’ George muttered. ‘Do you recognize this bloke?’

  Lestrade looked at the face again. ‘No,’ he said, ‘should I?’

  ‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s Sir Anthony Rivers, Advocate. He won’t be getting anybody else off.’

  ❖8❖

  L

  estrade was no stranger to the Temple. It was through the vanished Bar that he had walked those years ago as he swapped his City helmet for one of the
Metropolitans. Springtime gilded the blossom of the little trees among the cobbles and the Inspector limped up the steps to the Chambers at King’s Bench walk.

  A clerk in uncompromising grey with a wing collar he appeared to have borrowed from Mr Gladstone showed him into an oak-panelled office lined with dusty tomes labelled ‘Regina versus’. Roger Derringham QC sat with his feet on his desk, poring over an enormous brief.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade to see you, sir,’ the clerk bowed and made his exit.

  ‘Thank you, Foskett. When the Russian Ambassador arrives, give him a small vodka, will you, and check his antecedents? After all, the crime of which he has been accused has never been brought before an English court before. And it’s certainly never been perpetrated in St James’s Palace. Tea, Lestrade?’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Foskett. The thé ordinaire, s’il vous plait. Il n’est qu’un simple agent.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ bowed the old clerk, used to cryptic messages from his gentlemen.

  ‘Sir Anthony Rivers,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Hmm. Poor old Tony,’ the QC closed his brief, waving Lestrade to a chair.

  ‘He was your boss, I understand?’

  Derringham smiled darkly. ‘He was Head of Chambers, yes. Not quite the same thing, old boy.’

  ‘How long had you known him?’

  ‘Tony? Ooh, six, no, seven years. He was in some ways my mentor.’

  ‘We have spoken to his wife,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Ah, Calpurnia, yes. She’s above suspicion, of course.’

  Lestrade sensed a chink in the advocate’s armour. ‘Why would you think we’d suspect her, sir?’

  ‘Why? My dear fellow, don’t you read the Court columns? She was filing for divorce. Tony had some rather nasty habits.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Mr Lestrade,’ Derringham swung his feet down from the desk, ‘I am breaking no confidences when I tell you that in common with a high percentage of public men, Tony had a certain penchant.’

  Funny, thought Lestrade; the post-mortem hadn’t revealed that.

  ‘He had?’