Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘There, dearie,’ George drove a pin through Lestrade’s lapel into his chest so that the guv’nor winced and his eyes watered. Now you’ll be lucky all the live-long day. Have you got it?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, I haven’t got it,’ Lestrade hissed. ‘Just my luck it was old Bagster on duty – not for nothing known as the Most Awkward Magistrate in London.’

  ‘He wouldn’t play ball?’

  ‘Play ball?’ Lestrade made great pretence of finding the threepenny bit in his inside pocket. ‘I know I have it in here somewhere,’ he bellowed. ‘He wouldn’t even come out to inspect the pitch. Which means Plan B.’

  ‘Monro?’ George clicked his fingers in delight.

  ‘“Insufficient probable cause, laddie,” and I quote.’

  Lestrade nodded.

  ‘Guv,’ George closed to his guv’nor, ‘I’m not sure I can manage Plan C in this frock.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you ransacked the Yard Lost Property Department.’

  ‘But you said . . .’

  Lestrade rammed the threepenny bit into his sergeant’s hand. ‘I said “Keep your eye on 221B”. I didn’t say commit an act of gross indecency with a bunch of lucky heather.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, guv,’ and George removed the offending article from the Inspector’s person.

  ‘Right,’ said Lestrade without looking up. The front is hopeless, even now it’s dusk. You used to patrol this beat. Does Baker Street ever get quiet?’

  ‘Not quiet enough for a full frontal assault up the brickwork, guv, no.’

  ‘Back passage job, then?’

  ‘There’ll be a fire escape, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be working.’

  ‘Thank you, my good woman,’ Lestrade said and nipped into the blackness of the nearest alleyway.

  George was tapping his way back along the kerb when he collided with a toff hurrying home. ‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘A bunch of lucky heather, please.’

  George scowled at him and tore off the eyeshade. ‘Why don’t you bugger off?’ he asked and followed his leader.

  There was a rustling of borrowed clothes as George George removed such fol-de-rols as were likely to impede his progress.

  ‘After you, then, guv,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Lestrade, ‘you usually are. Get ready to catch me should I stumble up there. And you’re not bringing that stick, are you?’

  ‘No, no.’

  Lestrade paused. ‘Wait a minute. Are you sure there’s no one in?’

  ‘Holmes and Watson left this morning, early. Caught a growler down the road and went west. Their housekeeper went out later, came back and now she’s gone again. Come to think of it, a search warrant wouldn’t have been a lot of use with no one to serve it on.’

  ‘We’ll just have to be a little un-Greek Orthodox, that’s all. Are you game?’

  ‘That’s afoot, isn’t it? At least according to the conversation I overheard between Holmes and Watson this morning it is. Mind how you go.’

  Lestrade was doing just that. The fire escape behind 221B extended about halfway up. At this level, Lestrade paused, his Donegaled silhouette black against the purpling clouds of the city. The street sounds were curiously muffled here and the policemen were at pains not to scrape their boots on the metal rungs. A sash window shot up and a bucket of uncertain contents appeared, gripped by ancient hands, to splatter on the raffia wig of an old flower seller perched halfway up. The window slammed shut again.

  ‘Who’d be the neighbours of Sherlock Holmes?’ Lestrade whispered, peering in through the grimy glass.

  ‘That’s the last question going through my mind at the moment, guv.’ George parted his grey hair to see where he was going, spitting things into the night.

  ‘Right,’ hissed Lestrade. ‘There’s a parapet up here, but it’s pretty . . . ouch . . . crumbly.’

  A piece of cement whistled past George’s shawl to shatter in the courtyard below. A cat mewed from the darkness.

  ‘Guv,’ George called up as sotto voce as he could with his chin against brickwork, ‘when we get in, what are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything, George,’ Lestrade said. ‘Anything at all. Eek!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s all right. There’s a . . . loose . . . ah, that’s it,’ and George saw the window above him slide up and his guv’nor disappear inside. He hauled up his skirts and followed suit, hand over hand, heaving himself up by the parapet and scraping his knuckles on a carefully placed piece of barbed wire. Suddenly his guv’nor’s ‘eek’ fell into place, but he was bleeding by then and past caring. His feet found the windowsill and he was in.

  ‘Lucifers, George?’ Lestrade whispered.

  The sergeant obliged. They stood in what was clearly a man’s bedroom. A range of pipes rested on a rack in one corner among a debris of paperwork on a gnarled old desk. A violin lay at a rakish angle against the headboard and a dressing gown of a particularly tweedy appearance was draped across the coverlet. Lestrade lit a lamp with the extended Lucifer and another one for his sergeant.

  ‘Right, George,’ he said, ‘this must be Holmes’s room. It’s my guess there’s a study somewhere.’

  ‘Guv . . .’

  ‘I’ll take the wardrobe.’

  ‘Guv . . .’

  ‘What’s this?’ at the back of a drawer, the Inspector’s expert fingers had located a small packet of white powder. He opened it, dipped in a finger. It tasted revolting. ‘Talc,’ he said.

  ‘Guv . . . ’

  ‘What is it, George?’ Lestrade stood, hands on hips.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, sir, but I’m still not clear why . . .’

  Lestrade crossed to him. ‘Look, George,’ he held the man by his ample shoulders, teasing back the wet raffia from his face. ‘Not that I want you to worry your pretty little head unduly about this, but what happened in South Mimms?’

  ‘Squire Ralston died.’

  ‘And which pair of private detectives were there within hours?’

  ‘Er . . . Holmes and Watson.’

  ‘Exactly. And while we were playing Murder in the Dark at Blaenwhatsit? Who should turn up in heavy disguise as coal miners from those parts?’

  ‘Holmes and Watson.’

  ‘And at Borley – the spooks who came in from the cold?’

  ‘The very same.’ George was clicking his fingers in all directions. ‘Guv, you’ve cracked it.’

  ‘Even down to the description of the two men seen on Hounslow Heath by Trumpeter Armstrong and relayed to us by Constables Head and Bolger.’

  ‘So Holmes and Watson did it . . . er . . . them?’

  ‘Returning to the scenes of the crimes,’ Lestrade returned to his rummaging. ‘Psychologically unable to stay away.’

  ‘But Guv . . .’

  ‘Yes, George,’ Lestrade sighed.

  ‘Well, even if we find anything here, without a search warrant, it’s inadmissible isn’t it? In a court of law, it’d be thrown out, along, I suspect, with us.’

  Lestrade slammed the drawer shut and crossed again to his man. ‘You know what it is about you, George? What in three years I have found so infuriating?’

  ‘Er . . . no, guv.’

  Lestrade’s moustache twisted in the half light. ‘It’s that when the chips are down, when it really matters, you’re always so bloody right.’

  There was a pause, both men, tired, aching, looking at each other. ‘The simple point is,’ Lestrade whispered, ‘that eight people are dead. And we’re no further forward than when you and I first arrived in Mevagissey.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ a querulous voice called from the stairs. ‘What are you doing in my room?’

  Both detectives leapt to the funnels of their respective lamps and blasted themselves into blackness.

  ‘I know you’re there,’ the voice called again. ‘I have a 54-bore Swiss percussion bench rest target rifle by Vannod of Lausanne. It has an octagonal twist barrel, screw adjustable hair triggers and I�
��m not afraid to use it.’

  ‘Who is that?’ George whispered to his guv’nor from his hiding place behind the wardrobe.

  ‘Unless Holmes or Watson is rather stranger that even I considered,’ Lestrade said, ‘it’s the housekeeper. It’s Mrs Hudson.’

  George straightened. ‘Then she’s bluffing,’ he said confidently.

  There was a blast that blew lamplight from the landing into the room and beyond the hole in the central panel stood a little lady of lowland Scots descent, eyes blazing, wreathed in smoke.

  ‘Bluffing be buggered,’ Lestrade hissed, fighting George to get to the window. ‘Christ, she’s reloading.’

  It was no more than the truth. The Inspector somersaulted over the windowsill, scrabbling on the parapet before plunging like a flying squirrel, Donegal afloat, for the fire escape. George was half a second behind him and he rolled into the darkness just as Mrs Hudson’s second volley illuminated the courtyard. The sash window of 221 flew up and an exasperated neighbour called out, ‘Do you mind? This is a residential neighbourhood,’ prior to emptying the contents of an ornate privy on to the running head of Sergeant George.

  ‘But you said it was Holmes and Watson, guv,’ George was lying on his front across Lestrade’s desk.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ the Inspector was adamant. ‘I’ll be the first to admit, I’m clutching at straws.’

  ‘Damn!’ George jumped.

  ‘Sorry, sarge.’ It was Tyrrell at work with the tweezers. ‘What I can’t understand, is how did she hit you in the arse when she was firing from above?’

  ‘Yours not to reason why,’ George hissed through clenched teeth, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. ‘Yours just to get rid of all that bloody buckshot.’

  ‘Shut up, George,’ Lestrade pushed the wedge back in the sergeant’s mouth. ‘And keep chewing on that. I can’t think of a better use for the Police Manual. Come!’ he bellowed in response to a knock, kicking himself metaphorically for sounding more like an Assistant Commissioner every time he opened his mouth.

  A constable peered around the door, saw George’s backside blue with buckshot and ducked back again.

  ‘Yes?’ Lestrade called.

  ‘Constable Huxtable, sir, with a message from Chief Inspector Swanson.’

  Lestrade tried to see the man behind the door. ‘Are you embarrassed, by any chance, Constable?’

  ‘Er . . . yessir. A little.’

  ‘It’s all right, lad. I’m sure Sergeant George hasn’t anything you haven’t got. And probably not in such profusion either.’ He ignored the scowl from his number two.

  ‘Even so, sir,’ Huxtable said, ‘I’d prefer to give you the message from here, if I may.’

  ‘Very well,’ Lestrade sighed.

  ‘The Chief Inspector’s compliments, sir. He’s got a last minute addition to the Police Revue – a multi-force entry rejoicing in the name of Culpepper And His Crooning Chocolate Coloured Coons.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Lestrade dropped some blood-stained cotton wool into his ‘Out’ tray. ‘So he doesn’t need me?’

  ‘Oh, yessir. Sergeant Berryman and his performing seal have had to pull out on account of the death of said performing seal.’

  ‘Well, we should be grateful for small mercies, I suppose,’ Lestrade said. ‘Huxtable, do you know who’s reviewing the Revue?’

  ‘Constable Tinker, sir, L Division.’

  Lestrade sat bolt upright with an inrush of air just as Tyrrell’s probing tweezers elicited an excruciated roar from George.

  ‘Well might you scream, sergeant,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Joe Tinker is the most ferocious reviewer in the West End today. I’ve seen grown bass-baritones crying like babies after reading one of his critiques. Tinker the Stinker they call him. So I’m filling in for Berryman’s seal, am I? Well, I can’t guarantee to handle the ball so well, but at least my diction will be a damned sight clearer.’

  ‘So Chief Inspector Swanson can ink you in then?’ Huxtable checked.

  ‘Ink and be damned,’ Lestrade rolled his knuckles around in his eyes.

  ‘Eight o’clock start, sir,’ Huxtable reminded him, ‘Tomorrow night, Nestling Hall, Conduit Street.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ the Inspector said and Huxtable exited before he’d even come in.

  ‘Who was that?’ George looked up, his eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Constable Huxtable,’ Green said, without looking up from the report he was reading.

  ‘What Division?’ George asked.

  ‘He came from Swanson,’ Lestrade said, staring again, as he had countless times over the last weeks, at the pictures on the wallboard ahead of him – the artists’ impressions of ‘men seen loitering’ and that damned Nine Men’s maze. ‘Must be here at Headquarters.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone by that name,’ George grunted. His eyes met Lestrade’s.

  ‘Did you see him, Tyrrell?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘No, sir. I was busy with Mr George’s bottom.’

  ‘Yes, I wouldn’t noise that abroad too far if I were you. Green?’

  ‘I was reading this report, sir,’ the constable said.

  ‘George?’

  ‘Vision’s a bit swimmy at the moment, sir. You’re not thinking what I am, are you?’

  ‘A Headquarters’ constable that no one’s ever heard of, who’s embarrassed by colleagues’ backsides or afraid of blood and buckshot, whose face nobody’s seen? Yes, George, I am thinking exactly what you are.’

  He wasn’t in the corridor. He wasn’t on that floor at all. Chief Inspector Swanson was out on a case. No one knew when he’d be back. Huxtable? Must be from a Division somewhere. No one had heard of a Huxtable. But yes, there was a list of turns for the Police Revue. Yes, Culpepper’s Coons were on seventh, before Prestidge the Prestidigitator from J Division and shortly before Lestrade himself. ‘Lookin’ forward to it, sir,’ his informant had called after him. ‘Last time the lads and I couldn’t stop laughin’ for a week.’

  Not bad for one of the great Bernhardt’s most tragic pieces.

  Lestrade reached the first floor in double-quick time. He rapped on the frosted glass of the office of the Assistant Commissioner (Crime).

  ‘Come,’ he heard the Scots growl from within.

  ‘Mr Monro.’

  ‘Lestrade,’ the Assistant Commissioner paused in the middle of lighting his pipe, ‘I was about to send for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Came this morning,’ he tapped a telegram on his desk. ‘From a Mrs Hudson of Baker Street. Familiar?’

  ‘I am reasonably acquainted with Baker Street, sir, yes.’

  ‘Don’t come the old copper wi’ me, laddie,’ Monro scowled at him, stabbing the air with his pipe stem. ‘You don’t have the experience for it. This lady was burgled last night by a man and a woman. The woman was a flower seller. The man was you.’

  ‘I?’

  ‘Aye. We’ll have to employ this woman Hudson here at the Yard. I’ve never known a clearer description.’

  ‘I emphatically deny it, sir,’ Lestrade said.

  Monro laughed. ‘I bet ye do,’ he said. ‘Quite a coincidence, that the very day you ask me for a search warrant to nose around the premises of 221B Baker Street, said premises, said search warrant request having been denied, are turned over by a man answering your description.’

  ‘Incredible, sir,’ Lestrade shook his head, astonished anew by the wonder of life.

  ‘Admittedly, the female accomplice was inspired,’ Monro said, sending out clouds of smoke to wreath the panelled ceiling. ‘But I fear it was not inspired enough. It’s the horse-troughs for you, Sergeant Lestrade.’

  ‘Sergeant?’ Lestrade was almost speechless. I can assure you, sir . . .’

  ‘I am sure you can, Constable,’ Monro went on, ‘but I wouldn’t protest your innocence any longer, laddie. I can’t break you any lower.’

  ‘All right,’ Lestrade raised a hand. ‘Let’s talk, before I get my helmet back o
n, about turning over.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Lestrade threw himself, with as much bonhomie as a man with buckshot lodged in his leg who had recently leapt off a fire escape could, into a chair specifically specified for Chief Inspectors and Above by Commissioner Warren.

  ‘The turning over of my office.’

  ‘Your former office?’ Monro frowned, refusing to be browbeaten by Lestrade’s insubordination. The man could not hope to rise again beyond the level of Lost Property.

  ‘As you say,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘What do you mean, turned over?’ Monro asked.

  ‘Rifled, ransacked, burgled, broken into. A mere constable of H Division has no more words for it than that, sir.’

  ‘When was this?’ Monro asked.

  ‘Six days ago,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’

  Lestrade leaned forward in the way he’d seen the great founder of the CID, Howard Vincent do, in this very chair not nine years since, while stroking his pet iguana. ‘Because you ordered it, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I?’

  ‘You. And your minion was John Littlechild, Head of Section D.’

  Monro stood up, his pipe tobacco smouldering all over the papers on his desk. His face was as white as his collar and he crossed the room in three strides to snick the key in the lock. A sickly smile creased his immobile face and he patted Lestrade’s shoulder. ‘Sergeant, I’ve been too hasty,’ he said. ‘After all, the constant arrival of this Holmes and his assistant is a little curious, isn’t it? Let’s just put it down to a little over-zealousness on your part, shall we?’

  ‘Section D,’ repeated Lestrade.

  Monro reached his desk and flicked open the silver case. ‘Havana, Inspector? Come to think of it, you’re probably right. Holmes and Watson are obviously guilty as hell. I’ll just file this telegram,’ and he tossed it on to the fire. ‘Go and pick ’em up. How many men would you like? Thirty? Forty?’

  ‘Section D,’ said Lestrade quietly.

  Monro sat back in his own chair, flicking a desperate tongue over his thin, desperate lips. ‘Chief Inspector Lestrade . . .’

  Lestrade stood up and made for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Monro was on his feet too.