The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade Read online

  The Adventures

  of

  Inspector Lestrade

  M. J. Trow

  Copyright © 2013, M J Trow

  All Rights Reserved

  This edition published in 2013 by:

  Thistle Publishing

  36 Great Smith Street

  London

  SW1P 3BU

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Man in the Chine

  Ball of Lightning

  The Vicar’s Daughter

  Three of Spades

  The Widow

  Ball of Lightning

  Duels

  Séance on a Cold Thursday Evening

  Madmen and Fairies

  The White Lady

  Finale

  About the Author

  The Man in the Chine

  Melville McNaghten pushed the ledger away from him. He buried his knuckles in his eyes and drew his fingers down his cheeks, taking less care than usual not to disarrange his faintly waxed moustaches. Three years’ work, he mused to himself. A lot of good men, a lot of panic and in the end – nothing. What was it Her Majesty had said? ‘We must improve our detective force.’ Five women had died – or was it more? Over two hundred men arrested, hundreds more questioned. He shuddered as he thought of the fiasco of Barnaby and Burgho, the bloodhounds who had not only not caught the murderer, but had lost their handlers in the fog. And that idiot Charles Warren who had wiped the anti-Jewish slogans off the wall. He’d gone back to the army now – best place for him. And who was the buffoon who thought of photographing the dead eyes of Catherine Eddowes in a hope that a likeness of the murderer would appear on the plate?

  He was glad at least, he reflected, that he hadn’t been involved in that lunacy. He was the first policeman on the case – the first real policeman anyway. Again, the four names caught his eye – his suspects, his deductions. Nothing provable, of course, nothing absolutely tangible. But enough for him. Enough so that if he whispered just one of these names in the street, the vigilantes of Whitechapel would swarm from their hell-holes with noose and zeal. He could practically hear Mr Lusk, their chairman, wringing his hands in anticipation.

  A knock at the door brought him back to the present. He snapped shut the ledger.

  ‘Come.’

  Under the lamp’s flare he saw the trousers of a constable enter the room.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, sir.’

  McNaghten straightened his cravat. ‘Show him in.’

  The constable’s trousers were replaced under the light by those of the inspector. McNaghten swept the ledger quickly into a side drawer of his capacious desk. Lestrade stood with his back against the door, watching every move with a wry smile.

  ‘The Ripper files, sir?’

  ‘What?’ The suddenness and volume of McNaghten’s reply indicated that he had heard perfectly well.

  ‘The ledger.’ Lestrade walked more fully into the light, gesturing to the drawer as McNaghten locked it.

  ‘Er … yes.’ McNaghten was more reasonable as he sat squarely again in the chair. He swept his hand across his whiskers and straightened his cravat again. Lestrade remained motionless, hands in the pockets of his voluminous Donegal. McNaghten sighed and resigned himself to the unspoken question –

  ‘Lestrade …’ Too formal, he needed familiarity. ‘Sholto …’ Lestrade felt the avuncular arm metaphorically creeping across his shoulder. ‘You know I cannot divulge a word of these contents …’

  It wasn’t enough. Lestrade had not moved. McNaghten read his mind. ‘Yes, I know you were on it, but it was Abberline’s case.’ It still wasn’t enough. McNaghten stood up abruptly and the two men faced each other across the darkening room, their faces lit from below, like the inhabitants of Madame Tussauds’. ‘Damn it, Lestrade. It is classified.’ McNaghten hated dealing with subordinates, especially those as discerning as Lestrade. He was a thorn in his side, an itch he couldn’t scratch. The Head of the Criminal Investigation Department turned to the window. Outside, the rain was driving listlessly over the river and the arc lamps below. ‘One day,’ he said to the heavy London sky, ‘one day they will write about it. One day they will open my files and they will know.’

  ‘I shall be a hundred and thirty eight,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Damn it, Lestrade,’ McNaghten whipped round. He’d already said that and it weakened his argument to repeat himself.

  Lestrade smiled. He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘I understand, sir,’ he said. He turned up his collar and made for the night. At the door he stopped. ‘Goodnight, sir.’ The smile was chill.

  The door closed and McNaghten slammed a paperweight on his desk. How typical of Lestrade to want to know. But he could not know. Nobody could. In a hundred years, when they officially opened the file he was about to consign to the archives, it wouldn’t matter. He, Lestrade, all of them would be dead.

  Lestrade’s trousers under the light were replaced by the swish of an electric-blue skirt. ‘Father?’ McNaghten’s daughter swept into the room.

  ‘Ah, my dear.’ McNaghten’s professional face vanished. He was a family man again, in the bosom of his daughter. Miss McNaghten was dreadfully large. She was also dreadfully capable.

  ‘Come along, Father. Time for home.’

  McNaghten had a brief glimpse of his pocket watch before his daughter threw his Donegal over his shoulders. Three minutes past the half hour. ‘Call the cab, Father.’ McNaghten dumbly obeyed. He had long since ceased to think it odd that he who gave orders so unthinkingly in the line of duty should take them so unthinkingly in the line of domesticity. The constable wasn’t in the corridor. Damn. He set off in search of him in the outer office.

  In his absence, Miss McNaghten bustled round the desk, deftly produced a key identical to her father’s and unlocked the desk drawer. A further deft movement and the ledger was under her pelisse and the drawer relocked.

  McNaghten returned. ‘Downstairs,’ he said. ‘Constable Dew will drive us home. Oh …’ he remembered the ledger. It must go in the safe. Miss McNaghten read his mind and blocked his way. Her tone and her logic belied the panic in her heart, thumping beneath pelisse, ledger and matronly bosom. ‘The Commissioner, Father.’

  ‘God,’ mumbled McNaghten, as though they had axed his pension. ‘It’s tonight, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and Cook has bouillabaisse.’

  ‘Ah, I wondered why she walked like that.’

  His daughter’s gentle push nearly sent him reeling through the door. They clattered down the darkened corridor, lamps flickering on the institution green and cream. The ornate lift jarred and whirred its way to the ground floor. They stepped into the wet, chilly night. Constable Dew, never the same since he saw the corpse of Mary Kelly, held the door open for the McNaghtens. The police cab rocked as the Assistant Chief Constable’s daughter entered. The hack recoiled several paces, bracing its back. While McNaghten Senior fastened the door, his daughter flicked the ledger out of the opposite window. A gloved hand caught it and the cab clashed its way out of the cobbled courtyard and along the Embankment, now green with the river’s mist.

  From the shadows a figure emerged: Inspector Lestrade, in his damp Donegal, rain dripping from his Derby hat. He smiled down at the ledger and the little silver key. Moving to the nearest light, away from the drips, he opened the book. He flicked rapidly through the pages and pages of evidence, statements, depositions, theories. The letters met his gaze – I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. He knew all that. Nothing new, nothing different. It was the last page he wanted. There it was, the list of four names, stark in McNaghten’s copperplate.

  Lestrade
smiled and his smile broke into a chuckle and his chuckle to a roar. He slammed the ledger shut. So Abberline took my advice, he thought to himself. And McNaghten. They listed all four of them. He was pleased. He knew his name appeared nowhere in the ledger. He knew he would not be remembered when they opened this file a century hence. But it didn’t matter. It was enough for Lestrade to know that he had been right. It was that which time and again made his existence seem worthwhile. He did like being right.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Lestrade was inside the building again, the ledger under the flap of his Donegal.

  The sergeant, who had been dozing, stood up at his desk.

  ‘I’m going to Sir Melville’s office – papers he wants me to check.’ He made for the lift. ‘Oh, at your relief go to Sir Melville’s. Give a message to Miss McNaghten – tradesmen’s entrance. Tell her … tell her thanks and apologise to her. I shall be unable to join her this evening as planned. Pressure of duty.’

  Lestrade felt the sergeant’s eyebrows lower again behind his back and the smirk develop. ‘Oh, and sergeant,’ Lestrade was still with his back to the man. He paused, turned round and smiled. ‘Don’t let me catch you asleep again.’ The sergeant stiffened and tensed his shoulders. One good discretion, thought Lestrade, deserves another.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ mumbled the sergeant. ‘Mind how you go.’

  Lestrade was in the lift, raising his eyes heavenward at the inevitable cliché of that phrase. ‘Goodnight, Dixon.’

  When the good doctor alighted from the Southern Railway Company’s train he was not in the best of moods. To begin with, his morning eggs had not been to his liking and his mail had been late – three bills. Then the journey had been draughty and damp; the Telegraph full of misprints. But what had really irked him, as he took his hansom in the station forecourt, was the reason for his visit to the metropolis – to see his publisher. There had been no reply to his letters – it did not bode well.

  He didn’t notice the wet streets or the whipping wind. The jolting annoyed him from time to time, but they were soon there, outside Blackett’s the publishers.

  He was ready for the revolving doors, having caught his Gladstone in them last time. ‘Do you know your bag is going round in the doors?’ the doorman had asked him. ‘He’s a big bag now,’ the doctor had answered through clenched teeth. ‘He must go his own way.’ It was a different doorman this time, for which the doctor was exceedingly grateful.

  ‘Dr Conan Doyle … how nice … how nice.’

  ‘Mr Blackett, you have not replied to my last four letters.’

  ‘Dr Conan Doyle … it’s …’ Blackett was uncomfortable, shifting from leg to leg, wringing his handkerchief from hand to hand.

  ‘You like The White Company?’ Conan Doyle was relaxed, sure.

  ‘Indeed, sir, indeed. A fine book – rich in historical detail. But …’

  ‘But you don’t like The Refugees?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like it, Doctor …’

  Conan Doyle sat motionless, cold eyes fixing his publisher.

  ‘It’s not … finished,’ continued Blackett.

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. But the public likes new things. Crime – suspense.’

  ‘Like The Sign of Four.’

  ‘Yes.’ Blackett leaped at the memory, then was less sure. ‘But … er … Mr Holmes of Baker Street?’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘Well –’ Mr Blackett was at his most obsequious. ‘Did he mind? I mean, we do have the laws of libel.’

  ‘Oh, come, Mr Blackett. My stories of detection bear no relation whatever to the actual work of Mr Holmes. It would be more than my writing career of my medical practice is worth.’

  ‘Well, as long as you’re sure. That is the kind of thing the public wants. Plots. International intrigue.’

  ‘Rubbish. Inconsequential bread-and-butter.’

  Conan Doyle stood up purposefully. ‘I would be grateful if you would return my manuscripts. I shall take my business elsewhere. It is obvious that the firm of Blackett has no concept of good literature. It wants twopenny trash that even the … Strand Magazine would turn its nose up at.’

  Conan Doyle reached the door.

  ‘By the way, that hand.’ He pointed imperiously at Blackett. The publisher stared at his arm as though it had been severed. ‘Come, come, man – the fingers.’

  ‘Wh … what of them?’ Blackett was startled.

  ‘Unless I am mistaken – Grockle’s disease. We get a lot of it in Southsea. Poor chap – probably a terminal case. Good morning.’

  Across the Solent from Southsea lies Roman Vectis, the Isle of Wight. There was no moaning at the bar when Lestrade put out to sea. Merely a stiff wind straining from the south-west. The steam packet bore him faithfully to Ryde and from the pier he took the train to Shanklin. He was nautically attired, as befitted the occasion, in pea jacket and peaked cap. But it was not a day for a jaunt. McNaghten had received the request. The grudging telegram for help. A body, it said. Found two days ago. Not a pleasant sight.

  What bothered the Hampshire constabulary of course was the season. It was now late March; by the end of April, the tourists would be coming to the Island in vans and flies. Money, the Island’s life blood. There must be no leakage, no panic. McNaghten had seen the point. He had seen what panic had done to the East End.

  It surprised Lestrade therefore, in view of the need for secrecy, that the whole area of the Chine should be ringed, not only by constables, but by troopers of the Hampshire Yeomanry. He tackled his contact, a Sergeant Bush, about as soon as he could.

  ‘Ah well, sir,’ was the sergeant’s reply, ‘it’s Her Majesty, y’see. She’s at Osborne for Easter – and we can’t be too careful, can we?’

  ‘Quite so,’ replied Lestrade, but for the life of him he couldn’t see how the presence of the Hampshire Carbs, complete with helmets an plumes, around the Chine could protect Her Majesty some miles away at Osborne. From what McNaghten had told him, this didn’t sound like a Republican terrorist killing. But then McNaghten hadn’t told him much. As Lestrade correctly surmised, McNaghten didn’t know much.

  He followed Bush and the two constables down the winding path that had been hacked in the Chine wall. The breeze from the sea caught them as they turned a corner. The sergeant ducked under a rope cordon and seemed to disappear through a cleft in the rock. The constables took up their sentinel positions on the path.

  ‘You’ll need to watch your step,’ the sergeant’s voice echoed. Lestrade emerged in a world of total darkness. The smell was ghastly.

  ‘Can we have a light, Sergeant?’ he asked.

  He felt a hand grip his arm.

  ‘Inspector, this is not going to be pretty.’ The sergeant was grim.

  ‘I’ve been in the Force fifteen years, Sergeant. You get used to the Sights.’

  But Lestrade wasn’t ready. Not for this one. Bush’s arm swept up to strike the match and higher to show the ‘sights’. A foot or so from Lestrade’s face was the head. One eye had gone, the mouth gaped open, a gash in the livid skull. The hair stood on end, like a manic shrub blasted by the sea wind. The face flickered in the unreal sulphur glow. Lestrade swept Bush’s arm down and the match went out. There was a silence. None of the three men in the chamber breathed. Lestrade turned for the entrance and breathed fresh air again. The helmets of the constables reassured him. Do I look as green as I feel? he asked himself. Come on, man, pull yourself together. You’ve been fifteen years in the Force. And these country bumpkins need your help.

  Recovered, checked, in command, he faced Bush again. Now the sergeant was green. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he croaked. ‘I can’t get used to it. I’ve seen some Sights. Drowning, you know. Suicides in the Chine. Off Culver Point. But this …’ The sergeant’s voice tailed away.

  ‘Makes you glad of the sunshine,’ commented Lestrade. ‘Can we get to the beach down there?’ He pointed ahead of him. Bush nodded. ‘Be so good as to ask your m
an to stay here. Let’s walk awhile.’

  On the beach, drying now under the sun of the late morning and safe for an hour or two from the onslaught of the next tide, both men had a chance to clear their brains. At the back of each was a hideous head. Lestrade had not had time to view the rest.

  ‘Tell me again,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Well, sir. Workmen found it … er … him. Two days ago, it was. Let’s see. Tuesday it would be. The Chine needed repairs. Erosion, you see. The land slips and we do get fierce winds in the winter. Well, the tourists will be here soon. Why, these sands are knee deep in donkey …’

  ‘Spare me the holiday brochure, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, sir. So, anyway, these blokes were chipping away at the cliff face in that particular area of the Chine when they found this crack.’

  ‘Fissure.’

  ‘Bless you, sir. Being of an inquisitive nature, these fellers cleared the rubble and went in. Well, at first they couldn’t see nothing. Then, when they strikes their lucifers … well, there it were. They got hold of old Tom Moseley, then and there – he’s the local constable. Old Tom ain’t very quick but he got the sense to rope off the place and inform me and I sent a telegram right away to Pompey. I don’t think I expected them to send to Lunn’un though, sir. I mean, Scotland Yard itself – well!’

  Lestrade sat on a breakwater, following the line of sandstone cliffs with his eyes. Above them a solitary gull wheeled and dipped, scanning the sea for movement.

  ‘Pompey got the coroner over, but told him he was to leave … it … where it was.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ asked Lestrade, flicking the guano deftly from his cuff.

  ‘Coroner didn’t rightly know, sir. Said he’d been dead a long time.’

  Lestrade stood up. ‘Get me a lantern, Sergeant. We must go back.’

  This time Lestrade went in alone. He felt safer of his own emotions without Bush. The stench was still nauseating, but the steady light of the lantern gave the corpse a less hideous, less unreal aspect. This time Lestrade gave the task in hand his full concentration, his full professionalism. The body before him was make. Age, uncertain. He would guess about forty. The skin was the colour of old parchment, but here and there the bones of the skull were visible, a muddy, sickly white. One eyeball, or what was left of it, dangled from sinews onto the cheek. The other eye, sightless and pale, stared straight ahead. The clothes, muddied and drab, were those of a seaman perhaps – or a farm labourer. The dust from the sandstone had powdered them with grey and rivulets ran down the chest and arms where rainwater had seeped in. The bones protruded through. The hair caught his attention again – matted and long and grey – but, curiously, standing on end. He dropped to his knees and held the lantern at the floor. Gaiters. The man had been a farm labourer. What he saw next jarred him somewhat. The hands. Coarse, rough, almost devoid of flesh, but the nails were long – three or four inches long each one, curling out black and sharp. No working man grew his nails like that – he hadn’t the leisure or the time. For a moment, an image of mandarins came to mind. He had seen photographs of the Empress, and even a few of the Chinamen in his own city had nails like that. But the next moment he had dismissed it. What could be the connection? Opium? Secret Societies?He told himself to keep his mind open, not to be parochial. It wasn’t every day a hideous corpse turned up in a beautiful valley in an English coastal resort.