The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade
Read The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade Online
Authors: M J Trow
The Adventures
of
Inspector Lestrade
M. J. Trow
Copyright © 2013, M J Trow
All Rights Reserved
Thistle Publishing
36 Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BU
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.
