The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (16 page)

The second time was better, however: both of them relaxed. It was nearly midnight before Constance lay curled up in Lestrade’s arms, nuzzling her raven hair against his chest.

‘Tell me about Shock-Headed Peter,’ she whispered.

Lestrade shifted uneasily. ‘At a time like this?’ he asked.

‘Sholto, you could have been killed three days ago. My husband and my cousin are dead already. This may not be the time. But it may be the only time. You will return to your beloved Yard tomorrow or the next day. I must go home to Warwickshire.’

He turned her head to him. ‘What if I want you to stay?’ he asked her.

She took his hand, squeezing it hard. ‘You are a policeman, an Inspector of Detectives. I am a widowed lady with modest means and no future. We don’t suit, Sholto. We wouldn’t fit.’

‘You once told me you didn’t give a damn about convention,’ Lestrade reminded her.

‘I didn’t think I did,’ she answered. ‘With another man, another time, I might not. But tell me, what would happen if your superiors found out that you were here and that I was here with you?’

Lestrade chuckled. ‘I’d have another drubbing down from Sir Melville, then there would be a brief enquiry and I’d be kicked out of the Force. Your name would probably be dragged through the mud, though they wouldn’t get it from me and they’d probably board this place up as a bawdy house and arrest Lady Cardigan as a brothel-keeper. The Commissioner’s a stickler for the morals of his men.’

‘Exactly. That’s not a bright future for either of us, is it?’

He began to say something, but she stopped him with a kiss.

‘How did you know about Shock-Headed Peter?’ he asked her afterwards.

‘It was just something I overheard at the Ball. An orang-utan was talking very confidentially to Marie Antoinette, I believe.’

‘Oh, God. Arabella McNaghten wheedled it out of Forbes. I’ll kill him.’

‘Oh, Sholto, is it that secret? Isn’t she the daughter of the Head of your … what do you call it, S.I.D?’

‘C.I.D. That doesn’t matter. Regulations are very clear. All cases are classified information. They must not be divulged to any member of the public. Forbes knew that. I’ll have that bastard … begging your pardon, my dear … I’ll have that bastard back on the street for this.’

‘Sholto,’ she turned in the bed, pressing her naked thigh against his. ‘You mean you aren’t going to tell me anything about the case?’

She caressed Lestrade between the legs, her fingers sliding lightly at first, then harder as he rose to the occasion. ‘Stop it, Constance,’ he shouted hysterically. ‘I’m too ticklish.’

For a while, as he travelled back to the Yard, Lestrade let his mind wander over the leave-taking. She said she was going. Back to Warwickshire. To sell the house. To move away. To begin again, without memories, without heartache. Change her name, perhaps. Go somewhere where no one knew about Albert Mauleverer, where Struwwelpeter with his sad cheeks was simply a child’s fairy tale, not some sinister, ghastly reality. Lestrade had shaken his head as he held her hands. He had felt an iron lump in his throat. He was not a man of words. He was not a troubadour from one of Walter Scott’s novels. He was not as silver-tongued as he wanted to be for Constance. ‘I’ll find you,’ was all he had said. ‘When this case is over, I’ll find you.’ Then it was her turn to shake her head. She did not cry. Her voice remained strong, her smile as dark and deep as ever. Lestrade had cried, inside, alone, but he was a hard-bitten copper and he betrayed no emotion at all. At least he hoped he hadn’t.

Despite all this whirling in his brain, the atmosphere at the Yard was tangible. He noticed that in his brief absence, the scaffolding had been removed and that the new quarters gleamed in the afternoon sun that flashed on the river. But the place was like a morgue. A grim, silent desk-sergeant saluted him. He entered the lift with two ashen-faced detectives from Gregson’s division.

‘Sir Melville would like to see you, sir,’ said Constable Dew as Lestrade reached his office. There was no cheery greeting, no cup of tea, no enquiry into the inspector’s health. Lestrade knocked on the veneered door. A growl told him to go in.

McNaghten looked ten years older. Lestrade suddenly saw his whole career flash before him. Someone, Lady Cardigan perhaps, regretting her kindness, or Clarence, in a fit of pique, had shopped him. He even felt himself reaching into his pocket to hand over handcuffs and whistle.

‘Forbes is dead,’ McNaghten told him.

‘Forbes?’ Lestrade repeated.

‘Dead. Gangland slaying. His body was found in an alley off the Minories this morning. I sent constables. Where the hell were you?’

‘Er … recuperating.’ No point in giving the game away now. There was nothing to be gained by it.’

‘I don’t like it, Lestrade.’ McNaghten was rubbing his moustaches repeatedly, smoothing the cravat every third or fourth rub. ‘When a policeman is killed in the execution of his duty. I don’t like it at all.’

‘But what was he doing in the Minories, sir? He was supposed to be on the
Struwwelpeter
case. All my men are.’

‘According to Bandicoot, he’d had a tip-off. A nark, I suppose, told him to go to The Minories at midnight last night.’

‘And he went alone?’

‘Good God, Lestrade, you and I have done it dozens of times.’ Lestrade laughed inwardly. He knew he had, but doubted it of his rather more feather-bed leader. He knew McNaghten had never walked a beat in his life. ‘You don’t take half the force with you for fear of scaring your tipster off. Come alone, the man says, and if you want what he’s selling, you go alone.’ The advice and the reasoning were sound enough.

‘He must have been robbed. His watch had gone. We don’t know if he was carrying money. Presumably, going to see a nark, he would have been. I want the man who did this, Lestrade. You are to drop the
Struwwelpeter
business and use all your available men on this. You can have dogs, back-up from Jones’s division, anything you like. But these scum have got to learn.’ He thumped the desk for effect. ‘On my patch, no one kills a copper and gets away with it.’

Lestrade clattered down the corridor towards the mortuary. McNaghten must have been upset for he had not asked him to account for the bandage across his nose. He had worked out elaborate plans to explain an accident with the door of a hansom. He had also wrenched his arm, just for the record, should anyone ask, which would account for it hanging stiffly at his side. In the event he needn’t have bothered. McNaghten’s mind was elsewhere. It was largely in fact on the body of the man who now lay before Lestrade on the slab in the gleaming new white-tiled mortuary at Cannon Row. Forbes lay contorted, twisted slightly to one side, his body still stiff with
rigor mortis
, his face still wearing a slight look of surprise.

‘Stabbed through the heart,’ said the mortician cheerfully. ‘Slim-bladed weapon. Might have been a hat pin.’

‘A hat-pin?’ Lestrade was incredulous. ‘They’re breeding a new type of East End rough, aren’t they?’

‘I thought that. Mind you, I had a subject in the other day. Now, where was it? Yes, that was it, washed up near Shadwell Stair, stark naked. Exactly similar stab wounds, but through the back.’

‘I should have thought a common or garden chiv would have suited a sailor or a doxy.’

‘You’ll pardon me for saying this, Inspector. I mean, it’s not strictly my job, I know, but I’m something of a student of the criminal classes. I’ve noticed that murders go in waves. A certain type of weapon catches on and hey presto, they’re all at it.’

Lestrade looked at the cadaverous features of the mortician and the centre-parted, lank hair. All in all, he looked a lot worse than Forbes. Sensing that the inspector did not care particularly for his amateur sleuthing, the mortician shifted his ground.

‘Of course, it could be a
lady’s
hat pin.’

If anything, that suited Lestrade less.

‘Stabbing is not a female technique,’ he said. ‘Too physical, too messy. In twelve of murder enquiries, I have never known a female knifer.’ But at the back of his mind, and not entirely for reasons of pleasure, lurked the face and form of Constance Mauleverer. He dismissed the notion immediately. She had been with him at the time Forbes had been killed. All the same, he felt vaguely uncomfortable. Something about Forbes’ death did not sit well.

‘Of course, this is odd as well,’ the mortician was saying and he pulled back the green sheet to expose the pale corpse. Lestrade visibly rocked backwards. Forbes’ hands lay across his private parts. The mortician had forced them into that grotesque position as
rigor
was beginning to lessen, minutes before. Lestrade could not believe it. Both the thumbs had gone.

‘Hacked off with a pair of scissors, I shouldn’t wonder. Tough work, mind. The bone is very clean.’

But Lestrade had gone, nursing his arm as he leapt up the three flights of stairs to his office.

‘No stomach for it, these brass hats,’ muttered the mortician.

Feverishly, Lestrade opened the book. There it was –

‘Dew, where’s Bandicoot?’

‘The Minories, sir. He said he ought to follow the trail while it was still warm.’

‘You mean he’s alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good God, man, you should have gone with him. What’s an Old Etonian going to do in the East End? They’ll have him for breakfast. Get a Maria and hurry.’

It was dusk before Lestrade and Dew found their quarry. Bandicoot was sitting in a corner in a dimly lit cellar bar of the White Elephant in Portsoken Street.

‘I’ve been all over Aldgate and Houndsditch, sir. Nothing.’

Lestrade pointed at Bandicoot’s beer. ‘I hope that’s not on expenses. Dew, your round.’

Dew disappeared into the jostling and the smoke.

‘Who have you spoken to here?’

‘No one, sir … yet. But I’m told an eyewitness comes in here every night about eight.’

‘Who?’

Bandicoot reached for his notepad. ‘A man named “Skins”, sir.’

‘Skins?’ Lestrade leaned back in his chair, chuckling silently.

‘Sir? Do you know this man?’

‘The only one I know called Skins is one Albert Evans, a down-and-out. He’d tell you he’d stolen the Crown Jewels if you promised him a pint. Ah, thank you, Constable.’ Dew arrived with the drinks.

‘But what if he did see something?’

‘All right, I’m prepared to wait. What else have you got?’

‘Not a lot, I’m afraid. Sergeant Forbes received a note from a street urchin just before the end of his shift yesterday.’

‘Did you see the boy?’

‘No. The desk sergeant did. But that was the first place I asked. They hadn’t seen the boy before and probably wouldn’t know him if they saw him again.’

‘That’s what I like,’ mused Lestrade. ‘Efficient, observant police work. What else?’

‘I then thought to check the note – handwriting or something.’

‘You’re improving, Banders. And?’

‘Sorry, sir. Sergeant Forbes must have taken it with him, but it wasn’t on him when they found him.’

‘Have you been to the scene of the crime?’

‘Yes, sir. Two hundred yards from here in Gravel Lane. The constable who found the body was on a routine beat. He heard nothing, although he had passed the spot minutes before. Sergeant Forbes was due to meet his informer at midnight. His body was found round about half past two – the constable’s watch was not accurate.’

‘This constable, did he find any clues?’

‘Nothing, sir. Which is off. Sergeant Forbes was an experienced policeman and a well-built man. I would have expected him to put up something of a fight against the gang.’

‘Gang?’

‘The men who killed him, sir.’

Lestrade leaned forward again. ‘Have either of you gentlemen seen the body?’

‘No, sir,’ the constables chorused.

‘His thumbs are missing. We are not looking into a beating-up that went too far. We are looking for Agrippa.’

Dew and Bandicoot were astounded.

‘So that’s why Forbes didn’t fight!’

‘Whoever the murderer is, he took Forbes sufficiently by surprise.’

Bandicoot was thinking. Lestrade saw the strain showing on his face.

‘If I recall rightly, sir, the next victim ought to have been little suck-a-thumb, named Conrad. Did Sergeant Forbes have that habit?’

‘We needn’t be too literal, Bandicoot. But you’ve got a point. I think Forbes was on to something. The murderer knew that and had to get rid of him. He’s broken the pattern. Oh, the method is correct – the thumbs removed with scissors, but he’s been so close to the text so far, I can’t believe he wouldn’t have had a Conrad in mind had he been given a little more leisure.’

‘Wouldn’t he have found it rather difficult to find a Conrad, sir?’ asked Dew. ‘There can’t be many of them.’

‘I’ll grant you that,’ Lestrade replied.

‘Why not stay with the text, though?’ asked Bandicoot, ‘And bump off Sergeant Forbes anyway. Make it look like a gangland slaying, as we thought it was.’

‘I don’t understand Agrippa’s motives, Bandicoot. If I did, we’d have him in custody, wouldn’t we?’

‘Excuse me, sir, isn’t that Skins?’

Dew pointed to the door through which an ageing wreck of a man, toothless and grey, had shambled.

‘Bandicoot, your round. Three beers and two gins. Dew, bring him over.’

The constables departed to their various tasks. For almost the first time, Lestrade took in his surroundings. The cellar was filling up with people, beer fumes and smoke. Here and there carousers rolled drunkenly around a piano-accordion. A harlot was singing tipsily in a far corner. Three men had their hands up her skirt, but she appeared not to have noticed. The East End was crowded again after the recent return of the hop-pickers from the Kentish countryside. All human life lay before Lestrade as he watched Dew drag the struggling Skins across the sawdusted floor. Prostitutes, thieves, murderers, even the odd curate in silk top hat flashed before his gaze.