The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (4 page)

He remembered again the Ripper letters. Two of them he knew were genuine. Nearly two hundred were from cranks, oddities who crawled from the woodwork whenever murder walked abroad. But these two had carried inside information. And so did this verse; the hair alone had been mentioned in the local papers and the case – for such it had become – did not reach all the dailies. Only the coroner’s report, that of Sergeant Bush of the Hampshire Constabulary and Lestrade’s own carried full information. There was the possibility of a leak, mused Lestrade, as he painfully took the lift to the ground floor. Perhaps someone in the coroner’s office – that spotty lad Spilsbury, for instance – perhaps one of Bush’s constables. But he didn’t think so. In his heart of hearts he knew that this letter had been written, and the verse composed, by the murderer.

Well, so be it. This was 1891 and this was Scotland Yard – the foremost police headquarters in the world. This was Britain, the workshop of the world. Forensic science was at his disposal. Here, in the gloomy basement festooned with pipes of gas and water, here were the most brilliant men of science that Europe could boast. If they could not find clues in the letter, no one could.

‘Fingerprints?’ repeated the boffin as he stared at the outstretched letter in Lestrade’s carefully poised fingertips. ‘What are they?’

Ball of Lightning

Lord Frederick Hurstmonceux lay on the billiard table in the gaming room. His normally immaculate hunting coat was thrown back in tatters, his shirt lacerated and congealed with blood, as were his hands and face. He had been dead for some six hours when Lestrade arrived, at McNaghten’s personal request. The house, an extravagant Palladian monstrosity nestling in a curve of the downs, was still and silent. After the shaking and rattling of the Daimler Wagonette horseless carriage, that silence was bliss. A grim butler met him at the door and showed him into the tiled entrance hall. His policeman’s eye took in the aspidistrae, the elegant sweep of the staircase, the portraits of the Hurstmonceux, fathers and sons in their hunting pinks. A row of hushed, frightened servants, stiff in their starched white aprons lined the passageway. They were unsure how to behave to Lestrade. They knew he was a police officer and why he was there, but many of them had never seen an officer from Scotland Yard, a man in plain clothes. Some of them curtsied, others followed him with their eyes.

The butler threw back the double doors. Lestrade blinked in the bright electric light which flooded the table. He looked down at the body. ‘Ruined the baize,’ he murmured.

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes. Would you ask Sir Henry to join me here?’

The butler vanished. Lestrade gave the body a cursory examination. Cause of death he assumed to be severe lacerations and shock. Or blood loss, he mused, as he turned the matted head to find the jugular ripped. Of his clothes, only the mud-caked hunting boots remained unscathed. This was messy, a sticky end, even for a country squire of Hurstmonceux’s reputation.

‘McNaghten?’

The voice made him turn sharply.

‘Oh, I expected Assistant Chief Constable McNaghten,’ said the voice.

‘Inspector Lestrade, sir.’ ‘At your service’ sounded too deferential. ‘Sir Henry Cattermole?’

The voice brushed past Lestrade and looked down at the corpse on the billiard table. ‘Yes, I’m Cattermole.’

‘Assistant Chief Constable McNaghten was unavoidably detained, sir. He asked me to give you his regards. I shall have to ask you a few questions, sir.’

Cattermole had not taken his eyes off the body. ‘Come into the library,’ he said. ‘I can’t look at him any more.’ Lestrade followed him across the hall. Servants and butler had gone. The library was typical of these country houses, wall to wall with leather-covered books, which no one had read.

‘Cognac?’

Lestrade accepted the proffered glass. ‘In your own time, sir.’

Cattermole quaffed the brandy and refilled.

‘Freddie Hurstmonceux was a bastard, Inspector. A professional bastard. Oh, not in the sense of lineage, you understand. They don’t come with bluer blood.’

‘I found it rather red, sir.’ Lestrade could have kicked himself for the tastelessness of that remark.

‘No, Freddie deserved this. Or at least, I’m not surprised by it.’

‘Could you tell me what happened, sir?’

‘He was out hunting. We all were. Freddie loved having open house and riding to hounds with his cronies. They all hated him, but he exuded a certain raffish charm. Anyway, we’d got a view and the hounds were off. This was in the Lower Meadow and Freddie, as ever, was off in hot pursuit. Whipping his hunter unmercifully.’

‘He didn’t treat horses well?’

‘Horses, dogs, people. He didn’t treat anything well. I’ve seen him whip a horse to death.’

‘You didn’t stop him?’

‘Damn it, Lestrade. What business is it of yours?’ Cattermole paused. Then, more calmly, ‘You don’t cross a man like Freddie.’ A long pause. ‘Well, he came through the thicket ahead of me, away to the left. Barite Cairns and Rosebery were with him, but as he topped the rise he must have left them behind. Ploughed fields there of course, tough going. Freddie was a better rider than any of them. By the time I got to the rise, all hell had broken loose. The hounds set up the devil of a row beyond the wall. I thought they’d got the fox. They were tearing, limb from limb, howling and yelping. But Bertie and Rosebery were galloping down there, taking the wall and laying about them with their crops. It was obvious something was wrong. When I got there it was all over. The dogs were being hauled off and I could see it wasn’t a fox. It was Freddie.’

Cattermole buried his face briefly in his hands. Lestrade returned to the subject of the body.

‘Foxhounds did that?’ he said incredulously.

Cattermole sat back in his chair. ‘Impossible to believe? I saw it, Lestrade. They went for his throat. He had no chance at all.’

‘Forgive me, sir. I don’t mean to be in any way awkward. But this is accidental death. A quirk of nature in the breasts of vicious beasts.’ He congratulated himself on having got that out in one breath. And then, perhaps a little pompously, ‘I am from the C.I.D., sir, the Detective Branch.’

Cattermole stood up sharply. ‘Inspector –’ his face was dark – ‘I could have called in the village bobby, but I didn’t want huge feet trampling over the last vestiges of what was once a great family. That is why I contacted McNaghten. God knows I had no time for Freddie. He’s dead and damned to all eternity. But there,’ he pointed dramatically to the massive portrait over the empty fireplace, ‘is the fourth Baron Hurstmonceux – and a better man never drew breath.’ Henry Cattermole was of the old school, honest and loyal. ‘Friendships forged at Eton and Quetta don’t die, Inspector.’ The inspector took his word for it. ‘It’s for his sake I sent for the Yard. No fuss, no scandal, you understand?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’

‘Poor Georgie. Freddie was his only son. The bastard killed him.’

‘Would that be on our files, sir?’

‘Oh, not literally, Lestrade. He didn’t actually put a revolver to his head. But with his … ways … he might just as well have done.’ Cattermole gazed long at the portrait. Then, ‘Come with me, Inspector.’

The two men left the house by the vine-covered south wing and crossed the velvet lawns to the stables. Beyond the main buildings here, where the hunters and thoroughbreds steamed after their exercise, they came to the kennels. Lestrade was not taken with dogs. One or two of his superiors were keen on the use of bloodhounds, but they always seemed to urinate on him whenever he had been involved with them. He often wondered whether it was anything personal or whether it was somewhere he had been. In a yard, thirty or forty foxhounds, smart in black, tan and white, licked and snuffled. Lestrade was glad there was no growl, no howl. Not wishing to let Sir Henry believe he was afraid of these curs, he extended a sure hand, praying that it didn’t shake. A heavy jowled dog, perhaps older, certainly darker than the rest, buried its nose in his palm. Lestrade ruffled its ears. ‘Good boy, good boy.’

‘Do you notice anything about these dogs?’ Cattermole asked.

Lestrade hated being put on the spot in this way. Give him a burgled tenement, a done bank or even a forged fiver and he was on home ground. But hunting and shooting weekends and country houses were somebody else’s patch. He checked the obvious – leg at each corner. None of the dogs had tried to pee on him yet.

‘You mean …’ Long years in the force had given him the slow amble, developed to the point which would give his questioner time to chip in.

‘Apart from the blood.’

Lestrade whipped back his hand and hoped that the gesture hadn’t been too sudden. He hadn’t in fact seen the blood – until now. But there it was, dark and caked around many mouths. Human blood. Hurstmonceux blood.

‘They’re so docile,’ Cattermole went on, ‘you wouldn’t think that six hours or so ago they tore a man apart, would you?’

Lestrade shuffled backwards as far as protocol would allow.

‘That one by you,’ Cattermole pointed at the dog which Lestrade had been patting. ‘That’s Tray, the lead hound. He would have gone for Freddie first. Rosebery said it had him by the throat.’

Lestrade was grateful for the fresh air. Across the courtyard, still in his hunting pinks strode Archibald Philip Primrose, 5
^th
Earl of Rosebery. He was an anxious-looking forty-four.

‘Ah, Rosebery. This is Inspector Lestrade – of Scotland Yard.’

‘Oh, God.’ Rosebery caught the proffered hand.

‘My Lord,’ Lestrade bowed stiffly. ‘Can you shed any light on this unfortunate affair?’

Rosebery looked around him like a stag at bay, his large watery eyes flashing to every corner of the yard. He took Lestrade’s arm and led him away down the lawns. Cattermole sensed his air of secrecy and suspicion and walked back towards the house. ‘I’ll see to your room, Lestrade,’ he called.

‘Thank you, Sir Henry.’

‘Look, Balustrade, there’s a Garter in the offing for me.’

‘My Lord?’ Lestrade would believe anything of the aristocracy, but Rosebery did not strike him as one of those.

‘No scandal, y’see. I can’t afford any scandal. Not now. I mean, Home Rule is one thing. And the gee gees, but this … God, poor Freddie.’

‘What sort of a man was he, sir?’

‘Who?’

‘Lord Hurstmonceux.’

‘Oh, a bastard. An absolute bastard. He had his moments, mind.’ Rosebery chuckled a brittle, distant laugh. ‘No, I suppose Freddie wasn’t what you would call a decent sort. Look here, er … Balcony … this won’t become common knowledge, will it?’

Lestrade had met this kind of pressure before, but from a man like Rosebery, Gladstone’s right-hand man, a foremost politician and Peer of the Realm, it was disconcerting. He wouldn’t budge Lestrade himself, but an inspector’s hands could easily be tied and he wasn’t at all sure about McNaghten. Influence and the old school tie were all they had once been, despite the extension of the franchise.

‘You can’t conceal the death of a member of the House of Lords, My Lord.’

‘Death?’ Rosebery’s tone suggested that he had been misjudging Lestrade. Then, more calmly, ‘Oh, quite so. Quite so.’

But Lestrade had been quicker. He had read the signs. Rosebery was hiding something.

‘Do you think it was something more, My Lord?’

‘More?’ Rosebery’s attempt to effect unconcern was pathetic.

‘Murder, My Lord.’ Lestrade turned to face the man so that their perambulations came to an abrupt end. Rosebery stared at him, his mouth sagging open.

‘How?’ was all that he could manage.

‘That’s exactly what’s bothering me,’ confessed Lestrade. ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

Rosebery blinked and walked on, following Lestrade’s lead. The tone of the conversation had changed. The policeman was now in charge, leading the noble lord around with an invisible ring through his aristocratic nose.

‘I take it Lord Hurstmonceux was an experienced huntsman?’

‘Oh, yes, ridden with the Quorn, the Cattistock, the best of them.’

‘Knew horses and dogs?’

‘Like a native. That’s what’s so damned peculiar.’ Rosebery was beginning to open up. ‘I mean, he treated his animals badly, God knows. But dogs are faithful curs. They’ll stand for a lot, y’know.’

‘When foxhounds are on the scent, what do they go for?’

‘Well, the fox, of course.’

‘Because of the scent?’

‘Yes. It’s bred into them.’

‘And what could make them turn on a man, especially when they are in full cry after the fox?’

Rosebery shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s the damnedest thing.’

Dinner was surprisingly convivial. True, Rosebery was still nervous, but the wine flowed and the aristocracy found the presence of a Yard officer more novel than irritating. Lestrade deflected probes about the Ripper case as deftly as he could but it was obviously still the talk of clubland. He coped remarkably well, for a man of his class, with the vast range of cutlery and silver which would have made Mrs Beeton’s head spin. It was a curiously masculine evening. A ‘stag weekend’ was how Lord Hurstmonceux had termed these functions – by family tradition the last hunt of the season was a ‘gentlemen only’ affair. Over cigars and port, Sir Bertram Cairns took Lestrade aside.

‘They’ll be talking Home Rule all night.’ He motioned to Rosebery and Cattermole, heads together in earnest conversation by the roaring log fire. ‘Bring your glass. There’s something I want to show you.’

Lestrade followed Cairns through the house, past his own room and on through endless passages, twisting to right and left, until they came to a locked door, studded with brass. Cairns produced a key and unlocked it. It took a while for Lestrade to take in the contents. The room was obviously some sort of laboratory. Hanging from the ceiling were gruesome birds in the attitude of flight, casting large shadows on the walls. Pigeons disintegrating on the impact of hawks, and shrikes impaling insects on thorns. On the tables and benches was a vast array of glassware, bottles and flasks and tubing. In the centre of the room, the floor was bare, scarred with cuts and stained darkish brown. In jars on the shelves was every assortment of animal, floating in greenish liquid.