The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (17 page)

‘’Ere, wa’s your game?’Skins was still squawking at the pressure of Dew’s hand on his none-too-savoury collar. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Lestrade, sir.’ Skins seemed to have gone even paler under the lurid lights when he saw Lestrade.

‘Hello, Skins, how’s the dead-lurking business? Set them down, Bandicoot. The gin is for Mr Evans, here.’ Skins leapt for the glass, but Lestrade’s hand slammed down over the top of it. He placed his bandaged nose an inch from the grey, whiskery face of Skins. ‘When he’s told us what we want to know.’

‘Look, guv’nor, you know me. I been in and out o’ the Bridewell all me life, but there’s some ’ard men around these parts now. ’onest, if I gets seed by one of them talking to the likes of you, why, then you’ll find me floatin’ and that’s the Gospel truth.’

‘“The likes of me”, Albert. That’s not very charitable.’

‘’Ave an ’eart, guv’nor.’ Skins’ eyes flashed round the room. The man was obviously terrified.

‘Last night. Midnight. Gravel Lane. What did you see?’

‘Nothin’, guv.’

Lestrade sat up, staring long and hard at the other man. ‘Albert Evans, dead-lurker, noisy racket man, snoozer, sawney-hunter, skinner …’

‘Oh, no, sir.’ Skins was indignant. ‘Don’t you know that’s why they call me Skins? ’Cos I wouldn’t do it. It’s not natural.’

‘You’re missing my point, Albert. Do you know there are 20,883 men and women in prisons in this country? How would you like it to be 20,884? And I’m not talking about theft, Evans. Failure to report a murder will mean the crank and the treadmill.’

Skins fell back in his chair. He was steadied by Dew on one side and Bandicoot on the other. ‘Think of it, Skins. Six hours a day, fifteen minutes on, two minutes off. You’ll climb 8,640 feet a day. And of course for you we’ll apply the brake to make it even more difficult.’

‘Oh, no, sir. Not at my time of life. I couldn’t take it, not again.’

‘There again, murder carries the drop.’ Lestrade quaffed his pint, artlessly. ‘I was talking to James Berry the other day …’

‘The public hangman?’ Skins was pure white.

‘That’s him. He was telling me how he miscalculated the drop at Preston last week. Pulled the lever and the villain goes down, wham!’ Lestrade brought his good fist down on the table. ‘Unfortunately, the rope was too short and his head came off. Blood all over the place …’

‘All right, guv,’ Skins sobbed. ‘I get your meanin’. I’ll tell you. Only I got to ’ave police protection.’

‘We’ll walk you to the door,’ said Lestrade.

‘Well, I was mindin’ me own business …’

‘Dead-lurking.’

‘Shut up, Dew.’

‘An’ I seen two men talking in Gravel Lane. It was a dark night last night so I couldn’t see ’em clear, but they was both toffs. One of ’em had a topper and cloak. I thought, it’s the bloody Ripper come back, I thought.’

‘And?’ Lestrade couldn’t wait for asides.

‘I couldn’t hear what they was sayin’. They both whispered, like. Then, and I was just about to turn into Gaydon Square, the gent in the topper ups and stabs the other one, thumps him in the chest, like.’

‘Did you see the knife?’

‘No, guv’nor. I ran. Last thing I seed was the toff kneelin’ down over the other un. And I said to meself, that’s it, ’e’s done for ’im.’

‘Why didn’t you report the incident?’ asked Bandicoot. All three men around the table looked at him with utter scorn.

‘The murderer,’ Lestrade said. ‘Is there anything about him you can remember?’

‘Like I said, guv’nor. It was real dark. ’E was a big bloke. A bit taller than you.’

‘As big as Bandicoot here?’ The constable obligingly stood up.

‘No, I wouldn’t say so. ’E walked funny.’

‘Walked funny? What do you mean, man? Out with it.’

‘Well, sort of … I don’t know, sir, as if ’is feet was ’urting ’im. Can I have a drink now, guv’nor?’

Lestrade gestured to the glasses. Skins downed one gin, then the other, as if they were life savers.

‘Hello, Skins.’ An alien voice made them all look up. Four big men filled the space in front of the raised table. Their spokesman was a sailor by his coat and tattoos. Bandicoot was particularly aware of the smell. ‘Talking to coppers again?’

As if at a signal, the music and drunken revelry died down. Beyond the four men, Lestrade saw all faces in the cellar turned towards them.

‘We’re not looking for trouble,’ Lestrade told the sailor.

‘Well, you’ve found it all the same.’

Bandicoot stood up, massive and immaculate. ‘I should warn you that we are officers from Scotland Yard,’ he said.

One of the men behind the sailor spat on the floor.

‘Haven’t you read the sign?’ said Lestrade, pointing to the far wall. ‘No hawkers. No spitters.’

‘’E’s a big boy, ain’t ’e?’ said another man to his mate, eying Bandicoot.

Lestrade turned to his constable. ‘Why don’t you tell them you won a cap at Eton for boxing? That’ll really frighten them.’

‘Don’t you think that’s a little arrogant, sir?’

‘Skins, you’re a dead man,’ the sailor snarled and aimed a burly right arm at him. Bandicoot caught it in mid-air and, spinning the man round, kicked him into the crowd. A roar went up as the fight started and tables and chairs were scattered as the crowd took up the best vantage points. The sailor got up, his pride more hurt than the rest of him. Skins had vanished in the smoke. Two other roughs in caps and monkey jackets sidled up to the raised table. Lestrade and Dew were now on their feet and the inspector began to walk steadily towards the centre of the room. A hundred miles away, or so it seemed, the staircase was bathed in a lurid green light. He saw the blow coming from his left, but his left arm was too stiff and painful to deflect it. He spun round and his brass knuckles crunched head on with the wildly swung fist. The rough fell back, his hand broken. Lestrade staggered too, his wrist aching. Only the knuckleduster had saved him from a similar fate. Two of them rushed at Dew and that valiant policeman was last seen by Lestrade disappearing under a tangle of arms and legs. Bandicoot was parrying blows with his shoulders and Lestrade saw him pick up one of the smaller roughs and throw him the length of the bar. More and more bystanders were knocked about as the melee spread.

When it became apparent that all three policemen were essentially on their feet, and that three roughs lay unconscious on the floor, the mood turned nasty. There was an eerie pause, during which the cheering died down and then four knives flicked out, almost simultaneously, flashing in the sulphur light. Each of the policemen prepared for it in their own way. Lestrade flicked his own catchblade out, which certainly surprised Bandicoot and Dew, if not the clientele of the White Elephant. Bandicoot picked up a chair, like a rather unconvincing lion tamer. Dew grabbed the nearest pewter mugs, two in each hand, and waited.

‘Prepare ye for the Lord!’ a harsh voice bellowed, shattering the stillness.

All eyes turned at once to the stairs. Half way down them, silhouetted against the gaslight green stood a white-haired, wild-bearded man in a military frock-coat. The light seemed to play around his head as if it were a halo. Around him, a number of burly, uniformed young men were gathering. He descended the stairs, his footsteps the only sound in the entire cellar.

‘Repent, sinner,’ he snarled at the nearest rough and brought his heavy Bible crashing down on the man’s head. The rough collapsed among the overturned chairs.

‘You likewise, brother.’ And he smashed the brass clasps of the Bible into the teeth of a second. Before he reached the third, the area had cleared and some of the troublemakers had sloped towards the steps.

‘No one leaves!’ The terrible old man pointed towards the stairs and his henchmen formed a solid wall of blue. ‘Time for a prayer meeting.’

To the constables’ astonishment, the assembly – harlot, sneak-thief and drunk alike, all bowed their heads, as though they were in a church. Lestrade crossed the floor quietly.

‘Something for your collection, General?’ He produced a sovereign from his coat.

‘And something for yours, Inspector.’ The old man produced a book from his and pressed it into Lestrade’s hand.

‘Take your hat off, Dew,’ Lestrade growled. ‘You are in the presence of a great man.’

The assembly at the head of the stairs parted to let the policemen through.

In the alley above, it was Dew who first broke the silence. ‘Was that …?’

‘General William Booth of the Salvation Army, laddie. And thank his God he turned up when he did.’

From the cellar tap-room of the White Elephant, there floated the strains of ‘Abide With Me’ and the incongruous rattle of a tambourine. Bandicoot glanced over Lestrade’s shoulder at his book.
In Darkest England
.

‘And is there a “way out”, Inspector?’

‘That’s too clever for me, Bandicoot. Let’s go.’

‘One thing, sir. What did Skins mean when he said skinning was unnatural? What is skinning, sir? I’m afraid I didn’t understand any of that conversation.’

‘Skinning, Bandicoot, as any novice bobby will tell you, is the crime of enticing children into alleyways and stealing their clothes.’

‘No wonder he thought it unnatural,’ said Bandicoot, distastefully. ‘He obviously has a moral streak.’

Lestrade chuckled. ‘No, no, Bandicoot. Skins thinks it unnatural because skinning is women’s work. It would be a blow to his manhood. Dew, call me a cab in The Minories. We’ve got some bruises to look after.’

And Dew’s voice echoed back as he disappeared into the darkness. ‘You’re a cab in The Minories.’

Séance on a Cold Thursday Evening

This time there were two mourning letters for Lestrade. They both came two days after the murder of Forbes. McNaghten had intensified the search for ‘Agrippa’, Agrippa the Elusive. Twenty-six constables and three sergeants had been found from somewhere, but house-to-house searches had revealed nothing.

The first letter, Lestrade had been waiting for –

‘Agrippa’ had become the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor man’. It was the same man, unruffled. So Forbes had found something, but what? He was onto someone, but who?

It was the second letter that took Lestrade by surprise. The scissors man had struck again, even before there was a body, even before a crime was reported. Somewhere, Augustus lay dead –

Across the twilight river, the trees of October were dark and gaunt. A curlew called from the heathland. A knot of men wound their way up from the moored boat. Their lanterns swung as they walked, flinging shafts of light across the walls of the mill. Inspector Hovey of the Kent Constabulary looked at the huge, black building ahead of him. To one side the mill stream rushed and gushed, the overshot wheel groaning in the green darkness. A solitary light flickered in an upstairs room, high on the right.

‘Somebody’s in,’ a constable muttered.

‘Inspector.’ Hovey held out his arm to the front door, by way of invitation to his guest. Lestrade took the bell pull. Far away, down an echoing hall, they heard a distant answering ring.

‘Old Prendergast’s too mean to pay servants. And, as he’s deaf, you’ll wait for ever,’ Hovey observed.

‘This is your county, Hovey. It should be your boot in the door.’

‘Vowles. You’re the one with the shoulders. Open that door.’

Constable Vowles passed his lantern to a colleague and tried the door. It opened easily. ‘It was nothing, sir,’ he beamed. Hovey and Lestrade ignored the levity and in a confusion of courtesy, the inspectors collided abreast in the doorway.

It was Lestrade who finally led the way through the darkened house. There was no gas, not even any oil lamps that he could see. The lanterns threw long shadows across the faded wallpaper, peeling in the passageway. There was dust everywhere and cobwebs thick and white in the torchlight.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Vowles cried out. The others turned, constables’ hands poised over their truncheons. ‘Mice,’ said Vowles, a little sheepishly.

‘For God’s sake get off that chair, man. You’re a policeman.’

The party continued on its way, room by room. Empty, silent, dark.

‘The light was at the top of the house. Furthest away from the wheel,’ Lestrade observed.

‘That would be through here.’ Hovey now led the way, elbowing aside cobwebs as he reached the first landing. ‘God, it’s cold.’

The door at the end of the corridor was firmly locked. It took Vowles and the other two constables several attempts to force it open. The stench in the total darkness forced them back.

‘Christ, what is it?’ a constable asked.

‘That’s the smell of death,’ Lestrade told him.

‘I’m sure this was the room with the candle,’ said Hovey.

Lestrade took a lantern. ‘Opening the door probably blew it out,’ he said. His feet crunched on broken glass. He glanced about him. A bed, a chair, a sideboard near the window. His feet hit something else. It rattled, clanked. It was a chain, heavy, long. He picked up the cold links and pulled them taut. There was something at the end of it. Holding the lantern up, he saw what it was. An old man, greyish-green, in tattered nightgown, lay face up on the floor. Near his body the chain divided, one length attached to a bracelet on his wrist, the other on his ankle. Lestrade saw that the skin around these bracelets was cut and chafed. The man was skeletal, the eyes sunken, staring blindly at the ceiling. Lestrade looked up. Silhouetted against the dark blue of the night sky was a bowl of fruit. He could see by the lantern light that it was mouldy and shrivelled. He understood completely.

‘Augustus,’ he said.

‘No. Isaac Prendergast,’ Hovey corrected him, peering over his shoulder. ‘God, the smell.’

Lestrade saw effluent all over the dead man’s clothes and the floor. There was no sound now but Vowles quietly vomiting on the landing.

‘Have your constables stand guard at the front door, Inspector,’ Lestrade said. ‘We can’t do much until daylight.’

Daylight brought an unkind drizzle from the west. Lestrade had spent a cramped night sitting bolt upright in the settle of the snug of the Folded Arms. He was wakened by a tweenie raking out the fire with myriad apologies for disturbing ‘the gennelman from Lunnon’. Breakfast was a cup of very mediocre tea and the journey, by trap and rowing boat back to the old mill, was equally wet and nasty. Vowles huddled against the doorframe, dripping wet and nearly as blue as his helmet. Lestrade threw off his Donegal and hung the soaking thing on another constable in the hall. Isaac Prendergast was even deader by daylight than he had appeared in the dark. The room was vile, floor and bed covered in excrement and the old man’s body at the full stretch of the chains as though he had been reaching with his dying breath for the window.

‘This is unbelievable,’ Hovey was muttering. ‘It looks as if some bastard chained him up so that he couldn’t reach the fruit, leaving it there just out of reach. I’ve never seen anything like it in twenty years in the Force.’

‘Nor will you again, Inspector,’ said Lestrade. ‘Are your men reliable?’

‘They may not be the Yard, Inspector, but they are Kentish men. They know what they are about.’

‘Good. Then have them go over this house with a fine toothcomb, especially this room.’

Hovey looked at the state of it. ‘You’re asking a lot …’

‘Look, Hovey,’ Lestrade’s patience, after such a night, was wearing a little thin. ‘Why do you think I’m here, man?’

‘I was wondering that.’

‘Well, call it sixth sense. Let’s say it fitted a certain pattern. Isaac Prendergast is not an isolated case. He is the ninth victim of the man I’m after. And I’ll hang up my cuffs if he claims a tenth. So if you or any of your yokels are going to get squeamish on me, God help me, I’ll see you drummed out of the Force.’

The silent response told him he had struck a chord. Hovey spun round and barked orders to his men. Lestrade went to find some fresh air. He watched the raindrops make ripples on the river, and the dark lines of the mill broke and shivered.

‘He was a spiritualist, you know,’ Hovey had joined him. ‘I wonder if he’ll come back.’

Lestrade turned to him with a rising feeling in his heart – the first he had had since the case began.

‘Perhaps he will if we call him,’ he said.

McNaghten’s telegram was more encouraging that Lestrade had expected.
Go ahead
, it read.
Have great faith in spiritualism. More Things in Heaven and Earth. Get some results. McNaghten.
Lestrade was wondering how he could implement this decidedly off piece of extra-curricular police work when the solution fell right into his lap. He was visited by a deputation of sinister-looking ladies and gentlemen from the Dymchurch Spiritualist Circle. It had been some time, they said, since Isaac Prendergast had joined them, but each member of the Circle had once promised to do his or her utmost to reach the others when he or she crossed to the Other Side and, by a fortuitous coincidence, the great Madame Slopesski had expressed a wish to attend a séance for this very purpose as part of her European and American tour. The time was Thursday at seven in the evening. The place was Carlton Hall, the old manor house beyond Dymchurch Level. The Circle had heard from Inspector Hovey of Lestrade’s interest in the case (Lestrade hoped that his colleague had not given too much away) and invited both inspectors to the meeting.

In the event, Hovey had pleaded a previous engagement and Lestrade went alone. He crossed Dymchurch Level a little before seven. Far away he heard the rush of the sea, haunting, lonely. It was a clear night, starlit and cold. The turf was springy beneath his feet. He didn’t quite know what to expect. He had played with table-rapping as a boy, when such things were more in vogue than they were now. But he had never attended a séance in his life. Those held by Mr Lees, the medium employed in the Ripper case, had been observed by a very small, select gathering, headed by McNaghten and Abberline. Though Lestrade had met Lees, he had not been present at the séances. His directions for tonight had been very clear and by a quarter past seven his feet crunched on the gravel drive leading to Carlton Hall, an imposing mid-century house, turreted and bastioned. Very Gothic, Lestrade mused to himself. As a boy, his favourite paper had been
Varney the Vampire
. He could almost hear the leathery wings flapping through the crypt.

A tall, elegant Lascar took his hat and Donegal in the porchway he was shown into the drawing room, heavy with velvet curtains, latticed screens and studded doorways. A huge fire roared and crackled in the grate.

‘Not a night for smuggling.’ A cheery voice welcomed Lestrade from an ante-room.

‘If you say not,’ he answered.

‘No, too cold. Too clear. Hasdrubal Carlton. Welcome to my home.’ The squire extended a hand.

‘Sholto Lestrade. Thank you.’

‘Ah, yes, from Scotland Yard, no less? Not much chance you being a smuggler, eh?’ Carlton chuckled.

‘I don’t look too good in scarecrow’s rags.’

‘Ah, so you know our local legend – Dr Syn, the redoubtable Vicar of Dymchurch?’

‘I get the impression that before the death of Isaac Prendergast, people in this part of the world talked of little else.’

‘You may be right, Mr Lestrade, but please if I may be so bold, we of the spiritualist persuasion do not use the word “death”; we don’t acknowledge such a thing. We prefer “going over”. Brandy?’

Lestrade accepted a glass gratefully and turned his backside to the welcoming fire. It looked as though they were in for another winter like the last, beginning in October and ending in May. Carlton was called away by the arrival of other guests. One or two of them Lestrade recognised as having been in the deputation who had called on him at the Folded Arms. Introductions over, the group was taken through into the ante-room from which Carlton had first emerged. The entire room was hung with black velvet and, under a single oil lamp in the centre, was a large oval table surrounded by nine chairs. Solemnly, the guests took what seemed to be accustomed places. The Lascar showed Lestrade to a seat between two elderly ladies of the parish, lit a number of incense sticks and then retired, closing the double doors behind him.

‘We have two surprises tonight, ladies and gentlemen,’ Carlton said in a soft whisper. ‘Apart, that is, from the welcome presence of Inspector Lestrade.’

Nods and beams all round in the direction of the inspector.

‘One is that Madame Slopesski can be with us after all.’ A ripple of applause. ‘As some of you will know we thought yesterday she would be unable to be with us because of the pressure of her tour. I am delighted to report that I received a telegram but an hour ago and she will join us presently. The second surprise is that we have yet another guest, someone who is revered by you all and known I think to one or two of you, a founder member of the Society for Psychical Research, Mr Frank Podmore.’

Rapturous applause, somewhat at odds with the hushed tones which preceded and followed it, heralded the newcomer’s arrival. Lestrade had heard of Podmore too, but in a rather different context. Gregson had mentioned him because the man was a Fabian Socialist and to Gregson, of course not terribly conversant with the finer points of politics, that smacked of anarchy. Athelney Jones was after him too, strongly suspecting that Mr Podmore was a secret cottage loaf who had other designs on a long string of paper boys and telegraph lads than merely cataloguing their supposedly paranormal experiences.