Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (13 page)

‘The girl’, a pretty slip of a thing who made eyes at young Churchill, brought them the umpteenth beer as Grantham switched his reminiscences to the surgeons of the regiment.

‘A right lot they were. Wilkins, Crosse, the others. Did a proper job on my leg. Why, that’s why I still limp today. Sabre wounds should have healed better than that. Doctors! They’re all the same.’

Lestrade could learn no more. Yes, Grantham had known Jim Hodges, but not well. He had had a reputation of being a joker and ex-private Grantham had no sense of humour whatever. He wasn’t sure he’d keep his present job for long. His customers found him morose, he said, taciturn even. He’d probably end his days in the workhouse.

‘I’m heartily sorry for you,’ said Lestrade with feeling.

It was on his way out that one of those ludicrous accidents that seemed only to happen to Sholto Lestrade happened. As he reached the door of the White Swan, a passing sergeant dropped his swagger-stick. It rolled under Lestrade’s feet and for a moment the inspector teetered on it like an acrobat at the circus. Then he collapsed backwards, jarring his back as he did so, spilling the contents of a spittoon over his jacket. Churchill, suppressing a fit of the giggles as best he could, helped him to his feet.

‘Are you all right, Inspector?’

‘Thank you, Mr Churchill. By the way, if when you retire at a grand old age from the post of Home Secretary or general or whatever it is you are going to be and you write your memoirs, publish one word about me ending up “head first in a spittoon” and I swear I’ll rise up from my grave and haunt you.’

Young Churchill accompanied Lestrade as far as Oxford, whence he alighted among the dreaming spires to make his way home to Blenheim. The conversation had turned on many things. On the possibility that Lord Randolph’s debilitating illness was caused by poisoning. And how it would be possible to prove that the murderers – or intended murderers – were a conspiracy of Her Majesty, Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. Or there again, it might be Churchill’s old nanny, Mrs Everest. The possibilities were endless. Lestrade remained unmoved. Bearing in mind the stories he had heard about Lord Randolph’s liking for the ladies, the debilitating illness of the noble lord had but one source as far as he was concerned – Cupid’s measles. But he was not going to let the young man down so heavily.

What of Lizzie Borden? Churchill had also wanted to know. The American case that had recently filled the papers. His mother was American, did Lestrade know that? What was Lestrade’s professional opinion? Had she hacked her father and mother to death? Lestrade was non-committal in his answer. After all, no one had committed Lizzie Borden, either.

It was evening before Lestrade sat in the parlour of a neat little house in the village of Tysoe. Thatch, new and clipped, topped the old cottage nestling on the side of the hill as the shadows lengthened. For the second time that day he was alone with a ticking clock, a grandmother made in Coventry. He took in the contents of the room - small windows which let in a little light, two oil lamps steadily burning. A table covered with a cloth of purple velvet and on the sideboard a cluster of faded photographs. Two in particular caught Lestrade’s eye. Two rather similar men, one with magnificent flowing dundrearies, popular in the fifties, in the Review Order of the 11th Hussars; the other, taller, younger, neater, a more handsome face, in the uniform of an infantry regiment. The two sides of the triangle, thought Lestrade. And the third side, perhaps the vital clue to all the deaths so far, swept noiselessly into his presence.

‘It is not often I am visited by an officer from Scotland Yard, Inspector. Won’t you sit down?’

Lestrade eased himself into a tapestry chair, his back, from the day’s fall, still causing a certain stiffness. He dared not relax a single muscle – he knew from experience of many such accidents the pain this would cause. At times like these the children of passers-by had been known to comment, ‘Mama, there is a man with a coat-hanger still inside his coat.’ He carefully laid the metaphorical hook against the antimacassar.

‘I will come to the point, ma’am,’ Lestrade began as Mrs Douglas rang a tiny silver bell to summon tea. ‘The death of your late husband.’ Beneath her veil, the widow made no outward sign. She sat, reserved and demure in her black bombazine, a delicate woman of uncertain years. She had once been very beautiful, even the veil and the gathering dusk could not deny her that.

‘It has been twenty-two years, Inspector. What possible interest could it be now to Scotland Yard?’

‘Ma’am, I appreciate it must be painful for you, even after all this time, but I fear I must persist. What can you tell me about Colonel Douglas?’

‘“And darest thou then to beard the lion in his den,

The Douglas in his hall?”’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Sir Walter Scott, Inspector. His poem, Marmion. My husband was descended from the Douglases who waged war on the Marches those long centuries ago. They were ever a fighting family. You have heard of the Black Douglas?’

‘Would that be the African branch of the family, ma’am?’

‘Oh, Inspector,’ chuckled Mrs Douglas. ‘You’re teasing me.’

Lestrade was about to protest that he wasn’t when a maid brought tea, curtsied and left the room.

‘John Douglas was a fine man, Inspector. A fine man. Where can I start to tell you about him? His Army career? Well, Hart’s List will tell you all that.’

‘I do not have a copy with me, ma’am.’

‘No, of course not. Sugar?’

Lestrade nodded, but declined the Madeira cake.

‘He enlisted as ensign in the Sixty-first Foot in eighteen twenty-nine - my, an eternity ago now, isn’t it? Then, let me see, he joined the Seventy-ninth Highlanders. I never really understood why he exchanged into the cavalry. After all, the Highlanders were his own clansmen. It must have been his awful legs. Forgive me, Inspector, but at my age, I am allowed to transcend etiquette. “Lower limbs” are for the young. I call them legs.’

‘Quite so, ma’am.’

‘Yes, he looked quite dreadful in kilts. When I first received his attentions in a serious way, he was a captain in the Eleventh Light Dragoons. We married after a whirlwind romance – well, three years was a whirlwind in those days. He was tall, handsome, dashing, kind, considerate, everything a girl could wish for. By June eighteen fifty-four he was lieutenant-colonel commanding the regiment. There was only one cloud on the horizon.’

Lestrade braced himself to hear it.

‘Lord Cardigan, colonel of the regiment. Ever since that foul old man had been lieutenant-colonel of the Eleventh in the thirties he had regarded it as his pet. Ten thousand pounds a year he spent out of his own pocket to equip his men,’ she chuckled. ‘I remember a ditty going the rounds in those days –
The London Charivari
coined it – concerning the tightness of the trousers of the Eleventh. It went, let me see, it went,

“Oh pantaloons of cherry,

Oh redder than the berry.

For men to fight in things so tight,

It must be trying, very.”’

Lestrade tittered too.

‘None of which, of course, had the remotest thing to do with soldiering. God, how John hated that man. Cardigan was a perfect swine to his officers, Inspector. Upbraiding them in public, accusing them of drinking porter at his table. Small wonder there are now Socialists in the world when men with the arrogance of Cardigan strut upon it. The last years were quieter. John became colonel in eighteen fifty-seven and assistant adjutant-general of cavalry after that. He was commanding the Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot when he died. Doubtless you have seen his memorial there, in the garrison church?’

‘How did your husband die, Mrs Douglas?’

‘In his bed, Inspector.’

‘With respect, ma’am, I asked how, not where.’

‘What do old men die of, Inspector? My husband was fifteen years my senior.’

‘Hence Lieutenant Dunn?’ Lestrade rose with difficulty and handled the photograph of the officer in infantry uniform.

Mrs Douglas recovered the slight slip in her composure and poured them both another cup of tea.

‘Alex Dunn,’ she said with a sigh and gazed into the leafy middle distance of her youth. ‘Would you like me to tell you about him, too?’

Lestrade nodded.

‘Alex was younger than I, Inspector. Does that shock you? Well, it shocked a good many at the time. He was Canadian by birth. Perhaps it was that initially which made John dislike him. Inspector, the portrait I am painting of my husband is not a flattering one, I fear. He will seem to you petulant, anti-social. He wasn’t really. Not really. At least Alex went to Harrow. John and I had been married ten years when Alex joined the Eleventh. He was a young cornet, a dandy, broad shouldered, good looking. I was the colonel’s lady. I remember the night he first danced with me. Forgive my memories, Inspector. They cannot be of interest to you.’

‘On the contrary, ma’am. Go on.’

‘He had booked me for one waltz. And ended up dancing with me all night. Every head in the room turned. You could see all the ladies, the wives of the regiment, fluttering their fans and gossiping. Oh, how I loved it. John was furious.’

‘And you became … friends?’

‘We used the term “lovers” in those days, Inspector. Has it gone out of fashion now?’

‘No, ma’am,’ smiled Lestrade.

‘For two years we met in secret. God, I hated the lies, the deceit. But I was the colonel’s lady, Inspector. And it would have broken John’s heart. I have all of Alex’s letters still. I keep them in the same hat-box I hid them in all those years ago. Then came the Crimea. Alex was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour. He saved the lives of two of his men at Balaclava. Sergeant Bentley I think was one; the other I forget.’

Bill Bentley, thought Lestrade. Somebody saves him from Russian lances so that somebody else can put a pillow over his face. But here at last was a tangible link.

‘Alex came home in ‘fifty-five,’ Mrs Douglas went on. ‘I don’t know why; perhaps because he had come so close to death out there, so far from home. His attitude had changed. He was not prepared now to steal the secret moment, to brush my hand as though by accident. He had it out with John. They had a terrible row. I thought they would come to blows. When it was over, I could not stay with John any more. When Alex went to his estates in Toronto, I went with him.’

‘And then?’

Mrs Douglas let out a long sigh. ‘I knew Alex’s army days weren’t over. We were blissfully happy, Inspector, for the rest of his life. He became colonel of the Thirty-third Foot in ‘sixty-four. We travelled first to Poona, then to Abyssinia, his last posting. He died in a hunting accident on the twenty-fifth of January eighteen sixty-eight.’

The same year as Cardigan, Lestrade reminded himself. ‘How did it happen, Mrs Douglas?’ he asked.

‘A party of officers were hunting buck on the plains near Senafe. They say his rifle jammed and he was checking it when … when it blew up. It’s funny, I still have the clothes he wore that day.’

‘May I see them, ma’am?’

Mrs Douglas looked a little taken aback, but nodded and rang the bell.

‘Fetch Colonel Dunn’s things.’ She sent the maid scurrying into the bowels of the cottage.

‘And after Colonel Dunn’s death?’ Lestrade persisted.

‘Afterwards, I came home. To John. Oh, I know it was feeble. My own family did not want to know me. His still less. But we effected a reconciliation – of a sort. I somehow continued the dutiful wife at Aldershot. I still retained some affection for him, Inspector. Perhaps I even loved him a little.’

She paced the darkening room.

‘Was I wrong, Inspector? To run away with a younger man, a subaltern in my husband’s regiment? Oh, it’s the stuff dreams are made of for silly girls at school, their heads full of poetic nonsense. But in eighteen sixty-eight, I was forty-four years old. And romance had been shattered that day at Senafe.’

The maid brought in, with difficulty, a tin trunk. Lestrade helped her with it and immediately wished he hadn’t, because the ladies then had to help him upright. Mrs Douglas took out with loving care the shirt, trousers and duster coat with long white scarf and laid them on the table.

‘You had these cleaned of course, Mrs Douglas?’

‘Cleaned? No, Inspector, I did not. It is common knowledge that Her Majesty has her late husband’s evening clothes laid out on the bed each night at Osborne, as though he were there to wear them. Alex and I lived as man and wife for nearly thirteen years. No, Inspector. I wanted to remember him, his strength, his very smell. Does that seem strange to you?’

Lestrade picked up the coat and shirt. ‘You say the rifle jammed and exploded?’

‘Yes, Inspector.’

‘Then how do you account, ma’am, for this?’ and Lestrade placed a finger into the single bullet hole through the back of the coat, caked with the faded dark brown stain of Alex Dunn’s blood.

Mrs Douglas lit an oil lamp silently and raised her veil to let the light shine eerily from below, highlighting her once fine features, wrinkled now with age and the breaking of her heart.

‘Very well, Inspector.’ Her voice was still strong. ‘I have loved two men in my life – John Douglas, my husband, and Alex Dunn, my lover. How could I know the one would kill the other?’

‘How long have you known this, ma’am?’

‘For twenty-two years, Inspector. The night my husband died, he told me. He had been ill a short time only. Days, in fact. That last night, he held my hand and said, “Rosa, I cannot go with a lie on my lips. I shot Alex Dunn at Senafe. I killed him to get you back and I would do it again.” I just looked at him. “Don’t hate me,” he said, “I couldn’t bear that. My dearest Rosa,” and he slipped away.’

Lestrade folded the clothes neatly on the table.

‘So you have me at last, Inspector. I didn’t realise the holes in his clothes were not consistent with the kind of accident reported. I suppose Alex’s friends covered up out of loyalty to me. They didn’t want me hurt further. Tell me, will I go to prison?’

‘Technically, ma’am, you are an accessory after the fact of murder. But since the murderer is dead, I don’t suppose … And anyway, I have other fish to fry. You mentioned Sergeant Bentley earlier – the man Alex Dunn saved at Balaclava. What about Jim Hodges? Richard Brown? Do these names mean anything to you?’