Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (5 page)

Watson blustered, sweeping his grey whiskers from side to side in embarrassment. ‘But it’s all done in the best possible taste, Lestrade. Holmes and I …’

‘Sherlock Holmes is dead, Dr Watson. As I recall he hurtled over the Reichenbach Falls eighteen months ago, struggling with an innocent bystander whom he mistook for you.’

‘Sssshhh!’ Watson spun around in all directions in case of Ears.

‘It’s all right. Dew is deaf and dumb. Isn’t that so, constable?’

Dew placed the tea on Lestrade’s desk and went about his business as though he hadn’t heard. ‘See what I mean?’

‘Good God, Lestrade. It’s terrible that a man so depleted as that in natural functions should be allowed in the Metropolitan Police!’

Lestrade’s resigned look would have withered a brighter man.

‘Lestrade. Sholto. You promised …’

Lestrade waved aside the doctor’s mute protestations.

‘In all seriousness, though, Dr Watson. I cannot take any action against
Punch
. They have their little jibes at the Yard, too, you know. In any case, there are more pressing matters.’

‘Oh?’ Watson examined his tea carefully before taking his first sip.

‘Are you living now in Baker Street?’

‘Yes,’ said Watson. ‘221B. I … I’ve tried to keep Holmes’ spirit alive. I’m afraid Mycroft was no help.’

‘Mycroft?’

‘The Great Detective’s brother, at the Foreign Office.’

Lestrade winced at the description of the dead addict. ‘And Mrs Hudson?’

‘It’s all lies, I tell you.’ Watson realised he had been a little too vehement. He checked his pulse, momentarily. Lestrade sensed a raw nerve and took a different tack.

‘You have a surgery in Butcher Row, off Ratcliffe Highway?’

‘I have.’ Watson began to feel uneasy.

‘You are what is known as a Poor Law doctor?’

‘I believe it is my Christian duty to –’

‘Quite. Quite. And did you attend a death at eighteen, Havering Court on March the seventeenth last?’

‘March the seventeenth? Er …’

‘A docker named Joseph Towers.’

‘Oh, yes, now I remember. Natural causes.’

‘Cyanide poisoning.’

‘What?’ Watson was on his feet again.

‘Can you smell almonds, Doctor?’

Watson looked around him, sniffing maniacally.

‘Not at the moment,’ said Lestrade. ‘In the natural course of things.’

‘Almonds? Of course.’

‘But you can’t smell them on a corpse, evidently. What about the pupils?’

‘Whose pupils?’

‘The deceased’s pupils.’

‘Er … God, Lestrade. You’re talking about three weeks ago.

‘I’m talking about murder, Doctor. Were the pupils dilated?’

‘No.’ Watson was as emphatic as he could be, bearing in mind he hadn’t the faintest recollection. ‘But how do you know it’s murder?’

Lestrade wasn’t going to compromise his career before the good doctor, so he resorted to all the subtlety at his command. ‘We’ll ask the questions, sir.’ Lestrade began to wander the confines of his office. He had time again to glimpse the grandeur of Norman Shaw’s architectural style as the view of the blank wall from his window met him. If he craned his neck a little and stood on Dew’s shoulders and then stooped, he could catch a flash of the water in the morning sun on the river. But he had seen the river before and it wasn’t really worth the contortions.

‘So there was nothing about the case that led you to suspect foul play?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Watson was doubting not only his many years as a medical practitioner, but his many years in association with the Great Detective.

Lestrade decided to let the matter drop. Watson sensed it and pursued a new tack.

‘I read about your West Country adventure, Inspector. How you found the … er …’

‘Tasmanian wolf.’

‘Yes.’ Watson thumped his knee and strode to the door. ‘Er … I hesitate to mention it, Lestrade. Especially in view of the
Charivari
, but … well, I’ve been’ – another glance round to see that Dew was still deaf – ‘I’ve been thinking that I might resurrect Holmes, give him a new case. How about … “The Wolf of the Ashburtons”?’

‘You’re going to give Holmes
my
case?’ snarled Lestrade, even his bandaged knuckle turning white.

‘Well, no, not exactly. But …’ Watson was edging through the door, ‘how about “The Beast of the Aborigines”?’ and he dodged out as Lestrade threw his bowler at him.

The inspector called out as the doctor fled the building, ‘You may as well call it the Hound of the Baskervilles.’

Ben Tillet sat as in a studio portrait, in his waistcoat, sleeves rolled up, flanked by two heavies from the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union, who Lestrade thought he recognised from innumerable editions of the
Police Gazette.
Either of them, Lestrade surmised, could have cracked walnuts with his elbows.

‘I’d lost touch with him, Mr Lestrade,’ Tillet was saying, never a man to acknowledge titles. ‘The last time I saw Joe Towers was … oh … three years ago.’

‘You’ve moved on to higher things?’ ventured Lestrade.

‘I don’t consider being an alderman of the City of London, a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and a prospective Member of Parliament “higher things”. No, I’m still a man of the people, as I was in ’eighty-nine. Aren’t I, boys?’

‘Yes, Mr Tillet,’ chorused the heavies, as though he had pressed the switches on two automata.

‘And what of your work with the Independent Labour Party?’ Lestrade thought he might as well get in a bit of fishing while he was there.

‘Forgive me, Mr Lestrade. I thought you were enquiring into the death of Joe Towers, not my political affinities. If I am wrong, then of course I must have my lawyer present.’

‘Towers, then.’ Lestrade returned to the point. ‘The man worked closely with you. How well did you know him? Did he have any enemies?’

‘We all had enemies in ’eighty-nine, Mr Lestrade – the pillars of society, the wealthy, the bourgeoisie in their smug, middle class houses – not to mention the boys in blue.’ Lestrade ignored the jibe. ‘But we had friends too – thousands of dockers in the Port of London, engineers like Tommy Mann and John Burns. We even got thirty thousand pounds for our cause from our brothers in Australia. Now that’s working class solidarity, Mr Lestrade. Something I’m proud of. Joe Towers was part of all that. I remember the first time I met him in the main yard at the West India. He was a casual, Mr Lestrade, one of those countless numbers who drifted to work each day until ’eighty-nine, hoping for a ship to unload. He told me he hadn’t worked for four days and hadn’t eaten for three. It’s funny, but Joe Towers, as much as anybody, is why I called the Dock strike. It was for men like him we fought for the “Tanner”. I can see him now, standing in the Committee Room alongside Cardinal Manning, his face a picture of rapt attention to the great man speaking on our behalf.’

‘But he didn’t have any specific enemies?’

‘No, he was a mild man. Everybody liked Joe.’

Lestrade felt Tillet could help him no longer and rose to go.

‘Of course,’ the Alderman went on, ‘we are all mild men and there are thousands of us. There is a Union of Clerks and Teachers, of shop Assistants, a Miners’ Federation with two hundred thousand members this year. Altogether we number over one and a half million. How many Metropolitan Policemen are there, Inspector Lestrade?’

‘Enough, Mr Tillet.’

‘Of course,’ the Alderman began again, ‘if you can’t beat us, you could join us. Think of it, a Police Federation. Full pension rights, sick benefits, funeral expenses, strike pay. It’s got to come.’

But Lestrade was already on the stairs whence he had come, out into the warm sunlight, where the air was fresh.

Walter Dew was a copper of very average ability. There was nothing disparaging in that. Wasn’t it a fact, regularly voiced by the
Charivari
itself, that the vast bulk of the Metropolitan Police were of average ability? But on the subject of vast bulk, Nimrod Frost, the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, was anxious to weed out the weak ones in his department. So it was that Constable Dew, hair macassared to perfection, moustaches combed just so, stood in Frost’s office that day at the end of April, unusually for a plainclothesman, bedecked in his full uniform, helmet glittering in the crook of his arm. Perhaps crook wasn’t the right term and he shifted it as the thought struck him. Lestrade had told him to box clever, to be circumspect (something which Dew thought only happened to Jews) in that the evidence pointing to foul play in connection with the death of Joe Towers
without
Lestrade’s unofficial post-mortem findings was thin indeed. Even so, Frost was impressed with Beeson’s suspicions, based on long service within the arm of the law, as Lestrade had been, and so sanctioned Dew’s depositions taken from all and sundry who had known Joe Towers and who were among the last to see him alive.

‘All right, Dew, let’s have the last of them.’ Frost rested his podgy hands on the enormous velvet area of his waistcoat.

Dew flipped the page of his notepad and began. ‘On the twenty-fourth instant I had reason to attend a public house …’

‘A public house, Dew?’ Frost interrupted him.

‘In the pursuance of my duty, sir.’ Dew was quick to reassure him. ‘A public house called, appropriately, the Pig and Helmet.’

‘Appropriately, Dew?’

Dew cleared his throat to cover his failure at levity and went on. ‘… where at twelve thirty p.m. I met one Abel Seaman …’

‘Abel Seaman, Dew? Are you trying to be funny?’

Dew noticed that Nimrod Frost’s face was slowly turning the purple of his waistcoat.

‘I’m sorry, sir, that was the man’s name – or so he claimed.’

Frost’s eyebrows disappeared under what was left of his hairline, but he said nothing.

‘Who told me that he had seen the deceased Joseph Towers at approximately three thirty on the day of his death and accompanied him some little distance towards his destination, viz and to wit …’

‘To wit, Dew?’ repeated frost, doing a passable impression of a barn owl.

‘Er … Mr Lestrade told me to put that in, sir.’

‘Go on.’

‘This Abel Seaman is known to us, sir. He was a one-time cash carrier, known to be a bug hunter and cly faker, who …’

‘Dew!’ Frost rose with all the speed and majesty his paunch would permit. ‘Could we have this in English, please? It is, after all, the language of the Queen.’

Dew looked a little shamefaced. ‘Of course, sir. He was a one-time prostitutes’ manager, who has done a little bit of pick-pocketing and stealing from drunks.’

‘Not a man whose word is reliable?’ Frost took a pinch of snuff from the elaborate silver box on his desk. Dew could read upside down (in fact, rather better than the right way up) the inscription ‘From the grateful people of Grantham’ before Frost snapped shut the lid and proceeded to inhale violently the orange-coloured powder from the back of his hand.

‘I rather think in this instance, yes, sir.’

Frost waited for him to go on.

‘Seaman talked with Towers about this and that and Towers had told him that he was expecting someone that afternoon and declined his offer of a gatter … er … beer. Seaman was on his way to the penny gaff … er … Punch and Judy show, and spent perhaps five minutes in Towers’ company.’

‘A grown man attending a Punch and Judy show, Dew?’ Frost was incredulous.

‘Well, if you ask me, sir, it was probably an Under and Over,’ and as Frost spun round with the speed of a laden sloth, Dew corrected himself. ‘A fairground swindling game, sir.’

‘Did Seaman learn more of Towers’ visitor?’

‘No, sir, except that he was Trasseno.’

‘An Italian?’ Frost felt he was learning the lingo quite well.

‘No, sir, a bad person.’

Frost harrumphed his indignation at being wrong and continued to strut round his office.

‘So it is likely that Seaman – if we can accept his word at all – was the last person to see Towers alive – if indeed he was murdered at all, and of course we only have ex-sergeant Beeson’s sixth sense on that.’

Dew felt the ground shifting beneath him. Box clever, Lestrade had said, box clever.

‘Yes, sir,’ was the height of Dew’s wit and repartee.

Frost took Dew’s notepad and thumbed through the pages. The man was barely literate, he thought. The lines could be the work of a deranged chimpanzee.

‘Tell me, Dew, what do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘Sir?’ Dew frowned at the unusual levity from the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department.

‘What are your ambitions, Dew?’ he said, by way of an explanation for the feeble-minded.

‘Well, sir,’ Dew was grinning at the prospect, ‘I’d like to be a chief inspector one day, sir … and …’

There was an ‘and’ Frost realised. As if the first hope wasn’t forlorn enough.

‘And?’ He leaned over towards Dew’s right ear.

‘And I want to write a book, sir, a biographical account of my greatest case. It will be called “I Caught …” and then the name of the arch-criminal.’

Frost sat silently down in the folds of his leather armchair, whence he only ever rose with difficulty.

‘That will be all, Dew,’ he said, and as the ambitious young constable turned to go, he said, with all the sympathy and encouragement at his disposal, ‘I think you’d have difficulty catching a cold.’

To the Lighthouse

Joseph Towers had been dead for exactly one month. He had been buried for three weeks. And reburied for nearly two. Lestrade reflected again, as he had so often in the past, how difficult it was to reconstruct the last hours of a man’s life. Particularly an old man, a man with few real friends. And in a way, Joe Towers had been lucky. He had a good friend in Ben Beeson, whose nose had smelt a rat, if not bitter almonds. How many more old men, and young ones too, and women, mouldered in paupers’ graves or the elegance of Abney Park, apparently dead of natural causes, precisely because they did not have Ben Beeson for a friend?

And had one such case now landed on Lestrade’s desk, in the form of a plea from the Norfolk Constabulary? It was Sergeant Edgar Bradstreet who brought it to Lestrade’s attention – Gregson’s blue-eyed boy.

‘The inspector thinks it’s anarchists, sir,’ Bradstreet was saying. ‘He suspects the Russians, perhaps using Irish
agents provocateurs
.’

‘Inspector Gregson always suspects the Russians, Sergeant, and he usually throws in an Irishman or two, for good measure. After all, he does help run the Special Irish Branch. What would we do without Irishmen, eh?’

‘Do I detect a note of cynicism, sir?’

Well, thought Lestrade, Gregson had chosen a bright one this time.

‘Realism is, I think, a better word, Bradstreet. Do I understand I am to have the pleasure of your company on this little visit?’

‘I have been seconded to your division, sir.’

‘Not enough anarchy in London at the moment, hmm? Well, never mind. If you’re right, we’ll smoke a few out in the fleshpots and opium hells of Cromer, eh?’

Lestrade was suffering from a superfluity of sergeants. In addition to Bradstreet, a new boy was thrust upon him – one Hector Charlo, by special recommendation of His Nims. ‘He has friends in high places,’ Frost had said. ‘He looks to be a good boy, Lestrade. I think you can rely on him in a crisis.’

In the event, Lestrade couldn’t. Sergeant Charlo stood before the inspector in the angle of the Yard’s plumbing that passed as Lestrade’s office, a cherry nose swathed in a muffler, and eyes swimming with all the signs of terminal pneumonia.

‘I’b sorry, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘Not good forb, I know, and by first assignbent with you, but I’b afraid I … I …’ and his whole body shook with the violence of his sneezing.

‘You don’t fancy the Norfolk air, then, Charlo?’ Lestrade proffered.

‘With respect, Inspector, the ondly place I fancy dow is by bed.’

‘All right,’ sighed Lestrade, never impressed by physical illness. ‘Get your head under a towel and dose yourself up. You’d have thought they could have cured the common cold by now.’

‘There’s nothing common about by cold, sir,’ said Charlo, with a brave stab at some dignity. ‘It’s probably turning to bronchitis as we speak.’

‘We should be back in a day or two,’ Lestrade went on. ‘Report bright and early Monday morning.’

Bradstreet hoped that Lestrade had been joking about the fleshpots and opium hells, but he had never been to Norfolk before and he didn’t know
quite
what a hell-hole Cromer was. The representatives of Her Majesty’s Detective Force caught the train from Liverpool Street, Lestrade having made some quip about Bradstreet’s railway guide, which fell on professionally deaf ears and they journeyed without incident to Norwich. Thence by another train to Cromer, where they found, with surprising difficulty for two men trained to know their way around, the Police Station.

The chief constable, so less, informed them that the body was still
in situ
. Lestrade allowed a whimsy to enter his mind that had Dew been with him he would now be searching his gazetteer of Norfolk to find the village of Situ. He was grateful that Bradstreet seemed to have a smattering of Latin, or perhaps it was just that he hid his naivety better than Dew. The deceased was one William Bentley, lighthouse keeper, and the cause of death was natural. The only reason that the Yard had been called in was one of mere formality since one of Her Majesty’s lighthouses constituted an area of strategic importance. Should a French or even a German fleet appear in the Wash, Cromer lighthouse constituted an area of strategic importance. Should a French or even a German fleet appear in the Wash, Cromer Lighthouse could be instrumental in their landing. As such, and as a matter of course, an officer of the rank of inspector or above from the Metropolitan Police was duty-bound to carry out the aforementioned formalities. In view of the threat from possible espionage, that some dastardly foreign power was eliminating lighthouse keepers one by one, presumably before starting on the garrisons of the Martello Towers and Palmerston’s Follies around the south coast, it was natural that the Special Irish Branch and its most noted bloodhound, Tobias Gregson, should be involved. Gregson however had larger problems. It was rumoured that William F Cody was staging another British visit at the closing phase of his Continental tour and if there was a nation other than the Russians whom Gregson suspected, it was the Americans. So Bradstreet had been sent instead. Lestrade wondered why he too had been sent. The reason that appealed most was that he hoped Nimrod Frost shared his suspicion of the Special Branch and daren’t let Bradstreet out alone.

The little party of policemen picked their way across the cliffs that evening. The dying sun lent a magical glow to the small town clustered below them, gilding the great grey tower of St Peter and St Paul. Below to their right stretched the sand and shingle of Foulness, nearly dry now at low tide. The light flashed with its inevitable regularity above the whitewashed building. No one spoke. They were greeted at the door by the head keeper, Nathaniel Blogg, whose family, the Yard were told, had for years been rescuing sailors and fishermen from the jaws of the sea. The skin of his weathered face was the colour of the crab shells which littered the rocks. There was no trace of humour, no trace of warmth. It was the face, thought Lestrade, of a man who had looked too often on death. It was like looking into a mirror. Shifting the metaphor mentally, it was the face that saved a thousand ships.

Blogg led the way, with a series of grunts and rustic growls, to one of the upper rooms. On a makeshift bunk inside lay the body of William Bentley, dead these four days. The sea air through the window had removed the smell of death. Lestrade looked at the body, checked the eyes, having removed Blogg’s pennies first. Something. What?

‘Bradstreet,’ he motioned to the sergeant. ‘Your views?’

The sergeant looked carefully. He was not used to whole bodies. Most of the corpses he saw in his current line of duty had been eviscerated by explosives. Cause of death seemed a little academic after that.

‘Age about seventy, sir. Height, five feet eight inches or so. Colour of eyes, hazel. Not much hair. I would have to remove his clothes for distinguishing marks. Dead about four days.’

‘Hmm.’ Lestrade looked at the chief constable for confirmation. He nodded. ‘Cause of death?’

‘Natural, sir. Old age?’

‘Mr Blogg, you found the body?’

‘Ar.’

‘What?’

‘Ar,’ said Blogg louder, assuming the moustachioed Londoner with his distinctly inland pea-jacket to be deaf.

‘Who else has been in this room?’

‘Er – until today only me, young Emma and ’er fella and Jem.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘Jeremiah Rook is the local constable who Mr Blogg sensibly summoned,’ offered the chief constable. ‘Emma Hopkins, nee Bentley, is the daughter of the deceased. She arrived from York yesterday with her husband. Is any of this relevant, Inspector?’

‘Yes, sir, it is. You see, my sergeant’s description of the corpse is admirable, but he did get one thing wrong.’

‘Oh?’ Bradstreet thought it best to straighten himself so that he was a full inch taller than Lestrade.

‘Your lighthouse keeper was murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ The word was echoed round the octagonal room, chorused by all but Lestrade and the corpse.

‘Who has examined the body?’

‘Er … only me and Jem,’ Blogg answered, as the one-most-likely-to-be-in-possession-of-that-information.

‘No doctor? No death certificate?’

The chief constable blustered. ‘A matter of security, Lestrade. You know as well as I do that lighthouses are of strategic importance.’

Yes, Lestrade knew that.

‘Look here.’ Lestrade lifted Bentley’s eyelids, first the left, then the right. ‘You see these tiny specks of blood? Mr Bentley was suffocated. Oh, expertly, certainly. One of the neatest I’ve seen. Normally you’d expect blood at the lips and nose and more discolouration of the face.’

Lestrade mechanically sniffed the various cups and glasses in the room. ‘He was probably drugged first. Quite a painless way to go, actually; if you must go at all, that is.’

‘I want to go at sea,’ Blogg informed the company, ‘with a good nor’ easter blowin’.’

The chief constable looked at him curiously. ‘Well, each according to his taste, I suppose.’

‘You and Bentley took turns about on duty here?’ Lestrade put the question to Blogg, still gazing into the middle-distance of his vision of a Viking’s funeral.

‘Ar.’ He recollected himself.

‘So you wouldn’t know if he had any visitors, say, within the last five days?’

‘No, I … Although …’

‘Yes?’ The word was chorused by the policemen assembled. They all looked at each other a little sheepishly.

‘Well, it’s probably nothin’ really.’

‘We’ll be the judges of that, Mr Blogg,’ said Lestrade.

‘Well, I did see a ship moored ’ere. Must of been last Sunday.’

‘The day before Bentley died,’ Bradstreet said aloud.

Lestrade ignored him. ‘Was that usual, Mr Blogg?’

‘No, not really. Oh, boats come alongside now and then. Nosey parkers from Lunnun, mostly.’ He scrutinised the present company.

‘Was it a supply boat?’ Bradstreet was getting above himself.

‘Of course not,’ Blogg said flatly. ‘What do we need with a supply boat when you can walk to the bloody lighthouse?’

The chief constable and Lestrade turned to Bradstreet with an I-told-you-so expression on their faces. The sergeant had an inclination to follow this up by asking Blogg if the craft had been a submersible, for it had been rumoured for some months at the Yard that such an infernal machine was being manufactured for a forthcoming invasion. In view of his superiors’ faces, he decided against it.

‘Did you see anyone in the boat?’ the chief constable asked, desperate to prove that the weight of silver braid had not diminished the incisiveness of his enquiry-making.

‘No,’ said Blogg.

‘What sort of craft was it?’ Lestrade asked.

‘A ketch.’

‘Did you see a name?’

‘Ar.’

The company waited.

‘Well, out with it, man. What was it?’ Lestrade’s patience only extended so far.

‘Furrin.’

‘Furrin?’ the inspector repeated.

‘Ar. You won’t find it registered in an English port, I’ll wager.’

‘So,’ mused Bradstreet, ‘Gregson and I were right. It is foreign power, bent on eroding British manpower gradually here and there, whittling away the watchful eyes on the coast, ready for the great onslaught when there were no watchers left. Diabolically cunning.’

‘Bradstreet.’ Lestrade’s voice snapped the sergeant back to reality. ‘Mr Blogg is about to tell us the name of the boat, aren’t you, Mr Blogg?’

‘No,’ said Blogg, being as obtuse as possible, ‘but I’ll tell you the name of the ship. As near as I can, anyhow. It was somewhat like … like … “Ora Rosa”.’

‘Spanish,’ said Lestrade.

‘Italian,’ said Bradstreet.

They had spoken simultaneously.

‘Bradstreet,’ said Lestrade. ‘Wear out some leather along the coast here. Check all the boats,’ he glanced at Blogg, ‘– and ships – in harbour.’

‘You won’t find it ’ere. I never seen it roun’ before or since.’

‘We shall need to talk further, Mr Blogg,’ said Lestrade.

And so it was with Nathaniel Blogg that Lestrade and Bradstreet began their enquiries. Unfortunately for them both, Blogg was only a part-time lighthouse keeper. The rest of the time he was a fisherman, when he wasn’t manning the lifeboat, that was, saving souls from the deep. And Bradstreet in particular, looking every inch the city gent in his bowler and Donegal, kept hearing that word ‘deep’ each time the boat took a plunge into the grey of the North Sea. Looking back at the land was worse. The line of cliffs at Cromer yawed up and down like a demented seesaw, the spire of the church leaning at a rakish angle. It wasn’t long before Bradstreet had turned the colour of the sail creaking tautly overhead - the colour of old parchment.