Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (8 page)

‘Oh?’ Lestrade was all ears.

‘Where did tha say tha knew ’im from?’

‘In the docks,’ Lestrade hedged.

‘Liverpool?’

‘Yes. How do you mean, he died funny?’

‘Well,’ another inmate chimed in, ‘’e were all reet one mornin’, then be night time, ’e were gone.’

‘And ’is face,’ whispered another.

‘What about it?’ asked Lestrade.

‘Grinnin’ ’e were, like the devil ’isself.’

Lestrade felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck, where the short crop given by the warder three days ago was still smarting from the nicks of the razor.

‘I seen plenty of dead men. They die every day in ’ere – and t’womenfolk, and t’kids,’ another went on, ‘but nothing like ’im. He was smiling with ’is eyes bright and ’is teeth bared. Like a rabid dog, ’e were.’

‘I saw ’im die. I were wi’im.’ All eyes turned to the Little Fly in the corner.

‘Tha never said,’ another chided him. ‘I thought ’e were alone in bed.’

‘Nay, I were going to ask ’im for some snout when ’e went rigid. He screamed out – you all must’ve ’eard it.’

They hadn’t.

‘’E arched ‘is back a couple of times, like ’avin’ a fit, like, and ’e died. It were all over very quick.’

So was the conversation. A warder rang a bell deep in the bowels of the workhouse and the inmates scattered, like the zombies of a Gothic novel – the undead going about their business. Silence, but for the coughs, reigned.

It had been confirmed. Lestrade’s ravaged fingers curled painfully round the mallet again. The classic symptoms of strychnine poisoning. But this time Lestrade had to go further. He had to see the doctor who pronounced Richard Brown dead – and there was only one way to do that. He waited until the moment was right, heart pounding with the concentration, sweat breaking out on his forehead, then crushed his thumb with a mallet. He rolled sideways, crying out in agony. A warder was at his side, prodding him with his truncheon, ‘You there, Lister. What’s t’matter wi’ ye?’

Lestrade held up the blackening digit.

‘Malingering bastard,’ was the warder’s only comment, and he went away. Lestrade knelt there in pain and surprise until he passed out. The rest was easy.

When he awoke he was in a different room. Not the dormitory of the East Wing, but in a hospital room.

‘Oh, so you’re awake are you?’ A burly woman with a starched but grubby apron stood before him, sleeves rolled to reveal muscles not out of place on a circus strongman, hair strained back in a silver bun. ‘Malingering bastard,’ she grumbled, tucked Lestrade in bed even harder and stalked off, bellowing orders to other unfortunate inmates, whose terminal tuberculosis or tertiary syphilis had brought them to their last days in the infirmary of the Manchester House of Industry, Openshaw district.

It was the best part of a day before his quarry arrived, a sallow-faced man in his mid-forties, shabby frock coat and faded silk vest. He handled Lestrade’s thumb with something less than a charming bedside manner, but was alarmed when the inspector yanked him down to pillow level with his good hand. ‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. I must speak with you on an urgent matter of the gravest importance.’

The doctor pulled away, shaken. He recovered himself. ‘See him over there.’ He pointed to an old man staring at the ceiling, his fingers endlessly fiddling with his sheets. ‘He thinks he’s Nero. And I of course am Florence Nightingale. This one can chop wood with his right hand. There’s obviously nothing wrong with that. Only his mind and his thumb need attention. Wood chopping tomorrow!’ he barked at an accompanying warder. ‘Let him sleep here tonight,’ and he swept away. Lestrade’s silent protestations as he craned out of bed were met with a swift tap from the burly woman, who had miraculously reappeared at his bedside. ‘No broth for you tonight, me lad. Grabbin’ the doctor like that, indeed! Who do you think you are?’

‘Napoleon Buonaparte,’ said Lestrade and sank down in discomfort and despair into his bed.

Most of the night was spent fighting off the advances of an old cottage loaf who would not take no for an answer. In the end, Lestrade brought his knee up rather sharply into the old man’s groin, which cooled his ardour more than somewhat – and probably made him sing in a rather higher key. Nero in the meantime was composing odes of indescribable nonsense and the night would have been funny had it not been so unutterably sad. An inspector of Scotland Yard, Lestrade kept telling himself, had seen it all before. Remember that, keep your identity and this madhouse won’t get you. An inspector of Scotland Yard. Remember …. Or was it Napoleon Buonaparte?

The dawn saw Lestrade standing with the others, huddled against the driving rain. God, did it never stop raining in Manchester? Beyond the limits of the city, mused Lestrade, in the airy uplands of Failsworth and Stalybridge (he had studied the whole area on a map) the sun shone out in splendour, but the smoke of the Cottonopolis and the gleam of the cotton masters’ brass conspired to reflect it back and keep it out of inner Manchester. Or perhaps even the yards of the House of Industry. Perhaps even beyond those high, grey walls, the world was turning still.

A whistle signalled a break in work. The woodcutters stopped. But this was no rest period. Even without his half-hunter, Lestrade kept his sense of time. The bells never missed. It was not rest period for an hour or more. The gates of the yard opened to admit a Visiting Pair of Dignitaries. A good-looking lady, perhaps thirty or so, swept in, in a flourish of velvets and silks. The sweetness of her perfume flooded the air of sweat and sawdust. From nowhere, little workhouse children, the friendless boys and girls, scampered to her. She bent to them, kissing them, distributing sweets and liquorice.

‘That’s Mrs Lawrenson,’ came the whispered answer to Lestrade’s query. ‘She comes twice a year to give us baccy and the kids sweets. She brings pins and combs for the womenfolk.’

‘That’s charitable of her,’ Lestrade commented.

‘You don’t often get that. I was in the workhouse at Kensington a year or two back.’

Lestrade thought he recognised the south-London drawl.

‘Bloody Miss Louisa Twining stoppin’ our porter. Bloody do-gooder. This un’s all right, though. Knows how to treat a man proper, she does.’

‘Aye,’ whispered another. ‘I wouldn’t mind changing my place with that Dandy Jack of hers. I bet she’s a real hot ’un between the sheets.’

‘Just remember,’ the Londoner broke into verse:

‘The paupers is meek and lowly,

With their “Thankee kindly, mum”‘s;

So long as they fill their stomachs,

What matter it whence it comes?’

‘Is that Mr Lawrenson?’ Lestrade asked, though he couldn’t see the gentleman with her very clearly.

‘Dunno,’ said the Londoner. ‘Fancy done up though, ain’t ’e?’

‘Nay,’ the Mancunian spat a gob into the sawdust. ‘I seen ’im when they came last Christmas. Introduced to us, ’e was. ’E’s ’er intended. Name of Bandicoot.’

Lestrade dropped his axe, clanging loudly on the cobbles of the yard.

‘Watch out, you clumsy ba …’ and the Mancunian broke off as Mrs Lawrenson made her way towards the clump of woodchoppers.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ she beamed. ‘Not a fine one, I fear.’

‘Your radiance is sun enough for us, ma’am,’ the poetic Londoner replied.

Mrs Lawrenson curtsied graciously and began to distribute largesse in the form of tobacco. ‘Harry, help me here.’

‘Of course, dearest,’ and the tall, good-looking fiancé lent a hand. As he came to Lestrade, he stared in astonishment, his jaw hanging open. ‘Good God,’ was all he could say. All eyes turned to Lestrade.

‘What is it, Heart?’ Mrs Lawrenson asked.

Lestrade burned his eyes fiercely into the fiancé’s. He could tell that it wasn’t doing the trick. ‘James Lister, sir, from the Ratcliffe Highway, labourer.’

‘Has it come to this?’ Bandicoot persisted. What an idiot, Lestrade fumed inwardly. Still the same copper of very little brain he used to be two years ago. What though he owed his life to the man, this was no way to treat him now, breaking his cover on an assignment.

‘Do you know this man?’ Mrs Lawrenson asked.

‘No, ma’am,’ Lestrade broke in. ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ and then with vehemence, ‘You must be confusing me with someone else.’ He felt his stage Cockney fooling no one, but Mrs Lawrenson, accepting the statement at face value, gently pulled the uncomprehending Bandicoot away.

The others still looked a little oddly at Lestrade, not least the warders, whose truncheons were not in evidence this morning. Mrs Lawrenson swept away, with soothing words of comfort, surrounded by workhouse children, gobbling and sucking gratefully on their sweets. As the whistle signalled the men back to work, two warders strolled past Lestrade’s group. ‘She’s ’ere a lot these days. Only, what were it, two weeks back? Three?’

‘Nay, it weren’t that recent,’ said his mate.

‘Aye, it were. Don’t you remember? She visited Brown on t’ day ’e died. No wonder t’ old bastard died wi’ a smile on his lips.’

Lestrade’s ears pricked up. Was that it? Was that how strychnine was administered in this hell-hole? By the unsuspected hand of a social worker? A sister of mercy? Of course. It must be. Why else had Mrs Lawrenson visited Richard Brown? Had she visited him alone? Had she visited others? Had those other visits merely been to disguise her real purpose? Had she given anything to Richard Brown? What about a plug of snout? Strychnine on the tobacco. Yes, it was too easy. But she was Bandicoot’s lady. His intended. Had that muddle-headed ex-constable from the right side of the tracks, old Etonian and friend of kings, taken a viper to his bosom? And while the inmates nearest the gates were secretly admiring Mrs Lawrenson’s bosom, Lestrade hatched a plan.

He had to wait more than a month before he could make any move. Then, armed with a chit signed by a Guardian of the poor, he trudged out of the Openshaw Workhouse in search of work. Three others with him went straight to the nearest tap room, in the hopes of cadging or stealing the price of a pint. One, perhaps with greater resolve than they, set out for the diggings at the canal. But then it was easier for him; he was teetotal. Lestrade was choosier in his search for employment. He passed the rows of bleak, mean streets, silhouetted against the glower of the Manchester sky. Why were so many of them called Coronation Street, he wondered? He passed the gaunt, monolithic cotton mills, rows and rows of windows, repaired and buttressed against the escape of valuable steam. He passed the queues of women waiting their turn, with the resignation of the poor, at the standpipes. He avoided signs saying ‘Cotton operatives wanted’ and the pairs of uniformed policemen of the Manchester Constabulary. He was looking for one place of employment only – at the home of Mrs Lawrenson.

He had covered many miles in his workhouse hobnails before he found it, a large town house surrounded by acacias and planes. Dogs barked at his entry and the door was opened by a pompous butler of the old school, Scots and sandy-haired.

‘Who is it, Dudson?’ a voice called from the hall.

‘A vagrant, ma’am. A person of no consequence. Shall I give a shilling, ma’am?’ ‘And may I keep the change?’ he muttered under his breath.

Mrs Lawrenson appeared, gorgeous in a swirl of crimson satin – the afternoon dress of the rich. ‘No, poor fellow. Come in, come in,’ and she extended a hand and helped Lestrade over the threshold. Dudson, though used to this sight a hundredfold, showed with every movement of his body that he had never approved. What, he wondered for the umpteenth time, was a good Lowland Liberal like himself doing in the employ of a Socialist? And he was careful to keep upwind of Lestrade.

‘Tea, Dudson. In the drawing room.’

The butler bowed to the inevitable and vanished, clapping hands to attract unseen maids.

‘Pray, be seated.’ Mrs Lawrenson extended a hand to the sofa.

‘I’m dirty, ma’am.’ For the moment Lestrade kept up his Cockney idiot.

‘Nothing that can’t be cleaned. Dirt, like poverty, is only skin deep. Are you in search of work?’

Lestrade decided to drop the guise and go for the kill.

‘If I don’t complete this case, I may be.’

Mrs Lawrenson looked a little taken aback at the brightness of the answer, the loss of accent. She peered for the first time under the grime, the blackened hands and the blue shaven head and caught the flash of eyes, purposeful, sure, even haunting.

‘Who are you?’ she found herself saying.

‘Inspector Sholto Lestrade, ma’am, Scotland Yard.’ He rose and bowed stiffly but watched her every reaction.

She broke into a merry, musical laugh. ‘Lestrade. Why, Harry has spoken of you so often. But why …?’ Then it dawned. ‘Wait, you were in Openshaw Workhouse, last month. That was why Harry was so odd. He recognised you.’

‘He did indeed. It was all I could do to shut him up.’

‘Oh, he is a silly boy, isn’t he? Hasn’t the brains he was born with.’ A sudden seriousness. ‘So, you are on a case, incognito?’

Lestrade was about to say ‘No. In the workhouse,’ when the timely entry of Dudson with the tea saved him unawares from social embarrassment.

‘I thought I’d better bring the tea myself, ma’am,’ explained Dudson in his impeccable Lowland-Liberal delivery, ‘bearing in mind the present company.’ Had there been a clothes peg handy, Lestrade felt sure it would have been clamped firmly on the butler’s nose.

‘Vagrant be damned!’ cried Harry Bandicoot as he rushed into the room seconds behind Dudson. ‘This is Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. You mind your p’s and q’s, Dudson, or he’ll feel your collar.’

The very thought of Lestrade’s grimy hand coming anywhere near Dudson’s collar made the butler pale. He had read that the police were badly paid, but could it be as bad as this?

‘What do I call you?’ Bandicoot extended his hand. ‘“Sir”, it always was. And yet now …’

‘The least I can do for a man who saved my life is to let him call me Sholto, Harry,’ and the two men shook hands warmly.

‘You’ve met Letitia?’ said Bandicoot, indicating Mrs Lawrenson.

‘Bless you,’ said Lestrade. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, indeed.’