Lestrade and the Ripper Page 10

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lestrade, ‘I am familiar with the term. Where is Carstairs now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Channing-Lover began to whimper. ‘We each ran towards the school to get help.’

  ‘And you found it first,’ Mercer observed. ‘What were you and Carstairs doing down here anyway?’

  Silence but for the lapping of the water.

  ‘Channing-Lover?’ Mercer reminded the boy of his presence. But a greater Presence was approaching at the double, gown flying, mortarboard quivering.

  ‘If I’ve been brought here on a fool’s errand, Carstairs, I’ll flay you alive . . .’

  The unmistakable decibels of Dr Nails sent shivers over the surface of the lake.

  ‘Lestrade, Mercer,’ Nails took in the scene, ‘Channing-Lover, you snivelling little prig. I thought you’d be at the bottom of this. Carstairs, you unnatural beast, what have you and Channing-Lover been up to? I thought we’d heard the last of all that after the Founder’s Day incident of last year. Frankly, Carstairs, it’s only because your father was a mountaineer I closed my eyes to that at all. The goat of course will never recover . . .’

  ‘With respect, Headmaster . . .’ Lestrade cut in.

  ‘Eh?’ Nails turned on him with the speed of a scorpion. ‘I don’t believe you know the meaning of the word. What is it now? This isn’t a police matter.’

  ‘What’s in the boat is,’ Lestrade said quietly.

  All eyes followed his finger to the body of Singh Major that lolled across the bow, his black hair dragging in the water like Sargasso weed.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Nails peered in the gloom. ‘Some idiot playing the giddy goat?’

  The thoughts of most present turned to Carstairs and Channing-Lover, unnaturally enough.

  ‘It’s Cherak Singh Major,’ Carstairs volunteered. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Nails repeated.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Lestrade, leaning forward to steady the boat. ‘His hand appears to be caught in his rowlocks.’

  ‘Medically impossible, surely?’ said Nails. They all looked at him.

  ‘What do you make of it, Lestrade?’ Mercer asked.

  ‘Dr Nails, I would be grateful if these young men could be kept in quarantine, so to speak, until I have a chance to talk to them. I don’t want this body disturbed and I don’t want panic through the school. Carstairs, Channing-Lover, who else knows about this?’

  ‘I’ll ask the questions, Lestrade,’ Nails insisted.

  ‘Headmaster, may I remind you that three people have died at your school in mysterious circumstances in the last month. I have been placed in charge of this inquiry and I can do it far better with your help than with your obstruction.’

  For the first time in his life, Nails was speechless, but it was with anger rather than the realisation of his own deficiencies. Carstairs and Mercer smiled quietly to themselves, each of them glad in his own way for the cover of darkness. In any case, Channing-Lover was nearest and Nails slapped him loudly across the head. ‘And don’t slouch, boy. It shows a lack of intellect!’ And he strode off towards the buildings.

  ‘Mr Mercer, can I rely on you to send a telegram to Scotland Yard? I shall need officers to assist me.’

  ‘Of course. What about Singh?’

  ‘I’ll rope him off. The night air won’t help, but I’d rather study the body in its present position in daylight. Can we keep everybody on the premises tomorrow?’

  ‘We can try,’ shrugged Mercer, ’but Singh Minor is the problem.’

  ‘Singh Minor?’

  ‘Yes. You met him, I believe, when you first arrived. The boy in the boat is his elder brother.’

  Carstairs and Channing-Lover were at first furtive, clandestine even. Years of sneaking behind the bicycle sheds, the laundry tower, the Butts and the boating lake had turned happy-go-lucky boys into neurotic, spotty youths, and years of self-induced blindness stretched ahead of them.

  ‘Channing-Lover has already told me what happened,’ Lestrade lied. ‘All I need to know now is who actually hit Singh with the log.’

  Carstairs sat upright. ‘That little sneak!’ he hissed. ‘You realise the bounder is lying through his pretty little teeth, don’t you?’

  ‘It wasn’t a log you hit him with?’ Lestrade remained as obtuse as only he could.

  ‘I didn’t hit him with anything. Look, Sergeant . . .’ In his own limp-wristed way, Carstairs was an arrogant as Hardman.

  ‘Inspector, sonny,’ snapped Lestrade, ‘and make no mistake: Mr Berry the hangman can accommodate the necks of public schoolboys as well as the next man.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’ Carstairs’ voice remained calm, but Lestrade knew a gibbering idiot when he saw one.

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘I was merely walking with Channing-Lover by the lake . . .’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lestrade.

  Carstairs stared at him. ‘Were you never at public school, Inspector?’ A more worldly man would have known the answer to that by the cut of his bowler.

  ‘No,’ Lestrade scowled. ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘We saw the boat moving towards us from the centre of the lake. At first we thought it was old Adelstrop . . .’

  ‘Adelstrop?’

  ‘Yes, he’s the old duffer who tends to the boats. No one’s allowed in them except in the summer term. They’re usually locked in the boathouse by now.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was nearly dark. Channers noticed someone lying face down in the boat, his hand, as it were, manacled to the side. He was naked. We thought . . . then we realised he was dead.’

  ‘Did you know who it was?’

  ‘Not at first. But there aren’t many niggers at St Rhadegund’s, Mr Lestrade. Only two in fact: Singhs Major and Minor.’

  ‘How well did you know the elder Singh?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Scarcely at all,’ said Carstairs. ‘He wasn’t my type.’

  ‘Black?’

  ‘Straight,’ said Carstairs flatly. ‘Rather fond of the ladies by all accounts.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Look, Inspector, I don’t know what Channing-Lover has told you . . .’

  ‘The same as you, Mr Carstairs,’ Lestrade lolled back in his chair, ‘which either means you’ve cooked up a tight story together, or . . .’

  ‘. . . or you’ve told me the truth. Can you think of any reason why anyone should kill Singh Major?’

  Carstairs shook his head slowly. ‘He seemed a nice chap. Unless . . .’

  ‘Well, Bracegirdle didn’t care for him. Too many memories.’

  ‘Who is Bracegirdle?’

  ‘The Corps Commandant and games instructor. I’m surprised you haven’t met him.’

  ‘What do you mean, “memories”?’

  ‘I really think you’d better ask him, Inspector.’

  Lestrade looked at the youth before him, dark circles under the eyes, nails chewed to the quick, but managing still a certain hauteur in adversity. Such people, Lestrade had heard, were invaluable in a shipwreck. And probably an unnecessary hindrance in a murder inquiry. Swearing him to total silence on the affair, he let him go.

  Channing-Lover was no use either. Having recovered his composure after the shock of discovering Singh, he was bland, inscrutable even. Only when Lestrade touched on his relationship with Carstairs and the reason for his peculiar mincing gait, did the coolness melt. Lestrade put it down to solitary vices in the dorm and sent Channing-Lover back to bed. His own bed.

  Lestrade had promised that he would not interview any of Nails’s boys without the Great Man being present; another reason why he had sworn Carstairs and Pollux to secrecy. So he decided to break the news to Singh Minor after he had checked the body in the lake. He collected Mercer and Nails a little before dawn and the Headmaster supervised with totally unhelpful ‘Right a little’s’ and ‘Left a shade’s’, while policeman and Bursar hauled the stiffened corpse ashore.

  ‘Rigor,’ mur
mured Lestrade.

  ‘Sikh,’ Nails corrected him, ‘though utterly Christianised, I assure you.’

  ‘What do you make of this?’ Lestrade pointed to the waterlogged hemp noose, biting deep into the deceased’s neck.

  Mercer bent closer, then his eyes widened. ‘You had better ask the Headmaster,’ he said.

  ‘Eh?’ Nails flustered. For all his murderous skill with a cane, he was not at home with cadavers.

  ‘The rope,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Good God!’ Nails shrank back. ‘That’s . . . mountaineering rope,’ he almost whispered. Aware that all three were staring at him, one albeit inadvertently, the Headmaster bridled. ‘It’s common enough,’ he shrugged. ‘Nothing special about it. You’ve done the Himalayas, Mercer. Tell him.’

  ‘It’s true enough,’ the Bursar said. ‘All sorts of ropes are used for scaling mountains, Inspector. It’s just that this one is the most popular.’

  ‘The sort we’d find in your study?’ Lestrade stood up to face Nails.

  ‘Now look here . . .’ the Head bellowed.

  ‘Headmaster,’ Mercer interrupted him, and pointed to a handful of boys, led by a master, jogging doggedly across the ploughed field of the hill.

  ‘Damn, it’s Bracegirdle. I’d forgotten his damned cross-country. I’d better divert them or they’ll come this way. You’d better put Singh in the san, Mercer. I must write to his father, the Maharajah,’ and he strode off.

  ‘I didn’t know you climbed mountains too,’ Lestrade said to the Bursar. Mercer chuckled, a rare enough phenomenon in a man who kept accounts.

  ‘I don’t. Or at least, I haven’t for years. It’s all that kept me sane in the Civil Service.’

  Lestrade could understand that. ‘When we’ve taken Singh inside,’ he said, ‘where will I find Mr Bracegirdle?’

  ‘The Major? He’ll probably be in the gym after breakfast. I believe he has the Remove.’

  Hardman paced the floor of his study. Draped on furniture around the room were his cronies and on the carpet before the fire the solitary figure of Singh Minor, feeling more solitary by the minute.

  ‘The point is, nigger,’ Hardman pirouetted to land in an armchair, ‘your brother is dead.’

  Singh hung his head. They had dragged him from his bed before breakfast and had broken the news to him without ceremony or compassion. Channing-Lover had talked, very rapidly in fact, with Hardman’s boot pressing on his windpipe, and the whole sorry story had come out.

  ‘Isn’t it true that you fellows slum it in the East End during the vacs?’ Hardman asked him.

  Singh nodded.

  ‘Why you do that one can’t imagine, but I would suppose you mix with riff-raff like this Lestrade. What do you know of him?’

  ‘He’s a detective. From Scotland Yard.’

  ‘And when he turns up, your brother dies. Coincidence, eh?’

  ‘He has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Hasn’t he?’

  ‘This school’s going to pot, Singh,’ a crony piped out. ‘First niggers, then coppers, then murder. We’ve got to do something, Hardman.’

  ‘Quite, Dollery. All in the fullness of time.’

  There was an abrupt knock at the door and Ruffage, Captain of the School, strode in. He was elegant, relaxed, sporting a monocle, though his eyesight was perfect.

  ‘Ah, Ruffage,’ Hardman crossed to him, ‘you’ve heard about Singh Major?’

  The whole school had.

  ‘Niggers, coppers, murder,’ jabbered Dollery. ‘What’s the school coming to?’

  ‘Shut up, Dollery,’ Ruffage said. ‘Why did you want to see me, Hardman?’

  ‘You’re Captain of the School,’ Hardman closed to him confidentially. ‘You’re closer to Nails than anyone. What’s to be done?’

  Ruffage turned to him. ‘Get on with your lessons, Hardman. That’s what your old man is paying for.’

  There was a murmur of unease rippling the room. Ruffage sensed it and squared his shoulders. ‘What do you suggest?’ he asked them.

  Hardman circled Singh a few times and clapped an uncharacteristic arm around his shoulder. ‘Poor old Singh’s brother has been murdered, Ruffage. Here, at Rhadegund’s. The Sikh code of honour, not to mention Rhadegundian honour, demands a life for a life.’

  ‘I’m a Christian,’ mumbled Singh.

  ‘All the better, old chap,’ Hardman hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You will know that in the Good Book – ours, not yours – it says “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” . . .’

  ‘Ah, but ecumenically . . .’

  ‘Shut up, Dollery!’ the room re-echoed.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Ruffage stood his ground, ‘but even assuming for one moment I go along with your somewhat misplaced code of ethics, who had you in mind? Whose eye and tooth are you after?’

  Hardman clapped Singh heartily and sighed. Then he broke away, staring out of the window to where Lestrade was crossing the quad below. ‘What about that policeman chappie?’ he asked quietly. The murmurs dropped to silence.

  ‘That would be unlucky, Hardman,’ Dollery said. The House prefect whirled on the lesser boy and snapped, ‘Dollery, you are henceforth banned from this study. Any further disobedience will merit a flogging. Now get out.’

  ‘Yes, Hardman,’ and the crestfallen crony left.

  ‘Is it wise to follow this course, Hardman?’ Ruffage asked him, pocketing the monocle.

  Hardman leaned against the cold stone of the sill. ‘I’m not talking about killing him, Ruffage. Just untidying him a little – if that were possible, given his appalling taste in clothes.’

  ‘I don’t see where it will lead you,’ Ruffage persisted.

  ‘It’s a gesture,’ said Hardman, ‘to show we don’t like outsiders sticking their oar in – begging your pardon of course, Singh Minor.’

  ‘What if it lands you in jail?’ Ruffage asked. ‘This fellow’s from the Yard.’

  ‘My father the Field Marshal,’ Hardman could drop a name like anyone else, ‘was in the same regiment as Charlie Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. One word from me to him via him about him and Lestrade would be shovelling the horse dung in the Yard.’

  Ruffage clicked open the door. ‘Leave it at that, then,’ he said. ‘If you honestly believe we should take care of our own, talk to your father the Field Marshal. Break Lestrade. But, Hardman,’ he paused, making sure he had their attention, ‘leave it at that. If anything should happen to Lestrade, I shall take it personally,’ and he saw himself out, careful to face front the whole time. One didn’t turn one’s back on Hardman.

  An enormously fat boy was lumbering up to the vaulting horse as Lestrade found the gymnasium. Amid cackles and guffaws of delight, he landed squarely on it and the timbers cracked under his weight.

  ‘Get out of it, Eaden, you pathetic misfit!’ a field officer’s voice barked.

  Lestrade followed the sound to an upright, solidly built gentleman, marginally the wrong side of fifty, but trim and with biceps of iron.

  ‘Major Bracegirdle?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘That’s me,’ the moustaches bristled. ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘I am,’ said Lestrade, a little non-plussed by the question.

  Bracegirdle’s moustaches drooped as they invariably did in the presence of true idiocy. Indeed, in his long career at St Rhadegund’s, they had scarcely been upright. ‘What I mean is,’ – the Remove, five of whom were helping the hapless Eaden to his feet, had never seen him so patient – ‘to whom am I speaking?’

  ‘Ah, I see. Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’

  Bracegirdle crushed his hand in greeting. ‘Yes, of course. Saw you at the lake this morning, fishing Thing Major out of the boat.’

  ‘You saw that?’ Lestrade had hoped Nails’s intervention would have prevented it.

  ‘Of course. So did half the bloody Third form. If Nails were fitter, of course, he’d have headed us off at the stile. Still, there it is. How can I
help?’

  ‘I’ve called at a bad time,’ Lestrade observed as seven of the Remove bore Eaden past them like a Viking funeral procession.

  ‘There’s never a good time.’ Bracegirdle stopped the cortege and tapped the pallid Eaden with a riding crop. ‘You’ll be all right, boy. Just a few stitches. Smarts, doesn’t it? Ovett, take the others on a run, will you – eight times round the lake. Last one back’s a cissy.’

  Lestrade followed Bracegirdle into the darkness of his locker room. The walls were hung with trophies of the field, hunting and sporting. Various webbing pouches and strappings were piled loosely in a corner and Lestrade was invited to sit on them.

  ‘I understand you didn’t care for Singh Major?’ the Inspector fished.

  Bracegirdle began hanging up boxing gloves and throwing iron bars around. ‘Hated him,’ he confessed, ‘and his insufferable little brother.’

  ‘Is it usual for masters to hate their charges, Major?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about charges,’ Bracegirdle replied. ‘My father, God rest him, was at Chilianwala. There was a charge! Some Sikh bastard shot him in the back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lestrade. He had had a father too, though there were those at the Yard who doubted it. ‘Still, live and let live, eh?’

  ‘Let live? Did the Nana Sahib let the women and children live at Cawnpore? No, he did not, sir! I was there. With Havelock at the relief,’ he bent one of the bars in remembrance of it, ‘I saw with my own eyes what those little brown bastards did to our women and children. I was up to my spurs in blood, Lestrade, as I stand here. I shall never forget it as long as I live. Savages!’ He spat onto the pile of fencing jackets beside Lestrade. ‘They’ll never be civilised, Lestrade. Not like us.’

  ‘What did you do?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘What any decent Englishman would do.’ Bracegirdle stood to his full height. ‘I went out and tied the nearest damned nigger I could find to the mouth of a cannon and blew him to pieces!’

  Lestrade smiled weakly. It was a silly question really.

  ‘Then, two years ago, Nails allowed the little bastards here at Rhadegund Hall. It defies belief.’

  ‘Perhaps he needs the money,’ Lestrade suggested.