Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand Read online

  The younger rookie took over. He was as incisive on these matters as his older colleague.

  ‘Disappointing,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Still, graphology is not an easy art. Dew, tell them.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ the old hand shifted uncomfortably, ‘written by a . . . pen?’

  Lestrade closed his eyes. For seven years this man had served his apprenticeship with the World’s Second Greatest Detective, in the most famous police station in the Northern Hemisphere. ‘Very good, Walter,’ he said. ‘It’s this sort of blistering brilliance which allows the editors of Punch, not to mention Drs Conan Doyle and Watson, to poke fun at us. Listen, children, while a grown-up is speaking . . .’ He checked the letter again and cleared his throat. ‘First, notice the arches of the arcade letters – the “m” and the “n” – they tell us the writer was a woman. Next, the loops on the “g” – she’s about fifty years old. This at the bottom – “Guess Who” in loo of a signature; the hallmark of the exhibitionist.’

  ‘Why?’ Bromley had the temerity to ask.

  ‘Because I say so, Constable,’ Lestrade told him. ‘The cross on the “t” is a give-away – middle class, definitely. Almost certainly Church of England. Probably born near Uttoxeter.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ Bromley asked.

  Lestrade turned to the man as far as his hopelessly ricked neck would allow. ‘When I find her, I’ll ask her,’ he snarled. ‘Now, as subtly as you can, gentlemen, pick up these screens around me and we’ll sidle to the door. Dew, you brought the change of clothing?’

  ‘Yes, guv. In the station wagon outside.’

  ‘Good man. Last one back at the Yard buys the Bath Olivers.’

  GEORGE DIXON HAD BEEN the Desk man at the Yard for as long as he – or Lestrade – could remember. He was the acceptable face of the police: gnarled, wrinkled and grey, like an old oak. But he was solid and honest and patient and kind, like policemen were in the old days, before they asked them to think. Like Walter Dew’s tea, Sergeant Dixon’s cocoa was legendary. And he’d made some now, hot day though it was in the middle of May.

  ‘Just think of it, miss,’ he was saying. ‘Dr Grace is forty-seven and he scored two hundred and eighty-eight against Somerset yesterday. Makes your googies wither, don’t it?’

  ‘How long have you been on the Force, Sergeant?’ she asked him.

  ‘Ooh, now you’ve asked me, miss,’ the old man twinkled. ‘Let’s just say, when I joined first we still wore stovepipe hats and carried rattles. I forget who was on the throne – probably ’Er Majesty, same as now. She’s a wonder an’ all, ain’t she? Must be over a ’undred. Well over a ’undred.’

  ‘Sergeant!’

  Lestrade’s dulcet tones had the Desk man standing to attention, staring straight ahead. ‘Morning sir.’

  ‘Nothing better to do?’

  ‘I was waiting for you, Inspector,’ the lady said. ‘The Sergeant was kind enough to keep me company.’

  ‘Miss True.’ Lestrade couldn’t help smiling. For all his dour exterior, he was secretly pleased to see her. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve come to help,’ she said.

  ‘Help?’ he repeated.

  Bromley and Russell exchanged glances. Dew flashed a knowing wink at Dixon.

  ‘I behaved disgracefully the other day,’ she said, ‘fainting like that. But I’m over it now and I’m here to offer my services.’

  ‘You’re not one of these New Women, are you, Trottie?’ he chuckled.

  ‘Ah,’ she laughed, ‘one of those who dress like men, talk like men, live like men and don’t like men? No, no, Sholto. I promise I won’t get in your way.’

  ‘Indeed you won’t,’ he led her to the door, ‘because you won’t get the chance.’

  She pirouetted around him. ‘I’m not going,’ she said, ‘so you may as well get used to me being around.’

  Lestrade looked at her. In the background he caught the expectant faces of Dew, Dixon and the rookies. Detectives going off or coming on duty also gave him funny looks. He closed to his woman. ‘Murder is not a pleasant business, Trottie. It’s not a woman’s place.’

  ‘It wasn’t my sister’s place, either,’ she said, ‘to die at the hands of a madman, but she did. Now I don’t know much about murder, Sholto, but I know a lot about her. I think you need me on this case. I think you need me desperately.’

  He stood dithering in the hallway, for a moment uncertain, unglued. Then he acted. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come with me. Dew, you and Russell and Bromley will get me addresses on the owners of the Metropolitan and District and City and South London Railways. You will visit them and get their views on all this. Assure them the usual; no stone unturned, full manpower, arrest imminent, etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘Where will you be, sir?’ Dew asked.

  Lestrade paused at the entrance to the lift. ‘The usual, Dew – in the thick of it.’

  IT WAS ON THE FOURTH floor that Lestrade and Trottie True found him – in an annexe that ran transwise towards Whitehall. He was of an indeterminate age but probably the wrong side of sixty, and his spectacles appeared to have been made from the bottoms of porter bottles.

  ‘Good God, is that a woman?’ he said.

  ‘Indeed it is, Stanley. I was just telling Miss True, Stanley, how erudite and sharp you are. You’ve just confirmed that admirably.’

  ‘Well, come in, come in.’

  Trottie True had never seen such a laboratory in her life. The regulation green tiles were all but hidden by shelves which bowed in the middle like a one-string fiddle and contained jars of things she’d rather not inquire too closely about.

  ‘This is the Police Museum,’ Lestrade told her. ‘People nowadays seem to be calling it the Black Museum, though I don’t believe you have any negroes here, Stanley, am I right?’

  ‘Not unless you count Wesley Levine, the Chocolate-Coloured Coon,’ the boffin said. ‘That’s his death mask over there – the one with the funny lip.’

  ‘Corkindale?’ Lestrade cocked an apprehensive eyebrow.

  ‘Accident of birth. That’s what hanged him of course. Even under that make-up, a witness recognized his lip. Is this a social visit, miss? We don’t get many women – visitors that is. There are a few residents, as it were. That’s Mrs Pearcey’s perambulator in the corner, the one she wheeled the dismembered Mrs Hogg and her equally dismembered baby round in. And this,’ he handled it lovingly, ‘is the rope used on Mary Ann Cotton the poisoner.’

  Trottie True turned to Sholto Lestrade. ‘If this is designed to frighten me,’ she said, ‘it’s failed.’

  Lestrade held up his hands. ‘Nothing of the kind entered my head,’ he smiled. ‘Welcome to the world of homicide. No. Stanley,’ Lestrade pulled up a chair, ‘this is not a social visit – but let’s have a few niceties anyway – how is Mrs Stanley?’

  ‘Comatose at breakfast, but then what do you expect from a social worker? How’s that little boy of yours, the one young Harry Bandicoot adopted?’

  ‘Girl – and she’s fine, thanks. Leaks a bit.’

  ‘Ah, they all do.’

  ‘Right.’ Lestrade fished in his pocket. ‘That’s all that over with. What do you make of this?’

  The boffin lifted his glasses on to the top of his head and read the letter. ‘Friedrich Schiess is the one you want. I seen him on the Tube the other night near where that woman was killed. He done it or my name’s not . . . Guess Who?’

  ‘Well?’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Well . . .’ Stanley held the paper to the light of a table lamp. ‘Common enough paper. Writing slopes to the right, which indicates honesty, but there’s a reluctance here. Whoever wrote this didn’t really want to, yet felt it his duty.’

  ‘His?’ Lestrade was nonplussed.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the boffin. ‘The writer is definitely a man – the arcade letters of the “m” and “n” tell us that. He’s fortyish.’

  ‘Er . . . are you sure?’

  ‘I said “ish”,
Lestrade,’ Stanley reminded him.

  ‘Can you tell us anything else?’

  ‘Our man has a damaged right arm. He wrote this with his left.’

  ‘Really? He’s from Uttoxeter, though?’

  ‘Edmonton,’ Stanley corrected him. He sniffed the letter. ‘And he works with horses. His wife’s called Emma, he’s five feet nine inches with brown hair and brown eyes. No, wait a minute. I tell a lie – hazel eyes.’

  Trottie True and Sholto Lestrade sat open-mouthed.

  ‘You can tell all that from those few words?’ she asked.

  ‘Come off it, Stanley,’ Lestrade sneered. ‘You know something we don’t.’

  ‘An awful lot, Lestrade,’ the boffin smiled. ‘But in this particular case, yes, you’re right. I must come clean. One of my little hobbies is collecting signatures of famous people.’

  ‘Would you like mine?’ Lestrade asked.

  Stanley ignored him. ‘I’ve got Napoleon’s here somewhere and Frederick the Great’s. King John’s from Magna Carta should be somewhere too

  ‘I thought King John sealed Magna Carta, Mr Stanley,’ Trottie True said.

  ‘Ah, my dear,’ and he patted her hand, ‘how nice to find an astute person on the distaff side. You’re absolutely right, of course. It’s actually a rather clumsy forgery of Lord Macaulay’s. Ah, here we are.’ He handed a piece of paper to Lestrade.

  ‘A clumsy forgery of Lord Macaulay’s?’

  ‘No,’ Stanley tutted, in the wrong job of course to escape the suffering of fools gladly. ‘The actual signature of one Frederick Hitch, VC, late twenty-fourth Foot, now the South Wales Borderers. Notice the capital H – as in “Guess Who”.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Lestrade compared them. ‘A dashed odd way to spell “Who”. Stanley, you’ve got a mind like a knife blade.’

  The boffin bowed. ‘Photographic memory, that’s all,’ he said. ‘But it keeps me off the streets.’

  ‘What do you know about this Schiess?’ Lestrade asked.

  Stanley shrugged. ‘Not famous enough for me, I’m afraid. I suggest you ask Private Hitch.’

  ‘I will.’ Lestrade ushered Miss True to the door. ‘I don’t suppose you have an address?’ he asked and moved nimbly aside as the boffin threw a book at him.

  ‘You’re supposed to be the bloody policeman!’ they heard him call as they bustled away down the corridor and into the sunshine of Whitehall.

  ‘THIS COULD BE DANGEROUS, Trottie,’ Lestrade said, checking the brass knuckles in his pocket just in case. ‘I’ve no idea what this man is about.’

  ‘He’s about an inch taller than you, Sholto. And you’ve had police training.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s faced four thousand Zulus on a bad day.’

  ‘Has he?’

  He looked at her oddly. ‘It’s obviously before your time,’ he said. ‘The defence of Rorke’s Drift, Natal. That’s Africa.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I am a librarian, albeit part-time.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He peered again round the corner.

  ‘Eleven Victoria Crosses awarded in one day to the garrison of the mission hospital for valour against a Zulu Army led by King Cetawayo whose impis had destroyed their regiment at Isandlwana the day before.’

  ‘Er . . . quite,’ he said. ‘Fred Hitch was one of the eleven.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  He poked out the remnant of his nose beyond the brick wall. Before him lay a deserted Edmonton Street, dumb in the afternoon heat. Flies droned lazily around the hansom horse, which occasionally responded with a deft flick of its tail. But these were the first flies of the season, brought out by the unseasonable heat and they were too fast for it, darting from its back to its ears and then to investigate the feed sack roped over his nose.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ he told her, but as he glanced back, she had gone, marching past him defiantly, out into the street.

  ‘Trottie!’ he hissed, but whether she heard or not made no difference, because she didn’t look back.

  ‘Why have you been writing anonymous letters to Scotland Yard?’ he heard her ask of the cabman lolling against the lamppost.

  ‘Who says I have?’ He stood up to his full five feet nine.

  ‘A very clever man at the Yard named Stanley.’

  ‘Well, he’s a liar,’ the cabman said.

  By this time, Lestrade had caught up with the pair, dashing along the street for all he was worth. ‘Frederick Hitch!’’ he asked.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ the cabman rejoined.

  ‘My name is Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh.’

  In pursuance of my . . . colleague’s question: why have you been writing letters to Scotland Yard – or at least, the one?’

  ‘What makes you think it was me?’ the cabman asked.

  Lestrade stood nose to nose with the man. ‘Are you or are you not Frederick Hitch?’ he said.

  ‘What if I am?

  ‘Why is it,’ Lestrade said levelly, ‘that the working classes always answer a question with a question?’

  ‘All right, I’m Hitch,’ the cabman said. ‘What of it?’

  ‘You tell us, Mr Hitch,’ Lestrade said. ‘I assume you didn’t write this for laughs?’ He held up the letter.

  ‘Look, it’s Schiess you want, not me. I didn’t want to write in the first place. I knew I shouldn’t of. But my Emma – that’s my trouble and strife – she made me, see.’

  Lestrade moved aside lest Hitch’s horse took it into its head to empty its bowels. As a young constable he’d ridden, for want of a better word, with the Horse Patrol. It was not an experience he cared to repeat. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell us what you know.’

  ‘’Ere,’ Hitch frowned under his billycock. ‘’Ow long ’ave you ’ad donnas on the beat, then?’

  ‘It’s an experiment,’ Lestrade lied. ‘And this is Policewoman Jenkins, not a donna.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me for livin’.’ Hitch tugged at the rim of his hat. ‘Look, guv, I ain’t no squealer, ’onest. Only I was on the Tube the night o’ that last murder.’

  ‘Of Miss Verity True?’ Trottie asked.

  ‘Yeah, that was ’er name. You could ’ave bowled me over wiv a cabwheel, so you could. There was Schiess, large as life.’

  ‘Why did that strike you as peculiar?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, ’e was a City and Sarf London guardsman.’

  ‘Was he now?’

  ‘’E was, right down to ’is buttons. The second fing is . . . what a bloody coincidence – oh, beggin’ your pardon, Policewoman.’

  ‘Why coincidence?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Well the last time I seen ’im, it was at Rorke’s Drift an’ ’e was killin’ them Zulus like it was goin’ out of fashion.’

  ‘You didn’t know he’d settled in London?’

  ‘Nah. A lot of blokes fought ’e was Dutch. In fact it turns out ’e was a Swiss.’

  ‘I see. Where and when did you see him?’

  ‘Comin’ off of locomotive Number Eleven at Stockwell. This would of been near midnight.’

  ‘What were you doing at Stockwell? You live here in Edmonton.’

  ‘Visitin’,’ Hitch told the real and imaginary policepersons. ‘A few of us old sojers meet up on Fursday nights for a ’and of gin. We rotates it. It was old Dobbie’s turn this week.’

  ‘And old Dobbie lives in Stockwell?’

  ‘Right enough,’ Hitch confirmed.

  ‘What did Schiess say when you hailed him?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it,’ Hitch said. ‘’E looked right through me. Like I was a ghost or sunfink. Mind you, ’e’d aged a bit.’

  ‘He had?’

  ‘Well, yeh. ’Im and me, we was of an age. See. Bofe of us born in 1856. That makes us bofe thirty-nine. ’E looked sixty.’

  ‘How do you explain that?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Hitch shrugged. ‘Course, Schiess ’ad been brought up in an orphanage – that couldn’t of helped. �
�E was a sojer at fifteen. I ’eard ’e’d fell on hard times.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, you know, on the old grapevine.’

  ‘When did you discover there’d been a murder?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘It was in the Stannit the next day. My trouble Emma puts two and two together and she says, “Fred, that was when you saw Corporal Schiess. ’E must of done it.”’

  ‘Why must he of . . . have?’

  ‘Stands to reason, don’t it? ’E come off the very carriage in what they found her in. It’s too much of a coincidence. I didn’t want to shop an ol’ messmate, especially one wot’s stood by yer elbow against farsands o’ darkies. But you don’t know my trouble. So I sent the letter anonymous, like. ’Ow did you blokes – beggin’ yer pardon, Policewoman – find it was me?’

  ‘We have our ways,’ Lestrade said cryptically. ‘You will talk to no one else about this, Mr Hitch. If we need to talk to you again, can we find you here?’

  ‘’Ere or out on the road,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ and Lestrade held out his hand.

  The cabman offered his left and Lestrade had to change hands accordingly. To a casual passer-by, it looked as though it were a meeting of Masons from the Edmonton Lodge.

  ‘Arm still giving you trouble?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hitch winced. ‘Those Zulu buggers got some Lee-Enfields orff our blokes at Sandalwhana. I copped a bullet. Some days it’s bloody murder, I can tell you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lestrade, leading Trottie True away. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ❖ 6 ❖

  T

  hat was the night that Goron arrived. He caught a packet at Le Havre and the Pullman out of Portsmouth. Like another famous Frenchman (who wasn’t quite) he found his Waterloo and crossed the bridge to the Yard.

  A rather wary Sergeant Dixon let him up, but as soon as he was in the lift, lifted the speaking tube down from the wall to inform the guv’nor.

  ‘There’s a Frog on ’is way up, sir. Thought I ought to warn you. Forearmed is forewarned, isn’t it?’

  ‘Probably, Dixon,’ the tube crackled back at him after much blowing and scraping.