Lestrade and the Deadly Game Page 14

  She pointed in horror at the two bulges showing through Lestrade’s clothes.

  ‘Er . . . nothing, madam. I haven’t been well. Not since the operation.’

  The door crashed back and astonished faces peered in. Two lady athletes sprinted over to Frizzie and protected her with their bodies. Burly servants threw a ring round Lestrade. Only Harry Bandicoot had a good word to say for him. It was ‘Libertine’.

  Lestrade was getting very used to the carpet in Mr Edward Henry’s office. Rows of Victorian policemen looked down on him from sepia photographs, their arms folded disapprovingly. The Policeman’s Policeman sat stony-faced, facing the superintendent.

  ‘First, you brain a fellow officer in full view of the public,’ he said. ‘Next you are found without your trousers in a female witness’s boudoir. She’s filing charges, of course.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Lestrade thought it best to concur, even without stooping.

  ‘Lestrade, I don’t usually pry into the private . . . er . . . doings of my officers. You’re a widower, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And are there any . . . that is, is there a lady in your life?’

  ‘Not as such, sir.’

  ‘And do you make a habit of breaking into ladies’ boudoirs?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Lestrade was appalled. This was only the fourth or fifth time he’d done it, and always in the line of duty.

  ‘According to the report sent to me by the local constabulary, you were in a state of arousal.’

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  ‘Lestrade.’ Henry slapped his desk so that his hand stung. ‘I am not going to bandy words about relative degrees of tumescence. Did you or did you not have your . . . membrum virile exposed?’

  ‘I didn’t even take it with me to Touchen End, sir,’ Lestrade assured him.

  ‘Damn it, man, your . . .’ and he leaned across to whisper in Lestrade’s ear. Mrs Henry would have preferred it that way.

  ‘How dare you, sir?’ Lestrade was outraged. ‘What the young lady saw, in her hysterical state, was this.’ He triumphantly produced the domed contraption.

  ‘Good God, Lestrade. Is that some sort of marital device?’

  ‘It could be, sir, but actually it’s Bhisey’s Improved Bust-Improver.’

  Henry’s jaw fell slack. ‘I don’t think this helps your case,’ he said. ‘What did you want it for?’

  ‘On the contrary, sir. It helps my case enormously. Well, a little. Before I came here at your . . . er . . . request, I sent Detective Constable Bourne on a little errand.’

  ‘Bourne? Oh, yes, I know the one you mean. Rather limp-wristed, isn’t he?’

  ‘On the surface,’ Lestrade said. ‘Well, he’s been trailing a man for a few days and I thought I’d give him a break.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he visited one Shanker Abaji Bhisey of 323 Essex Road.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the said Mr Bhisey makes these things. The whole Ladies’ Team in the Games have apparently been wearing them.’

  ‘What has this to do with the death of this Effie Jennings?’

  ‘Effie Jennings wore a special one. I’ve got back the one she was wearing from the laboratory. They are made circular or oval or any other suitable shape and you pump them up to the desired size, by pumping this whatsit here.’

  Lestrade did and the dome rose to vast proportions, thrusting the perforated nipple towards Henry’s nose.

  ‘But presumably, you wouldn’t have just one blown up?’

  ‘No, no, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Lestrade. ‘Both, I suppose.’

  ‘Quite.’ Henry handled the device. ‘Otherwise one would be blown up out of all proportion.’

  ‘And the other is so small, it’s hardly there at all,’ Lestrade commented.

  Henry shook himself free of the technical spell of the thing. ‘How do you mean Miss Jennings’s was special?’

  ‘It lacked the padding around the lower rim. It had no ventilation channels.’

  ‘Leading to excessive glowing, I suppose,’ Henry suggested.

  ‘Leading to murder. With this edge sharp and coated in poison, all you need do is push sharply and the skin is cut. The rest – the poison travelling around the arteries into the tentacles – is merely a matter of time. Remember that Miss Jennings had been playing fives before she died. Her blood was pumping fiercely. It would have been very quick.’

  ‘Do we know who bought this special . . . um . . . thing?’

  ‘Bourne got the name. In Bhisey’s ledger,’ said Lestrade proudly. ‘One Victor Ludorum. I’ve got my man.’

  ‘No, you haven’t, Lestrade. Do you have Latin?’

  The superintendent frowned. ‘Not often, sir,’ he admitted.

  ‘Victor Ludorum means the Winner of the Games. It was the title given by the Romans to their greatest athletes and charioteers. It is a pseudonym, Lestrade. A sobriquet. Did Bhisey describe the man?’

  Lestrade shook his head. ‘He couldn’t remember him at all,’ he said. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘back to the shoeboxes. With your permission, sir.’

  ‘No.’ Henry stopped him. ‘I’ll have to consider your future, Lestrade. Carry on for the moment. But for God’s sake, keep your nose clean. No, I’ll keep this.’ He fondled the device. ‘Mrs Henry might like to see it – as a curiosity, you understand.’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ smiled Lestrade. But curiosity of course had killed the cat.

  ‘My card,’ the man with shoulders like tallboys said.

  Lestrade had had enough that morning already. A furious Inspektor Vogelweide had hauled an embarrassed Constable Bourne into the superintendent’s office demanding to know why this schwuler had been following him. At first he thought it was the cut of his lederhosen or that his luck had changed. Then, on flicking Bourne over his wrist and smashing his head against a wall, he frisked his pockets and realized he was a policeman. Why, he wanted to know, had Lestrade given orders to Bourne to follow him? Was this the Yard’s idea of co-operation? Was this how a British policeman extended courtesy and help to a bruder-officer, by having him followed? In future, Vogelweide would work on his own and he would only trouble Lestrade again when he needed to extradite the murderer of Hans-Rudiger Hesse.

  And now this. Lestrade looked at the card – an open eye and the legend ‘We Never Sleep’.

  ‘Maddox,’ the huge man said, ‘the Pinkerton Detective Agency.’

  ‘How may I help you, Mr Maddox?’ Lestrade was almost afraid to ask.

  ‘It’s the other way round, brother.’ Maddox slumped in a chair and lit himself a cigarette. ‘Smoke?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Lestrade confessed.

  ‘Well, that’s something we have in common,’ and he put the packet away. ‘Now, look, Lootenant . . .’

  ‘Superintendent,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Right. I’m over here to check up on these Limey officials at the Games, see. Been givin’ our guys the runaround. Breakin’ the tape an’ all.’

  ‘Yeah, well your blokes can’t run in a straight bleedin’ line, that’s the problem,’ Hollingsworth felt compelled to chime in.

  Maddox sat upright, his massive fist clenching and unclenching.

  ‘I’m sorry about him,’ Lestrade said. ‘He’s got a bad ankle.’

  ‘And a bad mouth,’ Maddox added.

  Sensing Anglo-American relations were not all, at that moment, that they could be, Lestrade dismissed the constable to make a pot of tea.

  ‘Never touch the stuff,’ Maddox assured him. ‘Coffee. Black and lots of it. You know, I don’t know how you guys stick it, drinkin’ that stuff all day.’ He reached a silver hip flask from his pocket. ‘Red eye?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade patted his bandage. ‘But it’s getting better.’

  Maddox shrugged and swigged in one fluid movement. ‘Effie Jennings,’ he gargled.

  It was Lestrade’s turn to sit upright. ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘D
on’t come that with me, Lootenant. You’re investigatin’ the dame’s death.’

  ‘No, she had no title as far as I am aware.’

  ‘So you are investigatin’ her?’ Maddox grinned triumphantly. United States, one; Great Britain, nil.

  ‘Just what is your interest, Mr Maddox?’

  The Pinkerton man puffed on his Old Glory. ‘Effie Jennings was the fiancée of J. C. Carpenter, our All-American star athlete. It’s bad enough that your guys loused up the four hundred metres for him, but when one of ’em cuts loose on his girl, well, we never sleep.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ Lestrade patted the calling card with his finger.

  ‘What have you got?’ Maddox asked.

  ‘An awful lot of paperwork,’ Lestrade sighed.

  ‘Come on, Lestrade. I gotta right . . .’

  ‘No, Mr Maddox. I’m afraid you have no rights at all. Miss Jennings is a British subject who died on British soil. That makes it my concern and not yours. And if I may say so, Mr Carpenter was one of many.’

  Maddox nodded slowly. ‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘I kinda figured that. OK, Lootenant, I get the picture. Scotland Yard ain’t gonna play ball, huh? Well, that’s all right. Just one word of advice, though.’ He stood up so that his Homburg touched the ceiling. ‘Don’t none of you guys get in my way, y’ hear?’

  Hollingsworth was entering with a cup of tea as Maddox left and the American dropped his Old Glory stub neatly into the cup. Lestrade noted the curling lip and whitening knuckles of his constable. ‘He can’t help it, Hollingsworth,’ he said. ‘He’s from the colonies.’

  The man from the colonies was as resourceful as the rest of his race. Of the same pioneer stock as Dan’l Boone, Jim Bridger and Davy Crockett, Maddox made for the only other source of criminal information besides Scotland Yard – Fleet Street. Here, under the distant grey dome of St Paul’s, between brewers’ drays and clerks’ articles, moved some of the most criminal men in the world. And most of them worked on newspapers.

  Marylou Adams was sitting looking out of the window when she stiffened as a pair of enormous shoulders hove into view, jostling costermongers and barristers aside. Her voice tailed off in mid-sentence, causing Richard Grant to look up.

  ‘Don’t tell me the Golden Girl of the Washington Post is lost for words.’ He frowned and crossed to her. ‘Marylou.’ He took in the parted lips, the tense stare. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘That man down there.’ She nodded towards the big American, looking now for the door of the Mail offices.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘John Maddox, Pinkerton man,’ she said.

  ‘Pinkerton? Well, well. Do you know him?’

  ‘Everyone in Washington knows a man like Maddox. He’s animal.’

  ‘Wonder what he’s doing here?’

  ‘I’d rather not find out, Richard. Do you mind?’ She turned to collect her hat.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we ought to liaise with Superintendent Lestrade, what with that murder at Touchen End.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Stands to reason. Effie Jennings was an athlete, like nearly all the others. I’m sure he’d value the female angle from you. By the way, did you know there was a German copper named Vogelweide here in London?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘What with your Pinkerton man . . .’

  ‘He’s not mine, exactly,’ she snapped.

  ‘Sorry.’ He sensed a raw nerve. ‘But soon, there’ll be more coppers to the square inch than victims.’

  Grant saw Marylou out the back way, then doubled back to meet the Pinkerton man in the street. Maddox and the Englishman went out in the midday sun.

  Parry of Sixte

  T

  hey walked well apart, the two superintendents. Patrick Quinn was the wrong side of forty-six and the wrong side of Sholto Lestrade. The Strand that morning was busy as it always was. Detective Constable Bourne, smarting somewhat from his rough handling from Vogelweide, was on lighter duties, investigating the theft of some singlets from lockers at the White City. He was clearly the best, nay, the only man for the job, with his vast experience of pleat and ruche coupled with months in Lost Property.

  ‘So how are things in the Special Irish Branch?’ Lestrade asked, lighting up a well-earned cigar.

  ‘Special Branch,’ Quinn corrected him. ‘You know perfectly well we dropped the Irish four years ago.’

  ‘Ah, not all of ’em, Paddy me boy,’ Lestrade brogued. ‘We’ve still got you.’

  Quinn’s hand snaked out suddenly to his left and caught the collar of a passing urchin. Without breaking his stride, he turned the protesting child upside down and shook a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He trod on the offending articles, cuffed the lad round the ear and walked on.

  ‘So what are your views?’ Lestrade asked.

  Quinn fixed his eyes ahead. ‘You know I cannot divulge,’ he said.

  Lestrade had heard rumours to that effect, but time was of the essence. ‘Damn it, Quinn, I don’t enjoy trampling your patch any more than you do mine, but when the Policeman’s Policeman suggests we liaise, what’s the first thing we do?’

  ‘Look it up in a dictionary?’ Quinn was trying to be helpful.

  ‘All right, the second thing!’ Lestrade clamped the damp butt firmer between his teeth.

  ‘Well.’ Quinn sidled nearer to his man so that serge almost brushed serge at the elbow. ‘You know it’s international, of course?’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  Again, Quinn snatched a passing lad, swung him round against a shop window and frisked him. He crushed the Weights in his fist, smacked the boy’s neck and walked on.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he said. ‘Four athletes dead, all of them British. One of them dead before the Games started.’

  ‘Fitzgibbon, yes. So who’s our money on?’

  Quinn edged closer still. ‘Frogs,’ he said.

  ‘The French? Why?’

  ‘Alsace and Lorraine,’ Quinn confided from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Accomplices?’ Lestrade enthused.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alsace and Lorraine. Who’s Lorraine?’

  ‘Not who, Lestrade,’ Quinn snapped, ‘Where. Good God, man, have you no knowledge of current affairs at all?’

  ‘Only Abberline’s.’ Lestrade admitted.

  Quinn’s left foot suddenly jerked sideways and brought a lad crashing to the pavement. He hauled the dazed youngster’s head upright, snatched the Woodbine from behind his ear and crushed it into the ground.

  ‘What’s your name, sonny?’ he snapped.

  ‘Harold Abrahams, sir.’

  ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

  ‘A runner, sir.’

  ‘Not with that nose, laddie!’

  In an instant he was off again, dodging pigeons with Lestrade through Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Who’s the victim who doesn’t fit the pattern?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘Hesse,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘And why doesn’t he fit?’

  ‘He’s a journalist.’

  ‘And what else is he?’

  ‘A German.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Quinn beamed. ‘There’s hope for you yet, Lestrade. I never really believed that nonsense in the Strand magazine, you know. By the way, did Sherlock Holmes really exist?’

  ‘No,’ said Lestrade. ‘I suppose somebody felt they had to invent him. What has Hesse being German got to do with this?’

  Quinn sighed. It was a sigh born of frustration. Of years spent poring over the maps of Europe, the ones that hadn’t been rolled up for ten years. ‘Alsace and Lorraine’, he explained as though to the village pump, ‘are provinces taken by Herr Bismarck in 1871. Germany has claimed them for her own. France says they are hers.’

  Lestrade blinked. ‘So?’

  ‘So,’ Quinn ripped a Burlington from the lips of a passing errand boy and deftly kicked him off his bike, ‘France is just itch
ing for a chance to get Alsace and Lorraine back. What better way to exact a little revenge on the side, while you wait, so to speak, than to knock off a famous German journalist at an international gathering. It’s quite a putsch.’

  Lestrade didn’t see the canine connection, but he let it go. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Well, that’s the brilliance of it, Lestrade.’ Quinn swung left into Whitehall. ‘It’s a cover-up, you see. Our man wants Hesse dead, to strike a blow for La Patrie, but he wants it to look like a mass murder. So he kills a few others to put us off the scent . . . And in your case, it’s worked.’

  ‘But why British athletes?’ Lestrade persisted.

  ‘I don’t know, man. I only deal with the damned foreigners. I can’t do it all, you know.’

  He leapt across Lestrade’s path and dragged a struggling boy down from a brewer’s dray.

  ‘’Ere!’ roared the brewer, hauling on his reins. ‘Whaddya do that fer?’

  It was a question which had occurred to Lestrade in the last ten minutes.

  ‘I am Superintendent Quinn of Scotland Yard,’ the superintendent said, plunging his hands into the boy’s pockets. ‘According to the Children’s Act of February last, I have the powers to search the clothing of said minors and to confiscate tobacco as and where I find it.’

  He duly found it and crumbled it into the nosebags of the snorting animals. As he turned back, another quarry met his gaze and he bent down in one fluid movement and lifted the urchin on to the back of the nearest dray horse. He hadn’t noticed in his zeal that this urchin was rather well dressed, in topper and tails. Not until he began frisking him did he see the gold fob, the studded waistcoat. He looked up with the eyes of a basset hound caught peeing in the larder.

  ‘I am Superintendent Quinn,’ he began, ‘sonny?’

  The eyes and wrinkled face of a little old man met him, sparks crackling from the rubbery ears.

  ‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ the midget croaked. ‘I am Mervyn Tiny-Teeny, of Mr Barnum’s Circus, and I am thirty-seven years old. Clod!’ And the next thing Quinn knew was an immaculate leather boot crunching into his nose and he collapsed gracefully into Lestrade’s arms. The midget leapt from the horse’s back and bounded away along Whitehall in a series of somersaults.