Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand Read online

  ‘There is?’ The Inspector longed to hear it; was ever open to suggestion.

  ‘A one-class society. Oh, not this nonsense the Fabians are jabbering about. Some Marxist dogma of a proletarian uprising, be it by bloody revolution or be it by ballot. No, the creation of a Utopia in which Jack’s as good as his master because Jack has no master. And master has no Jack.’

  Lestrade’s expression became ever more fixed as the philosopher began to tremble, then cough. He ferreted in his pocket for a handkerchief, failed to find it, then spewed blood all over his shirt and waistcoat. He dropped to both knees, the pole sliding into the water as he went down. Lestrade leapt forward, cradling the convulsing man in his arms.

  ‘Look out!’ he heard someone shout over an increasingly loud rush of water. ‘The weir. Watch out for the weir.’

  Weird was right, Lestrade observed. The erstwhile hearty Mr Wells, punter extraordinary, draper’s assistant, zoologist, teacher, novelist, free lover and Utopian prophet, lay bleeding in Lestrade’s arms, the bits that weren’t red a deathly white. It was only gradually, as the punt began to speed up and rock with a life of its own, that Lestrade realized the danger they were both in. Some yards away, the river appeared to vanish over a sliding, hurtling, silver drop. A ledge had developed unaccountably in the river bed and he saw at a glance what had happened. Wells’s seizure had sent the boat off course, past those large red signs that said DANGER, WEIR.

  Lestrade fumbled about in the boat’s bottom and came up with a single paddle. Like a man with one arm he dipped it into the frothy turbulence of the Thames. If only, like Harry Bandicoot, he had rowed for Eton. If only, like Jane Robbins, he had stayed on terra firma. And his terror now was complete. The roar of the river was deafening and Lestrade’s unskilled sculling made no headway against the foam. Wells looked up through the fog of his fit, half realized their predicament and murmured, helpfully, ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go,’ before passing out completely.

  Lestrade did what all Englishmen do when faced with the intransigence of machines. He blamed the boat. As he and Wells disappeared over the edge of forever, he was heard to cry, ‘You stupid punt!’

  ❖ 7 ❖

  T

  hey let Lestrade and Wells out of Surbiton General the next day. Both men, the doctor said, were lucky to be alive. They’d pumped enough water out of them to refloat the Revenge and if they’d gone in any lower down the Thames Reaches it would have been a case of poisoning, not drowning.

  Jane Robbins had sat at Wells’ bedside, clutching his hand, smoothing his delirious brow and feeding him nourishing broth. Walter Dew had sat by Lestrade’s, continuing to make inroads into the grapes he’d brought (like last time) and whittling his initials on the bed frame. He was always careful in these situations to carve a broad arrow between the W of Walter and the D of Dew so that the whole thing had an aura of officialdom and the War Department got the blame.

  ‘What of Herbert George Wells then, guv’nor?’ the Constable asked as the growler took them through sleepy Surbiton and on into bustling Barnes.

  ‘An odd cove, certainly,’ Lestrade said. ‘Confessed to an amorous dalliance with the late Miss Fordingbridge.’

  ‘Ah, so who was the lady I saw him with just now?’

  ‘That was no lady,’ said Lestrade ‘That was his fiancée.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Don’t ask, Walter,’ Lestrade rested his head gratefully against the leather seat of the growler. ‘We are not, you and I, of the Thinking Classes. We’re one-woman men, at least at a time. Mr Wells believes in getting it where he can as often as he can.’

  ‘So he killed Miss Fordingbridge because she had become an encumbrance?’

  ‘Possible,’ said Lestrade, ‘but I’d have emptied her pockets first.’

  ‘Eh, sir?’

  I wouldn’t risk killing a woman and leaving my calling card in her fol-de-rols, would you? Without that, we might never have linked her with Wells at all.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. But what if he didn’t know it was there?’

  ‘Well done, Dew. I’d hoped you’d spot that one. The fact is that Mr Wells has such a philosophy of life that he really doesn’t care that much who knows about his dalliances. He certainly wouldn’t kill to keep them quiet. No, I think our Mr Wells is in the clear, but we’ll just put him in the shoe boxes for now, shall we? Put him on ice, so to speak. We may have need of him again. Now, any news in my absence?’

  ‘Not a lot, sir. Formal identification of the body in question.’

  ‘Not a fictitious husband this time?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Oh, no, guv,’ Dew chuckled. ‘Bromley was meticulous.’

  ‘Bromley?’ Lestrade’s face fell an octave.

  ‘He double-checked with me, sir.’ Dew sat on his dignity a little. After all, he had been a detective man and boy now for seven years. A bloody apprenticeship, it had to be said. And if he could just lay his hands on one arch-criminal, it would be the making of him.

  ‘Did he, now?’ Lestrade was unimpressed ‘Who was this person, then?’

  ‘Father, sir.’

  ‘Father? How old did Bromley say he was?’

  ‘Er . . . on the youngish side, he said.’

  ‘I bet he did!’

  ‘Why, guv?’ Dew sensed that all was not well.

  ‘During my conversations with Mr Wells over the last four hours in our adjacent hospital beds, he told me, apart from his plans for world Socialism, and the plot of a fairly ludicrous novel about blokes from Mars invading earth, he told me that Henrietta Fordingbridge had no dependants. She was orphaned in the Great Diphtheria Outbreak in eighty-nine. Come to think of it, I didn’t feel so good myself that year.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘A little late for that Great Commissioner in the Sky, Dew, if you’ll permit me that observation. You know, I’ve had this conversation with you before – and recently. I assume we’re talking about our Australian friend?’

  ‘No, sir. Or at least, Bromley didn’t mention an accent. In fact, the bloke kept talking to him in Indian.’

  ‘Indian?’

  ‘“Hither lew” and “juldee juldee”. Hindoostani, isn’t it?’

  ‘Might as well be,’ Lestrade corroborated. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Well set-up chap, Bromley said. Auburn ’tache. Military bearing.’

  ‘Not a turban and a loincloth?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. He was a white man all right. Not a fakir or anything like that.’

  ‘Ah, but he was, Walter. He faked his identity and Bromley fell for it like the Essex constable he is. You just can’t get the staff. Look, when we get to the Yard, I want you to trot along to N Corridor and get hold of Constable Hockney.’

  ‘The police artist?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got a feeling that when he draws your Mr Bellamy and Bromley’s Mr Fordingbridge from the careful and meticulous descriptions you’re both going to give him, they’re going to look horribly alike.’

  ‘BUT WHY DIDN’T YOU take me with you?’ she asked, trying to catch his gaze.

  ‘I couldn’t, Trottie,’ he explained, untwining his fingers from beneath hers. ‘I shouldn’t even be doing this.’

  ‘You’re only winding my wool for me,’ she said. ‘Is that a crime in Rosebery’s England?’

  ‘Now, now,’ he warned her, ‘let’s not get political.’

  ‘But you might have been killed.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Walter Dew.’

  ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Hold still. I’ve nearly finished. He’s very fond of you, Sholto Lestrade. Lieutenants like him aren’t easy to come by.’

  He looked at her. The evening sun was sinking behind the solid, respectable villas of the Walworth Road, gilding her hair where it lay in tresses across her shoulders. ‘If you say so,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your wife.�
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  His eyes hardened. She felt the wool tense as she continued to wind around his hands. ‘Walter Dew?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not his fault, Sholto,’ she said. ‘I’m a very persuasive woman when I want to be. When he was kind enough to bring me breakfast at the Yard yesterday, I pinned him down.’

  ‘He must have thought his luck had changed!’ Lestrade scowled.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ she said again.

  ‘There’s not much to tell,’ he said. ‘Her name was Sarah. Sarah Manchester. She was a widow. Her husband died when his gig overturned at Hyde Park Corner five years ago. She was . . .’ and he smiled at the remembrance of it, ‘she was actually my landlady, but there was a joke between us that she was my housekeeper. I needed somewhere to lay my hat. She needed the rent. It worked well.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we . . . fell in love. That worked well too.’

  She lowered his arms. ‘Poor Sholto,’ she said. ‘Walter told me. She died, didn’t she?’

  He nodded. ‘One of those things,’ he said. ‘There was no reason for it. Oh, I expect the doctors had some scientific explanation. It was beyond me.’

  She lifted his chin, gazing into the sad, dark eyes and placed a finger on her lips. Then she passed it across the space between them, a space grown small in that moment, and touched it against his lips. For an instant they looked into each other’s eyes, his face closing imperceptibly to hers.

  Then there was the ring of her doorbell and the moment was broken for ever.

  She swirled away to the window that overlooked the little courtyard below. A carriage and pair stood beyond the myrtle hedge, a coachman in the livery of the old Prince of Wales Theatre perched on the box.

  ‘Damn!’ she muttered, biting her lip.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘That was mighty fine gooseberry pie, Trottie.’

  ‘But you haven’t had your coffee,’ she frowned. ‘Look. Wait in there,’ and she shoved him into an ante-room.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked, remembering to snatch up his boater.

  ‘That old duffer Squire Bancroft,’ she said. ‘Impresario Extraordinary – and that’s his phrase, not mine. He wants me for Ophelia.’

  Jesus wanted Lestrade for a sunbeam or so he’d always believed but this wasn’t the time to say so. He wedged himself against the flock of the wallpaper and waited.

  He heard the booming of the voice in the hall, then the crash of the drawing-room door as the Great Thespian made his entrance. He put his eye to the keyhole and saw a sight for sore eyes. Squire Bancroft was easily the wrong side of his half-century, with wild grey hair under a shiny topper and a superb pair of Piccadilly weepers that threatened to entangle themselves with the rope of his monocle that flashed like a firefly in the sunset.

  ‘Trottie, my jewel,’ and he chewed his consonants with relish, ‘I’m not compromising you, am I?’ And Lestrade saw the Actor’s Actor close a rather sweaty arm around the slim waist of Miss True.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she assured him and took his arm just as purposefully away.

  ‘Well, well,’ he glanced at the grandfather in the corner, glad that it was made of wood and metal rather than flesh and blood, ‘the night is young. Just wanted to say, the most deuc’d thing has happened. You’d never believe it.’

  ‘Nellie Melba’s hit the right note?’

  ‘Haw, haw,’ he guffawed and his monocle fell off. ‘My, but you’re a waspish little filly,’ he observed, showing a curious ignorance of the animal world. ‘No, no. It’s my gel for Ophelia. You’ll have to take the part now.’

  ‘Squire,’ she turned to face him, ‘I’ve told you. I’m not very good. What’s happened to the girl you had?’

  ‘Well, that’s the devil of it. It was in Greasepaint this morning – she’s dead. Been strangled by this bally maniac on the Tube. I don’t know what the bally police think they’re at. This is London, for Jove’s sake, 1895. Not Chicago in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said levelly, ‘it’s tragic. I didn’t know you knew Miss Fordingbridge?’

  ‘Oh Lord, yes. Er . . . not in the biblical sense of course. But I saw her Lady Teazle last year at the Hippodrome. Don’t tell Mrs Bancroft, but it beat hers into a cocked hat, I can tell you. Now, tomorrow, lotus flower, we’re having to rethink the whole thing. Well, you know what a perfectionist Forbes-Robertson is.’

  ‘Can’t you cancel?’

  ‘Cancel?’ Lestrade saw the Great Pretender turn ashen. ‘My dear girl, Irving himself is coming to the opening night. And it’s three weeks away. Fair makes your footlights dim, I can tell you. Shall we say ten-thirty then, at the POW? Give Mrs Bancroft time to put her face on. Not to mention the other parts of her anatomy.’

  ‘Squire . . .’

  ‘My dear,’ and he leapt to her side with a theatrical sweep, snatching up one hand and wiping his mustachios all over it, ‘who needs Sarah Bernhardt when I can have you?’

  ‘You can’t have me,’ she told him defiantly, ungluing his lips from her fingers. ‘Oh all right, I’ll be there. But I can’t promise anything much.’

  ‘“Divine perfection of woman”,’ he said, leering in the sunset, ‘you’ve made a nearly middle-aged man very happy. A bientôt,’ and he swirled his cape and exited, stage left.

  Lestrade oozed out of the cupboard where Trottie True had placed him in lieu of the ante-room in her haste. ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Let me put it another way.’ He shivered the nets aside to watch the Great Entertainer spring lightly into his waiting trap. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, he means well enough.’ She joined him at the window. ‘He actually retired ten years ago, but you’d never think so. He was manager of the Prince of Wales and the Haymarket. He’s raised twenty thousand pounds for hospitals you know, by giving recitals throughout the country.’

  ‘They pay him to stop, do they?’

  ‘Sholto,’ she flicked him with a curtain, ‘that’s unkind. His Little Nell is legendary.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I could see that. Almost. Tell me, Trottie, didn’t he know about Verity?’

  She shook her head and busied herself with a lamp. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said. ‘So much for June’s long-lighted days. No, I don’t suppose he does. I haven’t seen him for three months or more. Ever since I initially turned Ophelia down. Notice he only read about poor Miss Fordingbridge in Greasepaint. I expect it’s the only reading he does apart from plays.’

  ‘Rather a coincidence, that,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he should know one murder victim and the sister of another.’

  A chill flicked over her heart and she caught her breath, standing with the glass chimney in her hand, the oil glow lighting her face. ‘Sholto,’ she said, ‘you don’t think . . . that Squire Bancroft . . . ?’

  ‘This play he’s doing – the one with Ophelia in it. What is it, exactly?’

  ‘Hamlet,’ she said, looking oddly at him.

  ‘Any blokes in that?’ It had obviously slipped his mind for a moment.

  ‘Several,’ she said.

  ‘Good. I’ll come with you tomorrow. Introduce me as an actor – from the provinces.’

  ‘Do you do accents?’ she asked.

  ‘Somerset,’ he demonstrated, lapsing into fluent Lancashire.

  ‘Is this a good idea?’ she asked.

  ‘Links like these are important,’ he told her, making for the door, ‘when one name can join two victims. Who knows, perhaps Squire Bancroft is the missing link.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ she nodded.

  ‘Good night, Trottie. I’ll be back at ten tomorrow morning with a growler. Sleep well.’

  SHE DIDN’T. THROUGH her tortured turnings under the coverlet, Squire Bancroft loomed over her, moaning, ‘Murder,’ and grinning like some hideous death’s head. In the wings of her dreams, her sister lay garotted, a gaping
hole where her throat used to be and her face a deathly white, like a Pierrot whose cheeks ran with glycerine tears.

  The solid, comfortable, lived-in face of Sholto Lestrade came as an errant in shining armour to her dragons of the night. The growler took them to Coventry Street, to the side door of the Prince of Wales Theatre. Here, amid dusty flats and the smell of sulphur, an old crone took bookings on the telephone machine.

  ‘Gerard 7483,’ she croaked. ‘Yes. Yes. Upper circle? You must be joking, sonny. No. Out of the question. Only the pit. One and eightpence. Well, take it or leave it. I don’t have to do this job, you know. I could have been a contender.’ And she slammed the phone down.

  ‘Get a lot of bookings, do you?’ Lestrade asked Trottie as they climbed a set of rickety stairs to the stage. Once again, the darkened auditorium. Once again, the floodlit stage. A tall man of Lestrade’s own vintage, but with hair swept back and wearing a faintly outrageous codpiece, stood in the centre and an enormous woman in a nightie with a crown on her head knelt with obvious discomfort at his feet.

  ‘Johnston,’ Lestrade recognized Squire Bancroft’s voice bellowing from the blackness, ‘you’ll have to help her up, I’m afraid. It’s her knees.’

  The fairy queen on the floor wrenched off her crown and scowled into the darkness. ‘Will you stop mentioning parts of my body, Squire?’ she bellowed back.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a queen for God’s sake, Effie. At least manage some of the dignity that the Bard in his brilliance bestowed on Gertrude. Ah, Trottie. Marvellous! Marvellous! I was just congratulating Mrs Bancroft on her lofty portrayal of Denmark’s queen. Who’s that with you? Your driver?’

  ‘Er . . . no, Squire,’ she called over the footlights. ‘This is Anthony Lister, the actor.’

  ‘The actor?’ Bancroft repeated. ‘Take five minutes, everybody. Johnston, darling, see to Effie, will you?’

  And the leading man nearly ruptured himself trying to lift her.

  ‘Here goes,’ Trottie whispered, crossing everything she had, and waited while the Great Actor-Manager ascended the stage. There was deafening applause from a solitary inhabitant of the balcony above and Squire Bancroft turned to bow.