Lestrade and the Guardian Angel Read online

  ‘Is he all right?’ Davenport asked. ‘Good God, what’s that disgusting smell? Paddy?’

  The wolfhound looked outraged, but Lestrade knew the animal was innocent.

  ‘That smell is phosphorus, Major Davenport,’ he said, tugging at Mander’s scarf and cravat. ‘This man has been poisoned. Get this contraption down.’

  But even as he spoke, Mander’s head flopped to one side and he stared with sightless eyes at the wolfhound who whimpered and curled tightly into a corner.

  Davenport began hauling at ropes and weights and pulleys and the gas began to rush out of the vast globe. ‘Don’t breathe it in,’ he shouted, ‘cover your face,’ and Lestrade threw himself against the shaggy flank of the hound who snarled anew.

  Davenport had donned a pair of impenetrable goggles over his already impenetrable spectacles and the balloon began to lurch violently to the left. ‘Damn these westerlies,’ he shouted. ‘Lestrade, you can’t stay down there. Give me a hand,’ and he and the inspector struggled with the inflatable as it raced across the Downs.

  ‘Where are we?’ Lestrade shouted, his voice brittle with wind and panic. He thanked God he was wearing brown trousers. Davenport peered myopically over the side. ‘The South of England somewhere,’ he said. That was good enough for Lestrade, at least for the moment. ‘No, wait a minute,’ the major corrected himself, ‘that looks like Normandy down there.’

  For a moment, Lestrade experienced hysteria. Surely, Normandy was in France. They had crossed the Channel. Who knew what terrors awaited them on the ground? Perhaps even now the guns of the French artillery were trained on them. As he gripped the lurching, buffeted basket, the tops of the trees began to rattle and scrape on the wickerwork.

  ‘I can’t hold her!’ Davenport was screaming. ‘I can’t hold her! Bale out!’

  ‘What?’ Lestrade looked at him in disbelief. They must have been sixty feet above the ground.

  ‘Jump!’ and the officer of the Eleventh Hussars leapt over the side, his crimson legs racing through the air until he disappeared into the middle of a flock of sheep grazing on the hillside. Lestrade was alone. Alone that is save for an Irish wolfhound and a poisoned corpse. He knew then that he had never been so alone before. His only thought was to get down in as few pieces as possible and he began fumbling with the balloon’s neck. The gas rushed out, searing his hands and arms, but he held on and turned his face away.

  Two men, wandering the lanes below, saw him struggling with the inflatable. They stopped and one said to the other, ‘Look at that chap. He balloons like a policeman.’

  Lestrade saw the solid grey tower of a church hurtle past on his left and, with a crunch and sickening jolt, the basket hit the ground and ropes and weights cascaded on to his head as he rolled gracefully among the gravestones. It was some time before he came to himself, being licked around the frozen ears by the wolfhound. His head was resting on an angel, crouched in stone over a veiled urn. He remembered thinking how odd that there should be an English gravestone in Normandy.

  ‘What the bloody ’ell’s ’appened ’ere?’ a voice behind him boomed, though to Lestrade the words were indistinct.

  He sat upright, to be confronted by a sexton with a mean-looking scythe.

  ‘Bonjour.’ He mustered his only French and patted his chest. ‘English,’ he said, and then again, more loudly, ‘English.’

  ‘Well, I’m bloody ’appy for yer,’ the sexton said.

  ‘You speak remarkably good English,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Thanks,’ grunted the sexton, helping him up. ‘I’ve only bin practisin’ for these sixty year.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Lestrade clutched the man’s sleeve to steady himself. ‘Isn’t this Normandy?’

  ‘Normandy be buggered.’ The sexton spat in the grass. ‘Normandy be five mile that way. This be Church Crookham.’

  ‘Church Crookham? Where’s Farnborough?’

  ‘Over that bloody ’ill,’ said the sexton. ‘Where do you blokes come from, that’s what I’d like to know?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Lestrade told him, grateful for the feel of terra firma below his feet. He walked shakily to the basket to where the body of Sally Mander lay among ropes and canvas. The terror was there still.

  IT WAS CARPET TIME again that night. Lestrade, patched up where he had collided with the undergrowth by the regimental surgeon at Farnborough, stood squarely on the mat in Nimrod Frost’s office. He had borrowed Dew’s bowler in lieu of his own, which for all he knew still circled in the eddying air currents over the South Downs.

  ‘An unauthorized flight, Lestrade,’ Frost was saying, his cheeks quivering in the lamplight. ‘You might have killed someone.’

  ‘It might have been me, sir.’ Lestrade was in no mood for kid gloves.

  ‘Well, it’s out of my hands now.’ Frost struggled to his feet. ‘You are to wait here,’ and he waddled to the door.

  For a while Lestrade stood stock still. He had never liked this room. It had been unbearable under Melville McNaghten. It was unbearable under Nimrod Frost. His ribs ached, his hands and arms smarted from the flaying effect of the gas. He was about to turn and leave when a small, silver-haired man entered and sat down in Frost’s chair.

  ‘Do you know who I am, Inspector?’ he asked.

  Lestrade took in the moon cheeks, the small, clear, grey eyes and the weak chin. He didn’t need to see the scarlet tunic under the astrakhan coat. ‘You are Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley,’ he said.

  ‘Sir Garnet will do. What’s my job?’

  Was this a test? Or did the man have a genuine problem?

  ‘You are Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, sir,’ Lestrade told him.

  Sir Garnet leaned forward. ‘And as such it is my duty to have a word in your ear, Inspector. Have a seat.’

  A seat offered in this office was unheard of. Lestrade had to look for one. The leather of the chesterfield was cold comfort.

  ‘What do you know about the brothers Mander?’ Wolseley asked.

  ‘With respect, Sir Garnet, this is not a court martial. I ask the questions here.’

  ‘Lestrade!’ The door crashed open and Assistant Commissioner Frost stood there, quaking. But Wolseley held up his hand.

  ‘Leave us, Mr Frost, would you. Totally, I mean.’ His voice was firm.

  Frost shook some more but controlled himself. ‘Will that be all, my lord?’ he asked.

  The Field Marshal smiled. ‘For now, yes, but could we have some tea?’

  Frost screamed silently and spun on his heel, as neatly as a man of sixteen stone could, and vanished.

  ‘Mr Lestrade, I know I have no jurisdiction here. But two men are dead. I think we need to work together.’

  ‘Together then,’ said Lestrade, passing a cigar to Wolseley. ‘Question for question. First, how is Major Davenport?’

  ‘Davenport? Oh, that myopic idiot in the Depot Troop of the Eleventh Hussars. He landed, apparently, on a flock of sheep and the wool broke his fall. He however broke his leg. Damned bad form, that.’

  ‘Breaking his leg?’

  ‘Baling out of a bally balloon. You and Mander were civilians. It was his duty, as the only soldier present, to see that you were safe.’

  ‘Mander was already dead.’

  ‘What? I thought he was killed in the fall.’

  ‘He died of phosphoric poisoning, unless I miss my guess.’

  Wolseley sagged back in Frost’s chair. The man’s weight over the years had caused chronic indentation and he almost disappeared, but struggled upright again. ‘So much for military intelligence,’ he said.

  There was a knock at the door and a uniformed constable brought in a tray with Bath Olivers and real china cups, with handles. Lestrade basked in the unaccustomed luxury and he was mother while the tea-bobby left and Wolseley marshalled his thoughts.

  ‘I thought Sally Mander died accidentally, I must admit. I really came to see you about Gerald.’

  ‘He was stabbed,’ Lestr
ade told him. ‘In Epping Forest, by person or persons unknown,’ he picked up Frost’s ornate letter-opener and weighted it, ‘by a sharp, semi-blunt object. Sir Garnet, my second question – what was the hush-hush some-thing or other the Mander brothers were working on?’

  Wolseley fought his way out of the leather armchair and paced to the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I cannot divulge . . .’

  Lestrade stopped him. ‘I should tell you that the murders of the Mander brothers are only part of a larger conspiracy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Five others, to date. There’s no telling how many more we may yet find.’

  ‘That’s extraordinary,’ Wolseley shook his head.

  ‘You fought the First Ashanti War, Sir Garnet,’ Lestrade joined the old soldier by the window.

  ‘I did,’ he answered.

  ‘So did two officers called Fellowes and Hely – the Second War. Hely died there. Fellowes died recently.’

  ‘Archibald,’ Wolseley realized. ‘In the Life Guards.’

  ‘He was another,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Like the Manders. Do you know why?’

  Wolseley shook his head, not once, but several times. He crossed the floor, looked at Lestrade and crossed back. ‘I want your word, Lestrade.’ Wolseley looked his man in the eye, as he had done at the head of the Twenty-fifth Foot in Burma, as he had against the Mutineers in India and facing the Fuzzy Wuzzies at Tel-el-Kebir. ‘Your word, mind.’

  Lestrade looked back, as he had looked back at Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of Police, as he had looked on the ghastly corpses of the Ripper, as he had looked Death in the face as often as Sir Garnet. ‘You have it,’ he said.

  Wolseley relaxed and turned to the twinkling river-lights through the window. ‘The Austrians have built a rigid airship, Lestrade. Not a balloon of the type you flew today and in which the Manders made their name. It has a metal frame, was built by a Kraut named Schwartz and is not unlike your cigar in shape.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I wonder if you do, Lestrade,’ Wolseley said. ‘Imagine not one of those, but hundreds. We know the Germans and the French have been experimenting with petrol-driven airships for the past eight years. They’re still at the experimental stage but it’s vital that we catch them up.’

  Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re talking about an army in the sky,’ he said.

  ‘Cayley, Stringfellow and most recently Ader – they worked or are working on other types of aircraft. I don’t mind telling you, Lestrade, if there’s ever another European war, I hope I’m long dead. I wouldn’t want to see that. Imagine, bombs thrown from balloons. It’s monstrous.’

  ‘Like bolts of lightning,’ Lestrade mused.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Wolseley grimly, ‘lightning war. I’m just too old.’ He sighed. ‘The Manders, foremost among our civilian balloonists, were working on a pioneer airship. Like Schwartz’s, it is to be made of aluminium.’

  ‘What?’ Lestrade’s heart jumped.

  ‘Aluminium. It’s a light metal, stretches like a skin over the framework.’

  ‘Who knew about the Manders’ work, Sir Garnet?’

  ‘Well, half the bally Royal Engineers saw them at work at Farnborough, but only a tiny handful know about the airship.’

  ‘Have you questioned them?’

  ‘At length. As far as I know, they are all sound. The problem is the Manders themselves. Not long ago, they had a reputation for recklessness. A man was killed. All blown over now, of course.’

  ‘So you think the Manders were killed by a foreign power, to slow up our progress in this field or to protect a strategic secret?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I did think so, but you say others have died in a similar way.’

  ‘They have,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘But I have known murderers kill a number of unconnected people, just to confuse, whereas in reality there is only one actual target – or two, in the case of the Manders.’

  ‘That’s fiendishly clever,’ marvelled Wolseley. ‘Where does it get us?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Sir Garnet. May I question those privy to the secret work on the airship?’

  ‘Yes, but proceed warily, Lestrade. If this got out, it would blow an enormous hole in our national security. The safety of England is in your hands.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Garnet. I’ll do my best,’ and he shook the Field Marshal’s hand.

  ‘Oh, Lestrade.’ Wolseley stopped him at the door. ‘What I’ve just told you is of the utmost secrecy, of course, but what I am about to tell you is downright unprofessional. I don’t mind admitting I feel a cad to mention it.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Lestrade, sniffing a revelation.

  Wolseley looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s about Archie Fellowes – in the Ashanti business.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, it’s only a rumour, of course. Nothing in the official files.’

  ‘I know. One of my best men checked, as far as he was allowed.’

  ‘Quite. But there is a rumour that Fellowes lost his nerve at Koomassie. It is an eerie place, I can testify to that from my time there in ’73. But they say he ran out on Hely and his men, just left them there and skedaddled. Played the coward.’

  ‘Really?’ Things were beginning to fit into place for Lestrade.

  ‘Now it’s only a rumour, Inspector,’ Wolseley wagged a warning finger at him. ‘Apparently he spent some time in a nursing home. Bit namby pamby, what?’

  ‘A rumour is better than nothing,’ Lestrade said, ‘and at the moment, it may be all, Sir Garnet.’

  Lestrade spent a dogged four days interviewing members of the Royal Engineers Balloon Section. They may all have been foreign agents as far as he was concerned, but he could link none of them with phosphorus, Epping or, specifically, either Mander. He eyed their bayonets suspiciously and when no one was looking, lunged at the office wall at Farnborough, now that Davenport had vacated it, to see what sort of hole one made. The trouble was that plaster did not have the same consistency as neck and the experiment was not a total success. For an hour or so he contemplated sacrificing Paddy the wolfhound in the cause of forensic science by skewering him to the floor, but the sensitive beast got wind of it somehow and scurried out.

  One corporal of the Engineers did prove useful, however. He told Lestrade that Sally Mander had had a visitor the night before he died, which confirmed what Mander had begun to say before the irresistible urges of phosphorus poisoning called him over the side of the balloon basket. No, the visitor in question had not seen Mr Mander, but had left him a box of chocolates. Where were they now? Presumably, in Mr Mander. The corporal had no precise knowledge of the workings of the human alimentary canal and would be drawn no further on that point. The box? Gone. Had there been a calling card? He couldn’t remember one. What did this person look like? The corporal was very definite on this point. Tallish, perhaps five feet four, with a very large hat and muffler wrapped over the face.

  ‘Man?’ Lestrade asked. ‘Woman?’

  A moment’s pause. ‘Yes, sir. I’d say so.’

  Lestrade narrowed his eyes. It was the end of an imperfect day. ‘Which?’

  The corporal looked helpless. ‘If my stripes depended on it, sir, I couldn’t tell you. Do you ever meet people – and you’re not really sure?’

  Lestrade found himself nodding. It was the way of the world.

  ❖ Bus Stop ❖

  I

  t was in the middle of that December that William Terriss, the actor, was hacked to death in the darkness of a doorway at the Adelphi. But the weapon was a carving knife, not the stiletto for which Lestrade was searching, and in any case his assailant, Prince, had been caught red-handed.

  The London press buzzed with the Terriss case and the Manders passed into history. But at Scotland Yard there was a little knot of men who did not, could not, forget. They sat over their mugs of tea as the snow fluttered against the window panes and the river outside lay dark and grim in its white banks.

  ‘So w
hat did you learn at the Crystal Palace, Dew?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘The Mander brothers were regular exhibitionists there, sir. “Aerial Presti . . . Presti . . . sleight of hand By Appointment” – that’s what the handbill says.’

  ‘By appointment to whom?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘The Duke of Connaught, apparently.’

  ‘And what of the accident?’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s quite interesting. It was three years ago. A bloke named Parmenter teamed up with them for a while. Seems he was a brilliant balloonist in his own right. They were making an ascent over the Crystal Palace Park for the benefit of the May Day crowds – and Parmenter fell out.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘As a dormouse.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Well, that’s the peculiar thing. There were just the three of them in the basket. A fourth bloke who carried the flask of tea, or whatever, didn’t go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I hoped you’d ask that, sir,’ Dew beamed. ‘Because the Manders told him not to. Gave him some guff about ballast the bloke didn’t believe.’

  ‘You talked to this bloke?’

  ‘Yes, eventually. He does trapeze acts in the circus now.’

  ‘What did he make of the Manders?’

  ‘Well.’ Dew leaned forward, conspiratorially. Lilley and Skinner did likewise. ‘He reckons the Manders did Parmenter in.’

  ‘I see.’ Lestrade was the first to move back from the circle. ‘So it’s a matter of “Did he fall, or was he pushed?”’

  ‘Exactly, guv’nor,’ said Dew.

  ‘If he was pushed,’ ruminated Lestrade, ‘what was the motive?’

  ‘Yes, I was about to ask that, sir,’ said Skinner.

  ‘Oh, good.’ Lestrade delivered his most withering look.

  ‘This bloke I talked to said this Parmenter was drawing bigger crowds than the Manders.’

  ‘Professional jealousy, then?’ Lestrade said.

  ‘They’d had flaming rows before,’ Dew told them. ‘Lots of witnesses to that.’

  ‘And on the day of the fateful flight?’

  ‘Apart from this bloke, I couldn’t find anybody who was there.’