Lestrade and the Sign of Nine Read online

  ‘Well, that’s just it, Holmes, there seems to be rather an absence of good fellows at the moment. Look!’

  The World’s Greatest Detective turned to Watson’s window. ‘Hmm,’ he nodded, ‘they are a little late for the January Sales.’

  ‘Right,’ they heard the cabbie growl, ‘I’m orff,’ and he hopped up onto his perch.

  ‘Stay where you are, driver!’ Holmes roared. ‘I shall report you to the Hackney Carriage Drivers’ Association for conduct unbecoming.’

  ‘You do what you bloody well like mate. This ’ere vehicle is my bread and butter. Up, Bucephalus!’ and he lashed the weary animal with his whip.

  The crack of the leather seemed to galvanize the horde of black-coated men. The centre made a grab for the horse-collar and bridle, clinging on to the harness until the confused beast was slowed by the sheer press of men. The cabbie laid about him with his whip, then someone dragged him off his perch and he disappeared among the shoulders and flying fists.

  ‘Right,’ a voice bellowed, ‘Let’s ’ave them bastards out!’ And they wrenched the door off its hinges.

  ‘Shall I use my army service revolver, Holmes?’ Watson had dropped his cocoa again.

  ‘Waste of lead, my dear fellow,’ Holmes observed. ‘They’re only the sweepings of the gaols. Hit them with your Gladstone.’

  ‘It’s Gladstone!’ one of the roughs shouted. ‘It’s old Glad Eye.’

  ‘Blimey! The Prime Minister. The GOM. ’isself!’ and the impressed crowd stood back.

  Watson looked frantically at Holmes. ‘They think one of us is Gladstone, Holmes,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. ‘What’ll we do?’

  ‘Elementary, old fellow. We do what the real Gladstone would do – make empty promises we can’t possibly keep.’

  ‘We, Holmes?’

  The Great Detective sighed anew. ‘Shrewd of you to spot the plurality of the situation, Watson. Clearly, I cannot possibly pass as a man of seventy-six with a father who grew sugar and owned workshops in Liverpool. You on the other hand have no patrician features to disguise. Things would be different of course were I carrying my Leichner waxes. Well, get on with it, man. Pretend this is the Midlothian campaign all over again and make a speech. And don’t forget to wave your arms about.’

  Watson hauled the plaid off his knees and in a moment of inspiration wrapped it over his shoulders. He dashed nervous fingers through his hair to give it that Gladstonian mania, pinged his Eton collar up round his ears and balanced gingerly on the step of the cab.

  ‘My mission,’ he said to the murmuring, jostling crowd, ‘. . . er . . . is to pacify Ireland.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Never mind about Ireland, your honour,’ a voice called back. ‘Wot abaht the workers?’

  The cry was taken up.

  ‘Er . . .’ Watson held up his hand, ‘I can offer you . . . um . . . nothing but blood, sweat and tears,’ he said.

  ‘Who killed Gordon?’ another voice bawled.

  ‘Er . . . we will fight them on the beaches,’ Watson countered without conviction, but the crowd surged forward, chanting ‘M.O.G.! M.O.G.! and rocking the hansom backwards and forwards, holding the head of the whinnying horse.

  ‘Promise me, old fellow,’ Holmes gripped the upholstery, ‘that you’ll never try a career in politics.’

  ‘I thought those bits were quite good, Holmes,’ Watson bridled along with the hack, ‘the blood, sweat and tears bit and that thing about fighting them on the beaches.’

  ‘Didn’t do much good, did it, old fellow?’ Holmes hissed through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve changed my mind about your service revolver. Shoot a few of the working-class bastards.’

  A shot shattered the noise. The crowd pulled back, letting the hansom rock quietly to stillness. The dazed cabbie hauled himself upright and clung desperately around the neck of his horse, his head pouring with blood.

  Watson checked his pocket. No, the Webley hadn’t gone off by accident. There was no smell of powder and no gaping hole where his testicles used to be. It did give him pause for thought however about carrying a pistol with no safety catch so near his staff of life. He poked a crimson head out of the gap where the door had hung.

  A small knot of uniformed policemen, no more than six men strong, stood, truncheons at the slope, behind a yellow-faced ferret of a man in a bowler hat and ageless Donegal who twirled with a certain dexterity a twelve-bore shotgun, still smoking in the crisp morning air.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. You are all under arrest.’

  ‘What for?’ a rough yelled.

  ‘Disturbing Her Majesty’s Peace,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Damaging a hansom cab, thereby rendering it less than handsome, frightening a Hackney horse – no doubt the RSPCA will be in touch; being unpleasant to two respectable gentlemen going about their lawful business; oh, and breaking the nose of a Hackney Carriage Driver, licence number . . . er . .?’

  ‘Four free free,’ the cabbie managed, his nose spreading slowly over his face.

  ‘There’s only . . . um . . . seven o’ you,’ another rough shouted.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Lestrade turned to the man at his right elbow, ‘tell these gentlemen all about Metropolitan Procedure One Three Eight, would you.’

  ‘Yessir, certainly, sir,’ the sergeant cleared his throat. ‘Metropolitan Procedure One Three Eight states that in the context of crowd control no police action shall be undertaken unless the said police outnumber the said crowd eight to one.’

  ‘Especially . . .?’ Lestrade reminded his man.

  ‘Especially on Mondays.’

  ‘You’re bluffin’,’ a rough growled.

  Lestrade pointed to the roof of an adjoining building. Against the pearly haze of the February sky, a lone helmeted bobby straightened from his hiding place.

  The Inspector pointed again to another building where a young rookie rather spoiled the triumph of the moment by smiling down at him and waving. He pointed a third time and yet another boy in blue emerged from the roof railings.

  ‘Three sides of the square surrounded, gentlemen,’ Lestrade said. ‘Which leaves the side behind you – the one that faces the City whence I suspect most of you came. Constable,’ he turned to the man on his left, ‘be so good as to recite for these gentlemen Metropolitan Procedure Eight Two Nine.’

  The constable cleared his throat. ‘Metropolitan Procedure Eight Two Nine clearly states that no foot action of the police vis à vis a crowd situation is to be undertaken without the use of the Mounted Division and said Mounted Division is to be equipped with extra-long truncheons and if need be, lances.’

  ‘Lances!’ the crowd muttered, stumbling backward.

  ‘If you put your ears to the ground gentlemen,’ Lestrade said, ‘you will probably catch the cad . . . cade . . . rhythm of their hoof beats galloping along the Tottenham Court Road in this general direction as I speak. You will also catch frostbite on account of the snow, but that’s a small price to pay for Social Democracy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Er . . . Inspector Lestrade, sir,’ the sergeant tapped his superior’s shoulder.

  ‘Yes, sergeant, I’m a busy man. What is it?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we oughta tell them about Metropolitan Procedure Three Nine Two, sir?’

  ‘Oh, now, that’s a bit extreme, sergeant,’ Lestrade frowned. ‘The baby Howitzer, I mean. You know we aren’t allowed to use it within half a mile of the Palace.’

  But the crowd hadn’t waited to hear more. First one, then knots of three and four melted away from the back. Then the whole black-coated rabble began to run, fanning out of the square by every available orifice and covering their heads with their hands to avoid the missiles being rained on them by the scores of policemen above.

  ‘I think this puts the lid on Rousseau’s concept of the General Will, Clarence, don’t you?’ Lestrade heard a fleeing rough call.

  ‘I do, Arfur, I do. Maybe the lumpenproletariat aren’t re
ady for the barricades yet. Next September do you?’

  ‘Better make it the September after, Clarence, if it’s all the same to you. I’ve got that Emmanuel Kant to get frough yet.’

  ‘There’s no need to be unpleasant to what I feel is essentially a well-meanin’ body of philosophers, Arfur.’

  And the two voices echoed away through the side streets that twisted to the East End.

  The Inspector turned to his sergeant. ‘You’d better get your three blokes down from there before they freeze to death.’

  ‘Yessir. Very good, sir,’ the sergeant waved his boys down. ‘It’s a good thing we happened upon you, sir, off-duty an’ all. What is all that guff about Metropolitan Procedures? We ain’t ’eard of ’em in C Division.’

  ‘Neither had I until five minutes ago,’ Lestrade winked at him, ‘but you remembered your lines well, sergeant . . . er . . .?’

  ‘Regan, sir. This is Constable Carter.’

  ‘You’ll go far, lads.’

  ‘Lestrade!’

  ‘Ah,’ the Inspector turned to the wrecked hansom. ‘Mr Gladstone, sir, I trust you aren’t injured.’

  ‘Damn you, Lestrade, for your confounded cheek!’ Holmes snapped.

  ‘Ah,’ he tipped his bowler, ‘you must be Mr Morley.’

  ‘Please, Lestrade,’ Holmes shuddered. ‘It’s been a ghastly enough day without being taken for a Liberal. Besides, no attempts at satire, please. You haven’t the wit for it.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Holmes,’ Watson flustered, ‘I mean, damn it all, Lestrade here probably saved our lives. A moment later . . .’

  ‘A moment later and I’d have had my quarry,’ the Great Detective sneered. ‘As it is, the Count is long gone by now – halfway to the Docks, I shouldn’t wonder. Why is it, Lestrade, that just as my vast intellect is about to produce dazzling results, your great flat feet come trampling all over the place?’

  ‘Luck, I suppose,’ Lestrade said.

  Holmes closed to his man. ‘Keep out of my way, Lestrade, that’s all I ask. London isn’t big enough for both of us.’

  ‘I say, Holmes,’ Watson chortled, ‘that’s rather a cliché isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ Holmes snapped. ‘I leave that sort of thing to your friend Conan Doyle. Cabbie!’ The driver lifted a battered head out of a handkerchief. Luckily for him, it was his own head and still marginally attached to his neck. ‘221B Baker Street and double quick time.’

  ‘Right,’ the whip snaked out and the hack jerked forward, happy to feel the presence of the hames in action again. ‘But what about my door?’

  Even the assorted clutch of constables blanched at Holmes’s reply to that one.

  Lestrade eased back the serpentine of the twelve-bore.

  ‘Sergeant, you’d better have one of your men return this to Mr Wesson the gunsmith. Thank him for allowing us to borrow it. For the spent cartridge he’ll have to sign in triplicate.’

  ‘Very good, sir. Er . . . sir . . . I hope, on the acquaintanceship of a few moments you won’t presume it forward of me, but . . .’

  ‘Yes, man, spit it out.’

  ‘Well, I was just wondering, sir, where did the cartridge go? Only there’s blood all down your leg and on the snow where you’ve been walking.’

  Lestrade glanced down. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘so there is,’ and he toppled forward in the slush.

  Across the road from where a group of constables were lifting an unconscious Inspector on to their shoulders prior to the solemn walk to Charing Cross Hospital, a gnarled old woman dragged her gammy left leg down the steps of the grand old house in the corner. Her back slewed to the right and she grinned at the leaden sky through gappy teeth. Chuckling as she went and tucking the forged papers under her arm, she made her way to the Docks.

  ❖2❖

  A

  ssistant Commissioner James Monro stared out over the darkling city, the river at Hungerford Wharf brown between the white banks. Not since his native Scotland had he seen such snow in February. And in all his twenty-seven years in Bengal, not so much as a flake of the stuff.

  He turned at the rattle at the door. ‘Come,’ he bellowed in the stentorian Scots calculated to terrify rookies and members of the Press. An unshaken detective limped in, hobbling with the aid of a stick.

  ‘Shot yourself in the foot again, Lestrade, I gather,’ the Assistant Commissioner said.

  ‘The leg, sir,’ the Inspector had the neck to correct him.

  ‘Well, take the weight off it and sit ye doon . . . Not there!’

  Lestrade’s good knee had only barely bent when it snapped straight again. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, no,’ the Scotsman was softer. ‘I should be apologizing, laddie. We’re all a little on edge this morning. It’s a new directive from on high. That chair’s reserved for Chief Inspectors and above.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’s yours.’ Monro pointed to an altogether shabbier piece of furniture, the one Lestrade recognized as having housed Mr Howard Vincent’s pet iguana before the founder of the Criminal Investigation Department had forsaken the Yard for an altogether higher place. Now man and lizard lounged on the back benches of Her Majesty’s House of Commons. Lestrade winched himself down.

  ‘How old are you now?’ Monro fixed his man with a tilt of his pince-nez.

  ‘Thirty-two, sir, last month.’

  ‘Thirty-two, eh?’ the Assistant Commissioner found himself grinning stupidly. ‘Well, well . . . Well,’ he cleared his throat, shaking himself out of some half-forgotten reverie. ‘When you’re forty-six or so, no doubt that chair will be yours. Now, to the matter in hand. The Commissioner has asked me to pass on his warmest congratulations for the act of unsurpassed crowd control you executed in Hanover Square on Monday last.’

  ‘Thank you sir,’ a smile of self-satisfaction crept over the parchment features.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that just yet, were I you, laddie,’ Monro whirled to a pile of papers on his desk. ‘Smile, I mean. Y’ see this pile of papers?’ Lestrade did.

  ‘This is only a fraction of it. Lost Property downstairs is choc-a-bloc and the basement, well, you can’t see a stick of Fenian dynamite for the correspondence.’

  ‘About what, sir?’

  ‘Well, mostly, demands for resignations of the entire detective branch, a total disbandment of the uniformed men, a retraining programme which I estimate will cost nearly three million pounds and will end in April 1947 and several suggestions as to what Colonel Henderson can do with the rest of his sadly limited career. Not to mention a timely reminder that when a police officer was killed in the line of duty in 1833 the jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.’

  ‘What will the Commissioner do, sir?’

  ‘Damned if I know, laddie. Whatever it is, he won’t be doing it at Scotland Yard.’

  ‘You mean . . . he’s going?’

  ‘Man, he’s gone. One of his last acts was to ask me to see you personally. But of course he hadn’t seen all this, had he?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well, sir,’ Lestrade nodded sagely. ‘Better he didn’t find out.’

  ‘Och, awa’, I’m not talking about these. I said it was mostly to do with what an appalling job the Metropolitan Police did on “Black Monday” as the damn’d papers are calling it. These eight however, have to do with an appalling job you did on that self-same occasion.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Och, there are no buts, laddie,’ Monro leaned back, his hands locked behind his head. ‘Not in the Metropolitans. It’s all relative, y’ see. Relative to the complete crassness and abject inactivity of the rest of the Force, your slick operation and quick thinking was splendid stuff indeed. But I have a letter from a lady who says that a policeman wrought havoc in her hoose by putting his size tens through her skylight. Another from a member of the League Against Loud Noises for the totally unnecessary discharge of a shotgun. A bill from the London Hackney Carriage Company for damage done to one of their vehicular contr
ivances which you could and should have prevented. Etcetera, etcetera. Oh . . . and a rather curious note from a gentleman named Sherlock Holmes accusing you of baulking him of his prey. Do you know this Holmes? White Hunter is he?’

  Lestrade shrugged. ‘Never heard of him,’ he said with a face as straight as a poker.

  ‘Well, I’ve got a directive,’ Monro sighed, ‘from our new lord and master, General Charles Warren, the likely next appointee as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Hasn’t even got the job yet and he’s giving orders.’

  ‘A soldier?’

  Monro clicked his teeth. ‘Ach, I can see why you’re a detective inspector, laddie,’ he grinned approvingly. ‘I foresee there’ll be a mite more saddlesoap and blanco at the Yard than you and I are used to. The new directive says that I am to suspend you for causing a public nuisance in pursuance of your duty. What do you have to say to that?’

  Lestrade’s mouth flopped open.

  ‘Exactly what I thought you’d say,’ Monro nodded. ‘So,’ he carefully buried Warren’s directive under the pile of paperwork. ‘You’d better hobble over to Mr Rodney’s. He’s got a wee job for you. I’ll tell the Generalissimo when he arrives that his new directive got here just too late for me to reach you.’

  ‘Mr Rodney?’

  ‘Aye, you know the one. Assistant Commissioner in charge of traffic. Chap with mousy hair and a habit of forgetting who the bloody hell you are.’

  ‘But I’m a detective,’ Lestrade said, still bewildered by it all.

  ‘Aye, laddie. And if you want to stay one, you’ll get your backside over to Traffic and talk to Mr Rodney.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Lestrade shuddered. ‘It’s not that torso they found under the Opera House last year, is it?’

  ‘Monro chuckled. ‘Aye, it’s funny how the old Assistant Commissioner is obsessed wi’ that, isn’t it? And him not even old Assistant Commissioner (Crime). Still, there’s none so peculiar as middle-aged policemen. You’ll be one yersen one o’ these days, laddie.’

  Mr Monro always became heavily vernacular when he had terminated a conversation. Lestrade clawed his way to his feet, checking that the iguana hadn’t left anything indescribable on his trousers.