Lestrade and the Ripper Page 23

  The lamps at Great Scotland Yard burned late that night. Sholto Lestrade and Fred Wensley sat slumped in their respective chairs, wreathed in smoke and surrounded by cigar butts. For the umpteenth time they scanned the wall, covered from ceiling to floor with fluttering pieces of paper.

  ‘So,’ Lestrade coaxed his burning eyes to focus, ‘Marie Kelly was twenty-four. Twenty years between her and the others.’

  ‘Except Martha Tabram,’ said Wensley. ‘Only . . . what . . . eleven years between them.’

  ‘Martha Tabram, Martha Tabram.’ Lestrade circled the room, twisting his back and neck as he went. ‘Yes, I keep coming back to her as well, Fred. And yet . . .’

  ‘Yet?’

  ‘Yet does she fit?’

  ‘Why not? She was a doxy. East End. Throat cut.’

  ‘But no mutilations, Fred. No other wounds.’

  ‘Neither were there on Liz Stride.’

  ‘Because our man was interrupted.’

  ‘Who’s to say he wasn’t in the case of Martha Tabram?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Lestrade stared at the wall, chewing the ends of his moustache absent-mindedly. ‘Come in!’ he shouted to the knock at the door.

  ‘Your cocoa, sirs,’ Sergeant Dixon appeared with the steaming cups, ‘and a letter from Dr Macdonald, sir.’

  Lestrade took the envelope and left the tray to Wensley, who began stirring with his pencil stub.

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade said, ‘here’s a novelty, Fred. Lends some substance to Mrs Dew’s theory.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The doctor says Mary was pregnant. About three months gone, he reckons.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Wensley wrestled with his cocoa skin, a recurring problem for moustached men.

  ‘He’s not running true to form,’ was Lestrade’s conclusion.

  ‘Macdonald?’

  ‘The Ripper. Mary Kelly was younger than the others. She was expecting. She died indoors. Macdonald estimates it took over two hours to carry out the mutilations.’

  ‘But he’s down on whores,’ Wensley reminded him.

  ‘He is that,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘So far down that this one was all but skinned. And the bastard nips in and out of police patrols like he owns the place. What is it about him, Fred?’ Lestrade thumped the wall. ‘Between Chubb Rupasobly, George Lusk and us, you’d think somebody would have seen something.’

  ‘Somebody has, sir.’ It was Constable Dew at Lestrade’s door.

  ‘Don’t you knock, Constable?’ Wensley snapped, irked by this insubordinate behaviour in one of his own men.

  ‘Come in, Mr Dew.’ Lestrade was more generous. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘A bloke, sir, in the Truss and Ratchet in Cleveland Street. Sergeant Thicke advised me to find you, sir.’

  ‘Thicke?’ Lestrade groaned. ‘It had to be. H Division?’

  ‘Wasn’t he the one who arrested Leather Apron?’

  ‘Yes, Fred, yes. Johnny Upright. All right, Dew. And this had better be something. My cocoa’s ruined.’

  ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ yawned Wensley.

  ‘Dew, sir. Constable Dew,’ Constable Dew reminded him.

  ‘Of course,’ sighed Wensley. ‘How could I forget?’

  It was long past the closing time as laid down by Mr Gladstone, but now that Lord Salisbury was at the helm nobody asked too many questions. Lestrade and Wensley entered the tap room among the smiling doxies, the piano accordion rattling out its manic tune in the corner and the smoke and the noise. They sat down next to a squat figure in rags near the door.

  ‘God, Bill, you smell like a sewer,’ Lestrade observed. ‘Whose round is it?’

  ‘It’s all right for you people,’ Sergeant Thicke muttered, wiping his lips with his forearm. ‘You aren’t undercover, are you? You know I was pissed all over last night?’

  ‘Tut, tut,’ Lestrade shook his head, ‘Abberline on your back again, was he?’

  ‘Oh, ha, ha . . . sir,’ Thicke snarled.

  ‘Cheer up, Bill,’ Wensley beamed. ‘Constable Dew says you’ve got something.’

  ‘Must have something,’ Lestrade muttered under his breath.

  ‘It’s all right for you blokes, gentlemen,’ Thicke said again. ‘You’re not looking at a pension for years yet. What a way to go out! Thirty years I’ve been in this bloody job. Man and boy. Do you know what I had for breakfast this morning?’

  ‘What about this fellow?’ Lestrade prompted him.

  ‘What fellow, sir?’ Thicke growled. ‘Oh, him! He’s over there. By the fire. The one with the bloody topper. Stuck up toff. It’d take me six years to buy a waistcoat like that.’

  ‘What have you got on him?’

  ‘Well, I’m taller. And I’ve got my own hair.’

  ‘No, I mean what do you know about him?’ Lestrade tried to reason with the man. ‘Why do you suspect him?’

  Thicke flicked a little black book from his sock and passed it under the table to Lestrade, who flicked the fleas off it and began to read. His eyes widened. ‘Where did you get all this?’ he asked.

  Thicke tapped the side of his black nose. ‘Schtumm, guv’nor,’ he broke into the Yiddish patter. ‘It’s all bloody Kosher, innit?’

  ‘All right, Bill. Well done. Where are you tonight?’

  ‘Third arch along. Blackfriars bloody Station,’ he told them as they left his table. ‘Don’t bloody ask in future. It’s all right for you buggers . . .’

  But the buggers had gone, twirling among the dancers briefly to emerge the other side of the room. But Wensley did not emerge. A slip of a thing with wild red hair had hooked him in her shawl and the last Lestrade saw of him was his ferrety features disappearing under a hundredweight of female pulchritude in the form of the Madame who presided over the rooms on the first floor.

  ‘Business must be bad,’ Lestrade smiled, nodding in his direction and sitting down beside the toff. ‘Lister.’ He extended a hand.

  The toff raised himself from his arm and frowned at the interruption to his thoughts. ‘Stephen,’ he said. He was a darkly handsome young man, perhaps a year or two Lestrade’s junior, with rich blonde hair, of which Thicke was suspicious, falling in unruly splendour over his collar.

  ‘May I join you?’ Lestrade sat down, roasting his backside a little on the firedog on which he squatted.

  ‘If you must,’ Stephen sank back into his solitude.

  ‘Come on, sir,’ Lestrade kept up the bonhomie, ‘this is not a night to be alone. Nor indeed to be abroad. Gentlemen like ourselves venturing in these mean streets at this hour of the morning. What if the Ripper were to strike?’

  ‘The Ripper?’ Stephen raised himself again. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Lestrade leaned closer. ‘They say he struck again last night.’

  ‘I read the papers,’ Stephen scowled. ‘I wonder none of these wenches has turned him in. A hundred pounds reward, I understand.’

  ‘Ah, he’s too clever for them,’ Lestrade confided. ‘Runs rings round the police, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen almost smiled. ‘I particularly liked The Charivari’s cartoon of the game of blind man’s buff.’

  Lestrade hadn’t seen it. But, then, blindness apparently went with the job.

  ‘What’s your theory?’ Lestrade asked. ‘This Ripper chappie? How’s he got away with it so well?’

  Stephen stared into the flames. ‘He’s mad, they say,’ he said. ‘A mad doctor. Ha, ha, what tiny minds these policemen have.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Lestrade played along, ‘but we know better, don’t we?’

  ‘Do we?’ Stephen scowled at him, pouring the last of his champagne. ‘This stuff is warm, Mr Lister.’ He hurled it at the fire and it shattered into a thousand pieces on the hearth.

  ‘’Ere!’ Mine host, a rather less-than-jovial landlord, lurched towards him. Good, honest spirits were one thing, but wanton destruction he would not tolerate. His tolerance took on a more liberal air, however, when Stephen suddenly whirled to
face him with the deadly blade of a sword cane glittering at his throat.

  ‘Scum!’ Stephen hissed. ‘One more step and I’ll drop you where you stand.’

  The landlord retraced his steps, grovelling, leaving Lestrade to calm the quivering swordsman.

  ‘That’s a natty little thing,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed, very natty.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Lister,’ Stephen slid home the concealed blade, ‘are you looking for a new companion, perhaps?’

  ‘Er . . . perhaps,’ said Lestrade, looking with growing desperation for Wensley in the mêlée. ‘Who did you have in mind?’

  Stephen smiled, his even teeth flashing in the firelight. Lestrade felt a hand on his knee and his neck clicked. ‘Me,’ said the toff; ‘I have lodgings not a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Lestrade said, standing up, ‘shall we?’ and he was careful to allow Stephen to go first. Twice as they crossed the floor, he spun round, gesturing wildly to Thicke, who merely sat there, scratching himself. ‘I know,’ muttered Lestrade, ‘it’s all right for us blokes.’

  ‘What?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘It’s a good night for blokes,’ Lestrade said and winced as Stephen linked his arm with his.

  They left the noise and light and warmth of the Truss and stepped out gaily for the square ahead. The morning air was crisp and cold. Lestrade got funny looks from the pair of bobbies tramping their beat up Thrawl Street. Turning into Goulston Street, under the green of the gas lamp, George Lusk clumped past, bulging with his armoury of weapons, and behind him, whistling casually to the last of the stars, four men, built like outside privies. None of them noticed Lestrade and his friend.

  ‘Have you ever had a friend?’ Stephen asked him.

  ‘Well, I . . . er . . . yes,’ Lestrade bluffed, completely out of his depth.

  ‘I mean a real friend, a true friend,’ Stephen’s grip on his arm became more earnest.

  ‘Er . . . yes.’

  Stephen suddenly stopped, turning to face him. ‘And has that friend ever hurt you? Abandoned you for another?’

  ‘Er . . .’ It was a line Lestrade had learned from Assistant Commissioner Rodney.

  ‘I had a friend,’ Stephen unlocked a door and led Lestrade up a flight of stone steps, ‘who loved me with a love that surpasses the love of women.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lestrade sought safety in monosyllables. That too went with the job. He was shown into a single room, dominated by a large four-poster bed. Stephen threw down his silk hat and his gold-topped cane.

  ‘But tonight,’ he sniffed back his tears, ‘I intend to forget him.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lestrade felt an unaccustomed panic rising within him. ‘Is that wise? Your true love?’

  ‘True love?’ Stephen snapped, unbuttoning his frock coat. ‘Here!’ He snatched up a silver-framed photograph of a young man in the uniform of the 10th Hussars.

  ‘Isn’t that . . .?’ Lestrade peered through the lamplight.

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen said, nostrils flaring. ‘The Pet of the Tenth. His Highness, Edward Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence. My Eddy . . .’ His voice trailed away and his shoulders began to heave.

  ‘You are . . .?’ Lestrade prompted gently.

  ‘His tutor. I taught him all he knows.’

  Lestrade glanced at the bulge in the Royal tutor’s combinations. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  Stephen did not take his eyes off the photograph.

  ‘Oh, but he’s not worth it,’ Lestrade pouted, entering into the part now; ‘his neck’s too long, too thin. His eyes are too poppy . . .’

  Stephen’s face silenced him. The eyes burned with a fierceness that caused Lestrade to step backwards, and not just because the tutor was down to his kicksies.

  ‘He is perfection,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Lestrade blustered, altering the angle of the photograph, ‘I see it now. It was the light. Perfection, of course. Yes, I see it.’

  ‘She saw it too.’ Stephen peeled off his combinations and lay on the bed. ‘You’re not undressed.’

  ‘Er . . . no,’ Lestrade was facing his moment of truth, ‘it’s a little chilly.’

  ‘Is it?’ Stephen smiled quietly. ‘Well, bring it over here, I’ll warm it for you.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Lestrade desperately tried to cling to the conversation.

  Stephen was silent. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said after a while. ‘Come and lie beside me.’

  ‘I . . . haven’t been well,’ he said.

  ‘If it’s the pox, Mr Lister, fear not. I have it myself. Probably Eddy too . . .’ He suddenly sat upright. ‘She gave it to him! That bitch!’ He hurled the photograph across the room to smash in a dark corner.

  ‘She can’t have meant much to him,’ Lestrade soothed. ‘A passing fancy, surely?’

  Stephen’s face was a livid mask of hatred. ‘He married her, didn’t he? They had a child.’ His lips could barely frame the words. ‘The bastard king of England.’

  ‘He married her?’ Lestrade repeated dumbly, not remembering the event in the Illustrated London News.

  ‘A flower girl, Lister, a filthy little trollop conceived in a gutter. Well, we’ve done for her now.’

  ‘Done for her?’ Lestrade’s heart leapt.

  ‘Annie Crook. He won’t see her again. No one will.’

  After a while Stephen’s anger subsided and he looked up, a new eagerness on his face. ‘Now, enough of that, let me warm you up, you gorgeous . . .’

  But he was talking to himself. The Inspector had vanished.

  In his haste to vacate the premises, Lestrade, going west, collided with Wensley, hurrying east.

  ‘What happened to you?’ they chorused when the stars had cleared.

  ‘I asked first,’ Lestrade insisted.

  ‘Well, you saw at the Truss, I was unavoidably detained.’

  ‘By a girl with red hair?’

  ‘And her mother, the Madame.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Before I knew where I was I was flat on my back upstairs, the girl with the red hair astride me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told her I was a policeman.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Charged me double. Now it’s my turn. What happened to you?’

  ‘Ah, well.’ Lestrade pulled up his collar against the raw of the morning and waved his arms like a windmill to attract a hansom to prevent frostbite. ‘I went in a different direction.’

  The same two bobbies who had eyed him suspiciously minutes earlier now passed again, patrolling. They looked at Wensley, whose shirt tails were still hanging out from his close encounter at the Truss, raised their eyebrows disapprovingly and walked resolutely on.

  ‘I went to bed with a man,’ they heard Lestrade say, and they quickened their pace.

  ‘Sholto!’ Wensley was horrified.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Fred,’ Lestrade grabbed the door as the hansom stopped. ‘He wasn’t my type. Get in. Got any change?’

  ‘Of course,’ sighed Wensley.

  ‘Bedlam, driver,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘You can say that again,’ the growler growled. ‘Always the bloody same this time of mornin’,’ and he cracked his whip.

  ‘Do you think he’s related to Thicke?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Talking of whom,’ Wensley discovered the extent of his dishabille and put himself away. ‘What did that book say that he passed to you?’

  ‘Enough,’ Lestrade mechanically checked the trap in the cab’s roof to ensure they were not overheard. ‘The toff at the Truss was none other than James Kenneth Stephen.’

  ‘No!’ Wensley threw up his hands.

  Lestrade checked his half-hunter. ‘It’s too early for the jokes, Fred. Stephen, since you clearly don’t know, is tutor to the royal family. In particular, to His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence.’

  ‘Old Collar and Cuffs? You don’t say!’

  ‘Yes.’ Lestrade mused, struck by a new tho
ught. ‘Old Collar and Cuffs, a man in his late twenties, with dark hair, a small brown moustache and a pale face.’ He was remembering Stephen’s photograph of the Pet of the Tenth.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Cast your mind over about three hundred shoe-boxes, Fred. The description fits. The man talking to Annie Chapman, alias Sievey; and to Polly Nicholls . . .’

  ‘The bloke Hutchinson saw with Mary Kelly . . .’

  ‘Too Jewish, but otherwise all right.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Wensley looked at Lestrade. ‘Are you saying the Ripper is the Duke of Clarence?’

  ‘Eddy? No, I don’t think so, but I’m not sure I’d leave him alone in a room with someone I cared for. Stephen told me something about him.’

  ‘Oh? Don’t tell me, he dresses to the left.’

  ‘Now, Fred,’ Lestrade sighed, ‘what is it that tells me you aren’t taking all this very seriously?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sholto,’ Wensley chuckled. ‘But what was the tutor of the heir presumptive doing in a dive in Cleveland Street?’

  ‘Drowning his sorrows, same as Thicke. You see, Mr Stephen is not as other men.’

  ‘If he picked you up, he can’t be,’ commented Wensley.

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘He had an affair with Eddy and Eddy threw him over.’

  ‘For another man? They can put you in the Tower for this, Sholto.’ Wensley found himself whispering now.

  ‘No,’ Lestrade shook his head, ‘for a woman. A flower seller called Annie Crook.’

  ‘Annie Crook?’ Wensley leapt so high in the seat that the hansom lurched and they heard the growler complaining long and loud, frozen on his perch.

  ‘Come on then, Fred, let’s have it.’

  ‘Er . . . that girl, that girl . . .’ She was clearly on the tip of Wensley’s tongue. ‘Bedlam!’ he shouted.

  ‘I know!’ they heard the growler shout, ‘I heard you first time!’

  ‘I knew I’d seen her somewhere before. She worked, part time, I believe, in a tobacconist’s in Cleveland Street. I occasionally bought my Pickwicks from her.’

  ‘Did you ever see her in the company of Eddy? Or any smart young man?’

  ‘Only some artist chappie who had a studio across the road. Stickler or Stilton or something like that.’