Lestrade and the Ripper Read online

  ‘St Rhadegund’s?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Why, yes, how did you know?’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me about Cherak Singh, Mr Druitt?’

  ‘He and his brother – a boy of about seventeen, I believe – were visiting London one weekend last year. I met them in the Temple and we got talking. It transpired that young Cherak was struggling with his history so I offered to help. In the vacations from Rhadegund – I knew the place slightly as I had taught there for a term myself – they would stay at the Castle and Falcon in Aldersgate Street and each day when I was here we would do the Medes and Persians.’

  ‘Time somebody did,’ mused Lestrade, whose ancient history rarely ventured beyond Hammurabi. ‘So that’s how they learned to voker Romeny,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘I beg your pardon? Inspector, do you know the Singhs?’

  ‘I knew them, sir. They’re both dead.’

  Druitt gasped. ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘One of them was strangled. The other may have been, but his body was so badly burned it was impossible to tell.’

  Druitt closed his eyes. ‘Dear God, how? Has the world gone mad, Inspector? What has happened to St Rhadegund’s?’

  Lestrade reached for his hat. ‘I think, Mr Druitt, I am just beginning to find out.’

  Leman Street was not Lestrade’s favourite nick. The desk sergeant on the afternoon watch had a St Bernard who posed as an undercover rug, just inside the door. He was docile to all the felons who fell over him, but plainclothes policemen brought out the wolf in him and he went for Lestrade in no uncertain manner that November afternoon.

  ‘Who did you wish to see, sir? the sergeant asked, wrestling with the beast. ‘Down, Phaidough, down.’

  ‘Inspector Wensley,’ Lestrade yelled over the monster’s baying.

  ‘It’s the hat, sir,’ the sergeant yelled; ‘take your bowler off, or he’ll have your throat out. Phaidough, put the gentleman down, Phaidough!’ The sergeant’s boots beat a tattoo on the cur’s flanks. ‘Would you mind, sir? Give him your hat. I’ll see the lads all chip in for a new one. Phaidough! Heel!’

  The dog obeyed instantly, causing Lestrade to yelp with pain. ‘Not his heel, you bloody idiot!’ the sergeant yelled. ‘Phaidough!’

  Lestrade flung his bowler to the ravening beast who snatched it in his slobbering jaws and retired to a corner, where he proceeded to eat it with all the relish of a gentleman.

  ‘Now, Sholto,’ Wensley appeared at the bottom of the stairs, having heard all the commotion. ‘Put the dog down, there’s a good fellow.’

  Lestrade staggered across to him, dragging what was left of his foot. He hauled up his trouser leg.

  ‘No time for a Lodge meeting now, Sholto. What did you want?’

  ‘Anything new on the Ripper case?’

  ‘No. Oh, one thing. Did you know Kenneth Stephen’s brothers had rooms in the Temple? King’s Bench Walk, in fact?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Lestrade, really past caring about tangles like that.

  ‘And something else. We should have found this earlier.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Catherine Eddowes was also known as Anne Kelly. Odd, isn’t it? Anne Kelly and Mary Kelly. Almost as if . . .’

  ‘That’s it!’ Lestrade toyed with clasping Wensley to him, but thought perhaps Phaidough and Kenneth Stephen would misunderstand. One would be mortified anew at the rebuff. The other might conceivably kill him.

  ‘What?’ Wensley was confused. ‘Sholto, what is it?’

  But the Inspector had gone north.

  Train of Events

  I

  t was as he turned into Tenter Street that Lestrade became uneasy. He was aware of two figures, tall, square, immaculately dressed, narrowing the gap that lay ahead, driving him to turn left, away from Whitechapel High Street. Then he realised there was another one behind him. The top hats began to crowd in on the bare head and in a moment Lestrade would have to ask them to pass along there. If they hadn’t got to him first, of course. If they were Lusk’s men, he’d probably get away with it. If they were Rupasobly’s, he probably wouldn’t.

  ‘Mr Lestrade?’ A fourth gent loomed out of the shadows before him, barring his way.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ Lestrade could be as obtuse as the next man, but the next man had cocked a pistol and was jabbing him in the kidneys with it. As he didn’t particularly want those parts of his anatomy held up to the light by Dr Openshaw of the Pathological Museum, he said, ‘Alternatively, yes, I am.’

  ‘This way,’ said the spokesman and Lestrade was hurried to a waiting barouche, gleaming in its opulent black, harnessed to four bays. As he tumbled inside, he recognised the figure already sitting on the seat opposite him.

  ‘Your irregulars, Mr Holmes?’ he asked as the top-hatted gentlemen flanked them both.

  ‘I thought at first they were yours,’ said Holmes archly. ‘Then I realised they couldn’t be policemen. They were far too well dressed.’

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Lestrade asked the nearest, ensuring first that he had put his pistol away.’

  ‘I’ve tried all that, my dear fellow,’ said Holmes. ‘They don’t respond.’

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘Did Rupasobly send you?’ he asked.

  No response.

  ‘Lusk?’

  Nothing.

  ‘You might as well give up, Lestrade. They’re mute as far as you and I are concerned. Which gives me plenty of opportunity to remind you of the fact that I have spent a very uncomfortable few days in Bow Street Police Station at your recommendation. The beds were hard, the linen infested and the breakfasts indescribable. Needless to say, my gratuity was small.’

  Lestrade had heard that, but he didn’t want to embarrass Holmes still further.

  ‘Sorry,’ was all he said and lunged for the door. Four burly arms grabbed him and he found himself sprawling, with his head under the iron thigh of one of the gentlemen.

  ‘That’s pointless, Lestrade. I deduced that logically fourteen minutes ago.’

  ‘Really?’ Lestrade’s voice was oddly muffled, what with his mouth pushed into the upholstery and all.

  ‘These gentlemen outnumber you four to one. Given those odds, the result is inescapable.’

  At a signal from the spokesman, the two released the Inspector and he sat up gratefully, wrenching his neck vaguely into position and crossing his legs. Holmes executed the same move simultaneously and their knees cracked together.

  ‘We’re going north,’ the Great Detective deduced.

  ‘Good,’ said Lestrade. ‘I’d planned to anyway.’

  The rest was silence.

  It was dark by the time the lathered horses took the gentle slope by the Eight Bells. Under the arch of St Ethelreda’s Church they clattered over the cobbles and the six occupants of the coach lurched as a man as the growler reined in.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Lestrade said to him as he was hauled down. ‘No change’ and he waggled his pockets.

  ‘Really, Lestrade,’ moaned Holmes, ‘have you no sense of occasion? Remember where you are, man.’

  Lestrade could not remember where he was. As far as he knew, he had never been here before in his life. Before him, forming a gigantic letter ‘E’ and black against the frosty night sky, was a vast Elizabethan house, half-timbered and crumbling. Its many chimneys and turrets swirled and snaked star-ward, and there was the bark and yelp of dogs and the unmistakable sound of music coming from the central hall, whose long windows radiated the light of many chandeliers.

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Holmes, ‘a Galliard. Dowland, I believe.’

  Lestrade hadn’t a clue who the architect was. What concerned him more was why he was here at all.

  ‘You must forgive our manners, gentlemen,’ said the spokesman. ‘I assure you we have our reasons. Walk this way.’

  Lestrade checked to make sure there was no sign of Dick from Bedlam and followed the apparent undertakers through a low door into a walled garden. This was laid out
in perfect symmetry, with neatly trimmed hedges forming a herringbone maze that stretched out before them.

  ‘What topiary!’ Holmes was impressed.

  ‘He has apologised.’ Lestrade was altogether more magnanimous in these matters.

  They were shown to an ante-room and then into what appeared to be a laboratory. Retorts, racks, tubes and liquids of wondrous hues rose everywhere. Holmes was fascinated and clucked around it all, periodically wringing his hands in rapture, tapping, sniffing, chuckling as he went.

  ‘Germanium!’ he shouted.

  Lestrade couldn’t see a flower anywhere.

  ‘Here, Lestrade. Winkler’s process – the eka-silicon of Mendeleev’s table.’

  To Lestrade the table looked humdrum enough. Clever of Holmes to know it was of Hungarian manufacture.

  ‘And this.’ He bounded across the room in a single stride, ‘How quaint! It’s titanium, Lestrade. Most people imagine this to be rare but of course it is the eighth most abundant element of the earth’s crust.’

  Holmes was clearly insane and, as if to prove it, a pink-eyed rat in a nearby cage winked at Lestrade.

  ‘Gentlemen!’

  A large, slightly stooping man with a bald head and full beard stood at the top of the stone steps to one corner of the room.

  ‘Isn’t that . . .?’ Lestrade whispered to Holmes.

  ‘Precisely.’ Holmes’s great nostrils filled with pride. ‘Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury. Your Prime Minister . . . and mine.’ He all but stood on tiptoe.

  ‘Mr Holmes,’ Salisbury descended the steps. ‘So you’re the Great Detective?’

  Holmes bowed as though Winkler’s process had suddenly erupted in his groin at an alarming rate.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you. The Study in Scarlet – particularly fine.’

  ‘I am honoured, my Lord.’

  Salisbury held the man’s hand with both of his own. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming . . . oh, and you, Lestrade,’ and he whirled to a high desk, the sort used by clerks forty years ago, or chemistry masters at Rhadegund Hall.

  ‘Gentlemen, pray be seated. Not there, Lestrade!’

  The Inspector blanched as he realised how near to the rat’s incisors he had come. He leaned gingerly against a rack of chemicals. They appeared stable enough.

  ‘I must be brief,’ the great man said. ‘I have many guests at the house tonight. Representatives of the East Africa Company. Her Majesty has been pleased to bestow Charters upon them. We’re having something of a celebration. Oohh, one moment,’ he bent to adjust his clothing below the left knee, ‘my Garter’s killing me. Now, where were we?’

  ‘Brought rather unceremoniously from London,’ Lestrade reminded him.

  ‘Quite, Inspector. And I do apologise. What I am about to tell you, gentlemen, is of the utmost import. It must never be divulged to a living soul. And I must have your word to that before I continue. Mr Holmes?’

  ‘You have my word, my Lord,’ said Holmes, solemnly.

  Lestrade presumed that telling Watson didn’t count. After all, Salisbury had specifically said a living soul.

  ‘Lestrade?’

  ‘Sir, my position is not the same as Mr Holmes’s.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ Holmes shifted gratefully.

  ‘I appreciate that, Lestrade, but I must have your word, sir.’

  Lestrade looked at them both. He crossed his fingers behind his back. ‘My word.’ He bowed.

  ‘Gentlemen, you have both been engaged recently on a case which has come to be known as the Whitechapel murders. The Ripper case.’

  ‘We have,’ they chorused.

  ‘Would it be true to say, Mr Holmes, that one of your principal suspects in this unfortunate matter is Sir William Withy Gull, Physician in Ordinary to Her Majesty?’

  For a second, Lestrade swore he saw a look of total bewilderment darken Holmes’s face. It was a look of which Watson would have said Holmes was incapable. His eyes flickered across to Lestrade and he straightened, saying, ‘It might, my Lord.’

  ‘And I understand that you have visited Sir William’s house in Mayfair?’ Salisbury said to the Inspector.

  ‘That is correct.’ Lestrade felt the edge for a moment and relished it.

  ‘And I also understand that while you were there a number of Sir William’s colleagues arrived?’

  ‘They did.’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. He had noticed, draped over a carboy above the Prime Minister’s head, a velvet pall, embroidered with gold. It carried the device of the dividers he had seen in Gull’s library.

  ‘What did you make of that?’ Salisbury asked him.

  ‘It was an inquisition, my Lords,’ said Lestrade. ‘There were twelve of them. They were a jury whose job it was to sentence him to death.’

  ‘For what crime?’ Salisbury did not bat an eyelid.

  ‘For the murders of five women in and around the district of Whitechapel between August and November of this year.’

  ‘Where is your proof?’ Salisbury asked.

  ‘He all but confessed,’ Lestrade said.

  Salisbury sighed. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Where is Sir William Gull, my Lord?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Dead,’ bluffed Salisbury.

  ‘So those jurymen executed him as well as found him guilty?’ Lestrade asked.

  Salisbury nodded slowly.

  Lestrade walked forward, narrowing missing one retort only to make another. ‘I don’t believe you, Prime Minister.’

  ‘Lestrade!’ Holmes snapped, but Salisbury held up his hand. It was nothing Gladstone and Chamberlain had not said to him countless times.

  ‘Very well,’ the old man said. ‘As it happens, Inspector, you are quite right. William Gull is alive. In body at least.’

  ‘You mean . . .?’ It wasn’t often Sherlock Holmes was lost for words.

  ‘He is mad, Mr Holmes. Unhinged.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Safe,’ said Salisbury. He caught Lestrade looking at the velvet pall. ‘Yes, Mr Lestrade, we masons look after our own.’

  ‘That won’t do, Lord Salisbury,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Why? Because the man has a sense of honour? That is the stuff of England, Mr Lestrade, its lifeblood.’

  ‘And what of the lifeblood of Mary Nicholls, Annie Chapman and the others?’

  ‘Is it justice you want, Mr Lestrade?’ Salisbury challenged him, ‘or revenge?’

  Lestrade shrugged. ‘Perhaps both,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man with Gull,’ Salisbury told him, ‘and I can prove it.’ He rang a little bell on the desk and the spokesman with the immaculate silk topper appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Tell these gentlemen who you are,’ he said.

  ‘I am John Netley, my Lord, coachman to Sir William Gull.’

  ‘And?’ said Salisbury.

  ‘Private Secretary to Mr Henry Matthews.’

  ‘The Home Secretary?’ Lestrade’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Brilliant, Inspector,’ hissed Holmes.

  ‘Tell them about Sir William, Netley,’ Salisbury said.

  ‘Sir William is under the impression that he may have killed these unfortunates. In fact, he is innocent of all five murders.’

  ‘Why should a Home Office private secretary drive for the Queen’s doctor?’ Lestrade smelt a rat, probably the pink-eyed one that had winked at him.

  ‘My Lord?’ Netley turned to Salisbury.

  ‘Gentlemen. Dear friend though he is, William Gull is not my main concern. This matter concerns the Highest in the Land.’

  While Lestrade was wondering how Ben Nevis featured in the matter, Salisbury swept on. ‘It concerns His Highness the Duke of Clarence.’

  ‘Old Collar and Cuffs,’ mused Holmes.

  ‘Quite.’ Salisbury’s impression of the Great Detective was dwindling all the time. ‘The Duke is a headstrong young man, given to wild fancies. I have to tell you that he met, fell in love wi
th . . . and married a shop girl.’

  ‘Annie Crook,’ said Lestrade.

  Salisbury did blink this time. ‘You know’ he gasped.

  ‘And she and the child of the marriage, Alice, were abducted by Sir William Gull from Bedlam. Yes, I know. What I want, my Lord, is a reason why I shouldn’t arrest this man.’

  ‘He hasn’t done anything,’ said Netley. ‘He merely arranged for the transference of Annie and her child from one asylum to another.’

  ‘Why?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘It’s standard practice,’ said Holmes.

  ‘When the patient is deranged, yes,’ said Lestrade. ‘What about Annie Crook?’

  There was silence.

  ‘You’re right, Lestrade.’ Salisbury’s impression of the Lesser Detective was growing all the time. ‘She is not deranged. Grief-stricken, perhaps. She had to be parted from His Highness.’

  ‘Did she?’ Lestrade persisted.

  Salisbury may have been impressed by him but he was also irritated. ‘Of course!’ he thundered. ‘A shop girl, Lestrade! And a Catholic to boot! He may as well have married a schoolteacher! The man is heir to the throne of England, not to mention the Empire. It cannot happen. The King of England’s isolation must be splendid indeed.’

  ‘So you unleashed the madman Gull on her? And the others? What of them?’

  ‘As Netley has told you, Lestrade,’ said Salisbury, ‘he is innocent.’ He came down from his perch among the mortals. ‘It all began as a casual chat really. You are familiar of course with Henry II and the knights?’

  Was that a pub, Lestrade pondered?

  ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ asked Holmes, as though he and Salisbury were enjoying a private historical joke.

  ‘Quite. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales knew of course of his eldest son’s indiscretion, but was at a loss to know how to cope with it. William Gull simply said, “Leave it all to me, sir.”’

  ‘By which he meant?’

  Salisbury looked at Lestrade. ‘He took Annie and her child away. Put them in Bedlam under Dr McGregor’s care. It then transpired that she had a friend who knew of the secret marriage.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Holmes asked.