Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand Page 28

  The liftman was screaming at him not to jump but Lavender was already in the air and as his body hit the floor, his head hit the cross girder of the entrance and bounced back, rolling down the platform whence it came, like a cabbage kicked in the gutter, arcs of blood spraying where it came.

  The lift went on, dripping crimson to mark its path.

  The station clock struck twelve.

  BY THE TIME THE PHOTOGRAPHS had been taken and depositions written and the Railway and Metropolitan Police had tramped all over the place, it was after dawn. As numbed, exhausted Inspector Lestrade took the stairs, rather than the lift, to the sunshine and as he passed the old crone selling heather, he saw a face he thought he knew. The face was familiar but there was something out of place. ‘Mr Bayruth?’ he asked.

  ‘Bayreuth,’ the Confessor beamed, ‘and you’ll have to arrest me now.’

  ‘Really?’ Lestrade pulled a cigar wearily out of his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve got another arm,’ and he waved it at Lestrade, ‘what the doctors call a proscenium. Got it in that shop that sells marital aids in Villiers Street.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Lestrade grimaced, and took the offending limb in his hand, shaking it so hard that it fell off and landed with a clatter in Clapham High Street.

  ‘You bastard!’ Bayreuth roared. ‘That’s police brutality, that is!’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Lestrade, ‘I think you’re probably right.’ He turned on his heel. He had a lady to visit in Clapham General. Shock, the doctor had said, and the after-effects of a sleeping draught. She’d be perfectly up to dying on stage, indirectly at the hands of Mr Forbes-Robertson. Along, probably, with Effie Bancroft, who died whenever she appeared.

  Lestrade watched them scurrying to the Underground entrance – the businessmen and the bricklayers, the telephonists and the typewriters – all bound for the Twopenny Tube, where all classes jostled together in the brave new world of technology and the Independent Labour Party.

  He turned away, raised his arm, in fact, both of them, high in the air, just for the hell of it, and shouted, ‘Cab!’

  Other titles in the Inspector Lestrade series for your consideration:

  ❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖

  1879

  ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’

  Walk up! Walk up! This way for the greatest show on earth! It is 1879. Disraeli is at Number Ten. The Zulu are being perfectly beastly to Lord Chelmsford. And Captain Boycott is having his old trouble again.

  What has this to do with the young Detective-Sergeant Sholto Lestrade? Absolutely nothing. Or has it? He has his work cut out investigating mysterious goings-on at ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie, the dwarf, dies an agonizing death under the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this after two bodies have been found with multiple slashes ...

  And what is the link with Mr Howard Vincent, founder of the CID? And has the Prince Imperial really been caught by the Impis? A trail of murder is laid among the llama droppings as the World’s Second Greatest Detective goes undercover to solve the Case of the Sawdust Ring.

  ❖ The Sign of Nine ❖

  1886

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  It was a puzzle that faced Scotland Yard from its very beginning – whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another – what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiaristic novelist have in common? Answer: they’re all dead, each of them with a bloody space where his skull used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings the perpetrator to book.

  But 1886 was a bad year for the Metropolitan Police. The People of the Abyss have heard the whisper and the spectre of Communism haunts the land. There is a new Commissioner, a regular martinet, at the Yard. And then, there is that very odd couple, sometime of Baker Street ...

  Lestrade braves haunted houses, machine-gun bullets and two Home Secretaries in his headlong hunt for the truth. And at last, this is the book that chronicles his now legendary impersonation of the Great Sarah Bernhardt. The Police Revue was never the same again.

  ❖ The Ripper ❖

  1888

  ‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’

  In the year 1888, London was horrified by a series of brutal killings. All the victims were discovered in the same district, Whitechapel, and they were all prostitutes. But they weren’t the only murders to perplex the brains of Scotland Yard. In Brighton, the body of one Edmund Gurney was also found.

  Foremost among the Yard’s top men was the young Inspector Sholto Lestrade and it was to his lot that the unsolved cases of a deceased colleague fell. Cases that included the murder of Martha Tabram, formerly a prostitute from Whitechapel, and that of the aforementioned Gurney.

  Leaving no stone unturned, Lestrade investigates with his customary expertise and follows the trail to Nottinghamshire, to a minor public school, Rhadegund Hall. It is his intention to question the Reverend Algernon Spooner. What he finds is murder.

  As the Whitechapel murders increase in number, so do those at Rhadegund Hall and so do the clues. What is the connection between them all? As if it weren’t confusing enough, Lestrade is hampered by the parallel investigations of that great detective, Sherlock Holmes, aided by Dr Watson. Who is the murderer of Rhadegund Hall and are he and the man they call ‘Jack the Ripper’ one and the same?

  ❖ The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade ❖

  1891

  ‘Such as these shall never look

  At this pretty picture book.’

  It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade (that ‘ferret-like’ anti-hero so often out-detected by the legendary Sherlock Holmes) is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine.

  But this is only the start of the nightmare. It is merely the beginning of a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and, apparently, so random, that only a warped genius – and a master of disguise – could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern behind the crimes from the anonymous poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the sinister, self-styled ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man’.

  It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back, resulting in a portfolio of suspects which covers the entire range of late-Victorian society.

  ❖ Brigade ❖

  1893

  ‘And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade.’

  There is a new broom at Scotland Yard; Nimrod Frost. His first ‘little’ job for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a supposed savager of sheep and frightener of men. Hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigations Department.

  Yet even as Lestrade questions a witness, a man is reported dead, horrifically mauled. Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to another suspicious death and then another ... All old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection – is there a mass murderer at work?

  Lestrade’s superiors discount his speculations and he finds himself suspended from duty, but that is a mere technicality to the doughty Inspector. He moves from workhouse to royal palace, from backstage at the Lyceum to regimental dinner in search of clues and enlightenment.

  When can his glory fade?

  ❖ The Dead Man’s Hand ❖

  1895

  ‘There was no 9.38 from Penge.’r />
  Anon.

  The London Underground Railway, in 1895, was described as ‘dark, deadly and halfway to Hell’. Only too true, for as the last train rattled into Liverpool Street, the one remaining passenger did not get off. How could she, when her eyes stared sightless and her heart had stopped?

  There was another corpse at the Elephant in the morning, wedged between the seats like an old suitcase. And another had missed the late-night connection at Stockwell. What was left of her lay on the floor of the ‘padded cell’, her shoes kicked off in the lashings of her agony as she died.

  There is a maniac at large and Inspector Lestrade is detailed to work with the Railway Police, something he needs a little less than vivisection. Heedless of warnings to ‘mind the gap’ and ‘mind the doors’, the doughty detective plunges through a tangled web of vicious deviants to solve a string of murders so heinous that every woman in London goes in fear of her life.

  Who is the legendary Blackfriars Dan? What are the secrets of the Seven Sisters? Whose body lies at Ealing? Will the London Transport System survive, or will Lestrade run out of steam?

  ❖ The Guardian Angel ❖

  1897/8

  ‘And a naughty boy was he ...’

  He was in his forty-third year and knee-deep in murder. Well, what was new? Sholto Lestrade wouldn’t really have it any other way.

  The first fatality in a series of killings which was to become the most bizarre in the celebrated Inspector’s career, was a captain of the 2nd Life Guards, found battered over the head in the Thames at Shadwell Stair, an Ashanti War medal wedged between his teeth. Lestrade’s next summons was to the underground caves of Wookey Hole where the demise of an Egyptologist – a scarab clamped between his molars – prompted the question; can a man dead for a thousand years reach beyond the grave and commit murder?

  The further death from a cadaveric spasm of an enobled young subaltern whilst on picquet duty (this time a locket is his dying mouthful) forces Lestrade to impersonate ‘Lt Lister, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry’ and into becoming a barrack-room lawyer of incisive command.

  As the body count rapidly rises, Lestrade, constantly and relievedly touching base with his ‘family’, Harry and Letitia Bandicoot of the Hall, Huish Epsicopi, varies a volatile lifestyle with dinner at Blenheim Palace; a disastrous cycle tour ending in a night in gaol; a near-fatal trip in an air balloon; and masterful mediation in East End gang warfare on the Ratcliffe Highway.

  Eventually, some seven cadavers later, things begin to fit into place and the final conundrum emerges; who or what is Coquette Perameles?

  ❖ The Hallowed House ❖

  1901

  ‘Quid omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur.’*

  Edward I

  Britain has entered the twentieth century. Queen Victoria is dead and the Boer War rages on. Inspector Lestrade is called upon to investigate the brutal death of Ralph Childers, MP. It is but the first in a series of bizarre and perplexing murders that lead Lestrade around the country in pursuit of his enquiries.

  The connection between the victims appears to be politics. Is someone trying to destroy the government? It would seem so, particularly when a bomb is found in the Palace of Westminster. But who is responsible? The Fenians? Or have the Suffragettes decided upon a more drastic course of action to further their cause?

  During his investigations, Lestrade encounters some old and some new faces. Amongst the new ones are the brother and cousin of the late Sherlock Holmes who died eleven years ago at the Reichenbach Falls. But is Holmes really dead? Dr Watson doesn’t think so. Someone wants to keep Holmes alive and Lestrade is forced to tread the boards (playing himself) to discover the truth. And, as if things aren’t serious enough, the King is kidnapped just before his coronation.

  Amidst all this, Lestrade is faced with the knowledge that his daughter is growing up not knowing who her real father is.

  *Look it up on Google – do I have to do everything for you?

  ❖ The Gift of the Prince ❖

  1903

  ‘Lang may your lum reek, Lestrade.’

  Sholto Lestrade had never smelt the tangle o’ the Isles before Arthur, Duke of Connaught put him on the trail to the Highlands. Murder is afoot among the footmen on the Royal Household; a servant girl, Amy Macpherson, has been brutally murdered.

  Ineptly disguised as a schoolmaster in his bowler and Donegal, with his battered old Gladstone, the intrepid Superintendent is impelled by a villainous web of conspiracy northwards to the Isle of Skye by way of Balmoral.

  With the skirl of the pipes in his ears and more than a dram of a certain medicinal compound inside him, Lestrade, following the most baffling clues he has yet unravelled, takes the low road alone, save for the trusty yet mysterious Alistair Sphagnum in his twin-engined, bright red boneshaker. Narrowly escaping the inferno of Room 13 in the North British Hotel, Lestrade falls foul of The McNab of That Ilk and The Mackinnon of That Ilk and plays a very odd game of ‘Find the Lady’ in Glamis Castle.

  Coming from Scotland Yard is no help at all to a Sassenach in trews and everyone is convinced it’s a job for the Leith Police. Threatened by ghoulies, ghosties and wee, sleekit beasties, Lestrade hears things go bump in the night before solving the case of Drambuie.

  ❖ The Mirror of Murder ❖

  1906

  Beyond the mountains of the moon ...

  ‘Right, gentlemen. Recapping by numbers.’ Superintendent Lestrade, in martinet mood, was driving his minions.

  ‘Murder One. Four victims, Captain Orange, late of the merchant service and his three nieces, when the harness of their trap broke on a downhill gradient near Peter Tavy, Devon.’

  ‘Clues?’

  ‘A tall man seen near the Captain’s horse shortly before the trap left. He could have cut the harness.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A broken mirror found in the Captain’s breast pocket.’

  ‘Murder Two, sir. Janet Calthrop, fell downstairs at King’s College, London, on the way to the boudoir of her lover. Tripwire across the stairs. Broken neck.’

  ‘Clues?’

  ‘One broken mirror found in said lover’s boudoir.’

  ‘Murder Three. Juan Thomas de Jesus-Lopez, honorary major in the Sixteenth Lancers; body found in a ruined lighthouse near Beachy Head.’

  The clues accumulate; so do the mirrors and the murders ...

  And the suspects.

  ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,’ mused Sholto Lestrade. ‘Who’s the guiltiest of them all?’

  He was to find out ...

  ❖ The Deadly Game ❖

  1908

  ‘The Games a-foot’

  Sherlock Holmes, pinched from Shakespeare

  (who probably pinched it from Kit Marlowe)

  The Papers call it suicide. The deceased’s father doesn’t. But when Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard investigates the death by duelling pistol of Anstruther Fitzgibbon, 27, son of the Marquess of Bolsover, his suspicions of foul play are immediately aroused.

  One of Britain’s leading athletes, ‘nimbler than a wallaby on heat’, Fitzgibbon is the first victim in a series of murders which threatens to extinguish the exhilaration of the Olympic Games held in London that glorious summer of 1908.

  As the capital plays host to an army of athletes from the Empire, Europe and the United States, international politics rears its ugly head; a respected German journalist is discovered with an ornate paper-knife embedded in his back. When a hurdler of the Ladies’ Team falls victim to her own bust improver (dubbed ‘the killer corset’) fingers are pointed in all directions and not least of Lestrade’s worries is that his leading lady’s husband is an American detective with a short temper and the physique of a brick privy.

  ❖ The Leviathan ❖

  1910

  ‘To our wives and sweethearts – may they never meet!’

  ‘You’re promising me a peaceful one, eh? This Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Ten? Let’s hope you’re right.
’

  Unfortunately, his men can’t fulfil Superintendent Lestrade’s wish. Nor can his daughter Emma, who moments later brings him news of a tragic boating accident involving members of her family. In fact, Lestrade’s lot is definitely not a happy one. He has a number of vicious murders to solve, including that of a man hanged in a church bell-tower; of a potential cross-Channel swimmer and of his old sparring partner, Dr Watson. Anarchists threaten the peace of Europe and the whole of the Yard is looking for ‘Peter the Painter’.

  On top of all this, Lestrade is roped in to help with the plans for the coronation of George V. His daughter is in love; and Inspector Dew needs help with the disappearance of a certain Belle Crippen. And while Lestrade has his hands full, a violent London cabbie lies in wait for the Assistant Commissioner. A Mr Frederick Seddon is letting out the top flat of his house to elderly spinsters. And new bride Sarah Rose wanders forlornly around the National Gallery, waiting for George Joseph Smith.

  ❖ The Brother of Death ❖

  1913

  ‘I cannot sing the old songs

  I sang long years ago,

  For heart and voice would fail me