Lestrade and the Kiss of Horus Read online

‘You don’t know the first two, but they’re my own boys in the Flying Squad. One is Walter Hambrook. The Daily Telegraph called him “the ideal officer”.’

  ‘One to watch, then,’ Lestrade nodded grimly.

  ‘The other is Bob Fabian. Nice enough lad, but he put the bish in ambitious.’

  ‘And the third?’

  ‘Norroy Macclesfield.’

  Lestrade’s mouth sagged a little. ‘Now, come on, Fred. There I have to draw the line. I’ve worked with Macclesfield before. He’s a good copper.’

  ‘They’re all good coppers, Sholto,’ Wensley said. ‘But I have to face the fact that one of them might be a murderer. Hambrook took the first case; Fabian the second; Macclesfield the third. I’ve got all of them but Tickner in the spotlight. If there’s a fourth, I’ll send him. What I’d like you to do is to shadow them. Macclesfield you know already. Get to know the others.’

  Lestrade sighed. ‘Looking for bent coppers isn’t my idea of a cosy retirement, Fred,’ he felt compelled to say.

  ‘I know, Sholto,’ Wensley took back his piece of incriminating evidence and slipped it into the secret drawer whence it came, ‘but I don’t know who else to turn to. You know how it is. We’ve got the finest police force in the world in the Met, but I wouldn’t turn my back on some of the buggers – and those are the ones I like. No, I want a fresh mind on this. Somebody who’s on the outside, but who knows the system. That’s you, that is. Will you help me, Sholto?’

  Lestrade looked at his man, the most popular policeman since Sergeant Getty had inherited a fortune from some American relatives a few years back. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where do I start?’

  Two

  T

  wo floors below the office of the Chief Constable, two detectives of the newly formed Flying Squad were making their way to the stairs. Outwardly impervious to the sniggers of their col- leagues, the fact that both were dressed as Yeomen Warders of the Tower rankled with each of them.

  ‘Tell me, Inspector Fabian,’ the taller of the two said under his enormous moustache, ‘do I look as big an idiot as you do?’

  Fabian looked his oppo up and down. The man had no calves at all and Tudor tights did nothing for him.

  ‘I fear you do, Inspector Hambrook. At least the Old Man didn’t insist on those codpieces. I’d have had to get fairly unpleasant with that woman in wardrobe if she’d persisted. A chap on the up like me can’t go around looking totally ludicrous, you know.’

  ‘What is the Chelsea Arts Ball exactly?’ Hambrook wanted to know.

  ‘Buggered if I can tell you,’ Fabian shrugged. ‘Bunch of ponces dressed up in funny clothes. D’you think the Old Man’s got it right; about the whole thing being a cover for white slavery, I mean?’

  Hambrook shook his head. ‘I’ve got a lot of time for the Ace, but I think he’s out on a limb over this one. I say!’ The detective had stopped on a turn of the stair to stare out of a window.

  Fabian whistled at his elbow.

  ‘I saw her first, Bob,’ he said. ‘Finders keepers.’

  ‘In a pig’s ear,’ Fabian retorted. ‘What a smashing piece of hors-d’oeuvres. Is my ruff straight?’

  And they spun on their Tudor heels and clattered back down the stairs. The object of their attention was Emma Bandicoot-Lestrade who had just driven her Austin Seven into the courtyard below Fred Wensley’s office. She hauled on the handbrake and stepped out, with the intention of fetching her father. Her coat had hooked itself on to a bumper however and just as she was bending over to extricate herself, two Beefeaters had appeared at an upstairs window and had nearly done themselves a mischief craning their necks to the appropriate angle.

  Now Walter Hambrook was no slouch. In the Metropolitan Inter-Divisional Sports, he had twice won the hurdles and three times the Hundred Yards Dash. He would have won the Egg and Spoon outright had he not collided with Streaker Jenkins of F Division three yards from home. So on the second turn, he was clearly ahead of the rather dumpier Bob Fabian. But the rather dumpier Bob Fabian had the instincts of a born climber. In fact, had he and Hambrook been running up the stairs, he’d have been well ahead. As it was, he cocked his leg over the banister and slid past his friend with a triumphant whoop, gambolling nimbly over that nasty knob at the bottom and colliding solidly with an elderly gent just emerging from the lift.

  ‘My God, I’m terribly sorry, sir. Are you all right?’ Fabian helped his target up.

  ‘All right? All right?’ the elderly gent parroted. ‘I’m careered into by twelve stone of Beefeater and you ask me if I’m all right. Look at my nose.’

  Fabian did. ‘Good God’ he gasped. Its tip had gone. Just a flattened end. ‘Did I do that?’

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the old boy wanted to know. Fabian had apologized once. This ancient mariner was beginning to irk him somewhat. And Bob Fabian had never suffered irks gladly.

  ‘Undercover work,’ Fabian said, hearing Hambrook arrive at his back. He narrowed to the old boy. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The damaged gent peered back. ‘Not a clue,’ he said. ‘But I think I should tell you that if you thought that fancy-dress costume was unique, you’re in for a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I’m Inspector Robert Fabian,’ Fabian said. ‘Fabian of the Yard. No doubt you’ve heard of me.’

  ‘No doubt at all’, said the old boy, ‘I haven’t. And who’s this?’

  ‘Inspector Walter Hambrook.’ Hambrook could be as officious as Fabian when the mood took him. ‘Hambrook of the Yard.’

  ‘Well, I never.’ The old man shook his head. ‘Take that ridiculous moustache off, sonny, it does nothing for you whatsoever.’

  Instinctively Hambrook felt below his nose. ‘How dare you?’ he said. ‘It’s a humble thing, but mine own.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said the old boy. ‘I thought moustaches at the Yard went out with tipstaves and wooden rattles.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Fabian smirked, enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. ‘That’s as may be, but at the moment, you’re hindering the police in the pursuance of their enquiries. Now you’ve collected for the War Cry or whatever it is you’re doing, on your wheelchair, granddad.’

  And the uniformed inspectors spun on their heels and made for the door, elbow to elbow and ruff to ruff.

  ‘Excuse me,’ they chorused as they stepped into the April sunshine.

  ‘Ah,’ Emma looked at them in surprise, ‘it’s a Beefeaters’ Excuse Me.’

  ‘Hambrook.’ The leaner inspector doffed his hat. ‘My friends call me Wally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Emma beamed.

  ‘I’m Bob Fabian.’ The plumper one doffed his. ‘Bob Fabian of the Yard.’

  ‘I’m Emma Bandicoot-Lestrade,’ she told them.

  ‘Lestrade?’ Hambrook raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I know that name.’

  ‘Pity you don’t know the face,’ a voice snarled behind him.

  ‘Ah, Daddy.’ Emma squeezed between the Beefeaters and kissed him.

  ‘Does my nose look red to you? Broken even?’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Fabian’s face fell and his hand leapt up to catch it. He’d heard it wasn’t like Lestrade to break even.

  ‘Mr Lestrade, I . . .’ Hambrook began.

  ‘That’s ex-Detective Chief Superintendent to you, sonny,’ Lestrade snapped. ‘I can only assume that old Fred Wensley is suffering from overwork. Mental strain. Well, it can happen.’

  ‘Why, sir?’ Hambrook asked.

  ‘Because he told me you two were officers in the Flying Squad. Either that or I’m deafer than I thought I was. First you knock me flying – perhaps that’s what Fred had in mind – then, you browbeat me with a rank I last held nearly a quarter of a century ago. Now you have the infernal cheek to make passes at my daughter.’

  ‘Sir, we . . .’ both Beefeaters began.

  ‘Please,’ Lestrade bellowed. ‘You’ve already done enough today to get yourselves back on the Horse Troughs. One more word and it’ll be a pleasure to have you two sent to the Tower. After all, you’re dressed for the part.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Hambrook put his hat back on and saluted. Fabian did the same. They marched smartly back inside to be about their business.

  ‘Ooh, Daddy.’ She patted his cheek. ‘You are an old bear.’

  He smiled ruefully at her. ‘And what if I told you, daughter mine, that one of those two idiots is a murderer?’

  She frowned at the entrance way through which they’d disappeared. She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t believe you,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he climbed on to the running board of the Austin, ‘neither would I. Can you manage the crank? Only I think Fabian of the Yard just ruptured my clavichord.’

  Sholto Lestrade was still muttering about arrogant little whipper-snappers and assuring his daughter that he’d been collaring criminals while Messrs Hambrook and Fabian were still shitting yellow, when a telegram arrived for Emma Bandicoot-Lestrade. It was from Highclere, from Evelyn Herbert who was an old school chum. And her father, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was dead.

  The Lestrades, father and daughter, took the Great Western to Newbury, that hideous little market town which stands on the banks of the Kennet. Its church was built, appropriately enough, by Jack of Newbury, who led 150 men north to fight for his king at Flodden. At Newbury, they milled and they malted, pumped and made machine engines; and within its borough boundaries lay Speenhamland, renowned for its System and its racecourse, well known to the Flying Squad through the activities of its touts. Its market day was Thursday. So it was just as well that the Lestrades got there on Tuesday.

  ‘Tell me about the fifth Earl,’ Lestrade chewed the end of his cigar as the motor-taxi rattled south across the bleak expanse of Greenham Common. He noticed some rough-looking women loitering on its fringes, as though waiting for something.

  ‘Daddy,’ Emma looked sharply at her father, ‘I’ve told you already.’

  ‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Ah,’ she raised an eyebrow under her cloche, ‘it’s the old “Make ’Em Say It Again” ploy, isn’t it? Will I never be anything but a suspect to you?’

  ‘Of course not, chummy,’ he scowled. ‘Now you cough like a good ’un or it’s the bracelets for you.’

  ‘Oh, goodie.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Coral is particularly “in” this year.’

  ‘The fifth Earl?’ He blew smoke rings at her.

  She knew when she was beaten. ‘The fifth Earl,’ she repeated, clearing her throat. ‘George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, born 1866. Nice old boy, although I suspect your Berkshire colleagues may disagree with me.’

  ‘Oh? He’s got form, you mean?’

  ‘Hardly that,’ Emma giggled, ‘The late Earl fancied himself as something of a . . . what did people call them? . . . “automobilist”? Up before the beak more often than a baby cuckoo. He nearly killed himself a few years ago.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It must have been about the turn of the century. Evelyn was staying with us at Bandicoot Hall and I remember Harry coming in very grey-faced to breakfast one morning. Oh, I couldn’t have been more than seven or so, but you know how some things stay in the mind?’

  Lestrade did. He’d only ever seen his old friend Harry Bandicoot grey-faced once and that was when someone had suggested they demolish Eton. Other than that, he was the overgrown schoolboy who had brought up his daughter for him. The Lestrades owed the Bandicoots a lot one way or another.

  ‘Anyway, he said that Evelyn’s pa had been hurt. Oh, of course he played it down for us children, but I heard him talking to Letitia afterwards. It was that apparently that persuaded the fifth Earl to go to Egypt.’

  ‘Better roads?’ asked Lestrade, never having been further east than the Dymchurch levels.

  ‘Better climate. I must say when I first met the old duffer some years later, he didn’t look at all well. Eight stone twelve in his combinations - and that wringing wet. He became a prey to our good old British winters and found solace in the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor. It was there he met Howard Carter.’

  ‘Howard Carter, the Whistling Flasher of Bury St Edmunds?’

  ‘No.’ She cuffed him round the ear with the beaded end of her scarf. ‘Howard Carter the archaeologist. Honestly, Daddy, do you never read a newspaper?’

  ‘The Police Review,’ he countered sulkily.

  ‘Howard Carter’, she told him patiently, ‘is the man who has discovered the lost tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen, in the Valley of the Kings.’

  ‘Ah,’ Lestrade nodded.

  ‘It’s the most exciting find in the world,’ she enthused. ‘What a heartbreak for the fifth Earl that he didn’t live to see its glories unfold.’

  The glories of Highclere unfolded as the taxi swept through the great gates. A long gravel drive ran between cedars of Lebanon to the vast Queen Anne house with its red brick and its Dutch influence, as though its architects had been heartily miffed that Dutch William was dead and his unprepossessing sister-in-law had come to the throne. A huge pair of stone staghounds bayed at the front door and a liveried flunkey stood at the top of the steps.

  ‘Mr Lestrade?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Years on the job had taught the ex-Superintendent circumspection.

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ Emma hissed quietly. ‘Yes,’ she said to the flunkey. ‘This is Mr Lestrade. I am Miss Lestrade.’

  ‘Ravishing!’ a voice called from behind her and a tall, good-looking young man was running across from the gazebo. She was struck by his lovely blond curls and his dark-brown eyes and stood there with her mouth open.

  ‘I’m Jack Holinshed. You have to be Emma.’

  ‘Do I?’ She stared at him. ‘Do I really?’

  He took her hand and kissed it. Lestrade cleared his throat. Here was his daughter, around whom men buzzed like bees on red hot pokers, going googly over an overdressed layabout in a blazer. What were people calling them nowadays? Bright Young Things? He noted the buttons. Some hunt or other? Or was it a yacht club? He’d never really mastered the Gothic script.

  ‘Ah.’ Holinshed gripped his hand fervently. ‘I thought so,’ he said.

  ‘Did you?’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I knew your eyes would be hazel.’

  ‘Really?’ Lestrade felt himself pulling away.

  ‘The mark of the hunter,’ Holinshed beamed. ‘Isn’t that what you do, Mr Lestrade? Hunt men?’

  ‘I used to,’ Lestrade said. ‘But all that was some time ago. I’m retired now.’

  ‘And I’m Fatty Arbuckle!’ Emma snorted. ‘Mr Holinshed . . .’

  ‘Jack.’ He turned to her, placing an arm around her shoulders and leading her up the steps.

  ‘Jack,’ she repeated. ‘Where’s Evelyn? We got her telegram . . .’

  ‘Ah.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the taxi and the flunkey scuttled off to get the bags. ‘Well, there I’m afraid I have an eensy-weensy confession to make.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He led her into the vast marble hall where a huge fire roared and crackled in the grate.

  ‘The telegram was actually from us.’

  ‘Us?’ Lestrade followed, looking for somewhere to put his bowler.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Holinshed laughed. ‘I’m doing this very badly,’ he said. ‘Come into the library and I’ll explain all.’

  The library was a fraction larger than the Bodleian and nearly as dusty. Lestrade had stood in more of these than Jack Holinshed had had hot dinners. He’d always suspected the aristocracy of buying their books by the yard. Unlike the ex-Superintendent himself who always visited Lost Property and bought his books from the Yard.

  A striking-looking girl, perhaps a year or two younger than Emma, stood framed in the light of an oriel window. A more romantic soul than Lestrade’s would have seen in her the last glimmer of the Lady of Shalott, but when she moved, the spell was broken and her heavily fringed dress shimmered as she walked. The resemblance however was uncanny. The same curly blonde locks, but the eyes hidden behind the newly fashionable dark glasses that many Bright Young Things were sporting these days. She crossed to Lestrade.

  ‘I’m Tilly.’ she smouldered, running her fingers across Lestrade’s palm and a little way under his cuff. Any minute now, Lestrade thought she might start reciting ‘Round and round the garden’.

  ‘My sister,’ Holinshed didn’t need to announce. ‘Tilly, this is Superintendent Lestrade . . . and Miss Lestrade.’ He placed an arm across Emma’s view of the room, so that she was forced to look into his face. She didn’t object.

  ‘Charmed,’ Lestrade said, rubbing his ticklish wrist on the rough tweed of his Donegal. ‘You two sent the telegram?’

  ‘We did,’ Holinshed said, reaching across Emma and pulling the bell-pull. ‘Please . . . have seats.’

  The Lestrade family collapsed into the bottomless chintz. Jack Holinshed stood by the fireplace, warming his Oxford bags.

  ‘Ever since George was taken ill, we’ve been here, comforting Lady C and Evelyn.’

  ‘George?’ Lestrade needed help. ‘Lady C?’

  ‘Lord and Lady Carnarvon,’ Tilly purred, lighting a black cigarette in an ebony holder. ‘Emma, darling, do you?’

  She smiled at her father. ‘Only when Daddy isn’t looking,’ she said and accepted one.

  Daddy ignored her. ‘Then why the subterfugue?’ he asked.

  ‘The what? Oh, I see.’ Holinshed perched on the arm of Emma’s chair. ‘Well, we weren’t sure if Evelyn had spoken to you of us, Emma. I thought if I sent a telegram under my name you wouldn’t come. We discussed the whole thing at some length with Lady C. She suggested we call you in. It was very important that you came.’ He looked into her eyes for so long she had to look away.

  ‘May I ask why?’

  Holinshed looked at his sister. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘because George, Lord Carnarvon, was murdered.’

  Emma looked at her father. ‘Where is Evelyn?’ she asked.

  ‘In the Valley of the Kings by now,’ Tilly said.

  ‘You’d better tell me all you know, Mr Holinshed,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, raising his hands. ‘I’ll try. Tilly, darling, could you see where that wretched butler has got to? Either he’s deaf as Lon Chaney’s parents or that bell-pull has to go.’