Lestrade and the Ripper Read online

  ‘Well, I’m not sure Mr Abberline will be doing either of those things for long. Now that Munro’s resigned, I wonder who’ll be next?’

  ‘Who’s taking over from him?’

  ‘The word is it’s Assistant Commissioner Rodney . . .’

  Spratling gazed heavenward. ‘Well, that sets us back about six months!’

  ‘Right. Now, the Nicholls case.’

  ‘You’ve read the boxes?’

  Lestrade had.

  ‘Then you know as much as I do. Except . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if it’s important . . .’

  ‘Come on, Jack. Out with it. We’re not going to catch this bastard if we don’t co-operate.’

  Spratling chuckled. Lestrade was aware of the piety of hope behind his last remark too.

  ‘Well, one of my blokes reported seeing a tall old woman – a washerwoman, he thought – hanging around Buck’s Row for three nights in succession after the murder.’

  ‘Was she a regular, this washerwoman?’

  ‘No. He’d never seen her before. And there was something else . . .’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Her hands. He was moving her on, giving her a playful tap with his truncheon, when he happened to touch her hand. It was as smooth as glass. What do you make of that?’

  ‘She had a glass hand?’

  ‘Come off it, Sholto. Wasn’t your old mum a washerwoman?’

  Lestrade nodded. ‘Yes,’ he smiled fondly. ‘Hands like sandpaper.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  Lestrade leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve had a lot of washerwomen recently,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Spratling nudged him, ‘you single blokes are all right. If Mrs Spratling thought I’d . . .’

  ‘How is Ermintrude?’ Lestrade beamed.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Spratling groaned. ‘I was a happy man when I married her. Take my advice, Sholto. You stay single.’

  ‘I’ll try, Jack,’ Lestrade laughed. ‘I’ll try.’

  They found Annie Chapman around dawn that Saturday. It was September and a light drizzle was drifting over the river, curling up over the Isle of Dogs and west into wakeful Whitechapel. She was staring at the lowering sky, oblivious to the rain and the dogs that snuffled round her. This time they called in Lestrade and he fought his way through the police-ringed throng that filled one end of Hanbury Street. Inspector Abberline would have gone, but he was on another of those curious and secret surveillances that seemed to dog the man’s life at the moment. He’d stagger into the Yard about nineish and explain his gait by the number of stairs he’d had to climb. Inspector Fred Wensley wondered why Abberline was maintaining a surveillance from the top of Wren’s monument.

  And it was Fred Wensley who was waiting in the back yard of Number 29, crouching beside what was left of another middle-aged woman.

  ‘Fred,’ said Lestrade as the constables let him through, ‘what have you got?’

  ‘Annie Chapman,’ said Wensley in his soft, Dorset accent, ‘also called Dark Annie.’

  ‘Prostitute,’ the Inspectors chorused.’

  Lestrade looked at the corpse. She lay next to the stone steps he had just descended. Her tongue protruded blackly from her mouth and her throat was dark with dried blood.

  ‘Had your breakfast?’ Wensley asked by way of warning.

  Lestrade followed his gaze to the woman’s stomach. Part of it was draped over her shoulder.

  Lestrade looked up at the eager faces pressed through the railings above him. ‘Constable!’ he bellowed, trying to re-assert reality through the sound of his own voice. ‘Get those people away from there.’

  ‘She died over there,’ said Wensley. ‘Look at the blood on the wall.’

  Lestrade did. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘My boys found this.’ Wensley handed Lestrade a piece of paper. It contained two blue pills.

  ‘Your guess?’

  ‘Could be for liver,’ shrugged Wensley. ‘Lots of carters live around here.’

  ‘Could have been dropped by the Archbishop of Canterbury three years ago.’ Lestrade dismissed it.

  ‘Mr Wensley, sir,’ a constable came at the double, ‘something else, sir, in the corner of the yard.’

  ‘Give it to Mr Lestrade, Constable.’ Fred Wensley knew when he was outranked.

  Lestrade looked at the piece of paper the man had found. It was part of an envelope and bore the faded post date 28 August, 1888. Eleven days old. This at least was a warmer clue. He turned it over to reveal an embossed crest – the cross of St George and the star and garter with a single plume curling over it.

  ‘What do you make of this, Fred?’

  ‘Well, I voker Romeny, Yiddish, Hebrew and West Country, but Latin was never my strong suit, Sholto. You’re a man of letters.’

  ‘May I help?’ a voice rang out from the railings above.

  The knot of policemen around Dark Annie looked up to see a rather gaunt, elderly man struggling passively with one of the constables.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lestrade asked.

  The old man removed his hat, despite the rain. ‘Allow me to introduthe mythelf,’ he lisped. ‘I am Profethor Therrinford of the Univerthity of London.’

  ‘Professor?’ Wensley repeated.

  ‘Of languageth,’ the gent affirmed.

  A nod from Lestrade and the constables unlatched the door and let the man through. He balanced the pince-nez on the end of his long, elegant nose. ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘not Latin, my dear thir. French. Medieval French.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Wensley asked.

  ‘You mean you haven’t theen it before?’ The professor was incredulous.

  ‘Well, I have, of course.’ Wensley didn’t bridle often, but when he did he didn’t care who knew it. ‘I just can’t translate it.’

  ‘Honi thoit qui mal y penthe,’ Sherringford read. ‘Roughly, “evil to him who evil thinkth”.’

  ‘That’s rather apt,’ Wensley said to Lestrade.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Lestrade fixed his gaze on the professor. ‘And how handy, Mr Holmes, you happened along.’

  The professor looked up, snatching off his pince-nez and shuffling uneasily. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.

  ‘You are Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ Lestrade repeated, ‘of two hundred and twenty-one B Baker Street . . . unleth I mith my gueth?’

  Holmes hurled the Homburg to the cobbles. ‘Damn you, Lestrade,’ he growled.

  ‘And thank you, Mr Holmes,’ Lestrade bowed stiffly. ‘And if I catch you impersonating professors of the University again, I’ll put you away.’

  But Holmes had already bounded up the steps.

  ‘What was all that?’ Wensley asked him.

  ‘An old adversary,’ Lestrade chuckled. ‘Better get Dark Annie to the mortuary. And Fred . . .’

  ‘Sholto?’

  ‘Have a good look at her before you let a coroner near her, won’t you?’

  When Inspector Lestrade turned his back on Hanbury Street with its gaunt, derelict lodging houses and filthy tenements, he did three things. First, he hailed a passing constable, dripping miserably towards the end of his beat, tore off a sheet of the man’s notepad and wrote wetly on his obliging back. An urgent message to Inspector Spratling of J Division. Second, he hailed a cab to the premises of Messrs Stillwell & Co, Cap and Accoutrement Makers to the Army. He found their doors bolted and barred but it was astonishing what a boot through plate glass could do in waking up a sleeping nightwatchman. Third, he lacerated his leg rather badly and so it was not until nearly lunchtime when he limped out of Charing Cross Infirmary that he received the piece of news he had been hoping for – the reply from Spratling. He screwed up the paper and shouted in delight, causing passers-by on the Strand to hurry on, lest he be an escapee or just a Fabian Socialist. He hailed another constable, who was just about to move on this odd, drenched, limping man with his head on the skew, and told him to take a message to the Yard. He himself sped west, to
the great land where young men went at the behest of short-sighted American newspaper proprietors; where a man did what a man had to do, once the place had been made safe for women and children. And by four o’clock he had got to Hounslow.

  The barracks at Hounslow were typical of army barracks anywhere (except India, but Lestrade had never been there). As he crossed the windswept square, hobbling a little and veering to the right, the mingling smells of pipe-clay and ammonia hit him with the cross-winds from the cavalry quarters. Stables below, men above, for the use of. He was grateful to turn the corner into the less-noisome quarters of the Royal Sussex Regiment. Asking his way of the sentry parading in full pack, he limped gamely up the stone steps to an oak-panelled door.

  ‘Enter!’ a voice barked.

  Lestrade did so and found himself with a Sergeant-Major of Constable Derry’s stamp, only louder.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard, to see the Colonel.’

  ‘Not in, sir!’ bawled the Sergeant-Major with the force of a howitzer.

  ‘Major?’

  ‘Not in, sir!’

  Lestrade began to wonder if the Sergeant-Major was capable of any other sort of response. He was also beginning to doubt his own acquaintance with army ranks. What was next?

  ‘Captain?’ a quieter voice asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lestrade aloud.

  ‘Wedgwood,’ the Captain introduced himself. ‘I’m the Adjutant. Can I help?’

  ‘I hope so, sir,’ Lestrade took the chair.

  ‘Sar’nt-Major.’ The Captain unhooked his forage cap so that the strap didn’t affect his immaculate whiskers and threw it at the wall. It bounced off and landed on the floor.

  ‘Army cuts,’ he explained to Lestrade to explain the gesture. ‘There used to be a hat-rack there before the dear old Duke of Cambridge took up accountancy.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ smiled Lestrade. ‘I know the feeling. We have a Commissioner with much the same ideas.’

  ‘Oh, yes, how is Charlie Warren?’

  Lestrade had never met the man and was certainly not on Christian name terms with him.

  ‘Sir?’ the Sergeant-Major bawled.

  ‘What is it, Sar’nt-Major?’ The Captain looked perplexed.

  The Sergeant-Major did too. ‘Excuse me, sir, I thought you spoke to me, sir.’

  ‘Really?’ Wedgwood offered Lestrade a cigar. ‘Ah yes. Will you take tea, Inspector?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Sugar, sir?’ the Sergeant-Major bellowed.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Lestrade, lowering his ear even closer to his shoulder to avoid the blast.

  ‘Milk, sir?’

  Lestrade nodded, wincing now, and sighing gratefully when the man left.

  ‘He is a little overbearing, isn’t he? He was with Napier at Magdala. Had to shout a little over the cannonade. His vocal cords never got back to normal. Funny thing, war.’

  ‘Do you recognise this, sir?’ Lestrade handed Wedgwood the torn envelope.

  ‘It’s part of an envelope,’ said the Adjutant after due consideration. What marvellous officer material was coming through these days, Lestrade mused.

  ‘The crest, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s one of ours, all right. I’ve a whole stack of them here. Why, is it important?’

  ‘It could be. Can you explain how it came to be found in Whitechapel?’

  ‘Whitechapel? That’s odd.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. You’re the second chappie to enquire about Whitechapel today.’

  Lestrade became uneasy. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, the other was a professor from Sandhurst. He was doing research into the old Thirty-fifth. Seemed convinced there was some link between us and the East End. I told him we recruited almost entirely in Sussex . . .’

  ‘Did you catch this professor’s name?’

  ‘I believe it was . . . Sherrinforth, or something like that.’

  ‘A tall man? Large forehead? Long nose?’

  ‘No. But I must confess I didn’t remember him from my Sandhurst days. He seemed rather vague. But then, these military history chappies. Vague as a Generals’ Mess. Why the interest?’

  ‘This envelope was found near the body of a woman in the early hours of this morning, sir.’

  ‘Good God.’ The Adjutant was appalled. ‘I am appalled, Inspector. Are you implying that a man of the Royal Sussex Regiment is responsible for this murder?’

  ‘Murder, sir? Did I mention murder?’

  ‘Well, I naturally assumed . . .’

  ‘Are any of your men on leave, sir? And do they live in the East End?’

  The Adjutant wearily reached for a ledger, not taking his eyes off Lestrade. ‘I remember a few months ago a couple of our chaps were hauled in by you people. What do you call it? An indemnity parade?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Lestrade. ‘Do these men happen to be on leave now?’

  The Adjutant checked the list and shook his head. ‘No, Inspector, they are both here. In fact you should have passed one of them on your way in.’

  ‘Would it be likely that a private soldier would use this stationery, Captain?’ Lestrade asked.

  Wedgwood thought for a moment. ‘I doubt it, Inspector. Most of our chaps are literate, but they don’t go in for writing letters, not even on campaign. I remember in the Sudan . . .’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ Lestrade broke in, ‘but my business is rather urgent, sir. I am forced to conclude, then, that this envelope was dropped by an officer of the Regiment.’

  ‘Unthinkable!’ Wedgwood was capable of roaring as loudly as his Sergeant-Major.

  ‘Do you have a list of their home addresses?’

  ‘No,’ Wedgwood replied, ‘and even if I had, two things would pertain. One, none of them would live in Whitechapel. And two, I wouldn’t give them to you. Good afternoon.’

  Lestrade left without his tea. For the moment there was no more to be said.

  It was a jovial Inspector Abberline who met Lestrade that Monday morning. True, Mrs Abberline was away visiting relatives and was not expected back for a week, but it was Abberline’s professional life, not his habits, that caused the gardenia in his lapel to bloom anew and for his grin to be cheesier than usual. An old copper had told Lestrade long ago to beware of smiling inspectors. It always meant one of two things. Either their wives were away or they’d got their man.

  ‘Mrs Abberline away?’ Lestrade asked, as he pushed Constable Toms off his chair.

  ‘No, Lestrade,’ Abberline grinned. ‘I’ve got my man.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Don’t be fly with me, Lestrade. I remember when you were a constable, wetter behind the ears than anything you’ve got here.’ He shot a cruel glance at Toms. ‘I’ve got the Whitechapel murderer.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Abberline sat down uninvited, sniffing his gardenia ostentatiously. ‘Ought to be a Chief in this for me, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘May I ask who?’

  ‘Better than that. You can look at him. For the usual consideration I’ll let you poke him with a sharp stick. One John Pizer. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.’

  ‘Cough, did he?’

  ‘A few times, yes,’ confessed Abberline, ‘but I didn’t hit him that hard. It was the leather apron that clinched it.’

  ‘Leather apron?’

  ‘If you’d waited around yesterday, Lestrade, instead of haring off to Hounslow, wasting the Army’s time and chasing your own tail, you’d have discovered that a leather apron was found wringing wet near a standpipe not fifty yards from Hanbury Street. It was John Pizer’s. Never mind, Lestrade, better luck next time,’ and he swept out, wiping his fingers on the back of the chair as he did so, checking for dust.

  ‘Toms!’ snarled Lestrade. It was half-past eight on a Monday morning. The week had not begun well.

  ‘Sir!’ the constable straightened in an ex-Marine sort of way.

  ‘Where’ve they got
this Pizer?’

  ‘Leman Street, sir.’

  ‘Fred Wensley’s patch? Good. Where’s Sergeant George?’

  Toms consulted the roster. ‘Rest day, sir.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Lestrade snatched up the bowler. The Donegal hadn’t left his back. ‘Sergeants don’t have rest days. Get him. I want him at Leman Street within the hour.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Fred Wensley was tucking into his bagels when Lestrade arrived.

  ‘You’ve got a prisoner here, Inspector,’ Lestrade said, ‘I’d like to see him.’

  ‘We’re very formal this morning, Sholto,’ mumbled Wensley. ‘Had a visit from the Commissioner, have we?’

  ‘Thank you, Fred. Tell me about this Pizer.’

  ‘I brought him in this morning.’

  ‘You brought him in?’

  ‘All right.’ Wensley was patience itself, he’d known Lestrade for years. Not like him to be ruffled. ‘Constables Niven, Beckett and Allen and myself. Can’t be too careful. We’re not too popular since Bloody Sunday, you know.’

  ‘Abberline told me he’d got him.’

  Wensley laughed. ‘Figure of speech, Sholto,’ he said. ‘But that’s our Inspector Abberline all over, isn’t it? If there’s any credit due, he’ll take it.’

  ‘So,’ Lestrade was calmer, ‘is Pizer our man?’

  Wensley shrugged before tackling another bagel. ‘I don’t know. It stacks up against him pretty bad. Here’s the apron.’

  He reached over to a drawer and emptied its contents onto his desk. ‘And we found these knives at Pizer’s place.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘Mulberry Street, Number twenty-two.’

  ‘So he knows the area,’ Lestrade mused.

  ‘Like the back of his hand.’

  ‘What does he do, apart from murdering prostitutes, I mean?’

  ‘He’s a cobbler. Hence “Leather Apron”. It’s a sort of nickname.’

  ‘And they’re his?’ Lestrade pointed to the desk top.

  ‘He admits he owns the knives. Claims he trims leather with them.’

  ‘And the apron?’

  Wensley shook his head.

  ‘And that’s all Abberline’s got?’ Lestrade sat back in disbelief.

  ‘Two other things,’ Wensley said: ‘Pizer wears a deerstalker and a man wearing a deerstalker was seen talking to Annie Chapman on the night she died.’