by M. J. Trow
A constable complied and the blood began to flow back into Lestrade’s fingers.
‘I’m following a line of enquiry, with your Sergeant Bradstreet.’
‘Line of enquiry?’ Tobias Gregson was suspicious. ‘You’re up to something, Lestrade. Your pardon, Your Imperial Majesty,’ and he bowed almost double to the Kaiser, who was obviously amused by the whole thing, and then whisked Lestrade into the bushes. ‘Look, Lestrade. These bloody foreigners come over here at the drop of a hat. I had a call yesterday – a telegram – to say he was staying at Sandringham as a guest of His Royal Highness. I expect His Royal Highness is as browned off with Villy as I am. But I had to be here. Frost sent me packing on the first train. And as if this isn’t difficult enough – he goes where he likes, when he likes, refuses a bodyguard – you have to turn up like a bad penny, trying to strangle the man.’
‘I’m pursuing a murder enquiry, Gregson,’ Lestrade spat back at him (all this in vicious whispers, Gregson occasionally smiling and waving at the Kaiser while the constables righted his table and salvaged what was left of his currant buns). ‘And you can play bloody nursemaid to that,’ he pointed contemptuously, ‘all you like. But get in my way again, and I’ll get you back on the beat.’
‘How is he involved in murder?’ Gregson demanded know.
‘Not him, somebody else.’
‘Who?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘If you’re interrogating a Head of State of a major European power, it becomes my business.’
‘I’m not interrogating him. How many more times?’
‘Lestrade, you are evading my questions. If I didn’t know better, I’d say . . . God, you’re not a Communist, are you?’
‘If I were, Gregson, I’m sure you’d be among the first to know.’
‘Well, I never was very sure about some of McNaghten’s appointments. Wait a minute, you were there on Bloody Sunday, weren’t you?’
‘That was six years ago, Gregson. Talk about the long memory of the law.’
‘We have our uses.’
‘Gregson, you can look under every bed in Sandringham for Communists, anarchists, shopping lists, whatever you like. All you’ll catch is your own tail. Me, I’ve got a murderer to catch,’ and Lestrade broke away from the bitchy conversation under the privet, and, barely acknowledging the Kaiser, who was now busy instructing the constables in truncheon drill, made for the stables and Bradstreet.
‘I warn you, Lestrade,’ Gregson shouted after him; ‘this will go further.’
❖ Hell Broth ❖
J
acob sat in the attic room, cold and alone. The sun didn’t seem to enter the cobwebbed windows, but the wind shivered the yellowed nets and rattled the door behind him. He took up the pen again and wrote.
Sir, I must warn you that . . . and again the muse failed him. He threw the crumpled paper to join the others littering the floor. He must have been here an hour, perhaps two, and had got no further in his letter than the first line. At least he had addressed the envelope, To Whom It May Concern, New Scotland Yard, London.
The whole thing was too preposterous, too outrageous – who would believe him? He must go in person. And yet. What of them? Each rattle of the latch saw him turning, paralysed for a moment with fear. Then finer emotions took him. What of him? It was a matter of honour, really. A family affair. Across the wilderness of rooftops he heard a church clock striking. Six. He could stay no longer. He would write to the Yard again later, when he could. Now, he had to go north.
THEY STOOD BEFORE NIMROD Frost in his office. Tobias Gregson, thick set, squat, fuming. Sholto Lestrade, tall, thinner, calmer. The pattern Frost was prepared for, the pattern that so angered Gregson.
‘So, that’s it, is it?’ Frost was glowering at Lestrade, but talking to Gregson.
‘I wouldn’t belittle it, sir. If need be, I can go to the Home Secretary himself.’
Frost turned an odd sort of white. ‘Don’t you threaten me with the Home Secretary, laddie. I’m not at all sure you’re necessary on this Force, Gregson. In fact, once this Home Rule nonsense is over, I’m considering scrapping Special Branch once and for all.’
Gregson was speechless. He stood there with his mouth open.
‘No need for you to smirk, Lestrade. You tread with your great feet,’ again the unfair jibe, ‘all over Norfolk, harassing European royalty. Who the hell do you think you are?’
Lestrade opened his mouth, but in the event got no further than Gregson. Frost wallowed to his feet. ‘Consider yourself under suspension, Lestrade. Half pay. Go home. Cool off.’
Now it was Lestrade’s turn to be speechless. Gregson was smirking triumphantly while Frost rumbled out a tirade against inspectors who could not operate efficiently, about what the Yard was coming to, blah, blah, blah.
‘Now, get out, both of you.’
Gregson turned for the door, smarting under Frost’s attack, but pleased and justified as well.
‘Lestrade, before you go.’ Frost slumped into his chair and fixed the inspector with his sharp little eyes. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Lestrade. Twenty years on the Force. All for nothing. What will you do now?’
‘Grow geraniums, like other retired coppers.’ Lestrade shrugged.
‘Do that if you like, but first I’ve got a little assignment for you.’
Lestrade looked at his chief. That couldn’t be a smile playing around Frost’s blubbery lips, could it? No, a trick of the light.
‘I thought I was suspended – indefinitely,’ he said.
‘So you are.’ Frost struggled to his feet. ‘Show me your hands.’ Lestrade held them out. ‘You’ll have to take that bandage off. And toughen them up. Get yourself some rags. Don’t shave from today. Eat as little as you can.’
‘Sir?’ Lestrade already knew Frost too well to believe the man had cracked, yet certainly he couldn’t follow his train of thought.
‘Can you do a Lancashire accent?’
‘No.’
‘Cockney up your own, then. Bow Bells stuff, yes?’
‘Yes, if I must.’
‘You must. How will Mrs Manchester take it?’
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t hedge, Lestrade. You have a housekeeper named Mrs Manchester, haven’t you? Sarah Manchester? Aged sixty-one?’
Lestrade smirked. ‘Is that a crime?’
‘On the contrary. I’m glad to see my inspectors improving their social position. It gives them the air of authority they ought to have. But you’ll have to tell her you’ll be away for a while – one month, two, who knows?’
‘I have a feeling you do, sir.’
Frost chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Quite right, I do. You spoke of a conspiracy, Lestrade. Well, Gregson might not accept that, but I think you may have something. Three old men in as many months, dead from poisoning or suffocation – all made to look like the ravages of time. It’s a coincidence Lestrade.’
Lestrade was hearing his own words bounce back at him.
‘Well, I’ve got a fourth for you, I think.’
Lestrade was all ears – especially now the tip of his nose had gone.
‘An inmate of Manchester Workhouse, Lestrade. Another old man. Nothing odd in that, you might think. Old men die in workhouses every day. Except that this one was poisoned like the others. But this one was obvious – strychnine. Very messy.’
‘One murderer for them all?’ Lestrade was thinking out loud.
‘That’s for you to find out,’ Frost answered. ‘Give yourself a week to roughen up. Then go to Manchester and get yourself committed.’
‘Sir?’
‘Special request from Superintendent Olds. Jack and I were at school together back in . . . back in the old days. His men are too well known for undercover work. But yours is a new face, Lestrade. We must think of a new name for you, a new identity. Get into that workhouse and find out how that old man died.’
‘Why undercover, sir? Why not make enquiries in the usual way?�
�
‘As I said, Lestrade. Conspiracy. You know the worst thing about conspiracies? You never know who’s involved. It could be Jack Olds. The entire Manchester Board of Guardians of the Poor. It could be me . . .’ A pause. ‘For all I know, Lestrade, it could even be you. But we’ll have to chance that, won’t we?’
‘And the suspension?’
‘As far as the rest of the Force knows, Lestrade, you are out, at least for a while. Only you and I will know different. You can use Charlo as a go-between. Don’t come to the Yard yourself. How’s he shaping up, by the way?’
‘I wish I knew, sir. All I’ve seen of him is a red nose and he didn’t exactly say a lot between sneezes. He should be in my office now.’
Frost extended a chubby, powerful hand, and as Lestrade caught it he said, ‘Keep your wits about you, lad. It’s a rough world north of Hampstead. Think of it as a challenge.’
Lestrade smiled.
‘And Inspector . . . Don’t go annoying any more Visiting European Nobs. Or your suspension might be real.’
Sergeant Hector Charlo was not in Lestrade’s office. He had attempted to rise, said the note that was there, from his bed of pain, but his doctor had advised him to stay where he was. As he feared, the cold was bronchitis and the doctor had warned of pneumonia if he left his boudoir. There was even a doctor’s note confirming it, pinned to Charlo’s spidery, handwritten missive. The inspector was to rest assured, the sergeant would be back on duty just as soon as the swellings had gone down. Mind you, his back wasn’t what it was . . .
MANCHESTER. THE CITY. Not the housekeeper. It had a tart and a school named after it. Lestrade had never been before, but Frost had told him before he left the metropolis that it would be raining. It was. Grey rain was driving across a grey city. Its buildings were uninspiring and when Lestrade walked through it he found himself jostling with labourers on the last stages of cutting the Ship Canal which was to link the Cottonopolis with the Mersey. He spent the day, with the rain soaking to his skin, acquainting himself with the place. He didn’t like it. After this, the workhouse would come as a relief.
It was night before he found it – a long, low building in the shape of a cross, no doubt the pride and joy of some civic do-gooder under the shadow of the great Chadwick. He was admitted through a side door by an overseer with a hacking cough, to whom Lestrade gave his chit. By the guttering light of a single candle, the overseer read it: James Lister, labourer. It was an alias Lestrade had used before. The overseer peered at him through a greasy pince-nez. He saw the usual run-of-the-workhouse vagrant, unkempt, dishevelled, not perhaps as bowed of back or world weary as they usually were, but a month or two in this place, he knew, would alter that.
‘Last known address?’ The overseer, at this time of night, was forced to do his own paperwork. He perched on the upright desk that Mr Dickens had probably written on about fifty years before. Or if not him, then certainly Mr Disraeli.
‘Last known address?’ he repeated, quill poised.
‘Ratcliffe Highway,’ Lestrade lied.
‘Where?’
‘London.’ Had the man heard of it, Lestrade wondered.
He scratched something incomprehensible on the ledger.
‘Right, turn out your pockets.’
Lestrade complied. One pocket knife, handle broken, a length of string, one apple. ‘Stolen?’ asked the overseer. No comment. Lestrade would play it dumb with the authorities. He knew a chirpy workhouse inmate was as unpopular as a chirpy prisoner. And, looking about him, this was very little different from stir. ‘Tuppence ha’penny.’ The overseer slipped the change into his pocket and, as if to anticipate Lestrade’s protest, said, ‘which will go towards your keep.’
The overseer spat copiously in a corner and slammed shut the ledger. He beckoned Lestrade to a door in a grey wall, on which he knocked. A grille slid back and a face appeared.
‘Male, age unknown, former labourer. Bath, bed and oakum.’
Lestrade shuffled down endless corridors, dark and dank. Overhead in the lanterns’ flicker he caught the elaborate gilt hypocrisy of the Manchester Board of Guardians, ‘God is Love, God is Faith, God is Trust, God is Good,’ and he was forced into the conclusion that God was probably Somewhere Else. He shambled more convincingly now, aware of his warders at his elbows, though they barely noticed him. He stooped, tilted his head to one side. Perhaps deafness might be worth a try. After all, he was physically fit enough for labouring work. His presentation at the House of Industry had to be – and to remain – legitimate.
‘Strip.’
He did, standing naked in the dark of a circular room, in the centre of which he could see by the lantern’s light, was a bath. Had they heard of the Poplar Reform Movement this far north? he wondered. And his question was answered as they pushed him roughly into the icy water.
‘One hot bath,’ said the warder and he was thrown a grubby towel to dry himself. His rags were bundled together and tied with string. ‘For your release,’ the warder told him and he was given a thick, drab fustian jacket and trousers. This place, he mused to himself, makes Cold Bath Fields look like the Strand Palace.
He was shunted into the East Wing, for adult males between sixteen and sixty. His bed was a trough: rough, splintered wood worn smooth by countless derelicts collapsing into it. The mattress was thin, straw-stuffed and the sheet a single layer of cotton. It was past May 1st and the blankets had been withdrawn.
‘No beer. No spirits. No tobacco. No spilling your seed on the ground,’ and the warders left. Lestrade let his eyes attune to the darkness. A long, dank room, stone floor, with high barred windows the length of it. The noise was of snoring, coughing, and the occasional breaking of wind – not unlike the sergeants’ room at the Yard. But the smell was different. It was the smell of poverty, of despair, of death.
He didn’t sleep at all, but the morning bell rang as punctually as ever. Five o’clock. Cold water, what passed for a meal of bread and black pudding, which Lestrade had never seen before and didn’t really want to see again and then out to the labour yards to pick oakum. He studied the faces around him, grey, lifeless, identical. It wasn’t easy to tell a man’s age in here, much less his former calling. A pile of evil-smelling hemp was thrown at him. Like the others, he adopted the position of back against the wall of his stall, cross-legged, and proceeded to do as they did, hammering the rope with a broken mallet, teasing out the greasy, sharp threads until his hands were a mass of blood. At the end of the first day, he had spoken to no one, no one had spoken to him. He had failed to reach his quota of three and one half pounds of oakum. He was given a day to rectify that or it would be loss of privilege – no meals for two days.
He endured the night of hacking coughs, the tuberculous hours, yet again, wondering why exactly Nimrod Frost had chosen him for this, and the morning bell clanged the Unfaithful to work again. After hell broth on the fifth day his hands red raw but his quota achieved, Lestrade made his first contact – a knot of men of varying ages, their skins the colour of the workhouse walls. Yes, they had known Richard Brown. How old was he? God knew, they didn’t. Everybody looked the same age in here. All they knew was that he had worked on the canal side and when his rheumatics got too much, he came in here. Nice enough bloke. Honest. Mind you, he died funny.
‘Oh?’ Lestrade was all ears.
‘Where did tha say tha knew ’im from?’
‘In the docks,’ Lestrade hedged.
‘Liverpool?’
‘Yes. How do you mean, he died funny?’
‘Well,’ another inmate chimed in, ‘’e were all reet one mornin’, then be night time, ’e were gone.’
‘And ’is face,’ whispered another.
‘What about it?’ asked Lestrade.
‘Grinnin’ ’e were, like the devil ’isself.’
Lestrade felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck, where the short crop given by the warder three days ago was still smarting from the nicks of the razor.
�
��I seen plenty of dead men. They die every day in ’ere – and t’womenfolk, and t’kids,’ another went on, ‘but nothing like ’im. He was smiling with ’is eyes bright and ’is teeth bared. Like a rabid dog, ’e were.’
‘I saw ’im die. I were wi’ ’im.’ All eyes turned to the Little Fly in the corner.
‘Tha never said,’ another chided him. ‘I thought ’e were alone in bed.’
‘Nay, I were going to ask ’im for some snout when ’e went rigid. He screamed out – you all must’ve ’eard it.’
They hadn’t.
‘’E arched ’is back a couple of times, like ’avin’ a fit, like, and ’e died. It were all over very quick.’
So was the conversation. A warder rang a bell deep in the bowels of the workhouse and the inmates scattered, like the zombies of a Gothic novel – the undead going about their business. Silence, but for the coughs, reigned.
It had been confirmed. Lestrade’s ravaged fingers curled painfully round the mallet again. The classic symptoms of strychnine poisoning. But this time Lestrade had to go further. He had to see the doctor who pronounced Richard Brown dead – and there was only one way to do that. He waited until the moment was right, heart pounding with the concentration, sweat breaking out on his forehead, then crushed his thumb with a mallet. He rolled sideways, crying out in agony. A warder was at his side, prodding him with his truncheon, ‘You there, Lister. What’s t’matter wi’ ye?’
Lestrade held up the blackening digit.
‘Malingering bastard,’ was the warder’s only comment, and he went away. Lestrade knelt there in pain and surprise until he passed out. The rest was easy.
WHEN HE AWOKE HE WAS in a different room. Not the dormitory of the East Wing, but in a hospital room.
‘Oh, so you’re awake are you?’ A burly woman with a starched but grubby apron stood before him, sleeves rolled to reveal muscles not out of place on a circus strongman, hair strained back in a silver bun. ‘Malingering bastard,’ she grumbled, tucked Lestrade in bed even harder and stalked off, bellowing orders to other unfortunate inmates, whose terminal tuberculosis or tertiary syphilis had brought them to their last days in the infirmary of the Manchester House of Industry, Openshaw district.