Sherlock Holmes and the Disgraced Inspector

by John Hall

  ‘Not I. Did you propose to visit this Inspector White?’

  ‘He may be able to tell us something,’ said Holmes, ‘although I think it improbable. Still, it is better than sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves,’ and he gave us a lead by recovering the coat and hat he had just hung up.

  Within a very short time we were all sitting in a cab, bound for Shoreditch, where Lestrade told us Inspector White’s family lived.

  ‘Your Algernon Clayton is certainly not a sympathetic character,’ said Holmes as we rattled along.

  ‘What, have you seen him, then?’ asked Lestrade.

  ‘Yes,’ said Holmes. ‘Watson and I spoke to him this very morning.’

  ‘Oh? And what has he to say for himself, then?’

  ‘Much as you might imagine. He has gathered quite a crowd about him.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Lestrade.

  ‘Oh, mostly young people of radical, or would-be radical, disposition. I gather they have rallied to his cause,’ answered Holmes. ‘Not too surprising, because every enthusiast for the fin de siècle, everyone who seeks the label “decadent” for themselves, naturally sees the established order, the government, the forces of law and order, as legitimate objects of their scorn.’

  ‘That’s him all over! I beg your pardon, Mr Holmes,’ said Lestrade, ‘I should not have interrupted you, and I’d like to know what passed between you.’

  ‘Remarkably little,’ said Holmes, with an inclination of the head to show that he understood Lestrade’s impatience. ‘He has, it emerged, sold what one of his associates called something like “the true story of his twenty year ordeal” to one of the more sensational Sunday newspapers, for an undisclosed sum.’

  Lestrade groaned. ‘And once them fellows get their claws into me I’m done, good and proper. You know as well as I do that they’re only concerned with selling their rags, and don’t care how they do it, or who they ruin in the process.’

  Holmes went on, ‘Clayton did confirm that he is looking at the possibility of bringing a civil action against you, Lestrade. He has calculated it all out, “twenty years”, said he, “at two hundred a year, that’s four thousand pounds” — ’

  ‘Four thousand!’ cried Lestrade.

  ‘And even that, according to him, was merely the money he might have earned were he a free man. “There must also be a reckoning”, he went on, “of the loss of my freedom, and the injustice and injury done to me”, and the final sum he mentioned was ten thousand.’

  Lestrade sank back, aghast. ‘Ten! Ten thousand! Well, the sole consolation is that he might as well say a million, and have done. For I’ve no more chance of paying the one than the other. Mr Holmes, ten thousand pounds! My little bit of savings don’t amount to more than a few hundred. And if that goes, we’ll be ruined, the wife and me. Ruined. Well, I don’t know, and that’s a fact,’ and he passed a hand over his brow.

  Holmes laid a hand on Lestrade’s sleeve. ‘Do not be too despondent,’ said he. ‘It may not be as bad as all that.’

  ‘Did Clayton say anything that might give you hope, then?’ I asked at once. ‘For, to be honest — ’ and I broke off.

  Holmes did not answer me directly. ‘He is certainly very bitter about Lestrade here,’ he said. ‘That must have struck you, Watson?’

  ‘Indeed. It was palpable.’

  ‘And genuine?’ asked Lestrade, with a sneer.

  ‘It struck me that way,’ said I. ‘I am sorry to be so blunt, Lestrade, but so it seemed to me.’

  ‘His hatred of Lestrade was genuine enough, I’ll swear to that,’ said Holmes thoughtfully. ‘As for the rest — well, frankly I heard nothing that would lead me to feel any great optimism.’ And he sank back in his seat just as Lestrade had done, and drummed with his fingers upon the window. I had a very gloomy pair of travelling companions for the remainder of the journey.

  The cab turned into a narrow and rather dirty street, and drew up before a house that looked no different from its neighbours. Lestrade looked up at the windows, then at the door, then consulted a scrap of paper. ‘This is the place,’ he concluded, and knocked at the door, which was shabby but clean.

  ‘Shabby but clean’ also describes the woman who opened the door in answer to Lestrade’s knock. She was perhaps forty years old, and her face bore the marks of a life that had been far from easy. She looked apprehensively from one to another of us.

  ‘Mrs White?’ asked Lestrade.

  ‘No, sir. My name’s Williams.’

  ‘It was an Inspector White we sought.’

  ‘Ah, that’s dad. My father, that is. You’ll be friends of his?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Is he at home? Could you tell him Inspector Lestrade is here?’

  ‘Won’t you come in?’ She stood aside, to allow us to enter the house, which was cramped but spotlessly clean. ‘I’ll just tell him you’re here,’ and Mrs Williams disappeared into an inner room.

  We heard her say something in a low tone, then another voice, thin and querulous, the voice of an old man, called out, ‘Show them in, girl!’

  Mrs Williams reappeared, and ushered us into a tiny parlour, where a very old man, shrunken and wizened, sat in a wheelchair. A couple of small children regarded us with enormous eyes, but Mrs Williams, with a certain amount of tugging at collars, and one or two judicious cuffings of ears, cleared them out of the room. She turned at the door, and said, ‘If you’d like a cup of tea, please let me know,’ and then she closed the door after her.

  ‘Sit down,’ said the old man, ‘you make the place look untidy,’ and he waved us to ordinary wooden chairs. ‘Not what you’re used to, maybe,’ he added, ‘but it’s all there is.’

  ‘It’s well enough,’ said Lestrade shortly. ‘Now, then, do you know me?’

  ‘Know you? Of course I know you. Didn’t my daughter tell me who you were? Not that I needed telling,’ he added with a cackle, ‘I’d have known you anywhere.’ He held out a claw-like hand to Lestrade. ‘I expected to see you,’ he went on, nodding to a newspaper which lay on the scrubbed deal table. ‘And it’s good to see you, even though it took a calamity to bring you here.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Lestrade, embarrassed. ‘I always meant to come, but — well, you know how it is, Chalky — Inspector White, I mean.’

  ‘Chalky will do,’ said the old man. ‘Do you think I didn’t know you called me that, behind my back? And who are these two?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Mr Sherlock Holmes, and this is Doctor Watson.’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes?’ The old man tried to whistle, with limited success. I recollected that he had had some kind of seizure or stroke, and concluded that it had affected his speech somewhat. ‘Well, I’ve heard of you, sir, even out here. And Doctor Watson! Many a happy hour your stories have given me, sir. Far better than most of the rubbish in the Strand and such-like trash, even if they are a bit fantastic at times.’

  ‘I assure you, sir, that I record merely the bald facts as they occurred.’

  ‘I have lost count of the number of times I have accused you of embellishing your accounts, Watson,’ Holmes told me, ‘and now even your readers are coming round to my way of thinking. You are evidently an acute observer, sir,’ he told Inspector White.

  ‘Inspector White here — Chalky, if he’ll allow the impertinence from a youngster like me — was the best copper on the force in his day,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘I was, too,’ added the old man.

  ‘I am sure that you were,’ said Holmes, ‘and it was in what I might term a professional capacity that we wished to see you. You say that you have read of the release of Algernon Clayton?’ and he nodded towards the newspaper on the table.

  ‘That I have, Mr Holmes.’

  ‘And was he guilty, think you?’

  ‘Guilty? He was a rum ‘un, right enough. Guilty? Aye, he was guilty. Guilty as Judas Iscariot! And why the beggars have let him off, I couldn’t begin to tell you.’

  ‘And why do you say that?’ ask
ed Holmes. ‘Was there anything significant which did not emerge at the trial?’

  The old man thought a moment. ‘No, sir, I can’t say as there was,’ he said at last.

  ‘But it seems to me from what Lestrade has said, that there was some doubt as to the case against Clayton?’ said Holmes.

  ‘Not in my mind, sir. I was sure enough that he was guilty,’ said Inspector White stubbornly.

  ‘The appeal court thought otherwise, though?’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Their opinion, isn’t it? They have theirs, I got mine, and that’s all there is to it. I was certain of Clayton’s guilt, and my superintendent, Superintendent Buller, his name was, he went along with me. And Lestrade here.’

  ‘But now Lestrade here seems to think that there were many loose ends to the investigation,’ Holmes persisted.

  The old man shrugged again. ‘There’s always loose ends, sir, to any detective work. You’ll know that as well as anyone, Mr Holmes.’

  ‘But there seem so very many in this instance?’

  ‘It might look that way, now. At the time, we were satisfied enough.’

  ‘I cannot think why I did not say anything at the time,’ said Lestrade suddenly. ‘There were, as Mr Holmes says, so many loose ends that I ought to have noticed them.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ The old man laughed until he choked, and I feared that my professional services might be required. ‘I’m all right,’ he told us, recovering himself somewhat. ‘No, gents, I could tell you why Mr Lestrade here didn’t notice those loose ends, as he calls ’em. Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Lestrade?’ said Holmes, mystified.

  Lestrade looked at the old man. ‘I’m sure I’ve no idea what he’s talking about, Mr Holmes. What was it then, Chalky?’

  ‘You don’t remember, then?’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘Her.’

  ‘Her?’ Lestrade clearly had no idea what the old man was talking about.

  ‘Her. Bessie, was it?’

  ‘Bessie?’ Lestrade frowned. ‘I still don’t — oh!’ and he stopped, and flushed.

  ‘Well, Lestrade?’ said Holmes.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Holmes, sir. Nothing, I assure you.’

  The old man laughed immoderately again. ‘He won’t tell you!’ said he, sounding for all the world like a naughty child. ‘But I could. You ask him, gents. Make him tell you.’ He laughed again, then grew serious as he looked at Lestrade. ‘And this Clayton, now? Out to make trouble, is he?’

  ‘That’s the way of it,’ said Lestrade.

  The old man nodded. ‘He always struck me as a vicious cur,’ said he. ‘Of course, with Buller being dead, and me not so far off, it’ll be you he’s after, will it?’

  ‘It is,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘I thought as much. Well, if there’s anything I can do, count on me. Not that I expect there will be,’ said the old man cheerfully. ‘And I reckon nobody else will be able to do much either — or want to. They won’t want any mud sticking to them, you see,’ he explained to Holmes and me. ‘Throw him to the blinking wolves, they will.’

  On that cheerful note, we took our leave. On the way back, Holmes looked at Lestrade and asked, ‘What did Mr White mean about this — Bessie, was it?’

  Lestrade looked embarrassed. ‘It had nothing to do with the matter, Mr Holmes,’ he said.

  ‘Mr White seemed to think otherwise.’

  ‘He’s an old man, sir, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  ‘He seemed alert enough to me.’ When Lestrade did not reply, Holmes went on, ‘Come, Lestrade. You sought my assistance, remember, I did not come to you. If I am to do anything for you, then you must not hide anything from me.’

  ‘That’s true enough, sir.’ Lestrade sat back and stared out of the window. ‘It was twenty years back, and I’d all but forgotten it,’ said he. ‘That’s true as well, though Chalky wouldn’t believe me. I’d been married some three or four years, and the wife and me — well, to be blunt, we’d had a devil of a row, and off she goes to her mother’s. I was almost frantic, Mr Holmes, wondering if I’d get her back, blaming myself for what had happened. You’ll know what I mean, I’m sure, Doctor Watson?’

  ‘Indeed, yes! That is to say, I can readily imagine it,’ said I.

  ‘Well, I was on my own in the house, and I felt the need of someone to talk to.’

  ‘A sympathetic ear, as it were?’ said I.

  ‘You have it, Doctor. Of course, if I’d known either of you gents back then, it’d have been your ears I’d have been bending. But as it was, I didn’t know just who to talk to. And then I thought of Bessie. But that’s all it was, I swear, just talk. Just someone to talk to.’

  ‘And who exactly was Bessie?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘Bessie was — well, Mr Holmes, she’d been no better than she ought to be, if you take my meaning. It’s this way, sir. A few years before all this Clayton business first happened, when I was just a young copper on the beat, I was strolling along, waiting to go off duty, when under a street lamp I spies a young lady, plying her trade, as it were. Well, I went up to her, ready to run her in, and blow me if I didn’t recognize her. It was this Bessie I’m telling you about, and I knew her from years before. Matter of fact, we’d been at school together. Now, it’s a small world, isn’t it, and all? Well, I gave her a piece of my mind all right, told her that by rights I should take her along to the station, but that I wouldn’t, provided I didn’t see her there again.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I didn’t, Mr Holmes. She took my little speech to heart, and invested her bit of savings in a little eating place. Nothing so grand as a restaurant, or cafe, or anything of that sort, just a little workmen’s eating place where you could get pie and mash, a cup of tea, that kind of thing. Kept it nice, and didn’t take any cheek from the customers, neither, though some of ’em tried, for she was a good-looker. I got into the way of dropping in there myself from time to time, just for a cuppa and a natter. Handy for the Yard, it was, though I haven’t been in there for years now. Anyway, when all this upset happened, I called in there, and talked to her, most nights. When I could get away, that is, for we were pretty busy, as you may imagine. But it was only talk, sir, I promise you! Not that I didn’t sometimes think — well, you know. Bessie, she was a good-looker, all right. But then the wife’s mother, she came round to the house in a cab, and talked to me, said she’d got rid of Violet, that’s the wife, of course, once, and didn’t want her back there for the rest of her days, so we’d best sort it out quick. A bit rough, the wife’s mother, but a heart of gold. Anyway, we sorted it out, and we’ve never had a cross word since. Or not until this latest matter of my retirement, and even then we haven’t what you’d call argued, not as such.’

  ‘And what became of Bessie?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, her little place is still there, and so is she. Funny, isn’t it? I did once think — you know. She was a looker all right. And you should see her now. Built like a brick outhouse, begging your pardon, gents, where the wife’s kept her looks all the time.’

  Holmes’s mouth twitched. ‘The consequence of twenty years of pie and mash, perhaps?’ he suggested. ‘Well, Lestrade, I am inclined to agree that this has no bearing on the other matter, and is best forgotten.’

  Lestrade looked considerably relieved at this, and sat looking out of the window until we reached Baker Street. We had scarcely set foot inside 221B when Billy, the page boy, rushed out to meet us.

  ‘Inspector Lestrade!’ he cried, ‘your missus is here, sir, and in a dreadful taking.’

  ‘What, Mrs Lestrade? Where, then?’ asked the detective.

  ‘She’s in the kitchen, sir, with Mrs Hudson,’ and Billy led Lestrade off into dark regions where Holmes and I dared not follow.

  ‘I wonder what is amiss?’ I mused.

  ‘Doubtless we shall learn soon enough,’ said Holmes. He glanced at the door through which Lestrade and Billy had just left. ‘What think yo
u to this other business?’ he asked me.

  ‘What, this Bessie? Lestrade seems to think it can be dismissed with an easy word, and I’m sure that it can. But I fear his enemies may not see it in that light.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Holmes. ‘They are sure to say that here is the reason for his inefficiency, Whether he was chasing this other woman, or merely anxious at being deserted — even temporarily — by his wife, that is why he did not give the Clayton matter due attention.’

  ‘You are right,’ said I. ‘Anyone but a policeman would have had sympathy for his troubles, but we both know that men like Lestrade are expected to rise above things which would reduce any other man to tears. It is most unfair, but a sad fact.’

  ‘Yes — ah, Lestrade,’ said Holmes, as the little detective emerged from the kitchen. ‘Nothing wrong, I trust?’

  ‘The wife’s upset, as the lad said, sir,.’ said Lestrade bleakly. He held out a grubby piece of paper. ‘This arrived at dinner time, after I’d left, someone pushed it under the door and then knocked, so the wife naturally went to see what it was.’

  Holmes read the note with some distaste, and passed it to me. ‘Anonymous, of course,’ he said.

  The note had evidently been written by some uneducated person; the language was vile and the sentiment worse. I handed it back to Holmes.

  ‘Well, the wife read that,’ Lestrade went on, ‘and she thought — you know. But she’s no coward, isn’t Violet, and she goes to the door to see if she can see who it was that wrote that. And then — ’ and he broke off.

  ‘Well?’ said Holmes.

  ‘Filth, Mr Holmes, on the very doorstep. A dead cat. And worse.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said I. ‘No wonder Mrs Lestrade was upset.’

  ‘She knew I was here, and came round at once. Mrs Hudson has been looking after her, for which I’m very grateful,’ said Lestrade. He looked worried. ‘But what’s to be done, I don’t know.’

  ‘Who do you imagine has done this?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘Clayton, maybe. Him, or some of his fancy friends, who are probably not so particular as they like to pretend. Either that,’ said Lestrade, ‘or some of the local lads who I’ve put away. Everybody knows about my spot of trouble, and there’s always those who’ll delight in kicking a man when he’s down.’