Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand

by M. J. Trow

  ‘She has?’

  ‘Of course. Have you met her?’

  ‘Hecuba? Yes, I have.’

  ‘Well, there you are. Is she or is she not as insane as a snake?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Look, I’m an atheist. Refused to take the oath in the House of Lords. Load of Christian tomfoolery, that’s what it is. But that mad nigger believes in witchcraft – hoodoo or voodoo or whatever they call it. Goes around like a bloody zombie half the time. She’ll have put a spell on Fanny, you mark my words.’

  ‘It is my belief,’ said Lestrade, ‘that Miss Chattox met her end at the hands of the Underground murderer.’

  ‘Ah, another bloody Maryanne,’ Queensberry snorted.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. It stands to reason. He doesn’t like women, does he? That’s why he kills them. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Reason has little to do with murder, my lord,’ Lestrade said, wiggling a wobbly incisor. ‘The pederasts I’ve known have all been gentle men.’

  ‘They’re not gentlemen if they’re Maryannes, Lestrade; look at that somdomite Wilde. Buggering young men on the couch in Tite Street. It doesn’t bear thinking about. And that son of mine, the reptile. I stopped his allowance, I can tell you. He’s a damned cur and a coward that somdomite and Bosie is no son of mine.’

  ‘How long had you known Miss Chattox, my lord?’ Lestrade slurred.

  ‘Fanny? Must be three, no, four years.’

  ‘And you ensconced her at Number Thirty-five Duke Street?’

  ‘What of it? A man’s got a right to his pleasures, Lestrade. If you’d met my family, you’d understand. They’re all after my money, that’s all. My eldest, Percy – do you know what that blighter did? He actually . . . God, I still can’t believe it . . . he actually put up the bail money for that somdomite. There he was, buggering everything in sight . . .’

  ‘Percy?’

  ‘No, Wilde. Buggering everything in sight. They say even his canary wasn’t safe from his bestial assaults.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk.’ Lestrade shook his head and instantly regretted it.

  ‘And my eldest bloody son gives him his bail money. It’s beyond belief, I tell you. When I saw him last he looked like a dug-up corpse. It’s as true as I’m sitting here. Well, there y’are, y’see. Too much madness of kissing. I bumped into him at the corner of Bond Street and he demanded I stop sending obscene messages to that bloody awful wife of his. Know what I did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hit him. Good and hard, too. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the peelers, I’d have belted him good and proper.’

  ‘Have you any idea where Miss Chattox was going, on the Tube so late at night?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ admitted Queensberry, his usual predicament, ‘But I’ll tell you this. I’m getting that mad nigger out of there tomorrow. But I think I’ll send Fortinbras round. Just in case, you know; in case she points a bone at me or something. Bloody somdomites.’

  ❖ 9 ❖

  T

  he man with the badly bruised face poured the contents of the watering can all over the geraniums. Craning as he did so, by virtue of the rick in his neck, he could see over the sunlit roofs of the Walworth Road villas the great rococo facade of the Elephant and Castle Station, that bit of territory which had once, the historians said, belonged to Joanna of Navarre. It was now, to Lestrade at least, merely the site of a murder.

  ‘Sholto!’ He heard the voice behind him. ‘I feel so dreadful about all this. It’s my fault you’re here at all.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he slurred as saliva dribbled down his chin.

  ‘It’s true.’ Miss True spun him round as gently as she could. ‘You were suspended for allowing me to sleep on the couch at Scotland Yard. Didn’t you explain you didn’t want me to ride home on the Underground?’

  ‘I don’t think His Nims was in the mood to listen. He’d probably have suggested I get a constable to take you in a station wagon.’

  ‘And then he’d have suspended you for improper use of a police vehicle. Either way, it’s my fault.’

  ‘No, no.’ He blew as best he could through swollen lips to get rid of the aphids. They waved their tentacles at him in derision. ‘This is just one of Abberline’s little machicolations,’ he told her. ‘It’s high time that bloke retired to Bournemouth.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he like you?’

  ‘I’ve never really understood that,’ he said. ‘He was a rookie like me back in the seventies – in the old H Division based in Whitechapel. I suppose it was hate at first sight. But it’s not exactly his fault. I must be difficult to work with.’

  She took the watering can from him. ‘And as a gardener,’ she smiled, ‘you make a damned good policeman.’

  ‘I must admit,’ he smiled, ‘I’m happier with witness boxes than window boxes.’

  ‘When you do retire,’ she said, ‘do you see yourself pruning all day long?’

  ‘Retire? Me?’ He laughed. ‘Oh, no, I shall die in harness. Some dark alley, some winding stair. I’ll be a bit slow with the knuckles one night and that’ll be that. The last of the Lestrades. Killed in the line of duty.’

  ‘What about little Emma?’ She sat him down. ‘She’s a Lestrade.’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ he nodded. ‘But that’s precisely why I can’t ever have her with me. She’s happier in Somerset with the Bandicoots. It’s for the best.’

  ‘Well,’ she patted his knee, ‘you haven’t told me about Queensberry.’

  ‘How’s the play coming along?’ He tried to change the subject. ‘Can Bancroft cope without a second gravedigger?’

  ‘Without a second glance,’ she said. ‘If you’d read his atrocious little book On and Off Stage with Mr and Mrs Bancroft you’d understand it. The man’s middle name is Ego.’

  Squire Ego Bancroft Bancroft, Lestrade mused to himself. These theatrical types got sillier and sillier.

  ‘Johnston is still very cut up about Henrietta, poor dear. I think he’s become just slightly unhinged, you know. Handy, I suppose, playing Hamlet. Now, stop avoiding the issue and tell me about Queensberry.’

  ‘Well, the man’s an ape, there’s no question of it. A total filistine.’

  ‘I think he was horribly cruel to poor Mr Wilde, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah,’ Lestrade shrugged, ‘“the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”.’

  ‘Did Oscar Wilde say that?’ She thought she had read both of his plays.

  ‘No, but I bet he wishes he had. It was in a lecture I attended on Useful Quips for Policemen. Don’t know why that one sticks in my mind particularly. Perhaps it sounds a shade brighter than “Come along, now” and “Move along there”.’

  ‘What did Queensberry say about Fanny Chattox?’

  ‘Not a lot. But I suspect he was fond of her, in his fashion. Fonder than of his family, anyway.’

  ‘They say he’s mad.’

  ‘No question of it,’ agreed Lestrade.

  ‘Do you think he killed her?’

  ‘No.’ The suspended Inspector shook his head. ‘No, he’d have got some lackey to do it. He had a whole army of toughs to call on. Any one of “the fancy” would slit his granny’s throat for a quid. Or should I say guinea? Anyway, what would be the point? Why pay a fortune to equip a lady with fine gowns, an expensive town house and a maid, albeit black and mad, just to bump her off?’

  She took his bruised hands in hers. ‘You can’t leave it alone, can you?’ she said. ‘Any more than I can? Me, because it’s my sister. You, because . . . ? I don’t know. Is it in the blood?’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ he smiled.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘two heads are better than one. What have we got?’

  ‘Now, Trottie . . .’

  She put a finger to his lips and he winced at the impact. ‘Don’t you “Now, Trottie” me, Sholto Lestrade. What have we got? What’s the common denominator?’

  He looked at her long and hard. If
he could have screwed up his face to show disapproval without screaming, he would have done so. ‘All right,’ he sighed and rested his head against the high back of the Chesterfield. ‘Six women dead in as many months and the pace is a-growing.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s a lot we don’t know about murderers yet. I always thought the phrenologists had the right idea, but it’s old hat now, apparently.’

  ‘Phrenologists?’

  ‘Blokes who felt the bumps on your head. A certain pattern of bumps would indicate a criminal type. That way you can watch bumpy babies and prevent them from committing crime.’

  ‘Sounds a bit too simple to me,’ Trottie said.

  ‘Most crime is. The trouble is that I keep running into the clever ones. That doesn’t do much for one’s chances of promotion, one can tell you. Anyway, anybody feeling my bumps this morning would have a field day. Perhaps our man feels the compulsion to kill more strongly than before. Perhaps he relishes a challenge.’

  ‘A challenge?’

  ‘Yes. If he’s ridden the Underground in the past three days he’ll have seen coppers everywhere. Perhaps he sees it as a test of his manhood.’

  ‘There’s nothing manly about killing defenceless women,’ Trottie reminded him.

  ‘Ah, but that’s not all of it. He’s got to get past ticket barriers, up and down staircases, in and out of hydraulic lifts. Then he’s got to get past platform officials, other passengers, guards and drivers. He’s got less than five minutes to find a victim, kill her and get away. He probably thinks he’s pretty slick.’

  ‘What do you think, Inspector?’ She gazed steadily at him, her dark eyes burning into his own.

  ‘I don’t think he’s a sexual maniac,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Why not? He’s killed six women. What about the Whitechapel murders?’

  ‘Totally different kettle of fish.’ Lestrade shook his head gingerly. ‘A sexual maniac kills because he can only . . . er . . . well . . . you know,’ and he eased his collar a little.

  ‘Come to fruition?’ she suggested without a blush.

  ‘Er . . . what? Oh, yes, quite. He can only fruit in the act of or just having killed. This man doesn’t have the chance to fruit because of the time between stations. And he must know he hasn’t.’

  ‘So he’s impotent?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Lestrade, ‘but even impotent sexual maniacs kill when they’ll have time to do the thing properly. I remember Gerontius Hepplewhite, the Impotent Sex Murderer of Mevagissey . . .’

  ‘So what do you deduce, then?’

  ‘This has to do with the Underground,’ Lestrade said, ‘not with women. Whoever our fiend is, he wants us to think there’s another madman out there. Actually, he’s as sane as you or I.’

  ‘Did the women have anything in common?’ Trottie asked.

  ‘Apart from your sister and Miss Fordingbridge whose link is actually fairly tortuous, I don’t think so. At least we’ve found none and I’ve had Dew, Russell and Bromley wearing out shoe leather down that track. It leads to buffers.’

  ‘Could it be a matter of copycat killing?’ she posited.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lestrade. ‘Perhaps George Culdrose did kill his wife back in February and someone else thought that was a damned simple way of killing someone.’

  ‘But you said it wasn’t.’

  He blew outwardly with exhaustion. It felt as if there was a Beyer and Peacock Locomotive growling and rattling inside his head. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘The first railway murder I know of was back in sixty-four. I was a mere stripling of ten, you weren’t born and the Queen, God bless her, was still the Queen. A bloke called Franz Müller killed a bloke called Thomas Briggs in a railway carriage and just walked off the train. Too easy.’

  ‘But they caught him?’

  ‘Oh yes and hanged him. That’s because friend Müller had the intelligence of a geranium, which is probably unkind to geraniums. There’s no such thing as a perfect murder, Trottie, but you know what the nearest thing to perfection is?’

  ‘No,’ she said, waiting to be enlightened.

  ‘Strangers on a train,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take a tip from me. If you ever decide to murder someone, murder a complete stranger. Anyone known to you, and you run the risk of being questioned by us and something might slip. Choose a stranger and there’s no chance of that. Select someone, anyone, sitting across the central aisle of a padded cell from you, choose your moment and walk away. Until they invent trains with corridors, you’ve got your victim – all to yourself – at least until the next station.’

  ‘What about the alarm chain?’

  ‘Ah, the lost cord. If the train has one, you’ve got, as a victim, I’d say, no better than a fifty-fifty chance of reaching it. Whether you’d have the strength to pull it in that situation is anybody’s guess. Besides, not all trains have them, which is why, I suspect, our man haunts the City and South London line. That and the fact that you can’t see into its carriages from the outside. No, Trottie, make no mistake about it. Our man is very, very clever, but he’s rattled now. He’s making mistakes. Fanny Chattox fought back. I don’t think he expected that. He got some scratches before. I hate to think what he looks like now. Damn!’ And he caught his lip a nasty one on his coffee cup.

  ‘Oh, Sholto,’ she stroked his cheek, ‘is it very painful?’

  ‘Nothing that an old Stanwick like me can’t put up with,’ he said.

  She leaned forward, her arms around his neck. ‘You’ll catch him, Sholto Lestrade.’ she whispered. ‘I know you will.’

  Her face closed to his, her lips parted. Could he stand the pain? He was never to find out because the clanging of the doorbell below drove the sleuths, amateur and professional, apart. Trottie looked out of the window. ‘It’s a station wagon,’ she said. ‘Walter Dew is at the door.’

  ‘There’s been another one!’ Lestrade leapt to his feet and instantly regretted it.

  ‘Gently, Sholto.’ She eased him into his jacket.

  He managed to stick his head out of the window. An odd combination of pink and purple, he clashed horribly with the geraniums. ‘Where, Dew?’ he shouted.

  ‘Charing Cross, sir.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Usual time last night.’

  ‘Damn!’ Lestrade hissed, fetching the back of his head a solid one on the sash. ‘The Metropolitan and District line. I knew it. Frost and Abberline have got the City and South London sewn up with bobbies so he’s bound to go elsewhere. But Charing Cross!’

  ‘What about Charing Cross?’ she shouted after him.

  ‘It’s probably the busiest station on the entire Underground. He’s getting reckless.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ She ferreted for her hairpins.

  ‘Not this time, Ophelia. You’ve got a part to learn.’ And he slickly locked her door on the outside and left.

  ‘ALL RIGHT, DEW.’ LESTRADE braced himself against the seat of the wagon. ‘What have we got this time?’

  ‘Blimey, guv’nor.’ Dew had just noticed the contusions and the puffy cheeks. ‘You look like you’ve gone a round with Maurice “The Masher” Melhuish.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Walter. Morning, Russell.’ He tried to smile at the lad. ‘How are you enjoying the police force, sonny? Bromley,’ he bellowed to the man perched with whip and reins on the box, ‘imagine I’m a box of eggs and mind how you go. And no cracks – of the whip or of the wise – I’m feeling particularly fragile today.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ and the wagon lurched forward.

  ‘Tripe sandwich, sir?’ Dew offered, ever-solicitous of his guv’nor’s welfare.

  ‘I’d love to, Walter, knowing, as I do, the love and care that Mrs Dew lavishes on them, but sadly . . .’ he patted his face, ‘the jaw . . . you understand?’

  ‘Oh, righto, guv. Of course.’

  ‘To cases then.’

  ‘Well, this one’s a bit
different, sir.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘Well, for a start, sir, he’s back to the Metropolitan and District.’

  ‘Right. And?’

  ‘Well, you’ll never guess. It’s the damnedest thing.’

  ‘Dew,’ Lestrade growled, ‘I am forty-one years of age. I am under suspension. My head nearly left my shoulders for good two days ago and my entire career is hanging by a thread of intrigue. Now I don’t have time for twenty questions, so I’ll settle for one – what’s different about this case?’

  ‘Well, it’s the victim, sir. He’s a man.’

  ‘A man?’ Lestrade looked at Russell.

  ‘True enough, sir,’ the lad confirmed. ‘Name of David Appleyard.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Brilliant, guv,’ Dew grinned, ‘if I may be permitted to say so.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you knew Appleyard was a Maryanne.’

  ‘What? Not as other commuters, you mean?’

  ‘Well, other than Inspector Thicke and two rookies not a million miles from this ’ere wagon, I know of only one reason why a man puts on women’s clothing.’

  ‘Appleyard was in women’s clothing?’

  Dew nodded.

  ‘A rather fetching little pink number with black ribbons,’ Russell said.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t take you to view the body, sir,’ Dew apologized. ‘Mr Abberline’s strict orders. He’s put Constables McIntyre and Burgess on the mortuary door.’

  ‘So?’ asked the green Russell.

  ‘With the exception of Mr Dew and myself,’ Lestrade explained, ‘McIntyre and Burgess are the only two totally honest coppers at the Yard. I’ve got to hand it to Abberline; he can pick ’em. Do I take it from your attire, by the way, Russell, that you and Bromley are not buckling on your corsets on the Underground at the moment?’

  ‘No sir. Mr Abberline’s orders, sir. He’s left Inspector Thicke going round in circles, still in a frock. Said he didn’t want a man like that getting under his feet.’

  ‘Quite. You’ve seen the body, Dew?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’