Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand

by M. J. Trow

Lestrade turned to face him, hands in his pockets. As he neared, still whistling, the Inspector’s left hand pulled free. The other cradled the knuckles.

  ‘Oh, evenin’ sir,’ the man croaked, pausing to tug his peak. ‘Last train’ll be along in a minute.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Good night, sir,’ and he whistled on.

  He was right. No sooner had Lestrade become engrossed in reading Lady Fournier’s remedy for sciatica blazoned over the concave station wall than he felt the wind rush along the line and whip the tails of his jacket. He held on to his hat and screwed up his eyes as No. 8 locomotive with its staring bright eyes and its yellow frontage hurtled out of the darkness, and slowed with a rush of steel and a whine of electricity. The lights in the padded cells dimmed and Lestrade checked the cars. No guards. No guards at all. He took the middle car and climbed aboard, letting his hand slide around the rail. Then he sat down on the empty, clanking train.

  There was a tug on the electrics. The lights dimmed again and he was thrown sideways as the Mather and Piatt’s engines cranked into motion. He didn’t see the puzzled look on the face of the platform sweeper. The old boy frowned up at the station clock. That was funny. The 11.38 was nearly seven minutes early.

  So, he had followed instructions. Lestrade had caught the last train at Blackfriars. All he could do now was wait. No one got on at Blackfriars with him. And there was no guard to flag up the next station. The flash of light told him they were hurtling through a station, however, and he stood up to peer through the frosted windows above his seat. ‘Elephant,’ he said aloud.

  He staggered to the end doors and rattled them. Nothing. They were locked. He ran now, colliding with the padded seats as he went, snatching the brass handles at the end he had entered by. Nothing. They wouldn’t budge. Another flash of light. He couldn’t see the station name, but that had to be Kennington. And what speed was that maniac doing? The madman at the controls. It was then that Lestrade realized it. The madman had been in control all along and now he had stolen a train. There must be signals forward? Guards and station masters on the platforms as they passed? One of them would telephone ahead, inform the police, kill the power at Stockwell. Then he’d have to stop. Without juice, he’d have no choice.

  They took the curve by the Oval, Lestrade pressed flat into the cold leather, his boot heels dancing an insane jig on the slatted floor with the vibration of speed. A sign above him warned him not to smoke, but a quiet cigar now was the last thing on his mind. He could feel the engine racing, the car lift. The Stockwell gradient. The lights dimmed, then went out, and alone in the blackness, there was suddenly a scream of brakes. The dead man’s hand slid home, and the whole train slewed to the left.

  Lestrade was lying on the floor when he heard the front doors click open. He hauled himself up between the seats and whipped out the switchblade, ripping open the doors. There was no one there. He looked around him. If he’d cared to, he could have reached up and touched the blackened steel girders that ribbed the tunnel, like the skeleton of some great subterranean whale. He leapt over the metal tailgate and on to the next one. This time he was more cautious. He placed his left hand on the door handle, then wrenched. No one. Another empty padded cell, like the one he had just left. He walked steadily down it, lifting his boots as noiselessly as he could on the metal treads of the car.

  Then he was there. The last doors. Beyond these, he knew, lay the Mather and Piatt locomotive with its iron door. That meant a quarter of an inch of metal between him and a maniac. He swallowed hard, then hurled back the mahogany and stood, staring into darkness.

  Someone had switched off the locomotive lights so that the cab’s interior was dark. He could make out a silhouette in a peaked cap against the front window furthest from him, and the light from his own car fell on the uniform trousers of the City and South London line, encasing the legs of a murderer. He realized simultaneously that he was framed in light – a perfect target – and he knew that inches below him, just under his right foot, gleamed the live conductor rail.

  ‘Well, well, Johnnie,’ he said. ‘No frock tonight?’

  He saw the figure move a little, the shoulders quiver as though in a silent laugh.

  ‘Where is she, Johnnie? Where is Miss True? You’ve already killed her sister. You don’t want her as well. It’s over, Inspector Thicke. Come on down.’ And he made a step forward.

  ‘This is all rather embarrassing, Inspector Lestrade,’ he heard the killer say and he stepped forward a little too, just enough for Lestrade to see his face.

  ‘Mr Lavender!’ the Inspector rasped.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the railway expert smirked, ‘hence the embarrassment. You see, I thought you were on to me. That’s why I sent you that rather theatrical little note this morning. I thought it was time I shook you off, uncoupled you, so to speak. I knew your relationship with Miss True would bring you here as I asked, alone. And now it turns out you thought I was John Thicke all along. Well, well, there’s no going back now, I’m afraid. No shunting aside.’

  ‘You seem remarkably well informed,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘About Miss True, you mean? Oh, I’m not short of informants. Superintendent Tomelty of the Railway Police is as discreet as a loud hailer. Anything vouchsafed to him by your Mr Frost or Mr Abberline is instantly common knowledge. Then of course, there’s railway gossip and the famous circumspection of Fleet Street, who will give a would-be murderer every detail about a killing he could wish to know. Helpful bunch, aren’t they?’

  ‘Melville Lavender,’ began Lestrade, ‘you are under arrest for. . .’

  ‘Don’t move, Lestrade!’ The voice was harsher than he’d heard it, more malevolent.

  ‘You are not armed, Mr Lavender,’ the Inspector said, ‘and I have reason to believe you are suffering from a knife wound inflicted by the late Mr Appleyard.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Lavender, ‘careless of me, that. It wasn’t until my hands were round his throat that I realized my mistake. He made a damned good woman. It was only a scratch though.’

  ‘Even so.’ Lestrade stepped on to the locomotive platform, the switchblade upright.

  ‘Even so!’ Lavender screamed. ‘You will stay where you are.’

  He flicked a switch with his right hand and the front of the locomotive lit up. Lestrade stopped, his heart thumping, his eyes blinking in disbelief. In the locomotive’s beams he could see the body of a woman tied as though to a crucifix, her arms outstretched, her body slumped. Her wrists were tied to the buffers at the end of a platform some ten feet away.

  ‘Trottie,’ he whispered.

  ‘The same,’ smiled Lavender.

  ‘Is she . . . ?’

  ‘No, Lestrade. She’s not dead. If you’re an observant copper, which sadly I know you are not, you will notice that my left hand has never left this throttle. That is my weapon, Lestrade. You see, I am armed with a Number Eight Mather and Piatt locomotive. It weighs three tons, Lestrade. I won’t bore you with the velocity figure. But suffice it to say that even at ten feet, I can bring quite a bit of pressure to bear on Miss True – enough, at any rate, so that she will be unrecognizable when I reverse. Hydraulic death is not pretty – I know; I’ve seen it.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Lestrade stepped back and dropped the switchblade to his side.

  ‘You of course,’ Lavender said. ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d get very far using my normal methods. So, if you’d be so good as to throw yourself on to the live rail . . . Now!’

  His hand trembled on the cold steel of the controls. For a moment, time stood still. Lestrade could hear his heart thumping in his ears; felt his blood run cold.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why did you kill all those people?’

  ‘Does it really matter?’ Lavender asked wearily.

  ‘Call it professional curiosity.’ Lestrade played for time. He had to get that throttle away from Lavender – or Lavender away from it. Even without the locomotive as a ram, he knew th
at Trottie was unconscious and the strain on her heart and lungs from being hooked on those buffers would be fatal in minutes. God knows how long she had been there already.

  ‘No,’ said Lavender. ‘You amuse me first. Let me be privy to your feeble attempts at deduction. Why did you think I was John Thicke?’

  ‘It had to be someone with a knowledge of the Underground,’ Lestrade told him, ‘and who knew it better than a man who rode it every working day of his life?’

  ‘A man who once owned a part of it,’ Lavender answered. ‘A man like me. Thicke wouldn’t have known about this spur for example. It’s only yards from the Stockwell Station, but you won’t find it on any map.’

  ‘I knew Thicke was tired of the work.’ Lestrade kept talking, waiting, hoping, for his chance. ‘I’ve known policemen go funny before. Overwork. Strain. Some of them crack. And who better to trust than another woman? It was perfect. Thicke had the perfect alibi – he was supposed to be here and we provided him with a disguise.’

  ‘But he wasn’t your only suspect, surely?’ Lavender asked.

  ‘No. For a long time, I suspected the men who turned out to be the Sleigh brothers. They kept appearing at the Yard in various guises. But they cleared themselves – and their father – yesterday.’

  ‘What of Bancroft? The papers were full of him.’

  ‘It all adds up to more bums on seats for his show,’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘I was visited by an idiot named Galton the other week who had some half-baked theory about the little ridges at the ends of your fingers. Well that’s patent nonsense; but Squire Bancroft has a hard, calloused ridge on his right thumb. That would have left an obvious impression on the dead women’s necks – there wasn’t one.’

  ‘And Private Hitch?’

  ‘He couldn’t have done it himself for the same reason Edward Bayreuth couldn’t – a useless right arm. Oh, he could just manage to drive a cab, but to strangle a woman – and one man – that would be impossible. Besides, you cleared him yourself when you wrote that note this morning. It wasn’t the same hand as Hitch’s – nor as Bellamy’s, nor as Culdrose’s. I suspect something about Hitch though.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That he didn’t see his old comrade Corporal Schiess at all. I also suspect that you have a very strong facial resemblance to that gentleman. So when Hitch hailed you after you’d killed Verity True, you looked right through him.’

  ‘Hmm,’ nodded Lavender, ‘I must go to a branch library somewhere – or perhaps the United Services Institute – and find a photograph of him tomorrow, when all this is over. What about the artist, Aubrey Beardsley?’

  ‘The man’s dying of tuberculosis. I know. I’ve seen it. His lungs couldn’t stand a ride on the Tube, much less the exertion of killing anyone by strangulation. And you still haven’t told me why,’ Lestrade said, shifting his weight slightly to his left foot.

  ‘And you haven’t explained why you didn’t arrest Queensberry.’

  ‘I’d love to – and I might yet, one day, but your letter this morning clinched it. It was literate. He isn’t. No man with his boorishness could possibly spell “commuter”.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lavender, ‘I suppose you have a right to know. It was the randomness that threw you, wasn’t it? The fact that the victims had nothing in common. Oh, I know there was a connection between this lady’s sister and the woman Fordingbridge, but that was a mere coincidence – coincidence, I’m happy to say that saw you Yard bobbies chasing your own tails. I didn’t care who died. Anybody would do. But it had to be women. Women of all classes, not just the Unfortunates. Society had to believe that no woman was safe. And they never learn, do they? They still rode the Tubes after all the scaremongering from the Press and from Scotland Yard. I find the stupidity of Josephine Public quite incredible. It was terribly easy of course. I knew these trains and the stations like the back of my hand. At first I killed in my ordinary suit. Then some panic set in and ladies took to riding late at night with guards. So I became a guard.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Lestrade, ‘Messrs Hudson, Gooch and Hackworth. How did you manage that?’

  ‘Simple. I was constantly nipping in and out of station masters’ offices – they all know me here because of my railway museum. I was generous enough to buy the tea for the real guards and I slipped a certain substance into it – the same substance that has mercifully robbed Miss True of her consciousness at the moment. I simply slipped in early the following days and substituted myself on their shifts. I had the relevant uniform in my collection at home. The names were a bit silly, I realized afterwards – Hudson and Gooch, great railway magnates of the ’forties; Hackworth, the man who competed against the Rocket at the Rainhill Trials. Rather a give-away that, from a railway buff like me.’ He eyed Lestrade carefully. ‘I needn’t have worried though, need I?’ he asked. ‘You were none the wiser until now.’

  Lestrade shrugged. He’d die rather than admit it. And it looked as though, any moment, that could be arranged. ‘You still haven’t told me why,’ he said.

  ‘Revenge, if you like,’ Lavender said. ‘You see, when we first met, Lestrade, I told you a teensy untruth. I said that I had no head for business – that that side of the railways is a closed book to me.’

  ‘Not so?’ Lestrade asked.

  Lavender shook his head slowly. ‘I was the principal stockholder in the Charing Cross and Waterloo Railway. Ever heard of it?’

  It was Lestrade’s turn to shake his head.

  ‘Sank without trace.’ Lavender was shaking now, his fingers tightening on the controls. ‘It was to have rivalled the Central. It would have been bigger than the Metropolitan and District, and would have knocked this tin-pot organization into a cocked hat. Then the government withdrew its support. The bill collapsed. And my personal fortune went along with it. Well, I plotted. Planned. Carefully, so carefully. Those bastards Mott, Dutts, Spagnoletti and the others – they’re paying now just as I paid. Their profits have halved; no one’s riding their lines anymore. Two, perhaps three more murders, and I’ll have bankrupted them. Underground travel will be a thing of the past. And my personal reign of terror will have brought it all about. I even hinted at that after the third murder – that someone was out to discredit the company. I threw you the plausibility that someone in the City and South London was responsible. You fell for it superbly – “shitting on your own doorstep” you called it – very colourful.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ said Lestrade, ‘but I fear you’ve forgotten one thing.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Lavender’s eyes narrowed ‘And what’s that?’

  Till his dying day, Sholto Lestrade didn’t know how he made that shot, but make it he did. He hurled his switchblade at Lavender’s left arm, the one rigid on the throttle. A miss at that moment and the madman would have jammed down the lever and Lestrade didn’t even want to think about the result against the buffers. As it was, the blade bit deep into Lavender’s forearm and the arm shot up in sudden agony. The Inspector threw himself forward, taking Lavender to the floor of the tiny cab with him. The blade and knuckles had rolled clear with the impact and they struggled together among the engine oil and the grime. Once, twice, Lestrade brought his fist smashing down into Lavender’s face, but then he felt a bucket clang around his head and he rolled sideways.

  In an instant Lavender was gone, bounding back through the cars, his arm useless and bleeding. Lestrade shook his head free of the metallic ringing and threw back the front door of the locomotive. He had to get Trottie. Before it was too late. He leapt down, landing perfectly on both feet. Then he froze. He daren’t look. He daren’t look. But he had to look.

  His trouser leg was flapping a fraction of an inch from the live rail. One wobble now and the Inspector would be frying tonight. He lunged forward, hacking at Trottie’s hands with the switchblade. Her right arm flopped downwards and he caught her, steadying her weight while he sawed frantically at the left. It gave way and he lifted her bodily on to the platform. For an ins
tant her eyes flickered open, while he rubbed her wrists. She whispered, ‘Sholto?’ and her head fell back.

  He patted her cheek, whipped off his jacket and threw it over her for warmth and turned back to the locomotive. As long as Trottie didn’t roll off on to the live rail, all would be well; and Lavender was getting away. Lestrade ran down the spur to the Stockwell gradient. To his right, the lines curved downhill into the pitch darkness. It would have been easier for his man to run that way, but he had no torch and he was losing blood. To his left, the track rose steeply, but there was the pale light of Stockwell Station and a short ride to civilization and escape. He ran left.

  Around him, the cavern of iron reverberated with his footsteps. The sweat ran down his face and he tasted salt on his lips. He had to keep his feet in a tight line or there would be an instant blue flash and a crackle and the lights would go out, probably all over Europe. Once, twice he stumbled, crying out in the darkness as he recovered, not daring to throw out his hands to save himself.

  Then he was there, leaping up with a staggering gait on to the safety of the platform. No one. It was deserted. He looked back. It was a nightmare back there – a labyrinth of tunnels that interlocked with sewers and post office tubes and electrical subways. A man like Lavender probably knew them all. That’s how he’d walked away from so many murders. He hadn’t passed the guards at all. He knew a host of secret passageways, a myriad twisting ways where the sun never shone. It was hopeless. Lestrade had taken the wrong turning.

  Then there was the click of a shoe on concrete and he saw Melville Lavender hurtle diagonally across the platform ahead. He saw what he was aiming at, too – the last lift was about to make its ascent.

  ‘Come along there, please!’ they heard the liftman say. Lavender had hung back for as long as he dared. He was in no shape for the stairs and he’d hoped that Lestrade would double back looking for him in the blackness. Now, he had no choice. The lift was already rising, the platform about half-way up the open entrance. The liftman saw Lavender too late and frantically tried to reverse his controls. The railway expert relied on split-second timing and his knowledge of Otis Elevators. But he was exhausted. His lungs felt like lead and he lunged too late.