by M. J. Trow
‘A deerstalker?’ That was beginning to sound alarm bells in Lestrade’s head. ‘Do we have a description?’
‘Tweed cloth, brown flaps . . .’
‘Not the cap,’ Lestrade cut in, ‘the man talking to Chapman.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Wensley dug under his bagels in the shoe-box and produced a wad of depositions. ‘Er . . . let’s see. Fortyish, foreign-looking, shabby . . .’
‘Well, that could be you or me, Fred,’ Lestrade commented.
‘. . . haggling with Chapman over a price for her services . . .’
‘Could still be you,’ Lestrade commented.
‘Thanks, Sholto, I love you too.’
‘What’s the other thing Abberline’s got?’ Lestrade asked, ‘apart from the brass neck to call himself a policeman at all?’
‘Pizer’s been in hiding. We had to break down the door at Mulberry Street. The mob were after him.’
‘The mob?’
‘Mr Abberline in his wisdom let it be known that we’d found a leather apron near the body of Chapman and that this apron definitely belonged to the murderer.’
‘I see. So the locals were out for blood?’
‘I know those streets, Sholto,’ Wensley was serious. ‘It’s bad enough for the Jews anyway, but something like this . . . If Abberline’s wrong about Pizer, I can’t answer for what happens in Whitechapel. It’s not going to be pretty.’
‘It never was, Fred. Did you get any joy from the lodgers at Hanbury Street?’
Wensley shook his head. ‘One of life’s little coincidences, Sholto,’ he said. ‘Seventeen people, all blind, deaf and dumb, living in the same lodging house.’
‘Can I talk to Pizer?’
Wensley nodded. ’He’s an animal, Sholto. Watch yourself.’
The animal was squarely built, rather shambling, with the short-cropped hair of the labouring classes. They had put him in a grey fustian suit and had handcuffed him to the iron bedstead.
‘Constable, get these off.’
‘Mr Abberline’s orders, sir,’ the uniformed man protested.
‘Now, Constable,’ Lestrade said quietly. There was something in his tone that made the man comply.
Pizer sat on the crawling mattress, rubbing his chafed wrists.
‘Are you ready then, Pizer?’ Lestrade asked.
No response, just small, shifty eyes staring at the floor.
‘Constable,’ Lestrade stopped the man as he hesitated in the doorway, ‘you can bring the rope now.’
‘Rope?’ Pizer and the constable chorused.
‘Certainly’ said Lestrade in mild surprise, ‘no point in bothering Mr Berry. We’ll do it now.’ He nodded to the bewildered constable, who shuffled uneasily outside.
‘Do what?’ Pizer asked in his thick, guttural accent.
Lestrade looked up at the ceiling. ‘Hmmm.’ He seemed distant. ‘Oh, hang you, my dear fellow. That beam should take the strain, I think.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Pizer snarled, standing up now.
‘Why not?’ Lestrade continued the game. ‘Ah, you mean the trial?’
Pizer nodded, his little eyes almost normal size in his terror. ‘Where were you born, Pizer?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Poland,’ the man answered.
‘And doubtless you’ve heard stories of our legendary British justice? How a man is innocent until he’s proven guilty?’
Pizer nodded, swallowing hard.
Lestrade chuckled. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘have you heard the one about Goldilocks and the Three Bears? No, where we are sure a man is guilty of a crime, we hang him straight away. No fuss.’
‘That man,’ Pizer pointed hysterically to the door, ‘that Mr Venzel. He say I have trial first.’
Lestrade looked confused. ‘Mr Venzel? Oh, Inspector Wensley? Yes, well, he’s rather new. Doesn’t really understand. Oh dear, we haven’t got a rabbi. Would an Anglican chaplain do? Only I’m due at the pub later.’
Pizer stood quivering for a moment, then launched himself at Lestrade, bellowing in fear and rage. The Inspector sidestepped neatly, considering his neck and his leg, and brought his knee up in Pizer’s groin. The Pole lay axed on the floor, gurgling quietly.
The crash of furniture brought the constable scurrying back. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked. ‘I couldn’t find any rope.’
Lestrade looked up at him with the eyes of a basilisk. ‘Bugger off, there’s a good constable. Tell Mr Wensley I could do with a cup of tea.’
The constable saluted in a flurry of confusion and bounded up the stairs. Lestrade sat on the chest of the groaning Pole and jerked up his head. ‘Now, let’s cut the nonsense, shall we?’ he hissed. ‘Where were you on Friday night and Saturday morning? Think!’ he bounced the man’s head on the flagstones a few times, ‘or you’ll wish I’d let the mob have you.’
‘Home. At Mulberry Street,’ Pizer moaned. ‘My mother – she there. My brother – he there.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Mr Venzel that?’
‘He no . . .’ Pizer began.
‘I know,’ Lestrade broke in, ‘he no threaten to hang you, eh?’
Pizer nodded as best he could with Lestrade holding on to his hair.
‘All right, think back,’ Lestrade’s iron knuckles in his skull were strong persuaders, ‘the last day of August. It was a Friday. Where were you – evening; small hours of Saturday?’
‘Er . . . ’
Again the skull went down with sickening force on the cold stone. ‘Think!’ screamed Lestrade.
‘Holloway Road,’ Pizer screamed back. ‘I in lodging house. People there – they know me. They know me.’
Lestrade let the head fall back and stepped off his man. He let him get up and Pizer rolled onto the bed to join the rest of the crawling company.
‘You knew Annie Chapman?’ he asked.
Pizer nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We sometimes at same lodging house.’
‘Have you been with her?’ Lestrade asked.
The Pole looked even more stupid.
‘Slept with her, man. I don’t know the Polish for it.’
‘Ya,’ Pizer nodded. ‘I get into fight with Sievey.’
‘Who’s Sievey?’
‘He make sieve. He her husband.’
‘Did she live with her husband?’ Lestrade asked.
‘No, not now. He beat her.’
Lestrade stood up and kicked with his good foot for someone to open the door. ‘Well, nobody else will do that now,’ he said quietly. The bewildered constable arrived again.
‘Thank you for your help, Mr Pizer,’ Lestrade smiled.
‘You not going to kill me?’ The Pole stood up again.
‘You may not know it, Mr Pizer,’ he said, ‘but I just saved your life.’
At the top of the stairs, Sergeant George was waiting. His face registered all the feelings of a man who had lost his rest day.
‘Ah, George, there you are. Good man. Get over to twenty-two Mulberry Street. Better take a constable with you – not this one; he doesn’t know what day it is. What is your name, Constable?’ Lestrade rounded on the man.
‘Dew, sir. Walter Dew.’
‘Right, I’ll be sure not to ask for you next time. George, you’re looking for the brother and mother of John Pizer.’
‘He’s a cobbler,’ ventured Dew.
‘It’s all cobblers,’ grunted Lestrade. ‘Find out where this Pizer was on Friday night, will you? And then get to Holloway Road. One of the lodging houses there. See if any of ’em had Pizer staying there the night Mary Nicholls died. Got it?’
‘I probably will have before this is over, guv’nor,’ George muttered.
Lestrade slapped his back. ‘That’s what I like, Sergeant, dedication and enthusiasm. It’s a winning combination.
Inspector and sergeant went their different ways. At the outer desk, Fred Wensley confronted Lestrade. ‘Sholto.’ He introduced a shabbily dressed young man beside him. ‘This is Mr Richardson,’ he said
. ‘He says if we’re finished with his mother’s leather apron which she had washed and left on the fence of Number twenty-four Hanbury Street, could he have it back?’
Lestrade wandered quietly away.
Long Liz
C
harles Bradlaugh stood before the Gothic hearth in his country home. He turned at the click of the door behind him.
‘Inspector Lestrade to see you, sir,’ the maid bobbed.
‘Thank you, Hetty.’ Bradlaugh crossed the Persian carpet and took the policeman’s hand. ‘Good of you to come.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Lestrade. ‘I kept bumping into brick walls in London.’
‘Is that why . . .?’ Bradlaugh tilted his head so that it was at the same angle as Lestrade’s.
‘Oh, the neck? No.’ Lestrade did his best to smile. ‘I was speaking metaphysically.’
Bradlaugh flashed him an old Free Thinker’s look and poured them brandies.
‘I know you’re on duty, Inspector.’
‘I know you know, sir,’ said Lestrade, raising the glass.
‘Here’s iron in your necessaries!’ Bradlaugh raised his.
‘Sir?’
‘An old toast, Lestrade, from my days in the Dragoon Guards. Have a seat.’
Lestrade picked the mastiff’s chair. Luckily for them both, the great brindled beast was not in residence, but his weight over the years had caused the springs to go and Lestrade found his hams disappearing into the bowels of the upholstery and his knees meeting with a sickening crack. He wrestled manfully with the glass, trying to appear natural with his arms resting on those of the chair on a par with his parting and his feet swinging inches off the rug.
‘That’s it,’ said Bradlaugh. ‘Relax. What do you know of Rhadegund Hall?’
‘It’s a school, sir. A boarding establishment for the sons of gentlefolk.’
‘Yes, well they’re about as gentle as a shoal of piranhas, Lestrade.’
The Inspector wasn’t surprised. He’d never liked dogs.
‘You were there a month ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Investigating the death of a servant girl?’
‘Correct.’
‘What progress did you make?’
Lestrade looked at the large, silver-haired man before him. He wasn’t comfortable in his presence. Free thinking and the law did not go hand in hand.
‘Forgive me, Mr Bradlaugh, I realise you are the Member of Parliament for this County . . .’
‘Oh, come, Lestrade,’ it was as though Bradlaugh had read his mind, ‘I am also Charles Bradlaugh the iconoclast . . .’
Lestrade hadn’t known he was a sculptor.
‘Charles Bradlaugh, founder of The National Reformer, Charles Bradlaugh, the co-writer with dear Mrs Besant of the so-called obscene work on the control of conception. Charles Bradlaugh, who refused to take the oath in the Commons.’
At best, thought Lestrade, a man of many parts. At worst, a schizophrenic.
‘I realise that free thinking and the Law do not go together, Inspector . . .’
Lestrade gripped his brandy balloon more firmly.
‘. . . but this is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of plain duty. The girl was murdered.’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ Lestrade said, ‘but what is your interest in the matter?’
‘As a fellow human being, I am of course appalled. On a more personal level, the gardener here was the girl’s godfather. You should talk to him before you go. You can’t miss him; talks as though his cheeks were padded with cotton wool. He’s a good soul, Lestrade. Salt of the earth. He’s not happy.’
‘I understood I’d been taken off the case, Mr Bradlaugh,’ Lestrade said. ‘That the local police were handling it. It was only the merest chance I happened to be there in the first place.’
‘That is politics, Lestrade. If I’m any judge . . .’
Was he on the bench as well? Lestrade wondered.
‘. . . that old deviant Nails is behind this.’
‘The murder, you mean?’ Lestrade’s ears pricked up.
‘Perhaps. But I actually meant he was instrumental in getting you off the case. To protect his precious school.’
‘I gather you do not approve of St Rhadegund’s, Mr Bradlaugh.’
‘I’ve never forgiven the Clarendon Commission, Lestrade, any more, I suppose, than you have.’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘Quite. Perpetuating the snobbery and violence of the shirking classes. There are times when I feel quite Socialist . . .’
‘Surely not,’ Lestrade thought it best to say.
‘On behalf of old Diggles, my groundsman, Lestrade, I’d like you to go back to Rhadegund Hall. I don’t know what Nails is up to, but it’s no good if I know my onions.’
A market gardener too, mused Lestrade.
‘Here,’ Bradlaugh gave Lestrade an envelope, ‘this will get the Chief Constable of the county off your neck . . . er, I mean . . . tell me, I hate to pry, but is that congenital?’ He pointed to Lestrade’s neck.
The Inspector was a little alarmed. ‘I hope not,’ he had to be hauled to his feet, ‘the tailor who made it for me swore it was velvet.’
Diggles was locked in mortal combat with the compost heap when Lestrade found him. And the heap looked within sight of victory.
‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard,’ he introduced himself.
‘Fred Diggles,’ slurred the old man, tugging his cap.
‘I am investigating the death of your goddaughter, Maggie Hollis.’
‘God bless you, sir.’ The old man’s eyes filled with tears and the compost began to steam from his moleskin trousers.
‘Is there anything you can tell me?’ Lestrade asked.
Diggles closed to the Yard man, but Lestrade was faster and kept his distance.
‘She were ’eving a babby,’ he grimaced.
‘Were she? Was she?’ Lestrade corrected himself. He had not seen a coroner’s report. Assistant Commissioner Rodney had given him his marching orders before it was ready. ‘Who was the father?’
Old Diggles shook his head. ‘I dunno,’ he said sagely, ‘but it weren’t a local lad.’
‘How do you know that?’ Lestrade asked, backing to avoid the full force of spray from Diggles’s impediment.
‘’Ad airs, my Maggie did. Airs and graces. Stuck up, she were. Comes of workin’ up at that school. She wouldn’t mix with local lads. Not good enough for ’er, she always said. You take my advice,’ he prodded Lestrade’s Donegal with a dibber, ‘you’ll talk to one of them ’igh and mighty fellas up there.’
‘The boys, you mean?’
Old Diggles nodded. ‘It’s in the blood, y’see. They been givin’ their nannies and tweenies one since they wuz this ’igh. One of them will ’ave done for our Maggie. Only that there ’eadmaster don’t want it known, see. He want it ’ushed up, ’e do. Doctor!’ Diggles spat contemptuously. ‘He couldn’t cure a ham, ’e couldn’t.’
‘Thank you, Mr Diggles,’ Lestrade retreated before the compost got to him irrevocably. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
The Chief Constable of Northamptonshire could not see Lestrade personally. He was with the otter hounds at the time and then there was the Autumn Yeomanry Camp and he had his troop to attend to. He did, however, accede to Mr Bradlaugh’s request to allow Lestrade back on the case. He really had little choice. Unbeknown to Lestrade, Bradlaugh’s envelope contained a few other items: a lock of hair, a piece of lace from French drawers and a rather purple love letter, all belonging to Lady Conyngham, a very dear friend of the Chief Constable’s wife and, evidently, an even dearer friend of the Chief Constable. So the Northamptonshire Constabulary, in the person of Inspector Pearcey, bowed out to the Metropolitan Constabulary, in the person of Inspector Lestrade. The bowing out was none too graceful, however.
‘Well?’ Pearcey was a bovine man, straight from Miss Abercromby’s School of Charm and Deportment, recently opened in the Elephant and Castle.
‘Well, what have you got for me?’ Lestrade tried patience as his first tack.
‘Utter contempt,’ Pearcey answered.
Lestrade smiled. ‘Well, now we’ve got the niceties over, Inspector, perhaps we can get down to business?’
‘You expect my co-operation?’ Pearcey rammed a pound of orange snuff vaguely in the direction of his face.
‘That would be too much. Are you a sportsman, Mr Pearcey?’
‘Well, I have a flutter now and again . . .’ Pearcey admitted.
‘I was thinking of running,’ Lestrade said.
‘I should.’ Pearcey’s great sides wobbled with his apparent wit – girth shaken by mirth.
‘You know – a relay race,’ Lestrade went on, ‘when one runner hands his baton to another? That’s all I want you to do. Pass the baton to me. I’m not expecting you to run with me as well. Frankly, I haven’t got the time.’
‘What do you mean?’ Pearcey straightened in his desk, suddenly aware that he was losing this one, and his constables were sniggering at him.
‘You’ve had a dead girl on your slab for the best part of three weeks. Now, for the last time, what progress have you made?’
Pearcey’s head sank sulkily into his shoulders. He set his jaw and flicked open the relevant ledger.
‘Margaret Hollis,’ he read, ‘age seventeen years. Cause of death, drowning.’
‘Marks on the body?’ Lestrade interrupted.
‘Bruising to wrists and arms,’ Pearcey told him.
‘So she was held down. Go on.’
‘Nearly three months pregnant.’
‘Any signs of sexual assault?’
‘From three months ago? Come off it, Lestrade!’
‘I was referring to the time of death.’
Pearcey scanned the reports. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Who have you interviewed?’
‘Family. Mother, three brothers. Children all younger. Father deceased.’
‘When?’
‘Er . . . six years ago. Threshing accident.’
‘Did you get anywhere with the girl’s lover?’
Pearcey shook his head. ‘Could be anybody, either in the village or . . .’
‘. . . or the school,’ Lestrade finished the sentence for him.