by M. J. Trow
‘So he’d been in England . . .?’
‘Oh, many times,’ said Chesterton.
‘No, I mean how long had he been in the country this time?’
‘Oh, it must be – what, Frances? A week or so? I believe he was staying at the Grand before that.’
Lestrade was impressed. ‘They pay their journalists well in Germany, then?’
‘Oh, it’s all down to expenses, dear boy. The whole world runs on expenses.’
Lestrade sucked his teeth. ‘Not in my profession, Mr Chesterton,’ he assured him. ‘Tell me, did Mr Hesse have any visitors?’
‘Now you’ve asked me,’ Chesterton realized. ‘Frances, dear?’
‘It’s difficult to say, Mr Lestrade.’ Mrs Chesterton joined the superintendent on the sofa. ‘We are in the process of moving, you see – hence all this clutter – G. K. and I are out rather a lot at the moment, making arrangements.’
‘Ah,’ said Lestrade. ‘Where are you moving to?’
‘Er . . . where is it, dearest?’ Chesterton asked.
‘Beaconsfield, dear.’ She smiled at him. ‘In Buckinghamshire.’
‘That’s right.’ Chesterton clicked his fingers. ‘I knew it had something to do with Disraeli. We just don’t have the room here, Mr Lestrade.’
Looking at Chesterton’s girth, Lestrade could believe it.
‘. . . what with the children and all.’
Now Lestrade knew that children made excellent witnesses. Their clarity of vision and simplicity of approach to life made them sharp as buttons – not that he’d ever encountered any sharp buttons in his life.
‘How many children do you have?’ he asked.
Chesterton patted his wife’s hand. ‘None, I fear,’ he said, ‘but the house is invariably full of nephews, nieces, godchildren and friends. I’m just glad that this wretched business, if it had to happen, happened at a rather quiet time in terms of visiting.’
‘So you wouldn’t know if Mr Hesse had a visitor, say this morning, around ten or eleven?’
The Chestertons looked at each other. ‘Well, I was out at that place. What’s it called again, dear?’
‘Fleet Street, dear.’
‘Yes, that’s the place. And you . . . er . . .’
‘Shopping in the High Street,’ Frances recalled. ‘I had luncheon at the Pink Provender with Mrs Lewis.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Chesterton beamed. ‘How is dear little C. S.?’
‘Oh, very well, he’s . . .’
The Chestertons caught the frosty look on the face of the superintendent on the warm evening and they both giggled.
‘But,’ said Chesterton, ‘to more pressing matters. What is your surmise, Superintendent?’
‘It’s very difficult to say, sir.’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘Until I know rather more about the late Mr Hesse. Does anyone else live on this floor?’
‘No,’ the Chestertons chorused. ‘Only us and the suite of rooms taken by Mr Hesse,’ she continued alone.
‘You will inform Reuters, of course,’ Chesterton said.
‘Who’s he, sir?’ Lestrade asked.
‘The news agency,’ Chesterton explained. ‘After all, Hesse was a foreign national. And a journalist. Won’t there be a bit of a stink about this, Mr Lestrade?’
Mr Lestrade had been thinking that ever since he entered Hesse’s study. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘“German Journalist Done To Death In London”,’ Chesterton was reading the banner headlines of tomorrow. ‘And on the eve of the Games, too.’
‘Indeed.’ Lestrade rose to go. ‘There is still much to be done,’ he said. ‘I fear there will be policemen clumping about for most of the night. We’ll try to keep the noise to a minimum. Thank you for the tea, Mrs Chesterton. Oh, by the way, you mentioned someone named Hilaire as having visited recently. May I have his or her surname?’
‘Belloc,’ Chesterton told him.
Lestrade sighed. ‘Well, of course, you aren’t bound to tell me,’ and he limped towards the door. ‘Please let Sergeant Valentine know your new address if your move is imminent,’ he said. ‘You will know which one he is. He’s got “eager” written across his forehead. Good evening.’
‘I’ll see you out, Mr Lestrade.’ Chesterton waddled to the front door. ‘Nasty business, this. Do you think it has anything to do with the Games?’
Lestrade stopped and looked at the man. ‘In what way, sir?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Chesterton shrugged. ‘I’ll make no bones about it, Superintendent, I’m a Little Englander by inclination. I don’t like notions of Empire. It smacks of arbitrary government. On the other hand, I’m not all that partial to foreigners, especially the Greeks. Well, they are their Games, you see. A friend of mine visited Mount Olympus recently. Could quite understand why the Greeks should be miffed that every Tom, Dick and Harry is muscling in on their idea, as it were. Worst sort of plagiarism, really.’
‘And did he enjoy his Olympus trip, your friend?’
‘Enormously. But if you’ll take my advice, for what it’s worth, you’ll investigate the Greek connection. I was writing to dear old Reverend Baring Gould the other day. Beware Greeks, Baring Gould, I said to him.’
‘Quite, sir. And thank your good lady wife again for the tea. Good evening.’
At the end of the corridor, Lestrade collided with a lathered Constable Hollingsworth. ‘Strike a light, guv. I didn’t see you in the dark there.’
‘That’s the mark of a good detective,’ Lestrade told him between sobs as his ribs settled back into position. ‘The ability to see in the dark. I wish I had it. Where have you been?’
‘Well, Super, I missed the station wagon ’cos I was still making the Rosie for Sergeant Valentine. I had to catch the Underground in the end.’
‘Well, now you’re here, stand there. There’ll be a bobby with a camera arriving shortly. And Inspector Collins from the Yard. The room you want is there, on the left. I’m off for some supper and I’ll be back. Oh, and Hollingsworth . . .’
‘Super?’
‘There’s a lady in there who makes better tea than you do. So watch it. Your days are numbered.’
It was the edition of the Daily Mail the next morning that interested Lestrade. It carried a large obituary on the late Hans-Rudiger by someone who seemed extremely well informed. Perhaps that someone could fill in the missing details on the dead journalist; give Lestrade some tangible reason for the man’s murder. Above all, the superintendent would have to move quickly and quietly. The police of the Metropolis were stretched to breaking point. Even with an unusual degree of co-operation from their colleagues in the City Force, their resources were being seriously tested. The new Rotherhithe Tunnel exercised them night and day, with Mungo Hyde’s men darting out from their floating headquarters at Wapping to peer into the murky Thames waters for any bubbles that might indicate a leak. A massive rally was rumoured any day in Hyde Park or Regent’s – you could never be sure – when an army of Amazons demanding the vote would stretch the thin blue line still further. And most important of all, sixteen big blokes from both London forces spent their days hauling heavy hemp in preparation for the Olympic Tug of War. This was 1908. There were priorities.
The bowels of the Mail offices in dry, dusty, congested Fleet Street made Lestrade’s own accommodation seem palatial. Men in green eyeshades ran everywhere, smoking frenetically. Errand boys in cloth caps dodged this way and that. Typesetters with black fingers fidgeted with clicking machinery. And over the scratching of pencils and the rattle of the typewriters, the mad ringing of the telephone and the throbbing hum of the great presses.
‘Mr Grant?’
The man looked up at Lestrade’s entrance and tilted back the green shade. ‘Yes.’
‘Superintendent Lestrade, Scotland Yard. May I have a word?’
‘Mr Lestrade.’ Grant shook his hand heartily. ‘This is an honour, sir. An honour. Didn’t we do a story on you last year?’
‘After a fashion,’ Lestrade s
aid. He found publicity a little disconcerting. It was not his style.
‘Yes. Yes. It was the Otterbury incident, wasn’t it?’ Grant offered him a chair. ‘Is it true you solved that one in ten minutes?’
Lestrade chuckled. ‘An exaggeration, Mr Grant. But it was a brief case, certainly.’
‘Coffee, Superintendent?’
‘Thank you.’
Grant called through the open door to a passing boy. ‘Two coffees, Murdoch. At the double. Slug of gin in mine. Mr Lestrade?’
‘Just milk and sugar, please.’
‘And then there was the Justin case. First class, that one.’
‘Ah, I had a lot of help there,’ Lestrade confessed.
‘From Abberline?’ Grant scoffed. ‘You’re among friends here, Mr Lestrade. We know who the real heroes of the Yard are. But how may I help you? Are you on a case?’
‘I fear so. Hans-Rudiger Hesse.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Grant leaned back in his chair and tore off the eyeshade, running his journalist’s fingers through his sandy, tousled, journalist’s hair. ‘What a loss to the profession.’
‘You wrote his obituary this morning, I understand.’
‘Yes. Well, actually, I wrote it last night. Don’t tell me you’ve found a split infinitive?’
‘Sub Inspector Ganymede is in charge of Lost Property,’ Lestrade explained. ‘I am investigating a murder.’
‘Quite so.’ Grant looked at him oddly. ‘How can I help?’
‘You seem to have known Hesse quite well.’
‘Ah,’ smiled Grant, ‘the panache of the journalist deceives the eye. I had actually only met him once – two weeks ago when he first arrived. A group of us from the Street played host to the foreign newsmen who had come over to cover the Exhibition and the Games.’
‘You gained a lot of information from one meeting.’ Lestrade tapped the screwed-up edition on the desk between them.
‘Actually, I pinched it.’
‘Oh?’
There was a knock on the door and the coffee boy arrived.
‘Ah, coffee, Superintendent.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you, Murdoch. Euggh!’ Grant scowled as the brown liquid hit his lips. ‘There’s virtually no gin at all in this, lad. You’ll get nowhere in the newspaper business if you can’t make coffee properly. Never mind. I’m a resourceful chappie,’ and he pulled out a hip flask from a drawer and dropped some of its contents into the cup. ‘Get out. Now, as I was saying, I pinched it from another journalist.’
‘Is that ethical?’ Lestrade was benefiting from the ten minutes each day he allowed himself with Chambers Dictionary. The question remained, however, whether he would ever get beyond ‘E’.
‘Ethical?’ Grant was astounded. ‘Mr Lestrade, this is the newspaper business. More than that, this is the Daily Mail. All’s fair in love and Fleet Street, you know. Besides, she didn’t mind.’
‘She?’
‘Marylou Adams of the Washington Post.’
‘Is that a newspaper?’
‘No, not really. But it’s the nearest thing the United States can manage. That and the New York Times.’
‘I see. So is this Miss Adams a newspaperman?’
‘Bizarre, isn’t it? Actually, she’s a damned good one. Whatever this paper’s policy is on the Suffragettes, I have to concede privately that there are some jobs women do well. Would you like to meet her?’
‘Yes,’ said Lestrade, putting down his cup in the conviction that the coffee was made from printers’ ink.
‘Nothing simpler. I’m meeting her for luncheon at the new club in half an hour. Fancy a stroll?’
They strolled, the newsman and the policeman, along the grimy length of Fleet Street, the great grey dome of St Paul’s rising above the smoke and bustle of the City. Was it all those years ago that Constable Lestrade had taken off his City helmet and walked through Temple Bar into the Metropolitan District? His feet may have gone, but he left something of his heart there.
And his heart leapt again in the foyer of the Wig and Pen Club, the new dive for hacks and lawyers across the road from the Temple.
‘Superintendent Lestrade,’ Grant did the honours, ‘I’d like you to meet Miss Marylou Adams.’
‘Ma’am.’ Lestrade was mildly surprised when the petite lady shook his hand vigorously. She had clear, bright eyes and a captivating smile. What was she? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Her hair was in a short bob and her velvet jacket tight round a figure that made all heads turn.
‘I’m very sorry sir,’ a pompous man interrupted the trio, ‘but ladies are not allowed.’
Grant looked appalled and whisked the pompous man away, whispering animatedly in his ear. In a moment, while Lestrade and Miss Adams stood looking at each other in an awkward silence, he came back.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Marylou. I thought with you being a journalist on your side of the Atlantic, and with this club being new, there might be a new spirit abroad. Obviously, it is abroad and not here.’
‘Don’t worry, Richard,’ she smiled. ‘And I’m not so sure about a new spirit. Do you know, in New York they’ve just passed a law forbidding women to smoke in public?’
‘Tsk, tsk. Well, that’s the colonies for you,’ smirked Grant. ‘I even told the old duffer that you were the niece of McKern of the Bailey, but it cut no ice, I’m afraid. We’ll have to go to Luigi’s after all.’
They were leaving the dark little building when the coffee boy from the Mail hurtled into Lestrade, knocking him with a bang into the plate glass of Lipton’s. The bowler brim crumpled like paper and a purple bruise began to spread across the superintendent’s forehead.
‘You idiot, Murdoch.’ Grant cuffed the boy round the ear. ‘Would you like to press charges for assault, Superintendent? I’ll gladly swear this buffoon’s life away.’
‘No, no.’ Lestrade’s vision swam in the noonday heat. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’
‘Well, what’s the matter, you unspeakable urchin?’
‘It’s Lord Northcliffe, sir,’ the boy blurted to Grant. ‘He’s ’ere.’
‘Well, well,’ said Grant. ‘His Master’s Voice. Marylou, Mr Lestrade, I’m sorry. The Old Boy wasn’t due until later in the day. Top-level conference on the Games. I fear I shall have to go back into my cage.’
‘That’s all right, Richard,’ Marylou said. ‘I understand.’
‘A bientôt, then,’ and he kissed her hand, before booting Murdoch along the pavement.
Lestrade was now a little lost. He didn’t know Luigi’s. And he would never take a lady to the Coal Hole in the Strand. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure that Edward Henry would wear the Palace as a legitimate expense. As though she read his mind, Marylou said, ‘Actually, I’m not very hungry, Mr Lestrade. But I would love to see the Temple Church. I once wrote a thesis on crusaders.’
‘I’d be delighted.’ Lestrade offered his arm, if that wasn’t an unjournalistic thing to do, and led the way through the dark little alley into the sunlit court. They found the door in the circular tower and wandered through the cool stone archway into the darkness. Shafts of light probed the flagstones, flinging streams of red and gold across the floor of centuries.
They stood, bare headed under the hammer beams, and wondered. At the far end of the nave, in carved stone polished by a million curious fingers, lay the tombs of the Knights Templars, their legs crossed, their hands in prayer.
Marylou looked down at them and said,
‘Passive in their broken shells, the Masters of the World
A great and god-like race of kings with beards trimmed and curled.
Power rides at their scabbard sides and War is on their swords,
The rulers of the mystic East acknowledged them their lords.’
‘Shakespeare?’ said Lestrade, ever conscious of the heritage of English literature.
She smiled, then chuckled, a sound like bells in that hallowed place. ‘Marylou Adams,’ she said. ‘I was sevent
een when I wrote that. Awful, isn’t it?’
‘I liked it,’ said Lestrade.
She ran her fingers over the marble mail and the cold folds of the surcoat. At the face she stopped, gazing for a moment into the blind eyes. Lestrade looked too. The Templar’s nose had lost its tip, rather like his own. There, the resemblance ended. Lestrade wouldn’t be seen dead in a hat like that.
‘Lord de Ros,’ she said. ‘I wonder what he was like. If only the dead could talk, eh, Superintendent?’
He looked at her, but she was still looking at the crusader.
‘That’s rather why I wanted to talk to you,’ he said.
She looked at him, puzzled. ‘I thought you were a friend of Richard’s,’ she said.
‘We’ve only just met,’ Lestrade told her. ‘I understand you knew the late Hans-Rudiger Hesse?’
She walked away from the tomb, nodding sadly. ‘He was a fine man. We shall miss him.’
‘Mr Grant’s obituary,’ he walked with her, whispering, ‘I gather was your work.’
‘Essentially,’ she said. ‘Richard thought he deserved a piece, and knew that I had known him perhaps better than any English journalist.’
‘I’d like to know more,’ said Lestrade, ‘but perhaps this is not the place . . .’ He was aware of black-robed vergers flitting like bats around the columns.
‘I think this is very much the place,’ she said. ‘Rudi . . . Hans-Rudiger taught me all I know about newspapers. My stepfather took me to Berlin as a child. It’s the only career I ever wanted. And Rudi made it all possible. I think this is a fine place for us to talk.’ She leaned back against a stone niche. ‘Who would want to see a man like that dead?’ she asked.
‘Enemies?’ Lestrade suggested.
‘All newsmen have enemies, Superintendent. It goes with the job. But Rudi was the most respected journalist I know. A newspaperman’s newspaperman.’
‘Grant’s article said he wrote mostly about politics. Why should he bother himself with sport?’ Lestrade asked.
‘This was a holiday for him,’ she said. ‘It was to be his last assignment before he retired. He intended to write a series on the politics behind the sport, as it were. I can’t believe he’s dead.’ She turned away quickly before Lestrade could see her face.