by M. J. Trow
‘That’s all right, Sholto. Beastly business, this. Nice young thing, Effie Jennings.’
‘Was she?’
‘Oh yes. Charming. Simply charming. She was voted the Girl Most Likely To in 1906.’
‘Yes, I heard something along those lines. How’s Letitia?’
‘Very well. Coming up to the White City in a few days for my bouts.’
‘Aren’t you well?’
‘At the moment I am,’ laughed Bandicoot. ‘I’m not sure I will be when I’ve crossed swords with the Hungarians.’
‘Oh, the fencing. Of course. Emma told me all about it.’
‘You never write to her, Sholto.’ The big man was suddenly serious.
‘I know.’ Lestrade kept on walking, gazing out on the trout rings that plopped in the evening gold.
‘She is your daughter, Sholto. How long has it been since you saw her?’
‘Nearly a year,’ he said. ‘She must be quite a lady by now.’
He rested his arm against the trunk of a gnarled old birch that jutted out over the water.
‘She is. Fourteen going on thirty, Letitia says. She misses you, you know.’
Lestrade turned quickly away. ‘Look at that, Harry,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’
Bandicoot scanned the dark line of trees. ‘Trees,’ he said. ‘And there’s a heron flying home.’
Lestrade watched the silhouette rise above the elms, its wings huge against the sunset. Then it sank again, silent as it had risen. He nodded slowly. ‘I see blood, Harry,’ he said softly, ‘and mean streets. The cold dark eyes of the people of the abyss. Look at this.’ He pointed to his nose.
‘I didn’t like to ask about the bandage,’ he said.
‘Not the bandage. The tip of my nose.’
Bandicoot peered. ‘I can’t see it, Sholto.’
‘That’s because it isn’t there, Harry,’ Lestrade was patience personified. ‘I lost that to a sabre in Highgate Cemetery.’
‘I know,’ Bandicoot said. ‘I was there.’
‘So you were,’ smiled Lestrade. ‘Faithful old Harry. You saved my life at Hengler’s Circus and now you’re bringing up my daughter for me.’
‘Letitia and I are proud to do it, Sholto.’ Bandicoot knelt to pick a rose and tucked it into the buttonhole of his jacket. ‘We’d – that is Emma – would like to see more of you.’
‘I was saying,’ he said, ‘the nose I lost at Highgate. This,’ he pointed to the bandage, ‘at the Oval this morning. I’ll spare you the inventory of the rest. It’s no sort of life for a girl waiting at home to give her old dad his pipe and his slippers. What if her old dad doesn’t come home one night? What if he’s lying in an alley somewhere, with a blunt instrument where his head used to be? And even apart from all that, Harry, I couldn’t even afford one of her dresses on what they pay me, you know that.’
‘I know she loves you, Sholto. And she wants to see you. She’ll be at the White City with Letitia and the boys. Promise me you’ll see her.’
Lestrade looked at the man’s honest, pleading face. He looked again at the livid waters of the lake as the last rays of the sun left them cold to the night.
‘I promise,’ he said.
‘Now,’ Bandicoot slapped Lestrade’s back so the superintendent wheezed and stumbled. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘Can we get to the elephant house from here?’
‘Yes, just across the bridge.’
‘You’d better lead the way. I’m on strange ground. Tell me about these gatherings.’
‘Well, there’s not much to tell, really. A group of us from various sports who have been chosen for the Games decided to meet at each other’s houses since February and practise.’
‘And Effie Jennings?’
‘Hurdler with the Ladies’ Team. She and Frizzie Dalrymple were stable fellows, though between you and me they didn’t get on.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well – you’ve interviewed Frizzie?’
‘Not yet. She’s the last one, after you.’
‘Oh dear. She won’t like that. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her at dinner. A sure sign she’s sulking. By the way, have you eaten?’
‘I ate in the library,’ Lestrade explained, feeling his feet springing on the planking of the bridge. ‘I didn’t think it wise to eat with the guests. Why won’t she be pleased?’
‘Two reasons.’ Harry was calling back through the gathering gloom. ‘First, she’s indescribably bossy. Second, she hates men.’
‘Ah.’ Lestrade felt his old twinges coming back in his nose. The ones he’d been having since shortly after dawn when the stone hit him.
‘Which I suspect is why she and Effie were less than enchanted with each other.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, the whole thing was supposed to be Effie’s bash, actually. I mean, she’s a protégée of old Bolsover’s . . .’
‘Is she?’
‘Well, she was, poor thing. Of course, he’s not exactly chipper at the moment, is he? But in his younger days he was quite an athlete apparently. Once ran a mile while the kettle was boiling.’
Lestrade was unimpressed. In his experience, watched pots never boiled anyway.
‘But as it was, Frizzie turned up and began shouting the odds. Had everybody jumping in all directions. Perfectly vile to the servants. I’m just glad she didn’t accept my invitation to Bandicoot Hall. She and Letitia would have been a perfectly matched pair in the Greco-Roman.’
‘I’d put my money on Letitia any day,’ Lestrade chuckled. ‘So she doesn’t like men?’
‘Didn’t you notice her field strip this morning? Green, white and purple. The colours of Mrs Pankhurst’s movement.’
‘I’ve seen rather a lot of that recently.’
‘Sholto, I have to ask. Your nose? I didn’t know you played at the Oval. Sticky wicket?’
‘Very,’ said Lestrade. ‘Let’s just say it’ll be a long time before the Police XI ask for my services again. I thought a bowler was something you wore on your head. Tell me all you can about Effie Jennings.’
‘Well, I’m not one to talk of course . . .’ Bandicoot ducked under the trees of the orchard.
‘There’s a lot of you about.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Go on.’
‘They say her pitcher hath been too oft to the well.’
‘Do they? Who?’
‘People who didn’t like her, I suppose. She was a pleasant enough sort, Sholto, but I don’t really go in for . . . you know . . . there’s Letitia.’
‘Never been tempted, Harry?’ Lestrade cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Did Miss Jennings . . .?’
Bandicoot flashed a glance right and left. ‘As a matter of fact, she did.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’ He led the way into the paddock before the dark silhouette of the elephant house.
‘Last night?’ Lestrade stood rooted to the spot.
‘We were in the library. A group of us. There was a telephone call for her. When I looked up, I realized we were alone. I made my excuses, as she was on the line as it were, but she motioned for me to stay.’
‘Who was this call from?’
Bandicoot shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, but from the way she was flirting with him, it was a man.’
‘Do you remember any of the conversation?’
‘Er . . . let me see . . . “You naughty boy . . . er . . . you’re boasting again . . . No, I couldn’t possibly . . .”’
‘Just the gist, Harry,’ Lestrade said.
‘Well, it seemed she was arranging a . . . oh, my God.’
‘What?’
‘She was arranging to meet . . . whoever it was . . . for a game of fives this morning. Sholto, I hadn’t connected the two. Until now.’
Lestrade patted the man’s iron bicep. ‘Never mind, Harry,’ he said, ‘there was nothing you could have done. Did you see Miss Jennings this morning? Before you found her body, I mean?’
‘You mean you were hiding, Harry.’ Lestrade found the words for him.
‘Yes.’
‘She tried to seduce you in the library.’
‘Right under Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, all fourteen volumes. The Narwhal Edition, of course.’
‘Is there any other?’ Lestrade quipped.
‘I really don’t know,’ confessed Bandicoot, to whom the Remove at school had been a second home.
‘Well,’ smiled Lestrade, ‘your secret’s safe with me.’
‘Nothing happened, Sholto,’ Bandicoot assured him, somewhat petulantly, ‘nothing at all.’
Lestrade smiled again, enigmatic to the end. He opened the court door. ‘Let me draw on your expertise again. Tell me about fives.’
‘Well.’ Bandicoot walked the perimeter. ‘This is the Eton game. This,’ he patted the buttress where the body had been found, ‘is the hazard. You have a ball and you bounce it off the wall.’
‘Is it a ladies’ game?’ Lestrade perched on the hazard.
‘Not really. It gets a little rough, you see. Some chaps wear gloves. I don’t.’
‘So that’s it. Just a ball and a hand?’
‘Most of us have two, Sholto,’ Bandicoot thought it best to remind him.
‘Then how . . .?’
‘What?’
‘Harry, I don’t usually confide in members of the public, you know that.’
‘I do,’ he nodded.
‘In this case, I have no choice.’ Lestrade closed to his man. ‘You played the game at Eton?’
‘Of course.’
‘And since?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘You said it was a rough game. What kind of injuries are likely?’
‘Well . . . er . . . broken wrists, twisted ankles, the odd concussion when a chap hits the brickwork. That sort of thing.’
‘Not a gash across the diaphragm?’
‘Where?’
‘The chest, Harry.’ Lestrade resorted to the layman’s term.
‘A gash? Is that what happened to poor Effie? I didn’t like to look too closely.’
Lestrade nodded. ‘My guess is she died of blood poisoning. The cuts must have been made by the edge of her underwear.’
‘Her underwear?’ Bandicoot was puzzled. ‘I didn’t realize that whalebone was so vicious,’ he said.
‘Ah, this is special,’ Lestrade said. ‘She could have hit the wall, or been pushed. Either way, the effect would have been the same – the metal rim would have been rammed into her flesh. The poison would have done the rest.’
‘Why, Sholto?’ Bandicoot leaned against the wall. ‘Why should anyone want to kill Effie?’
Lestrade looked at the great house, with its twinkling summer lights.
‘I may have that answer in a few minutes, Harry,’ he said. He felt his bandage. ‘Then again, I may not,’ and they wound their way to the drive.
Harry Bandicoot was right. Frizzie Dalrymple was not at all pleased to be kept waiting all day. Lestrade sat in the library, careful not to sit beneath the Narwhal Edition, and awaited the onslaught.
‘I have no intention of answering any of your questions,’ Frizzie told him, tossing her wiry fair hair and tilting her nose under the chandelier’s sparkle.
‘Then how can I discover who killed Miss Jennings?’ Lestrade tried the wide-eyed approach.
‘That,’ Frizzie extracted a cigarette from a little wooden box, ‘is your problem.’
‘I thought she was a friend of yours.’ Lestrade chivalrously struck a match for her, but she struck faster and he merely succeeded in burning her fingers.
‘She was,’ she said pointedly. ‘Unfortunately, sergeant . . .’
‘Superintendent,’ he reminded her.
‘Unfortunately, she . . . went with men.’
‘Anyone in particular?’
‘Anyone,’ Frizzie answered coldly, blowing smoke down her quivering nostrils like a thoroughbred on Epson Downs.
‘You didn’t approve?’
‘Call me pernickety if you like . . .’ she began.
‘Let’s keep this formal shall we, Miss Dalrymple?’
‘What my views are on Effie Jennings – or any other subject – is strictly my concern.’
‘And men?’
‘Ah, yes, that subject I certainly do have views on. And very vocal ones. Why, for example aren’t you a woman?’
It was not a question which had taxed Lestrade often. ‘I expect God had His reasons,’ he said.
‘I expect She did,’ Frizzie countered, ‘though looking at you now, She certainly moves in mysterious ways. Are there any female police?’
‘No, madam,’ he said and decided not to add his usual ‘Perish the thought’ for the sake of his vulnerable nose.
‘A Women’s Parliament met in London last February,’ she told him. ‘Are you aware of that?’
‘Vaguely, madam,’ he said.
‘The day will come when we will rule the earth, constable. The worm shall turn.’
‘Maybe, madam, but until then . . .’
‘Until then “Harvest your humbled husbands while ye may”. The day of reckoning is at hand, Lestrade. The City of London did the only sane thing in its history by giving Florence Nightingale the freedom of its limits.’
‘Quite. Now, about Miss Jennings . . .’
But Frizzie was in full cry. ‘Yvette Guilbert summed it up brilliantly last week in the Westminster Gazette. Did you read it?’
‘No, I . . .’
‘Can you read?’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘She was advocating the wearing of a divided skirt and she said, “Ladies, cultivate muscle, for by muscle only will you conquer.”’
‘About your underwear . . .’ Lestrade began, but no sooner were the words from his lips than the cultivated muscle of Miss Dalrymple’s right hand smacked him painfully around the moustache, sending the lint flying and bringing tears to his eyes.
‘Libertine!’ she shrieked and fled from the room.
He couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the harvest moon slanting through the nets and lending the room a lurid glow. It wasn’t the fact that they’d put him in the topmost attic room so that his head hit the ceiling with every turn. It was that contraption; the one that had caused the death of Effie Jennings. Hollingsworth had gone off holding the killer corset at arm’s length and had had some very strange looks from passers-by. But during his brief interview with Frizzie Dalrymple, Lestrade had noticed something heaving beneath her pale green singlet, something firm and domed, and he had said to himself, ‘They can’t be natural.’ Could it be, he pondered as he collided with the wallpaper one more time, could it be that Miss Dalrymple too wore such an appliance? And if so, did she have a hand in lacing her former friend’s with bichromate of potassium?
He wrenched back the linen covers. He crouched upright in the angle of the roof. He glanced out over the leads where the great stone beasts stood sentinel in the moonlight. That damned moon wouldn’t help. But even so, he had to find out. He had to know. Was it, he wondered, as he rummaged for his stockings, that Effie had outraged her friend’s sensibilities by cavorting with men? Men, the arch enemies? Men, those devils inconsulate? Or was it something darker? Was this another in the terrible series that began somehow with Anstruther Fitzgibbon? Another athlete brought down before the tape? What did they have in common, he asked himself for the thousandth time as he peered round the door. Effie Jennings was a girl and a slip of a one at that. At least, all day, he’d been hearing how people slipped her one.
It was the eighth tread that brought his heart into his mouth. It must have wakened everybody. Even Effie Jennings might have stirred on her cold slab in Windsor morgue. But no. If the house dogs heard it, they were deaf or unconcerned or both. He followed the twisting stairs into the darkness. His white shirt betrayed him at the landin
g as the moonbeams caught it. The grandfather in the hall below solemnly chimed the hour of two and he flattened himself against the flock, regretting it instantly as his battered nose reminded him of the dawn.
He slithered along the carpet, shuffling rather like his King did on similar nocturnal ramblings in great country houses. But Lestrade’s quest was different, his purpose nobler. He had to get his hands on Frizzie Dalrymple’s corsets. He had made a note earlier of which door was hers – the green baize at the end of the passage. Here he waited, ear pressed to the panel. Silence. Damn. He’d have preferred it had she snored. Still, one couldn’t have everything. He placed a sweating hand around the knob. One twist. Two. A click. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Surely, she’d have heard that? He waited for what seemed an eternity, not daring to breathe. What would he say if she woke up? ‘There was just one more question, Miss Dalrymple?’ or ‘I thought I heard a noise?’ or ‘I didn’t thank you for being so frank?’ Yes, that was it. Still, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
A tipless, bandaged nose came round the door, followed by dark eyes, blinking in the dimness of the room. She’d drawn her curtains. Thank God. The moon was no hindrance now. But conversely the darkness was. He let his eyes become acclimatized. He made out the bed, double, opulent, and the sleeping figure sprawled in the centre. He could see no day clothes at all. They’d probably be in the wardrobe, huge in its mahogany darkness in the shadowy corner. He tiptoed across the carpet, careful to edge round the wash-stand. He sucked in his breath as the marble top collided with his legs. Why hadn’t he put his trousers on? The situation was far more compromising than it need have been, although the noise was reduced by less material.
There it was. A pair of canvas and metal domes lay like a model of a bactrian – or was it two dromedaries – on the dressing table. He picked them up carefully. They were heavier than he thought. And he just had time to whip them up the front of his shirt before the light snapped on and Frizzie Dalrymple sat there, bolt upright in bed, screaming. Curse these newfangled gadgets. What possessed old Bolsover to have electric lights upstairs?
‘I didn’t frank you for being so thank,’ he blurted.
‘What are you doing here, you beast?’ she screamed, hysterical. ‘And what’s that?’