by M. J. Trow
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ a passing constable saluted and enquired.
‘It’s Superintendent Quinn,’ said Lestrade, throwing the recumbent form to the uniformed man. ‘One too many, I’m afraid. See him safely to the Yard will you?’
The horses shifted uneasily, tossing their heads and rattling their chains. Even the Life-guardsmen looked at him oddly under their flashing helmets. The crowds of children and ladies clustered round them, while a man crouching under a black cloth and clutching a tripod called, ‘Left a bit, right a bit. Can’t you keep that horse still?’ while waving an arm in the air.
Lestrade took it all in in a glance. It was nothing he hadn’t seen countless times before. Sharp swords carried at the ready under Queen Anne’s arches, plumes gusting in the summer breeze. Milling tourists in mutton chop sleeves and parasols. The ladies were nicely dressed too.
But today something was different. He was aware of a man behind him, walking with a steady, sauntering gait. Once or twice he turned and noticed below the carefully macassared hair a slight groove around the forehead. The face was lean and tanned. Perhaps he was a colleague of the circus midget who had laid Superintendent Quinn low moments before. But he was altogether bigger. Lestrade stopped to tie his shoe on a step and caught another fleeting glance. The man turned to admire the Horse Guards as the cavalry went through their paces, boots clattering on the cobbles, orders barking under the canopy. Lestrade noticed that in his hurry to appear normal, his shadow was reading The Times upside down. An Australian, perhaps?
‘Excuse me,’ a voice hailed him and a little man with a northern accent tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Could you tell me which side the Admiralty’s on?’
Lestrade stood up so that the man’s parting reached his tie. ‘Ours,’ he said, ‘I think,’ and wandered away.
He continued to saunter until he suddenly turned sharp left into the yard behind the Yard. In the shadows now, he pressed himself up against Norman Shaw’s granite, waiting his moment.
‘Cabbie demanding his fare?’ Inspector Tom Gregory grinned, hurrying across the forecourt at that moment.
Lestrade waved him frantically away and Gregory veered to his left, whistling loudly, with all the subtlety of a stevedore. The tall man walked past and, as he did so, Lestrade’s finger jabbed into the small of his back.
‘Right, cobber,’ he said, ‘this is a gentleman’s excuse me. I am the gentleman and you’re going to have to excuse me.’ He grabbed the man by his collar and swung him against the Yard wall, careful to keep his index finger primed and cocked.
‘Monsieur Le Strade, would you please remove your finger from my back?’
‘You know who I am?’ Lestrade frowned, straightening.
‘But mais oui,’ the tall man said. ‘May I . . . ’ow you say . . . turn round?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Lestrade. ‘Who are you and why are you following me?’
The Frenchman reached inside his jacket, but Lestrade was faster, gripping his arm.
‘Please,’ said the Frenchman, ‘people will talk. I look like Nelson, ’e of the column.’
‘Tips of your fingers, then,’ Lestrade told him. ‘No monkey business.’
‘No, no,’ the Frenchman said earnestly, ‘I assure you, no business of ze monkey.’ He produced a card. ‘I am Inspecteur Claude Monet of ze Sûreté.’
‘The Sûreté?’ Lestrade checked the card. It might as well have been in Greek. ‘How is old Goron these days?’
‘Old,’ Monet confirmed. ‘’E ’as retired. ’E sends you ’is regards and suggests it is time you do ze same.’
‘Ah, how kind,’ Lestrade said. ‘Why are you following me?’
‘I wanted to know what you know.’
Lestrade chuckled. ‘My dear boy, as my dear old dad used to say, you haven’t finished shitting yellow yet. Come and see me again in twenty years or so.’
‘I very much regret, monsieur,’ Monet was serious, ‘zat I cannot do zat. M. Hugo will be a little ’igh by zen.’
‘’Ugo? I?’ Lestrade found the conversation difficult to follow.
‘Besançon Hugo, ze great French coach. ’E is dead.’
And so he was. Chief Inspector Dew sat in the locker room at Prince’s, the club founded in Piccadilly in 1853 for tennis enthusiasts, but times were fraught. Space was at a premium. The courts now rang to different strokes. Detective Constable Hollingsworth was at his elbow. Sergeant Valentine had been there momentarily too. The whole place smelt of cold metal and leather polish and sweating humanities. Lestrade did the introductions – the tall French detective with the mark of the kepi around his forehead.
‘Newly transferred from ze traffic,’ he explained.
‘Traffic?’ Lestrade and Dew chorused.
‘Doesn’t look like a hit and run to me, Walter,’ Lestrade said. ‘What does it look like to you?’
‘Murder,’ said Dew, looking vacantly at Monet.
And so it did. The great French coach lay neatly on a trestle table, his arms folded across his chest, a lily clasped firmly in his hands. Lestrade’s jaw dropped.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘It’s a flower, guv.’ Hollingsworth was proud of his botany.
‘Le fleur de lys,’ said Monet.
‘His team did this,’ Dew explained. ‘They found him earlier this morning and they laid him out.’
‘How did you get here?’ Lestrade asked. ‘You were at the White City, weren’t you?’
‘Four days and nights, guv, that’s enough for any man,’ Dew grumbled. ‘I was just on my way home, when a constable flagged me down.’
‘And you, Mr Monet?’ Lestrade said slowly and loudly. ‘How did you know about it?’
‘I was over ’ere to watch ze Games. It is – ’ow you say – a vacation.’
‘That’s what you say, mate,’ said Hollingsworth. ‘We say holidays, know what I mean, Jean?’
‘Zis man is insubordinate, Monsieur Le Strade,’ Monet observed as a matter of course.
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Lestrade, ‘he’s a Londoner, I’m afraid. What have you got, Walter?’
‘Monsieur Le Strade,’ Monet interrupted, ‘I must remind you zat a fellow countryman of mine is dead. I am ze officer in charge ’ere.’
Dew whistled quietly through his teeth and turned away.
‘And I must remind you, monsieur, that you are a visitor to this country and as such are here on sufferance. You have no jurisdiction whatsoever. As a favour to Monsieur Goron, for whom I have the utmost respect, you may stay. But only on the condition that you stay quiet until I speak to you. Is that understood?’
Monet nodded. ‘I will be as silent as ze grave,’ he said.
‘So, Walter?’ Lestrade smiled at his Number Two.
‘Gunshot, sir.’ He bent the lily aside with his finger. ‘Just here.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ Monet gasped as the bloody shirt appeared above the waist belt.
‘As the grave, remember.’ Lestrade spun round to him. He placed his straw boater into Hollingsworth’s hand. ‘How’s the ankle?’ he murmured.
‘Agony, thanks, Super,’ the detective told him. ‘How’s the hooter?’
‘Likewise.’ He crouched near the wound, unbuttoning the dead man’s shirt and peering down. ‘Clean bullet hole,’ he said. ‘Revolver?’ He grabbed a towel lying on a table nearby and wiped the stomach. ‘No powder burns. Reasonable distance then. What time did his blokes find him, Walter?’
‘About eight apparently. I’ve had the building sealed off, as you saw, but people are beginning to talk. There’s a fencing bout here this afternoon. I’ve had the manager on my back for the last hour.’
‘Eight.’ Lestrade checked the dead man’s pupils. He was fifty, if he was a day, iron grey, but trim and taut. ‘At a guess,’ he said at last, ‘he’s been dead for eight or nine hours. That means four or five this morning. Presumably, there have been sports officials and bobbies tramping all over the place out there?’
‘The Press?’
Hollingsworth had distinctly heard Dew say that he wasn’t to mention the Press, but the Super was the Super and you didn’t cross him lightly, if at all.
‘Well, a lady newshound anyhow.’
‘A lady?’ Lestrade cocked an eyebrow. ‘Who?’
‘Dunno, guv,’ said Hollingsworth. ‘I only got this from one of the blokes on the door.’
Lestrade eyed him coldly. ‘This bloke on the door; does he have any stripes on his sleeve?’
‘Could be, sir, could be.’ Hollingsworth had a soft spot for the uniformed branch. He’d been one of them himself until recently.
‘Well, he hasn’t now,’ growled Lestrade. ‘Have you talked to any of these Frog . . . Frenchmen, Dew?’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t sprechen the lingo.’
‘Clearly,’ agreed Lestrade. ‘All right, Monet. Start earning your keep. Where are these people, Dew?’
‘Upstairs, sir. The whole bloody fencing team.’
‘Right, Monet, with me. Dew, I want a photographer here now. And not that Bailey bloke. He’s useless. Who else have we got?’
‘PC Lichfield, sir.’
‘All right, Bailey it is. Hollingsworth, your job is to find a member of the English fencing team, one Harry Bandicoot. He’s probably on his way here now. When he arrives, get him to me upstairs. And don’t make a production of it. Hush-hush. Clear?’
‘As a bell, guv,’ and he vanished.
Monet certainly had his uses. Had he not been there, Lestrade would have grown old examining the fencers witness by witness. As it was, various sabreurs had to keep nipping in and out, claiming via Monet that they had been on the piste. Judging by the way they lurched, Lestrade felt inclined to agree. As the police cordon thinned in the street below and members of the public were allowed in for the afternoon’s entertainment, Lestrade began to piece together the story.
Besançon Hugo had been highly thought of in the Cadre Noir which Lestrade had assumed, when he thought of it at all, was composed of Negroes. Hugo, however, was as white as your chapeau, especially lying on the table in state, so that couldn’t be right. Anyway, he was champion swordsman of the army but had resigned his commission, like a good many others, when that revolting little Dreyfus had been reinstated. Since then, he had spent his time breeding bloodstock and teaching fencing. Some of the greatest names in France – Camembert, Brie, Port Salut – had called him friend. It was natural, therefore, that he should have coached the French Olympic team and natural that he should check the equipment on the night before the opening bouts.
His body had been found slumped against the far wall, and with the aid of a tape, Monet acting brilliantly as the corpse, Lestrade was able to surmise what had happened. Hugo would have entered by the door. There was a light in the hall behind him, but none in the locker room itself until the gas was lit in the centre of the room. No one could remember turning out the light after the body was found so it was likely that the murderer was lying in wait in the dark. Hugo would have made an easy target framed in the doorway with the light behind him and whoever had fired had done so, Lestrade guessed – and he moved PC Bailey aside to probe with his switchblade the congealed wound – by shooting from a kneeling position. Why? Not a good shot perhaps? A midget? For a moment he remembered the deadly feet of Mervyn Tiny-Teeny, but he dismissed it. Hugo had not been kicked to death.
The point was that a stomach wound would not have killed instantly. Hugo had had time to crawl to the door – the blood smears on the floor proved that. There was blood on the door handle too. He tried to open it after the murderer had gone, thoughtfully closing it behind him, but his strength had failed him.
‘But of course,’ Monet had said when the last member of the team went down to try his luck, ‘zere was zat business wiz ze letter J.’
‘What business with the letter J?’ Lestrade frowned.
‘Ah, I am sorry. Ze last one, Monsieur Alibert, ’e saw zis letter written on ze glass panel of ze door. It was written in ze blood.’
‘What?’ Lestrade straightened in his seat. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I ’ave,’ shrugged Monet.
Lestrade fumed. So much for international co-operation. ‘J,’ he mused. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It is ze letter of ze alphabet between I and K,’ Monet explained to him.
‘Brilliant!’ Lestrade roared. ‘Are we to suppose the late Monsieur Hugo was improving his writing skills to while away the moments as the life force left him? What is the significance, man?’
Monet was silent for a while. ‘I was brought up at ze knee of ze great Goron,’ he said. ‘In ’is Cookshop at ze Sûreté, we learned a ting or two.’
‘And which ting is this?’ Lestrade asked.
‘What none of ze team ’as told us in so many words is zat Hugo was – ’ow you say – anti-Semitic. ’E ’ated the Jews. ’Ence ’is resignation over ze affaire.’
‘The affair?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘I didn’t get anything about an affair. Who with?’ The world was passing him by.
‘Non, non, monsieur. We Frenchmen refer to ze Dreyfus case as ze affaire.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘So you think J stands for Jew?’
‘I know zat J stands for Jew,’ beamed Monet confidently. ‘Ze point is, which Jew was ’iding among the epees in wait for him?’
‘And why do it in London? Who outside France would know that Hugo hated the Jews?’
‘No one, I suppose,’ Monet shrugged.
‘Precisely. So why not kill him in Paris? Why go to all the trouble to follow him to London?’
‘Ah,’ Monet grinned. ‘To put us off ze scent. If ’e is a Frenchman, even a French Jew, ’e will know ’ow wonderful are ze French police. In England, ’e only ’as ze English police to worry about.’
‘Charmed,’ beamed Lestrade icily. He flicked out the half-hunter. ‘It doesn’t look as though my constable has found Mr Bandicoot. Shall we take in a bit of fencing, Inspector?’
It had been impossible, at such short notice, to cancel the afternoon’s events. People had come from all over the world to see the clash of steel at Prince’s. There would have been a riot had they been turned away. Similarly, it was impossible to explain the extraordinary police presence and, however careful Messrs Digham and Berryman had been, there was no disguising a seven-foot coffin with a lily sticking out of the top. When the detectives reached the hall, the first bout was under way, but the murmur of conversation in the audience was of the murder. Someone had leaked the death of Besançon Hugo, and every newspaperman in the building had left the piste to hover around the changing rooms, badgering constables and plainclothesmen alike.
Lestrade wedged himself between Monet and a lady with an extraordinary outsize hat whose ostrich feathers got right up his nose. The August heat was stifling and even the open windows only let in more August heat from the burning Piccadilly pavements outside. Fans and boaters wafted the heat around, but achieved little else. Lestrade felt his armpits crawl. Ripples of applause announced the end of the first bout and a tall, good-looking Old Etonian took his place on the floor.
‘Someone called Bandicoot,’ the big-hatted lady read from her programme. ‘Fenced for Eton.’
‘Who’s he against?’ the gentleman beyond her asked.
‘Jeno Fuchs,’ she read.
Lestrade turned to glance at her. There was surely no call for that. The man had only asked a civil question. Monet did not stir. Obviously the French had another word for it.
‘Who’s he?’ the gentleman asked.
‘A captain in the Hunyadi Hussars.’
‘Damned foreigner,’ the gentleman muttered.
This time Monet turned to scowl at him. Lestrade looked stolidly ahead. Then he caught a woman waving frantically at him. It was Letitia, Harry’s wife, and to her right, all three waving frantically, the boys
, Ivo and Rupert, and Lestrade’s own daughter, Emma. His eyes misted a little as he realized again, in her grown-up dress and with the afternoon sun shining on her face, how like her mother she was. It was nearly a year since he had seen her. My God, how lovely she’d grown.
Fuchs and Bandicoot saluted each other with their sabres and at the call ‘On Guard’ slid their blades together. Lestrade couldn’t believe the position of the Hungarian’s legs, bent akimbo in the dust particles borne on the sun. There was a slow scraping of steel on steel and judges nodded together as thumbs came down on stop watches. The Hungarian moved like lightning, his blade slicing through the air in a wide arc. But Bandicoot was faster. He caught the impact on the sword-guard and turned it in mid-air to thump against the Hussar captain’s chest. Whistles blew amid the applause. First blood to Bandicoot, and both men retired.
Perhaps Goron had been right, mused Lestrade. Perhaps he should do the same. At the far end of the piste from him, a second bout, with epees, was just beginning.
He didn’t catch the names. He just saw the two men in white salute each other with their swords and put on their masks. They crouched as the Hungarian had done. Then a strangled cry of outrage from the woman beside him brought him back to Bandicoot’s bout. ‘Boundah!’ she shrieked.
‘Dirty foreigner!’ the gentleman next to her called.
Bandicoot was drawing back from a failed lunge and the ripple of Hungarian clapping was drowned by a barrage of British boos. But the boos rose to a scream and all eyes swivelled to the far end of the hall. One of the swordsmen was staggering, blood trickling from his throat under the mask. He dropped the sword and struggled with his headgear before slumping to the floor on his knee and pitching forward on his face. His opponent stood back, his broken blade still at the parry, shaking his head in disbelief. Judges’ whistles shrilled through the hubbub. Mothers turned their children’s heads away. Fuchs and Bandicoot forgot their quarrel and dashed down the piste to the fallen fencer.