by M. J. Trow
‘My God,’ muttered Lestrade and snatched the programme from the ostrich-hatted lady.
‘Beast!’ she bellowed in outrage.
He scanned the page without looking at her. ‘No, madam, police,’ he said.
‘Arbuthnot!’ She rounded on her companion. ‘Did you see what this beast did? He stole my programme.’
Arbuthnot lifted his nose from his own. ‘Well, at least he’s British, my dear,’ he snorted.
But Lestrade had gone. He and Monet in one less-than-fluid motion somersaulted over the row in front and travelled across the highly polished floor for some yards on their knees, so that the Frenchman looked more like Lautrec than Monet. When they scrabbled upright, they had to fight their way through a substantial crowd.
‘Make way there!’ Lestrade shouted. ‘I am a policeman.’ People parted for him at the back as though he were a leper. But those in front were more obstinate.
‘Pardon!’ roared Monet, slashing the air with his boater. ‘Je suis un detective.’
The Frenchmen in the crowd pulled back, but there was still an inner ring of onlookers.
‘I am a doctor,’ another voice called. ‘Let me through, please.’
The more humanitarian of the inner ring made room, until only a hardened core of the ghoulish stood around the crouching knot of swordsmen in the centre.
‘Stand aside, please,’ another voice demanded, ‘I am morbidly curious,’ and the last few broke away, allowing Lestrade and Monet through.
The superintendent wrenched off the dying man’s mask. His nose and moustache were awash with blood and the steel point of the blade lay imbedded upright under his chin.
‘Tonnerre!’ whispered Monet and he crossed himself.
‘Who is he?’ Lestrade asked, suddenly realizing he was elbow to elbow with Harry Bandicoot. ‘Mr . . . er . . .?’
Bandicoot blinked. ‘It’s me, Sholto,’ he said.
He noticed Lestrade’s flickering left eye and couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps his old guv’nor had become a prey to nervous disorders since they had last met.
‘Do I know you, sir?’ Lestrade said pointedly.
Bandicoot swept off the mesh and canvas of his mask. ‘Of course . . .’ and he winced as Lestrade’s boot took the skin off his white-stockinged shin, ‘. . . you don’t. Who are you?’
‘Superintendent Lestrade,’ he said, ‘Scotland Yard.’
‘This is Hilary Term,’ Bandicoot told him, ‘the Cambridge Blue.’
The fencer of that name caught Lestrade’s sleeve as the superintendent crouched beside him. He opened his mouth to say something, but the effort was too great and his head fell back into the arms of an official.
‘What a tragic accident,’ muttered Fuchs in impeccable Budapest English.
‘Accident be buggered,’ snapped Lestrade in only slightly better Pimlico tones. ‘This man has been murdered.’
The cry was taken up by the nearest bystanders. ‘Let me through,’ shouted the morbidly curious man, now even more curious than before. But the press held him back. And the Press in the other room, still sniffing the scent of the Besançon murder, now came howling back into the main hall, cameramen with their tripods and black curtains floundering in their wake.
‘I want this room cleared now!’ Lestrade barked and from nowhere, an army of constables began hauling off the newshounds, shepherding the spectators away.
‘Harry,’ Lestrade whispered in the mêlée, ‘you’d better get Letitia and the family out of here. Things could get nasty. But don’t go too far away. I’ll want to know more about the late Mr Term.’
‘You murdering bastard!’ All heads swivelled to the Metropolitan sergeant who, as horrified onlookers looked on, was steadying the throat of Term’s hapless opponent prior to sticking one on him.
‘Sergeant!’ Lestrade shouted, but the fist was mightier than the tongue, and the Frenchman went down.
‘Un moment,’ said Monet, tapping the sergeant on the shoulder, and proceeded to spin him round and break his nose. An English official brought his knee up into Monet’s groin and, as the detective doubled up, pandemonium broke out at Prince’s in Piccadilly.
‘Now would be a good time, Harry!’ Lestrade called, but the Old Etonian was busy cracking together the skulls of two Frenchmen.
‘Sauve qui peut!’ Lestrade heard Monet shout before an enormous Hungarian fist made the room swim and the lights go out.
They stood with their backs to the river, a haunting pink under the evening sky. The boater-hatted detective with the purple cheekbone looked even sorrier for himself than usual. The Homburged Old Etonian, of course, didn’t have a scratch, but he did carry himself a little stiffly.
‘All right, Harry?’ Lestrade asked. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Rather silly, Sholto, really,’ Bandicoot told him. ‘It’s one of the properties of sprung steel that if you step on one end of it, the other end whips up and catches you one.’
‘I thought you fencers wore martingales or something . . . down there?’
‘Not in the British team, Sholto.’ Bandicoot was a little upset that his old friend should mention it. ‘I believe the Jocks wear straps.’
‘Quite.’ Lestrade slid his hand past his bruised ribs. ‘Cigar?’
‘Thanks. Good Lord, how long have you had that tooth missing?’
Lestrade felt the gap with his tongue. ‘About six hours,’ he said. ‘Did Letitia and the children get away all right?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Bandicoot eased himself down on to an Embankment seat. ‘They’re safe and sound at the Grand.’
‘Good. Now. Mr Hilary Term. You’re my eyes and ears among the sportsmen, Harry. I tried to reach you before the fights started – the official ones I mean – to see what, if anything, you’d gleaned from our fencing team. What happened this afternoon? God, we seem to be having this sort of conversation regularly nowadays.’
‘Well, of course, I didn’t see it,’ Bandicoot said. ‘Had my hands full with Captain Fuchs. But what appeared to have happened was that – who was the Frenchman?’
‘Alphonse Leotard – I checked in the programme.’
‘Leotard probably lunged. The impact caused his blade to break and the point shot upwards under Term’s jaw.’
‘Is that usual – the blade breaking?’
‘Extremely rare,’ Bandicoot said. ‘I’ve only ever heard of it; never seen it until now. Of course, there’s something doubly odd.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well,’ Bandicoot rummaged in his bag. ‘Have a look for yourself.’
He produced the Frenchman’s broken blade.
‘Where did you get that?’ Lestrade was astonished.
‘From the floor of Prince’s, Sholto.’ Bandicoot realized that Lestrade was slowing up.
‘But it’s evidence, man. I thought Monet picked it up.’
‘Yes, he did, but in the scuffle . . . Will there be trouble for you over that, by the way?’
‘I expect so,’ Lestrade sighed. ‘You’ll note how we’re sitting upwind of the Yard at the moment. I’m giving the place a wide berth as the expectant elephant said. Explain this to me. Cutlass drill was a long time ago.’
‘This is the end you hold.’ It was not usual for Bandicoot to be able to condescend to his former guv’nor. He was rather enjoying himself. ‘With the epee, the idea is to hit your man on the torso with the tip.’
‘But that’s damned dangerous, isn’t it?’
‘Not normally, because the tip is covered in a rubber cap. And the steel is blunted anyway.’
‘I see.’
‘Except in this case.’
‘What?’
Bandicoot fished about in his pocket. ‘This,’ he said triumphantly, ‘is the point of Leotard’s blade.’
Lestrade squinted at it in the evening sun. ‘It’s sharp,’ he said.
‘As a needle,’ Bandicoot agreed.
‘So . . .’
‘So someone sharpened the tip and replac
ed the rubber cap, knowing it would be superficially inspected by the judges before the bout and that, within the first few passes, the cap would come off.’
‘Would that be inevitable?’
‘Yes,’ said Bandicoot. ‘Parry of quarte or parry of sixte should do it. Then, there’d be nothing between Leotard’s point and Term’s throat.’
‘So the snapping of the blade . . .?’
‘Was by the way. The point should have gone through Term’s jacket. Either way, of course, it would be fatal.’
‘Risky though,’ Lestrade mused.
‘Suicidally,’ agreed Bandicoot. ‘What I can’t understand, Sholto, is why Leotard should want to kill his man and do it in such a public way.’
‘I think you’ve missed the point, Harry, unlike poor old Term. Leotard is just a prawn in a much greater game.’ Lestrade knew of old the glazed look in the Old Etonian’s eyes and he leaned forward to explain. ‘It came to me in a flash,’ he said, ‘as soon as I saw Term go down. The reason I was at Prince’s in the first place today was that Besançon Hugo was murdered last night.’
‘I surmised that.’ Bandicoot was on his dignity. Having bested Lestrade on the epee, he now sensed the ground slipping from under him.
‘It’s my guess his death was accidental. He caught someone in the act of doctoring one of the swords – to be precise, that one. I understand from the French team that everyone has their own favourite weapon?’
Bandicoot nodded.
‘So Mr X broke into Prince’s last night and sharpened the point on Leotard’s sword, which means he must have been well acquainted with the team. He was in the middle of this when Hugo found him. So Hugo had to die.’
‘So that’s what you meant when you said it was risky,’ Bandicoot nodded triumphantly.
‘No,’ Lestrade said, ‘the risk came in using Leotard’s sword. All right, so the rubber cap was bound to be knocked off. But how could Mr X guarantee that the sharpened point would kill his man? If it hit him in the hand, the arm, the leg, it would wound, perhaps only scratch. He couldn’t know that Leotard’s blade would snap and drive it into an unprotected part of the body.’
‘Oh.’
‘Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless what Mr X was going to do when Hugo interrupted him was to smear poison on the tip.’
‘Poison?’
Lestrade nodded. ‘That would be certain to kill, wherever it landed. As long as Leotard was half-way decent as a fencer, he’d be bound to draw blood, wouldn’t he, with a sharpened tip?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Bandicoot.
‘But when Hugo disturbed him, Mr X lost his nerve and ran.’
‘So it’s another of the French team.’ Bandicoot wrestled with the logic of it all – a sport in which he was ill equipped to compete. ‘You are actually looking for Monsieur X.’
‘I don’t think so, Harry,’ Lestrade sighed, leaning back. ‘Think about it for a moment. Hugo is killed – shot from close range. Why?’
‘Er . . . because he disturbed Mr X.’ Bandicoot breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized Lestrade would be asking questions.
‘Precisely, but why go that far? If Mr X was a member of the French fencing team, couldn’t he have dreamed up some excuse for being there, in those changing rooms, even in the wee small hours? Checking his kit one last time or something?’
‘Er . . . yes, I suppose so.’
‘No. Mr X was someone who should definitely not have been there, yet perhaps – and this is mere injecture of course – perhaps it was someone he knew and would recognize again. Know what I mean, Harry?’
‘Er . . .’
Lestrade nodded grimly. ‘Quite. One of the English fencing team,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, Harry, I’ll start working my way through them. Can you spare me ten minutes? I don’t want to blow your cover. It’s important that you and I remain at arm’s length as it were. You’re still valuable as my man on the inside.’
The body of Hilary Term, Cambridge Blue, gave Lestrade little he didn’t already know. The bruising high on the chest, the jagged wound below the jaw, the severed tongue, it all underlined Bandicoot’s injecture as to how Leotard’s blade had been fixed. And the details of Hilary Term’s life yielded little either. He’d been to Oundle, not yet a hanging offence, and had graduated by rather mysterious means to King’s, Cambridge. His undergraduacy had been marked by all things sporting and he had excelled in fencing, being a founder member of a rather esoteric group of handsome, debonair young men who called themselves the Gay Blades. Other than these, he had few friends. There seemed to be no women in his life, but his family were known to be close to General Baden-Powell. On this name in the depositions, Lestrade’s purple-ringed eyes rested. The plot was thickening. It was becoming murky, tacky even. And in the midst of it was He of the Big Hat, a little nut-brown man who was the hero of the hour. Lestrade made various enquiries. He of the Big Hat was to be found at that very moment on Brownsea Island with large numbers of rather small boys. He reached for his boater, but as he did so, an urgent telegram reached his gnarled old desk. It was from the Foreign Office. He crept down the back stairs so as not to disturb Mr Edward Henry and hailed a cab in the sunshine.
Red for Seven
T
he ducks quacked at him as he hurried by them. Little children in sailor suits and nannies with perambulators veered out of his path. A middle-aged man in a hurry. Lestrade was no stranger of course to the Foreign Office. They had finished it with an opulent Italianate swagger in the year he’d joined the City Force. It rose like a large public urinal looming over St James’s Park.
Its inner recesses he was less familiar with. A pompous flunkey with a smell under his nose showed him up the extraordinary main staircase, the one normally reserved for Ambassadors, Plenipotentiaries and Ministers who had forgotten their Portfolios. He would normally have been whisked in the back way reserved for the men who came to read the gas meter, but that particular corridor of power was blocked by just such a meter-reader and time was of the essence. Gigantic blooms hung in the afternoon stillness and flies droned heavily around the enormous rubber plants. Maids buckled in bombazine, with uniformly steel-grey hair whipped into buns, flitted this way and that, tickling the vast polished greenery with feather dusters.
He was shown into a room with wall-to-wall maps, mahogany desks and indescribable escritoires. On a stiff-backed leather chesterfield sat the stiff-backed leather Secretary of State for the Foreign Office.
‘Superintendent Lewgrade, is it?’ he said.
‘Lestrade, sir,’ the Yard man corrected him.
‘Quite. Thank you. Hurd, get out.’ The flunkey exited. ‘You know, of course, of the gravity of the situation?’
‘Er . . .’
Sir Edward Grey paced his tiger-skin rug. ‘Good God, man, what happened to your face?’
Lestrade looked yellower than normal under the white nose sling and purple eyes. He resembled a rather jaundiced banana split.
‘All in the line of duty, sir.’
‘Well,’ Grey sensed imminent collapse, ‘you’d better sit down. I won’t disguise the fact from you, Lestrade. The lamps are going out all over Europe.’
Lestrade was unaware of an energy crisis.
‘It’s all about careful steering, you see, rather than bold strokes. You see that?’ He pointed to a machine in the corner of the room. ‘Know what it is?’
‘Well,’ Lestrade was on strange ground, ‘it looks like Rintoul’s Horse Castrator, sir.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Grey loosened his collar. ‘But actually it’s a telegraphy machine of the very latest type. So late in fact that even the Patent Office haven’t got one. When anything happens anywhere in the Empire, I am told via that machine instantly – ooh, within three weeks at most.’
‘Astonishing, sir!’ Lestrade was almost speechless with admiration.
‘And it’s been telling me some pretty rum things, Lestrade. I don’t
need to tell you what’s going on, of course.’
‘Er . . . of course not, sir.’
‘First, an Anglo-French Exhibition. Admirable, of course, admirable. I’m a Francophile myself. Up to a point. Yes, I backed them at Algeçiras. That’s common knowledge. Wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one, of course. Not that any of them would ask her. It’s her rat-trap mouth, you see. Got her mother’s mouth. Still, there it is . . . Where was I?’ He trod heavily on his tiger’s head and a solitary glass eye popped out and rolled across the floor.
‘The French Exhibition, sir.’
‘Yes, of course. Of course. Well, old Henry’s kept me informed. Can’t get a bally thing out of the Home Office, of course. Helpful as a dose of cholera, they are. But Edward Henry, he’s been abroad you see – out . . . there.’ He gestured vaguely to all the maps on the wall. ‘He understands my position. It’s vital to keep absolutely informed, of course. Now, these Games are being sabotaged, aren’t they? Who’s behind it?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Lestrade confessed.
‘Good God, have I got the wrong man? Henry told me you were on the case.’
‘Well, yes, I am.’
‘Well, then. The Empire wasn’t won by idiots, Lestrade. And it won’t be held together by them either. We need results. How many athletes have died?’
‘At this morning’s count, sir, six.’
‘Six. Good God, that’s epidemic proportions.’ He whirled around several times on the rug, then pirouetted earnestly to alight on the chesterfield by Lestrade. ‘You know it’s the Turks, don’t you?’
‘The Turks?’
‘This is absolutely hush-hush, Lestrade. If a word of what I’m about to tell you leaked – well, I’d have to go back to fly-fishing for a living.’
‘Absolutely, sir.’
‘The Sultan has been forced to accede to the Young Turks’ threats. He’s ordered democratic elections throughout the Ottoman Empire.’
‘Tut, tut.’ Lestrade shook his head.
‘You see what’s happening, don’t you?’