Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I did, sir. Your leg was playing you up at the time.’

  ‘It still is, sergeant,’ Lestrade didn’t have to be reminded. ‘Can we get on with this, please?’

  ‘Funny woman. Intensely loyal to the Rector, of course.’

  ‘Didn’t know about the young girls?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Nor the dirty books?’

  ‘Never seen them.’

  ‘Nor the photographic darkroom?’

  ‘Didn’t know he had one.’

  ‘Even though the ancient curate knew all about the Rector’s hobbies?’

  ‘Curious, isn’t it?’

  ‘What did you make of this Bunn, then? Was she in on the procuring?’

  George considered the possibility for a moment. ‘Couldn’t procure a ham,’ he decided.

  ‘All right, then. Mrs Bunn, loyal or stupid or both. There’s none so blind as those that will not see. Let’s look at the murder itself.’

  ‘Well, Smith was right – about it being committed in the Vestry, I mean.’

  ‘How do we know?’

  ‘There were still blood traces up the walls and in the cracks of the tiles, as though Rodney had been dragged.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And although the curate found him draped over the lectern, he couldn’t have been killed there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because when you propped me in that position, guv, and proceeded to hit me over the head with that candlestick, the eagle fell over . . . and so did I.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Lestrade commiserated slightly. ‘How is the neck?’

  ‘Was that before or after the eagle had landed, sir?’

  ‘Well, well,’ Lestrade made light of it. ‘It established a truth, George. That’s important in a murder enquiry. Besides that, a little discomfort is neither here nor there.’

  ‘Well, it’s here and there, actually, sir,’ George could not leave it alone.

  ‘Cause of death?’ Lestrade forged on.

  ‘Blunt instrument, to the back of the head.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s as far as it goes. The post-mortem report was marginally worse than useless.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course. There was no speculation as to weapon, number of blows delivered, angle of attack. Nothing. Let’s face it, George, we just got there too late. However . . . motive?’

  ‘Ah, that’s easy. The Reverend Rodney had a more than ecclesiastical interest in various young girls of his parish. He seems to have liked them between fourteen and eighteen.’

  ‘And yet?’

  ‘And yet, despite photographic evidence, the parents of two of them don’t seem to give a tinker’s damn about it.’

  ‘And yet generally the Rector’s congregation was falling off, perhaps as a reaction to his provacities. Which means?’

  ‘Which means that the girls’ parents are lying or somebody else knew more than they did.’

  ‘The Carrick girl,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Family moved away to London. Not usual, I wouldn’t think.’

  ‘Not?’

  Lestrade shook his head. ‘No. The old man is a carter. Carters stay put. Oh, they might move parish by parish. He might have gone to St Ewe or even Bodrugan’s Leap. But London? That’s like you and I moving to the moon, George. What do you think our chances are of Tyrrell and Green finding them now?’

  ‘Three days ago,’ George computed with that grey-celled differencing machine of his, ‘I said four million to one. Now, let’s see, Wednesday,’ he checked his half hunter, ‘half past ten . . . hmm . . . six and a half million to one.’

  Lestrade nodded. It was a reasonable ratio.

  ‘What about this other one, sir? Where is it again?’

  Lestrade ferreted out the crumpled telegram that had arrived that morning. ‘South Mimms, George. It’s a village in Hertfordshire. You can do your gazetteer bit later. It seems the local squire is dead.’

  ‘Why are we on this one, guv? We’ve got our hands full in Cornwall.’

  ‘Cause of death, sergeant,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Viz and to wit a blunt instrument. Only this time, we’ve still got a corpse above ground. Or we will have if this damned train ever reaches Swindon. Oh, by the way, if the officer in charge of the case in Hertfordshire is one Chief Inspector Edward Towgrass, you leave the talking to me.’

  Chief Inspector Edward Towgrass stood on the gravel drive in front of the hideous Queen Anne building that was Ralston Hall. The Ralstons of South Mimms had come over with the Conqueror but had fallen on slightly harder times after the Great Railway Boom of the 1840s. They had put their trust in bonds of the East Kent and Cross Channel Railway Company, floated, if that was the right word, by Monsieur Felon of Le Havre. After that it had been downhill all the way. First the Colney Hatch properties had gone, then the Verulamium Estate. Now all that was left was South Mimms itself and Ralston Hall. The family had slipped a long way since South Mimms’ only famous son, Arthur Young, Improving Landlord, had first whispered ‘Turnips’ in the ear of the then Squire Ralston. That had been in 1793. The now Squire Ralston lay under a drugget on his bed in the Blue Room where the underpaid, dwindling body of retainers had carried him.

  Towgrass, with uniformed constables at his elbows, narrowed his eyes as the speck which was his own station wagon grew larger on the road. He spat out the wad of tobacco he was chewing and summoned his men forward. His lantern jaw had already set firm by the time the vehicle rattled and rolled to a halt in front of him. He took one look at the ferret-faced man in the Donegal and bowler and snapped at the driver up on the box, ‘Burden, you miserable bastard, who said you could use the station wagon to pick up civilians? Oh, it’s you, Lestrade. Didn’t recognize you without a gammy leg.’

  That very limb made its appearance at that moment as stick, then Inspector, clambered out and on to the ground.

  ‘Towgrass,’ Lestrade smiled through gritted teeth. ‘This is Sergeant George.’

  Towgrass nodded, ignoring the man’s outstretched hand. ‘I wonder how I knew it would be you?’ he said.

  Lestrade shrugged. ‘We just go where we’re sent. What have you got?’

  ‘Plenty of expertise as it is,’ the Hertfordshire man told him. ‘Without the Yard sticking its nose in.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Lestrade. ‘So much for police co-operation. I have my orders, Towgrass. Let’s just get on with this, shall we?’

  The Chief Inspector clicked his fingers and his constables dashed ahead to open the main doors, ancient oak set with studs. He led the Yard man through a wide hall, freezing cold and damp, up a swirling staircase to the first landing. Here a grandfather clanged half past three. The day was nearly over and no sign of spring.

  ‘Shall I serve tea, Mr Towgrass?’ a voice called from below.

  The Chief Inspector half turned. ‘Fussock, the butler,’ he explained.

  ‘He’s only being sociable,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Yes. In the library,’ snapped Towgrass. ‘The corpus delicti is in here.’

  Towgrass swept aside the drapes of the four poster and whipped back the sheet.

  ‘George, pass me that candle,’ Lestrade ordered.

  The sergeant did.

  ‘Perhaps you could light it?’ the Inspector suggested.

  ‘Oh, right, sorry guv,’ and the room was filled with the scraping of Lucifers.

  ‘I see the standard of sergeants hasn’t improved in the Metropolitans,’ Towgrass sneered. ‘Unlike my man Spatchcock. He’ll go far.’

  ‘Your man Spatchcock? Where is he?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I told you. Gone far. He’s back in St Albans. He found the body.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Routine surveillance.’

  ‘You were surveying Squire Ralston?’

  ‘No. Spatchcock was on Artificial Waterways. He’d done Brocket Hall and was working his way south.’

  ‘Uniformed man?’ Lestrade checked.

  ‘At the moment. But I’m
toying with transferring him to the CID. He’ll make a reasonable detective in twenty years or so.’

  Lestrade looked at the dead thing on the bed. ‘What’s all this, then?’ he asked.

  Towgrass leaned back against the ottoman and folded his arms. ‘You tell us, Mr World’s Second Greatest Detective.’

  Lestrade sensed George tensing, but he patted the man’s shoulder and hobbled alongside the deceased, hovering over him with his candle like some crippled ghoul. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The deceased was aged what, fifty-five, sixty?’

  ‘Fifty-seven,’ Towgrass specified. ‘Last Monday. There was a party.’

  ‘Well nourished,’ Lestrade commented. ‘Inclined to obesity.’

  ‘Fat,’ Towgrass insisted, ‘I’d say.’

  The Inspector hauled on the right arm and the Squire gave him the cold shoulder. A mass of congealed blood lay dark on the pillow and the pennies dropped off his eyes. ‘Back of the cranium stoved in,’ Lestrade said. ‘By a blunt instrument. At least three blows, but it’s difficult to tell with all this blood. Hold this candle, George. Don’t wobble, man. You’ve seen murder victims before.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. It’s so cold up here.’

  ‘Family’s in debt,’ Towgrass said. ‘They’re only lighting fires on the ground floor.’

  ‘One question, Towgrass,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Only one?’ the Chief Inspector chuckled. ‘Still, it’s early days.’

  ‘Why is the late Squire wearing an apron?’

  ‘Ancient Order of Buffaloes,’ Towgrass said. ‘He was Head Bull or something. They’ve got strict orders for laying people out.’

  ‘What, with blunt instruments, you mean?’

  Towgrass crossed to the window where the defunct fountain lay like a green bowl on the gravel below. ‘If you’re considering whether the Ancient Order expelled the late Squire in a fairly permanent way, it has already crossed our minds. We are less than fifteen miles from London, Lestrade. This isn’t the backwoods, you know.’

  ‘Any leads?’

  ‘None. Yet. But Spatchcock is, as I told you in St Albans as we speak, checking out the local lodge.’

  ‘You give your uniformed men a lot of rope,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘I told you,’ Towgrass turned back to his man, ‘Spatchcock’s one of us. He’ll be out of blue serge by the weekend.’

  ‘You say this Spatchcock found him?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Details?’

  ‘You’ll need to talk to him, Lestrade . . .’

  There was a tap on the door and a constable appeared. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Mr Towgrass.’

  ‘Yes, Chester, what is it?’

  ‘It’s Lord Verulam and the Hertfordshire Hunt again, sir.’

  ‘My God! What now?’

  ‘They’ve got a fox cornered in the Reverend Litchen’s graveyard, sir.’

  ‘Well? I always thought Litchen was a hunting parson.’

  ‘Oh he is, sir, but the dogs have been digging up graves and widdlin’ over tombstones. There’s a hell of a stink.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Towgrass. ‘I expect there is. What’s Litchen doing about it?’

  ‘Wielding his twelve-bore, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Lestrade, I can’t think of a man I’d like to have less on this case than you. But until I’m Chief Constable I suppose I’m stuck with it. Try not to upset anyone, will you, or it’ll be my bollocks on a plate as well as yours.’

  ‘Friendly sort,’ grunted George when he’d gone, constables snapping to attention on the staircase. ‘You and he go back a little way I gather?’

  ‘We do,’ nodded Lestrade, peering closer at the Squire’s head wound. ‘Some power behind this,’ he observed.

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me about it, are you?’

  ‘I am not. What do you reckon he weighs?’

  ‘Towgrass?’

  ‘Ralston. Do try to stay on the track, there’s a good sergeant.’

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen stone. Why?’

  ‘I’m just wondering how much fight he put up. Hold this nearer his fingernails, will you?’

  The candle flame hovered near the dead man’s hands, the flickering light licking his apron with luminous shafts in the near darkness.

  ‘No skin,’ Lestrade muttered. ‘No sign of a struggle.’

  ‘No warning,’ George said. ‘Just a quick thwack from behind.’

  ‘Or several.’

  ‘Or several,’ the sergeant echoed.

  Lestrade consulted his half hunter. ‘Quarter to four, sergeant,’ he noted. ‘Everything stops for tea.’

  Fussock the butler stood like a lamp post in the corner of the room. Lestrade had taken in the late Squire’s reading matter. Like most of the gentry plagued by dwindling financial fortunes he appeared not to have bought a single book since 1849. So that meant that Mrs Beeton was missing, not to mention Origin of Species and My Life Already by Baron Rothschild. A shame really, because the Rothschildren wrote a rattling good yarn.

  ‘Well, Mr Fussock . . .’ the Inspector began, as the taller man solemnly lit the oil lamps.

  ‘Just Fussock, sir,’ he intoned, a veritable martyr to catarrh.

  ‘Very well,’ said Lestrade. ‘How long have you served Squire Ralston?’

  ‘Forty years and more, sir. Ever since he was sent down from Oxford.’

  ‘Sent down? Why?’

  ‘Not for me to say, sir. I believe there were some irregularities at Brasenose.’

  That came as no surprise to Lestrade.

  ‘I was born on the Verulamium Estate, sir,’ the lackey volunteered. ‘As was my father before me. Generations of Fussocks have served the Ralstons.’

  ‘I see. And what manner of man was Osbaldeston Ralston?’

  ‘He was the nineteenth in the line, sir.’

  ‘Yes. That wasn’t quite what I wanted to know. Who is to be the twentieth?’

  ‘Twentieth equal, sir.’

  ‘Equal?’ Lestrade looked at George, but he was having trouble with his pencil stub.

  ‘Ian and Kelvin, the young masters, sir. They’re twins.’

  ‘But one must be the elder . . . mustn’t he?’ Lestrade’s knowledge of such things was not encyclopaedic. After all, he’d never given birth to twins in his life.

  ‘Ah, yes, sir. Young master Ian was the firstborn. But the Squire in his will stipulated that they should inherit equally.’

  ‘You’re very privy to your master’s financial arrangements,’ George commented.

  ‘I witnessed his last will, sir.’

  ‘His last?’ Lestrade said. ‘Were there others?’

  ‘No sir. I meant as in his last will and testament.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I see. Was he a fair master, the Squire?’

  ‘I always found him so, sir. When he was sober.’

  ‘When he was sober?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘And that was . . .?’

  ‘1873 if I remember. Mr Gladstone promised to repeal the income tax.’

  ‘That led to a bout of sobriety?’

  ‘No, sir. It was Mr Gladstone’s breaking his promise that led to that.’

  ‘I see. So the Squire was a drunk?’

  ‘A drunk; no sir. Merely drunk. You wouldn’t know unless you were dancing with him.’

  Lestrade glanced at George, who, characteristically, glanced back. ‘Which you did?’

  Fussock looked affronted. ‘Never, sir,’ he assured the policeman. ‘Oh, except possibly on the night of the news of Prince Albert’s death. The Squire could never abide the fellah.’

  ‘I see. I hope you’re writing all this down, George.’

  ‘Oh, every word, sir.’

  Lestrade crossed to the leaded panes. He could just make out before the dark line of elms the pale expanse of the lake which the fourteenth squire had had drained and in which Sergeant Spatchcock had found the body of the nineteenth squire. ‘Tell me about the night he died,’ he said.

  ‘He was celebratin
g, sir,’ Fussock told the Yard men. ‘What he called a . . . oh, dear!’

  ‘Yes?’ Lestrade sensed a break in the man’s speech pattern, a catch in his voice. He’d seen guilty men crack this way before.

  ‘What he called a killing, sir – on the Stock Exchange,’

  ‘By which he meant?’ the Inspector closed to his man.

  ‘A rather large amount of money, sir, usually by buying low and selling high.’

  ‘I see,’ Lestrade bluffed. To him, the City was a closed book – a book that bore the curiously lacklustre title ‘So You Think You Know All About Speculation?’

  ‘So Mr Ralston had cause to celebrate. Go on.’

  ‘He decided to throw a party. It had been some time, I must say, since Ralston Hall had seen such frivolity. The last time must have been when Lord Palmerston died.’

  ‘Which would be . . .?’ young George asked for the record.

  ‘In keeping with the Master’s hatred of Liberals,’ Fussock explained.

  ‘No,’ said George, ‘I mean, when did it happen? When did Lord Palmerston die?’

  ‘1865.’

  ‘God, man,’ Lestrade said, ‘that’s twenty-one years ago. Are you telling me there hadn’t been a party at the Hall since then?’

  ‘No, sir. If it hadn’t been for their respective clubs, the young masters wouldn’t know what a party was. We below stairs had to check Mrs Beeton for the protocol, I can tell you. And we had to borrow her from the lending library in Potters Bar.’

  ‘You made a guest list of course.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Mrs Beeton is very particular about that.’

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘Only one Mrs Beeton, sir. Unique, that woman.’

  ‘No. Guests, Fussock, guests. Do try to stay with it, man. I realize you’ve had something of a shock.’

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ the old man produced a crumpled paper from his pocket. ‘I’m afraid it’s a little the worse for wear.’

  ‘Yes, well, aren’t we all?’ Lestrade snatched it from him. ‘What’s this?’ he frowned.

  ‘It’s the guest list,’ Fussock explained.

  ‘If it is, it’s written in Egyptian.’ Lestrade shook the paper at him. It showed a square with a series of connecting lines inside it, like a plan of some long-forgotten maze.

  ‘Ah, sorry, sir,’ Fussock blustered. ‘That’s not the guest list.’