Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Brilliant!’ Ralston eulogized.

  ‘Elementary,’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘It’s what he tells everybody. Actually, I’m not sure he should be walking about. Presumably that’s where Watson comes in, sees to his medication and so on.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Kelvin said. ‘Trust you to pick some deranged idiot, brother.’

  ‘It looks as though we’ll have to rely on the Yard after all,’ Ian fumed. ‘It’s a bit bloody dishonest of this Holmes and Watson to offer their services to us both. They must have known we were brothers. They must have colluded.’

  ‘I’ve no evidence about that,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’ve always assumed they have separate bedrooms at Baker Street. Besides, it’s the sort of thing that would appeal to Mr Holmes, the intrigue of being briefed by identical brothers. I always said he was mad as a speckled band.’

  Lestrade got to his feet. ‘Sergeant George and I will need to talk to you again, gentlemen. Please give him your town addresses. I need to talk to the rest of the staff.’

  The Ralstons had been right about one thing at least. Old Benson Lammergeyer was no help at all. That was because his office was shut and all the caretaker knew was that he was in the South of France and wouldn’t be back for some time because he had retired. The rest of Squire Ralston’s staff were as much use as a colander in a flash flood. Only Mrs Fussock shared her husband’s doting on the dead master. Everybody else hated his guts.

  A weak February sun sent its rays flat against the south-east facets of the Abbey, its solid Norman tower marking the spot where Alban, the first Christian martyr, had so fatally upset his garrison commander. Lestrade and George had spent the rest of the morning locating the Woolpack, the hotel where Holmes and Watson were staying, and then booked into the Pea-Hen. They decided against the George in case it caused confusion.

  They found Constable Matthew Spatchcock on his old beat along Fishpool Street, the one he used to have before they transferred him, temporarily, to Artificial Waterways. He was plodding along at two and a half miles an hour on the raised pavement where the Medieval pilgrims had padded north to the city’s western gate long years ago. He was a little older than Inspector Towgrass had led them to believe and years of sampling McMullen’s best when he was stationed at Hertford had caused him to let out his belt a notch or two. There were introductions all round.

  ‘So you found the body, Spatchcock?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I did, sir. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.’

  ‘Tell us about it.’

  ‘Well, sir, in the dawn’s early light I thought the Squire ’ad ’ad another island built. Then I realized it was movin’, driftin’ with the tide so to speak.’

  ‘It’s not a tidal lake up at the Hall, is it?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ Spatchcock said, ‘seein’ as ’ow the sea is near on fifty miles away. It’s just the flow of the river. The fourteenth squire ’ad it widened by Capability Brown and deepened by Possibility Adams, Dredger to ’Is Late Majesty King George IV.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you were on Waterways, weren’t you?’

  ‘Until two days ago, sir, yes. I knows the Avon and Kennet like the back o’ my ’and. Still, I’m not sorry to be orff o’ all that. Didn’t do much for my feet I can tell you. An’ the missis is pleased – no more darnin’ an’ lancin’ chilblains.’

  George had no idea that people darned chilblains, but then he’d never served time in the Hertfordshire constabulary.

  ‘So checking the lake at Ralston Hall was routine, then?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. First port of call of the day. Fair shook me up, I can tell you. I mean, prams, bathchairs, the odd dead dog or cat but a ’uman bein’, we only ever ’ad one o’ them on the Avon and Kennet. Some old bloke who got tipsy and fell in. That weren’t pretty neither. Got sluiced to death he did.’

  ‘What did you do when you found Squire Ralston?’

  ‘Blew my bloody whistle – oh, beggin’ your pardon, sir. Do you think they’re any better, these whistles? I’m a simple man myself. I likes the old rattle.’

  Lestrade nodded. Nostalgia wasn’t what it used to be, but deep down he too preferred the rattle of a simple man.

  ‘Well, it was ’alf an hour before somebody came. Old Mellors, the Squire’s gamekeeper. Together we fished him out.’

  ‘What did you make of the state of the body?’

  Spatchcock shrugged. ‘I’m no detective, sir,’ he admitted.

  ‘Chief Inspector Towgrass speaks highly of you,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Spatchcock tipped his helmet to some passing ladies, ‘that’s nice of him, sir, but I knows my place.’

  ‘Your best guess, then,’ Lestrade harried his man. ‘Was the water frozen?’

  ‘No, sir. For all it was a raw night, the frost had cleared by mornin’. But the Squire ’e was like a lump o’ rock.’

  ‘Rigor,’ said Lestrade.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Spatchcock smiled proudly. ‘I does me best. No, ’e was stiff as a pig’s pego in the spring, sir – oh, beggin’ your pardon.’

  Lestrade waved the agricultural simile aside. ‘What was he wearing when you found him floating?’

  ‘A dinner jacket, sir. White tie and tails.’

  ‘You went through his pockets?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Spatchcock stopped patrolling. ‘Why on earth should I do that? I know’d who ’e was.’

  ‘What about the wound?’

  ‘Ooh, nasty sir, that. The back of ’is ’ead was stove in. I dunno by what, but somethin’ ’eavy.’

  ‘Inspector Towgrass seems to think it was an iron pipe.’

  ‘Well, there it is then, sir,’ Spatchcock walked on, a Yard man at each elbow.

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘The iron pipe?’ Lestrade’s gaze met George’s over the constable’s helmet.

  ‘No, sir. Mr Towgrass ’ad divers down in the lake for a couple of days, but we didn’t ’ave the happaratus and the blokes was gettin’ fearful cold. ’E called it off.’

  ‘Did you know the Squire, Constable?’

  ‘Only to wave to, sir. I’d only met ’im once or twice, on the waterways patrol, you know.’

  ‘Constable, I wanted to talk to you,’ a young lady in a black day dress with a matching muff and parasol had crossed the road to them.

  ‘Oh, mornin’, Miss Ratcliffe,’ the constable saluted. ‘I was so sorry to ’ear about your old dad, Miss. Didn’t suffer, I ’ope.’

  ‘No, Constable,’ she smiled. ‘He went as he would have wished to go – unconscious.’

  ‘The constable nodded. ‘Oh, may I introduce . . .’

  ‘No need, Constable,’ Lestrade interrupted. ‘You’re a busy man, what with your beat and everything. Off you patrol now. I’m sure we can answer Miss Ratcliffe’s questions.’

  ‘I’m sure you cannot, sir,’ she watched Spatchcock’s dark blue frame march steadily into the distance of Verulamium where elms wreathed the mill. ‘And I’ll thank you not to use my name until I know yours.’

  Lestrade looked at her. She was, as the Ralstons had said, a corker. Her golden hair was swept up under the feathered black of the hat and her eyes shone in the noonday sun with a reflective brilliance. For all her mourning, there was a smile that played elusively around her lips. It made Sergeant George adjust his tie.

  ‘I am Inspector Sholto Lestrade,’ he told her, ‘Scotland Yard. This is Sergeant George.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘But I fail to . . .’

  ‘We’ve been assigned to the case of the late Squire Ralston,’ Lestrade explained.

  ‘Bastard!’ the Yard men heard her hiss.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Lestrade frowned.

  ‘He was a bastard, Inspector,’ she said levelly. ‘Forgive me, but I have a rendezvous in town. Will you walk this way?’

  George for one didn’t have the anatomy to walk anything like that way, but walking with Miss Ratcliff
e was certainly preferable to patrolling with Spatchcock.

  ‘Do I gather you were not altogether fond of the late Squire, Miss?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I would cheerfully have shot him,’ she told him frankly.

  ‘Or bent an iron bar over his head, Miss?’ George threw in.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It would be a lie if I said otherwise. Someone else did that for him. And if I ever meet him, I’ll shake him by the hand.’

  ‘What was the cause of your dislike, Miss Ratcliffe?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘He swindled my father, Inspector. Cheated him out of some consoles – the old man’s life savings.’

  ‘I understood that your father was an admiral,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘So he was. But he retired years ago. I was the youngest in the family by a long way. My brothers and sisters are all married and living overseas.’

  ‘You’re not married, Miss?’ George took the opportunity to confirm.

  ‘No, sergeant, I’m not and before you come out with some appalling claptrap like “I can’t imagine why not”, it’s because I have yet to meet a man who is my equal in terms of intellect. I believe I may this afternoon.’

  Both Lestrade and George took that to mean each of them and they swept on through the open park of Romeland where only the swish of the headmaster’s cane from the school in the old gatehouse marred the late morning.

  ‘My father had always dabbled,’ she told them. ‘Even as a midshipman under Codrington he was always gilt-edged. He’d known Osbaldeston Ralston since they were cadets together. The vicious old reprobate had always secretly hated my father. He was always egging him on into dangerous speculations and risky investments. Usually, my father avoided him, but of late . . . well, I don’t know. I suppose he got greedy. But stupidly he still trusted Ralston. He was a loving, trusting man. And Ralston killed him for it.’

  ‘Literally?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ her face was hard and cold. ‘Ralston didn’t have the brass neck for that. He simply robbed my father blind. It was the shock that killed him.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about,’ Lestrade asked, ‘if I may ask?’

  ‘You may ask, Inspector,’ she said. ‘It was over one hundred thousand pounds.’

  Lestrade had turned as pale as Jane Ratcliffe. So had George George. ‘I see,’ he said.

  They had stopped outside the Woolpack Hotel.

  ‘So you went to have it out with Squire Ralston at his party?’

  ‘Some party!’ she snorted. ‘I’ve had more fun having my appendix out. There were two old duffers mouldering in a corner and those unspeakable children of his.’

  ‘The boys Ian and Kelvin?’

  ‘Twisted offspring of a degenerate line,’ she said. ‘I knew I’d get no help there. Do you suppose they did it? Killed their father, I mean?’

  ‘I’m afraid we rather had the same thought about you, Miss Ratcliffe,’ Lestrade confessed.

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I gather there was too much of his head left for it to have been me. I tell you, gentlemen, that Saturday night was about the only time I’ve ever wished I was a man. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she swept up the steps, ‘I have a meeting with the World’s Greatest Detective.’

  ‘Who?’ chorused Lestrade and George.

  ‘I believe he calls himself Sherlock Holmes,’ she said. ‘I have retained him to trace my father’s fortune. It’s not the money, you understand, but the principle.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Lestrade grinned in the chilly air, ‘one of those Mr Holmes has in plenty.’

  ❖4❖

  T

  hey had found him in the street as the first dawn of March lifted over the Villas of Lisson Grove. He lay sprawled on the flight of steps that led to the cellar of the King Arthur, a gent in his late forties, nattily attired in astrakhan coat and wideawake. His wallet was gone and what had probably been a gold tiepin had been ripped from its mooring. As Lestrade and George looked down, they saw his false teeth lying on the pavement and the railings above him daubed with his blood.

  ‘Yesterday, South Mimms; today, Marylebone,’ the sergeant muttered, only now coming to terms with the cold and the hour.

  ‘Isn’t that why you joined?’ the Inspector asked him ‘to see the world? Notebook, George. I’m only going to able to bend this leg the once.’

  He crouched as best he could while above him a clutch of constables was busy tying the blue cordon and moving on the odd nosy party who happened to be stirring with the lark. Lestrade eased back the coat flaps. ‘Fully clothed,’ he said. He fumbled through pockets. ‘One ticket for the Lyceum. What’s on, George? You’re a theatre-goer.’

  ‘Er . . . Babes in the Wood, sir. Still the panto season.’

  ‘Oh no, it isn’t,’ Lestrade countered.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ George stood his ground.

  Lestrade continued the search. ‘Aha.’

  ‘A clue, sir?’

  ‘No, I haven’t got one. It’s a letter of rejection.’

  ‘What, some woman’s turned him down?’ George looked at the pulverised head. ‘Most determined suicide I ever saw.’

  ‘No, not that kind of rejection. It’s from a publisher, turning down an author.’

  George shook his head. ‘Still the most determined suicide I ever saw.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Not the end of the world, I wouldn’t have thought, having a book turned down.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lestrade said, having harboured no literary ambitions at all. ‘I seem to remember you being a bit cut up last year when they didn’t use your Disraeli sketch for the Police Revue.’

  ‘Ah, that was different, guv. That was sheer waste of talent.’

  ‘No wallet,’ Lestrade had moved on, tilting the corpse as best he could. ‘No watch. The tie’s ripped. Whoever did this probably tore it off to get at the pin.’

  ‘Simple hit-and-run, then,’ George assumed.

  ‘There’s never anything simple about murder, George,’ Lestrade reminded his partner. ‘You know that. And Tom Berkeley’s not a man to send for the Yard for no purpose.’

  The Inspector of that name was alighting from a station wagon above them as Lestrade spoke.

  ‘Pass me those teeth, will you? If there’s a gold one still in the gum, we’ve got to get our thinking caps on. Who found the body?’

  ‘Up here, sir,’ a constable called from the railings.

  Lestrade hobbled up to him with the aid of George and the deceased’s left leg.

  ‘Mr Dickson, sir, a carter.’

  ‘Mr Dickson . . .’ Lestrade caught sight of Tom Berkeley ducking under the cordon. ‘One moment, if you please. Tom, how long’s it been?’

  ‘Too long, Sholto,’ the Inspectors shook hands. ‘Been in the wars again?’ He threw a glance at Lestrade’s leg.

  ‘“Black Monday”,’ he said.

  ‘I heard about that,’ Berkeley said. ‘Bloody fine bit of policing.’

  ‘Thanks. How’s the family?’

  ‘Mildred says – and I quote – “When are you coming over to finish that dinner, Sholto Lestrade? The custard’s nearly cold!”’

  ‘God, yes. I was called away, wasn’t I? A rape in Coldharbour Lane. When was that?’

  ‘Three years ago.’

  ‘Ah. How’s little Fanny?’

  ‘Not so little these days. Do you know, she was twelve last week?’

  ‘Get away!’

  ‘Pretty as a picture.’

  ‘I’m sure of it. She’ll be courting any day now.’

  ‘Not until I’ve vetted him first. Anyway, you know you’re the only man in her life, Sholto.’

  The Yard man slapped him across the shoulder. ‘Go on with you, I’m old enough to be her father!’

  ‘Yes,’ laughed Berkeley. ‘So am I. Now, to business. Bad one, this. As soon as I got the word, I thought of you. You made good time.’

  ‘Better than you think. We were actually in St Albans when your t
elegram arrived, passed on by the Yard. It pains me to say it, but we do have the best postal service in the world, you know.’

  ‘You’d better have a look at this, sir,’ the sergeant called from the steps.

  ‘Tom, you know George George.’

  ‘Yes, how’ve you been, George?’

  ‘Better, sir, thank you.’

  ‘Bit of an altercation with a locked door at Mevagissey a couple of weeks ago,’ Lestrade whispered to his old friend. ‘Playing the whingeing detective at the moment.’

  Berkeley nodded. It was a role he knew well.

  George handed Lestrade the deceased’s false teeth. They lay cold and clammy in the palm of his hand, flecked with blood. Something else lay with them, screwed up into a ball between the dentures. A piece of paper.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ Lestrade muttered. He passed the teeth to Berkeley. ‘Pity they can’t chatter any more,’ he observed. He unrolled the paper ball.

  ‘What is it, Sholto?’

  ‘Confirmation, Tom.’ Lestrade said. ‘Confirmation that you’re a bloody good policeman. You did right to send for us. We’ve seen this somewhere before.’

  Constable Albert ‘Nutty’ Slack stood at ease on Lestrade’s threadbare carpet at the Yard, second floor back. One day, when he’d been at inspectorial level for fifteen years, he might gravitate to first floor front, but by then, they’d all have moved lock, stock and truncheon, down the Embankment to the Opera House and he could really spread his wings. And by that time, as Assistant Commissioner Rodney had recently reminded everyone with a memorandum, there would be nearly sixteen million horse-drawn vehicles on the roads. Still, the roses would do well.

  ‘I’d offer you a chair, constable,’ Lestrade said, ‘but as you see, we’re all rather hugger-mugger at the moment. Can you drink tea standing up?’

  ‘I think so, sir. We get a lot of that in D Division.’

  ‘Been there long?’

  ‘Sixteen and a half years, sir, come Friday.’

  ‘And how do you like working for Mr Berkeley?’

  ‘Well, sir . . .’ the constable’s face darkened.

  ‘Speak out, man,’ Lestrade felt the buckshot jump in his leg.

  ‘Well, he’s the salt o’ the earth, sir, o’ course, but he’s a bit on the little and oft side.’