Lestrade and the Sign of Nine

by M. J. Trow

  ‘How close are you?’ Towgrass asked.

  ‘Huh!’ Lestrade grunted. ‘How close is Christmas? I’d offer you some tea, Towgrass, but we’re completely out. Aren’t we, Tyrrell?’

  ‘Like the tide at Weston-super-Mare, sir,’ the constable confirmed.

  ‘Look, Lestrade,’ Towgrass edged forward. ‘I’ve got a stake in this too, you know. Fill me in . . .’

  Lestrade was about to when the door crashed back.

  ‘Don’t you knock, Dixon?’ he snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Lestrade, sir, but I was just goin’ off duty and the news came in. ’Orrible murder, sir. Bludgeonin’s.’

  ‘Bludgeonin’s?’ Lestrade thought he’d heard the plural.

  ‘Yessir, there’s two of ’em.’

  With Towgrass in tow and George paying the cab fare, Lestrade followed instructions to the little hotel on the edge of Hounslow Heath. Here it was in the Olden Times that James II camped his vast army of cut-throats and Irishmen to overawe the parliament in London; and where more recently such upright citizens as ‘Swift Nick’ Nevison had plied their bloody trade on the roads.

  By the time the policemen got there (it would, as Towgrass kept saying, have been quicker by train) dusk was descending and an eerie stillness fell over the Last Post. A knot of policemen were stripped to their shirtsleeves even in the evening dews and damps and besides their bullseyes they were doing an impressive job on the hotel garden.

  ‘Got another one, Inspector,’ a sweating sergeant waved an arm through the trailing fronds of a weeping willow. It was not his own.

  The Inspector jumped down from the top of his station wagon, only to collide with Lestrade.

  ‘Aaggh,’ he screamed, ‘Lestrade, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, who are you?’ since Lestrade was seeing double, identification was difficult.

  ‘Pentridge, T Division. My lads have got six bodies back there and they’ve only dug the cabbage patch so far.’

  ‘Six?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘I was told two.’

  ‘Ah, two bludgeonings, yes. You’d better go inside. Constables Head and Bolger are in there. They’ll give you the details. There should be a doctor there as well. Found the head yet, sergeant? Dr Willie says that last find was the jawbone of an ass.’

  ‘Well, he ought to know,’ Lestrade heard somebody grunt as the Yard men and their Hertfordshire visitor swept indoors.

  The hall was gloomy enough, as befitted a tiny hotel that carried a sign saying ‘No Vacancies. Gone Away’.

  There were introductions all round. A squat little man in a white coat was perched at the top of the cellar steps.

  ‘They found the first one here, Lestrade,’ he called, his voice echoing. ‘Can you get past me? Only I’m trying to take a rectal temperature, and it’s n-never easy.’

  ‘He might as well stick it up his arse,’ Towgrass heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he whirled around.

  ‘Constables Head and Bolger, sir. T Division.’

  ‘Right. This isn’t my patch and I’m not one to step on toes. That man over there is Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Mark him well and should you ever meet him again after tonight, you will snap to attention, understand?’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ the constables chorused.

  ‘And in the meantime, straighten those tunics, you slovenly sentinels of society’s safety.’

  ‘Well, Dr Willie. Time of departure from this vale of tears? How’s the wife?’

  ‘N-n-no better. Been at death’s door n-n-now for three months. I’ve got to get out sometimes – I was grateful when I got this call. Difficult to say.’

  ‘Can you guess?’

  ‘N-no, I kn-know what time it was,’ he removed the thermometer with a slurp. ‘It’s just that I’ve always had problems pronouncing n . . . see, there I go again. N . . . n . . .’

  ‘Nine?’

  ‘Thirty, yes. N-not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The corpse?’

  ‘N-no, the wife. Still, she n-never was. Seemed a good idea at the time, to marry the boss of the practice’s daughter. N-now, I’m n-not so sure. How’s the Yard?’

  ‘Same as ever,’ Lestrade angled the bullseye. ‘Over-crowded, overworked, over that way somewhere.’

  ‘You want my theories?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade said, ‘but I suppose I’m going to get them.’

  ‘This one died second. Your blokes just put their feet in the blood. It’s my guess the first one died down there, at the bottom of the stairs and the other one put his head round the door at the wrong moment. He got about halfway across the hall when the first blow landed. That dented his cranium and he want down. Lost a tooth on the tiles. I haven’t found that yet. He got up from that and got the second one facing his attacker. See the bruises on the arms?’

  Lestrade did.

  ‘Instinctive defence reflex, but he was pretty groggy from the first blow. Wouldn’t have had much fight in him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Mine host, I understand. I wouldn’t kn-now. I’d n-never stay in a hotel without at least eighty rooms. The people one has to share a breakfast table with . . .’

  ‘Can we see the other one?’

  The doctor flashed the bullseye down the stairs. ‘N-not from here, n-no. We’ll have to go down. And watch it, there’s blood . . .’

  But the doctor’s words were a trifle late. As Lestrade negotiated the body of the first party, he somersaulted neatly down the stone steps to plummet into the body of the second.

  ‘I just did that,’ Constable Head called down. ‘Fetched myself a nasty one.’

  ‘Yes,’ groaned Lestrade, ‘I of course did it to prove a theory.’ He rolled over, feeling decidedly tender behind, to come eyeball to eyeball with a corpse. ‘God, it’s a woman!’ He hoped his shriek hadn’t been too falsetto.

  ‘That’s what I always remember about you from the old days, Lestrade,’ Doctor Willie said. ‘Such thrusting observation, such critical faculties. Sholto Lestrade, meet Mrs Mine Host.’

  The bullseye’s beams flickered on the dead face of a woman in her middle years. One eye was closed completely, the other a mere slit in a purple mass. A rather cheap wig lay on her chest and dark brown blood had congealed over her bald head.

  ‘Alopecia,’ Willie said.

  ‘Bless you,’ muttered Lestrade. ‘She died first, you say?’

  ‘By about half an hour, I’d say. Of course, it’s bloody cold down here. Plays the devil with my instruments. I wouldn’t give any of this in a court of law.’

  ‘All right,’ Lestrade had lain with the dead long enough. ‘Help me up, Doctor, would you? And if you have any liniment, I’ll be forever in your debt.’

  ❖9❖

  L

  estrade wasn’t in the habit of drinking on duty, especially when George George was out in the garden, leaving no distance at all between Lestrade and his own wallet. Even so, tonight was an exception. The stench of death lay over the cold hotel and the bar was surprisingly free at that time of the year, with ghostly druggets over the furniture and shutters at the sad windows.

  ‘Head, is it?’ Lestrade waited until the men had lit a fire in the freezing snug.

  ‘Yessir, Constable T391.’

  ‘That’s a nasty bump you’ve got.’

  The constable bridled. ‘The police surgeon said it wouldn’t show through my clothes, sir.’

  ‘I meant the one on your head,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Oh, oh, that one. Yessir. Them bloody . . . beggin’ your pardon, sir, uneven steps.’

  ‘So you’re Bolger?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir. T413.’

  ‘Long with the Force?’

  ‘Seventeen years, sir, come June.’

  ‘Right,’ Lestrade swilled Their Hosts’ brandy around his moustache. ‘That’s the niceties over. Who were these people? Head?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Kelly, sir. Kept the Last Post for the best part of four years.�
��

  ‘Children?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Dependants?’

  ‘None known.’

  ‘How old were they?’

  ‘Ooh, you’ve got me there. Kept to themselves quite a bit. Ben?’

  Bolger scratched his head where the helmet rim had worn a permanent groove, ‘I dunno. He was sixty, maybe. She was a few years younger.’

  ‘Nice people?’

  ‘Oh, charming. Charming,’ said Head.

  ‘You’d better ask the Inspector,’ said Bolger.

  ‘Ask me what?’ A tired, cold and grimy Inspector Pentridge arrived in the snug at that moment. ‘Ah, thank you, Head. Mine’s a Scotch.’

  ‘About the charmingness of the late Mr and Mrs Kelly,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Well,’ Pentridge threw himself down in the chair, hauling off his boots and wringing out his socks, ‘I didn’t know them all that well, although we’d talked often enough.’

  ‘You had?’

  ‘Lestrade, it might have escaped your attention, but we’ve found a total of nine bodies out there. The doctor’s working his way through them as we speak.’

  ‘Nine?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘All men we think. Can’t be any women – the mouths aren’t open!’ he guffawed loudly, then caught the glum faces around him and swallowed hard. ‘Sorry. Bit tasteless, that, under the circumstances. Look, I’ll be frank with you, Lestrade, this is my first murder.’

  ‘You’ll get into the Police Book of Records at this rate,’ Lestrade assured him. ‘Eleven bodies your first time out. Some coppers don’t get that in a lifetime. Cigar?’

  ‘No, thanks. The bits get under my plate. What do you make of it all?’

  ‘You say you’d talked to the dead couple before?’

  ‘Yes. Three times, I think. Always in connection with missing persons, last known at their hotel.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Various witnesses saw them arrive – cabbies, postmen and so on. But no one remembers them leaving.’

  ‘What about the hotel registers?’

  ‘Burnt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They had a small fire here about three months ago. Somebody careless with a cigar, I suppose.’

  Lestrade didn’t intend to be careless with his. He carefully tapped the ash into Head’s upturned helmet before the constable arrived with his master’s Scotch.

  ‘Here’s lead in your pencil,’ he raised the glass and downed it in one.

  ‘And the Kellys denied seeing these men?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘Didn’t that surprise you a little?’ Lestrade asked. ‘How many people went missing?’

  ‘Two. Both travelling salesmen. Well, you know how it is, Lestrade, these blokes. Half of them are on the road to escape the wife and half of them are in ladies’ underwear. You show me a straight travelling salesman and I’ll show you a clean pair of heels. Talking of which, just look at these socks,’ he held the grisly items up for police inspection. ‘I don’t know what Mrs Inspector Pentridge is going to say.’

  ‘Depends on her olfactory sensibilities,’ Bolger muttered.

  Everyone looked at him.

  ‘You’ll ’ave to excuse old Ben, sir,’ Head said. ‘’Is dad was a hactuary. Used long words like you and me use privies.’

  ‘Anything known on these Kellys?’ Towgrass asked. ‘Any previous?’

  ‘They kept the Rolling Gate at Itchen Abbas,’ Head said.

  ‘Anyone go missing from there?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I don’t know really,’ Pentridge scratched his head. ‘S’pose I should have asked them.’

  ‘Well,’ sighed Lestrade, ‘it’s a little late now. Who found the body?’

  ‘Trumpeter Armstrong.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bugle Master at Kneller ’All,’ Head told him.

  ‘Kneller ’All?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘Army Music School, sir,’ Bolger said. ‘It’s over the fields.’

  ‘What was he doing here?’ Towgrass asked.

  ‘Look here,’ Pentridge felt he ought to say, ‘this is my enquiry, you know.’

  The Inspectors from the Yard and Hertfordshire both glared at him and he turned to squeezing more water out of his socks.

  ‘’E was cyclin’ past, sir,’ Bolger said, ‘Exercisin’ an enflamed epiphysis.’

  ‘Is that all right in T Division?’ Lestrade asked the local Inspector.

  ‘Er . . . I don’t know of any bye-laws.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Willie clumped in. The garden mud on his boots made him several inches taller. ‘Nine bodies,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Cause of death?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Garrotting.’

  ‘Garrotting,’ Lestrade mused. ‘Haven’t seen much of that in many a long year.’

  ‘You’re familiar with it?’ Pentridge asked.

  Lestrade scowled at him. ‘How long have you been an Inspector, Inspector?’ he felt bound to ask.

  Pentridge looked at his half hunter. ‘Twenty-one hours,’ he confessed.

  ‘Right,’ sighed Lestrade. ‘Garrotting was all the rage when I was a young copper. Time was you couldn’t move in Spitalfields for trassenoes with wire loops. A quick wrap around the throat and while the victim’s hands are up there trying to avoid a damned good choking, his pockets are fleeced and the trasseno’s away. Neat.’

  ‘The difference here, Lestrade,’ Willie poured himself a brandy, ‘is that the “trassenoes” as you put it, didn’t get away.’

  ‘No,’ muttered Towgrass. ‘They’re lying in their own cellar.’

  ‘You’re very sure of that,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘When do you reckon these nine blokes died, Doctor?’ Towgrass asked.

  ‘Difficult to say,’ Willie shrugged. ‘I tried rectal temperatures, but there just weren’t enough rectums to go round. Or is it recta? I failed my Latin viva first time, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lestrade patted his arm reassuringly. ‘We won’t tell your patients.’

  ‘No, they’ve been gone a long time.’

  ‘Your patients?’ Pentridge asked.

  ‘The deceased in the grounds,’ Willie explained. ‘Several months at least. Some of them a couple of years or more. The soil is quite peaty. They’re preserved quite well. When I get a couple of stomachs back to my laboratory, I may be able to tell you what they last had to eat before they died. I say, Pentridge, you’ve gone a little green.’

  ‘Must be the Scotch,’ the Inspector said. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’

  ‘So,’ Lestrade thought it best that somebody got on with the investigation, ‘this Trumpeter Armstrong came upon the bodies . . . how? Did he knock at the door?’

  ‘The door was open, sir,’ Head told him. ‘Me and Ben was on patrol, cyclin’ ’cross the ’Eath when we seen ’im runnin’ out of the ’otel, shriekin’.’

  ‘Shriekin’?’

  ‘Like he’d seen a critter out of hell,’ Head assured him.

  Lestrade knew how he felt. He’d just rubbed noses with the late Mrs Kelly. ‘As I may have asked before, what was Armstrong doing here?’

  ‘’E said ’e was just passin’,’ Head said. ‘Saw the door open an’ thought to ’imself, “’Ello, Caedmon . . .” ’cos that’s ’is name, see, Caedmon. ’E said to ’isself, “I think as ’ow I’ll ’ave a drop or two at the Post.” Wet ’is whistle, so to speak. So in ’e goes an’ he finds old Pa Kelly there on the step.’

  ‘Already dead?’ Lestrade checked.

  ‘As a dum-dum,’ Head assured him. ‘’E saw summat else too.’

  ‘Oh?’ the three inspectors chorused.

  ‘Two blokes wasn’t it, Ben?’

  ‘It was, Dick. Two bipeds of the human species, masculinely inclined.

  ‘Actin’ suspicious,’ Head leaned forward, as though to underline the fact.

  ‘I don’t suppose we have a description?’ Lestrade raised an ever-optimistic eyebro
w.

  ‘Dick?’ Bolger could handle long words, but not the long sight.

  ‘One was tall,’ Head said. ‘Big ’ooter. Wore a deerstalker. The other was shorter. Daft moustache.’

  ‘Any sign of a vehicle?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Armstrong didn’t say,’ Head shrugged.

  Lestrade rose unsteadily. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I think Constable Head has just solved the case for us. Doctor, I look forward to your report. Inspector, to yours. Towgrass . . .’

  ‘Sir, sir,’ a bedraggled Sergeant George flapped his way through the snug. ‘I’ve found it, guv. The Morris board.’

  ‘Where?’

  The sergeant took his guv’nor outside. ‘There,’ he said, ‘staring down at us all the time.’

  Lestrade looked up. Over their heads, in the driving rain and the pitch black of the Hounslow night, the sign of the Last Post creaked and whined and on one side of it, dribbling in white runs down the painting of a bugler, somebody had daubed the design of death.

  The old flower seller tapped her way blindly along Baker Street, her white-painted stick beating an erratic tattoo against the kerb. Once or twice she placed her ungainly size elevens into the horse droppings before the crossing sweeper could reach them. By and large though, she coped very well for a thirty-one year old detective with perfect vision.

  ‘Buy my lucky ’eather, dearie.’ Lestrade felt a fistful of the stuff thump into his chest.

  ‘Not just now,’ he brushed it aside. ‘I bought the other day.’

  ‘Guv,’ the flower-seller hissed around the pipe stem, ‘It’s me. George.’

  ‘Wha . . . Good God, man, isn’t this a bit over the top?’ He flicked her eyeshade and kicked her gammy leg, with his good one, naturally.

  ‘You said “Keep an eye on the place”. I thought you meant literally. Have you got it?’

  ‘Thank you, my good woman,’ he called for the benefit of passers-by, then quieter, ‘got any change? I seem to have inadvertently. . .’

  George hauled up his grimy unmentionables, revealing a very sturdy thigh, as limbs of flower sellers went, and passed his guv’nor a threepenny bit.

  ‘Blimey,’ Lestrade sucked in his breath, ‘Haven’t you got anything smaller? Oh, well, in for a penny . . .’