Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (22 page)

Across the room from them, away from the 11th men, a figure stood alone while Coburg played. He had arrived late and was not in time to take his place alongside his old messmates.

‘John Buckton,’ hissed Beeson from the corner of his mouth, nodding in his direction. Something fell from Glanister’s mouth too, but Lestrade didn’t care to notice what.

When the Tunes of Glory were done and the hand-kerchieves put away for another year, the major-domo rose again.

‘Gentlemen, pray silence for His Excellency the Quartermaster-General, Sir Evelyn Wood, VC, GCB.’

‘And bar!’ shouted Sir Evelyn, one of the halest men there, though as old as any of them. ‘Which way is it?’ The veterans broke into cheers and applause. ‘Gentlemen, I will not keep you long. I am here tonight as your guest of honour. Some of you may think me a fraud.’ Cries of ‘No,’ ‘Shame,’ and ‘Resign.’ Wood held up his hand. ‘But I am here for two reasons. I had the distinction many years ago of sharing quarters in the Sepoy Mutiny with a fine and gallant gentleman, now, alas, deceased, Colonel Morris of the Seventeenth Lancers.’ Cheers from the men of the 17th. ‘And I am proud to say that I was greatly honoured to serve with him and some of you in that fine regiment. Shortly after the Crimea, I joined the Thirteenth Light Dragoons’ – the veterans of that regiment whistled and stamped – ‘and no more loyal and impressive body of men could be found anywhere.’ Applause.

Get on with it, thought Lestrade. If we are going to have Sir Evelyn’s life story, I’ll never get across to Buckton.

‘Some thirty-nine years ago tonight, gentlemen, I was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. And on my ship I heard of what was described as “a short, sharp, cavalry action”.’ Guffaws and poundings on the table. Beeson was working things out on his fingers again. ‘I think in all my years of service I have never heard of an engagement described with such woeful inadequacy.’ More poundings. ‘Gentlemen, I can only misquote the late Poet Laureate, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and say to you, men of the Light Brigade, “When can your glory fade?”’

The rapturous applause from so small a group of men promised to bring the chandeliers down. Even Lestrade found himself joining in in full measure, physically painful though it was to him. Toasts to Her Majesty, to Sir Evelyn, to the commanders of the various regiments at Balaclava, all now dead, followed.

Then the major-domo announced ‘Coffee and brandy, gentlemen, by courtesy of Sir Evelyn Wood.’ Poundings on the tables greeted this not altogether unexpected privilege. Cigars appeared from leather cases. Kilvert, not for the first time that evening, studied Lestrade closely through wreaths of smoke. Lestrade himself was about to make a move to contact Buckton, when there was a resounding crash in the passageway leading to the banqueting room. A white-coated waiter burst in, rushing in Buckton’s direction. ‘Don’t drink the coffee!’ he screamed as the man had the cup poised at his lips. Even as he reached Buckton, a shot rang out and a scarlet gash appeared in the centre of the waiter’s back. In the seconds of panic that followed, a figure stood in the shadows, aiming his pistol first at Buckton, who ducked under the table, then at the knot of 11th men around Lestrade. The first bullet whistled past Beeson’s head. A second shattered the coffee cup between Lestrade and Glanister. The latter crumpled, though unhit, clutching his jaw and moaning, ‘Not again!’

Lestrade wasn’t waiting for the next shot. Needs must when the devil drives and he stood up, hurling over the table. He and Beeson clambered over it as the others crouched, bewildered and confused, in the smoke.

‘Our friend isn’t much of a shot, thank God,’ said Lestrade. He reached the fallen waiter and turned him over. ‘Good God,’ he said, recognising under the slicked-down hair the mournful, haunted face of the Bounder, with whom he had absconded from Openshaw Workhouse, an eternity ago. ‘He’s still alive, Beeson. Look after him.’

‘I’m coming with you, sir.’ All pretence at his being Joe Towers had gone.

‘No, no. This one’s mine,’ and Lestrade dashed for the door. ‘Sir Evelyn, I wonder if I might use your sword for a moment?’

The general, who had not moved from his seat during all the shooting now stood up and drew the ivory-hilted weapon from its scabbard. ‘My dear fellow, be my guest,’ and called after him, ‘Remember the “Rear Protect”, private,’ as Lestrade disappeared down the darkened corridor.

‘Was it the Russians?’ asked Glanister, emerging from the tablecloth. Someone patted him calmingly on the head.

Lestrade dashed, as fast as his bruises would permit, past the milling waiters and servants, through the kitchen swarming with hysterical cooks.

‘That way,’ somebody shouted at him, pointing to the open back door.

‘Who was it?’ he yelled.

‘One of the waiters,’ came the reply. You can’t get decent staff these days, thought Lestrade. But that was what he wanted to know. He had not seen the figure who fired the shots at all closely. Now he knew his target wore a white jacket and shouldn’t be difficult to see in the dark. He edged into the yard. Empty, save for a couple of dogs tethered and barking. Behind him, the noise and lights died away. He was aware of men coming out of the doors and windows being opened overhead. But no one followed him.

He took stock, as he moved, of his situation. He was carrying a general officer’s mameluke sabre. A beautiful, ornate weapon, but it gave no protection for the hand. In a fight, he would have reach, but his adversary, whoever he was, had a gun. All right, he was no great shot, but he could get luckier. And Lestrade couldn’t move as he usually could. He turned into an alleyway. Ahead, a brick wall, the intangible counterpart of which had risen before him so often in this case. He stood still, panting with the effort of having run this far. No other sound, except somewhere a distant train whistle and the snort of a hackney horse.

He slithered round the corner into a second yard. It had been raining and the cobbles glistened wet in the green gaslight. A white jacket lay at his feet. The would-be murderer’s disguise had gone, but it didn’t matter. Lestrade knew where to find his man, if he had left the yard. He advanced slowly, sword arm extended. To each side were piles of timber and sacking. Good hiding places for a desperate man. His lips were dry. He licked them, tugging open the Hussar jacket for a bit more air, a bit more freedom of movement. His breath was visible on the air before him. And then he heard it. A tapping on the cobbles. Footsteps. He threw himself against the wall, trying to melt into the shadows.

A thick-set man in a Donegal and bowler stood squarely in the light from the gaslamp. He had a revolver gripped firmly in his right hand, raised at shoulder height.

‘I know you’re there, Lestrade,’ the killer spoke. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’

Silence.

‘I’m not a patient man.’

Lestrade lurched forward from the wall, some yards away from the man with the gun. ‘Hello, Gregson,’ he said.

The Head of the Special Irish Branch brought his pistol hand down on his left wrist to steady the gun for the recoil.

‘So, it was you all along?’ said Lestrade.

‘Me? You mean that bungled shooting tonight? You’re upsetting me, Sholto. You know I wouldn’t miss.’

‘The murders, then. The poisonings.’

‘My God, you really haven’t a clue, have you? I took you for a better policeman than that.’

He clicked back the hammer. Once. Twice.

‘I tried to make it easy for you. That trumped-up charge of mine about attacking the Kaiser. But you went on, didn’t you? Worrying it. Teasing it. You wouldn’t leave it alone. Well, you’ve only yourself to blame, Lestrade. For what follows. Only yourself to blame.’

For a long second, Lestrade stood there, expecting Bandicoot’s cased pistols to blast out or the Abo’s silent arrows to hiss through the air. In the event, all he heard was the roar of Gregson’s revolver. Too far away to reach his man, he spun round, attempting God Knows What. Perhaps just to be spared the bullet in his face. Perhaps it mattered how you died. As he turned, the sword came up behind his right shoulder, roughly in the position of ‘Rear Protect’ and the bullet clanged off the blade and ricocheted across the cobbles.

Lestrade continued his turn as Gregson recocked the weapon, cursing his luck, and threw the general’s sword for all he was worth. The tip sliced deep into Gregson’s stomach and the second shot went wide. In disbelief, Tobias Gregson staggered backwards, the gun gone from his grasp, Wood’s blade gleaming from his stomach in the lamplight, blood trickling over his fingers. He looked uncomprehendingly at Lestrade, reached out as if to drag him to Hell with him and pitched forward, driving the blade right through his body, so that the crimson tip protruded steaming through the folds of his Donegal. Lestrade eased himself down on one knee, and checked his pulse. Weakening. Gone. Police whistles were sounding from nowhere. He kicked Gregson’s body over and wrenched out the sword, wiping the blade clean on his coat. Then he stumbled back to the restaurant.

Beeson was cradling the fallen waiter in his arms. As Lestrade arrived, he looked up and shook his head. Lestrade took the Bounder’s face in his hands. ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked.

The Bounder opened his eyes and flickered into liveliness. ‘Did you … get him?’

‘Who?’ asked Lestrade.

‘Oliver.’

‘No, I got Tobias Gregson.’ Beeson’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. Had Lestrade gone mad?

‘Oliver … Oliver’s the one you want. You must get him,’ and he began to cough up blood.

‘I will. I think I know where he is. Listen, you haven’t got long.’ There was no time for niceties. ‘Who are you?’

‘Jacob Crowley,’ the Bounder/waiter answered. ‘I wrote to you. Twice. Three times. I can’t remember. Why didn’t you answer my letters or at least do something?’

‘I received no letters. Beastie, get these men away from here.’ Lestrade waved an arm in the direction of the stunned bystanders.

‘Come along now.’ Beeson the old copper was in charge again. ‘There’s nothin’ to see. Move along, now. Move along.’

‘And Donald Crowley …?’ Lestrade turned to the Bounder again.

‘My father. Oliver is my brother. They’re both mad, Inspector. Quite mad,’ and he coughed again.

‘Beeson, water,’ snapped Lestrade.

The Bounder waved it aside. ‘I’ve got to tell you. Got to explain,’ he mumbled.

‘Why the murders?’ Lestrade tried to simplify things for the dying man. ‘The men of F Troop. Why?’

‘My father joined a religious sect called the Order of the Golden Dawn when he was a … young man.’ His speech was slurring now. Lestrade knew he would lose him soon. ‘They are Satanists, Inspector. They worship the Devil,’ and the pain took him again. He writhed, then lay still. Lestrade mopped his sweating forehead until he recovered. ‘The night before Balaclava, F Troop were on patrol. A few of them got separated from the rest and in the hills above Kadikoy they found my father carrying out his rites.’

‘Rites?’ Lestrade checked he had not misheard.

‘Sacrifice, Inspector. Human sacrifice. My father was a neophyte then. He … had to attain a higher level within the Order. The only way was to … kill and devour a human being.’

Lestrade sat upright. In all his seventeen years on the Force he had heard of nothing like that.

‘He was … in the act of eating a Turkish boy when some of F Troop found him. He did his best to get himself killed. The … next day … he rode the Charge … expecting a bullet or a cannon ball to end it all. He reached the guns. He was taken prisoner by the Russians … His life for the next sixteen years is a closed book to me. What he did in Russia, how he lived, I cannot imagine. But … the Golden Dawn is an international sect, Inspector. The Russian Golden Dawn may have found him, rescued him from the threat of suicide.’

‘So, that’s why he rode the Charge,’ Lestrade said.

The Bounder nodded. ‘When he came back to England, and I never knew why he came back, he feigned … loss of memory. But my brother Oliver was brought up in the foul traditions of the Golden Dawn. And he is as mad as Father.’

‘Go on, if you can,’ said Lestrade.

It was becoming increasingly difficult. ‘Who can understand a madman?’ the Bounder asked. ‘Father had remembered the names and faces of those men who had seen him that dreadful night before Balaclava. Perhaps he knew he was dying. Perhaps the Golden Dawn demanded it. Anyway, he killed the first one. William Lamb.’

‘Lamb?’ Lestrade broke in. ‘But he was killed by an animal. A Tasmanian wolf.’

The Bounder managed a chuckle. ‘Yes, I read the newspaper reports at the time,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. That poor dumb beast may have killed sheep, but it did not kill a man. Father was carrying out his murder in the old ritualistic way.’

‘He was trying to eat Lamb?’ Lestrade asked, incredulous. The Bounder nodded. ‘And then he died. Merciful heaven released him.’

Lestrade thought quickly. The hairs from the thylacine which he found on the body must have got there after Lamb died. The smell of blood would certainly have attracted it.

‘And the poisonings?’

‘Oliver. He too trained as a doctor. For some years he served with the Army Medical Corps. He knew a great deal about poisons

‘And had access to them,’ Lestrade added.

The Bounder coughed his agreement.

‘And when we met at Openshaw?’ prompted Lestrade.

‘I was trying to stop him. All along, I’ve been … one step behind Oliver, one step ahead of you. He was the medical officer who was the locum before you arrived. He used the name … Corfield, Inspector. A pun. A taunting, arrogant pun. The Latin for the crow family is corvus. And another name for ley is field. Corfield and Crowley were one and the same. He gave the poisoned tobacco to Mrs Lawrenson.’

‘And it’s you who has been following me since the Lyceum?’

‘And before. I should … have confided in you earlier, Inspector, but … I was trying to save Oliver from himself. From his insane desire to carry out Father’s wishes; and all the time I thought you had received my letters telling you all this.’ He tensed, and tremors shook his whole body. ‘Lestrade,’ he clutched convulsively at the policeman’s sleeve, ‘stop him. And look after cousin Aleister. I’m afraid he’s going the same way.’