The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (3 page)

‘What makes you say that, My Lord?’

Tennyson stared unblinkingly under the over-shadowing brim of his Wide-awake. ‘Forgive me, Inspector.’ His tone was different. ‘Sometime I forget myself. Vain of me, isn’t it, to quote my own work?’

Lestrade tried not to show he had not been following the drift of the last few minutes. ‘Do you know anyone called Peter?’ he asked.

Tennyson rose with the aid of a stick and butler. Lestrade followed him towards the great house.

‘Why are you asking me these things?’

‘We have found evidence of foul play in the Chine, My Lord. The body of a man whose name may have been Peter.’

Tennyson stopped and faced the inspector. He motioned the butler to go ahead.

‘Inspector, I am not long for this world now. I have seen a great deal in my lifetime. Much sorrow … much sorrow. My mind is not so clear. If a body fell at my feet I doubt if I would notice it. The shadows are closing in. There are some days when I cannot tell if I am talking to men or ghosts.’

Lestrade, not usually a man of sympathy, patted the Laureate’s arm. ‘Thank you for the tea, My Lord,’ seemed warm enough.

Tennyson was quoting again –

He motioned the butler to him and hobbled up the lawn. Lestrade waved his hat in token that he would find his own way out.

Lestrade embarked on the steam packet later that afternoon. He had assured the authorities that there were further lines of enquiry to follow up and that the case was far from hopeless, but he was not very far forward. The local papers had been leaked the story – inevitably. And the name ‘Peter’, the labourer’s smock and the notoriety for the Chine were all there. The editor had had the good taste to suppress the grisly details – or the coroner had been unusually tight-lipped.

No time for Lestrade to return to London. Instead, he took the train, by easy stages, via Swindon and the wide gauge of the Great Western, to Haverfordwest. He was annoyed at having missed his connecting boat and had to spend a wet, cold night in the town with what appeared to be a single street. If there were further delays tomorrow, he ran the risk dreaded by all full-blooded Englishmen in a Welsh town – a dry Sunday. Methodist revivals and Mr Gladstone’s Licensing Laws had combined to kill Haverfordwest.

As it turned out, Lestrade would have preferred a dry Sunday to the wet Saturday he got. The ship lurched and rolled in the inhospitable Irish Sea. Lestrade, never a good sailor, found his stomach and his mind whirling together in speculation and nausea. Irish soil felt solid and safe. The cab clattered along Sackville Street and on into the suburbs. Dublin was still a lovely city, elegant, wealthy, English. And if there was an air of hostility, if the men and women did not look you squarely in the face, it wasn’t to be wondered at. After all, wasn’t that unprincipled maniac Gladstone playing with Home Rule? Playing right into the hands of the Fenians? And Salisbury couldn’t last long – the Irish MPs at Westminster would see to that. At least, so
The Times
said and Lestrade had a great respect for that newspaper. Not that he was a political policeman, but he believed in keeping abreast of affairs.

Lestrade alighted at the barracks of the 13
^th
Hussars to have his feet run over by their new maxim-gun detachment. Not wishing to appear unmanly before those fine fellows on manoeuvres, he buried his teeth in the rim of his bowler and drove his head a few times against the nearest wall.

‘Did ya have a nice trip, sor?’ chuckled the cabbie on his perch.

Lestrade flashed him a livid scowl and no tip and limped painfully into the regimental offices. The surgeon duly saw him, bandaged both feet and left him in the orderly room. It was some hours before the object of the inspector’s visit arrived. Two burly privates appeared and lifted Lestrade between than down the corridor, across the courtyard and into the office of the colonel. The walls were hung with regimental trophies and photographs and the whole room had an aura of cigar smoke and horse liniment.

‘Boys,’ a sharp voice barked behind him. Lestrade leaped an inch or two and instantly regretted it, landing full on his bruised toes. Colonel Templeton-Smyth strode past him to his desk. He was a man of average height, brisk and straight-backed, with the inevitable military moustache, clipped somewhat thinner than Lestrade’s own. He had the face of a hawk, clear blue eyes, firm chin and tanned, parchment skin – rather an odd hawk, really. He threw his forage cap on to the desk and unhooked the short, astrakhan trimmed patrol jacket before flinging himself into his chair.

‘Boys,’ he repeated, sliding a cigar box across to Lestrade. ‘What do you think of ’em, Sergeant-Major?’

‘Inspector, sir. Inspector of Police.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. Sorry. Find these rank things confusin’, what?’

‘I think that boys have their place in the scheme of things, sir. They will at very least be boys.’

‘Ah, yes. But you are a policeman. Right?’

Lestrade nodded.

‘You must know some of these youngsters. You know, the ones old Barnardo doesn’t get. I’ve got an idea …’

‘Forgive me, sir,’ – Lestrade was trying to be formal, despite the throbbing in his toes – ‘but I’m on important police business.’

‘Ah, yes, ’course. Light?’

Somehow Lestrade leaned forward and puffed gratefully on the cheroot. The grandmother tolled the hour of four.

‘Ah, tiffin.’ The colonel rang a silent bell near his desk. ‘But the prevention of crime, man. That Ripper chappie – he was a boy once. We can’t wait until they grow up twisted and bitter. We’ve got to train them, make them into useful citizens. Now, my idea …’

‘With respect, sir,’ Lestrade cut in.

‘Ah, yes, ’course. Fire away. Ha! Good that, what? Military joke, don’t you know, fire away!’ Templeton-Smyth saw that Lestrade was not amused. ‘Well, to business.’ His face straightened.

‘I am making enquiries into a suspected murder which took place recently at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, sir.’

‘Ah, yes? How can I help?’

Lestrade fumbled in his wallet and threw the scrap of material on to the colonel’s desk. ‘What do you make of that, sir?’

Templeton-Smyth scrutinised it closely. He took it to the light of the window. Something in the square caught his eye and he threw open the sash.

‘Not like that, Corporal,’ he shouted. ‘It’ll never get better if you piquet!’

Back in the room, the colonel answered the inspector’s question. ‘Officer’s lace, Thirteenth Hussars. Shoulder belt.’ A pause, then – ‘Could be the Fourteenth Hussars, of course.’

‘Thirteenth.’ Lestrade was emphatic. ‘This object was found in the lining of the clothes of the deceased, sir. I took the trouble of cleaning it. I also borrowed a copy of Her Majesty’s Dress Regulations for Officers from Messrs Gieves and Company, Portsmouth branch. A brief consultation of that told me that the lace belongs, as you say, to a shoulder belt of either the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Hussars. If however you look again at the object’ – the colonel did – ‘you will notice that one edge of it is brighter, less tarnished than the rest.’

‘I don’t follow you, Inspector.’

‘Your batman would, sir. Any man who has the job of cleaning regimental lace would know that where it is covered by a metal ornament, the lace is clean. The clean area of the scrap you have corresponds in size and shape with a metal scroll on which a battle honour is blazoned. I need hardly tell you, sir, that the Thirteenth is the only cavalry regiment that wears its battle honours on its pouch belt.’

Templeton-Smyth’s jaw fell slack. ‘I admire you police chappies. First-class piece of deduction, Lieutenant.’

‘That’s Inspector, sir.’

‘Ah yes, ’course.’ Templeton-Smyth returned the lace. The significance began to dawn on him. ‘So this chappie, your … er … deceased. An officer of the Thirteenth?’ His moustaches began to bristle with distaste.

‘That’s what I’m here to find out, sir.’

‘Now, look here, Lestrade. This isn’t on, you know. I mean, officers and gentlemen and all that. Bit unseemly, what? Chappie from one’s own mess endin’ up done to death.’ But curiosity overcame the scandal. ‘Tell me, how’d it happen? Sabre? Carbine? Maxim?’

Lestrade ignored these fanciful lunges into mid-air. The man had clearly no notion of the mechanics of murder. ‘Have – or had you – among your officers, Colonel, one called Peter? The Christian name, I would surmise.’

Templeton-Smyth strode around the room. ‘Peter, Peter,’ he mused to himself, stroking the long, lean chin. ‘Well, I’ve been with the Thirteenth for fifteen years now since Cornet. There’s only one Peter I’ve known among the officers.’

Lestrade straightened. Was this it? Had his gamble, his expensive, unrequisitioned trip to Dublin, paid off? Did he have a link with this fashionable cavalry regiment? What was Templeton-Smyth covering up?

‘Peter Endercott. He’s out there.’ He pointed to the window.

Lestrade hauled himself upright, grimacing with pain. Those damned gun-limber wheels must have broken his toes. He reached the window. Below, a squadron of the 13
^th
Hussars were going through their sword drill exercises, even though the afternoon was drawing in under a threatening sky. The clash of steel punctuated the harsh commands of the drill sergeants. Lestrade remembered his own days of such practice as a constable with the Mounted Division. He could see four officers standing casually around watching the men go through their paces.

‘Which one is he, sir?’

Templeton-Smyth looked oddly at him and realisation dawned. ‘Oh, no, my dear chap. Over there.’ He pointed beneath a clump of elms, some distance from the parade ground. ‘Third grave from the left. T.B., poor chap. Family insisted he be buried here. Full military honours, of course.’

‘When?’ Lestrade’s optimism had already reached his bandages.

‘Oh, three – no, four years ago. June it was. Shame. He made up a good foursome.’

‘Foursome?’

‘Whist, Captain. Do you play?’

‘Er … no, sir.’

‘Pity. Now there’s a good game for boys.’

The door opened and a tall angular woman in a frothy white dress appeared. ‘My dear, I’m sorry tiffin is late today. Shall we take it in the … oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company.’

Lestrade staggered to his feet.

‘Oh, no, please don’t get up.Gout can be a frightful business, can’t it?’

‘This is Major Lestrade, my dear, of the Metropolitan Police,’ offered Templeton-Smyth. ‘Major, my sister.’

‘Inspector, ma’am,’ groaned Lestrade as Miss Templeton-Smyth shook his hand heartily.

‘We were discussing a delicate matter, my dear …’ said the colonel.

‘Oh, Robert, my dear, can’t it wait? This poor man deserves some tea.’ She helped Lestrade to his bandages and steadied him on a wiry arm. ‘Girls,’ she said as they limped from the colonel’s office. ‘As a policeman, you must meet some of the wayward ones.’

Lestrade had been here before.

‘Well, we have to train them, Inspector, to make something of them. I was talking it over with one of my brother’s officers, Captain Baden-Powell, before he left for Malta. He rather ridiculed the whole thing.’ The colonel fell into step behind his sister. ‘We’ll have tea and I’ll tell you of my idea …’

So Lestrade had drawn another blank with the 13
^th
Hussars, as he had with Tennyson. He had bruised his toes, been violently sick on the crossing back from Dublin and had been subjected to Templeton-Smyth’s interminable ramblings about organising the youth of Britain into some ghastly regiment of paragons, helping old ladies across the road and hiking pointlessly around the countryside. What a fatuous idea – that Baden-Powell fellow had got it right. And how silly Colonel Templeton-Smyth would look in short trousers.

For the next eighteen days, a team of constables working from the War Office tracked down and interviewed the twenty-four Peters who were serving or had served in the ranks with the 13
^th
Hussars. Lestrade was desk-bound while his toes subsided, but he was rather surprised that there were so many of them – Peters, that is, not toes. It was not after all so common a name. He was disappointed not to find anything tangible in the follow-ups. Eight of the Peters were dead, three of them were in jail. Two were abroad and likely to remain so and of the remaining eleven, no links could be established with Shanklin, Isle of Wight or the disappearance of a middle-aged man in a labourer’s smock. At least Lestrade now knew that the smock denoted Norfolk, but enquiries by telegram and telephone to the chief constable of that county achieved nothing – partly because the chief constable did not have a telephone. But there were no reports of a missing person answering to the description of what was once the man in the Chine. Several cats of course were listed and one rather nasty salamander, but no farm labourers; indeed, no people at all.

Lestrade was about to conclude that an unidentified man whose name may or may not have been Peter, who may or may not have had association with the 13
^th
Hussars, had met his end by foul play by person or persons unknown, when a letter arrived by second delivery. It was a mourning letter, black-edged and the message was typed. Lestrade read it just once to realise its import –

The postmark was London and it was addressed to ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’ The inspector looked again at the doggerel. Home-made? Yes, he surmised so. He wished he knew rather more about poetry but the crammer he had been to had not thought it necessary and most of his colleagues at the Yard – Gregson, Athelney Jones, even McNaghten – found poetry and poets faintly limp and unmanly. The typescript was odd – slightly uneven with a decided kick on the letter ‘n’ so it stood a little way below the line. He had always thought there must be a way of detecting a faulty typewriter, but he was damned if he could see how.