Lestrade and the devils.., p.2
Lestrade and the Devil's Own, page 2
2
T
he fog lay over the city for two days that January. And traffic along the great artery that was the Thames slowed to a trickle, then a halt. On the roads it was different. To avoid anarchy and slaughter on the streets, the draymen had to deliver, no matter what. And cabmen, whose growlers stopped for nothing, sat hunched on their hansoms, like lines of ghosts, waiting for business.
But no one came. There was no milk for two mornings, for there was no milk train. The ladies of the Windmill Theatre, that never closed of course, sat in their sequins in the wings, filing their nails and talking about the weather.
Everywhere, there was an eerie stillness, like the muffling of a dream and solitary trams, empty save for their crews, clanked and clattered along their safe and silver lines.
Millicent Millichip, they’d remember later, got on at Marble Arch. She was a stout woman, jolly, middle-aged. She could have been the Madam of a brothel or a fishmonger – it wasn’t possible to pinpoint her trade.
‘Worst one I remember,’ she said to the clippie as he took her fare. ‘Can you change half a crown, ducks?’
‘Seein’ as ’ow you’re the first body I’ve set me eyes on all day – other than the driver, o’ course – it’ll be my pleasure, Missus.’
‘They ought to do something, you know,’ she’d told him.
‘’Bout the pea-soupers? Too right. Still, it’s quiet, you know. Bit like Christmas, really. You up for the sales, Missus?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Do you know where we are?’
The conductor had pressed his nose against the window. ‘Well, it’s London,’ he surmised. ‘Beyond that I won’t be drawn. Oh, ’ang about. There’s Swan and Edgar. Must be Piccadilly Circus, or my nephew is a primate.’
‘This is my stop.’
The conductor rang his bell and the tram lurched to a halt.
‘There you are, then, Missus,’ he called. ‘Mind ’ow you go.’
Millicent Millichip thumped on to the pavement, treading on somebody as she went. Alighted was the wrong word for someone of her girth. Her own footsteps sounded like whispers on the pavement. Dim lights threw misty circles from lamp-posts and shop windows. It could only have been two o’clock, but it seemed like night. Damn Robert Peel. Damn the whole lot of them. She was on the telephone. Why couldn’t they have called? Why did she have to come all this way up to town? And in this weather? With her asthma.
She was still tutting to herself, shuffling along the pavement, when she collided with a figure in the fog. She was aware of a thump in her chest, a sharp, sudden pain in her left side. She saw someone tip his hat, distinctly heard the word ‘Sorry’ and then she was on her knees on the pavement.
A man with a parchment-yellow face and sad eyes was crouching in front of her. She remembered the odd look on his face and for his face to be on the same level as hers, she guessed he must be a midget. She looked down at his hand. It was dangerously near to her left breast. A less worldly woman might have screamed. Then she noticed that his hand was dark red. He appeared to be bleeding. And the blood was warm now on her own hand. He was saying something. She knew that because she saw his moustache move. But she couldn’t hear anything. Which was silly, because she knew she wasn’t deaf. She blinked at him. His face was getting smaller, less distinct. This damn fog. This pea-souper. Millicent Millichip wondered again when they were going to do something about it all. Then she felt arms encircling hers and the parchment-yellow face was close again.
Then, Millicent Millichip did a very silly thing. Millicent Millichip died.
DETECTIVE-SERGEANT Blevvins had come up the hard way. Everybody he worked with wished he hadn’t and hoped he’d go the same way. There are some men born to be the flies in the ointment of life, the niggers in the piles of wood, the rub. Ned Blevvins was all of these and he sat that winter morning picking his teeth with Chief Inspector Froest’s paper knife.
‘So you’re Lyall,’ he grunted, reaching for his cocoa and scooping the skin from the top.
‘Yes, Detective-Sergeant.’ The young man stood stiffly before him, the bright January light reflected in his glasses.
‘None of that round here, lad.’ Blevvins frowned. ‘This is Scotland Yard. You may address me as “sir” or ...’ and he reached down to the trouser hem that encased the leg that was resting on the chief inspector’s desk. He pulled it up slowly, closing his left eyelid, without taking his right eye off Lyall. ‘... Should we be of the same affinity ...’
Lyall stood even straighter. ‘I’m a happily married man, sir,’ he said.
Blevvins frowned and rolled his trouser leg down again. ‘I was referring to the Lodge,’ he growled. ‘You stand no chance here unless you’re affiliated.’
Lyall blinked disappointedly.
‘You must be Tait.’ The detective-sergeant threw down one sheaf of papers and picked up another.
‘That is correct, sir.’ The shorter man stood to attention.
‘Says here you’re a vegetarian,’ Blevvins grunted. ‘Think that’s important, do you?’
‘Sir?’
‘Your star sign. Think it’s important what sign you were born under?’
It was Tait’s turn to blink. ‘I ... ’
‘I was born under the Ram, myself,’ Blevvins volunteered.
The news came as no surprise to Tait and Lyall.
‘All right; so, for the moment I’m stuck with you. You’re on probation, of course. And I’ll be watching. One gob in the wrong direction and I’ll have you. You know what my view is on rookies?’
‘No, sir,’ the constables chorused.
‘They belong in nesties, that’s what they do.’ Blevvins grinned his gappy smile. The constables did not. Blevvins stood up, scowling, looking both men in the eyes. He leaned on his knuckles on Froest’s desk. ‘You don’t have to be crawling bastards to work here,’ he told them, ‘but it helps. And the first thing to do is to find Detective-Sergeant Edward Blevvins considerably funnier than George Robey and Dan Leno put together. Savvy?’
‘Yessir.’ And they did their best to summon up a muffled smirk.
‘Right. Now, to cases. You’ll need to know the higherarky here at the Yard. That means who’s above you and who’s below you. Except it’s simple, really. ’Cos they’re all above you and no bugger’s below you. Got it?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Right. For day-to-day duties, tea-making, filing, tidying the office, you report to me. Any questions?’
Lyall looked at Tait. ‘Who’s above you, sir?’
The constables watched Blevvins turn a funny colour. ‘Nobody,’ he snarled. ‘Nobody at all. Unless you’re referring to those bustards with silver spoons in their mouths. Those blokes who got promotion ’cos their daddy’s a nob or something. Yeah, we got a few of them. The bloke on the door is “Buildings” Peabody on alternate days. The other one is Sergeant Douglas. Both tolerable coppers, but with the intellectual capacity of axolotls – that’s those things that look like tadgers and float about in water at the zoo. Down the corridor you’ll find the office of Chief Inspector Dew.’
‘Is he the guv’nor, sir?’
‘I told you, Tait.’ Blevvins outstared his man. ‘As far as you’re concerned, I’m the guv’nor.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Chief Inspector Dew is something of a literary gent these days. He caught Crippen three years back and he’s still dictating his memoirs. Course, it was my case really.’
‘Was it, sir?’ Tait and Lyall were all ears.
‘What made you check the cellar in Hilldrop Crescent specifically?’ Lyall asked.
‘How did you know it was hyoscine?’ Tait probed.
It was Blevvins’s turn to blink. ‘This office,’ he said, ‘when I’m not using it, is shared by the Head of the Serious Crimes Squad, Superintendent Froest.’ And he spat expertly into the man’s wastepaper basket.
‘Don’t you care for the Superintendent, sir?’ Lyall pondered.
‘My views on my colleagues are not a matter for public scrutiny, Constable. Aside from the fact that Froest is a fat, foreign bastard, I can take him or leave him.’
‘What about Superintendent Lestrade, sir?’ Tait leaned forward, eyes bright. ‘I’ve been hearing about his exploits ever since I could shine my shoes.’
‘Lestrade’s off sick,’ Blevvins told him. ‘Not likely to be back. Old before his time. No, that bloke Conan Doyle had him pegged. What did he call him? “The worst of a bad bunch”, that was it. He was wrong about the bunch, but right about Lestrade.’
‘I’m not sure that’s quite right, sir,’ Lyall ventured. ‘I think you’ll find ...’
‘You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag without a ball of twine and a lot of help,’ Blevvins snapped. ‘And another thing ...’
The door crashed back and a youngish man in a tweed coat and Homburg rushed in. ‘Blevvins, why aren’t you in the basement?’
‘Er ...’ The sergeant dithered.
‘Tait and Lyall?’
‘Yessir.’
‘I’m Inspector Kane. Whatever this man has told you, forget it. Come on; Superintendent Lestrade is in the mortuary.’
And so he was. The world’s second greatest detective was sitting on a green canvas chair, his parchment features lit by the dim and flaring lamps. There were introductions all round when the Yard men arrived.
‘How’s the leg, guv’nor?’ Kane asked. He was a competent copper was John Kane, curly black hair, grim jaw, sense of humour to match. He was smart, resourceful and honest, and Sholto Lestrade wondered again what on earth he was doing at Scotland Yard.
‘Floats like a butterfly since the cast came off yesterday,’ Lestrade told him. ‘But it stings like a b. I thought I’d pop into the West End, get my trousers refitted and would you believe it, first day off my crutches and a woman dies in my arms.’
‘Had you broken your leg, sir?’ Lyall asked, trying to make small talk and not look at the corpse on the slab.
‘My, my,’ Lestrade murmured, taking in his man. ‘Got a good one here, then, John. Deducting with the best of ’em. Yes, young man. Twice in fact. The first time I fell off the Titanic, like you do. The second time I was knocked off a park bench by my daughter. There was no malice in it, of course.’
‘The Titanic ...’ Tait repeated.
‘Yes, look, it’s rather a long story.’ Lestrade sighed. ‘And there are more pressing matters – like Mrs Millichip here.’
‘Ah.’ Kane swept off his Homburg. ‘The corpus delicti. I wondered when you’d introduce us. What’s the score, guv’nor?’
Lestrade leaned back in the chair, clasping his hands across his waistcoat. ‘Well, it’s been rather a trying morning one way and another,’ he said. ‘If I tell you old Doc Hennessey is down with his usual ...’
‘Oh, God, no – it isn’t?’ Kane wailed, peering at the mortal remains.
Lestrade nodded and caught the mystified expressions on the faces of the rookies. ‘The locum police surgeon here is Dr Benjamin Wentworth, known to all and sundry as the Doc Brief. You ask the man for all the detail he can give you and he’s short to the point of dwarfism. “Cause of death?” I asked. “Stab,” he said. “Where?” I cried – you see, it’s catching. “Heart,” was his lengthy rejoinder. “Weapon?” I queried. “Knife,” he proliferated. Then he went to lunch.’
‘What do we know then, guv?’ Kane was looking at the dark, elliptical wound below the flabby left breast, the pale nipple lolling outwards. ‘This looks neat.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Lestrade nodded. ‘I’ve always maintained, if you want to kill somebody, do it in a pea-souper. I was close enough to see who did this, John, and I didn’t see a bloody thing.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Oxford Street. Harry Bandicoot had insisted I go to his tailors – Proon and Ledbeater of St James’s. The doctor had told me to exercise the leg, so I found myself strolling.’
‘You were strolling along Oxford Street.’ Kane couldn’t help checking. ‘Having been to St James’s?’
‘No, I was going to St James’s. Twelve stone of Mrs Millichip in my lap rather scotched all that.’
‘Were you going East or West?’
‘Er ... West.’
‘Towards Marble Arch?’
‘John!’ Lestrade’s voice rose for an instant. ‘If I remember my history lessons at old Mr Poulson’s Academy for the Sons of Nearly Respectable Gentlefolk, the Inquisition was in Spain, not Vine Street.’
‘Sorry, guv.’ Kane grinned. ‘It’s just that ... well, what happened?’
‘Damned if I know.’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘There weren’t many people about, of course, on account of the fog. Odd how sounds change then, isn’t it? I barely heard the tram she got off.’
‘She got off a tram?’
‘Oh, yes. The local beat man saw it all.’
‘He did?’
Lestrade nodded, then shook his head. ‘Not exactly. Name of Tressider. Brain like a differencing machine. He saw the old girl get off the Number Sixteen, hit the pavement at a trot and collide with her killer.’
‘Can he describe him?’
‘Ah.’ Lestrade smiled. ‘Constable Tressider is a sharp operator, Inspector. Commendations as long as a felt want, but, he only just passed the physical, eye-wise.’
‘Yet he saw her get off the tram?’
‘Felt, more accurately,’ Lestrade said. ‘She landed on his toe and caught him a hefty one around the penalty area with her handbag.’
‘How did he react?’
‘Well, naturally, he assumed she was a Suffragette and was about to frogmarch her off to the nick for a spot of the old tea and biscuits, when he realized that it was an accident and let her go on her merry way. At least, it was merry for a few seconds more. It can’t have been longer than a minute before whoever it was stabbed her – clean thrust, single-edged knife – and she fell forward; on to me, in fact.’
‘And no one came past you, in the fog, I mean?’ Kane asked.
Lestrade shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I tried to catch her as she went down and somebody shouted “Call the police”. I hadn’t time to tell him I was the police when Constable Tressider doubled back – at the double, of course. He called an ambulance, but what with the fog it was half an hour before they found us. She was dead as a doorstop by then, so we brought her here. Sorry it’s your patch.’
‘All in a day’s work, guv.’ Kane shrugged. ‘Anything known?’
‘The briefest of rummages in her handbag revealed her name and address. She was a publican – worth quite a few bob, I shouldn’t wonder. Kept the Phlebotomist’s Arms in Chiswick.’ Lestrade ferreted in his inside pocket. ‘Her card.’
Kane checked the address, nodding to himself. ‘Nobody’s done next of kin, I suppose?’ he asked.
‘Nobody’s had time. With this fog, I doubt you’d make Chiswick by week Thursday.’
‘You’re right.’ Kane sighed. ‘Still, “a policeman’s lot”. Tait, Lyall, back on the wagon. We’re going West.’ Kane looked again at the dead woman, the full hips, the multiplicity of chins. ‘Clean thrust,’ he murmured. ‘Single edge.’
‘That’s right, John.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Any thoughts?’
‘No, sir,’ the inspector admitted. ‘Not at the moment. When do you expect to be back, sir? At the Yard, I mean?’
‘When the fog lifts, John,’ Lestrade said, smiling. ‘When the fog lifts.’
THE FOG DIDN’T LIFT that January. The evil, swirling blackness gave way to a wet winter, and biting winds. ‘Too cold for snow,’ said the Meteorological Office, checking their dangling bits of seaweed. And they were right.
In Michigan, a surgeon implanted a dog’s brain into a man, only to find the operation a failure – the man was barking mad. On February 5th, they found the bodies of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions, stiff and cold in the Arctic wastes, only eleven miles from the nearest base camp. ‘For God’s sake, look after our people.’ But the deaths of some brave men did not deter the women who were suffragettes and Mr Lloyd George’s house at Walton Heath was blown sky-high by one of their bombs on the 19th.
And on the day that Lestrade returned to his old office, wedged between the latrine and the broom cupboard, they found, in Sardinia, several tons of boxes, which Lord Nelson had amassed for his Trafalgar campaign. The archaeologists had to concede that, though the rum was still pretty good, the weevils were past their best.
By that day, John Kane had interviewed everybody he could find in connection with the murder of Millicent Millichip. It all looked quite impressive, fluttering in the draught on his office wall and it caught the eye of Superintendent Lestrade.
The guv’nor looked the picture of health, all gamminess gone. And if he didn’t exactly spring up the stairs two at a time in Mr Shaw’s former Opera House, that perhaps had more to do with the fact that he had just stared his sixtieth birthday in the face and had turned away quickly from his own reflection. Sergeant ‘Buildings’ Peabody had saluted him at the front desk as usual and all was right with the world.
‘Well, Inspector.’ The guv’nor sat himself down in Kane’s office uninvited. ‘You’ll have trained up your lads by now. Who’s the teaboy?’
The words were no sooner from his lips than Constable Lyall was at his elbow, a handleless mug on a tray.
‘Good.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Good. And the biscuits ...?’
Tait was ahead of him, sliding a plate of Bath Olivers across Kane’s desk. Lestrade chose one, felt it with his fingers, sniffed it, dunked it in his tea. ‘Excellent,’ he purred and caught the dripping biscuit just in time. ‘It’s good to be back, gentlemen. My Fanny bakes a cake like no one else in the world, but a good cup of Rosie and an Oliver of a morning is something a man could die for. Right, John. Fill me in on the Millichip case.’
KANE HAD IT DOWN TO one of three men and he’d seen them all. There was George Potter, whose family had made artificial limbs since the Peninsular War. In fact, those three rather natty hinged jobs worn (though never simultaneously) by Lord Uxbridge after Waterloo were all lovingly hand-crafted by the Potters. And old One-leg was gratitude itself, able to ride, dance and get his leg over just like the old days. George still carried His Lordship’s complimentary letter in his wallet. He had come to know Millicent Millichip when Albert Millichip was still alive. He had loved her then, but George was a gentleman and he’d admired her from afar. After Albert’s demise, however, and a suitable period of mourning, he’d been round the Phlebotomist’s Arms, Chiswick with a bunch of flowers and a proposal of marriage ‘when the time was right’.
