Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (24 page)

Lestrade somehow found the door handle and fell out into the corridor. He reached the stairs as he heard the alarm bells ring and a terrible, half-human, half-beast - ‘Ipsissimus.’ Nothing more.

End Game

There were odder sights on that sunny October morning than an 11th Hussar in obsolete uniform, jacket open, overalls torn, face and hair scorched and blackened with fire, walking purposefully towards Scotland Yard, but one would have been hard put to it to find one.

But something nearly as odd was walking towards Lestrade as he neared the river.

‘Lestrade – Good God, not another commissioner’s fancy dress ball?’

Lestrade’s heart sank. Of all the people to meet on one’s way to twenty years in Pentonville – Dr John Watson, sometime of Baker Street.

‘Good morning, Doctor. I really can’t stop.’

‘One moment, one moment, I must tell you this. I met a young chap called Friese-Greene the other day.’

‘A refrigerator manufacturer?’ asked Lestrade.

‘No, no, a film maker. He’s just taken out a patent on what he calls stereoscopic cinematography. It’s rather like the wheel of wonder, only better.’

‘Fascinating.’ Lestrade passed on.

‘But the best part is,’ Watson continued, ‘he says he can make moving pictures of one of my books … well, mine and Conan Doyle’s. Can you imagine it? Moving pictures of the great Sherlock Holmes himself!’

‘Who in their right minds would pay money to witness such a spectacle?’ sighed Lestrade. ‘Or do you pay them?’

‘Why, anyone would be delighted, delighted.’

By now quite a crowd had gathered around the oddly scorched soldier and the gesticulating general practitioner.

‘And actors will be queuing up for the honour and privilege of portraying him on the cinematograph. Pennington. Irving, even.’

‘Madam.’ Lestrade buttonholed a curious lady with husband and child. ‘May I ask, how old is your lovely boy?’

‘He’s thirteen months,’ she answered in a clipped, unusual accent.

‘My family and I are here on holiday,’ said the father, ‘from Johannesburg.’

‘Here you are then, Watson. Someone with just the right mental skills to play the Great Detective.’

‘That child?’ said Watson disparagingly.

‘Basil is a very bright baby.’ His mother was on the defensive.

‘Oh, er … of course. I had no intention of giving offence, Mrs … er …’

‘Rathbone.’

Watson tipped his hat.

‘You see, Lestrade …’

But Lestrade had gone.

There was to be no pussy-footing around this time. No sneaking in the back way. Straight up the steps and into the front door of the Yard marched Lestrade.

‘Morning, sir,’ Sergeant Dixon greeted him, as though it were perfectly natural for a suspended inspector, wanted for the murder of another inspector, and for attacking a Foreign Important Dignitary, to saunter in to work done up like a nigger minstrel.

‘Got you … sir,’ said Dew, leaping forward with one hand on Lestrade’s collar, the other on his wrist.

‘Not now, constable,’ Nimrod Frost bellowed from the cloakroom door. ‘Got it at last, have you, Dew, your great collar? Yes, I can see the book title now –
I Caught Lestrade
. Except he hasn’t done anything. Now be a good chap and put the inspector down, there’s a good lad.’

‘Sorry, Walter,’ grinned Lestrade. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’

‘Yes, sir … er … no hard feelings, sir?’

‘A cup of tea, Dew. I’ll be down for it later.’

‘Yes, sir,’ and the crestfallen constable scuttled off to do what he did best.

‘I’m glad you’ve lost some weight, Lestrade,’ said Frost ‘or I doubt we’d both get in this lift.’

They travelled in silence to the first floor.

‘There’s some sorting out to be done, Inspector. But first, there are two gentlemen who’d like a word with you.’

Frost kicked open his office door to reveal a tall, dandyfied gentleman with a gardenia in his buttonhole.

‘Chief Inspector Abberline.’ Lestrade grinned through gritted teeth. The man with him, shorter, stouter, wearing the black patrol jacket of the River Police.

‘Athelney Jones,’ said Lestrade.

‘You’ve been taking our names in vain, Lestrade.’ Abberline pompously rocked on his heels, then broke into a broad grin. ‘But I suppose it was in a good cause,’ and he nodded to Frost as he bade him good day.

‘Good to have you back, Lestrade.’ Jones slapped him heartily on the shoulder as he left the office.

‘Now then, you’d better sit down and tell me all about it,’ said Frost.

‘It’s difficult to know where to begin, sir.’

‘How about with the Golden Dawn?’

‘Ah, Beeson told you about that?’

‘Beeson? Good God, no. I don’t listen to retired coppers, Lestrade. They can get you into all sorts of trouble. No, I’ve known about the Golden Dawn all along. We grocers’ kids from Grantham are nobody’s fools, you know.’

Well, thought Lestrade, I’ve arrived. He’ll be offering me a cigar next.

‘Have a cigar, Lestrade.’

‘You’ve known about the Golden Dawn all along?’

‘Yes, why do you think I sent you to Mawnan all those months ago? We got a tip-off. Anonymous, of course. Aren’t they all? It simply said that a shepherd was going to be killed. When you found that hyena thing, I assumed that was it, but the killings went on.’

‘I suspect your tip-off was from a hapless young man named Jacob Crowley. I assumed William Lamb had no connection with the other deaths. Why was a warrant put out for my arrest?’

‘To trap Gregson. I’d had my suspicions about him from the start. Too fanatical. Too suspicious. Of everything. Everybody. That sort of man has something to hide. That’s why I sent you undercover to Manchester. Official enquiries, great feet, anything like that would have frightened him off. I wanted him to dig himself in deep. He was a neophyte, a novice if you like, in the Order of Golden Dawn.’

‘Are you seriously expecting me to believe, sir, that Tobias Gregson worshipped the Devil?’

‘No, Lestrade, he worshipped the pound note. Or to be more precise, lots of them. As far as we know, the Golden Dawn is a society of cranks, like the Flat Earth Society. Only occasionally, along comes a maniacal family like the Crow-leys and all hell breaks loose. For most of the Golden Dawn, it is a matter of power, politics, big business. Things you and I don’t understand, Lestrade.’

‘So you knew about the Crowleys too?’

‘No, not in detail. Until I had a visit not an hour ago from a Doctor Crosse. I believe you’ve met him?’

‘And who paid Gregson?’

‘Ah, there you have me. Whoever paid him wanted you out of the way. Off the case entirely. Hence this trumped-up nonsense about the Kaiser and hence my need to play along with it. Mind you, you kept out of my constables’ way fairly effectively. Calling yourself Abberline at Bow Street took some nerve.’

‘So the Golden Dawn still exists?’

‘Yes, it does. We only found the tip of the iceberg here, Lestrade. Most of it is in the murky depths somewhere, but we do what we can.’

‘And in those depths you didn’t suspect Charlo?’

‘Charlo?’ Frost’s composure was rattled. ‘What has he to do with this?’

‘You will find his charred body in whatever’s left of the asylum wing at Chelsea Hospital, sir.’

Frost blinked as realisation dawned. ‘You mean, he and Crowley …?’

‘… were the same man. Yes, sir.’

Frost’s lower lip threatened to disappear below his cravat for a moment. ‘I must confess, Lestrade, I never gave him a thought. Oh, I found his chronic absences suspect and I began to doubt my judgement. But I just assumed he was work-shy, a hypochondriac. Charlo, a neophyte of the Golden Dawn! No wonder he didn’t look well. To be candid, Lestrade, I had my doubts about Bradstreet, but this … And I gave him to you as your go-between with me. My dear chap, I could have been the death of you.’

Lestrade was just about magnanimous enough to wave that aside. ‘What does Ipsissimus mean?’

‘Ah, Ipsissimus. As I said, I don’t know much about the Dawn, but Ipsissimus is the Top Dog, the leader of the whole stinking lot. They aren’t all madmen, they aren’t all Satanists, but they play a dirty game and they are probably everywhere.’

‘Sort of Freemasons?’ ventured Lestrade.

‘If I’m right, the members of the Golden Dawn would make the Masons look like choirboys. Which reminds me, when is my next Lodge meeting?’ Frost consulted his diary. ‘You know the definition of Ipsissimus, Lestrade? Evil beyond all comprehension. That frightens me, Lestrade. That frightens me.’

‘I’ve an idea you know who Ipsissimus is, sir,’ said the inspector.

‘I was talking to the commissioner the other day. He had been talking to the Home Secretary —’

‘Mr Churchill?’ interjected Lestrade.

Frost ignored him. ‘Let’s just say I have a few ideas.’

‘May I hear them, sir? After all, I have been through rather a lot on this case. You see, there is one thing I don’t understand. Donald Crowley came back to England in eighteen-seventy, but it was twenty-three years before he began to kill, before Lamb’s death. Why the delay? Why did he wait to carry out “the prophesy of the Golden Dawn”?’

Frost looked at him hard. He opened the door and checked the corridor outside. ‘Let’s just say this, Lestrade. You breathe one word of this to a living soul and I’ll have you off the Force, I swear it. All I have is conjecture. Circumstance. Absolutely nothing that would stand up in a court of law. Ipsissimus is not one man, Lestrade. At least, he is a man who changes with another post, simultaneously held by the incumbent. I am not going to tell you what that post is, Inspector. Suffice to say that the residence that goes with it is Number Ten in a certain street by the river.’

‘You mean …’

‘As that office changes, so does Ipsissimus. It has been so since the days of Walpole.’

‘I still don’t see, sir.’

‘Only one man in that post has refused to assume the title and role of Ipsissimus, Lestrade. The man who currently holds it. Educated at Eton and Oxford, one of the ablest lieutenants of the late Mr Peel; he has a perfectly hideous wife and spends a great deal of his time chopping down trees.’

‘The GOM?’ said the inspector.

‘Lestrade!’ Frost clapped an hysterical hand over his subordinate’s mouth, eyes swivelling manically round the room. Then, in a whisper, ‘He’s on his way out, Lestrade. The man who has held the position by the river four times this century. He probably knows as much about the Dawn as any of its members and you know what a confounded Christian he is? Well, it’s my belief that before he goes – and he has said he will not stand again – it’s my belief he’ll speak out. Denounce the Dawn and all its members.’

‘Then he is in danger?’

‘Yes. Don’t worry. I’m working on that one.’

‘And Ipsissimus?’

‘Take your pick. The title must have been transferred. I’m sure your knowledge of the current political situation is as good as mine. They’ll bring the’ – again the whisper – ‘GOM down soon. Ireland. The Naval Estimates. It won’t matter what. They’re preparing for that day, Lestrade. Whoever the new Ipsissimus is, he’s a new broom, sweeping clean. Donald Crowley represented a cobweb. There were men alive – the men of F Troop – who had knowledge which could, in the right hands, draw attention to the Dawn and all its machinations. These men had to be silenced. And madmen like the Crowleys were the very ones to do it.’

‘The irony was,’ said Lestrade, ‘F Troop had forgotten. The Charge on the following day had pushed what they had seen at Kadikoy out of their minds. And what did they see? On patrol in a hostile land? Far from home? And at night? None of these deaths need have happened at all.’

‘Lestrade,’ said Frost, ‘I have said more than enough. You’ve been playing chief inspectors for too long. Now go and get your tea.’

Lestrade turned to go.

‘Oh, and Sholto,’ said Frost softly; ‘apart from the GOM, you are the first, as far as I know, to break the Dawn’s defences. We may both be marked men, you and I. Mind how you go.’

‘Oh, Sholto, all I heard from you was “Stay with relatives. Stop. Away for some time. Stop.” I wasn’t there when you needed me.’

Lestrade reached over to the lovely warm body of the woman beside him.

‘You are now, Sarah. That’s the important thing. And God, I need you now.’

He kissed her cascading blonde hair where it tumbled over her bare shoulders and full breasts.