Lestrade and the Magpie by M. J. Trow

Author:M. J. Trow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
Published: 2022-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

IT HAD BEEN SOME TIME since John Kane had visited Lestrade’s house in Surrey. Actually, it was Fanny’s house, as it had been her father’s. And so Sholto Lestrade, survivor of everything the world could throw at him, had at last come home.

The four of them sat around the blazing fire in the library where red, leather-bound rows of The Police Gazette stood spine by spine with A Hundred and One Things a Retired Police Superintendent Ought to Know, Volume Thirteen. Fanny flitted in and out with oatmeal goodies and lashings of steaming cocoa.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a brandy, Macclesfield?’ Lestrade asked.

‘I’m not sure Mrs Macclesfield would approve, sir,’ the sergeant answered.

Lestrade shook his head. Six foot two of upright bloke and totally under his wife’s thumb.

‘Sholto,’ Fanny swiped him round the head with a napkin, ‘get your foot off the fender.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind us pinning bits of paper all over your wall, Mrs Lestrade?’ Kane asked, dunking his goodie for the umpteenth time.

‘I’m used to it, Mr Kane,’ she said. ‘And it’s all in a good cause,’ smiling at Emma. ‘Besides, I have to see to Uncle Gideon. He had some tapioca for tea and I just know we’re all going to pay the price for that. Emma, darling, Madison is standing by in the kitchen with gallons more cocoa. Goodnight, gentlemen.’

Kane and Macclesfield stood up as she swept graciously from the room.

‘Fine figure of a woman, guv’nor,’ Kane nodded. ‘If I may be permitted to say so.’

‘You may, John.’ Lestrade was quite prepared to accept such compliments. It helped that Fanny was twenty years his junior. ‘Now, Edwin the Bedouin. What do we know?’

‘Norroy,’ said Kane, ‘over to you.’

‘Soheiya A1 Haroun,’ Macclesfield stood to the left of the paper-covered wall. ‘We don’t know very much.’

‘It’s not every day that a Bedouin Arab in full dress is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, Sergeant.’ Lestrade didn’t really have to remind him. Without the agility of John Kane, the ex-superintendent left his goodie that fraction too long in the cocoa and it plopped into the murky depths.

‘No one seems to have seen him, sir, not since he arrived at the Port of London.’

‘Which was when?’

‘Last Wednesday.’

‘Right. So he’d been in the country nearly a week. Where had he been? Who had he talked to? Did he just tie his camel to a nearby bush and pitch his tent?’

‘Guv’nor,’ Kane reminded him, ‘you know the problem. It was luck that Norroy here was the first plain-clothes man to view the body. That gave us a day’s grace.’

‘By the time I’d done the paperwork, three,’ Macclesfield explained with a wink.

‘Good man.’ Lestrade knew carefully planned dilatoriness when he saw it.

‘But then Patrick Quinn moved in and it was hush-hush, softlee, softlee catchee coldee,’ Kane said. ‘I was ordered to pass all relevant papers over to him.’

‘Including Allenby’s address?’ Lestrade was fishing for the soggy remains of his goodie.

‘Yes. But I gather you got to him first?’

‘I gather so,’ Lestrade said, ‘in that he made no mention of any other police inquiries.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.