Lestrade and the Devil's Own by M. J. Trow

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

8

E

mma Bandicoot-Lestrade came home that month from M. Le Petomaine’s Finishing School in Geneva. She was nineteen years old and mercifully had inherited her mother’s looks. There was none of the sallow face and parchment skin about Emma. Her eyes were clear grey and her hair a soft gold and many were the young men whose eyes swivelled right and left as she glided up the theatre stairs with Fanny, who was quietly hoping, as more mature women will, that they might be taken for sisters.

Lestrade was not with them. He was at his second home, on the second floor of Scotland Yard, where he had often slept jammed between the shoe-boxes and the filing cabinet. It was for that reason, among others, that all those years ago, when little Emma was just a babe in arms, he had taken her by the Great Western with its newly standardized gauge, to Huish Episcopi and to Bandicoot Hall. There would be nights, he knew, and days, when he would never see his little girl at all. So he had given her to his old friends Harry and Letitia Bandicoot, who had all the time and all the money and all the love in the world.

That was a long time ago, Lestrade mused as he met his golden girl at the station and she flew into his arms. He was glad he had given her to the Bandicoots and that that gift had turned out to be a loan; because here she was, home now and his, full of stories of what an old duffer Le Petomaine was and this or that ski-instructor. He held her to him for a moment, taking in her fragrance. Then she was gone, laughing with Fanny and tickling Madison’s bald head as she always had.

‘See you later,’ Lestrade said and whistled up a cab. He’d forgotten his wallet. Emma had lent him five bob.

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