Free Brigade: The Further Adventures of Inspector Lestrade by M. J. Trow Page A

Althorpe’s toy shop. He damn near won, too. I can see ’im now, Mr Lestrade, smilin’ as ’e give me the doll, ’is knuckles all red and raw and ’is face a mass of cuts. I loved ’im, Inspector. ’E was a darling old man,’ and she brushed a single tear from her cheek. ‘No,’ she breathed in the sea air sharply to recover herself, ‘I’m not surprised ’e died the way ’e did, though I’ll wager – not that I do wager, y’understand – they didn’t give ’im a fighting chance.’
    Lestrade ignored the fact that Mrs Hopkins was contradicting herself. It was one of the more controlled manifestations of grief. He’d seen it before, countless times. Why was it, he mused to himself, that even before the season began, they exercised donkeys on these beaches? And he shook his trouser leg with the resignation of a man who did not always look where he was going.
    ‘I ’adn’t seen ’im in, oh, five or six years,’ Mrs Hopkins was going on. ‘Well, you know ’ow it is when you’ve a family. My own children are nearly full grown now and there’s John, my ’usband. Have you a family, Inspector?’
    Lestrade hadn’t.
    The couple turned for the cheap hotel in the wrong part of town where the Hopkinses were staying. Lestrade watched the darkness settle over the sea before he began his journey back.
    ‘Can we take ’im ’ome, soon, Inspector? The old man, t’York? ’E’d want that. We’ll bury ’im in ’is native peat. ’E’d like that,’ Lestrade heard Emma Hopkins say again, in his mind.
    ‘Yes, you can take him back,’ Lestrade found himself saying aloud, hoping suddenly that there was no one nearby He picked himself up from the sand of the cliff walk and made his way back to the town, the great perpendicular tower o the church black and silent now in the gathering gloom Beyond that, the sibilance of the sea, a band of mauve-grey under a purpling sky. But Lestrade, as ever, had other thing on his mind.
    Blogg had told him that the Tuddenham tribe could usually be found in Cromer of a Friday night, in the tap room of the Cuttlefish, a far less salubrious hostelry than the one in which Bradstreet still lay, trying, no doubt, to make the bed lie still under him. It was one of the last refuges of the old Cromer, local Cromer, the Cromer that was the fishing village before the well-to-do began to spend their summers there. The place was crowded enough, with brawny good-natured fishermen and labourers, the smell of the salt and the brackish beaches lost in the all-consuming ether of Norfolk beer - a pint of which Lestrade ordered and took to one of the quieter corners, with his crab supper.
    The girl who served him didn’t seem too anxious to help him by pointing out the Tuddenhams, but in a few minutes it became obvious that Lestrade had found his quarry. He recognised the signs, the hurried glances in his direction, the lips moving silently behind cupped hands, the emptying of the bar and the tables around. And the final signal, the abrupt end of the fiddle music in the corner. Lestrade summed up the situation. His back was to the wall, a crackling log fire to his right. He had one good hand, but the other would not serve him well in a fight.
    He transferred the pewter mug to his left hand and noiselessly slipped his right into the pocket of his Donegal draped over the settle behind him. He felt warm brass and waited. Four men, rough seafaring types, stood before him, all bearing a vague resemblance to one another, watching him in silence.
    ‘Mr Tuddenham?’ Lestrade ventured.
    ‘Yes,’ the four chorused.
    ‘Who wants to know?’ The eldest of them edged forward, elbowing aside the rest.
    ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’
    ‘Where?’
    A growl and a ripple of laughter. The fiddler flashed his bow suddenly across his instrument, as though to punctuate the joke.
    ‘I would like to ask you a few questions,’ Lestrade went on, as the merriment subsided.
    ‘Oh, ar? What about?’