Free The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade by M J Trow

out.’
    ‘The pedlar used the front door. Was that not unusual?’
    Again, Mrs Drum had not thought of that. Again, she concluded that it was.
    Lestrade thought now that he knew how the murder was accomplished. And he knew who – or at least he had a description of the man. But he needed to prove it, and to that end he took the protesting Mrs Drum along with the complaining Beddoes back to Wildboarclough Vicarage.
    He was in time to see a cab leaving with Watts-Dunton and Swinburne and he thought he heard a superfluity of whip-cracking, but he couldn’t be sure. The Reverend Wemyss was somewhat peeved to see the return of Mrs Drum, but Lestrade assured him it was necessary and she would not be there long.
    It was nearly dark now and the housekeeper and the policeman ascended the stairs by the light of an oil-lamp. Lestrade once again insisted on overriding the Vicar’s newfound aversion to naked flames. Harriet Wemyss’ body had been removed to Congleton mortuary, accompanied by Swallow and one or two curious cats. Lestrade viewed the landing area where Mrs Drum had found the blazing girl. There were bad scorch marks on the carpet, through to the floorboards underneath. They formed a visible trail from a door down the corridor towards the dead girl’s bedroom.
    ‘What is that room?’ asked Lestrade.
    ‘The Chapel of Ease, sir,’ replied Mrs Drum, showing signs of being overcome once again at standing on The Very Spot Where Poor Miss Harriet Died. Lestrade opened the door on to a conventional, middle-class lavatory, complete with blue-flowered porcelain bowl. Much to the distaste of Mrs Drum, he peered into the pan. There was a coloured film floating on the water, he noticed, as he lowered his lamp towards it and burn marks on the wooden seat.
    ‘Has this lavatory been used since the accident?’
    ‘Why, no, sir. Inspector Swallow told us not to touch or move anything. There is another on the other side of the house, as well as the privy in the yard.’
    Lestrade was grateful that Swallow was enough of a policeman for that.
    ‘Stand back, Mrs Drum, you are in for another shock.’
    Lestrade poised himself, then flipped a lighted match into the pan. It exploded with a roar as a column of livid flame ripped upwards, illuminating the room, the landing and the terrified Mrs Drum.
    Lestrade threw towels over the fire and it died, slowly, reluctantly.
    ‘Is that the noise you heard, Mrs Drum, before the screaming started?’
    Mrs Drum was standing back against the wall, visibly quivering, nodding silently the while.
    ‘In the kitchen you would have not heard the cigarette – the furtive, clandestine cigarette that Miss Harriet was smoking – hit the water. But it wasn’t water, Mrs Drum. Or at least the surface of it was not. It was petroleum spirit, instantly inflammable to a match or a lit cigarette. The poor creature must have gone up like a torch, and in her shock and agony, must have rushed headlong towards the sanctuary of her bedroom. But such was the power of the flames that she never got there. Not in this world.’
    By now, the Reverend Wemyss, startled by the noise of the flames and the cry of terror from Mrs Drum, had joined the couple in the almost total darkness on the stairs.
    ‘Come, sir,’ Lestrade said to him. ‘You and I must have a little talk.’
    It did not unduly bother Lestrade that in telling Wemyss all he knew he was betraying an implied confidence to Miss Spink. His priorities were right, he felt sure. What was domestic tension compared with murder? The Vicar of Wildboarclough listened with an evertightening lip to the whole sorry, bizarre story. He could shed no light. He knew of no man. He assumed that Harriet’s increased visits to Macclesfield were due to an increasing interest in the newly extended lending library. It had never occurred to him that his daughter had become a libertine and that she had been seduced into the ways of the devil by an anonymous ‘seducteur’. He