This is a chapter that should have wound up in the TEST OF PROFESSIONALS: LEAP YEAR bit, but never quite got stuck in. It seemed a bit rushed, but it bothered me...so here it is.
As a reminder, Crimping-den is slang for a shanghai roost. They existed by drugging and impressing unwary sailors into cheap labor. A simple conversation with Clea Cheatham gave Lestrade the unexpected insight that the Crimping-den the Yard was searching for was in fact hiding under the name and reputation of a respectable establishment.
-
Gregson had taken in Lestrade's notion with a bald-faced look--the kind of unblinking gaze that suggested large, hungry serpents come time for the weekly feeding at the zoo. As his rival watched, the big man's pupil's contracted, dilated, and then assumed more normal proportions.
"The Kelpie." He said flatly. "That's the only place that would make sense."
"The Kelpie?" Lestrade was taken aback. "That's just an old boarding-house run by the Holesapples--they're so harmless they're a joke--the old man probably fought for Lord Nelson!" Assuming he was that young...
"It's the only one that makes sense." Gregson stroked his jaw with a growing frown--no one, not even the Home Secretary, could imitate the frightening look of Tobias Gregson when under a deep cloud of thought. "It's so respectable it squeaks. Always has. Who's about to question an old Navy man decorated for bravery in three wars, with a Quaker wife? The worst thing they've ever done was kidnap abused cats for the ASPCA, and that was back when they were in their hale and hearty seventh decade." Gregson drummed his fingertips on the desktop, vibrating loose papers. "They were in financial difficulties a year ago, weren't they?"
"Yes...a year ago." Lestrade agreed, beginning to get a glimmer of understanding. "They split some of their boarding-rooms and charged lower fees to get more rates in...something to do with the fact that the level with the waterfront was being used as a small warehouse, and the assessor changed their tax status."
"See? How many boarding houses on the water-front are also doubling for storage? It's perfect."
Lestrade conceded it made sense when lined up against the double crimes of missing sailors, and missing ship-goods. "But can it be proven?"
Gregson grinned, slowly. "Give me some time with Youghal. The man can track an ant across foolscap."
-
'Some time' had turned out to be only three days. Youghal looked half his age and acted the same, but his mind was attuned to the jungle of records the way a scent-hound could run a trail under a red herring. Gregson had given the good news by dropping the one incriminating slip of paper down in the desk before his eyes.
"Hmn. That doesn't really resemble the signature of the Senior Holesapple." Lestrade lifted an eyebrow.
"Man's perfectly literate." Gregson nodded. "Whoever pretended to be him on the paperwork wasn't. We're going to have to do this careful. The Holesapples are probably not even owners of the Kelpie now, but they're being kept on as figureheads...for all we know, they're being held prisoner."
"And the poor sailors think it's still the same old, friendly, safe place they've always gone to." Lestrade scowled. "This is rotten, Gregson. When are we going in?"
"I've got some of the CID posing as idle hands inside." Gregson lowered the boom. "Get some rest. You're coming with us to the raid tonight."
-
Despite everything, there was no denying things had gone rather well that day. Lestrade closed the door to the Main Office after him in a pleasant enough mood, though the weather was picking up for a bit of wind off the estuary. Hiding a Crimping-den in plain sight along the waterfront. Who would have thought a criminal would think of such an old trick in this day and age?
And yet it made perfect sense. Sailors weren't stupid; reckless, yes, reckless to a fault but not stupid, and canny captains never gave them all their pay at once, knowing the first night on shore was all about the drinking and bragging and women. If they wanted the rest of their pay, they'd come back on the morrow with aching heads and tend to post-party details such as squaring debts and their families' living accounts.
It was possible, he mused (ignoring the half-hearted screaming of cab-drivers as they fought over a funeral fare), that whoever was in charge of the Crimping-den merely thought no one would think of such an old chestnut. It wasn't normally a tactic employed by the small crooks and penny-feists of the underworld.
Well, fifty years ago, to be certain…back in the 1830's there had been quite the run on such activities, and it had all turned out to be orchestrated by a very clever and low-profile merchant who used a mask of respectability to hide some of the worst escapades London had ever seen. Before their times, yes—Lestrade had been born almost ten years after the apex of that particular mischief...but the cases had been infamous; the sort of thing discussed at night over low fires and even lower voices, dark with intrigue and tone.
He wondered what Gregson would do after this. Probably send Youghal back on the paper-trail to see what else the two of them could find…
A brief wind blew around the corner and passed him, scattering a sheaf of old theatre-tickets, battered paper bags and playbills of music that were no doubt ignoring copyright laws. Just as quickly, a knot of hard-ups1 raced by, following the wind and stuffing the papers they could find into their bags. Most of them were children; the old ones didn't have the energy or the ability to chase papers for a few ha'pence. Still, whatever they made for the day's labours would be turned over to the street-buyers, and that would go home to the stew-pot their elders were nursing in the mews and alleys that the police ignored. They lived one day to the next, and accepted nothing better for themselves. A quarter of the entire population of London was worse off than themselves, and they brooked no pity; wouldn't understand it if it was put to them.
Lestrade paused at the lip of the corner, and went from holding his bowler firmly about his head to pulling it off in automatic respect as a hearse clopped by, lacquered and varnished to the last quarter-inch. Even the matched black horses looked as though they'd been inked and then covered in shellac. Black ostrich plumes bobbed with a jauntiness that completely negated the ponderous look the owners had worked for.
It was then, as he re-donned his hat and prepared to step across the cobblestones that he encountered an all-too familiar young urchin, ragged coat six sizes too large, moth-eaten muffler swallowing his throat, and chalk-smears of every tint from his battered shoes to his massive red ears.
"Toby Irish, I thought you'd be in school today."
Toby Irish faced this observation from authority with not even a blink of his topaz eyes. He merely lifted up the reason for his being on the street: A brace of well-aged roosters that must have passed to the days of their forgetfulness some years ago. Old but in possession of some heft, they must have cleared two stone each. The seven-year old was nearly dwarfed by them.
"I…see." Lestrade permitted an eyebrow to aspire to loftier realms. "By any chance, would you be selling…'little chickens' inside that big coat of yours?"
Toby shook his head, sending a slight cloud of chalk and hen-house dust flying from his fine blond carpet of badly-cropped hair. Probably a flea or two, and some bird-lice went flying as well. He was affronted that a long-standing acquaintance such as the good Inspector would be implying he'd be selling partridges. Everyone knew a license was required, after all!
Not that that had ever stopped Toby's father from some interesting and inventive forays into the costermonger business…game-hawkers were quick on their feet as well as their minds, and there was a good chance the slight threat of danger added a bit of spice to their trade. Still, they never seemed to make ends meet until the holidays, and during Christmas they could clear up three months' worth of expenses in a week. So long as the entire family kept moving and selling and delayed their own holiday until well a fortnight past Boxing Day. It wasn't a perfect life, but it wasn't as destitute as most.
To be truthful, the Yard rather missed Johnson Irish; he'd kept them on their toes and had a tendency to anticipate the future as far as smuggling techniques went--always one step ahead of the latest criminal inspiration, and never violent. To study him was to study the future of sneakiness...But, sadly, he dropped dead of a fatty heart a year ago. His brother Winnie had given up a profitable income carving tatts2 and dutifully resumed the slightly-less illegal reins of the family's livelihood--it wasn't quite the same anymore. Winnie lacked Johnson's imagination and sense of playfulness. Still, Toby bid fair to step into his old father's shoes--and quickly.
Everyone on this side of London knew Toby Irish. When he wasn't 'working' the family trade, he was getting quite a bit more income as one of the most accomplished cocksparrows3 in London. Lestrade had lost count of the number of times Toby had been rounded off the street and sent off to the school his grandmother was paying for at a staggering seven pence a week. It was a complicated scenario in which the said grandmother with an ancient legacy had disowned everyone in the family due to a matrimonial dispute; but her grandchildren were worthy of salvage.
Lestrade wondered if the money she sent every month was no more than a balm on her iron conscience, for as far as he knew, she never personally inquired to see if Toby was getting the lessons she was paying for (which was all going into paying rent in a squalid sort of human chicken-coop off Convent Garden Market). Deep in his heart, he dreaded the boy's future. If the Iron Gram was like any of the old matriarchs he'd met in his line of work, Toby wouldn't ever meet her until the day before she was ready to marry him off to someone she deemed respectable. Then the quality of his education would be revealed. Jehovah's wrath would descend, with tactics inspired from hours of poring over the Old Testament.
"How much for those worn out old birds, Toby?"
Lestrade didn't bat an eye when the boy lifted one finger. "Fair enough. Your usual rate for delivery?" An eager nod was his answer. Lestrade shook his head and since he was officially off-duty, he could afford to linger on the street. Chances were Toby wouldn't pick his pocket; Lestrade faced him at all times to be sure. There was a definite status among the little sparrows who managed the High Standard among thieves.
"Hold a moment there, and you can deliver them to my landlady." Lestrade put one foot up on the kerb-line to use his thigh as an impromptu desk, and penciled in a short missive. "And you'd best mind your manners with Mrs. Collins, you imp. She's been wanting a good dish of coq au vin for several days now. Play your cards right and perhaps she won't try to wash your face for you." Long experience kept Lestrade's expression as stern as a mountain as the boy's face collapsed in horror. He tore off the paper from his note-book and folded the shilling and a tip inside them. "You may set yourself up in a bit of business with Mrs. Collins, you know." He advised in a warning tone as the boy appeared to leap into the street. "Once a month for old birds, she truly enjoys a good dish of coq au vin...but they'd best not be tenderized in someone's fighting ring the night before!"
Toby flipped an 'I-don't-know-what-you're-meaning-sir' grin at the policeman and took off, his normally swift gait awkward and uneven from the weight of the roosters. Lestrade shook his head as the boy soon learned he could scarper off faster with one birds in each hand.
"Inspector Lestrade?"
Just that quickly, the crushing weight of London fell upon the Inspector's shoulders. No, there was no denying that particular voice. He sternly stifled the warning thump in his heart and slowly turned around.
The speaker was taller than he was by a full head without his top hat, and three stone heavier—not all of that in the right places. Further signs of good living were displayed on cuffs starched hard enough to shine (Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be able to write on those cuffs; not without a glass-etcher), a watch that gleamed as brightly as the polished metal head of his walking-stick (carved to look like a Chinese dog), and—as usual—full-spectrum formal dress. From his old-fashioned spats that went up to his knees under his pressed trousers and black coat, from the watch-chain holding a tiny pen and the world's smallest note-book, Powell Madison was back from his well-deserved vacation on the continent.
"Mr. Madison," Lestrade inclined his head with the sort of respect one gave another living human being—and no more than that. "I see you've returned from across the Channel."
The reporter peered at him with a slight sense of confusion through his medium-weight glasses. Between the glasses and the large sweep of curling mustache, the impression was the man was wearing a mask at all times; it made him difficult to read. "You're out a bit late this evening, aren't you, Inspector?"
"Just finishing up some loose ends." Lestrade answered with the tone of voice that suggested he would die before revealing his business to anyone short of the Queen or the Home Secretary. "Are you in need of some police assistance?" A direct question was best with Madison—it saved hours of prevarication. Lestrade was barely able to tolerate the man as it was, but the London Littoral was not a newspaper to be lightly treated, nor its reporters, treated lightly.
Madison paused and genteelly cleaned his glasses with a silk-blended handkerchief. "I thought for a moment I recognized that young boy," he began. With his face exposed, he blinked like a cat in a dust-storm. Lestrade was relieved to see the glasses back in place. "A draughtsman's assistant with the side-walk chalks at the last traveling circus."
That's what the coloured chalk stains were all about, you fool. Lestrade merely shrugged. "It's quite possible. The boys are always looking for a spare method of means."
"Well." Madison resumed his air of business with a sniff. Case closed. "How are things at the Yard, Inspector?"
"As good as ever, I suppose." Caution and experience sent a knot of nerves slowly coiling inside his spinal column.
"Oh? What is the Yard doing about the missing seamen, Mr. Lestrade? Or what about the rash of thieving of the honest businessman's hard-earned stocks? It isn't right to keep this case unsolved, you do realize."
"No, Mr. Madison, I do realize." Just the effort of keeping a bottle-cap on his thoughts (and inclinations) was enough to bring a sweat to Lestrade's face. "But I'm sure you realize, that just as a decent reporter can't reveal his work too soon, nor can a policeman talk too much about the leads they are following. Criminals can read as well as the honest man, and gossip flows even faster."
Madison met that with a lift of the nose, but he was always polite; painfully so. Many were the times Lestrade had mentally begged the man to prove he was human and start yelling.
"I have often thought, sir," Madison went back to the same old argument that had brought them together in the first place, "that the right of the public to know comes first. Who knows how many criminals would be stymied if their actions were common knowledge?"
Lestrade swallowed hard. "I am full aware of your paper's moral stance, Mr. Madison." And thank god, the other papers thought even the Littoral was too inflammatory to work within good taste. "And I respectfully say to you that I have no inclination to go outside the bounds of my duty. I hope you understand that."
Madison poised then, a long moment expanding between them. "I've often felt you made a better Constable than you made an Inspector." He pointed out. There was no anger at this statement; merely an opinion posed as a fact.
"Nevertheless, my promotion was not my decision." Lestrade swallowed down another wave of bitterness. While the other newspapers tended to waver between being sickly sweet in their praises when happy, and vicious when angry, the Littoral was as steady as ship's ballast in their opinions of all the Inspectors that had sadly caught their eye. Gregson was the Littoral's usual favourite; his education and slender but excellent connections was often held up as a tribute to the earnest man. Lestrade was quite a different story, and no one knew why Madison disliked him so much. But unique to all the papers in London—and probably the English speaking world, the Littoral refused to retract any statements, or any opinions. Their much-loved motto to themselves was "consistency."
Madison was the proud creator of his most infamous nickname: "Inspector Plod." In a world where the nickname "Constable Plod" implied long hours and a brain beaten into pudding by grueling physical activity, "Inspector Plod" was even worse. That attitude had not changed one hair. Ever.
They were indeed consistent. Gregson called them "a littoral pain in the neck." He might be the adored child for the paper, but he loathed them as much as anyone else. Possibly more; he had to work with them more than anyone else.
Madison was musing over his lenses. "You still harbour some irrational feelings over my work, sir?"
Lestrade was a moment collecting his voice. "I understood your desire to pursue your story Madison," he said in a voice that was utterly at odds with the rage boiling inside. "But I felt you went outside the bounds of decency when you went to interview my aging parents for your newspaper." Long experience kept him from using more truthful but ruder words. Madison had been a vulture, and that was it. And the Littoral was not a newspaper so much as a very expensive rag that let the higher classes feel smug and superior about themselves.
"I do what I feel is correct." Madison neither admitted or denied any wrong-doing.
It was all very twisted...and if one had that sort of humour, almost amusing. During the Aton Bank Murder Trial, Madison had discovered a small discrepancy in his research into one particular Lestrade's history.
Not that he'd lacked for fodder in his rag...the Littoral was the worst sort of paper as it was, making the Gazette appear to be the height of sobriety.
No paper could resist a delicious scandal; two brothers responsible for the murder of a policeman in a bank robbery. Apprehension on part of a third brother who was a fellow-policeman of the murdered man...how could it ever be overlooked?
Lestrade had perhaps declared unofficial warfare between himself and the Littoral by completely ignoring the tall, expensively dressed representative for a newspaper that was so costly the only way the common man would read it is if they picked it up from the gutter the day after. Facing the fact that his testimony, and his testimony alone would help the jury decide if his brothers were guilty of murder had taken all his fibre. He hadn't even noticed the stuffy swell. And then when the English jury declared one brother to hang, the other to spend the rest of his life in an asylum...Lestrade had cared even less.
His parents had chosen that moment to disown him. Lestrade had been too exhausted to even care at the time.
For months the horror had inked up untold reams and rolls of newsprint. Madison had been a rising reporter at the time, and admittedly keen on certain instincts. He knew once the serial petered out there would be lower sales and lower commissions...so he decided one day to go examining the Lestrade family history.
What he found was a strange discrepancy.
In the court records (which were plentiful), both the doomed Armoricus Lestrade and the institutionalized Paul Lestrade had been in possession of birth-records to prove their identities. But the youngest son, the policeman, did not.
Further digging revealed to a fascinated Madison that Geoffrey Lestrade had applied for a policeman's post in the winter of '42, passing the physician's physical with a written statement to the effect that in lieu of a proven birth-record, Dr. Armstrong had stated the applicant was clearly old enough to request the employment of the London Metro. On his word the Metro decided Geoffrey Lestrade was of legal age and passed him into the ranks, where he soon proved a willingness to outwork his peers, if he couldn't outthink them.
Lestrade was so used to being examined (French surname, Channel culture, an education best described as scraped from the bottom of a rotting fish-barrel, witness to the ethics scandal of the Yard in '77), that he hadn't paid attention to that either. He'd found out the hard way that Madison had hopped the nearest train to Plymouth and tracked his parents down to the country estate they worked in.
City-born and cosmopolitan, Madison had not been prepared to face a lifestyle he'd long thought was a myth. Here in the provincial lands, servants were still called peasants, and the landowners were saluted with forelocks. Adding to his frustration, the elderly Lestrades hadn't understood a single word of English, and only spoke a rudimentary form of French (Madison wouldn't have recognized the millennia-old Breton dialect had it struck him, stolen his watch, and pushed him into a canal).
Looking back, Lestrade wished he would have been that fly on the wall, just that one time when Madison finally found a willing priest to translate their 'illiterate gibberish' in his attempts to discern the reason why only two of their three sons had a viable birth record. He could see it now, in his blessedly limited imagination: Thomas Lestrade staring at the stranger in utter befuddlement. Jeanne Lestrade would have been bending over backwards to be polite to the poor young madman.
And for what? A family Bible, with the names of all the children carefully written in smooth Luxeuil calligraphy...
...how bitterly frustrated had Madison been, to see the page for one particular son's name razored out in harsh blocks? Had he not understood a disownment was forever? Did they not know that it was disrespectful to speak the names of the dead?
-
On the other side of ten years' passing, Madison was speaking. Lestrade pulled his mind out of the past gladly, even if it meant listening to him.
"It wasn't as though I learned anything from your parents, Mr. Lestrade." Madison still managed to eke out a bit of annoyance.
Lestrade had reached inside his coat and found his tin case of cigarettes. He did not offer the other man one. He cupped his hands around the stalk and struck a match on his fingernail in one stroke. For a moment there was silence and flame as the little detective drew the spark inside the tobacco.
"You're limited, you know." He said at last. "It's your own innocence that gave you that mistake."
Madison was instantly furious, though he said nothing. Not then.
"You see," Lestrade blew a thin stream of smoke, no more than a grey thread, into the air. "At the time, my parents were Anglicans. And the Anglicans are still the only church in England that insists on birth-records. They had a falling-out with the priest before I was born. Went back to being Romanists...that's really the reason why there's no paper to back up my existence." He shrugged wildly, not quite rubbing it in to the self-assured bastard.
"No man is without something to hide."
Madison's words congealed in the air between them, just as the reporter realized the full irony of the meaning.
Lestrade's dark eyes never reacted, never showed anything more than a steady gaze upon him.
"I quite agree. You seek your information your way," the little detective answered in a low, quiet voice, "and I will seek mine."
There was really nothing more to say.
Madison found himself walking away from the tradesman without another word. He was almost home before words even came to him.
-
Lestrade finished his smoke, watching the tall man melt into the crowd. His thoughts were suddenly troubling...and murky. A shame there was no such thing as a compass for human behavior.
He pinched the end of his smoke off before it could burn his lips, and a small girl ran up. Her face and ragged yellow hair was clean, but the five dresses she wore--her life's possessions--spoke of the filthy streets. A month ago he'd witnessed the claim of her brother's body to lockjaw...a common enough way to die in streets decorated with horse-dung. He handed the cooling nib to her, and she pocketed it with a grin. It would join the other tobacco-stubs and nubs to be dried over stingy soft-coal fires that night, and re-made into fags to sell to people even poorer than herself: the bone-grubbers; the dredgermen who made their livelihood pulling up the corpses of the dead from the waters...and the dog-dung-sweepers.
Alone, he lit another smoke.
Had Madison declared war then? He was never without inspiration for his poison pen. Polite poison was still poison. Lestrade was hardly the biggest fish in his net...or even the most interesting.
Still...there was a personal dislike the reporter had of him that should not be overlooked.
No man is without something to hide...
Too true.
The irony of it was, Madison proclaimed to tell the story of the London poor, but he didn't know a single thing about them. Henry Mayhew he was not.
A disownment was final. He was dead to his family, their extended kin, and those that were loyal to his family's friendship. It was a large region, and just as well they were all in Plymouth while he stayed in London. Any sentence in the diaries with his name in it had been blacked out years ago--if it hadn't been sliced out, burned out, or just tossed out.
Lestrade had not been the first man to lack possession of proof of his own life. More people than not were in the same situation. More than three-fourths of the London poor had no idea there was an attempt to record the simple fact of their existence. Such proofs, which were usually the only way one could track down the vicious predations of places such as baby-farms, child-rings or kidnappings, depended on the few charity groups and overworked, underthanked Anglican clerks.
For him...the issue lay within the kindly doctor who looked upon the young man who was pulling extra-shifts as a cab-man in order to prepare for his wanted career in the Metro. A physical exam; the determination that his twisted left foot posed no difficulties. The conclusion that he was physically mature enough for the work. One signature and it was done.
Bretons aged quickly. Lestrade had stopped growing rather soon, but Lestrade wasn't certain just how old he was; what was a birthday if it wasn't just another work-day? He'd been born sometime during the autumn...whatever year that was. Faced with that problem, and needing to make his own way in life, he'd found a sympathetic doctor who was willing to write the obvious.
As far as proving he was younger or older than he claimed...well...Lestrade wished Madison luck, in a sardonic way. As long as he was barking up empty trees, he wouldn't be noticing other things the Yard was up to.
Such as tonight's raid at the Kelpie.
-
1 Slang for 'street-finders'—people that scrounge a living (literally) out of picking up the things no one else wants or can afford to ignore. They are usually the poorest of the poor.
2 Dice; loaded dice
3 The newest pickpocket in the gang; prized because they hadn't been identified as such by the police just yet. Toby is good at what he does because he can move without being noticed, and picks the beats of the inexperienced policemen.