Once in a great while—a very great while—Geoffrey Lestrade managed to pull one over on his wife. Needless to say, this took a great deal of planning on his part, or more tpically, the type of seamless luck that occurs when all the planets are found to be quite accidentally in proper alignment.
In this case, it was dancing her to a level of exhaustion and waking up in the morning to find he had actually beaten her to the dawn chorus.
Such moments weren't witnessed every day…
Geoffrey managed to slip out of the covers and dress himself without falling over Nick's shoes (bless him, the boy wasn't quite as neat as Martin), and rang for the maid. When she emerged he left instructions for their breakfast and went downstairs for his own.
Clea never complained, but it wasn't easy enjoying an English breakfast with a husband who displayed nausea at the sign of anything sweet. She liked her cane syrups, sweet butter, jellies, jams, treacle, and three different kinds of ground sugar as well as the next woman. So did Nick. They deserved the freedom of a scrooge-free breakfast once in a while…
-
Downstairs he was taken aback at how deserted the place was. He looked about, even behind him, but it was still just himself and one lonely little maid puttering around in the back, wiping up a spill off a vase of fresh flowers.
They really don't pay people enough to work in a place like this, Geoffrey thought to himself. Learning a useful trade, my badge. Anyone can mop water for the toffs…
She was already rising, her face pinking all the way to her ears and hands fluttering at her apron-clad sides. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Lestrade. May I help you?"
Knowing who he was and that he preferred to be "Mr." when on vacation said as clearly as a gunshot that his wife had gone through the staff before him. He nodded at her, wishing that people didn't look at him with such fear and suspicion. It was all part of being a policeman, but he didn't like it.
"I was wondering when breakfast would be up, Miss."
"We have most of it now, sir. Most of the guests aren't up for another hour or two."
Geoffrey wondered how anyone could possibly sleep so late. It had to be going on seven in the morning. Most everyone had gone to bed by midnight!
"Eggs if you have any." No one had yet found a way to put sugar on an egg that he knew of.
-
No newspapers in this place. In complete resignation and in his restlessness he plucked a book off the shelf in the breakfast room and paged through a puzzling private publishing venture on the wonders, glories, and majesties of Surrey.
Whoever this person is, they'd get rich writing for Punch under satire…
Just as he was distracted by the arrival of the tray, Inspector Baynes emerged.
The man looked quite tired. Lestrade had to feel professional sympathy for him; he was doing all the policework and most of the leg-work…but he had a feeling that despite the seeming alliance between himself and Mr. Holmes, the two divas were performing on separate sides of the stage.
Under such circumstances, Lestrade's sympathy could only go so far.
"Just in time for some breakfast, Mr. Baynes." Lestrade put the book aside with politely disguised relief (he could care less about murders and scandals that happened back when Breton was the only one of two languages running around the southern part of the isle).
"I shouldn't say no to that offer, Lestrade." Baynes admitted. "I'll need every bite I pack in if I'm to keep up with Mr. Holmes today."
"Completely understood." As usual, the meal was grossly over-proportioned. He signaled for another place at the table.
"I hope last night didn't cause any difficulties." Baynes opened the floor.
"I can't say it did." Geoffrey divided up enough eggs to feed a family off Lambeth between them. "We're here for recuperation more than a vacation, as you're aware."
"Still, it looked a little odd, you must admit. Mr. Holmes inviting you over just before the murder."
In polite society, a gentleman does not hold his cup with both hands. He holds the handle by one, and the other holds the tiny, fragile, idiotically slender cup-saucer beneath it. At Baynes' statement, Geoffrey temporarily forgot just how fragile china could be, but this was a set off the local clay, not something imported from across the globe for an ignominious end under a policeman's calloused grip.
They were the only members in the Breakfast-room, but abruptly, the room seemed to get a bit crowded.
So. He had arranged this. Thought so. Geoffrey took a sip of unsweetened twig tea and put the cup back down with exaggerated care. Without saying a word he set the whole thing down on the table by his plate and waited a moment, collecting his thoughts.
"You'll have to ask Mr. Holmes for his reasons on arranging this vacation," he said at last. "But while he's an infuriating man, I can tell you it is completely against his character to do something as intolerable as inviting a man's family to a resort just so the head of that family can help investigate a murder." Amazing what you can learn if you actually have the guts to ask the man something...sometimes he actually even tells you something.
Baynes looked skeptical—and hopeful. He wanted to be convinced, Geoffrey realised. "You've worked with him a great deal." He pointed out. "You ought to know him as well as anyone."
"I don't know him as well as anyone." Geoffrey said it far more sharply than he meant, but he wouldn't apologize for his feelings. "I barely know the man at all. Dr. Watson has his measure, not I." He waved the fork between them like a lever to underscore his point. "He can solve cases. But he can't just up and solve cases without the help of the Yard. And he will always need us for the times when we're in a country-wide manhunt or a blank arrest warrant absolutely must be written out."
Baynes split a too-crisp piece of toast in his large hands. "He's a smart one, but there's enough he does that isn't approved procedure."
Talking about someone when they weren't there frankly scared Geoffrey. It called for a degree of brazen confidence he didn't carry. He hoped devoutly that would be the end of it.
It wasn't.
"Still, the rewards aren't half bad." Baynes was saying. "You've solved quite a lot of them with his help."
"Just as he's finished his share with mine." Geoffrey concentrated on getting a too-runny yolk to his fork. "It's worth the occasional inconvenience, just like it is with any partnership."
Baynes mused him over. There was no other word for it in Geoffrey's admittedly just-adequate vocabulary. "So," he said slowly. "You really don't care what others think of you?"
"Of course I care!" he protested with an assuring warmth to his voice. "Everyone ought to care…but it's a luxury in this profession." He sighed and put his fork down before he could swing yolk across the table. "My old supervisor once told me, a man learns more from losing chess than he does winning. Whether or not he was giving me indirect advice, I'll never know…but it's stuck with me ever since." His mouth made a peculiar twist, one Clea would have recognized on his father the one time she'd seen him. "It isn't an easy rope to walk on," he confessed. "I stand up for myself as a grown man ought…but when it comes to politics…there's just too many pitfalls and traps and Mr. Holmes fears nothing, Baynes. He grew up in a world where men make their own way by commanding others."
Baynes said nothing, but he appeared to be listening with both ears.
"The police might not be thought much of, but we're the only yardstick of behavior out there. Legally we can arrest anyone regardless of their station, but we're still battling out the older way of doing things where things were handled by people within your own station or higher-up. I get tired of the cover-ups and the attempts "not to make waves" and all the other ways people get in the way of the law. So many of them think they even obey the law, but they don't, really. They're at odds with the other laws they were raised up with: Be respectable, don't do anything shameful, set a good example, and never fail. Recipe for disaster, that." He took a deep breath. "And I don't envy you, because you're not being given the truth in the matter. Every single one of those jesters wants to hoarde everything they know from you."
Baynes sighed. "I knew that would happen when I was called in." He pointed out. "They think we're all out to find something else and root up all the skeletons while we're there, instead of just sticking to the case."
"I don't envy you."
"Perhaps you could share some of the credit on this case." Baynes commented as if casually. Geoffrey didn't for once think it was an idle thought that just popped into that large head.
"I'm flattered but I hardly have the connexions that would be of any use."
"Didn't you have dinner with His Lordship?" Baynes asked in an odd tone of voice.
"It would be more truthful to say I was already having dinner." Geoffrey answered with a voice so even it would stand as a spirit-level. "Mr. Holmes toled him over. You know how he can be."
"Yes." Baynes mused. "But why did he feel the urge to invite him over?"
Geoffrey sighed. "I don't know and I really don't care." He answered. "I'm here on vacation, and it's the first vacation I've ever had that didn't involve looking at the walls of a hospital." He sighed again, and lifted his hands in the thin scraps of rising sunlight. "I have no wish to interfere with your case. In fact, had I known there would be a mysterious death here, I would have regretfully cancelled this vacation and gone somewhere less stressful."
Baynes made a chuckling sound. "Well, I suppose I must earn my promotion all the way."
"You'll be promoted." Lestrade told him evenly. "I'm sure of it. You have what it takes."
Baynes chuckled again. "High praise from you, Inspector." He swirled his tea.
"I suppose." Lestrade answered diffidently.
"Lestrade, you'd work with me if you had a professional reason. I know it. But you've got a personal score against me and I'd like to know what it is."
"You arrested the wrong man, deliberately." Lestrade heard himself saying before he could stop himself. "A terrified man who could barely understand English. It should have been your thumb what was nearly bit off! I've arrested plenty of people by accident, but I've never done anything like that."
"Finding the true murderers…who had murdered plenty of people in the past, wasn't enough of a reason for you, sir?" Baynes' tone of voice was pleasant but there was a single strand of cheerful condescension in it that made Geoffrey think about leaping across the table and wrapping his hands about that muscular throat. He gave himself less than ten seconds before Baynes cracked his skull open with the truncheon hanging off his coat.
He counted to eleven.
"It wasn't." He said at last. "It was not. You abused the trust in the police with your actions, you created fear where it hadn't existed, and you made no apologies—oh, I don't know why I'm even bothering talking to you about it!" Geoffrey's smaller form was pressed into the air facing Baynes, and Baynes was making no move against him. "I've been on the force twenty years longer than you, Baynes. Don't ask me to overlook the world I grew up in. You really want to transfer to London? Are you willing to face the fact that one out of every four of your comrades are going to seek a hospital from our own public attacking us? The number of criminals with firearms is on the rise while we have to beg for the temporary permission to keep an iron for the night in the worst parts of London. Do you have any illusions about how high the suicide rate is now? Can you work, one man, for every few hundred to few thousand citizens depending on the case? You have your ambitions and you have a right to pursue them, Baynes. To be honest you don't belong here. You need to be where the big problems are, but your generation takes some things for granted. I'm worried that an abuse of authority, even for a good cause, will reverse the trust we're only just starting to hold with our own people."
"You're singing at the choir there." Baynes answered, and for once without his chuckling humour attached to it. "But I made a judgment, Lestrade. And I weighed the people who had died under the Tiger against a single man."
"A single man who had no friend nor ally." Geoffrey said bitterly. "Why are you still here?" He demanded. "The bloody Tiger of San Murillo wasn't enough to get you a desk straight at the Home Office, next to the Chief Secretary's potted fern?"
"When is it ever enough, Lestrade?"
It was as if the sun had passed behind a cloud in the room. The honesty shivered. Geoffrey's hands closed around his teacup again, but made no move to pick it up.
He glanced down at the stitched cutwork of the table for a moment, his tea balanced between his fingers. "True enough." He said in the same sort of voice. "But still."
"The Tiger escaped England. That was "enough" for some."
"Bloody hell…" Geoffrey swore without embarrassment. "And saving the life of the diplomat's widow wasn't enough?"
"It was pointed out that if a sacked gardener can do the work of the police, there was an obvious lack in the organisation of the Constabulary."
Baynes waited, but his professional comrade…his rival…remained silent.
"Well?" He wanted to know. "Say it."
"Say what?" Geoffrey scowled.
"Say that for all my clever planning, everything was still ruined as far as my ambitions. The case was solved but not prettily. The Dictator has left our soils, but under his own power not ours. And our country lost a bargaining-chip with Central America we may never get back. Yes, it looks as though the world is headed to another war, but a willing ally is better than an ally out of need. All this…lost until somehow it can be salvaged, and it will be hands other than mine that does the salvaging."
Geoffrey looked back down at the cup in his hands. "That's not what I was thinking." He said in a low voice.
Baynes studied him suspiciously, but those dark eyes looked back up and met his without flinching. It was like looking into the eyes of a wild animal; there was no particular recognition of the importance of another man in the look.
"What were you thinking, may I ask?"
"I was thinking," was the quiet answer, "that this case looks as though you're being set up for another failure."
Baynes leaned back slowly until his back touched the chair. "I daresay you're right." He agreed in a calm voice that Geoffrey recognized all too well.
He'd used it himself often enough.
