Gregson's mood was actually much worse than what Bradstreet had told Lestrade.
The big man was chilled to the bone, his hands ached and there was something wrong with the draft so he was hovering closer to the coal than was dignified. Their "conference room" was nothing more than one of those small rooms things tend to get lost in until they're needed, and in this case it was an annex off the Missing Items Claims.
Hopkins made no particular contrast in his own misery. The young man had been developing a chest cough since last night, and Patterson (who looked ill enough when he was supposed to be having a good day), sat on the other side of the card-table, caught between a potentially catching comrade, and a big man who wanted to pace incessantly.
Bradstreet was in temporary disgrace; Lestrade was still out from the effects of his accidental invention of the sport of graveyard-diving, and Montgomery was taking a much-earned vacation in the south (no doubt drinking his way all to Nantes).
They were a sorry lot.
"I agree with what the two of you are saying," Gregson folded his aching hands under his arms to pad them with steady heat. "There are just too many coincidences."
"Blake's our man," Hopkins persisted. "He's got to be."
"Hopkins, we know you're right," Patterson lifted skeletal hands in exhaustion. "The problem is mapping out why he is exactly the key."
"He's not the key." Gregson retorted. "But he's one of the underpinnings." He pulled out his throbbing hands (Elise would have the hot water ready as soon as he got home) and counted the points on his fingers. "He was a cutter for the Army Medical Corps. If that didn't give him access to some unpleasant stuff, nothing would."
"Not to mention his brother and father both have significant posts in the First Bank of Thames, the same wonderful people who supported the burial charity in the first place." Gregson opened his mouth to add a rather important point, but all three men wound up jumping instead at the sound of a body striking the door from the outside. The wood rattled in its frame. "Bloody hell!" He swore.
Bradstreet's large hand punched the door open and held it as a frozen-countenanced Lestrade came in, propelling a white-faced Pennywraith before him. The old man's arm was wrenched behind his back.
"There you are, doctor." Lestrade gestured to the stunned Inspectors as he shoved Pennywraith forward. "They're all there, and you needn't try to listen through a half-inch of pinewood door…you can just sit down and spy on them the old-fashioned way."
-
"No doubt, he's been playing the crooked cross."
Miller's blotchy face was close to repeating the attack of last spring. He ignored Bradstreet's presence in the room—he could hardly get rid of him, seeing as how the Runner had witnessed Pennywraith's defection as well as Lestrade.
Gregson pondered how it must completely gall the old stick to face the fact that a man he trusted was not only corrupt, but that he was exposed in that corruption by two of the Inspectors he hated the most.
He felt a little sorry for old Miller, but he also knew he could afford the sympathy. Miller had never personally crossed him, like he had most of the others. For all his flaws and horrid desire to prick pins into the men around him, Miller seemed to want to regard Gregson as his successor.
The Chief Inspector paced in the confines of the room, and if he looked sleepless he was in good company. None of them looked like a man who ought to show up before a journalist's camera right now.
Gregson was shocked by the sudden emotion in his breast. Miller was living proof a human being could cross-breed with the stinging nettle, and he was probably as ugly on the inside as he was on the outside. At the same time, there was something sad and pathetic about the old man as he struggled to swim upstream against his upbringing and his training to face the truth.
What would happen to the old man when he retired?—a movement that would happen soon, surely! Not outside the next ten years…[1]
Miller was so old he could resent the French for the murder of his grandfather back in the last sea-war with France. It was the first three reasons why Lestrade and his Frenchie surname would never rise higher in rank than plain detective-Inspector…but at least Lestrade had the sense to ignore the other man's failings.
Perhaps it was because he was childless too, but he could glimmer something of Miller's world. Whether or not you were a father, there existed some sort of desire to leave some sort of legacy behind…
Miller was looking at him.
Gregson carefully schooled his thoughts. It was time to put them aside and tend to business. Even as his mouth opened and assuring plans of attack came out, the big man was thinking ahead of his lips, to the strange and disturbing future that lay before them.
-
"The garden."
Clea said it so abruptly, it surprised Mary. The thought must have percolated unawares while they dipped into more restful topics—the uses of sweet almond oil being the current one.
"The garden?"
"When it's in bloom…he goes there. Even when he's tired out, he tends to it a bit, and when the weather's wretchedly hot he almost sets up a desk outside." Clea sighed. "It's taken me longer than I like to think to remember that…"
"I thought your husband was indifferent to the country."
"Believe me, he is. But Mrs. Collins' garden has him absorbed. He's always doing something with the fig-trees, or the stone walk." Clea's deep eyes were surprised. "I never really thought about it before, Mary, but he's always doing something with it. Except for now…there's not much anyone can do."
"So we need to think of some way to work the garden into the house for the winter." Mary mused. "Is it the plants he likes? Or the architecture?"
"I couldn't tell you. He doesn't talk about it…" Clea shrugged helplessly.
"Men can be unfathomable," Mary decided. "I'm aware that's a trite observation, and something that allows one to blithely drop a matter, but there are some things they do that I'm sure I'll never follow, should I live to be a hundred."
-
"Hold the light."
"I'm holding it, Ratty."
"Then hold it still, would you please, Euclid?" Lestrade shot back.
"Temper, temper," Gregson scolded but without heart. Lestrade had the worst of the job, combing over the smallest nooks and crannies of Pennywraith's desk. The room was stifling-hot, but the floor was ice cold and Lestrade's back had been on it for nearly an hour. "At least you can lie down. I'm the one bent half-over."
"Gregson…"
Gregson grinned, mostly in the luxury of Lestrade's ignorance. He couldn't see him from several layers of pressed wood, could he?
"Oh, dear me…"
It was the rat's worst invective. The flat and empty way Lestrade's voice turned was enough to deaden anyone's heart. Gregson lowered the little lamp with an equally sinking heart.
"What is it?"
"Give me a hand and…dear Lord, I hope I'm wrong…"
Gregson complied. Lestrade pulled out from the desk, rumpled and pale. A sheaf of tightly-stuffed letters rumpled in his fingers.
"Where's the good light?" Lestrade wanted to know.
"What's wrong with you?" Gregson demanded. "Anything good?"
"Look for yourself…where's the water-jug?"
Lestrade pushed the paper into his startled rival's hands, got to his feet, and went for the pitcher resting against the wall, muttering softly to himself.
Gregson opened the first envelope with a shaking hand. Even though it was unadorned on the front and back, the sender's address rested neatly in the upper left-hand corner in a beautiful flowing hand.
A hand no one at the Yard had seen in two years…and had no desire to see.
Charles Augustus Howell.
"Damn." Gregson breathed. "Oh…damn."
"Careful, Gregson," Lestrade's black humour emerged as he poured water. "There might be women present."
"Not likely, as they're filing our reports right now." Gregson disliked men who preferred the peaceful life of clerical joys under a roof.
Charles Augustus Howell had been one of London's special scourges. He was a master blackmailer who hobnobbed with the art-patrons and artists (all the better to find incriminating materials). He was most famous for illegally exhuming the grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's wife, in order to recover the unpublished poems Rosetti had placed inside her coffin in a fit of artistic grief.
Even Mr. Holmes had run afoul of the man, repeatedly so if there were any truths within the rumour-mill…but events transpired in a strange way and the Great Detective had at least lived long enough to see the satisfaction of the blackmailer's death.
Lestrade held part of the correspondence in his hands, thinking of that particular case.
Gregson sat down next to him with the other half, and lit up a smoke. "You think Howell really died of pneumonia?" He wondered. "Or was it the slash over his throat?"
"I don't know. It wasn't my inquest." Lestrade sighed. "At the time, I was just happy to be nowhere near Chelsea…" He poked open the flap of the envelope and wondered what would happen when they read the contents. "Funny when you think of it."
"How so?"
"All that wealth he amassed…gaining it by hurting other people who must have made just a simple bloody mistake…"
"Language, Lestrade."
Lestrade ignored that. "Mr. Holmes tried hard to get evidence on him, so I suppose it shows how oily he really was. But what good did it do him? He still died."
"Dunno, Ratty." Gregson smoked. "You have two choices. The first one is that he really did die of pneumonia, and one of his victims hauled his corpse out to Chelsea, slashed his throat, and stuffed the ten-shilling piece in his mouth for the police to find. The second is, he was really killed by a slash across the throat, in which case he was also stuffed with the shilling, and tossing his body by a public house was icing on the biscuit."
Lestrade had to agree. Howell's fastidious arrogance would have hated to be associated with a public water-hole. In comparison, being murdered would be secondary to the man's horrendous pride.
"Choices aside, Gregson, there was still a dirty ten-shill in his mouth. The righteous dead are given pennies over their eyes, or under their tongue to pay the ferryman. But it's the traitors we find with thirty silver pennies in their hands, or the slanderers with ten shillings in their mouths." Lestrade had drooped like a grass-stem, and was now sitting on Pennywraith's blotting-paper with a cup of cool water against the back of his neck. "So what now, genius-Inspector?" He asked too tiredly to be wholly sarcastic.
"What now?" Gregson repeated softly.
"Yes, I believe I just said that." Lestrade spat even as he heard how fruitless and petty the words sounded when coming out of his mouth.
"Good question." Gregson answered in that same colourless voice. "First of all, if Pennywraith had been in communications with Howell…who else was he in communications with?" He didn't wait for an answer. "You remember Howell as well as I do. Hell, man. You probably gave people the same speech I gave 'em when I was telling 'em to stay away." He leaned back, eyes closing for a moment. "We're going to have to read this garbage," he said at last. "Go over it for names, and I hope to God there's nobody mentioned in here that we like."
"Howell didn't target people that were despised," Lestrade reminded him.
Gregson sighed. "And here I thought Blake would be our ticket…" both men looked up as Bradstreet's heavy tread neared the door. He poked his head in, hat in his hand.
"Just thought you ought to know," Bradstreet began, "but Pennywraith was the physician who saw Baldwin the night he died. I'm still trying to see who saw to Loseth before he died…but…still…"
"Pennywraith wouldn't have any call to be all the way down there!" Gregson exclaimed.
"Dear Lord." Lestrade closed his eyes. "Roger, get Patterson. We need his gimlet eye on this."
"What are you thinking?" Gregson asked as if he already knew. Lestrade slid off the top of Pennywraith's desk and began slowly pacing back and forth.
"I'm thinking that Pennywraith's been ensconced for a long, long time. I'm thinking that we need to see if Patterson recognizes some of the names that come up."
He did.
So did they.
There were many names.
Patterson was still finding them when Lestrade gave it up for the evening. He bade them a decent evening and donned his hat and coat. There was less rain, but the wind was biting, and there was that particular scent in the air (underneath the flying smuts) that suggested snow was coming back.
I know this is still winter, but this really and truly is ridiculous…
Clea met him at the door, flour-dusted and smiling. "Welcome back, love," she paused to look him over. "What's wrong with you? You're not covered in London!"
"Stayed inside today." He explained. "How are things?"
"Very good. Had a good chat with Mrs. Watson…" Together they hung up his street-wear and went up the steps. Clea pushed aside a flurry of papers done up in coloured chalks to make room for a light meal. He saw a lump of green on the corner of one and picked it up.
"Designing the gardens?"
"I think it's the effect of too much ice and rain and snow." Clea explained. She frowned her concentration over pouring the tea. "I want to see something green again."
"It'll be a miracle if Mrs. Collins figs survive." He mused, and set the paper down. "Too bad my mother couldn't be here. She liked nothing better than to work over a garden in paper."
"Really?"
"Probably has plant-juice instead of blood…oh, that's good." He relished the first cup.
"Don't fill up on tea…we have chowder soon!"
"Yes'm…"
"So she has a hand for plants?"
"You've no idea. The floor in our kitchen was an awful exposed plank…she had us paint it up so it looked like the bottom of an herb-garden." He grinned at his wife's expression. "Even painted a few Apothecary Roses in the corner. Still, it was the only garden we were allowed to just walk in." Clea was turning thoughtful. "Oh, no you don't!"
Yes, Charles Augustus Howell did exist…and the subject of his life…and death…is an absorbing one! Doyle's case of "The Master Blackmailer" is quite bold, for he appears to be giving an underlying message to Howell's victims as well as those who had supported him.
[1] Gregson's last appearance in Canon is about ten years from now, in REDC. Two possibilities are he was killed in the line of duty or promoted up. This author far prefers the latter theory.
